by Ruth Ware
I wished I could wear dark glasses, but glancing out the window I saw it was pitch-black—and the clock on Anne’s bedside table said quarter past eleven. Oh God, Richard would be back any minute.
I pushed my feet back into Carrie’s espadrilles, and then looked around for the purse she had described. There was nothing on the immaculately polished dressing table, but I opened a couple of the drawers at random, wondering if the maid might have put it away for safekeeping. The first drawer was empty. The second I tried had a clump of patterned headscarves, and I was about to close it again, when I noticed there seemed to be something beneath the pile of soft silks, a hard, flat shape among the gossamer-thin wraps. I pushed them aside—and my breath caught in my throat.
Nestled beneath was a handgun. I had never seen one in real life before, and I froze, half expecting it to go off without even being touched, questions clamoring at the back of my skull. Should I take it? Was it loaded? Was it real? Stupid question—I doubted anyone would bother to keep a replica handgun in their cabin.
As for whether I should take it . . . I tried to imagine myself pointing a gun at someone, and failed. No, I couldn’t take it. Not least because I had no idea how to use it and was more likely to shoot myself than anyone else, but more because I had to get the police to believe and trust me, and turning up to a station with a stolen, loaded gun in my pocket was the best way to ensure I was locked up, not listened to.
Half reluctantly, I pulled the scarves back over the gun, shut the drawer, and resumed looking for the purse.
I found it at last in the third drawer down, a brown leather wallet, rather worn, laid carefully on top of a file of papers. Inside were half a dozen credit cards and a wad of bills—I didn’t have time to count them, but they looked like easily the five thousand kroner Carrie had mentioned, maybe more. I slid it into the pocket of the leggings, beneath the kimono, and then took one last look round the room, ready to leave. Everything was as I’d found it, except for the purse. It was time to go.
I took a deep breath, readying myself, and then opened the door. And as I did so, I heard voices in the corridor. For a minute I wavered, wondering whether to brazen it out. But then one of the voices said, with a touch of flirtation, “Of course, sir, anything I can do to ensure your satisfaction. . . .”
I didn’t wait to hear any more. I shut the door with a stealthy click, dimmed the lights, and stood in the darkness with my back to the solid wood, my heart going a mile a minute. My fingers were cold and prickly, and my legs felt weak, but it was my heart—my heart, racing crazily out of control, a panicked stampede of a beat—that threatened to overwhelm me. Fuck fuck fuck, I couldn’t have a panic attack now!
Breathe, Laura. One. . . . Two. . . .
Shut the fuck up! I had no idea whether the scream was inside my head, but somehow, with a huge effort, I managed to peel myself away from the door and stumble to the veranda. The door slid open, and I was outside, the cold of the September night shocking against skin that hadn’t felt fresh air for days.
I stood for a moment, my back to the glass, feeling my pulse in my temples and my throat, and my heart banging against my ribs, and then I took a deep breath and edged to one side, to where the veranda curved around the corner of the boat. I was out of sight of the window now, my back to the cold steel hull of the boat, but I saw the flash of light as the door to the corridor opened, and then the lamps in the cabin itself blazed on, illuminating the glass wall of the veranda. Don’t come out; don’t come out, I prayed, as I cowered in the corner of the veranda, waiting for the click and slide of the glass. But nothing happened.
I could see the reflection of the room in the glass barrier. The image was cut in half where the glass ended at rib height, and the reflection was jumbled with ghosts thrown up by the double and triple layers of glass. But I could see a man in the room, moving around. The dark silhouette of his shape moved off in the direction of the bathroom and I heard the noise of taps and the flush of a toilet, then the television came on, its blue-white flicker instantly recognizable in the glass. Above its sound, I heard the noise of a phone call, and Anne’s name, and I held my breath. Was he asking about Carrie’s whereabouts? How long before he went looking?
The phone call seemed to end, or at least he stopped talking, and I saw his shape move again as he threw himself onto the white expanse of the bed, a dark sprawl across its bright rectangle.
I waited, growing colder now, shifting from foot to foot to try to keep myself even a little warm, but not daring to move too much for fear he would see the movement reflected back at him from the same barrier I was using to spy on him. The night was unbelievably beautiful, and for the first time since I had come out here, I looked around.
We were deep inside one of the fjords, the rocky sides of the valley rising up all around us, the waters beneath black and still and unfathomably dark and deep. Far across the fjord I could see the lights of small settlements, and the lanterns of boats moored out on the still waters, but the overriding thing was the stars—clear and white and almost unbearably lovely. I thought of Carrie, down below, trapped and bleeding like an animal in a snare. . . . Please, dear God, let her be found. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to her. I would be responsible for locking her down there, leaving her to her crazy plan.
I waited, shivering helplessly now, for Richard to fall asleep. But he did not. At least he dimmed the lights slightly, but the television continued to blast away, the flickering images turning the room shades of blue and green, with sudden cuts to black. I shifted my weight again, pushing my chilly hands beneath my arms. What if he fell asleep in front of the TV? Would I know? But even if he did fall asleep, properly and deeply, I was not sure if I could summon up the courage to enter the room with a murderer, tiptoe through it while his sleeping form lay there just inches away.
What was the alternative, then? Wait until he went in search of Carrie?
And then I heard something, something that made my heart seem to stop, and then stutter back to life, twice as fast. The boat’s engine was starting up.
Panic washed over me like a cold sea wave and I tried to think—we weren’t moving yet. There was a chance the gangway was still down. I would have heard it being raised. I remembered from when we set out from Hull that the engine had hummed and thrummed for a good long time before we actually departed. But it was a ticking clock. How long did I have? Half an hour? A quarter? Perhaps less, given there were no passengers on board, no reason to hang about.
I stood there, frozen in agonized indecision. Should I make a run for it? Was Richard asleep? I couldn’t tell from the reflection in the balcony barrier—it was too blurred and indistinct.
Craning my head and moving as stealthily as I dared, I peered around the edge of the veranda door and into the silent room—but just as I did, he shifted and reached for a glass, and I whipped my head back, my heart thumping.
Fuck. It must be one a.m. Why wasn’t he asleep? Was he waiting for Carrie? But I had to get off the ship. I had to.
I thought of the veranda windows, how they could be opened from the outside, how someone very brave—or very stupid—might scale the high glass wall between the verandas and gain entry to an empty cabin. Once inside I could just let myself out of cabin 2 and then make a break for the gangway. I didn’t care what story I had to spin when I got there. Somehow I would get off this boat, if not for me, then for Anne, and Carrie. No—fuck it.
For me.
I was getting off this boat for me—because I had done nothing to deserve this apart from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I was damned if Bullmer was going to add me to the list of women he had screwed over.
I looked down at myself, at the flowing, slippery lines of the kimono, impossible to climb in, and I untied the belt and shrugged off the soft silk. It fell to the floor with barely a whisper, and I picked it up, balled up the fabric as tight as I could, an
d then tossed it over the privacy screen, where it landed with a soft, barely perceptible flump.
Then I looked up at the glass screen, towering above me, and swallowed.
I was never going to be able to climb the privacy screen itself, that was clear. At least not without some serious equipment and/or a ladder. But the barrier over the sea—that I probably could climb. It was rib height, and I was flexible enough to get one leg up and over and pull myself to sit astride it, and from there I could use the privacy screen to stand up.
There was just one problem. It was over the sea.
I’m not phobic about water—at least, I never used to be. But as I looked over the edge at the dark waves, sucking hungrily at the ship’s prow, I felt my stomach shift and roll in a way not unlike seasickness.
Shit. Was I really going to do this? Apparently, yes.
I wiped my sweaty palms on the back of the Lycra leggings and took a deep breath. It wouldn’t be easy—I wasn’t fooling myself. But it was possible. Carrie had done it, after all, to get into my cabin. If she could do it, so could I.
I flexed my fingers, and then very slowly I hooked one leg up onto the glass overlooking the sea, and using all the strength in my weak caged-hen muscles, I pulled myself up so I was sitting astride the wall of glass. To the left of me was the cabin, its curtains pulled back, the veranda doors framing me in full view for anyone who turned their head to see. To my right was a sheer drop to the waters of the fjord below—I had no idea how far, but from this angle it looked like the equivalent of a two- or three-story house. I was not sure which side was more frightening—I just had to hope that my movements didn’t attract Richard’s attention. I swallowed and gripped the slippery glass with my legs, trying to get my courage up for the next step. I hadn’t done the hard bit yet. That was coming.
Shaking with fear and exertion, I got one foot up in front of me, and I gripped the edge of the frosted privacy screen and hauled myself to standing. Now, all I had to do was edge my body weight out, round the seaward side of the privacy glass, and swing myself to safety on the other side.
All. Yeah. Right.
I took a deep breath, feeling my cold, sweaty fingers slip on the glass. There was no bloody purchase. Every other part of this boat was pimped up, couldn’t they have spared a little bling for the privacy glass? Just a few rhinestones, some fancy etching, something to give my fingers an edge to hang on to?
I put one foot out, edging it round the high wall of glass . . . and I instantly knew the espadrilles had been a mistake.
I had left them on, thinking that something to protect my feet and give me extra purchase on the glass would be no bad thing, but as my weight swung out over the water, I felt the sole of my supporting foot slip against the sharp edge.
I gasped, and my fingers tightened desperately on the glass in front of me. If sheer willpower could have held me steady, I would have made it. I felt one nail break, then two—and then the glass seemed to be pulled out from between my scrabbling hands with a suddenness that left me unable to do anything—even scream.
I felt the wind against my cheek for a brief, terrifying instant, my hair flapping in the darkness, my hands still clutching at the air—I was falling, falling backwards towards the fathomless waters of the fjord.
I hit the blackness of the sea with a sound like a gunshot, a fierce, smacking blow that knocked all the breath from my lungs.
I felt the air bubbling from my lungs as I plummeted through the stone-cold chill, I felt the icy water strike through to my bones, and as I plunged deeper into fathomless black, I felt a silky current rise from far below me, grip my feet, and pull.
- CHAPTER 33 -
I didn’t scream. I didn’t have time. I was twenty, thirty, forty feet down in icy black water before I had time to draw a breath.
I don’t remember what I felt as I fell—only the bone-cracking smack as I hit the sea, and the paralyzing cold of the water. But I do remember the gut-churning panic as the current seized me, deep, deep below.
Kick, I told my legs, feeling the breath sob in my throat. And I kicked. In the black and the cold, I kicked, first because I didn’t want to die, and then as the black cold began to grip, because there was nothing else I could do, because my lungs were screaming and I knew that if I didn’t break the surface soon, I would be dead.
The current pulled and tugged at my legs with slippery fingers, trying to drag me deep into the darkness of the fjord, and I kicked and kicked with increasing desperation and despair. In the dark, with the swirling currents of the fjord all around, it was almost impossible to tell which way was up. What if I was driving myself further into the depths? And yet, I didn’t dare stop. The instinct to survive was too strong. You’re dying! shouted a voice in the back of my head. And my legs had no other response except to kick, and kick, and kick.
I shut my eyes against the salt sting, and against my closed lids lights began to spark and shimmer, terrifyingly close to the shards of light and dark that fragmented my vision when I had a panic attack. But amazingly, unbelievably, when I opened my eyes again, I could see something. A pale, luminous shimmer of the moonlight on water.
For a second I almost didn’t believe it, but it was coming closer . . . and closer, and the tug of the current on my body was loosening, and then I broke the surface with a breath that sounded closer to a scream, water streaming down my face, coughing and sobbing, and coughing again.
I was very close to the hull of the ship, close enough to feel the throb of the engines like a pulse through the water, and I knew that I had to start swimming. Not just because it was totally possible to die of hypothermia in really not-very-cold seas, but more urgently because if the ship started moving while I was this close, nothing short of divine intervention would save me, and I’d had bad luck enough these past few days to make me think that if there was a God up there, he didn’t like me very much.
Shivering, I trod water and tried to get my bearings. I had surfaced at the front of the boat, and I could see the string of lights at the quayside and what I thought might be the dark shape of a ladder, although my streaming eyes made it hard to be sure.
It was hard to make my body obey; I was shaking so convulsively that I could barely control my limbs, but I forced my arms and legs to start moving, and gradually I began to swim towards the lights, coughing against the waves that slapped my face, feeling the chill of the water striking through to my bones, forcing myself to breathe slowly and deeply, though every part of my body wanted to gasp and pant at the physical assault of the cold. Something soft and yet solid bumped against my face as I swam, and I shuddered, but it was more with cold than revulsion. I could worry about dead rats and decaying fish when I got to shore. Right now, the only thing I cared about was surviving.
I could not have fallen in more than twenty or thirty yards from the quay, but now it seemed to be much farther. I swam and swam, and at times I could swear the lights of the shore were getting farther away, and other times they seemed almost close enough to grasp—but at last I felt the rusted iron of the ladder bang against my numb fingers, and I was climbing and slipping and slipping and climbing up the ladder, trying not to shiver loose my grip as I hauled my wet and shuddering bones up the rungs.
At the edge of the quay I collapsed onto the concrete, gasping and coughing and shaking, and then I got to my hands and knees and looked up, first at the Aurora and then towards the little town in front of me.
It wasn’t Bergen. I had no idea where we were, but it was a small town, barely even a village, and this late at night there was not a soul about. The smattering of cafés and bars that lined the quayside were all closed. There were a few lights in shop windows, but the only establishment I could see that looked as if I might stand a chance of finding someone to open the door was a hotel overlooking the quay.
Trembling, I got to my feet, lurched over the low chain that fenced off the sheer
drop to the sea, and half walked, half staggered across the quayside towards the hotel. The Aurora’s engine had picked up a notch, and there was an urgency to it now. As I crossed the seemingly endless concrete apron of the quay, it rose again in pitch, and there was the sound of sloshing water, and as I glanced fearfully behind me, I saw the boat begin to pull slowly away, its prow pointing out into the fjord, its motors grinding and thrumming as it inched slowly away from the shore.
I looked quickly away, filled with a kind of superstition, as if just turning to look at the boat could attract the attention of the people on board.
As I reached the steps up to the hotel door, the sound of the engine picked up, and I felt my legs give way as I banged, banged, banged on the door. I heard a voice saying “Please, please, oh please somebody come . . .” And then the door opened and the light and warmth flooded out, and I felt myself helped upright and over the threshold to safety.
Some half hour later I was huddled in a wicker armchair, wrapped in a synthetic red blanket, in the dimly lit, glassed-in terrace overlooking the bay. I had a cup of coffee in my hands, but I was too tired to drink it, and I could hear voices in the background, speaking in . . . Norwegian, I supposed it must be. I was overwhelmingly tired. I felt as if I hadn’t slept properly in days—which perhaps I hadn’t, and my chin kept nodding onto my chest and then jerking back up as I remembered where I was, and what I’d escaped from. Had it been real, that nightmare of the beautiful boat, with its coffin-like cell, far beneath the waves? Or was this all one long hallucination?
I was half dozing and half watching the still black lights of the bay, the Aurora a distant speck far up the fjord, moving west, when I heard a voice over my shoulder.
“Miss?”
I looked up. It was a man wearing a slightly skewed name tag reading ERIK FOSSUM—GENERAL MANAGER. He looked as if he had been dragged from his bed, his hair rumpled and his shirt buttons awry, and he passed a hand over an unshaven chin as he sat down in the armchair opposite me.