by David Evans
It was inevitable at some stage that Sebastian would either land at one of these ports by ship or fly into one to board a ship for local destinations.
His acclaim as a cruise pianist was extremely high, and he was in constant demand. Sebastian was ahead of the pack. He was much sought after, because he could double up, perform classics with the onboard orchestras on the large ships as well as undertaking his piano bar sessions each night.
Sebastian was in demand and could choose to work for any of the cruise lines. To date, he had worked on three different cruise lines out of America over the past five years, and it would soon be time to find new pastures.
Sebastian had berated himself after the fiasco in Malaysia. That had been seven years ago, and it still angered him to think of the stupidity of it all. Although nothing was ever traced back to him, it had been messy, and not fulfilling in any satisfactory way. It was an act which was flawed. Sebastian recognized that he had been detailed enough in his research, but subsequently had not reconnoitred the area accurately and thoroughly. He also concluded that to go so far from the ship was not the intelligent option he first thought; it gave numerous people the opportunity to see him along the way.
Although the harelip had been operated on, Sebastian could not hide the distinctive tram-line scar over his lip, which he knew was a definite identification marker. Someone might also notice his wig. Both facts set him aside from most other people. Sebastian could hear the conversation in his head.
“Yeah, I saw a guy, white, no, maybe Asian. Cannot remember the colour of his hair or eyes. Could have been anywhere between five foot five, to six feet tall. Oh, yeah, had a scar above his lip, like he had surgery on a harelip or something, and he had weird hair.”
So, an excursion out and about to fulfil his desires was not the way to go. In fact, if he wanted to get caught, this would be a sure way of ensuring that happened. Sebastian did not want to get caught.
His eureka moment came on his second cruise on the Duchess of Shetland cruise ship, those seven long years ago. During the first two weeks of the journey, a passenger had gone missing in the water surrounding the French Reunion Island. The island is located in the Indian Ocean, to the east of the African coast.
Jill Cooper was in her fifties and had simply gone missing. She was observed entering her cabin on the first Saturday night of the cruise, and then she was gone, declared missing by Sunday morning. Following a full search of the ship, no trace or evidence of her or what had happened to her was discovered.
Jock Walker was an old sea dog who hailed from Glasgow. Jock was still, at forty-two years of age, a cabin boy; he was Sebastian’s boy. He was a five-foot-two Glaswegian with shocking red hair and a pockmarked face, with an old knife scar running to the side of his right eye; a legacy from a drunken advance toward Moira of Paisley. Unfortunately, Moira’s husband did not see the funny side of this drunken encounter. Jock should have been in a more senior position after his twenty-three years at sea, but the drink and his antics had ruined that, as well as the few brain cells he had started life off with.
Jock had been raised up in the urban sprawl of Glasgow. In his youth, he frequented the streets and alleys of Hill Street and Renfrew Street in the dilapidated city centre. The large three-floor sandstone houses were in much need of tender loving care. When Jock was thirteen, his school organized a day’s outing to the beautiful Trossachs National Park, about an hour away by coach, but a million miles away by contrast.
The stunning area was spotted with a multitude of breweries interspersed with Dickensian villages that still discharged large plumes of smoke out of chimney stacks. The scenic locations, nestled in along the banks of Loch Lomond and between the Munros, as the Scots called their mountains, were a magnet to tourists. The master brewers utilized hundreds of years of inherited knowledge and skills to convert the icy-cold, crystal snow-clear water, and brewed the magical whiskies by the vatful. Jock had been introduced to the lovely malts of the beautiful national park by one of the older schoolchildren on that trip. Jock had been given a lifelong legacy on that day trip all those years ago, as he became hooked on the firewater. While it was well-known in the ships Jock had served on that he had a drinking problem; hangover or not, he always got up to do his duties. But he was a crew assistant and kept away from the passengers and on a tight leash.
The first cruise lines were British, and being British, they automatically included a class structure. Not just between passengers, such as first and second class, but also between the crew. It was always officers first and everyone else after. But the entertainers on board were treated as if they were royalty. Sebastian, as a headliner, was considered amongst the elite contingent of the crew, which entitled him to the same standard of service as the passengers.
Jock was cleaner, carrier, general dogsbody, and scandal sheet to several of the entertainers, including Sebastian.
Within twenty minutes of the first news that Jill Cooper had gone missing, Jock had relayed the news to several of his wards. He knocked on Sebastian’s door before entering to find Sebastian sitting at the small desk, reading some music scores.
“Aye, staff captain told the chief steward who told Roily the senior steward that she was a single woman in her fifties. She was supposed to be here celebrating her divorce,” Jock said, giving a knowing wink.
“Obviously looking for a little action. They become invisible at that age, so probably ended up with a gin and tonic rather than a roll in the hay. Probably drank a little more; gin is a well-known depressant. Finally the sixty-foot drop into the dark ocean below. Probably seemed like an excellent idea at the time.” Jock added, “Silly bitch,” as an afterthought.
“Captain sent out three lifeboats to search for her this morning, but she could have jumped twelve hours ago. Anyway, with the number of sharks around here she’s dead meat, and her next appearance will be out of the rear end of a tiger shark sometime soon,” Jock said, as a matter of fact.
Sebastian was fascinated by the unsubstantiated jumps to conclusions, and lack of facts that Jock had just presented to him.
“Not wanting facts to get in the way of a good story, Jock, this woman spends $2,000 to come to the other side of the world to jump into a sea to be eaten by sharks? Why not just take a swig of methanol or a couple of packets of sedatives? Is the captain sure she wasn’t murdered and dumped or something?” Sebastian inquired.
He addressed Sebastian by his surname, as was his custom, “Mr McKenzie, we never have a murder on a ship, you should know that. We have incidents, we have accidents; we never have killings. It’s a bit like an actor saying ‘Macbeth’; we don’t even think it.”
“What about a police investigation?” Sebastian asked.
“No police out here, sir; only police in five hundred miles are the ones in the Reunion Islands. On the high seas, the captain is the police. He says it is suicide, then suicide it surely is. He reports it to the police and to the company, and that’s the end of that. On to the next cruise.”
“Does this befall people often, Jock?”
“Aye, I have been on cruise ships some twenty-odd years now, transferred from an old cargo ship company. The first I ever witnessed was an eighteen-year-old, straight out of college he was. Whenever someone crosses the equator for the first time, we call it crossing the line; well, we threaten them with stuff, and mostly carry out the threats. Martha, the third engineer, whose real name was Marty, had scared him shitless. He had told the lad he was going to gang-fuck him with a couple of mates. The boy, believing this, hid in the freezer down at the rear of the galley; idiot didn’t know you couldn’t open it from the inside. Found him next day as solid as a leg of New Zealand lamb. Missing his mom, committed suicide, the captain said. Dropped him off at the nearest port, which was Aden, to be shipped home; never seen again. Lads reckon the locals turned him into dog food. Since then I have seen too many suicides and accidents to remember, but not one murder.” Jock took a breath.
“Not
one murder, not one domestic squabble that leads to a fight and death?” Sebastian replied incredulously.
“You have to remember we have a fair amount of the walking dead that come on cruises. Generally old people, those who want the journey of a lifetime before the cancer, cirrhosis, or whatever ailment they suffer from gets them. We get the depressives, we get the drunks, we get the idiots; there're a thousand ways to die on the sea, and I’ve seen most of them,” Jock replied.
“Do you mean like once or twice a year?” Sebastian probed.
“No, I mean like once or twice a cruise. It’s just kept quiet so as not to disturb the guests. Disturb the guests and they don’t spend money, my old captain used to say.”
Sebastian’s modus operandi altered; the discussion had assisted in Sebastian’s evolution. In future, there was no need to go off the ship, no need to take risks and chances. The sea was a massive dumping ground, with little hope of the body’s discovery, and the captains and cruise line companies had a blind spot for murder.
Several years later, Jock was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, caused by his drinking. He took the coach to Callander in the Trossachs. On the outskirts of the town sat a medium-sized brewery. The brewery was fed water by the local stream, which cascaded down a small waterfall into the catchment area. The smell of hops was overwhelming from the large brass vessels. Jock had broken into the brewing area and the brewery manager, on investigating a blockage in the fermenter the following morning, found Jock dead, evidently drowned in the vat. The manager related to anyone who would listen that Jock had a smile on his face. Jock became immortal as the ghost of Callander Brewery, and the children of the area shivered when his name was mentioned.
The body of Jill Cooper was never found. She had thrown herself overboard in despair, mid-air she knew it was a mistake. The fall killed her instantly, like hitting a block of concrete. It had taken all of the thirty minutes before the sharks had ripped her limb from limb. The small remnants of body tissue after the shark fest fed the smaller fish and eels.
Chapter Eight
Cutler had one stop on the way into Tacoma International Airport in Seattle. The plane had a soft landing in Gander, Newfoundland, and would be on the ground for two hours. Gander airport had been a Canadian Air Force base that had many years previously allowed civilian aircraft to land to refuel. The highlight for most passengers was Gander’s famous ice cream. During short stopovers most passengers headed towards the small store within the steel-framed building that sold the treat.
Cutler did not register the frigid Newfoundland wind chill as he walked down the aircraft steps onto the aircraft staging area. Most of the long flight had been a blur since he had heard the news of his sister’s disappearance. Once inside the sparse building that passed for a terminal, he headed for a seat as far away from the humanity around him as possible.
A little girl approached him. She had blonde hair tied into two small ponytails sprouting from above each ear, her tiny frame in a floral printed dress displayed like a vase of summer flowers against the cold, hard interior.
“You look sad, mister,” she said innocently, in a tone that was sympathetic beyond her years.
“Macy, Macy, come away and leave that man alone!” boomed the voice of what Cutler assumed was the girl’s mother. He gave a little smile as the girl ran towards her mother with a quick backward glance.
Cutler could remember his sister in ponytails, wearing floral dresses that his mother would make on her little sewing machine on the porch of their house. His mind wandered back to Elisa when she was a kid, wanting to hold his hand wherever they went. Sometimes it had been restrictive; he was five years older than she was, and having a young girl hanging onto your arm was a topic for his friends to prod him with jibes.
He remembered the first time he had pitched a tent in the garden at their house in Cleveland. It had been an old silk parachute that his father had got hold of. Cutler did not know it was purchased so his mom could make a First Communion dress for Elisa; she must have been six years old. Boy, the telling-off was worth it to see the joy on his little sister’s face when she had charge of her first playhouse. She was playacting the mom, ordering Cutler about. “Clean the dishes! Mop the floor!” He had to endure the warm water flowing from a plastic teapot into a plastic cup and was made to drink every last drop of Elisa’s unique tea.
Elisa was every inch as clever as Cutler and had become an honour student at Cleveland High. Cutler’s mother did not leave a single item out of what she had done, how she had grown, who was making eyes at her, in the long letters she wrote to Cutler during his absences. On his return, Cutler would spoil her, spending a significant amount of his salary on her in Abercrombie and Fitch and other high-end clothes shops.
As he sat there in the minimalist terminal building, he was in no doubt his little sister was either in severe peril or dead. From his experience, he knew the crew would have searched the ship thoroughly.
Cutler had been involved in searches on ships looking for counterfeit dollars off the coast of Tampa, and he knew the crew would have a thorough understanding of all the places she could be on the ship. If she had injured herself, or knocked herself unconscious, they would have discovered her by now. He was certain she was no longer on the vessel.
“Boarding will commence on the British Airways flight to Seattle in twenty-five minutes,” the loudspeaker announced.
His mind had settled on the fact; she was definitely not still on the ship. That meant there could only be two possibilities. One: she was abducted onto another boat from the vessel, and that was highly unlikely with the watch-outs and the size of the vessel. Plus, the assailants would have to traverse the side of the hull and bypass the sophisticated radar. In essence, he calculated, one of the two possibilities was highly unlikely. Not impossible, but highly improbable.
All that remained was that Elisa had, by one means or another, fallen overboard. Certainly not by her own hand; suicide was not an option. She was a happy girl. He had seen her only four months earlier, and she was looking forward to the gymnastic competitions that she was entered in that summer.
Cutler’s parents were sure Elisa would make the national team for the vault, such was her skill at the sport. Cutler was almost sure; she was too well-adjusted to ever consider suicide. Even in the unlikely event his eighteen-year-old sister had a major problem in her life, she would not consider suicide.
Cutler took out his pen and notebook and scribbled down a reminder for himself to investigate the events involving Elisa’s life leading up to the cruise.
“Sir, you have to board; we’re waiting for you,” said the flight attendant he barely recognized from his aircraft.
Cutler looked up and was surprised to see that the terminal building was almost empty.
“Sir, you’re the last person; we have to board,” she emphasized.
“Sorry, I was deep in thought. I didn’t hear the boarding announcement,” Cutler apologized, as he stood up and began walking toward the terminal door with the flight attendant.
Under normal circumstances, he would have noticed the utter beauty of the stewardess—black hair, perfect almond skin, large brown eyes—but today this was lost on him.
They boarded the aircraft, to the background muttering from a young, suited banker type in the second row of business class.
“Always one person to keep you waiting,” he said, looking around at the same time to see if he had any back slaps or support for commenting.
Cutler was certainly not in the mood, and the business type visibly shrank in his seat when Cutler gave him a look that said, ‘Don’t mess with me today, you may regret it.’
Cutler did not feel the upward motion as the wheels lifted off the ground, for he had returned to his thoughts. So, not suicide; one hundred percent rule that out. That means she had gone overboard by what means? Could she have fallen over by accident?
Cutler had a fair understanding of the requirements under federal law for hea
lth and safety of maritime vessels. This was one of those series of lectures he had had to undertake along with other, what he considered at the time, lame subjects, but he now appreciated the background.
As far as he could recall, guardrails around outer decks on the lower levels with decks above would normally be 950mm to 1150mm, above waist height. On the upper, open decks above the ship would be enclosed in glass panels, where the wind strength was the strongest. Guardrails again a minimum 950mm at the stern. What this meant was that it would take a physical action on Elisa’s behalf—or someone else’s—for her to go over the barriers. It would not be an accident. The deck with the lifeboats would have removable guardrails for loading in the event of an emergency, but these are locked into position.
Again, Cutler took out his notebook and wrote, ‘Check logs for the lifeboat drill that day,’ just in case someone had not locked the guardrail in position.
Cutler had spoken to his father courtesy of the consulate satellite phone before leaving the building in Munich. Stephen, his father, had stated that the last time anyone saw Elisa was 11:30 pm on her way to her cabin, which was next door to theirs. Cutler concluded that any lifeboat drill would have been completed in daylight hours. To him, it was kind of inconceivable, but again not impossible, that the guardrails could have remained unlocked for such a period, considering the inspection systems on-board. He took out his pen and wrote, ‘Check inspection log aboard vessel.’
“Sir, can I offer you a drink?” asked the stewardess who had escorted him onto the airplane.
“Erm, sorry, yes, can I have a malt whisky. Glenfiddich if possible, no ice, make it a double, please,” Cutler replied, as he finally made eye contact with her.
“Sir seems very preoccupied; is everything all right? If you are afraid of flying maybe I can get you something,” she offered.
For the first time in many hours, a shadow of a smile crossed Cutler’s face.