After lunch we dressed our shining ship. We didn’t have fancy lights, but we hoisted a line of signal flags stretching to each mast top, with the pennants of all the tall ships races she’d taken part in going from her stern to the mizzen top. The courtesy UK flag waved at one cross-tree, and the Norwegian flag was at the other. Lidl were one of the sponsors of this year’s race, and their executives were the people partying on board tonight, so we strung up two of their flags as well. That done, we were ready to open to visitors. Only the crew on watch were required to be on duty. I was just wondering if Gavin would make it back for the museum tour when my phone rang. I hauled it out of my pocket.
‘Hi. I was just thinking about you. How’s it going?’
‘Slow. The Belfast police are being friendly, but it’s taking time. I won’t manage the Titanic.’
I made a face. ‘Pity.’
‘I should be free for the party.’
‘You won’t like it,’ I warned him. ‘But it ends at ten.’
‘Early night, then. Or we could try for a pint of real Guinness.’
‘Oh, yes please,’ I said. My first half-pint, under the auspices of my cousins, had been Dublin’s best Guinness, and the bottled stuff you could get on mainland Britain was never quite the same.
‘I should be off in time for a bite to eat before the fun starts.’
‘Good. I’m starving again already.’
‘Have fun at the museum. Bye.’
We were done now. Rolf hung up the board with the information about the ship, and unhooked the ‘Crew only’ chain across the gangplank. I dodged the crowds coming up and walked onto the flat, heavy shore.
The dock was filled with holiday crowds in candy-coloured clothes, and the smells of food from every nation under heaven drifted on the air: crepes, hamburgers, pizza, salsa, tikka, sickly popcorn and candyfloss. In daylight, the ‘pirate entrance’ resolved itself into a Ferris wheel with a toddlers’ carousel below it. A jazz trio on stilts was giving it laldy just opposite the dock, moving like crickets on their extra long legs: Lady, be good … I dodged a family of ten with a T-shirted father sweating behind an ankle-snagging double buggy, and headed around the closed end of the dock, where I could check the map we’d all been issued with, and sort out my bearings.
From here, I could see all of Sørlandet. My heart filled with pride. With the flags from every mast fluttering in the breeze she was bright as this bonny day. The glittering water reflected her swan-white hull and the dancing pennants. How could I bear to leave her? I felt my throat close up just at the thought. It wasn’t yet, I reminded myself. Sometime …
I pushed myself away from the railing, and hauled the map out of my pocket. It wasn’t far to the water taxi, just across this dock, but the way there led beside the major road from the port into the city, with a lorry passing every five seconds. By fifty yards my face felt coated with grit. I dodged across the last roundabout and down into the cool of the dock side, where a line of private yachts was moored along a pontoon: several thirty-footers, a couple of bonny classics and a handful of motorboats. The water taxi for crews and volunteers was at the end of it, similar to the Mousa ferry at home, with rows of seats and some standing space. We clambered aboard and were taken round the end of the dock, where the open sea glittered between red-legged cranes. Four small yachts were coming in, ready to join the party. On our right, a four-lobed building glittered like an opening metal flower – the Titanic Belfast centre I was headed for. Further to the right again, at three o’clock, four great yellow cranes hung horizontally over the striped front of Belfast College.
Coming into the dock was like going back to the Belfast of the 1880s. We were all here, the sailing ships that had once carried cargoes round the world: first, in the outer dock, our sister-Norwegian Christian Radich, then Frederyk Chopin, with Iskra behind her. Beyond them were De Gallant, then the dark hull and merchant build of Pelican of London. The dressed masts dwarfed the buildings around them, a forest of waving flags. Gulden Leeuw had her sails immaculately rolled, but Cisne Branco had left hers half-furled, hanging in decorative white festoons from each yard.
The docks were hooching with people. I got along the walkway, waved my pass at the guards and stepped into pandemonium. Families with swarms of children, teenagers on skateboards or rollerblades, all eating ice cream and candyfloss, pausing to take photographs, blaring music from iPods. Off the water, the heat hit me like a sauna. I flattened myself against the barrier and let the wave of humanity flow past me until I’d gathered enough courage to press into it, searching always for the clearest route forward, my eyes fixed on the glittering building five hundred metres ahead.
Once I was out of the immediate dock area, the crowd thinned to bearable levels, though I was still moving against the flow. The world was out today, along with his wife, all their children and the family dog, coming to join the party. My map showed several markets, a Victorian play area, three fairgrounds, a family interactive zone, kite workshops and a hot-air balloon display. The gloomy thought sprang into my mind that in ten years’ time, Gavin and I might be one of these families, with a buggy and a straggle of children, red-faced and constantly counting. Never, I swore to myself. Like a million Catholics worldwide, I’d defy the official line on contraception. Abortion was one thing, but a child a year in an overpopulated planet quite another.
I’d reached a red, black and white tugboat with a mustard-coloured funnel, set in a dry dock, and familiar from a dozen black and white photos. Nomadic, Cherbourg was printed on her white stern. She’d been the Titanic’s ferry boat, and they’d made a beautiful job of restoring her; she could have been built yesterday. I paused to admire, then walked on, into the cool of the museum.
I was the only one of Sørlandet’s crew on this tour, but there were several from a dozen other ships, and it took a while to get us all sorted out and issued with tickets. It was while we were waiting that I began to feel that prickle down my spine, as if someone was watching me.
I turned casually, as if I was scanning the row of ticket desks, the souvenir shop, the escalators leading up and down, the cafe entrance, the door I’d come in with the Star Wars droids displayed above it. Nobody met my eyes; no faces were turned towards me. All the same, there was an uneasy feeling in my breast … but it was a museum; it would be open and brightly lit. My fingers turned my mobile over in my pocket. Gavin was busy. I wouldn’t press the panic button.
I realised my mistake as soon as I got past the ticket-taker. My idea of museums was obviously twenty years out of date. Instead of cavernous rooms lined with glass cases, there was a series of slanted walls with White Star Line posters on them, leading into a large room broken up by screens. I stared, entranced. Each screen had an old photograph of Belfast projected on it, so big that it was like you were standing in front of the reality, and crossing back and forwards across each were silhouettes of actors in costume: a lady searching in her bag as she walked, two men hurrying to work, a sweep with his cart and brushes, a governess with a pram. It felt like you were looking back a hundred years.
From the point of view of a display, it was marvellous. From the point of view of a possible quarry, not so good. The room was in semi-darkness, lit only by the photographs, and the screens were angled across, with room to walk behind. It was a pursuer’s dream.
I dodged behind the first screen, heart thumping, and attached myself to a couple from one of the small pirate ships. Of course, I could be totally imagining things. A prickle on the back of my neck was nothing to make a fuss about. On the other hand, I had a selection of bonny bruises to remind me that I’d been tripped down those steps. I would try to do the sensible thing.
I looked at the photograph of central Belfast, with the horse-drawn buses in the street, and thought. I’d felt I was being watched in the main hall, and my impulse had been to look up and behind me, towards this entrance. If I had a pursuer, if he was up here, then he’d not been waiting in the corridor; the only people ther
e had been shuffling forwards, tickets in hand. No, he’d assumed he was unobserved, and come in before me. In which case I wanted to exit again, sharpish, pleading the heat, or sickness, or claustrophobia, and head across the road to the crew centre where I could stick with other sailors in a nice cafe until Gavin was free to come and get me.
I took a long, slow look around. All I could see clearly was the moving world of old Belfast. The audience were shadows around it, blurs of a whisked ponytail, a swung shoulder, an upturned face lit white by the screens. Gradually I eased my way around the back of the screen facing the entrance, and began edging towards the ticket attendant. I had almost left the dimness of the room for the brightness of the corridor when I saw Bezrukov in the queue.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I was sure it was him. I couldn’t see his face, but I recognised the broad shoulders and black workman’s jacket. My heart began thudding painfully. He hadn’t come in ahead of me; he’d dodged back to the other side of the hall and waited to make sure of me before he followed. If I went out again he’d close in on me.
I dodged back behind the screens and merged myself with a family group. Mum, Dad, a bored teenager with a permanently texting thumb, a lively ten-year-old who kept jumping up and down as if he’d had chocolate and fizzy juice for breakfast, and two smaller girls dressed entirely in pink. I was much the same height as the teenager. I hovered beside her as if I was one of her mates and got my phone out. Gavin. Like shortening sail, the time to call for help was when you first thought of it, not once the situation got out of control. He took so long to answer that I thought he wasn’t going to, and a cold hand of panic squeezed my breastbone. Then at last I heard his voice. ‘Cass?’
I took a deep breath. ‘I’m in the Titanic museum.’ I didn’t dare say Bezrukov’s name. ‘Our stowaway has just come in after me. I felt him watching me. He’s between me and the door.’
‘OK. Hang on.’ The pause seemed to stretch for ever, in the flickering white lights; through it, I could hear him speaking, and a jumble of voices answering. The Titanic museum … He may be armed … Have you been inside that place? … Nightmare … If we had a hostage situation … Our chance to get him … Can she keep a cool head? Then another voice came on the phone, deep and reassuring, with a strong Belfast accent. ‘Now, then, Cass, I’m Chief Inspector Beattie. You’re being followed by a man you think may be our suspect, is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’ll be busy in there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now, we want to get you out safe, but we don’t want to cause a panic, or create a hostage situation. DI Macrae tells us you’ve got good wits, and you’ll keep a cool head.’
I was glad he couldn’t see my thudding heart. ‘Do my best.’
‘You do that. Now, I daren’t send two officers in after you in case he thinks they’re after him, and the situation turns dangerous.’
‘I understand.’ I moved forward with the family to a wall of White Star Line posters, and heard what he wasn’t saying. There were innocent people here who would suffer if Bezrukov was panicked into a shoot-out.
‘Does this man know you’ve spotted him?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Don’t do anything to let him know it. Don’t look to see where he is; don’t avoid looking at him either. Get yourself in among other people all the time; keep behaving like a normal tourist – can you do that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Speed up where you can, but don’t make him suspicious. I’ll send officers to the museum exit. If we can get you out, and him not suspecting a thing, we can collar him as he comes out.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘Brave girl. You hang up now, and we’ll give you a call every few minutes. Just answer as if it was a friend, and say where you are, and you’ll phone back later. Just like you would if it was for real. If you don’t answer, we’ll know you’re in trouble. Good luck, now.’
I cut him off, and set myself to behave like a tourist. If my nerves hadn’t been jangling like halyards in a wind, I’d have been fascinated. I stuck with the family into the next room, which was all about the industries of Belfast: the factories that churned out the flax, whiskey and linen that were sent all over the world, and of course the ships that carried them. The family got bored at that point and hurried through, leaving me stranded in a brightly lit room with a tabletop map of Belfast showing the docks, factories, and houses, with a model of Titanic under her scaffolding in the place she’d been built. I felt a pang of longing strike me. I was here, in this white model, and Sørlandet was moored just two handspans away, across the familiar pale blue and buff of the chart, yet I was separated from her, from safety. My heart was still thumping madly, and I felt horribly vulnerable under this strip lighting.
Then he came in. I sensed him, rather than saw him. It took all the willpower I had not to turn around. I nodded at the map, as if I was saying, Very interesting, seen that now, and strolled out of the room. I caught the dark shadow of his jacket out of the corner of my eye as I turned into a narrow corridor with people ahead of me. He could be closing up on me. I wriggled round my family, ahead of a middle-aged couple and jammed myself between them and another family party in front. There were a couple of just-pre-teenagers with them, of my height. I infiltrated myself beside them and hauled off my jacket, hooking it inside out over one shoulder to show my red T-shirt underneath.
Then my phone vibrated, and it took a moment to fumble it out of my jacket pocket. I did my best to speak naturally, in the hushed tones appropriate to a museum. ‘Hi, Agnetha! Listen, I’m in the museum; can’t talk here. Call you back later.’
It was an effort to cut off CI Beattie’s reassuring voice. I pressed the button and shoved the phone back into my jacket pocket. There was a surge forwards, and I found myself last to get into one of those scarily openwork lifts, set like a workmen’s cradle on the outside of what turned out to be a four-storey stairwell, all painted black, with a dizzying drop back to the ground floor. Only half the height of Sørlandet’s mizzen, I told myself, but the pit of my stomach wasn’t reassured. There was something much nastier about a drop onto concrete.
I’d lingered too long, looking down, and now I was alone in the corridor with the next lift already creaking upwards. I gathered my wits and scuttled along after the family, through a doorway and into another queue. A warning notice said this ride wasn’t suitable for people with a long list of conditions. Ride? I shot a glance behind me. The next lift had arrived, spilling the knot of people into the corridor. Bezrukov’s dark jacket was among them, and here I was, at the end of the queue, all set for him to sidle in beside me and take his place in whatever little cars were waiting at the end of this railing. My breathing quickened; I cast frantic glances round me, wondering how I could get myself further ahead of him.
My queue jumped forward to a wire wall. Past it, the floor fell sharply down into a world of firelight and projections. The black cars were lining up on their rails, and I breathed a thankful sigh. Instead of the two-person buggies I’d been dreading, these were substantial cars, built to take six people. I did a quick headcount of the family. Five of them. I’d squirm in with them, rather than risk being left in a car with Bezrukov. I didn’t like the way each car swung forwards into space.
He’d had the same thought, for as the queue surged forwards again he slid in behind me. One more car filled up. Another, and the family was at the front of the queue. I felt him tense behind me. As the next car drew up, I pressed closer to the pre-teens, as if I was with them, and slid smoothly into the car, as naturally as if I’d been directed by the attendant. They could hardly turn and say, ‘Hey, she’s not with us!’ He dropped the bar over our knees, and the car jerked forwards and swung out into space.
If I hadn’t been so tense with nerves I’d have been fascinated. The ride took us inside the half-built hull of Titanic, guided by a workman’s voice, and with period film of workmen projected around us.
The noise was horrendous: grinding of plates in a shower of stars, riveters hammering. We dangled all the way down to ground level, where the furnace blazed red, then rose upwards past the huge rudder fixings. Best of all, I calculated, the cars were a minute apart, and I’d be first out of this one. I could put a good distance between me and my pursuer in a minute.
We came out at frosted saloon doors with celebrating shadows behind them, raising their glasses to ‘the pride of Belfast’. I resisted the urge to look back and scurried forward to the next room.
It was dazzlingly light. We were on the top floor of the building now, with a great window looking out over the whole dock area. There was an expanse of concrete that would once have been filled with workers, and was still criss-crossed with railway lines, then the dark blue water of the dock, a neon-white cruise liner, the giraffe-necked cranes, and then, beyond, Belfast Lough and the sea, my safety, calling me. To the side I could see the forest of masts, and picked out Sørlandet with one glance.
The phone in my pocket vibrated again. It was Gavin’s voice. ‘How are you doing?’
‘Hey!’ I said. ‘I’m at the launch.’ I lowered my voice. ‘He’s on my heels. Must keep moving.’
It was an effort to cut the connection. Fourteen years of being on my own seemed to have shrunk to wanting to be safe, with Gavin’s arms around me. More than anything I wanted to get out of here. I stamped down hard on the voice that said run, run. If I ran, I risked the people around me. I walked briskly, with frequent glances at my watch, like someone due back at her ship.
It was too exposed in this room. I felt like an insect with a pin poised over it, and the chatter of excited Wasn’t that cool! voices in the corridor warned me the next carload was arriving. Ignoring the overlapping voices remembering the day of the launch, I dived for the stairs and the next room, the story of how the ship was fitted out.
Death in Shetland Waters Page 24