The Woman in Cabin 10(27)

No murderer, crouched to spring. No smear of blood. The glass barrier shone in the moonlight, clean, innocent of so much as a fingerprint.

I turned back to Nilsson, knowing that my face must be stiff with shock. I shook my head, tried to find the words. He watched me, something sympathetic in his blue eyes.

It was the sympathy that stung more than anything else.

“It was there,” I said angrily. “He’s obviously wiped it off.”

“He?”

“The murderer! The f*cking murderer, of course!”

“There’s no need to swear, Miss Blacklock,” he said mildly, and went back inside the cabin. I followed him, and he carefully shut and latched the door behind me and then stood, his hands by his sides, as if waiting for me to say something. I could smell his cologne—not an unpleasant smell, faintly woody. But suddenly the spacious room felt oppressively small.

“What?” I said at last, trying and failing not to make the word sound aggressive. “I told you what I saw. Are you saying I’m lying?”

“Let’s go next door,” he said diplomatically.

I yanked the bathrobe belt tighter still, so tight now I could feel it digging into my stomach, and followed him, barefoot, into the corridor. He gave one short knock at the door of cabin 10, and then, when there was no answer, produced a passkey from his pocket and opened the door.

We stood in the doorway. Nilsson said nothing, but I could feel his presence at my back as I gazed, openmouthed, at the room.

It was utterly empty. Not just of people—but of everything. There were no suitcases. No clothes. No cosmetics in the bathroom. Even the bed was stripped back to the mattress.

“There was a girl,” I said at last, my voice unsteady. I shoved my hands in the pockets of the bathrobe so that he wouldn’t see how my fingers were clenched into fists. “There was a girl. In this room. I talked to her. I spoke to her. She was here!”

Nilsson said nothing. He walked through the silent moonlit suite and opened the door of the veranda, then looked outside, inspecting the glass barrier with almost insulting conscientiousness. But I could see from here there was nothing. The glass gleamed in the moonlight, misted faintly with ocean spray but otherwise quite untouched.

“She was here!” I repeated, hearing and hating the edge of hysteria in my voice. “Why won’t you believe me?”

“I didn’t say that I didn’t believe you.” Nilsson came back into the room and latched the veranda window. Then he walked me to the cabin door, and closed and locked it behind us.

“You don’t have to,” I said bitterly. My own door was still open and he escorted me inside. “But I tell you, she was there. She lent me— Oh!” Something suddenly struck me, and I ran to the bathroom. “She lent me a mascara. God damn it, where is it?”

I was rummaging through the carefully set-out cosmetics, but it wasn’t there. Where had it gone?

“It’s here,” I said desperately. “I know it is.” I looked around wildly, and something caught my eye, a flash of shocking pink behind the retractable shaving mirror at the side of the basin. I pulled it out—and there it was—an innocent little pink tube with a green cap.

“There!” I brandished it triumphantly at him, like a weapon. Nilsson took a step back, and then took the mascara gently from my hand.

“I see,” he said, “but with respect, Miss Blacklock, I’m not sure what this proves, apart from the fact that you borrowed a mascara from someone today—”

“What does it prove? It proves she was really there! It proves she existed!”

“It proves you saw a girl, yes, but—”

“What do you want?” I interrupted, desperately. “What more do you want from me? I’ve told you what I heard—what I saw. I’ve told you there was a girl in that cabin, and now she’s gone. Look on the manifest—there’s a guest missing. Why aren’t you more concerned?”

“That cabin is empty,” he said gently.

“I know!” I shouted, and then, seeing Nilsson’s face, I made a huge, concentrated effort to get myself under control. “I know—that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, for God’s sake.”

“No,” he said, still with that same quiet gentleness, the gentleness of a big man with nothing to prove. “This is what I’m trying to explain, Miss Blacklock. It has always been empty. There was no guest in that cabin. There never has been.”





- CHAPTER 11 -

I stared at him, openmouthed.

“What do you mean?” I managed at last. “What do you mean, no guest?”

“The cabin is empty,” he said. “It was reserved for another guest, an investor named Ernst Solberg. But he pulled out at the last minute—personal reasons, I understand.”

“So the girl I saw—she wasn’t supposed to be there?”

“Perhaps she was a member of the staff, or a cleaner.”

“She wasn’t. She was getting dressed. She was staying there.”

He said nothing. He didn’t have to—the question was obvious. If she was staying there, where was all her stuff?

“Someone could have taken it out,” I said weakly. “Between seeing me and your coming.”