Distress Signals

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  It was like an episode of that show, Hoarders, that Sarah loved, only one where the hoarder had an exceptionally specific interest and made an effort to catalogue things.

  In the middle of the room was an antique dining table on which sat two laptops and a box of blank CDs.

  A pad of yellow legal paper was on top of one of the closed laptops with a list scribbled on the first page. I moved to read what it said, but then caught sight of the wall to my right and forgot about everything else.

  What I assumed were the original inhabitants of it, a series of generic seaside prints, cheaply framed, were on the floor, leaning against a table leg. They’d been evicted to make way for a five-foot-wide collage of maps, photographs, fragments of newspaper articles and letters, both typed and handwritten, all tacked to the wall. There was a schematic of something vaguely oval that had been divided into hundreds of little boxes. There were smeared receipts, creased train tickets, curling photographs. One A4 page had a grainy overhead image of a bar printed on it; I could just about make out two women sitting at the counter while one bartender stood behind it, in front of them. It looked like a still from CCTV. A clear Ziploc bag had been hung from the wall with a blue plastic key-card inside it, an old Swipeout card by the looks of things. My eyes moved across a bus timetable, a printout of a job description for a security guard on the Fiesta and the cover page from an official-looking report: CARTER, P. v BLUE WAVE TOURS PLC. It was dated 2003. On a page torn from a reporter’s notebook, a list of dates and times had been hastily written in pencil and—

  Sarah.

  She was on the wall too.

  It was one of Moorsey’s ‘Have you seen Sarah O’Connell?’ posts, a printout of a screenshot from Facebook. There was a large picture – her profile picture – in which Sarah’s cropped head and shoulders were turned slightly away from the camera, her mouth open in laughter, her eyes bright.

  I stepped towards the wall, reached out, touched it.

  Sarah, what are you doing here?

  And saw another photo peeking out from underneath it.

  At first I thought it must be of Estelle, but it was a picture I’d never seen before. A blonde woman in her early twenties, slim and attractive. Scandinavian, maybe. She was wearing a tie-dyed sundress on a dark sand beach, smiling at the photographer. Someone had written SANNE VRIJS (Celebrate #1?) on the photo in magic marker. Next to it was a yellowing newspaper article featuring the same photo, written in what I thought might be German or Dutch. Several paragraphs of it were circled in red.

  Behind me, Peter cleared his throat. I turned to see him standing in the doorway, holding two small bottles of beer.

  ‘What is this?’ I asked him.

  ‘It’s my research.’

  ‘Into what?’

  ‘Into him. Ethan. Well, I didn’t know he was Ethan until you told me. I hadn’t identified him yet.’

  ‘What do you mean, you hadn’t identified him? Who is this other woman? What is all this?’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

  ‘Why don’t you just tell me what this is?’

  ‘Sarah and Estelle,’ Peter said after a beat. ‘They’re . . . They’re not the only ones.’

  Peter was right. I did need to sit down.

  I pushed a bundle of Blue Wave merchandise off the armchair and collapsed into it, ignoring the stack of cruise brochures digging into my lower back.

  ‘More than two hundred people,’ Peter was saying, ‘have disappeared without trace from cruise ships in the last twenty years. We’ve only been keeping count that long, apparently. Some of these can be put down to tragic accidents – usually involving alcohol – and others, sadly, appear to be suicides. But many of them can’t be explained at all. When Estelle disappeared and Blue Wave started stonewalling me, I started doing my own research into the statistics. In the last year I’ve dug up every single thing I could find – every police report, internal memo, Internet forum thread – about cruise ship disappearances, trying to find similarities. Looking for a pattern, for any connections to Estelle’s case. Searching for any disappearances that in fact were something else. And so when you contacted me about Sarah and told me about the passport and the note, just like Estelle . . .’ Peter cleared his throat. ‘Well, it wasn’t the second time I’d heard of a woman disappearing from the Celebrate and someone she loved back home getting sent her passport with a note stuck inside it. It was the third.’

  I looked at the young blonde woman’s picture on the wall.

  SANNE VRIJS (Celebrate #1?)

  Peter followed my eyes.

  ‘Sanne,’ he said. ‘Yes. She disappeared from the ship in June of last year, during its maiden voyage. She was crew. A bartender. A few days after she was last seen aboard the ship, her father received her passport in the post at home in the Netherlands. This would’ve been just a few short weeks before Estelle went missing.’

  The beer bottles were sweating on the table. I got up and grabbed one and took a long, cold swig.

  ‘How do you know that?’ I asked Peter. ‘About the passport?’

  ‘I read about it in a news report. There was no mention of a note, so I tracked down an address for her father and contacted him to ask. He said it was a private matter and wouldn’t tell me whether or not there was one – which leads me to believe that there was. Because wouldn’t he have just said no otherwise? And if it said the same thing as Estelle’s and Sarah’s did, he might’ve interpreted it as a suicide note. Who’d tell a stranger the content of that?’

  ‘What happened to her? To Sanne.’

  ‘She was on the opening team. They’re the staff who come aboard the ship once it’s been finished but before it opens its doors to the general public, so to speak. They set up the rooms and the restaurants, clean and test things, complete their training. The first operational cruise then is mostly friends and family members of Blue Wave employees, travel writers, etc. so anything that goes wrong won’t go wrong on premium-paying customers. I think they offer last-minute discount tickets to fill up the rest. Blue Wave maintain that, during this first cruise, Sanne got drunk at a crew party and fell overboard. Death by misadventure. No body, of course. And no CCTV. No witnesses, even though she supposedly fell during a party, which by definition requires the presence of a crowd. There’s nothing to go on except for what Blue Wave say there is.’

  ‘But that doesn’t sound anything like Sarah or Estelle.’

  ‘But it was on the Celebrate. Her passport was sent home. That’s enough for me to assume that a note was too. Yes, there are some differences, but I think they’re down to the fact that Sanne was crew, and that this was his first kill on this particular ship. He was probably still working things out. And he’s crew too, let’s not forget. It makes sense that he’d target a colleague, if he saw an opportunity. Perhaps he even knew her. He could’ve been involved with her.’

  ‘You think he’s killed on other ships too?’

  ‘It seems likely, doesn’t it? Ethan is, what? Late thirties? He hardly woke up one morning last year and felt a compulsion to kill for the first time in his life. There are other unexplained disappearances of women from other cruise ships – other companies’ cruise ships – but no other incidents where family were sent passports and notes afterwards. Not that I can find in the press, anyway.’

  ‘Doesn’t that timeline strike you as a bit weird though?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Think about it. Sanne disappears in June, Estelle in August and then Sarah in August again. What’s he doing for the year in between?’

  Peter looked at me pointedly, waiting for the penny to drop.

  It didn’t.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We know,’ Peter said, ‘that for some of it, at least, he was in Ireland. Courting Sarah.’

  I took another long swig of beer, swallowing it back until my e
yes watered.

  ‘He has it all worked out,’ Peter said. ‘On these ships, individual crimes go unsolved and, sometimes, even unreported. That’s bad enough if these crimes are random. But what if the same person was committing crimes on a regular basis? What if they were all murders? Who would realise there was a pattern? Who would even have a chance to see that there was?’

  Peter’s eyes had taken on a wild, crazed look and two prominent veins near his temples were bulging.

  ‘No one,’ he said, answering his own question. ‘No one has all the information, so no one can join the dots. Brilliant for you if you’re the kind of sick monster who enjoys ending lives, right? What better place is there to do it than on a cruise ship? Not only are you likely to get away with the individual murders – the cruise company will even help you do it – but you can practically be certain no one will ever say, “Hey, doesn’t this seem like the work of one guy?” Not to mention the fact that you have an ample and never-ending supply of fresh meat’ – I winced at this – ‘and hundreds of dark corners and private balconies designed not to be overlooked, for Christ’s sake, where you can commit your murders in peace, and everyone on board is busy drinking and having fun and in holiday mode and under the gravely mistaken impression that they are safe. Oh, and the sea is all around you to dump bodies in, you work at night so the dark helps you too, and you have professional cleaning staff to wipe away any and all evidence that might forensically link you to the crime. It’s downright perfect for you, you sick bastard. You probably can’t even believe your luck.’

  ‘Peter, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘This all seems . . .’ Too crazy? Too frightening? Too perfect a fit for the facts? ‘Estelle and Sarah, yes. We can’t deny the connection there. But this Sanne woman? Maybe the company sent her passport back with the rest of her belongings. I mean, did her father speak English? Are you sure he understood what you were asking him?’

  ‘There is something else,’ Peter said, ‘that the three of them have in common. None of them is American.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘This maritime law, international waters thing – it doesn’t work. How can it, possibly? You get two police officers instead of a police force, they have to travel halfway around the world to get to you and, by the time they arrive, there’s usually no physical evidence for them to examine or witnesses to speak to. It’s ridiculous. But it works for the cruise lines because it doesn’t work. Nothing goes to court. No one gets charged. Justice is never served. And no one ever does anything about it – except for the United States. They changed the law – or, to be specific, they created their own law that supersedes the existing one. Now, if an American citizen goes missing from a cruise ship, no matter where that ship is at the time or what country it’s registered in or what the damn captain says, the FBI is awarded jurisdiction. It automatically becomes an FBI investigation. The FBI, who’d have the skill and resources to join the dots. Who have whole departments who would try to make connections. The foremost experts on serial murderers in the whole world.’ Peter had started pacing up and down in a line parallel to the wall of research. ‘So doesn’t it strike you as a bit unlucky for the law that here we are with a slew of missing women and yet not one of them is an American citizen, despite the United States being the most enthusiastic cruising nation in the world? He’s purposefully avoiding American victims. Don’t you see? He’s found the perfect hunting ground and he’s doing everything he can to preserve it.’

  Peter’s face was red.

  ‘I think maybe you should sit down,’ I said to him.

  He waved a hand dismissively.

  ‘No one cares about this,’ he went on. ‘No one gives a shit about Estelle. About my wife. Do you think I can just let that go? If we were talking about a hotel or a holiday resort, it would’ve been burned to the ground by now. At the very least some sort of investigative task force would’ve been assigned to it to find out what the bloody hell was going on. But because these things happen to float on the water, no one even knows.’ He stopped pacing and turned to me. ‘No one is interested in helping us, Adam. The law is a joke. Ethan’s thought every bit of this out. Blue Wave’s plan is to cover their ass. It’s up to us. Don’t you see? You and me. We’re the only ones who can prove that this is even happening and you want to pack up and go home.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this at the beginning?’

  ‘Because you would’ve thought I was a crazy person. One of those Internet freaks who preys on people like us, people who’ve lost loved ones. The psychics and the angel-talkers and the alien abductees.’ When he saw the look of recognition on my face, Peter smiled sadly. ‘Yeah, I got those too. It was undeniable that Estelle and Sarah were connected, so I stuck with that. I said no more. Plus this just happened to you. I’ve had a year with it. If I told you all this at the beginning, over the phone . . . Well, we wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Why tell me it now?’

  ‘You were upset last night because you were scared. You are scared, I know. So am I. Sometimes I think to myself that I’ll just go home, back to London, and find a way to live alongside this pain. That even if I keep going, I may never know for sure what happened to Estelle. And I know that’s what you’ve been thinking too, right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Ethan has killed two women already, Adam. We’re the only two people who know. Who believe. So this isn’t just about us any more. It’s about the woman he kills next. The one he kills after her. It’s about his future victims. Their blood will be on our hands. Don’t you want to stop this from happening to anyone else?’

  ‘I want to,’ I said, ‘but how can I? Before all this, I sat at home in sweats all day. My main concern was when I could eat next and what I’d have when I did. I’m a terrible liar, I’m a coward, I’m—’

  ‘Estelle was pregnant,’ Peter said.

  ‘Oh, God, Peter. I’m sorry.’

  ‘When I said I didn’t want her to go on the cruise? That was the real reason why. The week before I’d read about some norovirus outbreak on a cruise ship in the States. I didn’t think it was a risk a pregnant woman should take.’

  ‘Estelle didn’t agree with you?’

  ‘She thought I was overreacting, but we’d been trying for so long . . .’

  We fell into silence for a minute, thinking about what we’d lost.

  ‘My point,’ Peter said, ‘is that you don’t have to do anything except help me find him. Once we do, I’ll take care of the rest. This monster, he didn’t just take my wife. He took my family. He took my future from me. He did it when I wasn’t here, when I was sitting back at home, oblivious. I failed in my duty as her husband. I failed to protect her. But I’m not going to fail her now. I’m prepared to do whatever has to be done.’ He looked me right in the eye, held steady his gaze. ‘What I’m saying is, I don’t have to go back. It’s okay if I don’t come out the other side of this the same way I went in.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand . . .’

  ‘I want an investigation, Adam. An investigation and a trial. I want him put in prison, made to suffer for what he did. I want him to have to tell us what he did and why. If I can’t make that happen, if it starts to look like that is an impossible task, then I’ll settle for stopping this from happening to anyone else. I want you to know that. Not because I expect you to do the same, but so you’ll know that if something happens, well, we both don’t have to . . .’

  I thought he was talking about risking his safety, about putting himself in danger, planting himself in the path of a killer to lure him out of the dark, if need be. I thought he was talking about ways to bring Sarah and Estelle’s killer to justice, to find Ethan and get him to confess, trick him into doing it if we had to.

  That’s what I thought he was talking about.

  ‘What do you need me to do?’ I asked.

  ‘Get back
on the ship with me now. Agree to use Megan, enlist her help. Under false pretences, yes, but she’s not in any danger. He avoids Americans, we know. We’ll stick to our surprise-a-friend story with her. Three of us searching the ship will be better than two.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I can do that. I will.’

  Peter looked relieved.

  ‘Good. Because I can’t find him on my own, Adam. And time is running out.’

  Peter wanted to check the mailbox he rented and I wanted to check my emails, so we agreed to meet back on the ship. I got the distinct impression Peter thought I was absconding, so I reassured him more than once that I’d see him aboard. Then I wandered back down the wide street full of pharmacies, turned off onto a narrow, cobbled pedestrianised street and kept going until I spotted an Internet cafe.

  It was the kind that catered to gamers: high-spec equipment, comfortable leather chairs and partitions between the consoles. I paid for half an hour and bought a coffee from the machine, then pulled my chair as close to my desk as my internal organs would allow.

  Rose had sent me several emails since I’d spoken to her. The first couple had been written in all caps and sprinkled with typos, rants she’d evidently fired off in a fit of rage after our last phone call. These had been followed by a couple of longer, more thoughtful ones, in which she had calmed down enough to put to me all the logical reasons why I should return home straightaway. Finally, she’d given in and done what I’d asked: searched for Ethan Eckhart online.

  She’d found more profiles for him – Facebook, which he’d locked down, and LinkedIn, which he’d left mostly bare – and a much better, clearer picture, taken from a Facebook group for employees of something called Les Sablons, which appeared to be a campsite on the south-west coast of France. It was dated nearly ten years before but, despite much blonder hair, the younger Ethan was easily recognisable.

  There seemed to be no evidence of Sarah anywhere in his online presence, Rose said in the message, but interestingly she had found a sample of his handwriting.