I was almost at the door of my suite when I heard an angry voice from behind me.
“Lo. Lo, wait, you can’t make those kind of accusations and walk away.”
Shit. Ben. I felt a strong urge to slip inside my cabin and slam the door, but I made myself turn to face him, my back against the door.
“I didn’t make any accusations. I just said what I’d been told.”
“You pretty much implied you’re suspecting me now! We’ve known each other more than ten years! Do you realize how that makes me feel—that you could accuse me of lying like that?”
There was genuine hurt in his voice, but I refused to let myself soften. It had been Ben’s favorite tactic in arguments, when we were together, to divert the discussion away from whatever was annoying me to the fact that I’d hurt his feelings and was acting irrationally. Time and again I’d ended up apologizing for the fact that I’d upset him—my own feelings completely ignored, and always, in the process, we’d somehow wound up losing sight of the issue that had provoked the disagreement in the first place. I wasn’t falling for it now.
“I’m not making you feel anything,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I’m stating facts.”
“Facts? Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Ridiculous?” I folded my arms. “What does that mean?”
“I mean,” he said hotly, “that you’re acting completely paranoid. You’re seeing bogeymen behind every corner! Maybe Nilsson—”
He stopped. I clenched my fist around my delicate evening bag, feeling the solid bulk of my phone beneath the slippery sequins.
“Go on? Maybe Nilsson . . . what?”
“Nothing.”
“Maybe Nilsson was right? Maybe I am imagining things?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But it was what you were implying, right?”
“I’m just asking you to take a step back and look at yourself, Lo. Look at this rationally, I mean.”
I forced myself to keep a hold on my temper and smiled.
“I am rational. But I’m very happy to take a step back.” And with that, I opened my suite door, stepped inside, and slammed it in his face.
“Lo!” I heard from outside, and a thump on the door. Then a pause. “Lo.”
I said nothing, just slid the bolt and the chain across. No one was getting through that door without a battering ram. Least of all Ben Howard.
“Lo!” He banged again. “Look, will you just talk to me? This is really getting out of hand. Will you at least tell me what you’re going to say to the police tomorrow?” He paused, waiting for me to reply. “Are you even listening?”
Ignoring him, I threw my bag on the bed, stripped off my evening gown, and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door and turning on the taps to drown out the sounds from outside. When at last I stepped into the scaldingly hot water and turned off the taps, the only sound I could hear was the gentle hum of the extractor fan. Thank God. He must have given up at last.
I had left my phone in the bedroom, so I wasn’t sure what time it was when I climbed out of the bath, but my fingers were waterlogged and wrinkled, and I felt heavy with sleep, but in a good way, quite unlike the nervous, edgy exhaustion of the last day or two. As I cleaned my teeth, dried my hair, and belted the white bathrobe around myself, I thought of the good night’s sleep I would have, and the logical, carefully rehearsed story I would give to the police tomorrow.
And then . . . Christ. I felt almost weak with relief thinking about it. Then I would get a bus or a train or whatever bloody transport Trondheim possessed and get myself to the nearest airport and home.
When I opened the door to the cabin, I held my breath, half expecting Ben’s hammering and shouting to start up again, but there was no sound. I walked cautiously to the door, my feet silent on the thick pale carpet, and, lifting the cover to the spy hole, I looked out into the corridor. There was no one there. At least no one I could make out—in spite of the fisheye lens, I could only see part of the corridor, but unless Ben were lying on the floor beneath my door, he was gone.
I let out a sigh and picked up my abandoned evening bag to check the time on my phone and set the alarm for tomorrow. I wasn’t waiting for a call from Karla—I wanted to be up and off the boat as soon as possible.
But my phone wasn’t inside.
I turned the bag upside down, shaking it out but knowing it was fruitless—the bag was small and light, and there was no way anything heavier than a postcard could have been concealed inside. It wasn’t on the bed. Could it have slipped onto the floor?
I tried to think clearly.
I could have left it at the dinner table—but I hadn’t taken it out of my bag, and in any case, I had a clear memory of feeling it inside my evening bag during the argument with Ben. And I would have noticed its weight missing when I threw the bag on the bed.
I checked the bathroom in case I’d taken it in there on autopilot, but it wasn’t there, either.
I began to search harder, throwing the duvet onto the floor, pushing the bed to one side—and that’s when I saw it.
There was a footprint, a wet footprint, on the white carpet, very close to the veranda door.
I froze.
Could it have been me? Getting out of the bath?
But I knew that was impossible. I’d dried my feet in the bathroom, and I hadn’t walked anywhere near that window. I moved closer, touching the cold, damp shape with my fingertips, and I realized this was the print of a shoe. You could see the shape of the heel.
There was only one possibility.
I stood up, slid back the veranda door, and went out onto the balcony. There, I hung out over the rail, looking across to the empty veranda on the left of mine. The white glass privacy screen to either side was very high, and very sheer, but if you were daring and had a head for heights, and didn’t mind the possibility of slipping to a watery grave, you could just get over it.
I was shivering convulsively, my thin dressing gown no protection from the cold North Sea wind, but there was one more thing I had to try, though I was going to be very sorry and feel very stupid if it turned out I was wrong.
Carefully, I dragged the sliding glass door closed and let it click into position.
Then I tried to pull it back.
It worked—smooth as silk.
I went inside and did the same thing, and then checked the lock. As I had thought, there was no way of securing the veranda door to prevent someone entering from the outside. It was logical, really, now that I thought about it. The only person who should be on the veranda was an occupant of the room. You couldn’t risk someone accidentally locking themselves out there in bad weather, unable to get back inside and raise the alarm, or a child shutting a parent out there in a moment of rebellion, and then being unable to work the lock.
And really—what was there to fear? The veranda faced the sea—there was no possibility of someone accessing it from the outside.
Except there was. If you were very bold, and very stupid.
Now I understood. All the locks and bolts and DO NOT DISTURB signs in the world wouldn’t do any good on my cabin door, not when the balcony offered a clear route to anyone with access to the empty room, and enough upper-body strength to pull themselves over.
My room was not safe, and never had been.
Back inside the suite, I got into my jeans and boots, and my favorite hoodie. Then I checked the lock on the cabin door and huddled on the sofa with a cushion hugged to my chest.
There was no possibility of sleep now.
Anyone could have access to the empty suite. And from there, it was just a short climb across the glass divider into mine. The truth was, I could draw the bolt across my cabin door as much as I liked, but any member of the staff could open the empty cabin with their passkey. As for the guests . . .
I thought again of the layout of the cabins. To the right of mine was Archer’s, ex-marine, with an upper-body strength that made me wince when I remembered it. And to the left . . . to the left was the empty cabin, and beyond that, curving round the ship to the other side of the corridor, was Ben Howard’s.
Ben. Who had deliberately cast doubt on my story with Nilsson.
Ben, who had lied about his alibi.