THURSDAY'S ORCHID (17 page)

It wasn’t until about an hour before dinner that Flint finally terminated his enquiry. Pete’s body was carried unceremoniously down to the galley and placed in the bulk food freezer. The cook wasn’t pleased and threatened strike action, screaming for the body to be taken away. But there
was no other place to store it, and there was no risk to the food. He hadn’t died of a disease. And he was wrapped in the blanket and a couple of large plastic garbage bags.

The crew wanted a burial at sea, and for once I agreed with them. But th
e body was to be taken ashore at Singapore for an autopsy. I hoped it would be nothing more than a mere formality and that they wouldn’t be in any sort of a hurry.

Dinner was almost a repeat
of the mid-day misery. The diners were hungry now, but the thought of the corpse in the food freezer was enough to turn all but the captain and myself off the meal.

After my coffee
I adjourned to the lounge with those of the officers who weren’t on duty. It was Chinese video tapes again, so I settled down to a few stiff whiskies and challenged myself to a couple of games of darts.

At ten-fifteen I dec
ided it was time to go snooping and said goodnight to the other loungers, leaving them to their sing-song music and kung-fu movie. I think they were pleased to see me go, for conversation had been subdued the whole evening. I picked up a fresh bottle of whisky and went out the door, giving the impression that the whole thing had been too much for me; that I was exhausted.

I had acted totally distressed at din
ner, even though I had been one of the few to go through the whole three courses. I had made a point of telling the steward that it was a terrible thing to happen; one I would remember for the rest of my days; that I was going to drink myself into oblivion and forget about it for a few hours. He was a gossip and I felt sure he would let the crew know that I would be out of everybody’s way for the rest of the night.

I closed the cabin door and drew the thin curtain across the porthole.
It only took a minute to sneak out on deck and check whether it was still possible to see in. It was, but only vaguely, and with the light out it would be impossible to tell whether I was in the bunk or not.

I left the light on and poured myself a whisky, or that’s what anybody looking through the window would have thought. I had substituted the fresh bottle for an old one, filled with a mixture of water and black coffee.

I sat there for an hour, staring at the wall and sipping the bogus whisky. A third of the bottle later I undressed, turned off the light and climbed into the bunk. I lay in the dark for another fifteen minutes, watching the faint circle of light behind the curtain, watching for any sign of movement.

I was sure I had been watched as I sat with the small glass tumbler gripped tightly in one hand. There was nothing to indicate it, no sounds of footsteps on the deck, no scraping as he leaned against the bulkhead, but there was that old feeling in the small of my back. And I couldn’t be certain, but I was sure there had been a quick movement as I had turned out the light, as if a head had suddenly been drawn away from the porthole.

I dressed hurriedly: an old pair of jeans, navy-blue sneakers and a dark roll-neck sweater pulled up to cover the lower part of my face. I opened the door without a sound, crept out into the passage and along to the door leading to the deck. I saw no-one. I went back to the cabin, picked up my torch and locked the door on my way out again.

It was eerie.
The whole of the accommodation section was ablaze with lights, but there was no sound except the hum of the engines, and no sign of life. Those on duty were either down in the engine room or high up on the bridge. The rest were all asleep. I was just on the point of slipping out of the main doors on to the deck, when I heard a cough and footsteps approaching down the internal staircase.

I was out through the door in a flash and into the darkness of the companionway leading up to the next deck. The noise faded away as I closed the door. I waited a few minutes, but nobody emerged.

Making my way with the utmost stealth I crept down the ladder to the main deck, feeling like an idiot – and scared stiff. Apart from the sound of water slipping beneath our bows, and the low rumble of the main engines, it was deathly quiet.

I moved up to the main hatch
, sneaking along under the lip of the coaming like a thief in the night, then around the first winch-house and past the forward hatch; the hum of the engines fading the further I moved towards the bow.

Crash!

I jumped as the noise smashed out above my head, and raced for my life, up around the hatch and into the protection of the bow companionway; the one Pete had been thrown from. Huddled in silence, I waited for him to reveal himself. I was prepared to wait as long as my nerves would allow, which I didn’t think was going to be very long.

Crash!

The noise rang out again with a dull thud, still coming from above my head, but on the opposite side of the hatch. I peered upwards into the mass of cargo-handling gear as the noise sounded again, but softer this time. One of the crane booms had lifted from its bracket and was crashing against the side of the winch-house at the end of each roll of the ship.

Perhaps I should have stayed in my cabin and drunk real whisky.

I sat on the deck and took long slow breaths, trying to calm myself. My nerves had never let me down before; but I had never been trapped on a ship with a killer before, a killer who could choose his own time, his own place.

The whole ship seemed like a dark island, with the devil and me the only inhabitants, and with no way off for one of us, and all the aces in the devil’s hand.

After a minute or two of deep breathing I was ready to go on again. It had to be done. I searched the deck but there wasn’t a soul to be seen; and no sound that should not have been there, just the creaking of the hull.

The door to the paint locker was still ajar, as it had been during the afternoon. I stepped inside, keeping my back against the door as I pulled it to me, closing out the moonlight. The steel
vault became pitch black. All I could hear was the sound of my own breathing and the steady thump of my heart. I was certain I was alone, that he was not there waiting for me, but I was still afraid to draw my back away from the protection of the cold hard door.

The light from my torch made a mockery of my fear.
The locker was empty – of people that is; but otherwise a shambles: a clutter of tins of paint, coils of rope, drums of chain, wire hawsers, shackles and tools. There was some order in the chaos, but not much. The chain was on one side, the paint up forward, and the rest just lying where it had been dropped.

There were a dozen things that could have been used to bash Pete across the neck: a heavy shackle, some steel bars and even a couple of hammers. I picked up several and they all had traces of grease, but then so did everything in the locker. I was wasting my time, and my nerves.

The crew were probably in and out of this locker all day. It was no use looking for something the killer might have left behind. Anything lying on the floor could just as well have been dropped by any one of a dozen people, and each item would show at least twenty sets of fingerprints.

Searching for the murder weapon
was useless anyway. There wouldn’t be any blood on it. The skin on his neck hadn’t been broken. There might be the imprint of the weave of the material fixed into the grease, but I was no forensic scientist, and to establish which object had been used would take a laboratory full of equipment.

I sho
uld have thought it through with more care. Better still, I should have taken a casual look into the locker during the day. It would have been enough to satisfy my curiosity.

As I turned back to the door, my wrist hit one of the pillars supporting the deck above my head and the torch flew out of my hand, the light spinning and whirling until it crashed to the steel floor. Pitch-black darkness enveloped everything. I heard the torch roll, but to where I couldn’t tell.

I was panic-stricken. The door was behind me. Or was it? I crouched on the floor and began to creep around in a circle, trying to reorientate myself. I touched the pillar again. The door had to be behind me! I moved backwards until I felt it pressing into my heels, and then stood up slowly, running my hands around the edge, finding the handle.

For all I cared the bastard could have been outside behind the door, waiting for me to emerge. He would have had to have been quick. I was through that door like a greyhound out of a trap and didn’t stop until I was back at the side of the winch-house, shaking like a leaf, drops of moisture clouding my vision.

The trembling slowly subsided; my breath returned and my head stopped spinning, and once again I was capable of rational thought. The torch! Where the hell was the blasted torch? I steeled myself to return to the locker and walked back, step by reluctant step. But the moonlight hardly penetrated past the open doorway. The torch would have to stay where it was until I had a chance to search for it in the daylight. I didn’t want to lose it. I’d had it for years. It was a present from George, inscribed with some sentimental words of wisdom.

I must have been gone from my cabin for an hour or more. It was getting late; and if I was caught on deck by anyone at this time of night I might have some explaining to do, particularly dressed the way I was.

I turned away from the paint locker and made my way back along the deck, keeping in shadow wherever I could. The lifting gear still crashed against the winch-house, but this time it was a comforting sound, something to focus on. The nearer I got to the accommodation section, the louder became the rumbling of the engines: a familiar sound that spoke of men and machinery. I was coming out from the unknown, back into the realm of the living.

Stealth had gone by the ti
me I reached the upper-deck hatchway leading into the ship, to the safety of my cabin. I burst into the passage, fumbled for my key and threw open the cabin door, ready to meet anyone hiding there. The cabin was as I had left it: the curtain drawn across the porthole, the roll of blankets still beneath the top sheet.

The glass of real whisky hardly touched the sides of my throat as I tossed it down, two-handed. And, by some miracle, it stayed there; although it was touch and go for one horrible second.

Hanging my sweater across the porthole to completely block out the night, I turned on the light and inspected myself. The knees of my jeans were a mess, but nothing that a good wash wouldn’t fix. Apart from the dust and the dirt I had picked up, there was nothing to show that I had been creeping about the deck in the dark – except for my trembling hands and pounding heart.

The poor security of the cabin worried me. I was tired, w
orn out, and scared. If I fell off to sleep it would be a deep one and there would be no way I would wake fast enough to deal with an intruder. He could be through the door and on to me before I could even raise the sheets. There was a lock, but I couldn’t trust it, and the bastard probably had a key. The one chair I had propped against the door the previous night was not enough. I sat on the edge of the bunk, sipping at the whisky.

I placed the easy chair alongside the desk
fixed to the wall, and the other chair next to that, and then wedged one of my suitcases between the chair and the door. It made a tight fit. I tried the door, unlocking and jerking it, but it didn’t budge; and, just in case he was more dexterous than I gave him credit for, I propped the water jug on top of the suitcase. It would be impossible to get the door open without sending the empty jug crashing to the floor, making enough noise to either wake me, or to scare him away.

My security arrangements taken care of, I crawled into bed with another stiff whisky under my belt and was soon in that deep sleep.

I looked across at the sun shining on the other side of the porthole and realised that I had slept the rest of the night without interruption. The clatter of cups reached my ears as the Indian steward knocked gently on the door and slipped his key into the lock. As a paying passenger, I was one of the privileged few who received a morning cup of coffee; although not every morning. It depended on his mood of the day; and usually I just called for him to come in, but this time there was a loud yell as I told him to wait. It was a mad sprint to remove the suitcase and throw it under the bunk. The two chairs were flung across the room. He entered to find me, stark naked, holding the water jug. I had been too tired to bother with pyjamas.

He didn’t bat an eyelid, and sneaked a quick look around the cabin, as though he were a hotel waiter suspecting a guest of smuggling a female in for the night.

On his way out he took one last look at my nakedness, pausing for an instant. A questioning glance, as though he had never seen one of such a pale colour before.

Breakfast was more than welcome.
I was ravenous. The fear on the darkened deck had used up reserves of energy that had to be restored. I was glad to be back amongst the officers. There was safety in numbers. It was a more cheerful meal than dinner the night before. They were starving now, and thoughts of Pete laid out in the freezer were beginning to fade.

Flint was his miserable self again, but his temper had cooled. I had no doubt that his private stock
had taken a considerable punishment before he had finally dropped off to an untroubled sleep the previous evening. The steward was happy; and I hoped it hadn’t been thoughts of my beautiful white body that broadened his smile as I sat down to eat.