The Woman in Cabin 10(89)

I was half dozing and half watching the still black lights of the bay, the Aurora a distant speck far up the fjord, moving west, when I heard a voice over my shoulder.

“Miss?”

I looked up. It was a man wearing a slightly skewed name tag reading ERIK FOSSUM—GENERAL MANAGER. He looked as if he had been dragged from his bed, his hair rumpled and his shirt buttons awry, and he passed a hand over an unshaven chin as he sat down in the armchair opposite me.

“Hello,” I said, wearily. I’d gone through my story with the man at the desk—at least as much of it as I thought safe to give, and as much as his English would permit. He was obviously the night porter, and he looked and sounded more Spanish or Turkish than Norwegian, although his Norwegian seemed to be better than his English, which was fine when it came to stock phrases about checking in and opening hours, but not up to a garbled tale of mixed identity and police.

I had seen him showing the only ID I had with me—Anne’s—to the manager, and heard his low, guarded tones, and heard my own name repeated several times.

Now the man sitting opposite me folded his fingers and smiled, slightly nervously.

“Miss—Black Lock, is that right?” He pronounced it as two words. I nodded.

“I don’t completely understand—my night manager tried to explain—how do you have Anne Bullmer’s credit cards? We know Anne and Richard well; they stay here sometimes. Are you a friend?”

I put my hands over my face, as if I could press back the tiredness that was threatening to overwhelm me.

“I—it’s a really long story. Please, can I use your phone? I have to contact the police.”

I had made up my mind as I hung, dripping and exhausted, over the polished checkin desk. In spite of my promise to Carrie, this was my only chance to save her. I didn’t for one second believe that Richard would let her live. She knew too much, had screwed too much up. And without the headscarf I had no chance of passing myself off as Anne, and without Carrie’s passport I had no chance of posing as Carrie, and both were lost somewhere in the bay, fathoms down. Only Anne’s purse had survived, miraculously still in the pocket of the Lycra stretch pants as I crawled up the ladder, out of the water.

“Of course,” Erik said sympathetically. “Would you like me to phone them? They may not have an English speaker on duty at this time of night. I must warn you, we don’t have a police station in the town, the nearest one is a few hours away in the next . . . what’s the word. The next valley. It will probably be tomorrow before someone can come out.”

“Please tell them it’s urgent, though,” I said wearily. “The sooner, the better. I can pay for a bed. I have money.”

“Let’s not worry about that,” he said with a smile. “Can I get you another drink?”

“No. No, thanks. Just please tell them to come soon. Someone’s life could be in danger.”

I let my head rest, heavy on my hand, my eyelids almost closing as he went back to the front desk, and I heard the sound of a phone receiver being lifted, and the beep-beep-beep-beep . . . beep-beep-beep of a number being dialed. It sounded like a long one. Maybe the Norwegian number for 999 was different? Or perhaps he was calling the local station.

It rang. Someone at the other end picked up and there was a brief exchange. Through the haze of exhaustion I heard Erik saying something in Norwegian out of which I could only pick the word hotel . . . then a pause and then another burst of Norwegian. Then I heard my own name, given twice, and then Anne’s.

“Ja, din kone, Anne,” Erik said, as if the person on the other end had not heard correctly, or had not believed what he’d heard. Then more in Norwegian, and then a laugh, and finally. “Takk, farvel, Richard.”

My head jerked up from my supporting hand, and every part of me went suddenly cold and still.

I looked out to the ships in the bay, to the Aurora, its lights disappearing in the far, far distance. And . . . was it my imagination? It looked as if the ship had stopped.

I sat for a moment longer, watching its lights, trying to measure them against the landmarks of the bay, and at last I was almost sure. The Aurora was no longer moving west up the fjord. It was turning around. It was coming back.

Erik had hung up, and was dialing another number now.

“Politiet, takk,” he said as someone answered.

For a moment I couldn’t move, frozen with the realization of what I’d done. I hadn’t believed Carrie’s assertions about Richard’s web of influence, not really. I’d dismissed them as the paranoia of a woman too beaten down to believe in the possibility of escape. But now . . . now those fears seemed all too real.

I set the coffee cup gently down on the table, let the red blanket fall to the floor, and, very quietly, I opened the terrace door and slipped outside, into the night.





- CHAPTER 34 -

I ran, up through the winding streets of the little town, my breath tearing in my chest, stones cutting into my bare feet and making me wince with pain. The streets petered out, and the streetlights began to disappear, but I ran on in the dark and the cold, stumbling through invisible puddles and over wet grass and graveled paths, until my feet grew too numb for me to even feel the cuts and the stones.

Even then I kept going—desperate to put as many miles as possible between myself and Richard Bullmer. I knew that I could not keep this up, that at some point I was going to have to give in—but my only hope was to keep going as long as possible, until I found myself some kind of shelter.