by steve higgs
‘What can I do?’ he asked as he settled into the fabric.
‘I have been trying to find out more about Mr Langley but he doesn’t show up in any search engines I have tried.’ I wafted my hand at the computer screen.
‘Okay. That should be easy enough. All the passengers have their passport details recorded at central registry when they come on board so we have a manifest in the event of an emergency.’
‘I also need to find the man that was following us today. I don’t know how to do that though. Especially now that I am trapped in here and banned from leaving.’
Jermaine pursed his lips. ‘Yes, that is a little more difficult. I couldn’t see his face properly with the hat and glasses.’
‘No. I guess as a disguise, it served its purpose.’ Annoyingly so. If I saw him again, I could confront him and tear his hat off, but how could I send Jermaine to do that? Just then there was a knocking noise. I turned my head toward the door across the other side of the main living area we were in, but that was not where the sound had come from.
‘Hello,’ said Barbie to get our attention. We swung around to find that she had come in through the kitchen. ‘I got no answer at your door,’ she said to Jermaine. ‘So, I let myself in. I hope that’s okay.’ The last bit was addressed to me.
‘Join us, please,’ I replied. ‘Are you alright? Was Mr Schooner hard on you?’ I wondered if he had aimed his unpleasantness at her once he was done with me. He had displayed no concern in barking orders at her when he disturbed our lunch.
‘Oh, I’m fine. He’s not very nice, but he is like that with everyone.’
‘He sure is,’ agreed Jermaine.
Barbie was looking at me expectantly. ‘Was there something you wanted?’ I asked, unsure why she was here.
‘Oh. Well, Mr Schooner said I was to arrange some private sessions in the gym.’ I groaned internally. ‘And he said I had to have a guard with me in case you tried to kill me and escape because you had already killed Mr Langley.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Sorry to spoil the fun but I didn’t kill him.’
‘Patricia is trying to figure out what did happen,’ Jermaine interjected. ‘There’s all kinds of mystery going on here. Missing jewellery, men in disguise… It’s quite exciting,’ he said brightly.
I rolled my eyes again. ‘Exciting isn’t the word I would use. I’m accused of murder and under house arrest.’
‘Yes, right. Sorry. I got a little carried away,’ he said meekly.
Barbie held up her hand. ‘So, who is the killer?’ she asked.
‘That’s the bit I have to find out.’ Jermaine and Barbie were watching me. I stood up, gathering my thoughts as I paced a little. They were tracking me as I moved around, waiting for me to say something. ‘I think we need to first work out why he was killed. The killer could be anyone. There’s thousands of staff and guests on board so….’ I had no idea what I was talking about. I was trying to articulate coherent ideas, but I was pulling my concept of how to go about solving this mess from watching daytime detective shows like Ironside and Murder She Wrote. ‘We have to work out why someone would benefit from his death. Was it revenge? Was it motivated by love or sex?’ I was pacing back and forth, a tiny thread of an idea forming as I talked. ‘There is a man that we need to find. Jermaine and I have seen him, but we don’t know what he looks like because he was wearing a disguise. But I can tell you that he is white and probably in his fifties. He fits into this mess somehow and finding him has to be my first priority. I need your help though because I can’t leave the room.’
I was pacing back and forth as I talked and had turned to face back toward them when I realised something had been niggling me since Barbie arrived. ‘Barbie, how did you get into the suite?’
‘I came in through Jermaine’s cabin,’ she said.
‘Which is connected to my kitchen,’ I added.
‘And isn’t being guarded,’ Jermaine finished.
I locked eyes with Barbie, suddenly energised. ‘Barbie, I need a makeover.’
She clapped her hands together excitedly, ‘Yay!’ Then the excited smile was replaced by confusion. ‘Why?’ she asked.
Sneaking About
Getting out of my suite had been easier than I could have possibly imagined because there was a second door that Mr Schooner had failed to take into account. Even so, it still opened into the same wide passage as the suite’s main door which a pair of burly guards in white uniform were now standing outside.
Barbie and Jermaine had disguised me by putting me in a spare uniform from Jermaine’s closet. In many ways the outfit choice was brilliant as I had to acknowledge there were so many crew going back and forth that I never paid them any attention. Why would anyone else?
Buoyed by the hope that I was largely invisible, and coupled with the belief that, unless Mr Schooner had circulated my photograph, almost no one knew me, I was still thoroughly nervous during the twenty-four minutes it took to get from my suite to one of the on board theatres. The Aurelia, like other cruise ships to my knowledge, put on lots of different shows so Barbie and Jermaine were taking me to one of the backstage dressing rooms.
The anxiety I felt proved to have no foundation as not once did anyone spare a glance in my direction. Although, I will say that lots of eyes tracked Barbie’s progress. So many, in fact, and so often that she didn’t even notice it. As you might imagine, the eyes all belonged to scumbag men and several of them made their ogling so overt that we heard a complaint or, in two cases, a slap on the arm from the man’s wife.
It had been my intention to have Barbie dress me up to look far younger. Maybe add a wig and some glasses to disguise my face, but the uniform worked so well we all agreed I should stick with it.
Barbie said, ‘I still think we need to change your hair and face a little.’
‘I think I there are some wigs in one of the cupboards,’ Jermaine added helpfully before ducking out to see what he could find.
Left alone with Barbie, I felt a need to express my thanks. Both of them were putting their jobs in jeopardy. ‘I can’t thank you enough for helping me, Barbie.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she replied.
‘It really isn’t. You could get into hot water if Mr Schooner discovers you smuggled me out.’
Barbie shrugged. She had been applying some make up to my eyes but stopped to say, ‘I had considered that. Fortunately for me, people see a pretty blonde woman and assume I am stupid. If Mr Schooner quizzes me, I will dazzle him with my dumbest smile and giggle. You would not believe how many men fall for it.’
As she went back to disguising my face, I asked her a question, ‘So, what’s the deal with you and Jermaine? How did you get to be friends?’
‘Oh, Jermaine is just the best,’ she grinned, ‘We came aboard the same day just over a year ago and both got lost and arrived late to Mr Schooner’s induction brief. He made us stand up in front of everyone else at the edge of the stage for an hour. I guess we bonded over that. Isn’t it just great having a gay BFF though?’ she asked.
‘I, ah. I don’t really know any gay men other than Jermaine. We don’t get many overtly homosexual men where I live.’
‘Well, it is,’ she stated knowingly. ‘They don’t want anything from you. You don’t want anything from them. You can talk about clothes and makeup and boys. It’s really cool. He even has the greatest advice about sex. He knows just what to do with a boy’s junk, because, you know, he’s got one. Once, he told me to…’
Just that second Jermaine came back in. He seemed nervous and out of breath, but he was holding a plastic bag that appeared to have a cat in it.
‘Ladies,’ he said in greeting. Then he reached his hand into the bag and with a flourish and a, ‘Ta-dah!’ produced what turned out to not be a cat but was instead a wig.
Of dreadlocks.
‘Um,’ I started.
‘It’s the best I could do,’ he explained. ‘It will hide your hair.’
‘Yes, bu
t won’t I then look like Bob Marley’s white aunt?’
He shrugged. I looked at Barbie for her opinion, but all I got from her was another shrug.
‘Okay, let’s see what it looks like.’ Barbie took the hairpiece, came around behind me and slid it on. It certainly covered all my hair. It also made me look ridiculous. ‘This won’t work,’ I said it as I took it off.
Thankfully, both my companions agreed.
‘So, what do we do?’ asked Jermaine.
‘How about a hat?’
‘Staff don’t wear hats,’ he replied.
‘The chefs do,’ Barbie pointed out.
Then an idea popped into my head. I had to find the mystery man. A man who could be anywhere on board the world’s largest ocean liner and might even be wearing a different ridiculous disguise the next time I saw him, so where was the best place to look for him? At dinner. He had to eat, so at meal times I could be in the restaurants. The staff in the restaurants were the wait staff. There would be no reason for me to be in there unless I was disguised as one of them but then I would look like me. But dressed as a chef, I could hide my hair. It just might work.
‘Barbie, do you know any of the chefs well enough to borrow their clothes?’
She thought about that for a moment. ‘Brian seems to have a thing for me. I can ask him.’
‘Ok then,’ I replied, ‘Let’s find Brian.’
Mystery Man
I couldn’t say I felt confident now that I was by myself, but I had been the one to concoct the plan, so I didn’t see how I could back out at this point. All of the restaurants, with the exception of the upper-deck, were accessible by all guests. The upper-deck was reserved for the special guests staying in the top two decks of suites. I hadn’t known this myself until Jermaine and I had been brainstorming where best to hang out and look for the mystery man. Since he had been in the upper-deck restaurant last night, it stood to reason he must be in one of the best suites and might therefore be reasonably expected to return.
Let’s just say I had bet all the money on black and didn’t have another play if he failed to show. The bit I hadn’t counted on was how much I would stand out. I was dressed as a chef, so to the guests filing in and seeing the wonderful spread of food I looked like I belonged, but there were other staff wearing the same uniform and they were all doing things. There was a carvery, there was a fresh sushi bar where guests surrounded the two chefs working there and got to watch the mastery taking place. There was a Chinese kitchen set up in a corner where flames shot up almost continually because the chefs there were adding flare and excitement to what they were doing. I was just milling about near the entrance, hoping I could catch a glimpse of the mystery man when he came in.
If he came in.
Jermaine and Barbie had seen me to the door of the restaurant before withdrawing, wishing me luck and probably praying I would not get caught so they themselves would not be exposed as my accomplices.
Twenty minutes passed as I greeted guests when they noticed me and I tried to look like I belonged.
‘What are you doing?’ asked a voice from behind me.
I turned to find another man in chefs clothing staring down at me. He looked grumpy and a bit sweaty and he had a fat belly that made his apron stick out like it was hiding a fuel tank. His accent was German, but his English came out fluently. I opened my mouth to start lying but he held up his hand to silence me.
‘I don’t care. Reinhart sent you from the second deck galley, right? You know we are short staffed, so why it is I find you hiding out here when I need you working? That dick. I knew he would send me someone useless.’ He grabbed my arm around the bicep as he turned away and dragged me after him. I could say I resisted but I didn’t because he weighed at least twice as much as me and doing so would have caused a scene and drawn unwanted attention.
Ten seconds later I was shoved behind the sushi counter. ‘I need Thomas in the kitchen,’ he said as he indicated his head to one of the men. The man quickly finished what he was doing, passed the freshly made green roll thingies to the customer in front of him and darted away clearly sensing the older man’s lack of patience. ‘You can make sushi, right?’ Mr Grumpy asked me. He didn’t wait for an answer though, he had other things on his mind.
‘I’ll take a California roll, please.’
I looked up to find a thin, posh-looking lady with an upper-class English accent staring at me. Around her neck was a string of pearls that looked like they should cost more than a car. I couldn’t see her foot, but the way her lips were pursed made me think she was tapping it with impatience.
‘Just one moment,’ I begged while I went to the sink behind me to wash my hands. I had attended a sushi class with Maggie once about three years ago. She had booked it because she thought it would be a fun thing to do and it had been, although what I remembered now was that rolling sushi was far harder than it looked.
I could stall no longer so I was going to have to bluff my way through this or abandon the hope of catching the mystery man tonight.
I fixed the lady with a smile. ‘California roll, yes.’
‘Yes,’ she answered a little snippily as if I had already wasted enough of her evening.
‘What’s in that again, please?’
Next to me the young man in the chef’s uniform hissed, ‘It’s a sushi roll, rolled inside-out and containing cucumber, crab meat and avocado.’
Again, I smiled at the lady as I eyed up the ingredients in front of me trying to find the ones I needed.
‘Is this going to take long?’ the woman asked.
‘Not long at all,’ I lied.
The young man’s foot knocked into mine to get my attention. ‘I’m making one now. Copy me,’ he whispered.
So, I did. His expert hands were a blur though as he laid out rice, neatly sliced avocado and cucumber and delicately added a line of brown crab meat before twisting the bamboo mat like a seasoned professional to produce a six-inch sausage of rice which he then sliced into six perfect rounds.
He handed his over to the gentleman waiting in front of him. I offered mine to the lady, looking up as I did so to a face that looked like I had just shoved a dead pigeon in it.
‘What is that?’ she asked.
‘California roll?’ I hazarded.
‘After an earthquake,’ the man next to her said, chuckling as he departed with his perfect sushi. Mine was less than perfect. So imperfect in fact it was getting the attention of everyone standing patiently for their turn. As we all stared at the plate, I was offering the lady, the rice started to fall away from the rolls.
‘I think I’ll have a salad instead,’ she said and walked away.
The young man leaned in to whisper again, ‘I’ll make, you serve. Okay?’
I nodded vigorously and that was how it worked. Somehow, I was a sushi sous-chef on board the world’s largest ocean liner. I quickly learned that the man’s name was Ian. He was from Southampton and said he knew there was no sushi bar in the second deck restaurant and hadn’t expected me to be any good at making it.
We worked like that for half an hour before I looked up to address the next customer in line and found myself face to face with the mystery man. Despite his disguise earlier today and his ridiculous sunglasses last night, I was certain it was him. The hair matched and the shape of his face was the same. My jaw hung open for a second. He was going to recognise me.
‘I’ll have the Hamachi gunkanmaki, please, with extra wasabi.’
I stared, trying to work out what to say. Was I staring at a murderer? Was he the one that had stabbed Jack? How come he hadn’t spotted that he was talking to the same woman he was following earlier?
‘The Hamachi gunkanmaki, please,’ he repeated.
Ian kicked my foot which broke the spell finally. ‘Absolutely, sir. That will be just one moment.’ He nodded and lost interest in me, peering at his phone. I risked a question. ‘Travelling alone, sir?
He lifted his eyes to look at me thr
ough his fringe. At least he wasn’t wearing the daft hat tonight. Instead he was dressed much the same as all the other men with a jacket and tie. ‘Yes, thank you,’ he replied. That he was displeased with the question was very clear.
I pressed on anyway because I had just learned something. ‘Are you on board for a long trip, or just a short one?’ Ian kicked my foot again. This time I ignored him.
Now the mystery man lifted his head to look at me, which made me gulp. Had he just worked out that I was his quarry? He opened his mouth, but all he said was, ‘Until I get off.’
If he had identified me, he was doing nothing about it, but with a small lump of terror now forming in my throat, I attempted to deflect his suspicion and asked another question. ‘Sorry for the questions, sir. You look like someone famous.’ he frowned, ‘Are you, sir? Are you someone famous? Can I ask your name?’
‘Flint Magnum,’ he replied just as Ian handed me the mystery man’s sushi. He accepted it with a nod and was gone, forgetting me immediately. I watched as he wove his way to a table across the air-conditioned lounge. He dropped something as he went. He had been putting his wallet into his back pocket with one hand and what looked like a bank card had fallen to the deck as he did. It gave me a perfect reason for speaking to him again as I could now pick it up and hand it back to him. I spotted where he had gone and acknowledged that it was time to act.
I had to confront him now.
‘Excuse me,’ the next person in line wanted to be served. I thought about taking their order but I was only acting the role to spot my mystery man and I couldn’t think of a further use for the ruse.
‘Sorry, I’m on my break,’ I said with a quick smile as I ducked out the back of the sushi shack. Ian called after me but his voice was lost to the general din of the restaurant as I followed Flint Magnum’s path. I could see him ahead of me, just thirty feet away and began to compose in my head what I was going to say when I got to him. As I closed the distance, I scanned the floor for the bank card I saw him drop, but I couldn’t find it. I didn’t want to spend too much time looking for it because I was drawing the attention of other guests as I stared at the deck between their tables.
