Cruising to Murder

by Mark McCrum

  No, no, no, this was not how he wanted to go. In pain. Gasping for breath. Oh, God, help him, what a fool he’d been—

  ‘Step back, please.’

  He squinted sideways to see both women spin round. Klaus was on the edge of the clearing, holding a smart little silver pistol.

  ‘It’s loaded,’ he said; he wasn’t smiling.

  Carmen froze. ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘Surprising what you can buy in an African village market. I didn’t like the idea of being unable to defend my person from pirates.’

  ‘It’s illegal to carry a gun on a cruise ship.’

  ‘It’s illegal to murder someone. Drop the knife, please.’

  Carmen was staring at him now, as if she might be about to risk all with a mad lunge.

  ‘I said, drop the knife. You have five seconds before I shoot. As I’m sure you know, I have military experience. One. Two. Three …’

  Carmen dropped the knife.

  ‘On your feet, too, please, Doctor.’

  Alyssa scrambled up.

  ‘Drop that syringe. Then I’d like you both to unclip your walkie-talkies and put them on the ground. Turn around slowly, kneel down and put your arms up behind you. Francis is going to tie your wrists together with some of that useful nylon twine. And then we can get going.’

  Even as the two intercoms were placed on the ground, they crackled into life. The sudden noise startled them all.

  ‘Expedition team, expedition team,’ came Viktor’s voice. ‘Dark Leader here. Start encouraging the guests back towards the Zodiacs now please. The tide is falling rapidly. I repeat, the tide will soon be at a critical state.’

  ‘Dark Leader!’ Klaus repeated, shaking his head.

  ‘We have forty-five minutes,’ came Viktor’s voice, ‘until the last Zodiac must leave the island. Alyssa, I’ve lost sight of you. Please respond. Over and out. Carmen, you too, please. I need you down at the beach for the embarcation right away.’

  Francis, standing now, was looking at Klaus.

  ‘How on earth …?’ he mouthed, shaking his head.

  The German smiled.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you I always know more than I let on,’ he replied.

  TWENTY

  Dakar, Senegal. Saturday 29 April.

  As they docked in Dakar two days later, Francis stood by the rail on deck seven, looking down the sheer side of the ship at the quay far below.

  ‘Sad, isn’t it?’ said Bruce from Chicago, who was next to him, gazing out at the masts and stacks of containers in front of them. ‘I don’t want to go home now.’

  ‘I so don’t want to go home now,’ chirped Candy. ‘I have just loved Africa. Hey, Bruce, look, one last retail opportunity.’

  Below them, the hawkers were already out in force, their wares laid flat on the grey concrete, which was stained here and there with ugly dark patches of oil. Scarves, shirts, necklaces, statues, models, paintings – all the brilliantly colourful and inventive art and tat of Africa was on display, available for one last time before the guests made their way by coach or taxi to their transfer hotels ready for their flights out of Senegal later tonight.

  ‘I have ten Mandela shirts and you have a case full of dresses and shawls,’ Bruce replied. He turned towards Francis with a smile. ‘We have about twenty ebony carvings, ten necklaces and God knows how many bangles. We really don’t need more.’

  ‘But this is another country, honey. Who knows when we’ll be back? It’s all so cheap. And anyway, they’ll make fine presents.’

  Tonight was the end of the road for Francis too. Goldencruise had not invited him on the next leg, which left Dakar this evening and went up past Cape Verde and the Canary Isles, Madeira and Morocco to dock in Lisbon in fourteen days’ time. Once they had checked this lot of passengers out, the staff and crew had a busy day ahead, ending with welcome drinks and dinner this evening for a whole new crowd.

  As soon as the guests had left there would be another transfer too: of Carmen and the doctor to the Senegalese authorities, supervised, Francis had been led to understand by the captain, by some operatives from Interpol. The whole operation had been magnificently discreet, from the moment Francis had picked up Carmen’s intercom from the dry leaves of the jungle floor and informed Viktor that there was ‘a situation’ that needed to be dealt with. The expedition leader had waited until the passengers had all left the beach for the Golden Adventurer, and then Carmen and the doctor had been taken back to the mother ship on a separate Zodiac, with Klaus, Francis, Viktor, Mike and Leo to guard them.

  No announcement had been made. That evening a five-course dinner had been served as usual. The next night, after a day’s birdwatching on the lovely River Gambie at Banjul, there had been the Farewell Cocktail party, complete with a full parade of crew and staff in the Panorama Lounge, and loud cheers for Captain Adrushenko.

  The prisoners had meanwhile been confined to the ship’s jail down on the second deck, while Klaus and Francis had been debriefed by the captain. George’s body was due for an autopsy that would confirm his poisoning by a South East Asian pit viper, a snake that could never have made its way to his cabin on the West Coast of Africa. Francis had also made sure that he had picked up the syringe the doctor had prepared for him; now it was isolated for evidence.

  Had Klaus not been so sharp, and so resourceful, Francis shuddered to think what might have happened. For as the captain had confided, a negative result had come back from the European Hospital in Takoradi. The autopsy had concluded that there had been nothing suspicious about Eve’s death, despite the doctor’s ‘reservations’. Mrs Bagshawe had reached the end of her natural life and died of old age.

  Dr Lagip’s bluff had worked. And had Francis not discovered what he had, how might Lauren’s death have been presented? A tragic suicide, almost certainly, whatever Don thought; not the first and not the last troubled passenger to have thrown themselves from a cruise ship. Meanwhile, Francis doubted whether any more would have been done to discover how the puff adder had got on board to kill poor George. That would have been another accidental death for the authorities of the Bahamas not to be troubled by. The horrible truth would have been buried at sea, just as many another mysterious death had been over the years. Would that ever change? Francis wondered. Or would the ‘high seas’ remain like the Wild West, a place where bad things could happen and people could still get away with them?

  Francis had not spoken to either Carmen or Alyssa since the showdown in the sun-dappled Bijagos clearing. Presumably, once the case was over, the money that had been left to the Rising Star Trust by Marikit Wyldestone, Mr Krugbender, Major Fisher and Mrs Drew-Higgins would have to be returned to the relevant estates. Though he deplored the murders, Francis couldn’t help but have a sneaking admiration for the charity’s grand plan. Taking money from the rich and elderly to help orphaned children was an idea of genius; and in an ideal world one that would happen naturally. It was a dreadful shame that Alyssa hadn’t just stuck to quiet persuasion, as she had at the start. Though Alyssa had effected the killings, Francis had little doubt that Carmen was the evil, not to say insane, one in the equation. He would never forget that look in her eye as she strode back and forth across the jungle clearing with her glinting knife. Pitiless, was one word for it. Was she actually a psychopath?

  As the Golden Adventurer was tied up, and the gangway was lowered from the ship’s main entrance on deck three, Francis could see a little posse of officials edging forward from a couple of parked minivans. These weighty uniformed gentlemen were doubtless the Senegalese customs people, who would sit upstairs and check guest passports before everyone was allowed to leave. But there was a police van there too, and next to it a couple of suited guys leaning on an unmarked Mercedes. One was black and heavily built, the other white and lean. Interpol?

  Behind them, and to one side, was a larger group who clearly weren’t police; or if so, extremely convincing in their undercover operation. This latest lot of dance
rs was highly energetic, arms and legs akimbo, then throwing themselves down to the ground, doing the splits, then up again. The women wore long, low-cut, shiny dresses, rather as if they were heading off for some smart evening function, and hardly what you’d imagine in a Muslim country – but then again, as Viktor liked to say, Africa was always unexpected.

  To Francis’s right, up on deck, one of the guests had started dancing too. It was Shirley, toyi-toying with husband Gerald, head thrown back in the sunny breeze. She had had some unexpected good news, by email, when they returned from their bird-watching day on the Gambie river. Remission. Francis had toasted her last night, up in the bar with Brad and Damian and Sebastian and Kurt and Sadie and Leo. Shirley would never have come on this cruise, she had told Francis tipsily, squeezing his arm, if she hadn’t thought she was going to die. Wasn’t it strange, she went on, that it took a threat like that to make you start living; doing the stuff you really wanted to do. But she wasn’t going to hold back now. Certainly not. There was nothing like a second chance. She was going to be like one of the beautiful fish eagles she had seen circling above the Gambie river, flying free. She had sounded, he’d thought, rather like Eve, and he’d felt sad for the old widow then, her life taken from her before she was ready, before she had seen Kamchatka or the Komodo dragons.

  ‘Woezo!’ shouted Shirley now, as she twirled adventurously in the sunlight. Who cared that the Togolese greeting meant nothing in Senegal? She was in a perfect, private moment of happiness, with the rest of her life ahead of her, and her devoted husband beside her.

  And this was Africa, after all.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am grateful to Tom Robbins, travel editor of the Financial Times, who first sent me on a cruise with the wonderful Silversea, and to Silversea and Paul Charles of PCC for arranging a second adventure. What happened on those luxurious and impeccably organized trips bears no relation to the narrative of this book, which is entirely a product of my own fevered imagination. Back home, Roddy Bray gave me helpful insights into the life of a cruise expedition leader; Kendall Carver of www.internationalcruisevictims.org explained about the state of the law at sea; and Captain Michael Lloyd filled me in on some realities of below-decks life. John Honeywell, editor-at-large of World of Cruising magazine, shared his expert knowledge of the industry and Dr Roger Stephenson corrected my medical errors. Stephanie Cross offered me encouragement and excellent editorial advice on my first draft, and Sue Cooke, Ben Craib, Linda Hughes, Imelda Dooley Hunter, Katrin MacGibbon, Stephen McCrum and Jo Swinnerton were early and insightful readers. My agent Jamie Maclean sold the book with alacrity, and I am grateful to the fine team at Severn House publishers: Kate Lyall Grant, Sara Porter and Michelle Duff, as well as to copyeditor Anna Harrison. Thanks again to my wife Jo, who would have loved to have come cruising too, but stayed behind to look after our small children: her plot points remain invaluable.