by David Evans
He slowly opened the small hull door, so it was open enough for him to see out, but not open enough to draw the attention of any tender boats in the area. The waterline was not more than ten feet below his position. On looking around, he could see there were no tenders bringing back early visitors. Although the tenders would draw up to gantries on the other side of the vessel to offload their human cargo. It was always a possibility when there were too many tenders for the available gantries that they would lay off on the other side of the hull until some of the tenders had departed from their positions.
On peering down into the crystal-clear water, Sebastian could see that the water extended well below the hull. However, even if he weighed Frau Shultz down, the water was so clear her body may be sighted or discovered if she floated out. The water was too clear.
He decided then that he would hide the body under the bags of rubbish and come back later when it was getting dark, but before the garbage porters started their nightly duties. By the time he had achieved this task he was matted in grime, blood, and a mixture of human and food waste. He washed himself down with the hose in the warm seawater and stood there with just his swimming shorts on. As he had done with his body, he rinsed his clothes in the seawater to remove the blood. He placed the clothes into a waste bag he opened and pushed it down amongst the pile of over a hundred refuse bags. Sebastian had retrieved Frau Shultz’s cabin key and washed off the blood.
After the exertions of hiding the dead weight and the warm flow of seawater over his body, he took a few minutes to settle his pulse down. Sebastian did not want to look flushed or overexerted on his way back to his cabin.
Quietly he closed the waste hold door and walked up the two flights of internal stairs before emerging from the door with the ‘No Entrance’ sign on the front. He walked from the restricted area, and it was only seconds until he was seen by staff and by a cruise guest. A man walking through the corridor in his swimming costume does not raise suspicion or alarm on a cruise ship, Sebastian knew; it was an everyday occurrence. Sebastian walked back to his cabin; no problem, just another guy who had been for a swim on the Promenade Deck.
After a quick shower to remove the salt from the seawater that he had rinsed himself down with. Once dry he put on fresh shorts and a Bermuda shirt and went back to the tender area in readiness for the tenders returning.
It had been three hours since he had left the tender station; it had felt a lot quicker to Sebastian. He was due back at the arrival deck in one hour, as the half-day excursions would be returning within the next hour. And he would be there to greet them. Sebastian went back early to the unmanned station.
Before Frau Shultz was allowed on the ship on embarkation, there had been several formalities she would have had to complete to ensure the company’s procedures had been followed.
In the embarkation hall, she would have an imprint of her credit card taken, and a check to see that she had sufficient balance on it would be made. Then she would have her photograph taken, and the image transferred to a database on-board the ship. She would then be issued a cabin key; the key would also act as her on-board embarkation and disembarkation pass. Every time she got on or off the ship, she would be identified by inserting the pass into a computer terminal.
Each time she bought a drink at the bar the key would be swiped, and her photograph would appear on the screen in the bar till; it was an on-board credit card.
Sebastian knew there was one flaw in the system; the embarkation and disembarkation system for excursions merely recorded access and egress from the ship; it did not record the time the individual left or came back on-board.
Sebastian retrieved Frau Shultz’s pass and inserted it into the terminal. For all intents and purposes, Frau Shultz had exited the ship and disembarked. Minutes later, the key was cut into ribbons and deposited on the tide of the Caribbean Sea.
That evening at 6 pm he heard the announcement over the on-board speakers.
“Mrs Shultz, report to the Purser’s Office, immediately.”
Sebastian knew this was standard procedure if someone was back late or had not returned past the last boarding time. He knew that soon they would be telling her husband she had not returned from shore and, as per company policy, they would not wait and put themselves behind schedule. Anyone late back would have to make their way to the next port of call and rejoin the ship there, obviously on their own dollar.
Sebastian was almost sure that no matter what the argument was that had caused Herr Shultz to go ashore alone, he would not stay on the ship while his wife was not on-board. He would think her late back and would want to be there for her. Once it was clear she was not on-board, Herr Shultz did decide to go ashore to look for her. He was put on the pilot boat and taken ashore.
Once the ship was on its way and the light began to fade, Sebastian went out again in his swimming shorts, with a towel draped over his shoulders. Once inside the garbage room, he opened the hull door and observed the waves swelling up to about two yards below the hull door.
Sebastian retrieved the large refuse bag containing the remains of Frau Shultz. He dragged her lifeless form out of the bag and to the door and waited. The ship rose and fell on the swell, and the water line changed with each cycle. Sebastian waited until the ship fell and quickly slipped the body out of the bag and through the door.
The draw of water from two massive bronze propellers is enormous, and no sooner had she entered the water than she was drawn to the water flow towards the propellers like a magnet. There was a slight shudder and a little kick, and Sebastian knew she had met this kiss of the giant bronze propellers. The body would now be in edible chunks for the reef sharks.
“Job done,” he whispered to himself.
If anyone had night vision glasses, and a bird’s eye, sea-level view, which was not possible in the light conditions, they may have spotted the flush of red water, the dismembered arm, part of a foot with two toes and half a heel, for that was about all that was left of Frau Shultz.
While Herr Shultz was pleading with the police to find his wife in the Dominican Republic, Sebastian was playing with vigour in the piano bar. He seemed to really enjoy himself. He was on top of the world.
Several weeks later, and three nights spent in a mosquito-infested hotel, Manfred Shultz returned home with the finger of suspicion hanging over him, as Frau Shultz’s body had never been found. Certainly the Dominican police thought he was the prime suspect, but they had no evidence to detain him.
His team leader back in Munich thought it highly unlikely Manfred had anything to do with his wife going missing. They had sent a detective from their team over to assist, and he could not find one sighting of them together on the island. The detective found it strange that no one at the port or on the island had seen or could remember Frau Shultz.
Manfred Shultz had been drinking far too much beer for the past three months. He had been part of a mission hunting armed thieves who had held up a jeweller. They had cornered the remnants of the gang at the central train station in Munich. They had their sights trained on them. One of the gangs, smaller and lighter than the others, and still wearing a black ski mask, turned towards Manfred and his team, the gun glistening and visible.
Manfred Shultz had not thought twice before shooting two bullets into the chest area of the criminal. Once they had detained the rest of the gang, who gave up readily after the shooting, he moved over to the body, which was outstretched at the top of the entrance to the subway lines. Travellers in the area had screamed and backed away from the entrance to one of the many food outlets in the station.
Shultz removed the mask; it was a young girl of Albanian descent, no more than thirteen years old. He just stood there, motionless, staring as the blood seeped around his boots.
German beer is good; too good. But it could not take away the pain Shultz felt. The guilt over the child, along with the guilt over arguing with his wife before she went missing, consumed him. He knew three things; he did not
kill her, and she would have never killed herself and murdered their unborn child, and thirdly, the beer was not helping, so he had stopped his drinking.
Manfred Shultz was six feet of muscle, with an athletic build, fair hair, blue eyes, and Germanic features. Post 9/11 he had run away at sixteen and joined the Foreign Legion. He was annoyed that the German Army could not participate in any retaliation, and he wanted revenge. His older brother had been in the South Tower when it collapsed. Manfred had trained and fought with the Legion over Algeria and other countries they were not supposed to be in. He returned in 2005 and joined the elite squad of police.
Time was cruel; a lot had happened in a year. He had passed the police entrance and subsequent German Special Forces training. He had gunned down a child, married his childhood sweetheart, and lost his wife and unborn baby. Now the first week back on duty here he was, in the same train station he had shot the young girl. Had the shooting given him post-traumatic stress syndrome, or had it been the loss of his wife? Manfred knew he had reached the bottom of the barrel and did not have the energy for the fight back up. Manfred stepped off the platform as the 8:28 am to Nuremberg was leaving the station, wanting the pain to stop. Large hands grappled at his shoulders and dragged him back from the rail lines. Manfred turned to see the sympathetic look from the station master; Sebastian had not claimed another victim.
Chapter Ten
Cutler landed at Seattle Airport tired and irritable. He was met at immigration control by Conan Dreyfuss, a Secret Service agent based in the city of Seattle. Brad Hemmingway, Cutler’s head of department, had arranged the assistance for Cutler, knowing his prodigy would need as much help as possible when he arrived.
Dreifuss brought Cutler up to date on the location of the Oceanic Discoverer, the ship Elisa had disappeared from. The ship was due in Vancouver within the next four hours. Dreyfuss relayed to Cutler that his parents had insisted on staying in Juneau while the sea search continued.
He did not have to tell Cutler that thirty minutes after entering the water she would have been dead from the intense cold of the water. Instead, he just raised his palms upwards in a gesture of futility.
Dreyfuss stayed with him until Cutler boarded the 11:30 am flight to Vancouver, a flight of less than one hour in duration.
He had organized a Canadian police officer to pick Cutler up from Vancouver International Airport and drive him to the seaport where the ship would be docking in the next hour. The officer tried to engage Cutler in banal conversation; he gave up trying when it became apparent that his charge was not in the best of moods for trivia.
Cutler watched the ship dock from beneath the overhang of the roof of the embarkation hall. The Victoria rain put a watery curtain on the scene, with high visibility coats hanging onto ropes and securing the boat the quay.
Accompanied by the Canadian police officer, Cutler was able to bypass the security checks and they walked through the baggage reclaim area, which was a big, empty space with a roof and gray aluminum panels for walls. There was a hive of activity as dockside porters offloaded the never-ending stream of small, medium, large, extra-large, massive, blue, brown, and polka-dotted bags. The bags had been placed in lanes in readiness for the guests to depart.
Immediately Cutler’s spirits dropped, as he had not realized this was the disembarkation port, the final destination where everyone left the ship. He thought the last port would be Seattle, the port from where all the guests had embarked.
Cutler bypassed the long, high escalator and took the stairs up to the main terminus. He needed security passes to gain permission to enter the vessel from the immigration officers on duty. The police officer remained in the terminus, relieved that he was able to get a hot cup of tea.
Cutler was escorted the short distance across the enclosed gantry, which rose at a slight angle to emerge on the ship’s fourth deck. He was escorted to the captain’s quarters. Cutler had to wait for half an hour before the captain came down and invited him into his office adjoining his quarters.
The captain was a stocky man, his perfectly crisp white shirt straining at the seams. Captain Jjordsen was of Viking descent and followed a long tradition of Nordic captains. He sported a silver beard and moustache, which was also the colour of his dense, cropped hair.
Captain Jjordsen confirmed everything Cutler had been told previously: Elisa had been on the ship, and then she was gone the following morning. The ship had been searched thoroughly, and the captain assured Cutler she was not anywhere on the vessel. There was no evidence of any foul play. And he had an open mind as to the cause of her disappearance.
Cutler probed Captain Jjordsen on the siting of any CCTV cameras. To Cutler, it appeared that there were cameras which pointed down the port and starboard side of the hulls in case of illegal boardings and yes, because of the odd suicide attempt. However, on further questioning, it was apparent that there were blind spots, so the captain admitted. The CCTV had been reviewed, and although there were sightings of Elisa in the common areas, there was certainly none of her jumping off the ship.
Captain Jjordsen angered Cutler immensely by acknowledging that the only people who had been questioned over Elisa’s disappearance were her cabin steward and Cutler’s parents. However, Jjordsen did stress that most of the crew had been involved in the search for Elisa.
“Captain Jjordsen, I know my sister would not commit suicide, so that leaves an accident or murder. If she was killed, it is highly likely that the murderer may have been a guest or an employee, most of whom can disembark this vessel today without being investigated!” Cutler seethed.
“Mr Cutler, I’m very sorry for your loss, if indeed she is dead. We have two thousand guests leaving today, eight hundred members of staff, and you want them interviewed? You do the math. You would need two hundred officers all day, every day, for the next week, and that’s just for interviews!”
Cutler knew he was hitting a barrier, a barrier he could neither influence nor order around. He could argue till he was red in the face; the captain was not about to launch a major investigation which would cost his company millions of dollars, and anger a couple of thousand guests, for what they probably thought was probably a suicide.
Max thanked Captain Jjordsen for his time, knowing he might need more information from him in the future. He did not want to leave him with bad blood between them.
No sooner had Cutler disembarked the ship than the police officer sped him back to the airport with his blues and twos flashing.
To get to where he wanted to go, Cutler had to hire a seaplane from an Alaskan charter based at Vancouver International Airport. The operations manager of Orca Airlines warned him to delay the flight for a couple of hours due to bad weather, but Cutler could not wait. Luckily for Cutler, Captain Mantis had been flying seaplanes in this part of the world for twenty-five years, and a little storm would not stop him from flying.
Cutler’s cup was refilled by the co-pilot from the thermos he had wedged down the side of his seat. The plane see-sawed over the large glacier below, then back out above the open sea of the Gulf of Alaska.
Cutler sat in silence, weighing up what he knew already, which was not a great deal. If someone goes missing on a cruise ship, the local authorities investigate. By the time they investigate their possible crime scene, it has moved to another location, along with any suspects, of which there is a poll of thousands. Any one of the guests could be a killer, and they will have dispersed to the four corners of the world. The easiest solution all round is a proclamation of a suicide or accident.
Rolls of black, angry clouds rose thousands of feet above the red 1983 Cessna 4 Turbo U206 Amphibian seaplane. Suddenly the plane dropped as the currents that lifted the plane ceased to exist, and then rose several hundred feet as the plane bounced off the rising bubble of air. Then it was gone, and the plane plummeted. It felt like the biggest rollercoaster Cutler had ever been on.
Cutler balanced his coffee in his hand as best he could, as the plane tr
ied to maintain ten thousand feet across the Gulf of Alaska. Cutler needed the coffee, he had not slept in the two days since he had left Munich after learning the devastating news. He hardly registered the burning sensation in his hand as the seaplane lost another five hundred feet in height in a split-second.
The plane fought against the winds, and it seemed impossible for the pilot to land it in any chosen spot, but land it he did, right alongside the quay in Juneau in the sea harbour port. Abundant numbers of seals swam around when the propellers of the plane ceased to rotate.
“Welcome to Juneau, Mr Cutler. You may want to button up your coat. The temperature is around fifty-one degrees,” the pilot announced.
This was Cutler’s first visit to the Alaskan city, and Juneau was not what Cutler had expected. National Geographic was Cutler’s only previous exposure to the state, fragmented from its homeland by the country of Canada.
Cutler thought of glaciers and whales, and he was not disappointed, as they were certainly in abundance. The pilot had pointed out a pod of humpback whales blowing water from their blowholes as the plane had come in low over Stephens Passage on the way to Juneau. As for glaciers and mountains, the beautiful Mount Juneau perched over the city, with remnants of snow from the harsh winter still in evidence.
What Cutler did not expect was the homeless shelter and Alcoholics Anonymous centre next to the largest pub in town. It may be a pristine environment, but it is contaminated with human beings, Cutler thought.
Stephen Cutler was a tall, erect man, with large shoulders and cropped black hair. He did not look tall today when Max met his father in the reception area of the Bears Paw Hotel. Stephen Cutler was stooped; it had only been a few months since Max had seen him, and he was shocked by what he saw—his black hair had turned white.
