by Dawn Brookes
Once outside the restaurant, she picked up her pace until she found herself running towards the upper decks.
“Rachel, stop!” She heard his voice at a distance behind her. Once she arrived on deck twelve, she stopped and gazed out to sea, not knowing what on earth had got into her.
Well, that was mature! she scolded herself. I’m just not ready.
She finally acknowledged that her problem was still Robert and the unwelcome fact that he had shattered her trust in men. Facing up to this reality, she leaned over the ship’s rail and cried a deep, sobbing cry that released some of the excruciating pain that she had been bottling up for months. A few people passed by and discreetly looked away, continuing on with their night-time strolls.
After crying for about an hour, she began to feel calm again. All these weeks, she had been throwing herself into her work, trying to avoid the inevitable chasm of emptiness and pain that was like a boil that had to be burst before it could heal. Meeting Carlos had been wonderful, she acknowledged, but it had also made her face up to the lack of trust she now had towards the opposite sex. Fearing he might be married added to the dilemma. She enjoyed his attention, and when he kissed her, it sent electric shocks through her body, but was it all a show?
Would he turn out to be another Robert?
She didn’t even know what he believed. How would he feel about her religion? Would he understand? Did he believe in God? Most of all, though, it was the anger and misery that Robert had caused that tormented her.
“I hate you, Robert,” she shouted. “I was ready to give my life to you, you’re a contemptible rat. You behaved shamefully, and I hope you live in misery for the rest of your life.”
Her words were lost in the night sky, and the noise of the waves drowned them out. Rachel stopped, shocked at the vehemence she’d felt in her heart – that gentle heart that had been so easily broken. These were not nice feelings. She was having visions of some of the people she had arrested who had shouted and cursed and sworn, giving off nothing but anger.
She settled herself.
I cannot go there, but I cannot give my heart away so easily again. I must protect it at all costs.
She stood upright, lifted her head and walked back towards her stateroom, determined to put Carlos out of her head before she made a huge mistake.
Deciding to walk to the bow of the ship, she went down the most forward steps to avoid the crowds who tended to use the centre stair and lift areas as they gave easier access to all of the entertainment areas. It was dark as she made her way down the outer steps first before going inside to descend to deck nine. As she walked along the corridor towards her stateroom, she had the feeling of being watched again, but there was no-one in sight. Josie’s assistant came out of one of the staterooms and Rachel nodded to him, keeping her head down so that he couldn’t see she had been crying.
When she entered her stateroom, she found the balcony doors open, which was unusual. Josie must have left them open by mistake. Walking out on to the balcony as it was a nice, warm evening and the sky was clear, she could hear noises coming from Marjorie’s room next door and called out. The balcony screens were such that she couldn’t see into Marjorie’s room unless she peered round from the front, which she only did when she knew Marjorie was on the balcony.
“Good evening, Marjorie,” Rachel shouted, but there was no reply. Perhaps she was going to bed and it was difficult to hear above the waves. Rachel decided to call it a night and went back into her stateroom.
An hour later, she awoke as she thought she heard Marjorie’s door close and movement next door. Rachel got up and dressed quickly into a pair of slacks before knocking at her neighbour’s door.
“Good evening, my dear.” Marjorie was fully dressed and looking a little flushed.
“Good evening. Erm, I just thought I would check in on you. Have you been out?”
“Come in, dear. Yes, I went to the theatre with Mr and Mrs Hutchinson, a couple I met on one of my trips. They are really sweet – from Dallas, you know.”
Rachel was feeling an uncomfortable adrenaline surge again as she entered the room. She noticed the balcony doors were closed and the room looked untouched since it had been made up by the stewards earlier.
“Are you alright, Rachel?” Marjorie was staring at her.
“Yes, sorry. I was asleep, I think I must have heard you and wanted to say goodnight. I will leave you to it, then.” Rachel turned to go, but then she noticed there were tablets on the table at the side of Marjorie’s bed. “Are those your painkillers? I almost forgot, Sarah asked me to swap them for slightly weaker ones.” Rachel had no idea why she was saying this, but she grabbed the pills before Marjorie could object. “I think I left them down in the medical centre, I’ll go and get them for you.”
With that, she turned and rushed down to deck two. There was no-one there and the area was closed off, but Rachel could see a light coming from the infirmary so she knocked.
Bernard answered. “Hello, Rachel, Sarah’s off tonight,” he said in his Philippine accent. “Hot date!”
“Oh yes, sorry, I forgot. Do you have any paracetamol? I seem to have run out and I’ve got a splitting headache.”
“Are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I’m fine, just a bad head.”
“I’ll go and get you some tablets.”
Bernard came back with a full packet of paracetamol tablets. “Do you want me to label them for you?”
“No, it’s okay, I know what to do, thanks. Please bill them to my room.”
Rachel went back to Marjorie’s stateroom and gave her the paracetamol before leaving a rather confused looking lady staring after her. When she got back to her own room, she stared at the tablets she had taken from Marjorie, but they made no impression on her. One tablet looked like another, except illegal drugs, which she was pretty good at spotting.
She sat on her bed, thinking about what she should do now. There had definitely been someone in Marjorie’s room earlier, and it hadn’t been Marjorie. It wasn’t the assistant steward either because she had seen him further down the corridor. The only other person with a legitimate reason to be there would have been Josie, and if it was not her, then who?
Rachel tucked the tablets into her bedside cupboard and decided that she would ask Josie in the morning if she had been making up Marjorie’s room later than usual. As she drifted off to sleep, Rachel really did start to develop a headache and wished she had kept some of the paracetamol for herself. Thoughts whirred around in her head again, including visions of Robert and Carlos.
The next morning, Rachel woke early and decided to catch Josie before going for a run. She went into the corridor and saw a different steward, a stocky Asian man who smiled pleasantly.
“Good morning, ma’am.”
“Good morning, I was looking for Josie.”
“Sorry, ma’am, Josie burned hand last night. Gone help elsewhere. I help, ma’am?”
“No, thank you. It’s alright, it wasn’t important.”
Her headache was returning. Drat!
She headed upstairs for her run, joining her singing Jamaican friend from the breakfast buffet as he ran at the same time most mornings. He usually made her smile, but today she was deep in thought, mulling over the events of the previous night. She wished she had her police uniform on so that she could ask questions formally, but that wasn’t to be. The reassuring thought was that it was most likely to have been Josie in Marjorie’s room rather than anyone else, and the worst that could happen would be that Rachel would look rather foolish for having taken away the painkillers.
Daylight and running always help clear the head, she thought as she returned to her stateroom for a shower.
Chapter 20
Rachel took Marjorie’s tablets to the medical centre shortly after breakfast and asked Dr Bentley to check them.
“There’s nothing wrong with the tablets, these are the ones I prescribed.” He looked perpl
exed. “What made you think there was a problem?”
Rachel explained about hearing noises in Marjorie’s stateroom the night before and how she had initially thought it was the old lady herself. She explained about being woken up later when Marjorie had arrived back and how she had managed to remove the tablets with a cock and bull story about milder painkillers.
Dr Bentley frowned. “Look, you had a shock early on in the cruise and your mind is still coping with the fact that it was just a tragic accident. In the meantime, your policewoman mind-set is seeing villains behind every door where there are none. When I started medicine, I was the same – every pain was cancer. Every symptom more serious than it actually was and I developed a warped view of the world where everyone was seriously ill. But this was my world, not the real one.”
It made sense. Rachel knew that her senses were in overdrive, and the stress of the broken engagement had made her work and study even harder than ever, immersing herself in criminology books. The accident early on in the cruise had re-awoken her senses, and she was just beginning to relax when the issue with Carlos had triggered another stress reaction.
“How do I learn to deal with it?” she asked.
“It takes time.” Dr Bentley got up to leave as Sarah entered the clinic room with a cup of coffee. “You were suddenly awoken last night and your mind was overactive after hearing the noises earlier. You reacted, end of story. If it had been a crime scene, you would have saved the old dear’s life, but it wasn’t. No harm done.”
Dr Bentley left the room.
“Sometimes I think I’m going mad,” Rachel confided in Sarah.
“There’s no-one I know who is saner,” said her friend. “Come on, drink up, there’s no need to worry. Apart from last night, you have been more yourself. Just put it down to experience.”
“You’re right, I guess all I’ve hurt is my pride. Thank goodness your Dr Bentley is so understanding. He didn’t even tell me off about switching the pills.”
“Those painkillers would be too strong now anyway. They probably made her sleepy so it was a good switch.”
Rachel felt pleased that everything had been put into perspective. She made a note to herself to fit in some relaxation classes when she got back to work.
Sarah stood up. “I’d better get back to work. Are we still on for Gibraltar tomorrow?”
“Yes, but I don’t know how you persuaded me to join you on the Barbary ape trip. I hate monkeys, and I hear these ones can be quite aggressive.”
“I know, but I’m fascinated by nature, you know that. See you tomorrow in the atrium.”
As Sarah went back to the waiting room to call her next patient through, Rachel returned to her stateroom to change into shorts before going to the upper deck in search of light entertainment and food. Deck fourteen was packed as ever with people sunbathing and swimming, but she managed to find a sunbed and made herself comfortable, stripping down to her bikini. Her skin glistened in the sun as she applied sun cream and she was pleased to see that her usually pale skin had developed a nice bronzed glow. She was always careful in the sun as she was prone to burning, and a childhood experience of painful blistering had taught her a lifelong lesson. She was also well aware of the risks of skin cancer from the sun’s harmful rays, and this was an added incentive to apply frequent dollops of sun cream.
Rachel looked around, and all she could see were people and sunbeds. Children were swimming and some people had chosen beds in the shade. Looking out to sea, she could see that the Mediterranean was beautifully calm and blue. There was something therapeutic about the way the ship bobbed gently up and down as it made its way in a westerly direction towards Gibraltar.
She was looking forward to visiting this island of which her grandfather had spoken. He had been stationed in Gibraltar during the war and spoke fondly of what he called Mediterranean England. The island still belonged to the United Kingdom, a fact which was occasionally under dispute by the Spanish who wanted to reclaim it.
Rachel pulled a book out from her bag and decided to spend some time reading. This was a pleasure she had largely given up as the majority of her reading in recent years had been text books or policing manuals. It was nice to read something completely different. She was avoiding romantic novels, and had picked up a crime thriller by Dee Henderson, an author she had discovered on a recommendation from Louise, Robert’s sister. Many of the people in her books were broken for one reason or another, but they managed to find happiness and purpose through their work and relationships. Maybe there was hope for Rachel yet.
In spite of the buzz of activity all around her, Rachel managed to get lost in a fictional world for a while, but now she was hungry. She decided to do what everybody else did and leave her towel while she went into the buffet dining room to collect some lunch. Craving healthy food, she opted for a large bowl of Mediterranean salad.
Having gathered her salad, she was about to make her way back outside to her sunbed when she saw a familiar figure in the pizza queue. Carlos looked as handsome as ever, and Rachel debated whether to avoid him or apologise for the previous evening. The decision was made for her as Carlos turned his head and saw her standing there. He left the queue and joined her.
“What the heck happened last night?” He sounded confused rather than angry, so she tried to explain.
“I’m sorry, I am just not ready for a relationship at the moment, and I don’t do one night stands.”
“Okay, I understand. I can’t say they are my cup of tea either, but can we be friends and see where things lead?”
His brown eyes were piercing her with an intensity that she had not seen before and he seemed genuinely relieved when she answered positively.
“Right, don’t go anywhere. I will get a pizza and we can relax together.”
Rachel waited, not sure whether this was a good idea because she was struggling with her feelings for this man. There was something mysterious about him, the way he wouldn’t talk about himself or what he did for a living, and yet he had just shown a vulnerability which she hadn’t seen before. It was new, and attractive. He was drop-dead gorgeous, as her friends would say, yet he was also interesting and able to converse on many different levels. She was drawn to him, and this could prove dangerous if she dropped her guard but having decided that she was not ready for a relationship, she would summon all her self-control to make sure that she was not put in a position of compromise.
Carlos rejoined her and they walked out to where she had been lying on a sunbed. He perched himself on the side of the bed and they chatted as if nothing untoward had happened. Ordering cocktails from one of the waiters who was passing, Carlos handed her a sangria. The drink was loaded with ice, and she found it refreshing as she felt it on the back of her throat.
She loosened up as they continued to chat for a while. Rachel found it quite distracting when he took his shirt and shorts off and sat in his swimming trunks on the edge of her bed. Close up, he was a lot more muscular than she had previously thought, and his biceps were firm.
“Look, there’s a free bed.” She pointed it out as someone got up on her left-hand side. He smiled at her teasingly as he moved over to the bed next to her and appeared fully aware of the effect he was having on her. Rachel felt completely relaxed now. Was it the sangria or was it the Mediterranean sun that was helping her to laugh again?
Carlos looked at his watch. “I need to go now, but I will see you at dinner later. Yes?”
Rachel felt slightly disappointed, but nodded. She watched him go, and then decided to move herself as the afternoon was turning into evening.
She was collecting her things together when she saw Marjorie.
“Hello,” she said.
“Oh hello, Rachel. It’s very hot out here, isn’t it? I was just going to head back to my room and dress for dinner.”
“Me too.” Rachel smiled and took the old lady’s arm. “Let’s go together.”
Chapter 21
He was bitterly dis
appointed not to have finished the job completely so that he could relax and enjoy time with the girl he had met. Having made his way into the woman’s stateroom, all he’d had to do was wait until she returned. He could have had her over the side in seconds.
It had been planned down to the last detail. He’d waited until the cabin stewards had gone into the rooms, then he had managed to sneak into the room next door while the steward was collecting supplies to replenish teas. Hiding behind the curtains that were already drawn, he had waited for the steward to close the door before opening the balcony doors.
He was about to close them when he heard someone coming into the room. He mustn’t be seen. Quick to react, he climbed over the rail and on to the old woman’s balcony. He had gone in earlier and unlocked the doors while the steward had been cleaning the bathroom, but the curtains were still open so he couldn’t hide.
He tripped over a table on his way into the room, then heard a woman’s voice call out, so he closed the balcony doors quickly. Annoyed that he had been heard, he decided it was too risky to make the murder look like an accidental fall overboard.
I’ll have to come up with another plan now.
His employer was becoming impatient and had called again when the ship was docked in Corsica. He had explained it would all be done by the time the ship got to Gibraltar and he would call from there.
It has to be tonight, then. I have to finish the job tonight so that I can get paid and get this ridiculous man off my back.
He couldn’t believe how difficult it was to kill off an old woman, who appeared to have more lives than a cat. Not for the first time, he considered reneging on the job, but this was not possible. His reputation would be tarnished and no-one would hire him again. These things had a way of getting around, and he didn’t want rumours spreading that he couldn’t finish off a woman in her eighties – he would be the laughing stock. Being a hired killer was all about reputation, and competence and efficiency were key to maintaining a reputation and guaranteeing future hires.