by Ruth Ware
Ten minutes later I was dressed in jeans and a crisp white shirt, pressed by whoever unpacked my case, and my face was pale but clean. I pulled back the security chain and opened the door to find Nilsson waiting patiently in the corridor, talking on a radio. He looked up when he saw me and shut it off.
“I’m very sorry, Miss Blacklock,” he said. “Perhaps I should not have woken you, but you were so insistent last night . . .”
“It’s fine,” I said through gritted teeth. I didn’t mean to sound quite so curt, but if I opened my mouth too much I might be sick again. Thank God the movement of the boat provided an alibi for my queasy stomach. Being a bad sailor was not exactly chic, but it was less unprofessional than being considered an alcoholic.
“I have spoken to the staff,” Nilsson said. “No one has been reported missing, but I suggest you come down to the staff quarters and you can see if the woman you spoke to is there. It may put your mind at rest.”
I was about to protest that she wasn’t staff, not unless the cleaners valeted rooms wearing Pink Floyd T-shirts and not much else. But then I shut my mouth. I wanted to see below decks for myself.
I followed him along the lurching corridor to a small service door by the stairwell. It was fitted with a keypad lock, into which he tapped a quick six-digit code, and the door swung outwards. From the outside I would have assumed the door hid a cleaning cupboard, but in fact there was a small, dimly lit landing and a flight of narrow stairs led down into the depths of the ship. As we descended I realized, unsettlingly, that we must now be below the waterline, or very near it.
We emerged into a cramped corridor that had a completely different feel to the passenger part of the ship. Everything was different—the ceiling was lower, the air was several degrees hotter, and the walls were closer together and painted a dingy shade of beige, but it was the lights that made me feel instantly claustrophobic—dim and fluorescent, with a strange high-frequency flicker that made your eyes tire almost at once.
Doors opened off to the left and the right, eight or ten cabins crammed into the same space as two above. We passed one door that was ajar and I saw a windowless shared bunk room lit by the same graying fluorescent light, and an Asian woman sitting on a bunk inside, pulling on her tights, her head and shoulders cramped in the narrow space beneath the bunk above. She looked nervously up as Nilsson passed, and then at the sight of me her face froze, like a panicked rabbit in the headlights. For a moment she just sat, motionless, and then with a convulsive start she reached out with her foot and kicked the door shut, the sound as loud as a gunshot in the confined space.
I felt myself blush like a Peeping Tom caught in the act, and hurried after Nilsson’s retreating back.
“This way,” Nilsson said over his shoulder, and we turned into a door marked STAFF MESS.
This room was larger at least, and I felt the growing sense of claustrophobia lift slightly. The ceiling was still low, and there were still no windows, but the room opened out into a small dining room, a lot like a miniature version of a hospital canteen. There were only three tables, each seating maybe half a dozen people, but the Formica surfaces, the steel grab rails, and the powerful smell of institutional cooking all combined to underline the difference between this deck and the one above.
Camilla Lidman was seated alone at one of the tables, drinking coffee and going through some kind of spreadsheet on a laptop, and across the room, five girls were sitting around another, eating breakfast pastries. They looked up as Nilsson entered.
“Hej, Johann,” one of them said, and followed with something in singsong Swedish, or maybe Danish, I wasn’t sure.
“Let’s speak in English, please,” Nilsson said, “as we have a guest present. Miss Blacklock is trying to trace a woman she saw in the next-door cabin—number ten, Palmgren. The woman she saw was white, with long dark hair, in her late twenties or early thirties, and she spoke good English.”
“Well, there’s me and Birgitta,” said one of the girls with a smile, nodding at her friend opposite. “My name is Hanni. But I don’t think I’ve been in Palmgren. I work behind the bar mainly. Birgitta?”
But I was shaking my head. Hanni and Birgitta both had pale skin and dark hair but neither was the girl from the cabin, and even though Hanni’s English was excellent, she had a noticeable Scandinavian accent.
“I’m Karla, Miss Blacklock,” said one of the two blond girls. “We met yesterday, if you recall. And we spoke on the phone last night.”
“Of course,” I said absently, but I was too busy scanning the faces of the other girls to pay proper attention. Karla and the fourth girl at the table were both blond, and the fifth had Mediterranean coloring and very short hair, almost a pixie cut. More important, none of them looked like my memory of that vivid, impatient face.
“It’s not any of you,” I said. “Is there anyone else who fits the description? What about the cleaners? Or the sailing crew?”
Birgitta frowned and said something to Hanni in Swedish. Hanni shook her head and spoke in English.
“The crew are mainly men. There’s one woman, but she’s redheaded and perhaps forty or fifty, I think. But Iwona, one of the cleaners, has dark hair. She’s Polish, I’m not sure how old she is.”
“I’ll get her,” Karla said. She got up with a smile and squeezed out from behind the table.
“There’s Eva,” Nilsson said thoughtfully, as Karla left the room in search of the absent Iwona. “She’s one of the spa therapists,” he added to me.
“She’s up in the spa, I think,” said Hanni. “Setting up for the day. But she’s in her late thirties at least, maybe forties.”
“We’ll go and speak to her after this,” Nilsson said.
“Don’t forget Ulla.” The pixie-haired girl spoke up for the first time.
“Ah, yes,” Nilsson said. “Is she on duty? Ulla is one of the stewardesses for the forward cabins and the Nobel Suite,” he added to me.
The girl nodded.
“Yes, but I think she’ll be coming off shortly.”
“Miss Blacklock,” said a voice from behind me, and I turned to see Karla presenting a colleague, a small, dumpy woman in her forties with dyed-black hair showing threads of gray at the roots. “This is Iwona.”
“I can to help?” Iwona said, in a heavy Polish accent. “There is a problem?”
I shook my head.
“I’m so sorry.” I wasn’t sure whether to address the answer to Iwona, Nilsson, or Karla. “She’s— You’re not the woman I saw. But I just want to say: there’s no question of this woman being in trouble. It’s not that she’s stolen anything or anything like that. I’m worried about her—I heard a scream.”
“A scream?” Hanni’s narrow eyebrows nearly disappeared into her fringe, and she exchanged a look with Karla, who opened her mouth to say something, but behind us, Camilla Lidman rose, and spoke for the first time.
“I am sure none of the crew is the woman you’re looking for, Miss Blacklock.” She came across the room to stand by the table, putting her hand on Hanni’s shoulder. “They would have said if they had any cause for alarm. We are a very—what’s the expression—very tightly knitted.”
“Very close,” Karla said. Her gaze flickered to Camilla Lidman and back to me, and she smiled, although her raised, overplucked brows gave the expression an oddly unconvincing, anxious air. “We are a very happy crew.”
“Never mind,” I said. I could see I wasn’t going to get anything out of these girls. The mention of the scream had been a mistake; they had closed ranks now. And maybe speaking to them with Camilla and Nilsson present had been an error, too. “Don’t worry. I’ll go and speak to . . . Eva, was it? And Ulla. Thank you for talking to me. But if you hear anything, anything at all—I’m in cabin nine, Linnaeus. Please do come and see me, anytime.”
“We heard nothing,” said Hanni firmly. “But of course we will
let you know if that changes. Have a wonderful day, Miss Blacklock.”
“Thanks,” I said. As I turned, the ship lurched, making the girls at the table give little laughing shrieks of alarm, and clutch hold of their coffees. I stumbled, and would have fallen if Nilsson hadn’t grabbed my arm.
“Are you all right, Miss Blacklock?”
I nodded, but actually his grip had hurt, leaving my arm aching. The shock of the movement had sent a stabbing pain through my head and I wished I’d taken an aspirin before heading out.
“I enjoy that the Aurora is a smaller ship, not one of these Caribbean monsters, but it does mean that you can feel the impact of a big wave more than you might on a larger vessel. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said shortly, rubbing my arm. “Let’s go and speak to Eva.”
“First, let us take a detour via the kitchen,” Nilsson said. “Then we can head up to the spa to speak to Eva, and finally we can finish in the breakfast room.” He had a list of staff in his hand and was crossing off names. “That should be everyone apart perhaps from two members of the sailing crew, and a few cabin stewards we can find at the end.”
“Fine,” I said tersely. In truth I wanted to get out—out from the narrow, claustrophobic walls and the airless corridors, away from the gray lighting and the feeling of being hemmed in, trapped below the waterline. I had a brief, horrible image of the ship striking something, water flooding the confined space, mouths gasping for the fleeing scraps of air.
But I could not give up now. To do that would be to admit defeat, to admit that Nilsson was right. Instead, pushing the thoughts away, back into my subconscious, I followed him down a corridor towards the nose of the ship, feeling the floor shift and lurch beneath me, while the smell of cooking became stronger. There was bacon and hot fat, and the distinctive buttery tang of baking croissants, but also boiled fish, and gravy, and something sweet. The combination brought a rush of saliva to my mouth, not in a good way, and I gritted my teeth again and grabbed hold of the rail as the ship heaved up another wave and dropped into the trough, leaving my stomach behind.
I was just wondering whether it was too late to turn back and ask Nilsson if we could do this another time, when he stopped at a steel door with two small glass windows and pushed it open. White-hatted heads turned, their faces registering polite surprise as they saw me standing behind Nilsson.
“Hej, alla!” Nilsson said, followed by something else in Swedish. He turned to me. “I’m sorry, all of the deck and hospitality staff speak English but not all the cooks do. I’m just explaining why we’re here.”
There were smiles and nods from the staff, and one of the chefs came forward, his hand stuck out.
“Hello, Miss Blacklock,” he said, in excellent English. “My name is Otto Jansson. Any of my staff will be pleased to help, although they do not all speak good English. I can translate. What do you need to know?”
But I couldn’t speak. I could only gulp, staring down at his outstretched hand, in the pale latex catering glove, while the blood hissed in my ears.
I looked up, into his friendly blue eyes, and then back down at the latex glove, with dark hairs showing through, pressed against the rubber, and thought, I must not scream. I must not scream.
Please God, don’t let me scream.
Jansson looked down at his hand, as if to see what I was gaping at, and then laughed, and pulled the glove off with his other hand.
“So sorry, I forget I am wearing these. They are for catering, you know?”
He threw the pale flaccid glove into the bin and then shook my limp, unresisting hand; his grip was firm, his fingers warm and slightly dusty from the latex coating.
“I’m looking for a girl,” I said, knowing I was being abrupt, but too shaken to be more polite. “Dark-haired, about my age or a bit younger. Pretty, with pale skin. She didn’t have an accent—she was either English or completely bilingual.”
“I’m sorry,” Jansson said regretfully, and he did look sorry. “I don’t think any of my staff fit that description, though you are welcome to take a walk around and see if any of them are the girl you are looking for. I have only two female staff members and neither speak very good English. Jameela is over by the serving hatch, and Ingrid is on salads, behind the grill station there. But neither of them fit your description. Perhaps one of the stewards or waiting staff?”
I craned my head to see the two women he indicated, and saw that he was right. Neither was remotely like the girl I’d seen. Although she had her head bowed and her body hunched away from me, I was certain that Jameela was the Asian woman I’d seen in the cabin as we came down. She was Pakistani or Bangladeshi, I thought—and absolutely tiny, probably not even five feet tall. Ingrid, on the other hand, was Scandinavian and at least two hundred pounds, plus she had a good six inches on me. As I looked at her she put her hands on her hips, squaring up to me almost aggressively, although I knew it was unfair to think that—it was her height that made the gesture seem threatening.
“Never mind,” I said. “Sorry for disturbing you.”
“Tack, Otto,” Nilsson said, and then made a joke in Swedish that set Otto laughing. He patted Nilsson on the back and said something that made Nilsson guffaw in return, a great belly laugh that set his stomach shaking. He raised his hand to the rest of the crew. “Hejdå!” he called, and then ushered me out into the corridor.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said over his shoulder, as he led the way towards the stairs. “The official language of the boat is English and it’s policy that we don’t speak other languages in front of our English guests, but I thought under the circumstances . . .” He trailed off and I nodded.
“It’s fine. Better that everyone was comfortable and understood what they were being asked properly.”
We were passing the crew’s cabins again, and as we passed the few open doors I glanced in, shocked afresh at the dinginess of the cramped quarters. I couldn’t imagine spending week after week, month after month, in the windowless confines. Perhaps Nilsson felt my silence at his back, for he spoke again.
“They’re a little small, aren’t they? But there’s only a dozen or so staff on the boat, excluding the sailing crew, so we don’t need much space. And I can tell you, they are better than much of the accommodation on rival ships.”
I didn’t say what I was thinking, which was not that it was the space itself that shocked but the contrast with the light, airy rooms above. In truth the rooms were no worse than plenty of cross-channel ferries I’d traveled on; in fact they were more spacious than some. But it was the graphic illustration of the gap between the haves and have-nots that was upsetting, a modern upstairs-downstairs in action.
“Does everyone share?” I asked, as we passed a darkened cabin where someone was getting dressed with the door ajar, while their bunkmate snored. Nilsson shook his head.
“The junior staff share cabins, the cleaners and the younger stewards and so on, but all the senior staff have their own.”
We had reached the staircase that led to the upper deck and I made my way slowly up, following Nilsson’s wide back, and holding on to the grab rails as the ship heaved and tipped. Nilsson opened the dividing door that separated the guest part of the ship from the workers and then turned to me, as he shut the door behind us both.
“I’m sorry that did not work out so well,” he said. “I had hoped that one of the girls would be the woman you saw, and put your mind at rest.”
“Look . . .” I rubbed my face, feeling the roughness of the healing scar on my cheek, and the pressure headache that was beginning to build. “Look, I’m not sure—”
“Let’s press on and speak to Eva,” Nilsson said firmly. And he turned and led the way along the corridor towards yet another set of stairs.
The ship heaved itself up another crest, and down in the trough, and I swallowed against the gush o
f spit in my mouth and felt the cold clamminess of sweat on my spine, beneath my shirt. For a moment I almost considered ducking back to my cabin. It wasn’t only my head—I had work to do—I still had to finish reading the press pack, and I needed to make a start on the piece Rowan would be expecting when I got back. I was horribly conscious that Ben, Tina, Alexander, and all the others were probably already making notes, filing pieces, googling Bullmer, and sorting out press shots.
But then I steeled myself. If I wanted Nilsson to take me seriously I had to go through with this. And as much as I wanted to climb the ladder at Velocity, some things were more important.
We found Eva in the spa reception, which was a beautiful, tranquil room on the upper deck, almost all glass, with long curtains that floated in the cool breeze from the open door. The glass walls looked out onto the deck, the light almost searingly bright after the beige warren of dimly lit rooms below decks.
A striking dark-haired woman in her forties with wide gold hoops in her ears looked up as Nilsson and I entered.
“Johann!” she said pleasantly. “What can I do for you? And this must be . . . ?”
“Lo Blacklock,” I said, holding out my hand. I felt instantly better out of the claustrophobic confines of the staff quarters, the clammy nausea retreating in the sea breeze.
“Good morning, Ms. Blacklock,” she said, smiling. I shook her hand, her grip firm, her fingers bony but strong. Her English was astonishingly good—almost as good as the girl in the cabin’s had been, but it wasn’t her. She was much too old, her carefully moisturized skin still betraying that slight weathering of a complexion that had seen a little too much sun. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was looking for someone, and the girls below decks suggested it might be you, but it’s not.”
“Miss Blacklock saw a woman last night,” Nilsson put in. “In the cabin next to hers. She was in her twenties, with long dark hair and pale skin. Miss Blacklock heard some noises that made her concerned, and we were trying to ascertain if it was a member of staff.”