The Body on the Lido Deck

by Jane Bennett Munro

  “No idea,” Joe said. “Let me run it in slow motion.” He did so. The object soared into the air and disappeared on the other side of the roof. It seemed to have a string attached.

  “It’s a weight,” Grant said, “attached to a rope. Blimey, the guy’s got an arm. Those things are heavy. It’d take a bloody discus thrower to get it all the way to the other side of that roof, especially with a rope attached.”

  “Damn,” said Nigel. “He stood right underneath the camera so he wouldn’t show up. This fellow is a sharp cookie as well as an Olympic medalist.”

  “So that’s how they got the body up on the roof,” I said. “They tied the rope around her neck and threw the other end over the roof, and then ran around to the other side under cover of darkness and pulled her up. But how did they attach the ropes that held her in place while the roof closed on her?”

  “Perhaps they attached those before they hauled her up on the roof,” Nigel said.

  “Then how did they get them off the body so fast?”

  “There are all sorts of quick-release knots he could have used,” Joe said.

  “That must be what that guy on the roof was doing,” I said. “Releasing the ropes. He must have taken them with him, because there were no ropes on the body when we saw it.”

  “Two ropes,” Grant said. “One around the torso and arms, and the other around the legs. Leave just enough slack to allow the body to fall into the opening but no farther, close the roof just enough to hold the body in place, and then release the ropes before closing it the rest of the way.”

  “Well, now we know how it was done,” Nigel said, “but we’re no closer to knowing who did it.”

  “Wait,” I said. “How did they get the body up to the observation deck in the first place?”

  “Good question,” Grant said. “Joe, can you go back farther?”

  “Certainly,” Joe said. “How much farther?”

  Grant shrugged. “Just do it. Maybe we’ll see something.”

  The video began to run backward again. At 5:55 a.m., the body slid toward the edge of the roof and off the side and disappeared from view. Joe switched to another camera, but it was too dark to see anything.

  “Try the cameras that show the elevator and the stairs,” Grant suggested. “He’d have to bring the body up here one way or the other.”

  “There’s no security camera in the stairs, sir,” Joe said. “That is, if you mean the stairs behind the bar, sir.”

  “Okay, try the elevator.”

  Joe did so. But the elevator door remained stubbornly closed.

  “How about the elevator on the Lido deck?” I asked. “Maybe he brought the body up to the Lido deck and then hoisted her up the stairs.”

  Joe did so. At a quarter to six, the elevator door opened. After about five minutes, it closed again, and remained closed thereafter. The interior of the elevator was pitch dark. Although we ran that tape back and forth several times, we saw no other movement of any kind.

  Grant removed his cap and scratched his head. “It would seem that our perpetrator is an invisible man. Is there a camera that shows the interior of the pool area, including the door, the bar, and the bottom of the stairs?”

  Joe switched to another camera. The bar showed up just fine, but the door into the pool area and the bottom of the stairs were in deep shadow. As he ran the video back, we saw the door into the pool area open and close, although as far as we could tell, nobody was there. Then I saw it.

  A reflection in the glass door.

  “There!” I said excitedly. “Right there!”

  “Run it forward, Joe,” Grant said. “What do you see, Doctor?”

  “A head,” I said. “And possibly a face. See the nose?”

  “I see it,” Joe said, peering at the screen, “but I can’t tell who it is.”

  Grant leaned forward to look closer. “Whoever it is is wearing a black hood over his head. If it weren’t for the reflected light from the bar, we’d never be able to see even this much.” He shook his head. “But I can’t tell who it is either.”

  “Can you e-mail that recording to Scotland Yard?” Nigel asked. “I think our forensics people could enhance it enough to identify him.”

  “Of course,” Joe said, and Nigel gave him the e-mail address.

  “This is a very savvy killer,” Grant said. “Someone who knows where the cameras are and how to stay out of sight of them. Also someone with access to ropes. This whole thing was done with ropes.”

  “Sir,” Joe said, “if I’m to e-mail all this to Scotland Yard, I’ll need some help up here.”

  “Right,” Grant agreed. “Get Meacham up here to relieve you so you can give it your full attention.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where do you suppose those ropes are now?” Nigel asked Grant. “They should have DNA on them.”

  “Whose?” asked Grant. “The killer’s or the victim’s?”

  “Both,” Nigel said. “Or at least that guy, whoever he was. He may not even be the killer. He could be just disposing of the body for somebody else.”

  “The captain should know about this straightaway,” Grant said.

  “We’ll go with you,” Nigel said.

  For a moment Grant looked like he might object, but then he shrugged and said, “Let’s go, then.”

  We rode the forward elevator up to the Nav deck, where it opened into the corridor leading to the bridge crew’s cabins, including the captain’s. In the elevator I expressed the thought that had just occurred to me. “What about the stairs?” I asked. “There could be blood on them. Or on the railing. Couldn’t there?”

  “Certainly,” Grant said. “But would it still be there after all of us ran up and down them a multitude of times? And then if Jamal and his mop have cleaned them in the meantime …”

  “Sounds like the stairs are a nonstarter,” Nigel commented.

  Grant pushed the bell button to the right of the door leading to the bridge, and First Officer David Lynch opened it. “Officer Grant! What—”

  Grant wasted no time on niceties. “We need to see the captain straightaway.”

  Officer Lynch stepped out into the corridor and closed the door after himself. “He and his wife are in their cabin and probably asleep by now. Are you sure?”

  “Quite.”

  “Right, then. Come this way.” He led the way down the corridor that branched to the left off the main corridor, as he had done before. I took the opportunity to ask a few questions of my own. “Officer Lynch, I heard that you had a relationship with the late Leonie Montague. Is that true?”

  “I’m sorry, Doctor, but I fail to see what business that is of yours,” he said huffily.

  “You must have been angry that she started spending so much time with the captain,” I pursued.

  Lynch shot me a hostile glare but didn’t have a chance to answer because the captain opened his door—in pajamas and smoking jacket. “Officer Lynch? What—?”

  His wife stepped out from behind him, glamorous in a black silk robe. “Darling, where are your manners? Please, do come in. May I get anyone a nightcap?”

  Captain Sloane sighed. “Sarah, this is hardly the time …”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “It’s as good a time as any. Please. Make yourselves comfortable. We were just enjoying this wonderful port wine.”

  “Sarah, this is not a social occasion.”

  His wife ignored him and handed around tiny glasses of port. “There’s nothing like a nightcap on a stormy night like this,” she said, and as if on cue, the ship lurched suddenly, throwing me off balance just as I was about to accept a glass from Sarah. Nigel tried to catch me but failed. I landed on my butt, and my head flew back to crash painfully into the leg of an end table. I saw stars, but it didn’t knock me out. I sat up, gingerly palpating the goose egg risi
ng on top of the lump I already had on the back of my head. When I brought my hand away, there was blood on my fingers.

  If I didn’t stop getting hit on the head like this, I’d end up with post-pugilistic Parkinsonism, like Muhammad Ali.

  Sarah knelt on the carpet next to me. “You’re bleeding!” she said. “Colin, call the doctor at once. She needs stitches.” She got up, fetched a towel from the bathroom, and wrapped it around my head, tucking in the ends.

  But Captain Sloane sat staring at me as if he’d seen a ghost.

  “Colin!” Sarah grabbed her husband’s arm and shook it. “The doctor?”

  The captain came out of his trance. “Oh, yes, of course. Officer Lynch, would you …?”

  “Yes, sir. Right away,” Officer Lynch said and left.

  “Is this what happened to Leonie?” I blurted without thinking.

  A collective gasp ensued. It was then that I noticed that the coffee table had been replaced. This one didn’t have the stain and the chip out of the edge that I’d noticed the last time we were in the captain’s cabin. I also noticed that the carpet near one corner looked rough and matted. I hadn’t noticed that on our last visit to the captain’s cabin, but perhaps it was just the angle of the light from my vantage point while sitting on the floor. Nigel reached down to help me to my feet, but I waved him off and crawled over to feel the carpet. It felt caked and stiff. I parted the fibers. They were discolored brown at the base. I looked up. Everybody seemed to be holding their breaths.

  “This is blood,” I said.

  “It’s coffee,” Captain Sloane snapped.

  Nigel knelt down next to me and felt of the carpet. “It’s blood, all right, and someone’s tried to clean it, but they didn’t get it all. We’re going to need to cut away this piece of carpet and send it to Scotland Yard.”

  Grant pulled out his radio. “I’m on it,” he said.

  “Where’s the other coffee table?” I asked.

  “What are you talking about, Dr. Day?” Captain Sloane asked. “This is the same coffee table that’s always been here.”

  “It had a splinter,” Sarah said. “Things kept catching on it. Colin’s having the ship’s carpenter smooth it out.”

  “Sarah,” the captain said sotto voce, “please be quiet.” I wasn’t sure, but he seemed to be talking through his teeth. What was he trying to hide, and whom did he think he was fooling?

  Certainly not Nigel or me. “It’s probably got blood on it too,” I said.

  “I hope you don’t think you’re sending an entire coffee table to Scotland Yard,” Captain Sloane said irritably.

  “No need,” Nigel said affably. “Just have your carpenter cut that section out and we’ll send it along with the carpet.”

  “I don’t know what you think you’re going to match it to,” Captain Sloane pointed out. “All your other evidence is gone.”

  “Not exactly,” Nigel said. “The Royal Barbados Police coroner removed what was left of the body. Plenty of DNA there.”

  “Not to mention that your son has been extricating bits and pieces of her from various food grinders down below decks,” I said.

  The captain’s face went pale. I hoped I wasn’t sitting in his path to the bathroom should he desire to bolt in that direction. But I needn’t have worried. He didn’t move.

  There was a knock at the door, and Sarah opened it to admit Rob. He took one look at me with the towel wrapped around my head and said, “Toni, what have you done now?”

  I told him.

  “Okay,” Rob said. “You’re coming with me. Can you walk? I’ve a wheelchair outside if you need it.”

  “Just a minute,” I objected. “We haven’t told the captain what we came here to tell him. About the security tapes.”

  “No worries,” Nigel said. “Officer Grant and I can do that. You go ahead and get yourself taken care of.”

  “Can’t this wait?” asked Captain Sloane. “It’s nearly midnight.”

  Sarah stood up. “Thank you all for coming,” she said graciously, “but Colin does need his sleep.”

  We took the hint. Officer Grant said, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Captain.”

  The captain nodded wearily, and we left. Out in the hall, Nigel said, “I’ll let Fiona and Hal know what’s going on,” and he and Officer Grant went out through the double doors into the main corridor leading to our cabins. Rob put me in the wheelchair, and we took the forward elevator down to the infirmary, where Rob stitched me up while I filled him in on what we’d been doing. He was particularly interested in the captain’s reaction to my injury.

  “I can’t believe you just came right out and asked him if that was what happened to Leonie,” he said admiringly. “I should think he’d have given you all the boot.”

  “He might have,” I said, “if Sarah hadn’t been there. She was treating the whole thing like a cocktail party, and he didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it.”

  “I have a feeling,” Rob said, “that she wears the pants in that family.”

  “Perhaps because she’s the one who has the money,” I speculated. “He certainly wouldn’t want to screw that up by having her find out about Leonie.”

  “The way you describe his reaction tells me that Leonie fell and hit her head in his cabin,” Rob said. “So maybe that lady was right about her being in his cabin all along.”

  “She could have been,” I said. “She came aboard in Fort Lauderdale.”

  “Do you know that for a fact?” he asked.

  “I heard it from a reliable source,” I told him.

  “The cruise director?”

  “No, a hairdresser.”

  “A hairdresser,” Rob said skeptically.

  “Yes, a hairdresser. I had a massage and facial today while everybody else went ashore, and Mavis, who did my facial, told me that. She said Leonie got a massage and facial before every show. And not only that, but Horacio, who gave me a shampoo and haircut, told me that Leonie was looking for her father, and that was why she spent so much time talking to the captain.”

  “Blimey, you do get around, don’t you?” Rob said. “So does that mean she thought the captain was her father?”

  “Not necessarily. Horacio said she talked to the captain so much because he’d known her mother and might help her find her father.”

  “How?” Rob demanded. “He hasn’t had time.”

  “Maybe he has,” I said. “I’m sure this isn’t the first time Leonie’s been on this ship. Maybe he told her who it was on a previous cruise, and this time she went to that person, and he killed her.”

  “That means he has to be on this ship right now. We need to ask the captain about that.”

  “I already did,” I told him. “He said that as far as he knows, nobody who was on Southern Cross twenty-five years ago is on this ship right now. But that’s not the problem.”

  “What do you mean, that’s not the problem?”

  “Whoever got Leonie’s mother pregnant didn’t do it twenty-five years ago. When she went to work as cruise director on the Southern Cross, Leonie, or rather, Maggie, was already four years old.”

  “So what ship was she on before that?”

  “I have no idea. We don’t know the ship, we don’t know which cruise, and we don’t know who we’re looking for. It’s like trying to grab a handful of fog. Where do we start?”

  “If we postulate that the same person who fathered Leonie also killed her mother—and then killed Leonie—that person has to have been on all three ships.”

  “Postulate? Who are you, Socrates?”

  “You know what I mean,” Rob said patiently. “If we could find out who on this crew was also on the Southern Cross, then we could trace that person’s work history back four more years, and voila!”

  I sighed. “Well, there you are. There’s only one
person.”

  “I thought you said Captain Sloane told you—”

  “I did,” I interrupted, “but Nigel got a list from Scotland Yard of the crew of the Southern Cross for that cruise, and Joseph Gerard was the third engineer.”

  “Joseph Gerard, who is now the chief engineer?” Rob asked incredulously.

  “Presumably. Unless there’s more than one Joseph Gerard. And speaking of which, our chief engineer’s son, Joe Junior, is one of the security guards on this ship. I met him tonight while we were watching security tapes. But it’s not him. Twenty-five years ago he would have been maybe ten years old.”

  “Security tapes?” Rob inquired. “What were you watching security tapes for?”

  “To see if we could catch whoever put Leonie in the roof.”

  “And did you?”

  “We saw her body, and we saw the roof open and her body disappear, and we saw somebody run across the roof and do something to the body, and we saw the roof close,” I explained. “And we saw somebody throw a weight with a rope attached from one side of the roof to the other, but we couldn’t see who either of those people were. So now Joe Junior is in the process of sending all that video to Scotland Yard by e-mail.”

  “How’s he going to do that and do his job too?” Rob objected. “He can’t do both at once, can he?”

  “No, of course not,” I said. “Officer Grant told him to get somebody called Meacham to come and relieve him.”

  “Meacham?” Rob repeated. “You mean Bert Meacham is here? On this ship?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “Who’s Bert Meacham?”

  “It may not be the same guy,” Rob said, “but there’s a story I’ve heard about a guy named Bert Meacham who went to the same maritime college that our captain did. Rumor has it that our captain caught him cheating on an exam and reported him, and he got kicked out.”

  “Well, that would certainly be someone with a grudge against the captain,” I said.

  “So,” Rob continued, “he’s had to work his way up from the bottom, rather like our young friend Keith, and oddly enough he always seems to turn up wherever Colin Sloane is. And now he’s done it again.”

  “You mean this guy is stalking the captain?” I asked in disbelief.