The Woman in Cabin 10

“Who else knew about it?”

“About the mascara?” It was a good question, and one, I realized with a touch of chagrin, that I had not thought to ask myself. “Um . . . I guess . . . no one apart from . . . Nilsson.”

It was not a reassuring thought. We looked at each other for a long time, Ben’s eyes reflecting the uncomfortable questions that were suddenly churning inside me.

“But he was with me,” I said at last. “When it was taken.”

“The whole time?”

“Well . . . more or less . . . No, wait, there was a gap. I ate breakfast. And I spoke to Tina.”

“So he could have taken it.”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “He could.” Had he been the one in my cabin? Was that how he had known about my medication, and the advice not to mix them with alcohol?

“Look,” Ben said at last. “I think you should go and see Richard Bullmer.”

“Lord Bullmer?”

“Yes. Like I said, I played poker with him last night and he seems like a decent bloke. And there’s no sense in messing around with Nilsson—Bullmer is where the buck stops. My dad always used to say, if you’ve got a complaint, go straight to the top.”

“This is hardly a customer services issue, Ben.”

“Regardless. But this Nilsson guy—it doesn’t look good for him, does it? And if there’s anyone on this boat who can hold Nilsson accountable, it’s Bullmer.”

“But will he? Hold him accountable, I mean? He’s got as much motive as Nilsson for hushing this up. More, in fact. Like you say, this has got the potential to play out very badly for him, Ben. If this gets out, the Aurora’s future will be very shaky. Who the hell wants to pay tens of thousands of pounds for a luxury trip on a boat where a girl died?”

“I bet there’s a niche market,” Ben said, with a slightly twisted smile. I shuddered. “Look, it can’t hurt to go and see him,” he persisted. “At least we know where he was all last night, which is more than we can say for Nilsson.”

“You’re sure none of the people you were with left the cabin?”

“Absolutely sure. We were in the Jenssens’ suite—there’s only one door and I was sat facing it all night. People got up and went to the loo and stuff, but they all used the bathroom in the cabin suite. Chloe sat and read for a while and then went into the bedroom next door—there’s no exit from that except through the main room of the suite. No one left until four at the earliest. You can rule out all four men, plus Chloe.”

I frowned, ticking off passengers on my fingers.

“So that’s . . . you, Bullmer . . . Archer . . . Lars, and Chloe. Which leaves Cole, Tina, Alexander, Owen White, and Lady Bullmer. Plus the staff.”

“Lady Bullmer?” Ben raised an eyebrow. “I think that’s stretching it.”

“What?” I said defensively. “Maybe she’s not as ill as she looks.”

“Yup, that’s right, she’s faked four years of recurrent cancer and grueling chemo and radiotherapy just to provide an alibi for the murder of a strange girl.”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic. I was just making the point.”

“I think the passengers are a red herring, though,” Ben said. “You can’t get away from the fact that you and Nilsson were the only people who knew about that mascara. If he didn’t take it, he must have told the person who did.”

“Well . . .” I said, and then stopped. An uneasy feeling, not unlike guilt, was trickling down the back of my neck.

“What?”

“I—I was trying to think. When Nilsson took me round the staff. I can’t absolutely remember . . . I could have mentioned it.”

“Jesus, Lo,” Ben said. He stared at me. “Did you? Or didn’t you? It kind of matters.”

“I know that,” I said peevishly. The boat heaved up and down a wave, and the feeling of nausea swept over me again, the half-digested pancakes shifting uneasily in my gut. I tried to think back to the conversations below decks, but it was hard to remember, I’d been so hungover, so distracted by the claustrophobic artificial light of those narrow, windowless cabins. I shut my eyes, feeling the sofa lurch and tilt beneath me, and tried to think back to the staff canteen and the pleasant, scrubbed faces of the girls tipped up towards me. What the hell had I said?

“I can’t remember,” I said at last. “I really can’t. But I could have mentioned it. I don’t think I did, but I can’t absolutely say that I didn’t.”

“Bollocks. Well, that widens things out considerably.”

I nodded soberly.

“Look,” Ben said at last. “Maybe one of the other passengers saw something. Someone going in and out of the empty cabin, or whoever stole the mascara going into yours. Who’s in the aft cabins?”

“Um . . .” I counted them out on my fingers. “Well, there’s me in nine, you in eight. Alexander is in . . . I think it might be six?”

“Tina’s in five,” Ben said thoughtfully. “I saw her go in last night. Which means Archer must be in seven. Okay. Want to go and do some door stepping?”

“All right,” I said. For some reason, maybe it was the surge of anger, or the feeling of being believed, or maybe just the effect of having a plan, I was feeling better already. But then I caught sight of the clock on Ben’s laptop. “Shit, I can’t, not now. I’ve got this bloody ladies’ spa thing.”

“What time does it finish?” Ben asked.

“No idea. But I shouldn’t think it will run over lunchtime. What are the men supposed to be doing?”

Ben stood up and flicked through a brochure on the desk.

“Tour of the bridge. Nice and sexist—blokes get technology, women get aromatherapy. Oh, no, wait, there’s a men’s spa morning tomorrow. Maybe it’s just to do with space.” He picked up a pad and pen from the dressing table. “I need to be going, too, but let’s see what we can dig up this morning, and then we can rendezvous back here after lunch and door step the remaining passengers. After that we can take the whole lot to Bullmer. Maybe he can get the boat to divert—get the local police on board.”

I nodded. Nilsson hadn’t taken me seriously, but if we could find out something to corroborate my story—even just someone else who’d heard the splash, it would be a lot harder for Bullmer to ignore.

“I keep thinking about her,” I blurted as we reached the door. Ben stopped, his hand on the latch.

“What do you mean?”

“About the girl—the girl in Palmgren. What she must have felt when he went for her—whether she was alive when she went over. I keep thinking what it must have been like, the shock of the cold water, the sight of the boat pulling away . . .”

Had she screamed as the waves closed over her? Had she tried to call out, as the salt water flooded her lungs, her chest laboring as the cold bit harder and the oxygen leached from her blood, and she sank deeper and deeper . . . ?

And her body, drifting through the cold silent blackness of the deep ocean, white as bone, the fishes nibbling at her eyes, her hair floating in the current like a stream of dark smoke . . . All that I was thinking of, too, though I didn’t say it.

“Don’t,” Ben said. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you, Lo.”

“I know what it’s like,” I said, as he opened the door. “Don’t you see? I know what she must have felt like, when someone came for her in the middle of the night. That’s why I have to find out who did this to her.”

And because if I didn’t find out, they might come for me next.

- CHAPTER 16 -

Chloe and Tina were waiting in the spa when I arrived. Tina was leaning over the counter, reading something on the laptop Eva had left open behind the desk, and Chloe was ensconced deep in a luxuriously upholstered vintage leather chair, playing on her phone. I was surprised to see that without her makeup on, she looked completely different—the huge smoky eyes and jutting cheekbones of last night looking somehow faded and flat by the light of day.