She wasn’t that ill. Now she would look like everyone else.
Rosanna would merge with the passengers wearing the same clothes and whatever else was in the gym bag. Red hair, that’s all we really could go on and the burns. But she could tuck her hair up inside a baseball cap and no one would know. But why was she on board and what would she do when she discovered she couldn’t find her father, Reg Hawkins?
Bait. The way to get her to come out of hiding was to string up some bait.
It would not be ethical to publicise a magic show in the Princess Lounge theatre when the magician was dead. But supposing we offered lessons in magic or a lecture about famous illusions? Would that draw her out of the woodwork?
There was no one to run this by, only myself. I didn’t want to approach Head Office. They had enough problems. I slipped into the library and hunted the shelves for any books on magic and illusions. Who could I ask to give the lecture? I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to write a lecture from all this information and then deliver it in an entertaining way.
It would take me weeks. I was thinking hours.
The author lecturer was always surrounded by her throng of would-be writers wanting to talk or get her guidance on a piece of writing they were working on. It didn’t seem fair to ask her to take on any more. The other lecturers said they had no spare time, not their style, etc.
Dr Mallory and Richard Norton were out of the question, both far too busy. And it had to be someone that Rosanna didn’t know. Someone she would not suspect.
The perfect person fell into my lap, or almost. I gave her a radiant smile.
‘I’m going to go and get my hair done,’ Susan said, hesitantly, tripping over some cables. ‘Is that all right? You don’t need me.’
‘Sure,’ I said, with words of sweetness and light. ‘Here’s a couple of books for you to look at under the dryer. As we don’t have a magician any more, I thought a one-off talk about magic and illusions might fill a gap. Do you feel like doing it? You could read it from the lectern. You don’t have to learn it by heart. Just mark the passages and do a bit of ad-libbing in between. It could be fun.’
‘Oh yes, wow,’ she said, taking the books. ‘I’d love to do that. A lecture. When do you think would be a suitable time?’
‘How about after lunch? We could still get an announcement on cabin television and tannoy the event.’
Susan flushed with pleasure. Perhaps all she needed was more praise and more responsibility. ‘I could wear my new turquoise trouser suit,’ she offered.
‘Sounds perfect,’ I said. ‘Off you go and get your hair done. I’ll take your calls.’
Fool. Why did I feel I had to do this for everyone? They could catch their own stowaway. I phoned Richard Norton and told him about the bait. He thought it was a great idea. He said he would sit in the projectionist’s box at the back, out of sight, but ready to assist if needed.
‘We need a sort of code,’ he said. ‘So that you can alert me if she turns up.’
‘Maybe you could alert me since you wouldn’t tell me what she looks like.’
‘We’ll think of something.’
‘How about using our mobiles?’
‘Quick one there, Casey,’ he chuckled. ‘Right on the ball.’
There was a little time left till the Countess would dock at Isla Margarita tomorrow. Rosanna might take it into her head to skip ship there. Not a good choice since it was a small remote island off the coast of Venezuela. Unless she planned to stay there for a good while. She could always teach English to local children.
I made sure I could go to Susan’s lecture. I’d also arranged for there to be slides to illustrate her talk. It might be quite good. It might be the start of an alternative career for Susan.
I changed out of my Conway uniform and put on a cotton dress. I wanted to merge and slip into the back of the lecture theatre once it had started. I asked Joe Dornoch to introduce Susan and make some suitably complimentary remarks. He agreed. He was such an agreeable person.
The lecture theatre was quite full. It was too hot out on the decks and passengers were seeking air-conditioned entertainment. When I was watching a film, late at night in the same place, I had to wrap my shoulders in a pashmina.
Joe introduced Susan Brook with professional ease. He knew what he was doing. Susan smiled broadly, half hidden by the lectern. Her hair looked good. At least it was clean and shining.
She rattled through the information I had given her, stopping for the slides to be shown on the screen. I had slipped into the back of the theatre, as I often did to evaluate a lecturer, keeping my head down. Sometimes we got a dud.
Susan was doing OK. She even raised a few laughs. Joe had slipped out of the back door so maybe she wasn’t getting a thank you. If nothing happened, then I would do it.
But it wasn’t going to be that easy.
I felt a tension rising. Someone in the third row was making comments, talking over the lecture. No one likes a disruptive audience.
I slid down and eased myself along the curved wall of the theatre, pretending I was a late arrival looking for a seat. There was a woman in the third row, hair in a baseball cap, wearing a Countess sweatshirt. She was gripping the sides of her seat.
‘Where’s Merlin the Magician?’ she suddenly shouted. ‘Why isn’t he giving this talk? He knows all about illusions.’
We’d got her. This must be Rosanna Hawkins. No one else would be aware of the non-appearance of our magician.
Susan continued, as I knew she would. She had brick-wall mentality. I’d noticed this in the office. Total oblivion sometimes.
I dialled Richard on my mobile and spoke very quietly. ‘Third row, four seats in, baseball cap.’
‘Roger,’ he said.
‘Richard,’ I said.
How would the audience react if there was a sudden flurry of activity and one of the audience was carted off in custody? This had to be handled with care. Richard was all too aware of this and his men were simply stationed at the doors. There were only two exits to the lecture theatre, one at the back right, one at the front left.
Wherever Miss Hawkins went, I would be close behind. I sat myself into an empty seat two rows behind, never taking my eyes off her.
‘That’s one of Merlin’s illusions,’ she shouted.
‘Quite right,’ said Susan smoothly. ‘One of Merlin the Magician’s famous illusions and he has been a regular performer on the Countess for many years.’
‘Where is he now?’ she went on but was shushed by other members of the audience who wanted to hear the lecture. ‘That’s what I want to know.’
Not long now. It was nearing afternoon teatime. Scones with jam and cream were my favourite snack if I had missed lunch. No wonder some of my waistbands had trouble meeting. I was not ready yet for the elastic waist.
Susan was winding up and waffling. This was a fraction on the boring side. She had deserted the written text and was using her own minimal knowledge of the subject, but the passengers were patient and polite, knowing that tea was imminent.
There was an outburst of clapping when Susan took a breath. It was not the end of her rigmarole, but the passengers decided that it was the end. They wanted their fabulous tea. I stood up quickly and blocked the third row, only allowing a couple of innocents to proceed out. She could not escape me.
As Rosanna came face to face, I smiled pleasantly.
‘Hello, Rosanna Hawkins?’ I said. ‘How are you?’
She looked at me, panic-stricken, eyes wide, face skinless red. No mistake in identity. I’d found my quarry. I put my hand on her arm, not in a threatening way but simply so that she knew I had spotted her.
What happened then was all so fast that afterwards I had trouble remembering anything. She brought her other hand down on my arm, bone-hard fist side, like a karate blow. Pain shot through me. She’d broken my arm.
I fell against the wall, clutching my arm. The pain was a red swarm across my eyes. Rosanna ran
out of the lecture theatre, past the security guards who were not sure who they were looking for. Where she ran to, no one knew.
Dr Samuel Mallory found me sitting on the floor of the lecture theatre, now weirdly empty, still clutching my arm.
‘Dear God, Casey, what have you done now? Let me look at it. Don’t move. Fold your arm back, against your shoulder. Hold it up there under the elbow. You need this X-rayed immediately.’
‘I’m sorry but I cannot pay for an X-ray.’
‘Have this one on me.’
Fifteen - At Sea
‘Can you wiggle your fingers?’ Samuel asked.
I did some digital wiggling.
‘Nothing’s broken. But we’ll do an X-ray to make sure. She’s probably bruised the bone. It was a hefty whack.’
Dr Mallory’s administrations were professional and efficient. Neither arm nor wrist were broken but a bruise the size of an orange was appearing and it hurt. He suggested a wrist support for a couple of days and some painkillers. I became an interesting invalid on deck.
The passengers were curious. Most of them assumed that Hurricane Dora was to blame and I was thrown against some bulwark during my arduous duties. Time spans seem to have a way of getting mixed up on ship. People forget the date and days of the week quite easily, one merging into another. I often do the same. It’s not easy to remember what day it is.
Passengers at the lecture who had witnessed the incident put around various lurid rumours. I had been attacked by a drunk, a deranged female, a jealous wife.
Rosanna Hawkins disappeared into the panelling again. She had obviously found herself a good hiding place. One with all mod cons this time. She couldn’t leave the ship at Isla Margarita without presenting a cruise card at the gangway, and the stolen one had been cancelled. But we needed to find her first.
Susan Brook was on a high after her lecturing debut and was researching new topics on Google instead of doing her work. Head Office were sending out a replacement entertainer who would be joining the ship at Curaçao, an island in the Netherlands Antilles. He would be with us for the last half of the cruise, all the way back to Southampton, so he would earn his keep with several performances.
‘I did very well, didn’t I?’ said Susan. ‘They were so appreciative. People keep stopping me and asking me how do I know so much about magic.’
‘And you told them that you were reading from a book,’ I said.
‘I told them it’s in the family. My dad used to do card tricks.’
‘How about a talk on card tricks, then?’ I suggested, trying to type an email on my keyboard with one hand. Capital letters were awkward. I took my wrist out of the support. It didn’t hurt too much.
‘I don’t really know enough,’ she said, unaware that I was ribbing her.
‘Day in port tomorrow so we can take some time off. Would you like to go ashore in the afternoon for a couple of hours? There’s a lovely beach quite close to the quayside. Miles of shallow water first so you have to wade out for a swim.’
‘I’m not too keen on swimming,’ she said, not looking up. Ah, the swimsuit phobia. Baring all in public. She would be hesitant in a size eighteen swimsuit. An island fringed with deserted beaches would be more her style of heaven.
‘Find yourself a spot on deck,’ I said. ‘You’ll have the ship to yourself.’
‘I’ll research my next talk,’ she said. What had I started? I kept my mouth shut. There would be the right time to gently squash her career move.
I hoped Richard Norton would keep me informed of any new developments, maybe out of politeness. I was not part of the security team but I was a victim of the circumstances. A twice-times victim. I’d forgotten the sleeping pills. So who dosed me with sleeping pills? Now that couldn’t have been Rosanna — or could it? We didn’t know she was on the ship but she was already bunked up in lifeboat twelve. But why me? I was hardly any sort of a threat to her.
I tried to make a list in my head of why I was a threat but could think of nothing much except that I had witnessed the collapse of Mr Foster at table two. What had I seen? Did they think I had seen something incriminating? I couldn’t remember. It had all happened so fast. We didn’t have CCTV cameras in the dining room. Who wanted grainy pictures of folk slurping their soup?
I had emailed Head Office a couple of days back about the DJ who wasn’t doing his job. I asked them to give me more information about his background and why we had employed him to come on to the Countess. He must have had good references or an outstanding CV.
A reply flashed on to my screen and I clicked into the body of the email. It was an eye-opener. They had done a lot of digging. He had signed a contract with Conway Blue Line as Darin Jack. But now it seemed that no such person as Darin Jack existed. His passport was false and the references invented. They suggested that he should be sent back to England immediately.
Darin Jack equals DJ. No one had spotted that. It could be funny if it wasn’t so serious. Ha, ha. So who was this person? I would have to inform Richard. I was such a coward, I sent him a copy of the email instead and hoped he would pick it up fast. He would start to think that trouble rolled my hair and I was best kept at a distance.
‘Has La Diva been thumping you?’ It was Joe Dornoch on his way to the Lido deck to top up his tan. He looked a trim fifty in white shorts and white rugby shirt. I didn’t look at his legs.
‘Not yet. I’ve been practising my first aid.’
‘My advice is to duck,’ he grinned, swinging a towel.
‘The show was good.’
‘I told you it would be.’
He made me feel a lot better though he was not my type. I didn’t think I had a type. My past history was a messy blank of student dating that came to nothing. What had happened to all those men? No engagements, no affairs, no matrimonial baggage. One could hardly count a shattering teenage crush on Andre Dupois, my ballet teacher. He had been my perfect man for years. Though very tight jeans on men still worry me.
There was a lull and time for a quick cuppa on deck outside the Terrace café. My favourite table was free where I could watch the tumbling white wake of the ship. It was mesmerizing to see the thrashing water, cascading and spreading behind us. I almost forgot to take a painkiller.
‘You really have been in the wars,’ said Madame de Leger, stopping by the table. She was wearing a slim shift the muted colours of a kingfisher, perfect for an older woman. ‘I didn’t know being Entertainment Director was such a dangerous job.’
‘It’s kept very quiet,’ I said.
‘I was sitting behind when she went for you. I was somewhat concerned because she wouldn’t keep quiet during the talk. It must have been distracting for Miss Brook.’
‘Could you catch what the woman was saying?’
‘Something about her father inventing something and people trying to steal it. Nothing really relevant. I suppose she had been out in the sun for too long. She did look rather red-faced. Is she all right?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘She’s fine now, very sorry, of course. Full of apologies. Some kind of accidental reflex action.’
Maria de Leger gave me a quizzical look. ‘Is that what it’s called now?’
She wasn’t fooled. There was nothing else I could say. I went on stirring my tea and she drifted away.
The late afternoon sun was enough to make me feel dozy. I loved the warmth on my skin. My eyelids felt heavy, so heavy that I missed what happened next.
There was a sudden, urgent shout from below. Then another, even louder. A woman screamed, her voice piercing the air.
‘Man overboard! Man overboard!’
People rushed to the rails, scattering cups, plates, trays. The crew were faster, trained to respond immediately. Several lifebelts were tossed into the sea from a lower deck. I saw one being immediately swept away on the wake, but then dragged back to the ship’s side by the rope attachment.
It was a choppy sea. We were going through some strong cross-current and the w
aves were larger than they had been earlier. I heard the engines stop and the big ship slowed down. She couldn’t stop immediately. We might be in water too deep to anchor. It was strange not to be moving.
Starboard was packing with crowds of gawping onlookers. I could see a man struggling in the water, waves swamping him, a lifebelt out of reach. He looked so small and helpless.
A gasp went up as he went under, totally immersed by a huge wave. A stout man turned to me angrily.
‘Can’t you do something?’ he shouted. ‘Can’t you see he’s drowning?’
‘The crew are trained in rescue work,’ I said. ‘They will be throwing down an inflatable dinghy any moment now.’
‘Well, they’d better get on with it,’ he growled, ‘or it’ll be too late.’ He stomped off to complain to someone else.
I could hear the squeaking and creaking of a dinghy being rapidly winched down into the sea. Two crew members in lifejackets were perched on it, ready to swim to the drowning man as soon as it touched the water. They would haul him aboard. They’d practised many times with a volunteer crew member acting as a casualty.
It was a tense drama. I saw the man being swept further out to sea. He was tiring, his arms flailing, not looking good. There was no time to launch a tender. The dinghy had to reach him.
‘Do we know who it is?’ Samuel asked. He’d appeared at my side, bag and defibrillator case in his arms.
‘No, don’t know.’
‘How did he get in the water?’
‘Don’t know. I never saw it happen. I suppose he fell from the Promenade Deck.’
‘The railings are chest high. They are for leaning on, not falling over. Did he climb over?’
‘Don’t know. I wasn’t there.’
‘You don’t know much, do you? I’d better get down to a lower deck. He’s taking in a lot of water. I may have to pump him out.’
He hurried away. He had a man’s life to save. If they were in time.
Second Sitting Page 13