I thought nothing more about it at the time.
‘Tell me, Adam: how much do you know about maritime law?’
Peter and I had found a quiet spot on the Pacific Deck, a small bar with its shutters down that faced into a semi-circle of tub chairs and tables, arranged in the chilly shadow of the ship’s funnel.
On the other side of the funnel, in the sun, an expansive swimming pool spilled around its base, already filling up with children splashing and laughing and throwing inflatable things. Pop music played unobtrusively from unseen speakers. Happy passengers milled about clutching glasses topped with impressively cut fruit pieces while, over the portside railing, the cityscape of Barcelona shimmered in the afternoon heat.
I couldn’t help but scan the faces of the crew members I found in the crowd.
‘I only know what Cusack told me,’ I answered. ‘The thing about the authority in charge being the authority of the country where the ship is registered, not where the ship is.’
‘In charge,’ Peter scoffed. ‘If only.’
‘She talked about Shane Keating. Have you heard of him?’
‘Yes, of course. Tragic that. You have to feel for the brother.’
‘She said a couple of policemen from Barbados were about to head for the Fiesta when the crew realised he’d gone overboard and called in the coast guard instead.’
‘Yes.’ Peter took a sip of his drink, made a face. Two fruity, watered-down cocktails had been thrust into our faces the moment we’d stepped out on deck. The easiest option had been to accept them. ‘The thing is, Adam—’ He stopped, hesitated. ‘Let me ask you something. What do you think has happened to Sarah?’
‘I’ve been trying not to think about it.’
‘Which I can understand.’
‘There’s no scenario that makes sense.’
‘It seems that way, yes.’
‘It’s like I’m walking down a very narrow corridor and the wall on my right is the best-case scenario – that this is all a misunderstanding of some kind, that Sarah did lose her passport, that there’s a logical explanation for the note. That’s she been in hospital or had an episode or something, which explains her absence, but she’s going to be absolutely fine. That this guy Ethan was just a friend who let her use his employee discount. Then the wall on the left is . . . Well, it’s the other end of the scenario spectrum. The worst possible outcome. And while the best-case scenario seems implausible at this point, I don’t want to believe the worst one until I have to. Until I’ve no choice but to. So until then I’m just walking down this corridor, trying to stay in the middle, trying not to touch either side, even though they’re so close there’s only inches to spare.’ I paused. ‘Sorry, that probably sounds a bit crazy.’
‘Not at all,’ Peter said. ‘It makes complete sense. And I know exactly what you mean. I spent enough time in that corridor myself. But those walls . . . I’m sorry, but I’m about to push you straight into one of them.’
I didn’t have to ask which one.
‘Your policewoman was right about the Keating case,’ Peter continued. ‘The Fiesta – like the Celebrate – is registered in Barbados for tax purposes, so, if a crime needed investigating, two Barbadian police officers would board a plane and head for the ship, a ship filled with thousands of potential suspects and owned by an incredibly powerful corporation. Two of them. On their own. Away from their offices, support staff, etc. And that’s if the ship’s captain invites them aboard in the first place. Where was that one – Shane Keating – the Adriatic?’
‘I think so.’
‘So that’s, what? Eight thousand miles from Barbados, give or take? How long would our two Barbadian PD friends need to get there? Let’s say twenty-four hours. And while they’re in a plane over the Atlantic, what’s happening back on the ship? The crew could be unwittingly scrubbing potential crime scenes clean. Potential witnesses walk off to partake in a pleasant day-tour. Or worse, fly off home.’
‘But isn’t there somebody on the ship who can start the investigation? Isn’t there security on board? There has to be some kind of authority on the ship.’
‘There are security guards,’ Peter said. ‘The same kind you see parading around shopping centres with their thumbs in their belts and the power they think they have already gone to their heads. Blue Wave calls them security officers, but that doesn’t make them effective. Or change the fact that they’re policing a product they’re also supposed to be protecting for their employer, which is a huge conflict of interest. That’s why, most of the time, crimes aboard cruise ships aren’t investigated at all.’
‘How can that be?’
‘Let’s say you were physically assaulted in your cabin, and then robbed. What do you do?’
‘Go to a security officer.’
‘Go to a security officer, who may talk to you for a while, take a statement, etc. and then take the matter up to the bridge. There, the captain will decide whether or not to do anything about it – but who says he has to do anything at all?’
‘Um, the law?’
‘So he’s going to fly two police officers halfway around the world to find the guy who stole your wallet?’
‘And assaulted me.’
‘That would only draw attention to the incident.’
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’
‘To the captain it would be, because it’s nice having a job. Cruises are supposed to be all fun and frolics at sea. There’s nothing about thefts or assaults in the brochures that I’ve seen. Or date-rape drug incidents, for that matter. No mention of sexual assaults. No disappearances. Those things just wouldn’t fly in a floating paradise. Who’d want to go on a cruise if they thought they were walking into danger? An enclosed space full of it. If something happens, they try to keep it quiet. Keep it out of the press, most importantly of all.’
‘How though?’
‘More often than not these incidents involve a wayward crew member, and crew can be fired. Problem solved. If the victim can be appeased with a free cruise or compensation for medical bills or whatever, better yet. They’ll cough up any amount so long as it’s kept out of court and you sign a non-disclosure agreement. It’s in the cruise company’s best interests to sweep all this under the rug and then stand over the bulge, smiling and pretending nothing’s wrong.’ A pause. ‘Unless, of course, there’s a murder.’
I flinched.
‘They wouldn’t call it a murder though,’ Peter said. ‘Not unless they had to. If there’s no body, they don’t. For a murder, you need a cause of death.’
‘Where would the body—’
I stopped, realising. Looked over my shoulder. There it was, over the starboard railing: endless sea.
‘The perfect dumping ground,’ Peter said. ‘If you pushed someone off a balcony in the middle of the night, who’d even know? No one until the morning, when that person’s absence is noticed. If it is. It might take longer if the person was travelling alone. They mightn’t be missed at all until the end of the cruise. Meanwhile, the cabin attendants are cleaning away all the forensic evidence and the ship’s sailing further and further away from the body’s location. The other passengers are oblivious. It’s like it never happened at all.’
‘Except that a person is missing.’
Peter clicked his fingers.
‘Exactly, Adam. That’s just it. There’s no evidence of a murder but a person is missing. And what’s a missing person minus a body? Not a murder. Oh, no. Never a murder. That’s called a disappearance.’
The word hung in the air.
I steeled myself. ‘You’re saying . . . ?’
No. I couldn’t say it.
‘Estelle didn’t disappear, Adam. I know it. There’s no possible way she would’ve walked off this ship and decided never to come back to her life, to never come back to me. She would never have left me
living like this, in this hell of not knowing. And wouldn’t you say exactly the same thing about Sarah?’
‘But Sarah did walk off it.’
Peter said nothing for a full three seconds. Then, gently: ‘How do you know that?’
‘Because Blue Wave told me,’ I said. ‘They showed me.’
‘What did they show you?’
‘The key-card activity. The Swipeout card thing.’
‘A piece of paper, you mean.’
‘Yeah.’
‘With things printed on it.’
‘What else could they have produced?’
‘How about some CCTV? How about moving images, time and date-stamped, of Sarah getting off the ship when they say she did? Every inch of this ship has cameras pointed on it. That tender platform was probably covered from every angle. Why not show you that?’
‘Maybe it was because I didn’t think to ask them for it.’
‘Well I did, Adam. I asked them for it. More than once. I took them to court to ask them for it and they still said no. Why? Could it be because they don’t have any? Could it be because there’s no footage of Estelle getting off the ship? Could it be that she never did?’
‘If she didn’t walk off the ship,’ I said. ‘Then where did she go?’
‘I think she’s with Sarah. I think the same person took them both.’
In the narrow corridor in my mind, the right-hand sidewall was rushing towards my face.
I closed my eyes.
‘It seems like no scenario makes sense,’ Peter said, ‘but one does. Unfortunately it’s the one we don’t want to think about.’
When I opened my eyes again, a British passport was on the tabletop between us.
‘The envelope got thrown away,’ Peter said, ‘but it was postmarked Nice too. Sent two days after I last saw Estelle. The same day she supposedly got off the ship.’
I picked it up, flicked through it. It was the same in all the ways that mattered: the sticky note, the new Blue Wave logo, the two words.
Only this note was signed ‘E’.
‘Like you,’ Peter said, ‘I didn’t know what to make of it when it arrived. But I knew something had happened to her. Something awful. I knew it from the moment her friend Becky called to tell me they couldn’t find her on the ship. So this’ – he lifted his chin to indicate the passport – ‘was a torment. A piece of the puzzle I couldn’t get to fit. The note, it’s in Estelle’s writing. Definitely. And you said you were sure the writing on yours was Sarah’s, right?’
I nodded but didn’t speak.
I wasn’t sure I could.
‘So we have two women,’ Peter went on, ‘who don’t know each other, who have no connection to each other, last seen in the same place one year apart. Here, on this ship. They both write the exact same words on the exact same type of paper, stick them in their passports and then, somehow, those passports find their way to you and me, the men who love them. Postmarked Nice, where Blue Wave says they walked off the ship. How can that possibly be a coincidence? And then you find me, and find out that Sarah came aboard with a man who works here. A man who would know this ship and the rules that govern it like the back of his hand.’
Ethan.
‘He’s the connection,’ Peter said. ‘He’s the one who did this.’
Into the wall, face-first.
‘Tell me what happened,’ I said weakly. My tongue felt thick and bristly, my throat tight and dry. ‘Tell me what happened to Estelle.’
Estelle Brazier was thirty-two on 3 August 2013 – the day she disappeared from the Celebrate. She’d boarded the ship in Barcelona the day before as part of a group of ten women. Among them was Becky Allen, Estelle’s closest friend. They’d known each other since they were toddlers.
‘It was a last-minute thing,’ Peter explained. ‘The trip was actually a hen party for one of Becky’s colleagues. With three days to go, one of the women broke her leg in a cycling accident and had to drop out. She was supposed to be Becky’s cabin-mate, so Becky was asked if she knew anyone else who might be able to come along instead on short notice. It was all already paid for, no refunds. Estelle wrangled a few days off work and off she went. I often think: what if that other woman didn’t have that accident? None of this would’ve happened. Doesn’t the world turn on such small, small things?’
‘Had Estelle ever been on a cruise before?’ I asked.
‘No, never. It wasn’t really our kind of thing. To be honest, I didn’t want her to go.’
‘Why?’
‘I just didn’t think she was going to enjoy it. Becky was the only one in the group she knew well. She’d never even met most of the others before. And stuck with them all on a ship, drinking and being silly and running around with L-plates on their backs?’ He shook his head. ‘That wasn’t Estelle.’
‘But she must’ve wanted to go.’
Peter’s face hardened.
‘Becky wanted her to go. That’s why she went.’
I figured he wasn’t a Becky fan. Understandable, after what had happened.
‘They flew out from Gatwick together,’ he said. ‘Boarded the Celebrate here early on a Thursday afternoon. I think the ship had barely been in service a month at that stage; there were still a few teething problems. Lifts breaking down, a wave pool not open yet, glitches in the dining reservation system. Things like that. They spent a few hours sunbathing by the Grotto Pool and had a late lunch in the Cabana Cafe alongside it. Then they all went back to their cabins to get ready for the evening, before meeting up again around eight in the Showcase Theatre on the Oceanic Deck to watch a variety show. After that, they went to Fizz. It’s a cocktail bar.’
The way Peter talked about the Celebrate reminded me of Titanic documentaries I’d watched where talking heads – historians, enthusiasts, James Cameron – spoke of the A Corridor and the Grand Staircase and Orlop Deck like they were places they’d been visiting all their lives, places they knew so well they could navigate them in the dark.
This despite the fact that none of them had ever set foot on the ship itself.
Accounts – and, not coincidentally, inebriation levels – varied when it came to what happened next, but it was generally agreed that sometime between 10.45 p.m. and 11.10 p.m. on that first night at sea, Estelle told the others she had developed a bad headache. One of the women would recall Estelle looking ‘grey and sweaty’, while another said that she was slurring her words.
‘She wasn’t drinking alcohol,’ Peter said, ‘so we’re not talking about the effects of that. My guess is Estelle either had had something slipped into her drink, or she was getting a migraine. She did suffer from those, from time to time. Either way, she told Becky that she was going to go buy some Paracetamol, lie down for an hour and then come back to the bar if she was feeling well enough. But she didn’t come back.’
‘She wasn’t in the cabin when Becky went back to it?’
‘Becky spent the night in one of the group’s other cabins so as not to disturb Estelle. When she finally did go back to their one, it was nearly nine o’clock the following morning, and Estelle wasn’t there.’
‘Had she slept there?’
‘The bed was made. Becky assumed Housekeeping had been and gone. They were already tendered at Villefranche by then and the plan for the day was to take a private bus tour around the coast. The driver was meeting them at the ferry terminal at half-past ten. They all assumed Estelle had got up early – being the only one among them who’d had an early night – and gone ashore. They thought she’d decided to meet them there.’
‘What about her phone?’
‘Becky called it but it went straight to voicemail. She thought maybe the phone hadn’t managed to connect to a service in France.’
‘But when they got ashore and realised Estelle wasn’t in Villefranche . . .’
�
�. . . Becky went back to the ship. To the cabin. Had another look at the bed. She realised then it hadn’t been remade – it hadn’t been disturbed in the first place. And then she found the phone.’
‘Estelle’s phone was in the cabin?’
‘Yes,’ Peter said grimly.
It was a sign of the times that this detail seemed to be more significant than all the rest.
‘What about the rest of Estelle’s stuff?’
‘All her clothes and cosmetics were still there, many of them still in her suitcase. So was the Paracetamol that she’d presumably bought after leaving Fizz. Unopened. No sign of her Swipeout card.’ A pause. ‘Or the passport, of course.’
Becky alerted a security officer, Peter explained, who brought her to the bridge to speak to his superior. A ship-wide tannoy announcement was made, asking Estelle to make herself known to a crew member. By the time this was done, time was ticking on. It was now almost one o’clock and no one had seen Estelle since around eleven the night before.
‘It was at this point that Becky really started to worry,’ Peter said, ‘mostly because the crew seemed to be taking it very seriously. There was talk of conducting a cabin-to-cabin search – with the majority of passengers already on the coast, now was the time to do it – but then, all of a sudden, the cruise director shows up, brings Becky into a little room and says, it’s alright, panic’s over: Estelle got off the ship this morning. He gave her this.’
Peter reached into his pocket and withdrew a single sheet of A4 paper, folded in quarters.
‘Estelle’s Swipeout activity,’ he said, handing it to me. ‘I got one too.’
I quickly scanned the page: a dense, neat list of dates, times and what I presumed were locations on the Celebrate. Three lines at the end had been highlighted in neon yellow and alongside them, in the margins, there were notations in handwriting.
03.08.13 11:23 4814 (CB) CRESGEN CB=chargeback (tablets)
03.08.13 11:59 2391 (AP) CAB8002 Access point – 40 mins??
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