by Ruth Ware
Outside was a man I hadn’t seen before, dressed in some kind of uniform. I don’t know what I was expecting—something pseudo-policeman-like. This was more like a nautical uniform—closer to a purser or something. He was about forty or thereabouts, and tall enough to have to stoop as he took a step forward into the doorway, with rumpled hair that looked like he’d only just got out of bed, and eyes so startlingly blue that it looked almost as if he were wearing colored contacts. I was staring at them when I realized, suddenly, that he was holding out a hand.
“Hello, you must be Miss Blacklock, I presume?” His English was very, very good. Just a faint trace of a Scandinavian accent, so slight he might almost have been Scottish or Canadian. “My name is Johann Nilsson. I am head of security on the Aurora. I understand you’ve seen something that disturbed you.”
“Yes,” I said firmly, suddenly painfully aware of the fact that I was in a dressing gown with my mascara halfway down my cheeks while he was fully and professionally dressed. I tightened the belt again, nervously this time. “Yes. I saw—heard—something thrown overboard. I—I think it was, it must have been . . . a body.”
“You saw, or heard?” Nilsson said, cocking his head to one side.
“I heard a splash—a very loud splash. It was quite clearly something very big falling overboard—or being pushed. And then I ran to the balcony and I saw something—a body, it looked like—disappearing under the waves.” Nilsson’s expression was grave but guarded, and as I spoke his frown deepened. “And there was blood on the glass wall of the balcony,” I added.
His lips tightened at that, and he gave a short nod towards the veranda door.
“Your balcony?”
“The blood? No. Next door.”
“Can you show me?”
I nodded, pulled the belt again, and watched as he undid the latch of the veranda door. Outside, the wind had picked up, and it was very cold. I led the way to the narrow space, which felt painfully small now with Nilsson’s bulk beside me. He seemed to take up all the room there was and more, but part of me was very glad he was there. I didn’t think I could have brought myself to go out there on my own.
“There.” I pointed over the privacy barrier that separated my veranda from that of cabin 10. “Look over there. You’ll see what I mean.”
Nilsson peered over the barrier and then looked back at me, frowning slightly.
“I don’t see where you mean. Could you show me?”
“What do you mean? It was a big smear all down the glass.”
He edged backwards, extending a hand towards the barrier by way of invitation, and I pushed past him to peer over. My heart was pounding in spite of myself. I didn’t expect to see the murderer still there, or to get a fist in my face, or feel a bullet fly past my ear. But it felt horribly vulnerable to peer over the wall not knowing what I might find on the other side.
But what I found was . . . nothing.
No murderer, crouched to spring. No smear of blood. The glass barrier shone in the moonlight, clean, innocent of so much as a fingerprint.
I turned back to Nilsson, knowing that my face must be stiff with shock. I shook my head, tried to find the words. He watched me, something sympathetic in his blue eyes.
It was the sympathy that stung more than anything else.
“It was there,” I said angrily. “He’s obviously wiped it off.”
“He?”
“The murderer! The fucking murderer, of course!”
“There’s no need to swear, Miss Blacklock,” he said mildly, and went back inside the cabin. I followed him, and he carefully shut and latched the door behind me and then stood, his hands by his sides, as if waiting for me to say something. I could smell his cologne—not an unpleasant smell, faintly woody. But suddenly the spacious room felt oppressively small.
“What?” I said at last, trying and failing not to make the word sound aggressive. “I told you what I saw. Are you saying I’m lying?”
“Let’s go next door,” he said diplomatically.
I yanked the bathrobe belt tighter still, so tight now I could feel it digging into my stomach, and followed him, barefoot, into the corridor. He gave one short knock at the door of cabin 10, and then, when there was no answer, produced a passkey from his pocket and opened the door.
We stood in the doorway. Nilsson said nothing, but I could feel his presence at my back as I gazed, openmouthed, at the room.
It was utterly empty. Not just of people—but of everything. There were no suitcases. No clothes. No cosmetics in the bathroom. Even the bed was stripped back to the mattress.
“There was a girl,” I said at last, my voice unsteady. I shoved my hands in the pockets of the bathrobe so that he wouldn’t see how my fingers were clenched into fists. “There was a girl. In this room. I talked to her. I spoke to her. She was here!”
Nilsson said nothing. He walked through the silent moonlit suite and opened the door of the veranda, then looked outside, inspecting the glass barrier with almost insulting conscientiousness. But I could see from here there was nothing. The glass gleamed in the moonlight, misted faintly with ocean spray but otherwise quite untouched.
“She was here!” I repeated, hearing and hating the edge of hysteria in my voice. “Why won’t you believe me?”
“I didn’t say that I didn’t believe you.” Nilsson came back into the room and latched the veranda window. Then he walked me to the cabin door, and closed and locked it behind us.
“You don’t have to,” I said bitterly. My own door was still open and he escorted me inside. “But I tell you, she was there. She lent me— Oh!” Something suddenly struck me, and I ran to the bathroom. “She lent me a mascara. God damn it, where is it?”
I was rummaging through the carefully set-out cosmetics, but it wasn’t there. Where had it gone?
“It’s here,” I said desperately. “I know it is.” I looked around wildly, and something caught my eye, a flash of shocking pink behind the retractable shaving mirror at the side of the basin. I pulled it out—and there it was—an innocent little pink tube with a green cap.
“There!” I brandished it triumphantly at him, like a weapon. Nilsson took a step back, and then took the mascara gently from my hand.
“I see,” he said, “but with respect, Miss Blacklock, I’m not sure what this proves, apart from the fact that you borrowed a mascara from someone today—”
“What does it prove? It proves she was really there! It proves she existed!”
“It proves you saw a girl, yes, but—”
“What do you want?” I interrupted, desperately. “What more do you want from me? I’ve told you what I heard—what I saw. I’ve told you there was a girl in that cabin, and now she’s gone. Look on the manifest—there’s a guest missing. Why aren’t you more concerned?”
“That cabin is empty,” he said gently.
“I know!” I shouted, and then, seeing Nilsson’s face, I made a huge, concentrated effort to get myself under control. “I know—that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, for God’s sake.”
“No,” he said, still with that same quiet gentleness, the gentleness of a big man with nothing to prove. “This is what I’m trying to explain, Miss Blacklock. It has always been empty. There was no guest in that cabin. There never has been.”
- CHAPTER 11 -
I stared at him, openmouthed.
“What do you mean?” I managed at last. “What do you mean, no guest?”
“The cabin is empty,” he said. “It was reserved for another guest, an investor named Ernst Solberg. But he pulled out at the last minute—personal reasons, I understand.”
“So the girl I saw—she wasn’t supposed to be there?”
“Perhaps she was a member of the staff, or a cleaner.”
“She wasn’t. She was getting dressed. She was staying there.”
He said nothing. He didn’t have to—the question was obvious. If she was staying there, where was all her stuff?
“Someone could have taken it out,” I said weakly. “Between seeing me and your coming.”
“Really?” Nilsson’s voice was quiet, his question not skeptical, not mocking, just . . . uncomprehending. He sat down on the sofa, the springs squeaking beneath his bulk, and I sank onto the bed and put my face in my hands.
Because he was right. There was no way someone could have cleared the room. I didn’t know exactly how much time had elapsed between me calling Karla and Nilsson appearing at my door, but there was no way it was more than a few minutes. Five, seven at the outside. Probably not even that.
Whoever was in there might have had time to wipe the blood off the glass, but that was it. There was no way they could have emptied the entire cabin. What could they have done with the stuff? I would have heard if they had tipped it over the side. And there simply hadn’t been time for them to pack it up and take it down the corridor.
“Shit,” I said at last, into my hands. “Shit.”
“Miss Blacklock,” Nilsson said slowly, and I had a sudden premonition that I was not going to like his next question. “Miss Blacklock, how much did you have to drink last night?”
I looked up, letting him see my ravaged makeup and the fury in my sleep-bleared eyes.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I simply asked—”
There was no point in denying it. There were enough people who’d seen me at the dinner last night, knocking back champagne, then wine, then after-dinner shots, to blow a hole a mile wide in any claim that I was completely sober.
“Yes, I was drinking,” I said nastily. “But if you think that half a glass of wine turns me into some hysterical drunk who can’t tell reality from fantasy, you’ve got another think coming.”
He said nothing to that, but his gaze traveled to the bin beside the minibar, where a number of whiskey and gin miniatures and a considerably smaller quantity of tonic cans were stacked up.
There was a silence. Nilsson didn’t ram home his point, but he didn’t need to. Bastard room cleaners.
“I may have been drinking,” I said through clenched teeth, “but I wasn’t drunk. Not like that. I know what I saw. Why would I make it up?”
He seemed to accept that and nodded wearily.
“Very well, Miss Blacklock.” He rubbed a hand over his face, and I heard his blond stubble rasp against his palm. He was tired, and I noticed, suddenly and incongruously, that his uniform jacket was buttoned up askew, with an orphan buttonhole at the bottom. “Look, it is late, you are tired.”
“You’re tired,” I shot back with more than a touch of malice, but he only nodded, without rancor.
“Yes, I am tired. I think there is nothing we can do now until the morning.”
“A woman has been thrown—”
“There is no proof!” he said louder, his voice cutting over mine, and for the first time there was exasperation in his tone. “I’m sorry, Miss Blacklock,” he said more quietly. “I should not have contradicted you. But I don’t feel there is sufficient evidence to wake the other passengers at this point. Let us both get some sleep”—and you can sober up was the unspoken translation—“and we will try to resolve this in the morning. Perhaps if I take you to meet the ship’s staff we can track down this girl that you saw in the cabin. It is evident that she was not a passenger, correct?”
“She wasn’t at the dinner last night,” I admitted. “But what if she was a staff member? What if someone’s missing, and we’re wasting time in raising the alarm?”
“I’ll speak to the captain and the purser now, let them know the situation. But there are no staff members unaccounted for that I am aware of; if there were, someone would have noticed. This is a very small ship with a tight-knit crew. It would be hard for someone to go missing undetected, even for a few hours.”
“I just think—” I began, but he cut me off, politely and firmly this time.
“Miss Blacklock, I will not wake up sleeping staff and passengers for no good reason. I’m sorry. I will inform the captain and the purser and they will take whatever action they see fit. In the meantime, perhaps you could give me a description of the girl you saw, and I can double-check the passenger manifest and arrange that all the off-duty staff members who match the description are in the staff restaurant for you to meet tomorrow after breakfast.”
“All right,” I said sulkily. I was beaten. I knew what I had seen, what I’d heard, but Nilsson was not budging, that much was plain. And what could I do, out here in the middle of the ocean?
“So,” he prompted. “She was how old, how tall? Was she Caucasian, Asian, black . . . ?”
“Late twenties,” I said. “About my height. White—very pale skin, in fact. She spoke English.”
“With an accent?” Nilsson put in. I shook my head.
“No, she was English—or if she wasn’t, she was completely bilingual. She had long, dark hair . . . I can’t remember what color eyes. Dark brown, I think. I’m not certain. Slimmish build . . . she was just—pretty. That’s all I remember.”
“Pretty?”
“Yes, pretty. You know? Nice features. Clear skin. She was wearing makeup. Lots of eye makeup. Oh—and she was wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt.”
Nilsson wrote it all down solemnly and then rose, the springs squeaking in protest, or perhaps relief.
“Thank you, Miss Blacklock. And now I think we should both get some sleep.” He rubbed his face, looking for all the world like a big blond bear dragged out of hibernation.
“What time should I expect you tomorrow?”
“What time would suit you? Ten? Ten thirty?”
“Earlier,” I said. “I won’t sleep, not now.” I was buzzing, and I knew I would never get back to sleep.
“Well, my shift starts at eight. Is that too early?”
“That’s perfect,” I said firmly. He walked to the door, suppressing a yawn as he did, and I watched as he lumbered off along the corridor towards the stairs. Then I shut and double-locked the door, and went and lay on the bed, staring at the sea. The waves were dark and slick in the moonlight, heaving themselves up like the backs of whales, and then slipping back down, and I lay and felt the boat rise and fall with the swell.
I would never sleep. I knew that. Not with my blood ringing in my ears, and my heart beating in angry staccato thumps in my chest, I would never relax.
I was furious—but I was not sure why. Because a woman’s body was even now floating down into the black darkness of the North Sea, probably never to be found? Or was part of it something smaller, baser—the fact that Nilsson had not believed me?
Maybe he’s right, the nasty little voice in my head whispered. Pictures flitted across my mind’s eye—me, cowering in the shower because of a door blowing shut in the wind. Defending myself against a nonexistent intruder by attacking Judah. Are you completely sure? You’re not exactly the most reliable witness. And at the end of the day, what did you actually see?
I saw the blood, I told myself firmly. And a girl is missing. Explain that.
I switched the light out and drew the cover across myself, but I didn’t sleep. Instead, I lay on my side watching the sea, rising and falling with strange hypnotic silence outside the thick, stormproof panes. And I thought, There is a murderer on this boat. And no one knows but me.
- CHAPTER 12 -
“Miss Blacklock!” The knock came again, and I heard a passkey in the door, and the bang as the door itself opened a centimeter and the security chain pulled taut.
“Miss Blacklock, it’s Johann Nilsson. Are you okay? It’s eight o’clock. You asked me to call you?”
What? I struggled up onto my elbows, my head pounding with the effort. Why the hell had I asked to be called at eight o’clock?
> “One sec!” I managed. My mouth was dry, as if I’d swallowed ashes, and I reached for the glass of water by my bed and choked some down. As I did, the memory of last night came flooding back.
The noise that had woken me in the night.
The blood on the veranda glass.
The body.
The splash . . .
I swung my legs out of bed and felt the boat shift and lurch beneath me, and I felt suddenly and violently nauseous.
I ran to the bathroom and just managed to get myself positioned over the bowl in time for the retching heave of last night’s dinner against clean white porcelain.
“Miss Blacklock?”
Go. Away.
The words didn’t make it out of my mouth, but maybe the sound of splashing vomit conveyed the sentiment, because the door shut, very quietly, and I was able to stand up and examine myself without an audience.
I looked awful. The dregs of my eye makeup were smudged across my cheeks, and I had vomit in my hair, and my eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. The bruise on my cheek just added to the whole impression.
The boat heaved itself up onto a wave and down the other side, and everything around the sink shifted and clinked. I pulled my dressing gown around myself and went back into the cabin, where I pulled the door open the tiniest, tiniest crack—barely enough to see through.
“I’ve got to take a shower,” I said tersely. “Do you mind waiting?” And then I shut the door.
Inside the bathroom I flushed the toilet and wiped around the rim, trying to destroy all traces of my vomit. But when I straightened, it was not my own pale, ravaged face that caught my eye, but the tube of Maybelline, standing sentinel by the sink. As I stood, clutching the vanity table, my breath coming short and sharp, the ship gave another roll, and everything on the countertop shifted and wobbled, and the tube fell, with a tiny crack, and rolled into the bin. I reached in bare-handed and pulled it out, holding it in my fist.
It was the only tangible evidence that that girl had existed, that I wasn’t going mad.