The Woman in Cabin 10(29)

“Thank you, Miss Blacklock. And now I think we should both get some sleep.” He rubbed his face, looking for all the world like a big blond bear dragged out of hibernation.

“What time should I expect you tomorrow?”

“What time would suit you? Ten? Ten thirty?”

“Earlier,” I said. “I won’t sleep, not now.” I was buzzing, and I knew I would never get back to sleep.

“Well, my shift starts at eight. Is that too early?”

“That’s perfect,” I said firmly. He walked to the door, suppressing a yawn as he did, and I watched as he lumbered off along the corridor towards the stairs. Then I shut and double-locked the door, and went and lay on the bed, staring at the sea. The waves were dark and slick in the moonlight, heaving themselves up like the backs of whales, and then slipping back down, and I lay and felt the boat rise and fall with the swell.

I would never sleep. I knew that. Not with my blood ringing in my ears, and my heart beating in angry staccato thumps in my chest, I would never relax.

I was furious—but I was not sure why. Because a woman’s body was even now floating down into the black darkness of the North Sea, probably never to be found? Or was part of it something smaller, baser—the fact that Nilsson had not believed me?

Maybe he’s right, the nasty little voice in my head whispered. Pictures flitted across my mind’s eye—me, cowering in the shower because of a door blowing shut in the wind. Defending myself against a nonexistent intruder by attacking Judah. Are you completely sure? You’re not exactly the most reliable witness. And at the end of the day, what did you actually see?

I saw the blood, I told myself firmly. And a girl is missing. Explain that.

I switched the light out and drew the cover across myself, but I didn’t sleep. Instead, I lay on my side watching the sea, rising and falling with strange hypnotic silence outside the thick, stormproof panes. And I thought, There is a murderer on this boat. And no one knows but me.





- CHAPTER 12 -

“Miss Blacklock!” The knock came again, and I heard a passkey in the door, and the bang as the door itself opened a centimeter and the security chain pulled taut.

“Miss Blacklock, it’s Johann Nilsson. Are you okay? It’s eight o’clock. You asked me to call you?”

What? I struggled up onto my elbows, my head pounding with the effort. Why the hell had I asked to be called at eight o’clock?

“One sec!” I managed. My mouth was dry, as if I’d swallowed ashes, and I reached for the glass of water by my bed and choked some down. As I did, the memory of last night came flooding back.

The noise that had woken me in the night.

The blood on the veranda glass.

The body.

The splash . . .

I swung my legs out of bed and felt the boat shift and lurch beneath me, and I felt suddenly and violently nauseous.

I ran to the bathroom and just managed to get myself positioned over the bowl in time for the retching heave of last night’s dinner against clean white porcelain.

“Miss Blacklock?”

Go. Away.

The words didn’t make it out of my mouth, but maybe the sound of splashing vomit conveyed the sentiment, because the door shut, very quietly, and I was able to stand up and examine myself without an audience.

I looked awful. The dregs of my eye makeup were smudged across my cheeks, and I had vomit in my hair, and my eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. The bruise on my cheek just added to the whole impression.

The boat heaved itself up onto a wave and down the other side, and everything around the sink shifted and clinked. I pulled my dressing gown around myself and went back into the cabin, where I pulled the door open the tiniest, tiniest crack—barely enough to see through.

“I’ve got to take a shower,” I said tersely. “Do you mind waiting?” And then I shut the door.

Inside the bathroom I flushed the toilet and wiped around the rim, trying to destroy all traces of my vomit. But when I straightened, it was not my own pale, ravaged face that caught my eye, but the tube of Maybelline, standing sentinel by the sink. As I stood, clutching the vanity table, my breath coming short and sharp, the ship gave another roll, and everything on the countertop shifted and wobbled, and the tube fell, with a tiny crack, and rolled into the bin. I reached in bare-handed and pulled it out, holding it in my fist.

It was the only tangible evidence that that girl had existed, that I wasn’t going mad.


Ten minutes later I was dressed in jeans and a crisp white shirt, pressed by whoever unpacked my case, and my face was pale but clean. I pulled back the security chain and opened the door to find Nilsson waiting patiently in the corridor, talking on a radio. He looked up when he saw me and shut it off.

“I’m very sorry, Miss Blacklock,” he said. “Perhaps I should not have woken you, but you were so insistent last night . . .”

“It’s fine,” I said through gritted teeth. I didn’t mean to sound quite so curt, but if I opened my mouth too much I might be sick again. Thank God the movement of the boat provided an alibi for my queasy stomach. Being a bad sailor was not exactly chic, but it was less unprofessional than being considered an alcoholic.

“I have spoken to the staff,” Nilsson said. “No one has been reported missing, but I suggest you come down to the staff quarters and you can see if the woman you spoke to is there. It may put your mind at rest.”