by Ruth Ware
I checked the bathroom in case I’d taken it in there on autopilot, but it wasn’t there, either.
I began to search harder, throwing the duvet onto the floor, pushing the bed to one side—and that’s when I saw it.
There was a footprint, a wet footprint, on the white carpet, very close to the veranda door.
I froze.
Could it have been me? Getting out of the bath?
But I knew that was impossible. I’d dried my feet in the bathroom, and I hadn’t walked anywhere near that window. I moved closer, touching the cold, damp shape with my fingertips, and I realized this was the print of a shoe. You could see the shape of the heel.
There was only one possibility.
I stood up, slid back the veranda door, and went out onto the balcony. There, I hung out over the rail, looking across to the empty veranda on the left of mine. The white glass privacy screen to either side was very high, and very sheer, but if you were daring and had a head for heights, and didn’t mind the possibility of slipping to a watery grave, you could just get over it.
I was shivering convulsively, my thin dressing gown no protection from the cold North Sea wind, but there was one more thing I had to try, though I was going to be very sorry and feel very stupid if it turned out I was wrong.
Carefully, I dragged the sliding glass door closed and let it click into position.
Then I tried to pull it back.
It worked—smooth as silk.
I went inside and did the same thing, and then checked the lock. As I had thought, there was no way of securing the veranda door to prevent someone entering from the outside. It was logical, really, now that I thought about it. The only person who should be on the veranda was an occupant of the room. You couldn’t risk someone accidentally locking themselves out there in bad weather, unable to get back inside and raise the alarm, or a child shutting a parent out there in a moment of rebellion, and then being unable to work the lock.
And really—what was there to fear? The veranda faced the sea—there was no possibility of someone accessing it from the outside.
Except there was. If you were very bold, and very stupid.
Now I understood. All the locks and bolts and DO NOT DISTURB signs in the world wouldn’t do any good on my cabin door, not when the balcony offered a clear route to anyone with access to the empty room, and enough upper-body strength to pull themselves over.
My room was not safe, and never had been.
Back inside the suite, I got into my jeans and boots, and my favorite hoodie. Then I checked the lock on the cabin door and huddled on the sofa with a cushion hugged to my chest.
There was no possibility of sleep now.
Anyone could have access to the empty suite. And from there, it was just a short climb across the glass divider into mine. The truth was, I could draw the bolt across my cabin door as much as I liked, but any member of the staff could open the empty cabin with their passkey. As for the guests . . .
I thought again of the layout of the cabins. To the right of mine was Archer’s, ex-marine, with an upper-body strength that made me wince when I remembered it. And to the left . . . to the left was the empty cabin, and beyond that, curving round the ship to the other side of the corridor, was Ben Howard’s.
Ben. Who had deliberately cast doubt on my story with Nilsson.
Ben, who had lied about his alibi.
And he had known about the photos on Cole’s camera before I did. His words came back to me as if in a dream: He was showing them to us over lunch. He had some great pics . . .
Ben Howard. The one person on board I had thought I could trust.
But I pushed that thought away—focusing on the phone, and the stupidity and daring of coming in to steal it while I was in the bath. He had risked a lot to take it, and the question was why. Why now? But I thought I knew.
The answer was Trondheim. As long as the boat’s Internet was down, the perpetrator had nothing to worry about. I couldn’t make a call to land without going through Camilla Lidman. But once we started to draw closer to land . . .
I hugged the cushion harder to my chest, and I thought of Trondheim, and Judah, and the police.
All I had to do was make it until dawn.
WHODUNNIT WEB FORUM—
A DISCUSSION PLACE FOR ARMCHAIR DETECTIVES
Please read the forum rules before starting a thread, and exercise caution in posting anything potentially prejudicial and/or libelous to live cases. Posts that violate these guidelines will be taken down.
Monday 28 September
iamsherlocked: Hey guys, anyone else been following this Lorna Blacklock case? Looks like theyve found a body.
TheNamesMarpleJaneMarple: I think you’ll find it’s Laura Blacklock actually. Yes, I’ve been following it. Really tragic and sadly not that unusual. I read somewhere that more than 160 people have gone missing off cruise ships in the past few years, and almost none of those have been solved.
iamsherlocked: Yeah I think I’ve heard that too. Saw in the Daily Fail that her ex was on board the ship. Theres a big sobby interview wiv him saying how worried he is. He reckons she got off on her own accord. Is it me or is that a bit suss? Don’t they say that a third of women are killed by ex’s or partners or something?
TheNamesMarpleJaneMarple: “a third of women are killed by ex’s or partners or something?” I presume that must be in the case of women who are murdered, a third of them are killed by a partner or ex, not a third of all women! But yes, that kind of proportion sounds plausible. And of course there’s the boyfriend. Something about his statement’s not quite ringing true, and apparently he was out of the country at the time . . . hmm . . . very convenient. Not that hard to get a plane to Norway, right?
AnonInsider: I’m a regular on WD (although I’ve name-changed as I don’t want to out myself) and actually I know something about this case, I’m a family friend. I don’t want to say too much for fear of making myself identifiable or impinging on the family’s privacy, but I can tell you Judah is completely devastated about Lo’s disappearance, and I’d be very careful about implying anything to the contrary or you’ll probably find this thread gets taken down.
TheNamesMarpleJaneMarple: Anon, I’d find your claims more convincing if you dropped the mask, and in any case none of what I said above was libelous. I said I didn’t personally find his statement convincing. Show me the libel in that?
AnonInsider: Look, MJM, I’m not interested in debating this with you, but I do know the family very well. I was at school with Laura, and I can tell you, you’re barking up the wrong tree. If you must know, Lo’s got serious problems—she’s taken medication for depression for years and she’s always been . . . well, I think unstable would be the kind way of putting it. I imagine that’s the line the police will be looking at.
iamsherlocked: what suicide you reckon?
AnonInsider: Not really my place to speculate on the police investigation—but yes, that’s my reading of it between the lines. If you notice, they’re being very careful not to describe it as a murder investigation in the press.
JudahLewis01: A friend told me about this thread and I’ve registered to post this, and unlike Anon this is my real name. Anon, I have no idea who you are and to be honest you can fuck off. Yes, Lo takes medication (although FYI it’s for anxiety, not depression and if you were really a friend of hers you’d know that) but so do literally hundreds of thousands of people, and the idea that that automatically makes her either “unstable” as you put it, or suicidal, is fucking offensive. Yes, I was out of the country. I was in Russia, working. And yes, they’ve found a body, but it’s not been identified as Lo, so at this stage it’s still a missing person’s investigation, which is why you’ve not seen any suggestion it’s a murder investigation. Can you people remember this is a real person you’re talking about and not just your personal episode of M
urder, She Wrote? I don’t know who the admins of this shitshow are, but I’m reporting this thread.
iamsherlocked: “unlike Anon this is my real name” not being funny but we’ve only got you’re word for that mate.
MrsRaisin (admin): Hi all, sorry to say we agree with Mr. Lewis, this thread is straying into some rather unpleasant speculation so we’ll be deleting it. We obviously don’t want to stop you discussing what’s in the news, so feel free to take it elsewhere, but please stick to the reported facts.
InspektörWallander: So what about this Norwegian polis scanner blog that is reporting a positiv identification of Laura’s body?
MrsRaisin (admin): We are now closing this thread.
- CHAPTER 22 -
I was trapped. I was not certain where, or how, but I had a pretty good idea.
The windowless room was small and stifling, and I lay on the bunk with my eyes shut and my arms wrapped around my head, trying not to give way to the feelings of panic rising up inside me.
I must have replayed the events a thousand times in my head, through the rising fog of fear—hearing, again and again, the knock at the door as I sat on the edge of the sofa, waiting for Trondheim and dawn.
The sound, though not particularly loud, had been shocking as a gunshot in the silent cabin. My head jerked up, the cushion falling from my hands onto the floor, my heart going a mile a minute. Jesus. I found I was holding my breath and I forced myself to exhale, long and slow, and then inhale, counting the seconds.
It came again, not a rough banging, just a tap tap tap, then a long pause and a final tap as if an afterthought, slightly louder than the rest. At that last tap, I scrambled to my feet and made my way, as quietly as I could, to the door.
Cupping my hand over the opening so no telltale flash of light could betray my presence, I slid the little steel cover of the peephole open. Then when my face was close enough to the glass to shield any gray dawn light from my window, I withdrew my fingers and peered through the fisheye.
I don’t know who I was expecting to see. Nilsson, maybe. Ben Howard. I wouldn’t even have been surprised to see Bullmer.
But not even for one minute did I imagine the person actually standing outside. Her.
It was the woman from cabin 10. The missing girl. Standing outside like nothing had ever happened.
For a minute I just stood there, gasping like I’d been punched in the stomach. She was alive. I’d been wrong. Nilsson was right—and I’d been wrong all this time.
And then she turned on her heel and began to walk down the corridor, towards the door to the staff quarters. I had to get to her. I had to get to her before she disappeared behind that locked door.
Slamming back the chain and the bolt, I wrenched open the door.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Hey, you, wait! I need to talk to you!”
She didn’t pause, didn’t even glance back over her shoulder, and now she was at the door to the lower deck, punching in the code. I didn’t stop to think. I just knew that this time I wasn’t going to let her disappear without a trace. I ran.
She was already through the staff door by the time I was halfway down the corridor, but I caught the edge of the door as it was just closing, pinching my fingers painfully, and then I wrenched it open and flung myself into the gap.
Inside it was darkness, the bulb at the top of the steps burned out. Or taken out, as I later thought.
As the door swung shut behind me, I stopped for a second, trying to get my bearings, see where the top step was. And that’s when it happened—a hand grabbing my hair from behind, another twisting my arm behind me, limbs grappling mine in the darkness. There was a short interval of panting, scrabbling terror, my nails in someone’s skin, my free hand trying to reach behind me to get a grip on the thin, strong hand laced in my hair—and then the hand pulled harder, twisting my head painfully back, and rammed my head forwards against the locked door. I heard the crack of my skull against the metal doorframe—and nothing.
I came to alone, lying on a bunk with a thin blanket over me. The pain in my head was agonizing, throbbing with a low pulse that made the dim lights in the room warp and shimmer, with a strange halo effect around them. There was a curtain on the wall opposite and with trembling limbs I slithered off the bed and half stumbled, half crawled across the floor towards it. But when I dragged myself upright, using the top bunk for support, and pulled back the thin orange cloth, there was no window there—just a blank wall of creamy plastic, lightly patterned as if in imitation of textured wallpaper.
The walls seemed to close in, the room narrowing around me, and I felt my breath come faster. One. Two. Three. Breathe in.
Shit. I felt the sobs rising up inside me, threatening to choke me from the inside.
Four. Five. Six. Breathe out.
I was trapped. Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .
One. Two. Three. Breathe in.
Propping myself against the wall with one hand, I made my way unsteadily back towards the door, but I knew before I tried it that it was useless. It was locked.
Refusing to think about what that meant, I tried the other door, set into the wall at an angle, but it opened into a minuscule en suite, empty except for a single dead spider curled in the washbasin.
I stumbled back to the first door and tried again, pulling harder this time, straining every muscle, rattling the door in its frame, yanking so hard at the handle that the effort left me panting, stars exploding in my vision as I slumped to the floor. No. No, this was not possible—was I really trapped?
I got to my feet and looked around me for something to lever into the door, but there was nothing, everything in the room was bolted or screwed down, or made of fabric. I tried forcing the handle again, trying not to think about the fact that I was in a windowless cell maybe four foot by six, and well below sea level, a thousand tons of water just inches away behind a skin of steel. But the door didn’t move, the only thing that changed was the pain in my head, jabbing with neon intensity until at last I stumbled back to the bunk and crawled onto it, trying not to think about the weight of water pressing in on me, focusing instead on my aching skull. It was pounding now so much that I could feel my pulse in my temples. Oh God, I had been so stupid, running out of that room straight into the trap. . . .
I tried to think. I had to stay calm, had to keep my head above the rising tide of fear. Stay logical. Stay in control. Think. I had to. What day was it? It was impossible to tell how much time had passed. My limbs felt stiff, as if I’d been lying in that position on the bunk for a while, but although I was thirsty I wasn’t completely parched. If I’d been unconscious for more than a few hours I would have woken up seriously dehydrated. Which meant it was probably still Tuesday, the twenty-second.
In which case . . . Ben knew that I’d been intending to go ashore at Trondheim. He would come looking for me—wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t let the boat leave without me.
But then I realized that the engine was running and I could feel the rise and fall of waves beneath the hull. Either we hadn’t stopped at all, or else we’d already left the port.
Oh God. We were heading out to sea—and everyone would assume I was still in Trondheim. If they looked for me at all, it would be in completely the wrong place.
If only my head didn’t hurt and my thoughts didn’t keep stumbling over each other . . . if only the walls weren’t closing in on me like a coffin, making it hard to breathe, hard to think.
Passports. I didn’t know how big Trondheim port was, but they must have some kind of customs check, or passport control. And there would be someone from the ship on duty at the gangway, surely, checking passengers in and out. They couldn’t risk leaving without someone. Somewhere, there would be a record of the fact that I hadn’t left the boat. Someone would realize I was still here.
I had to hang on to that.
But it was hard—hard when t
he only light was a dim bulb that flickered and dipped every so often, and the air seemed to be running out with every breath. Oh God, it was so hard.
I closed my eyes, shutting out the looming walls and the claustrophobic warping light, and pulled the thin cover over myself. I tried to focus on something. The feel of the flat, limp pillow beneath my cheek. The sound of my own breathing.
But the image I kept coming back to was that of the girl, standing nonchalantly outside my door in the corridor, her hand on her hip, and then the swing of her gait as she walked towards the staff door.
How. How?
Had she been hiding on the boat all along? In this room, maybe? But I knew, even without opening my eyes to look around, that no one had been living here. It had no sense of being inhabited, there were no stains on the carpet, no coffee marks on the plastic shelf, no fading scent of food and sweat and human breath. Even that spider curled in the sink spoke of disuse. There was no way that girl, full of snapping life and vivacity, could have been in this room without leaving some impression. Wherever she’d been staying, it wasn’t here.
This place felt like a tomb. Maybe it was already mine.
- CHAPTER 23 -
I was not sure when I fell asleep, but I must have, exhausted by the ache in my head and the roar of the ship’s motor, because I awoke, to the sound of a click.
I sat up sharply, cracking my scalp against the bunk above, and then fell back, groaning and clutching my head as the blood pounded in my ears, a shrill ringing in the back of my skull.
I lay there, my eyes squeezed tightly shut against the pain, but at last it receded enough for me to roll onto my side and open my eyes again, squinting against the dim fluorescent light.
There was a plate on the floor, and a glass of something—juice, I thought. I picked it up and sniffed it. It looked and smelled like orange juice, but I couldn’t bring myself to drink it. Instead, I got painfully to my feet and opened the door to the little en suite, where I emptied the juice down the sink and refilled the glass with water from the tap. The water was warm and stale, but I was so thirsty now that I would have drunk worse. I gulped down the glass, refilled, and began to sip the next more slowly as I made my way back from the sink and onto the bunk.