by steve higgs
‘Hi,’ I waved.
He frowned, perplexed by my outfit. ‘Did you forget to get dressed?’
Thinking quickly, I said, ‘I just nipped up to my kitchen to check on an icing sculpture I made last night. I was nervous it might have sagged, and I would need to get started again now. It looks okay though.’ The chefs put lots of artistic touches to the food presentation, I hadn’t seen a table yet that didn’t have some kind of masterpiece carved from fruit or moulded from butter.
He accepted my answer with a disinterested nod and turned back to the elevator just as the doors opened. ‘You certainly have it easier in your kitchen. Chef Schneider would never tolerate any of us stepping foot in his kitchen in less than full uniform.’
We all stepped inside where I watched Ian use a key card to activate the button. The lift wouldn’t go anywhere unless the person getting on had one. He thought I was just another member of staff though.
I pushed my luck a little further. ‘Do you know where Barbie Berkeley the gym instructor’s cabin is? She is going to help me with weight management.’ I picked a believable lie.
‘I do,’ the maintenance man said, a leering grin creeping onto his face without invitation. He saw my expression and quickly reset his face. ‘I can show you if you like.’
‘Super, thanks.’ The lift pinged again, and we all got off. I had been the last one on so was nearest the doors when they opened but not knowing where I was supposed to be going, I had hesitated, causing both men to bump into me as they moved forward. ‘Sorry. Daydreaming again.’
Ian shook his head as he turned to walk away. ‘This way,’ said the maintenance guy.
The deck we had come out on was vast and there was no natural light. I wondered if this was below the water line, a question that made me feel a bit odd suddenly. Would I be happy in the bottom of the boat? Memories of watching Titanic at the cinema surfaced as he led me through the rabbit warren of passages.
We walked for more than five minutes before he announced, ‘Here you go.’ The door had her name on the outside and the door to its right displayed the name Shaun Metcalf. My heart thudded in my chest. My escort hadn’t hung around to see if I needed anything else, he was fifty yards away and would soon disappear. I stared at Shaun’s door. I was going to have to knock on it. What did I do then though? Grapple with him and tie him up? I had taken some self-defence classes a few years back when Maggie had talked me into it. She liked the hunky instructor but after a brief fling she had moved on and quit the class just when I was getting into it. How much of it did I remember now? Not much was the likely answer.
You’re heavier now, a little voice reminded me helpfully. That should count for something. Was I really going to grab him when he answered the door and accuse him of murder? If he was guilty of two murders already, what would stop him making me his third victim?
Just then Barbie’s door opened, her surprised face matching mine. ‘Hi, Barbie,’ I managed.
‘Um, hi, Patty. I thought they had you locked up in your suite.’
‘They did. Listen, I need to speak with Shaun, will you stay with me for a minute?’ She was wearing her usual skin-tight brightly coloured Lycra gym gear.
‘I need to speak to him too. That’s why I came out actually. It sounds like he is wrestling someone in there.’
I looked from her to his door. Wrestling? I hammered on the door, worry rising. I got no answer, so hammered again.
Sound coming from inside preceded the door opening. The person framed in the doorway wasn’t Shaun Metcalf though, it was one of the surly guards that had been outside my door this week. He recognised me at the same time, his eyes widening and his mouth opening to shout. I kicked him in the nuts as hard as I could.
He called me something unpleasant as he crumpled to his knees. I was shocked at myself. I hadn’t kicked a boy in the groin since Billy Mascall pulled my pony tail in sixth grade.
Beside me, Barbie gasped her surprise and then gasped again when I grabbed her elbow to drag her over the now prone guard and into Shaun’s cabin. I put a finger to my lips so Barbie might understand the need for quiet. We could both hear someone moving about deeper into the cabin.
‘Dean get back here and finish the job with me, will you?’ The voice came from a door at the back of the cabin that I took to be the bathroom. What on earth had I stumbled upon now.
‘That’s not Shaun’s voice,’ Barbie whispered.
I glanced about, looking for a weapon. When nothing presented itself, I picked up a discarded dinner plate and advanced on the door the voice had come from. Crumbs spilled on the floor unnoticed, my pulse banging in my head yet again.
‘Grab his legs,’ the voice said just as we drew level and could see inside. There was a man on the floor and another man crouched over him. I couldn’t see the face of the man on the floor, but I was fairly certain I was going to discover it was Shaun. The man crouching over him was another guard that I recognised. When he got no response to his request, he looked up. Just in time to catch the dinner plate on his nose as I swung it. The plate broke, but my hope that he would magically fall down unconscious was not to be fulfilled as he rose to his feet, blood coming from a cut across the bridge of his nose.
He said a bad word as he came at me, arms rising to grab my face.
Backing speedily away from the menace to my front, I bumped into Barbie and was stuck as she was fiddling with her bag and not paying attention to what was happening in front of her. There was no time for a discussion on the subject though. How much of my self-defence training did I actually remember? I could see that he was going to grab me with his right hand, so since I didn’t have time to shove Barbie out of the way and even if I did he was just going to chase after me, what I needed to do was turn into him and grab his wrist before he got to me, parry his other arm and elbow him hard in the face as I stomped on his instep and maybe kneed him in the groin.
Yeah, I could make this work! He wouldn’t be expecting it either and that would give me an advantage.
I spun off my left foot to grab his right wrist, his face showing surprise as I moved toward him instead of flinching away. Then I swung my other arm around in a wide arc to block any attempt to grab me with his left hand and that was where I realised that I didn’t remember any of my self-defence training. I could do it in my head, but in practice I was lost. Instead of disabling the man, my move just spun me into him so we were spooning standing up.
The significantly larger, stronger and heavier man swept a leg out to knock me off my feet, then followed me to the floor where he instantly had me pinned.
Knowing I was caught, I fought back anyway, kicking and flailing and struggling for all I was worth because I knew Mr Schooner was sure to lock me in a cage this time. Above me, Barbie yelled something and suddenly the man’s weight was gone as he threw himself backward to get away.
‘Arrrgh! Arrrgh, my eyes!’ he screamed while flailing at his face. Barbie had sprayed him with mace!
I rolled onto my front, taking Barbie’s hand as she helped me up.
She was smiling through the fear that was etched on her face. ‘I keep this in case boys ever get too amorous.’
By our feet, the fallen Shaun Metcalf was coming around. He had blood all over his face from a cut on his head. ‘Quick, grab an arm.’ Instinctively, Barbie did as I asked, and we dragged him out of the bathroom. In front of us now though was Dean the guard, just getting up as he recovered from the swift knee I had given his nuts.
‘I’m gonna kill you,’ he managed between laboured breaths before shoving himself off the wall. He was coming in my direction, clearly not fully recovered, but determined to do his job anyway.
He didn’t get far though. No more than a few steps when Barbie maced him as well. Just like his partner, he went down clutching his face and screaming.
‘That’s for not being very nice,’ said Barbie as she delicately tucked the mace back in her bag.
‘Who are you?’ Shaun was alert e
nough now to ask questions.
It was Barbie that answered. ‘I’m Barbie, I live next door.’
‘That’s nice,’ he replied, clearly not certain that it was. ‘Now what the heck is going on?’
‘We need to move,’ I said rather than answer his question. ‘Your friends won’t be down forever.’ We had to step over Dean on our way out, his attempt to trip us and block our exit rewarded with another kick to the nuts which ended his efforts instantly.
‘Remind me not to piss you off,’ murmured Shaun. ‘Do either of you know who they are?’
‘You mean you don’t know?’ I was staring at Shaun, unsure what to make of the shift in my plan. Somehow, I was now protecting Shaun Metcalf as much as I was myself. The man I had thought was the killer was being targeted by the same men that were keeping me locked up in my suite. What did that mean? ‘Barbie, we need to get somewhere safe. Is there a room we can go to where we won’t be disturbed for a few minutes?’
‘Girls toilets?’ she asked. I nodded and two turns later she shoved open a door to her left and we all spilled through it.
‘What’s going on, Patty?’ she asked as we found ourselves tucked out of the way and able to gather our thoughts. The main thought I had was that we were trapped if they caught us in here. They hadn’t made it out of Shaun’s room before we had escaped the passage his cabin was in so I was hoping, once again, that they had entirely too much ship to search.
I turned to Shaun Metcalf. ‘Did you kill Jack Langley?’
He stared right at me, his furrowed brow trying to work out what I had just said. ‘Jack Langley?’ he replied slowly. ‘What do you know about Jack Langley?’
I returned his gaze. Shaun looked genuinely mystified by my question. ‘I know that the two of you stole a precious gem many years ago and he escaped while you went to jail.’
‘Escaped with the damned jewel and abandoned me,’ he snapped out to interrupt me.
I continued anyway, ‘I know you lost your fingers that night and that was how they caught you and I know Jack was murdered in his cabin three days ago. How much coincidence are you willing to believe, Shaun?’ I was struggling to believe that he wasn’t involved but sadly, I had to admit that his dumbfounded act, if it was one, was convincing. When I combined that with what looked like two of Mr Schooner’s guards trying to kill him, I had to admit that, yet again, I had no idea what was going on.
Shaun looked right at me when he said, ‘You’re telling me that Jack Langley was on this ship and someone murdered him?’
I didn’t answer him though, I had another question, ‘If it wasn’t you, then who else would want him dead?’
Shaun blew out an exasperated breath, ‘Maybe everyone? The man was a parasite. He stole from everyone and no one ever suspected him because he was so suave and charming.’ I couldn’t disagree. Shaun sagged against the counter behind him. ‘I can’t believe he was on this ship. God, I hated that man. I probably would have killed him if I had known.’
I believed what he was saying but I wasn’t finished with the questions, ‘What did the security guards want with you?’
As he opened his mouth to answer, a beeping noise came from a speaker mounted in the ceiling, then Mr Schooner’s South African accent came over the tannoy, ‘This is a message to all staff. Be on the lookout for a guest in the crew accommodation area. The guest’s name is Patricia Fisher. She is to be considered extremely dangerous. Last seen wearing pink flannel pyjamas, she may be accompanied by two accomplices, Barbara Berkeley and Shaun Metcalf. Security have been dispatched to apprehend her, however, if you see her, or her accomplices, you are tasked, as a member of this ship’s crew, to detain them. Good luck.’
‘Oh, my God,’ whispered Barbie, utter terror making her voice almost silent. Dean and the other guard must have recovered enough to trigger the alarm.
‘Shaun,’ I snapped. ‘What did the guards want with you?’
He looked as bewildered as Barbie. ‘I don’t know. They were in my cabin when I got there. They grabbed me and knocked me out. One of them used the sleeper hold thing where they squeeze off the blood supply to your head?’ He was checking to see if I knew what he was talking about. ‘When I woke up, you were there. Now how about you answer a question for me? I am going to assume from that announcement that you are Patricia Fisher so why don’t you tell me why they want you and what it is that I am suddenly an accomplice to?’
‘They think I killed Jack Langley. I’ve been trying to find out who did kill him for three days. I thought it had to be you. Your presence on the boat is just too much…’ I stopped speaking mid-sentence as something occurred to me, then asked a different question. ‘How is it that you came to be on board?’
‘I was recruited,’ he replied.
That just led to more questions, but the toilet door opened, the young women framed in the doorway now frozen as she took in the three of us all looking at her. She held up her hands. ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ she said as she backed out of the room, but as the door swung shut again, we could hear her yelling outside. ‘They’re here! Someone help me. They’re here. I found them!’
Cursing my luck for the hundredth time in the last hour, I yanked the door open, yelling, ‘Come on!’ to Barbie and Shaun as they were both too stunned to have started moving.
The next second we were running along the passage away from the woman who was still yelling to get attention. Her efforts worked too. As we turned the next corner, I saw more security guards in their pristine white uniforms running along the passage after us. They were still fifty yards the other side of the woman, which gave us almost one hundred yards head start, but where were we supposed to hide on a ship?
Just as I was thinking our situation was hopeless, Jermaine appeared from a doorway just ahead of us. We skidded to a halt. Was he still mad at me? ‘Quick,’ he beckoned as we were just staring at him and not moving, ‘there’s stairs this way.’
Barbie, being naturally faster since she looked like a gazelle in human form, started bounding up the stairs three at a time. Shaun was no fitter than I and stank of cigarettes which explained him wheezing for breath after only a fifty-yard dash. I pushed Shaun after Barbie as Jermaine closed the door.
My butler caught up with me easily on the stairs. ‘I came as soon as I heard the announcement. Isn’t that the other jewel thief?’
‘Hi, Shaun Metcalf, very confused steward,’ said Shaun.
‘I’m sorry, Jermaine, I don’t know what’s happening. Two of Mr Schooner’s security guards were attacking Shaun when I got to his cabin.’
‘Attacking him?’ Jermaine’s voice betrayed the same disbelief I held. The attack wasn’t imagined though.
‘We need to get to a public place,’ I yelled. I had no breath for anything else. I wanted to find the captain. Force him to listen to reason. I was innocent and someone had just tried to hurt the one man I thought might be the killer. Okay, he wasn’t the first man I thought might be the killer, but what the heck was going on?
As we raced up the stairs, the door below us slammed open and the guards started up the stairs towards us. They were three flights behind but they were going to catch Shaun and me in no time.
‘This is silly.’ Barbie had stopped for us to catch up and looked disinclined to keep running. ‘Why don’t we just explain that we haven’t done anything and let them escort us to Mr Schooner. I’m sure we can sort it all out.’
A deafening boom echoed in the stairwell and a hole appeared in the steel bulkhead by Shaun’s face. They had just shot at us! I glanced over the handrail. Both men had weapons in their hands and were running up the stairs again. They saw me look down and cracked out two more shots.
I shouted, ‘That’s why!’ as I tried to maintain control of my bladder. The stairs wound around and around with an intermediate landing between each deck. Screaming as we went, the four of us ran up the next flight and burst through the first door we came to. We were on the thirteenth deck, three decks beneath
the first sun deck.
‘We have to jam this door.’ Shaun was barely able to breath but he could still think. The sound of shattering glass behind me the result of a fire axe being set free. Shaun threaded it neatly between the fire doors, checked it secured them and sagged against it.
Seconds later the security guards hit the outside of the doors, rattling them in their frame but the axe handle held. Two more booms rang out and two dents appeared in the steel doors as the bullets deformed them. They couldn’t penetrate it though.
We were safe, perhaps only briefly, but a sigh of relief escaped my lips, nevertheless.
‘Would one of you now tell me what is going on?’ Shaun pleaded. He was leaning against the wall, still trying to catch his breath.
I said, ‘We need to keep moving before they radio to their colleagues and catch up to us. We can walk and talk, right?’ Jermaine slipped an arm around Shaun’s shoulders to get him moving. I turned to Barbie. ‘Can you find us a way out of here? We need to get to the captain or at least somewhere public so they can’t shoot us.’
‘Where are all the people?’ wailed Barbie as she darted ahead to find a way out. ‘There’s like ten thousand people on this ship, how come we are alone? Where are we even?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Jermaine. Wherever we are, I have never been here before.
Ahead of us, Barbie was trying doors. Most of them were locked and those that weren’t led to maintenance rooms or storerooms. They might be good to hide in but hiding wasn’t a strategy that could have any long-term success.
I remembered a question I had thought of earlier but hadn’t had the chance to ask, ‘Shaun, tell me again how you came to be on the ship.’
‘I was recruited right out of jail. I was coming up for parole and they had a job waiting for me. I didn’t have to take it, but if I hadn’t, they probably wouldn’t have let me out.’
‘That’s it? You don’t know where the job offer came from?’
‘Nope. Well, not at the time. There was a pair of men in the parole hearing that were there to guarantee my employment. Normally, ex-cons are not allowed to travel for a period after release but someone had made some kind of assurance that went with the job so I got out and they brought me straight to the boat. I didn’t see them again until they turned up in my cabin and tried to kill me earlier.’