The Woman in Cabin 10(65)

And then she turned on her heel and began to walk down the corridor, towards the door to the staff quarters. I had to get to her. I had to get to her before she disappeared behind that locked door.

Slamming back the chain and the bolt, I wrenched open the door.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Hey, you, wait! I need to talk to you!”

She didn’t pause, didn’t even glance back over her shoulder, and now she was at the door to the lower deck, punching in the code. I didn’t stop to think. I just knew that this time I wasn’t going to let her disappear without a trace. I ran.

She was already through the staff door by the time I was halfway down the corridor, but I caught the edge of the door as it was just closing, pinching my fingers painfully, and then I wrenched it open and flung myself into the gap.

Inside it was darkness, the bulb at the top of the steps burned out. Or taken out, as I later thought.

As the door swung shut behind me, I stopped for a second, trying to get my bearings, see where the top step was. And that’s when it happened—a hand grabbing my hair from behind, another twisting my arm behind me, limbs grappling mine in the darkness. There was a short interval of panting, scrabbling terror, my nails in someone’s skin, my free hand trying to reach behind me to get a grip on the thin, strong hand laced in my hair—and then the hand pulled harder, twisting my head painfully back, and rammed my head forwards against the locked door. I heard the crack of my skull against the metal doorframe—and nothing.


I came to alone, lying on a bunk with a thin blanket over me. The pain in my head was agonizing, throbbing with a low pulse that made the dim lights in the room warp and shimmer, with a strange halo effect around them. There was a curtain on the wall opposite and with trembling limbs I slithered off the bed and half stumbled, half crawled across the floor towards it. But when I dragged myself upright, using the top bunk for support, and pulled back the thin orange cloth, there was no window there—just a blank wall of creamy plastic, lightly patterned as if in imitation of textured wallpaper.

The walls seemed to close in, the room narrowing around me, and I felt my breath come faster. One. Two. Three. Breathe in.

Shit. I felt the sobs rising up inside me, threatening to choke me from the inside.

Four. Five. Six. Breathe out.

I was trapped. Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .

One. Two. Three. Breathe in.

Propping myself against the wall with one hand, I made my way unsteadily back towards the door, but I knew before I tried it that it was useless. It was locked.

Refusing to think about what that meant, I tried the other door, set into the wall at an angle, but it opened into a minuscule en suite, empty except for a single dead spider curled in the washbasin.

I stumbled back to the first door and tried again, pulling harder this time, straining every muscle, rattling the door in its frame, yanking so hard at the handle that the effort left me panting, stars exploding in my vision as I slumped to the floor. No. No, this was not possible—was I really trapped?

I got to my feet and looked around me for something to lever into the door, but there was nothing, everything in the room was bolted or screwed down, or made of fabric. I tried forcing the handle again, trying not to think about the fact that I was in a windowless cell maybe four foot by six, and well below sea level, a thousand tons of water just inches away behind a skin of steel. But the door didn’t move, the only thing that changed was the pain in my head, jabbing with neon intensity until at last I stumbled back to the bunk and crawled onto it, trying not to think about the weight of water pressing in on me, focusing instead on my aching skull. It was pounding now so much that I could feel my pulse in my temples. Oh God, I had been so stupid, running out of that room straight into the trap. . . .

I tried to think. I had to stay calm, had to keep my head above the rising tide of fear. Stay logical. Stay in control. Think. I had to. What day was it? It was impossible to tell how much time had passed. My limbs felt stiff, as if I’d been lying in that position on the bunk for a while, but although I was thirsty I wasn’t completely parched. If I’d been unconscious for more than a few hours I would have woken up seriously dehydrated. Which meant it was probably still Tuesday, the twenty-second.

In which case . . . Ben knew that I’d been intending to go ashore at Trondheim. He would come looking for me—wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t let the boat leave without me.

But then I realized that the engine was running and I could feel the rise and fall of waves beneath the hull. Either we hadn’t stopped at all, or else we’d already left the port.

Oh God. We were heading out to sea—and everyone would assume I was still in Trondheim. If they looked for me at all, it would be in completely the wrong place.

If only my head didn’t hurt and my thoughts didn’t keep stumbling over each other . . . if only the walls weren’t closing in on me like a coffin, making it hard to breathe, hard to think.

Passports. I didn’t know how big Trondheim port was, but they must have some kind of customs check, or passport control. And there would be someone from the ship on duty at the gangway, surely, checking passengers in and out. They couldn’t risk leaving without someone. Somewhere, there would be a record of the fact that I hadn’t left the boat. Someone would realize I was still here.

I had to hang on to that.

But it was hard—hard when the only light was a dim bulb that flickered and dipped every so often, and the air seemed to be running out with every breath. Oh God, it was so hard.