The Woman in Cabin 10(26)

My voice cracked as I said it, and I suddenly felt like laughing—or maybe crying. I took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to get ahold of myself.

“I will send someone right away, Miss Blacklock. Don’t move. I will call you when they are at the door so you know who it is. Hold on, please, and I will call you right back.”

There was a click, and she hung up.

I was still holding the receiver, and I put it gently back on the cradle, feeling oddly dissociated, almost like I was having an out-of-body experience. My head was throbbing, and I realized I needed to get dressed before they arrived.

I picked up the bathrobe from where it hung on the back of the bathroom door—and did a double take. When I went down to dinner I had left it on the floor, along with the clothes I’d worn on the train. I remembered looking back over my shoulder at the bomb site I’d made in the bathroom—clothes on the floor, makeup scattered across the counter, lipstick-smeared tissues in the sink—and thinking, I’ll deal with that later.

It was all gone. The bathrobe had been hung up, my dirty clothes and underwear had disappeared, whisked off to God knows where.

On the vanity counter, my cosmetics had been neatly set out in rows, along with my toothbrush and toothpaste. Only my tampons and pills were left inside my toiletry bag, a weirdly coy touch that was somehow worse than everything being out in the open, and made me shudder. Someone had been inside my room. Of course they had. That was what maid service meant, for heaven’s sake. But someone had been inside my room, messing with my things, touching my wrinkled tights and my half-used eyeliner pencil.

Why did the thought make me want to cry?

I was sitting on the bed, head in my hands and thinking about the contents of the minibar, when the phone rang, and a couple of seconds later, as I crawled across the duvet to pick up the receiver, there was a knock on the door.

I picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Miss Blacklock?” It was Karla.

“Yes. There’s someone at the door. Should I answer it?”

“Yes, yes, please do. It is our head of security, Johann Nilsson. I will leave you now with him, Miss Blacklock, but please do call me at any time if you need any further assistance.”

There was a click and the line went dead, and the knock on the door came again. I belted my bathrobe more securely and went to open it.

Outside was a man I hadn’t seen before, dressed in some kind of uniform. I don’t know what I was expecting—something pseudo-policeman-like. This was more like a nautical uniform—closer to a purser or something. He was about forty or thereabouts, and tall enough to have to stoop as he took a step forward into the doorway, with rumpled hair that looked like he’d only just got out of bed, and eyes so startlingly blue that it looked almost as if he were wearing colored contacts. I was staring at them when I realized, suddenly, that he was holding out a hand.

“Hello, you must be Miss Blacklock, I presume?” His English was very, very good. Just a faint trace of a Scandinavian accent, so slight he might almost have been Scottish or Canadian. “My name is Johann Nilsson. I am head of security on the Aurora. I understand you’ve seen something that disturbed you.”

“Yes,” I said firmly, suddenly painfully aware of the fact that I was in a dressing gown with my mascara halfway down my cheeks while he was fully and professionally dressed. I tightened the belt again, nervously this time. “Yes. I saw—heard—something thrown overboard. I—I think it was, it must have been . . . a body.”

“You saw, or heard?” Nilsson said, cocking his head to one side.

“I heard a splash—a very loud splash. It was quite clearly something very big falling overboard—or being pushed. And then I ran to the balcony and I saw something—a body, it looked like—disappearing under the waves.” Nilsson’s expression was grave but guarded, and as I spoke his frown deepened. “And there was blood on the glass wall of the balcony,” I added.

His lips tightened at that, and he gave a short nod towards the veranda door.

“Your balcony?”

“The blood? No. Next door.”

“Can you show me?”

I nodded, pulled the belt again, and watched as he undid the latch of the veranda door. Outside, the wind had picked up, and it was very cold. I led the way to the narrow space, which felt painfully small now with Nilsson’s bulk beside me. He seemed to take up all the room there was and more, but part of me was very glad he was there. I didn’t think I could have brought myself to go out there on my own.

“There.” I pointed over the privacy barrier that separated my veranda from that of cabin 10. “Look over there. You’ll see what I mean.”

Nilsson peered over the barrier and then looked back at me, frowning slightly.

“I don’t see where you mean. Could you show me?”

“What do you mean? It was a big smear all down the glass.”

He edged backwards, extending a hand towards the barrier by way of invitation, and I pushed past him to peer over. My heart was pounding in spite of myself. I didn’t expect to see the murderer still there, or to get a fist in my face, or feel a bullet fly past my ear. But it felt horribly vulnerable to peer over the wall not knowing what I might find on the other side.

But what I found was . . . nothing.