The Woman in Cabin 10 (28 page)

- CHAPTER 32 -

T
he light. It hit me like a slap, leaving me blinking and dizzy, gaping at the rainbow prisms of a thousand Swarovski crystals. The service door led directly out onto the Great Staircase, where the chandelier blazed, day and night, a giant “fuck you!” to economy and restraint and global warming, not to mention good taste.

I steadied myself on the polished wooden handrail and looked left and right. There was a mirror at the turning point of the stairs, throwing back the reflected glare of the chandelier, multiplying the dancing light again and again, and as I turned I caught sight of myself in it and for a moment I did a double take, my heart leaping into my throat—for there in the glass was Anne, her head swathed in gold and green, her eyes hunted and bruised.

I looked like what I was—a fugitive. I forced myself to stand up straighter, and walk slowly, in spite of wanting to scurry like a terrified rat.

Hurry, hurry, hurry
,
snarled the voice in the back of my head.
Bullmer’s coming. Get a move on!
But I kept my pace slow and steady, remembering Anne’s—Carrie’s—stately walk, the way she measured each pace like someone conserving their strength. I was heading towards the front of the ship, where cabin 1 was, and in my pocket my fingers closed over the cabin key, feeling its reassuring hardness under my sweaty fingers.

And then I came to a dead end, stairs leading up to the restaurant, no way through into the prow.
Fuck
. I had taken a wrong turn.

I turned back, trying to remember the route I had taken when I went to see Anne—Carrie—that night before Trondheim. God, was it really only last week? It felt like an age, a different life. Wait—it was supposed to be right at the library, not left. Wasn’t it?

Hurry, for God’s sake, hurry!

But I kept my pace steady, kept my head up, trying not to look back, not to imagine the hands snatching at my flowing silk robes, dragging me back down below. I turned right, then left, then past a storeroom. This looked right. I was sure I remembered the photograph of the glacier.

Another turn—and another dead end, with stairs leading up to the sundeck. I wanted to sob. Where were the fucking
signs
? Were people supposed to find cabins by telepathy? Or was the Nobel Suite deliberately hidden away so that the hoi polloi couldn’t bother the VIPs?

I bent over, my hands on my knees, feeling my muscles trembling beneath the silk, and I breathed slowly, trying to make myself believe I could do this. I would not be still wandering the halls, sobbing, when Richard came up the gangplank.

Breathe in. . . . One. . . . Two. . . .
Barry’s soothing voice in my head gave me a surge of anger, enough to propel me upright, set me walking again. Stick it, Barry. Stick your positive thinking somewhere painful.

I was back at the library, and I tried again, this time turning left at the storeroom. And suddenly I was there. The door to the cabin was ahead of me.

I felt in my pocket for the key, feeling the adrenaline zipping up and down every neuron in my body. What if Richard was already back?

Don’t be the loser cowering behind the door again, Lo
.
You can do this.

I shoved the key in the door and opened it, faster than fast, ready to drop and run if there was someone in the room.

But there was not. It was empty, the doors to the bathroom and adjoining bedroom standing wide.

My legs gave way, and I sank to my knees on the thick carpet, something very close to sobs rising in my throat. But I wasn’t home and dry. I wasn’t even halfway there. Purse. Purse, money, coat, and then off this horrible boat forever.

I closed the door behind me, stripped the kimono off, hurrying now that there was no one to see my feverish movements, and in my bra and knickers searched through Anne’s drawers. The first trousers I tried were jeans, and impossibly tight, I couldn’t get them halfway up my thighs, but I found a pair of Lycra sports leggings I could get into, and an anonymous black top. Then I put the kimono back on over the top, belted it tight, and adjusted the headscarf in the mirror where it had slipped.

I wished I could wear dark glasses, but glancing out the window I saw it was pitch-black—and the clock on Anne’s bedside table said quarter past eleven. Oh God, Richard would be back any minute.

I pushed my feet back into Carrie’s espadrilles, and then looked around for the purse she had described. There was nothing on the immaculately polished dressing table, but I opened a couple of the drawers at random, wondering if the maid might have put it away for safekeeping. The first drawer was empty. The second I tried had a clump of patterned headscarves, and I was about to close it again, when I noticed there seemed to be something beneath the pile of soft silks, a hard, flat shape among the gossamer-thin wraps. I pushed them aside—and my breath caught in my throat.

Nestled beneath was a handgun. I had never seen one in real life before, and I froze, half expecting it to go off without even being touched, questions clamoring at the back of my skull. Should I take it? Was it loaded? Was it
rea
l
?
Stupid question—I doubted anyone would bother to keep a replica handgun in their cabin.

As for whether I should take it . . . I tried to imagine myself pointing a gun at someone, and failed. No, I couldn’t take it. Not least because I had no idea how to use it and was more likely to shoot myself than anyone else, but more because I
had
to get the police to believe and trust me, and turning up to a station with a stolen, loaded gun in my pocket was the best way to ensure I was locked up, not listened to.

Half reluctantly, I pulled the scarves back over the gun, shut the drawer, and resumed looking for the purse.

I found it at last in the third drawer down, a brown leather wallet, rather worn, laid carefully on top of a file of papers. Inside were half a dozen credit cards and a wad of bills—I didn’t have time to count them, but they looked like easily the five thousand kroner Carrie had mentioned, maybe more. I slid it into the pocket of the leggings, beneath the kimono, and then took one last look round the room, ready to leave. Everything was as I’d found it, except for the purse. It was time to go.

I took a deep breath, readying myself, and then opened the door. And as I did so, I heard voices in the corridor. For a minute I wavered, wondering whether to brazen it out. But then one of the voices said, with a touch of flirtation, “Of course, sir, anything I can do to ensure your satisfaction. . . .”

I didn’t wait to hear any more. I shut the door with a stealthy click, dimmed the lights, and stood in the darkness with my back to the solid wood, my heart going a mile a minute. My fingers were cold and prickly, and my legs felt weak, but it was my heart—my heart, racing crazily out of control, a panicked stampede of a beat—that threatened to overwhelm me. Fuck fuck fuck, I couldn’t have a panic attack now!

Breathe, Laura. One. . . . Two. . . .

Shut the fuck up! I had no idea whether the scream was inside my head, but somehow, with a huge effort, I managed to peel myself away from the door and stumble to the veranda. The door slid open, and I was outside, the cold of the September night shocking against skin that hadn’t felt fresh air for days.

I stood for a moment, my back to the glass, feeling my pulse in my temples and my throat, and my heart banging against my ribs, and then I took a deep breath and edged to one side, to where the veranda curved around the corner of the boat. I was out of sight of the window now, my back to the cold steel hull of the boat, but I saw the flash of light as the door to the corridor opened, and then the lamps in the cabin itself blazed on, illuminating the glass wall of the veranda.
Don’t come out; don’t come out,
I prayed, as I cowered in the corner of the veranda, waiting for the click and slide of the glass. But nothing happened.

I could see the reflection of the room in the glass barrier. The image was cut in half where the glass ended at rib height, and the reflection was jumbled with ghosts thrown up by the double and triple layers of glass. But I could see a man in the room, moving around. The dark silhouette of his shape moved off in the direction of the bathroom and I heard the noise of taps and the flush of a toilet, then the television came on, its blue-white flicker instantly recognizable in the glass. Above its sound, I heard the noise of a phone call, and Anne’s name, and I held my breath. Was he asking about Carrie’s whereabouts? How long before he went looking?

The phone call seemed to end, or at least he stopped talking, and I saw his shape move again as he threw himself onto the white expanse of the bed, a dark sprawl across its bright rectangle.

I waited, growing colder now, shifting from foot to foot to try to keep myself even a little warm, but not daring to move too much for fear he would see the movement reflected back at him from the same barrier I was using to spy on him. The night was unbelievably beautiful, and for the first time since I had come out here, I looked around.

We were deep inside one of the fjords, the rocky sides of the valley rising up all around us, the waters beneath black and still and unfathomably dark and deep. Far across the fjord I could see the lights of small settlements, and the lanterns of boats moored out on the still waters, but the overriding thing was the stars—clear and white and almost unbearably lovely. I thought of Carrie, down below, trapped and bleeding like an animal in a snare. . . . Please, dear God, let her be found. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to her. I would be responsible for locking her down there, leaving her to her crazy plan.

I waited, shivering helplessly now, for Richard to fall asleep. But he did not. At least he dimmed the lights slightly, but the television continued to blast away, the flickering images turning the room shades of blue and green, with sudden cuts to black. I shifted my weight again, pushing my chilly hands beneath my arms. What if he fell asleep in front of the TV? Would I know? But even if he did fall asleep, properly and deeply, I was not sure if I could summon up the courage to enter the room with a murderer, tiptoe through it while his sleeping form lay there just inches away.

What was the alternative, then? Wait until he went in search of Carrie?

And then I heard something, something that made my heart seem to stop, and then stutter back to life, twice as fast. The boat’s engine was starting up.

Panic washed over me like a cold sea wave and I tried to think—we weren’t moving yet. There was a chance the gangway was still down. I would have heard it being raised. I remembered from when we set out from Hull that the engine had hummed and thrummed for a good long time before we actually departed. But it was a ticking clock. How long did I have? Half an hour? A quarter? Perhaps less, given there were no passengers on board, no reason to hang about.

I stood there, frozen in agonized indecision. Should I make a run for it? Was Richard asleep? I couldn’t tell from the reflection in the balcony barrier—it was too blurred and indistinct.

Craning my head and moving as stealthily as I dared, I peered around the edge of the veranda door and into the silent room—but just as I did, he shifted and reached for a glass, and I whipped my head back, my heart thumping.

Fuck
. It must be one a.m. Why wasn’t he asleep? Was he waiting for Carrie? But I had to get off the ship. I
had
to.

I thought of the veranda windows, how they could be opened from the outside, how someone very brave—or very stupid—might scale the high glass wall between the verandas and gain entry to an empty cabin. Once inside I could just let myself out of cabin 2 and then make a break for the gangway. I didn’t care what story I had to spin when I got there. Somehow I would get off this boat, if not for me, then for Anne, and Carrie. No—fuck it.

For
me
.

I was getting off this boat for me—because I had done nothing to deserve this apart from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I was damned if Bullmer was going to add me to the list of women he had screwed over.

I looked down at myself, at the flowing, slippery lines of the kimono, impossible to climb in, and I untied the belt and shrugged off the soft silk. It fell to the floor with barely a whisper, and I picked it up, balled up the fabric as tight as I could, and then tossed it over the privacy screen, where it landed with a soft, barely perceptible
flump
.

Then I looked up at the glass screen, towering above me, and swallowed.

I was never going to be able to climb the privacy screen itself, that was clear. At least not without some serious equipment and/or a ladder. But the barrier over the sea—that I probably could climb. It was rib height, and I was flexible enough to get one leg up and over and pull myself to sit astride it, and from there I could use the privacy screen to stand up.

There was just one problem. It was over the sea.

I’m not phobic about water—at least, I never used to be. But as I looked over the edge at the dark waves, sucking hungrily at the ship’s prow, I felt my stomach shift and roll in a way not unlike seasickness.

Shit. Was I really going to do this? Apparently, yes.

I wiped my sweaty palms on the back of the Lycra leggings and took a deep breath. It wouldn’t be easy—I wasn’t fooling myself. But it
was
possible. Carrie had done it, after all, to get into my cabin. If she could do it, so could I.

I flexed my fingers, and then very slowly I hooked one leg up onto the glass overlooking the sea, and using all the strength in my weak caged-hen muscles, I pulled myself up so I was sitting astride the wall of glass. To the left of me was the cabin, its curtains pulled back, the veranda doors framing me in full view for anyone who turned their head to see. To my right was a sheer drop to the waters of the fjord below—I had no idea how far, but from this angle it looked like the equivalent of a two- or three-story house. I was not sure which side was more frightening—I just had to hope that my movements didn’t attract Richard’s attention. I swallowed and gripped the slippery glass with my legs, trying to get my courage up for the next step. I hadn’t done the hard bit yet. That was coming.