by Ruth Ware
“Never mind,” I said awkwardly. He was standing uncomfortably close and I wanted to take a step back, but Rowan’s voice was nagging in the back of my head: Network, Lo! “Tell me . . . tell me something about yourself instead. What made you come? You said it’s not your usual thing.”
“Richard’s kind of an old friend,” Cole said. He grabbed a coffee from a passing stewardess’s tray and took a gulp. “We were at Balliol together. So when he asked me to come, I felt I couldn’t say no.”
“Are you close?”
“I wouldn’t say close. We don’t really move in the same circles—it’s hard when one of you is a struggling photographer and the other one’s married to one of the wealthiest women in Europe.” He gave a grin. “But he’s a good guy. He might look like he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but that’s not the full picture. He’s had some tough times and I guess that’s what makes him hold on all the harder to . . . well, all this.” He waved a hand at our surroundings—at the silk and crystals and burnished fittings. “He knows what it’s like to lose things. And people.”
I thought of Anne Bullmer, and the way Richard had walked her to her cabin in spite of the roomful of guests waiting to talk to him. And I thought perhaps I knew what Cole meant.
It was around eleven that I finally made my way back to my room. I was drunk. Very, very drunk. Although it was hard to tell exactly how drunk, as we were now midocean, and the shifting movement of the sea mixed queasily with the champagne . . . and the wine . . . oh, and the frozen shots of aquavit. Christ. What had I been thinking?
There was a moment of clarity when I got to my door and stood for a moment, steadying myself on the frame. I knew why I’d got drunk. I knew exactly why. Because if I was drunk enough, I would sleep the sleep of the dead. I couldn’t cope with another broken night—not here.
But I pushed the thought away and began the task of retrieving my room key from where I’d stashed it inside my bra.
“Need a hand, Blacklock?” slurred a voice behind me, and Ben Howard’s shadow fell across the doorframe.
“I’m fine,” I said, turning my back so that he couldn’t see me struggling. A wave hit the boat and I lurched and staggered. Go away, Ben.
“Sure?” He leaned over me, deliberately peering over my shoulder.
“Yes”—my teeth were gritted with fury—“I’m sure.”
“Because I could help.” He gave a lascivious grin and nodded towards the top of my dress, which I was gripping with one hand to stop it from peeling down. “You look like you could use an extra hand. Or two.”
“Fuck off,” I said shortly. There was something wedged beneath my left shoulder blade, something warm and hard that felt a lot like a key. If I could only get my fingers far enough round . . .
He moved closer, and before I’d realized what he was about to do, he shoved his hand roughly down the front of my dress. I felt a streak of pain as his cuff links dragged over my skin, and then his fingers closed over my bare breast and squeezed, hard, in a way that was presumably meant to be erotic.
It wasn’t.
I didn’t even think about it. There was a ripping noise like a snarling cat, and my knee connected with his groin so hard that he didn’t even cry out, he just toppled slowly to the floor, making a kind of weak, gasping whimper.
And I burst into tears.
Some twenty minutes later I was sitting on the bed in my cabin, still sobbing and wiping borrowed mascara off my cheeks, and Ben was crouched next to me, one arm around my shoulders and the other holding a tumbler of ice against his crotch.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, his voice still croaky with suppressed pain. “Please, Lo, please, stop crying. I’m really sorry. I was a dick, a complete arsehole. I deserved it.”
“It’s not you,” I sobbed, though I wasn’t sure he could understand the words. “I can’t cope anymore, Ben, ever since the burglar I’ve just been— I think I’m going mad.”
“What burglar?”
I told him—between sobs. Everything I hadn’t told Jude. What it had been like, waking up, realizing there was someone in my flat, realizing that no one would hear if I cried out, realizing that I had no way of getting help, no chance of fighting the intruder off, that I was vulnerable in a way I’d never thought I was before that night.
“I’m sorry,” Ben kept repeating, like a mantra. He rubbed my back with his free hand. “I’m so sorry.”
His awkward sympathy only made me sob harder.
“Look, sweetheart—”
Oh no.
“Don’t call me that.” I sat up, shaking my hair away from my face, and pulled out of his hold.
“Sorry, it just— It slipped out.”
“I don’t care, you can’t say that anymore, Ben.”
“I know,” he said distractedly. “But, Lo, if I’m honest, I never—”
“Don’t,” I said urgently.
“Lo, what I did, I was a shit, I know I was—”
“I said don’t. It’s over.”
He shook his head, but his words, somehow, had stopped my crying. Maybe it was the sight of him, stricken, hunched, and so very miserable.
“But, Lo.” He looked up at me, his brown eyes puppy-dog soft in the soft bedside light. “Lo, I—”
“No!” It came out harsher and louder than I meant, but I had to shut him up. I wasn’t sure what he was about to say, but whatever it was, I was certain I couldn’t afford for him to say it. I was stuck on this boat with Ben for the next five days. I couldn’t let him embarrass himself more than he already had done, or this trip would become unendurable when we had to rub shoulders in the cold light of day. “Ben, no,” I said more gently. “It was over a long time ago. Anyway, you were the one who wanted out, remember?”
“I know,” he said wretchedly. “I know. I was a twat.”
“You weren’t,” I said. And then, feeling dishonest: “Okay, you were. But I know I wasn’t the easiest— Look, that’s not the point now. We’re friends, right?” That was overstating it, but he nodded. “Okay, then don’t screw this up.”
“All right,” he said. He stood up painfully and swiped at his face with the arm of his dinner jacket, then looked at it ruefully. “Hope they’ve got an onboard dry cleaner.”
“Hope they’ve got an onboard dress mender.” I nodded at the rip all the way up the side of the gray silk dress.
“Will you be all right?” Ben said. “I could stay. I don’t mean that in a sleazy way. I could sleep on the couch.”
“You totally could,” I agreed, looking at the length of it, and then shook my head as I realized how my words sounded. “No, you couldn’t. It’s big enough, but you can’t; I don’t need you to. Go back to your cabin. For Christ’s sake, we’re on board a ship in the middle of the ocean—it’s about the safest place I could possibly be.”
“All right.” He walked, hobbling slightly, to the door and half opened it, but he didn’t actually go. “I—I’m sorry. I mean it.”
I knew what he was waiting for, hoping for. Not just forgiveness, but something more, something that would tell him that squeeze wasn’t completely unwanted.
I was damned if I’d give it to him.
“Go to bed, Ben,” I said, very weary, and very sober. He stood in the doorway a moment longer, just a millisecond too long, long enough for me to wonder, with a shift in my stomach that echoed the shifting sea, what I would do if he didn’t go. What I’d do if he shut the door and turned around and came back into the room. But then he turned and went, and I locked the door after him and then collapsed onto the sofa with my head in my hands.
At long last, I don’t know how much later, I got up, poured myself a whiskey from the minibar, and drank it down in three long gulps like medicine. I shuddered, wiped my mouth, and peeled off my dress, leaving it coiled on the floor like a sloughed-off skin.
&nbs
p; I stripped off my bra, stepped out of the sad little pile of clothes, and then fell into bed and into a sleep so deep, it felt like drowning.
I don’t know what woke me up—only that I shot into consciousness as if someone had stabbed me in the heart with a syringe of adrenaline. I lay there rigid with fear, my heart thumping at about two hundred beats per minute, and I scrabbled for the soothing phrases I’d repeated to Ben just a few hours before.
You’re fine, I told myself. You’re completely safe. We’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean—no one can get in or away. It’s about the safest place you could possibly be.
I was clutching the sheets with a rigor mortis–like grip, and I forced my stiff fingers to relax and flexed them slowly, feeling the pain in my knuckles subside. I concentrated on breathing in . . . and out. In . . . and out. Slow and steady, until at last my heart followed suit, and I could no longer feel its frantic pounding in my chest.
The drumming in my ears subsided. Apart from the rhythmic shush of the waves, and the low engine hum that permeated every part of the vessel, I couldn’t hear anything.
Shit. Shit. I had to get a grip.
I couldn’t self-medicate with booze every night for the rest of this trip, not without sabotaging my career and flushing any chance of advancement at Velocity down the drain. So that left—what? Sleeping pills? Meditation? None of that seemed much better.
I rolled over and switched on the light and checked my phone: 3:04 a.m. Then I refreshed my e-mail. There was nothing from Judah, but I was too wide-awake now to go back to sleep. I sighed and picked up my book instead, lying splayed like a broken-backed bird on the bedside table, and opened it to the last page I’d read.
But although I tried to concentrate on the words, something niggled at the corner of my mind. It wasn’t just paranoia. Something had woken me up. Something that left me jumpy and strung out as a meth addict. Why did I keep thinking of a scream?
I was turning the page when I heard something else, something that barely registered above the sound of the engine and the slap of the waves, a sound so soft that the scrape of paper against paper almost drowned it out.
It was the noise of the veranda door in the next cabin sliding gently open.
I held my breath, straining to hear.
And then there was a splash.
Not a small splash.
No, this was a big splash.
The kind of splash made by a body hitting water.
JUDAH LEWIS
24 September at 8.50am
Hey, guys, bit concerned about Lo. She hasn’t checked in for a few days since she left on a press trip. Anyone heard from her? Getting kinda worried. Cheers.
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LISSIE WIGHT Hi Jude! She messaged me on Sunday—20th I guess it must have been? Said the boat was amazing!
Like · Reply 24 September at 9.02am
JUDAH LEWIS Yeah, I heard from her then, too, but she didn’t reply to my e-mail or my text on Monday. And she hasn’t updated facebook or twitter, either.
Like · Reply 24 September at 9.03am
JUDAH LEWIS Anyone? Pamela Crew? Jennifer West? Carl Fox? Emma Stanton? Sorry if I’m tagging random people, I’m just—this is kind of out of character to be honest.
Like · Reply 24 September at 10.44am
PAMELA CREW She emailed me on Sunday, Jude love. Said the boat was lovely. Do you want me to ask her dad?
Like · Reply 24 September at 11.13am
JUDAH LEWIS Yes, please, Pam. I don’t want to worry you both, but I feel like she’d have made contact by now, normally. But I’m stuck here in Moscow, so I don’t know if she’s been trying to phone and not getting through.
Like · Reply 24 September at 11.21am
JUDAH LEWIS Pam, did she tell you the name of the boat? I can’t find it.
Like · Reply 24 September at 11.33am
PAMELA CREW Hi, Judah, sorry, I was on the phone to her dad. He’s not heard anything, either. The boat was the Aurora, apparently. Let me know if you hear anything. Bye love.
Like · Reply 24 September at 11.48am
JUDAH LEWIS Thanks, Pam. I’ll try the boat. But if anyone hears anything, please message me.
Like · Reply 24 September at 11.49am
JUDAH LEWIS Anything?
Like · Reply 24 September at 3.47pm
JUDAH LEWIS Please, guys, anything?
Like · Reply 24 September at 6.09pm
- CHAPTER 10 -
I didn’t even think about what to do next.
I ran to the veranda, threw open the French windows, and hung out over the rail, desperately searching for a glimpse of something—or someone—in the shifting waves. The dark surface was spattered with bright refracted light from the ship’s windows, making it almost impossible to make out the shape of anything in the swell, but I thought I saw something beneath the crest of a black wave—a swirling white shape that trailed beneath the surface as it sank, like a woman’s hand.
Then I turned to look at the balcony next to mine.
There was a privacy screen between the two cabins, so I couldn’t see very much, but as I peered over, I saw two things.
The first was that there was a smear on the glass safety barrier of the next-door veranda. A smear of something dark and oily. A smear that looked a lot like blood.
The second was a realization, and one that made my stomach clench and shift. Whoever had been standing there—whoever had thrown that body overboard—could not have missed my stupid, headlong dash to the balcony. In all likelihood they’d been standing on the next-door veranda as I dashed onto mine. They would have heard my door crash back. They would probably even have seen my face.
I darted back into the room, slamming the French windows behind me, and checked the cabin door was double-locked. Then I put the chain across. My heart was thumping in my chest, but I felt calm, calmer than I had in ages.
This was it. This was real danger, and I was coping.
With the cabin door secure, I ran back and checked the veranda windows. There was no deadlock on this—just the normal latch—but it was as secure as I could make it.
Then I picked up the bedside phone with fingers that shook only slightly and dialed 0 for the operator.
“Hello?” said a singsong voice. “How can I help you, Miss Blacklock?”
For a minute I was so disconcerted that she knew it was me that I completely lost my train of thought. Then I realized—my room number would probably come up on the desk phone. Of course it would be me. Who else would be phoning from my room in the middle of the night?
“H-hello!” I managed. In spite of the tremor, my voice sounded surprisingly calm. “Hello. Who is this, please?”
“It’s your cabin stewardess, Karla, Miss Blacklock. Can I help you?” Beneath her perky phone manner a touch of concern had crept in. “Are you all right?”
“No, no, I’m not all right. I—” I stopped, aware how ridiculous this might sound.
“Miss Blacklock?”
“I think—” I swallowed. “I think I’ve just seen a murder.”
“Oh my goodness.” Karla’s voice was shocked, and she said something in a language I didn’t understand—Swedish perhaps, or maybe Danish. Then she seemed to control herself and spoke in English again. “Are you safe, Miss Blacklock?”
Was I safe? I looked across at the cabin door. It was double-locked and with the chain across, I was as certain as I could be that no one could get in.
“Yes, yes, I think I am. It was in the next-door cabin—number ten. Palmgren. I—I think someone threw a body overboard.”
My voice cracked as I said it, and I suddenly felt like laughing—or maybe crying. I took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to get ahold of myself.
“I will send someone right away,
Miss Blacklock. Don’t move. I will call you when they are at the door so you know who it is. Hold on, please, and I will call you right back.”
There was a click, and she hung up.
I was still holding the receiver, and I put it gently back on the cradle, feeling oddly dissociated, almost like I was having an out-of-body experience. My head was throbbing, and I realized I needed to get dressed before they arrived.
I picked up the bathrobe from where it hung on the back of the bathroom door—and did a double take. When I went down to dinner I had left it on the floor, along with the clothes I’d worn on the train. I remembered looking back over my shoulder at the bomb site I’d made in the bathroom—clothes on the floor, makeup scattered across the counter, lipstick-smeared tissues in the sink—and thinking, I’ll deal with that later.
It was all gone. The bathrobe had been hung up, my dirty clothes and underwear had disappeared, whisked off to God knows where.
On the vanity counter, my cosmetics had been neatly set out in rows, along with my toothbrush and toothpaste. Only my tampons and pills were left inside my toiletry bag, a weirdly coy touch that was somehow worse than everything being out in the open, and made me shudder. Someone had been inside my room. Of course they had. That was what maid service meant, for heaven’s sake. But someone had been inside my room, messing with my things, touching my wrinkled tights and my half-used eyeliner pencil.
Why did the thought make me want to cry?
I was sitting on the bed, head in my hands and thinking about the contents of the minibar, when the phone rang, and a couple of seconds later, as I crawled across the duvet to pick up the receiver, there was a knock on the door.
I picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Miss Blacklock?” It was Karla.
“Yes. There’s someone at the door. Should I answer it?”
“Yes, yes, please do. It is our head of security, Johann Nilsson. I will leave you now with him, Miss Blacklock, but please do call me at any time if you need any further assistance.”
There was a click and the line went dead, and the knock on the door came again. I belted my bathrobe more securely and went to open it.