He was ordinary. So ordinary that I would not have noticed him if I had not been looking. Slightly double Dutch, but it was only because I was scrutinizing every inch of film that I noticed him. He went unhindered through each crowded area because he was so ordinary. I tried to make a note of his appearance but got no further than male, about fifty, maybe thinning hair. Colour nondescript, sort of middle height, middle weight, plain features. Not a lot to go on.
He was almost invisible. It was uncanny. Maybe this was the private investigator the captain had mentioned to me? The thought popped into my head. It was one answer. Being nothing or no one was always a good disguise. I’d done it many times.
I sat back in the chair and stretched my back. It was aching, a low down sort of ache. I might not be able to stand up. That back had endured a lot of injuries in the past and last night had been one too many. Sometimes it protested.
I marked the films carefully with Tippex so that I knew where to find the invisible man if I needed to. The marks were almost invisible. Geoff Berry was not to be trusted. He’d lost more police videos than I’d had hot dinners at Maeve’s Cafe.
I took a different turning as I came out of Berry’s office. It was in the same corridor as the medical centre. I didn’t like that proximity. It was too near for comfort.
As I went back to our staterooms on A Deck, Dr Max Russell was coming in the opposite direction. It was the first time I had really taken in his appearance. First time that I’d noticed that he had blue eyes, like James. Not the same piercing, ocean blue eyes, but a softer more luminous blue, reflecting some of the sky as well as the sea. I felt a wave of Bridget Jones coming over me.
‘You’re staring,’ he said, thrown.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘You reminded me of someone I used to know.’
‘It happens. So how is our patient?’
‘The same. Nothing has changed. I don’t know what to make of it.’
We fell into step. He was not as tall as James. Heavens, did I have to compare every man to James? Dr Russell was not craggy, nor dark, nor granite-jawed, nothing like the current James Bond coming out of the sea in his swimming shorts, so why did he remind me of James? This was not the time to think about it. Snap out of it, Jordan. You’re supposed to be working.
‘Shock rarely has this effect for so long,’ he said, outside the door. ‘There are two other possible reasons. Do we know if Mrs Carter is diabetic or if she is taking medication for another illness? If, because of this keel incident, she was not able to take her regular medication, it could create a similar trauma.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, helplessly. ‘I don’t know if she was diabetic or if she was taking any medicine. I’ve never seen her take any pills. We did have separate staterooms. I didn’t watch her all the time but I could always hear her humming.’
‘Let’s go in,’ he said, waiting for me to put the key card into the door.
Suna was sitting beside Joanna, reading a magazine. Joanna had not moved. It was like an oriental trance. They said in Salem, in 1692, that those witches had put young girls into trances and some of the girls died. Nineteen men, women and two dogs were hanged for witchcraft. Arthur Miller wrote a play about it. A spasm of tragic judicial violence.
‘It’s a trance,’ I said.
‘What makes you say that?’ said Dr Russell. He began checking Joanna’s blood pressure. ‘Hello, Mrs Carter. How are you feeling today? It’s much nicer in your own stateroom, isn’t it? A hospital room is not nearly so comfortable.’
Joanna was sitting in an armchair by her balcony, the sea rushing by, the sky a glorious expanse of sparkling sunlight. The rain had cleared and left every cloud washed and Persil white. Gulliver’s floating islands. She was not looking at them. She was not looking at anything.
Suna had dressed Joanna in fresh clothes and a robe, wrapped a rug round her knees. Then she had drawn an armchair close to the balcony doors so that Joanna had a view to look at. But she remained locked into a different world.
‘Sorry,’ said Suna, as if it was her fault. ‘Nothing today.’
‘You’re doing very well,’ said Dr Russell. ‘Don’t worry. Mrs Carter will slowly recover, I’m sure. Please let me know any sign of change.’
Later I showed the doctor to the door. He turned to me, sort of hesitating, as if he didn’t say this often. ‘Feel like a drink in a bar, sometime this evening, when you are free?’ he asked.
‘This is an inappropriate conversation.’ It was meant to be a joke.
‘Do I take that as a yes?’
It couldn’t hurt. It might help. I might find out something about the invisible man and that little key. I had a feeling they were connected but no idea why.
‘That would be nice. Where shall we meet?’
‘The Bridge Bar, nine o’clock.’
I found myself nodding, agreeing. But my heart was saying please James, forgive me. You are a million miles away in Yorkshire and you didn’t reply to my last email. I email because I want to keep in touch. It’s the only way when we are so far apart. So send me an answer, man.
‘I only drink champagne,’ I said.
‘I only buy champagne,’ he said.
TEN
Honningsvaag
This was the North Cape. We had arrived, after weaving to our berth alongside the small port of Honningsvaag. The vast, unforgettable barren beauty loomed around us and was already creating moonscape fissures in my mind. I had never seen such grandeur, such a rugged wilderness, such uncluttered space.
‘Be prepared to have your mind blown,’ Max Russell had said in the Bridge Bar, the night before. ‘The North Cape plateau is stunningly beautiful. It was an English explorer, Richard Chancellor, who gave it the name North Cape.’
‘When was that?’ I asked, already high on having time to myself.
‘Fifteen fifty-three. I’ve just looked it up. I thought you’d ask. He was drifting along the coast trying to find a sea route to India.’
‘Going the wrong way, I’d say.’
I knew the doctor’s Christian name now. I had kept my fingers crossed that it was not Jack. Mirth control is not one of my strong points.
‘My name’s Max,’ he said, ordering me an Australian Merlot red wine. ‘This wine is good for your heart.’
‘You said champagne.’
‘Only joking.’
He was a pleasant companion, nothing more. We talked a lot about ships and cruising and people and then said a very proper goodnight. I was pining for James, wishing I could beam him down. We didn’t mention Joanna once which was a relief. The doctor didn’t want to talk shop.
*
The snow was six foot high either side of the road, yet the sunshine was brilliant, almost dazzling. Partly cloudy but fine — but not the temperature. I was wearing my two thermal vests, the red pashmina folded round my neck and my leather baker’s boy cap, which Jack, the owner of the amusement arcade in Latching, had bought for me in a rash moment.
It was minus three in the wind. My hands were already like ice and I was lucky. I had gloves on. There was a lot of suffering going on, red noses, blue hands. No one had realized how cold it would be. Many passengers had not brought enough warm clothes.
The coach trundled over the barren landscape, negotiating hairpin bends, snow fences, plateau snow and rocks, past reindeer nibbling at moss. It was dramatic terrain. The coach stopped for a herd of reindeer ambling across the road. They have right of way and are protected by law. These reindeer were not brown Christmas card cut-outs. They were pale grey. Sometimes they were quite unseen against the rocks.
Suna had stayed with Joanna. We had both, without saying a word, almost given up on her. There was no improvement, nothing we could do, except to keep her warm and comfortable. Even Suna was bored. She brought another load of magazines to read. I’d escaped to go on a tour which Joanna had booked. I could hardly investigate the matter locked inside the four walls of our staterooms with a trancelike victim who said not a
word.
There were rows of coaches parked in the yard outside the pavilion alongside the bleak landscape. No one was in a hurry to get out of the coaches.
Then it dawned on everyone that the North Cape Hall might be warmer by a hundred degrees. Passengers suddenly streamed off the coaches into the warmth of the newly built tourist centre to find panoramic 3-D films, food, shopping, loos, bars. Civilization. It was all under one roof. We didn’t need to go anywhere to post a card to a friend in a letterbox that would have a North Cape postmark. I sent two, one to Doris and one to Mavis. They would think I was freezing mad.
I went outside and walked to the furthest point of the North Cape before my courage gave in or out. The cliff was three hundred and seven metres above the Atlantic Ocean. I could hardly breathe because of the biting north-easterly wind. My throat was choked by the icy blast. My asthma was in relapse. Some reluctantly bundled backpacker took my photograph by the globe and signpost but I didn’t care what he took. Nor did he. My entire body was frozen. I was going to turn into one of those embalmed corpses, not found for centuries, encased in ice.
But there were these huge sculptured wheels of peace on their rims and I had to look at them. Peace and Friendship, it said, copies of drawings made by children of the world. Call it curiosity, call it stupid but I had to look at everything. And there was a seven-foot bronze mother statue with a boy pointing seawards. Her hand was polished with touching, a bit like the holy statue in the Vatican.
There were cairns everywhere despite the notices saying Don’t Build Cairns. I added a small stone. Guilt, girl, ruining the natural landscape.
I followed the stream of people down to the cinema. I was now into obey-the-signs mode. The five screens of the 250-seater panoramic cinema showed swooping scenes of wild scenery, waving brown roots, underwater swims, steep aerial drops, yellow lichen and grass waving underwater, birds. So many beautiful and wonderful, soaring birds, wing span of angels. I wanted them all to live in freedom. They had to be protected.
The guides said take any coach to go back to Honningsvaag. They all went the same way. There was only one road. I felt sorry that Joanna had missed all this barren splendour. It had been a surreal experience.
‘Wonderful, ain’t it?’ said a man, sitting heavily into the seat next to mine. He was overweight. It was a wonder there was room to do up my seat belt.
‘Yes, amazing.’
‘I was expecting it to be Santa Claus land. Y’know, Father Christmas, jingle bells, and all that, reindeers and snow.’
‘I think that’s Lapland.’
‘This is something else, ain’t it?’
We talked in a funny sort of way. He and I were miles apart. I might have been sitting next to a millionaire or a lottery winner. If he was a millionaire, then I was hardly going to find out. He had no vocabulary. Perhaps he was a lottery winner thrown into the big spending circus with no guidance. Then good luck to him, poor sod.
‘You’ll be warm soon,’ I encouraged, like a nanny. ‘Back to the ship.’
‘Yeah, back to the bar. D’you wanna join me?’
A jolt to swerve past some wandering reindeer saved me from answering. I pretended I hadn’t heard. I gabbled on about nearly having reindeer soup on the menu.
But I loved it, every freezing moment. Don’t ask me why. Latching never got as cold as this. The sea never froze over. My turbulent, foaming Sussex sea. My force six gales and mountainous waves. Sometimes I could not breathe because of the wind, then they closed the pier to the public. People could get blown off.
There was no pier here to close. I found out that their Health Service supplied light lamps and sunbeds to counter the depression of so many weeks of darkness. I was not surprised. Sometimes their only light was the gas flare burning brightly on the offshore island.
I lost my heavyweight companion as soon as the coach parked in the small town square. He lumbered out and went in search of the nearest local bar. I wanted to savour the town, too, stroll the few streets of colourful wooden houses.
There was an old lady in an embroidered black wool dress with red pleated hem, red bonnet with flaps over her ears, big fur boots. She was selling reindeer souvenirs, hats, horns, gloves, pelts hanging on the wall. Her long grey hair was thickly plaited. There was a workshop inside the house, with people sewing. Pieces of fur lay on the floor, moulting white hairs.
The few shops stayed open as long as there were cruise ships in port. They needed sales. We were a lifeline, a much needed source of income.
Everything looked really warm and I would have loved a fur hat, but could not bear to think of wearing the animal, now that I had seen them roaming the rocky cliffs.
There was no sail away party on deck on leaving Honningsvaag. We needed lots of hot tea, maybe a toasted cheese sandwich, soup. I hurried to A Deck so that Suna could have a break.
She was in tears, her face flushed.
I did not leave her. I did not leave her for a moment, only to go to the bathroom. But when I came back she was on the floor. I called immediately for help and we got Mrs Carter back into the armchair. I am so sorry. She’s not hurt.’
‘I think that’s a good sign,’ I said, trying to reassure her. ‘She must have moved of her own accord, got up to do something. Don’t feel bad about it, please. You couldn’t have prevented it.’
‘You are not annoyed?’
‘No, of course not. You have a break now. I’ll see you back in an hour’s time.’
There were three short blasts on the ship’s whistle which made us both jump out of our skin. They always surprised me. But it made us laugh and Suna looked more cheerful as she left with her crumpled magazines.
But they didn’t make Joanna jump. Her trancelike state had cut her off completely from the world.
No changing into glad rags tonight. This was the night of the midnight sun. We would all be out on deck, playing quoits, taking photographs, still awake in unfamiliar daylight. I put out my warmest everything, ready for braving the decks. Maybe I would skip dinner. I wasn’t hungry. An apple would do or some grapes from the bowl that was replenished daily.
My bare feet touched something on the carpet. I looked down. My toes were spreading over a smattering of grape pips. Not Suna, surely? She would never have dropped pips on the carpet. Too well trained as a midwife and stewardess. There was only one other person in the stateroom.
I broke off a cluster of grapes and took them over to Joanna.
‘These grapes are really sweet,’ I said. ‘Would you like to try some?’
Sometimes I got the uncanny feeling that she would suddenly lunge at me. It was creepy. She would burst out of that trance and clutch at my throat or something equally scary. I didn’t like being on my own with her any more.
Yet I had to stay. All that money sitting in the bank. All those landlord problems waiting for me when I got home, flapping their black wings. Moving would be horrendous. They say moving is the third worst trauma. The physical act of packing up was quite beyond my disorganized brain. I would never find anything again.
I could always camp out in my shop. I’d slept there before. My box of costumes was there, the instant bag ladies, traffic wardens, keepers, teenagers, pensioners. That’s what I needed now. It was hard for me to find out anything parading as Joanna Carter’s travelling companion. People knew me too well. Geoff Berry knew me. And the nice Max Russell.
One more eccentric passenger would not go amiss. I could be unconventional, strange, odd, different. A surge of enthusiasm threatened to break the silence of the staterooms. Yes, yes, yes. I could do it. I would be someone else, someone no one would suspect as investigating the attack on Joanna.
But how could I do it, with only what was around in the stateroom? I could hardly ask Suna to lend me her trim bar outfit. As if it would fit. Nor would I want to be obliged to carry out bar work. I wanted the freedom of a passenger to roam anywhere on the ship.
Suna returned, subdued, not keen to be left with Joanna
either. This arrangement was not going to work forever.
‘I cannot stay more,’ she said, not explaining.
‘I’ll be back in half an hour, I promise,’ I said. ‘Then we’ll watch a film together.’
‘OK,’ she said. ‘But it not nice. Like being with a corpse.’
Ouch. What about those grape pips? Was Joanna a grape-eating corpse?
I had wandered round the Olympus theatre earlier, amazed how the dancers managed on such a small stage and wondering where they did all their quick changes. The decor was elegant. Tables and armchairs flanking the stage, then rows of comfortable armchairs rising, step by step, so every passenger had a good view. But there was always rivalry for those first row seats. Evening bags at the ready, nightly, I’d been told.
So who was I going to be? The theatre was eerily empty. A steward was hovering, tray and order pad at the ready. He accepted a smile from me and withdrew to the bar, to rewipe glistening glasses.
The heavy curtains were drawn across the back of the stage, concealing where the orchestra were usually placed. I moved the curtain, very casually, and found myself in a different world. This was backstage. This was the heart of every show performed on ship.
I was not here to steal or borrow. I was here to see what they threw away or what they lost. There was a grey wig in a waste bin. Easy to see why. It was covered in some sort of greasy make-up. It needed a makeover.
In minutes I had an armful of rejects. The theatre was still empty. I slipped out and went to the nearest launderette. I threw everything into a machine, including the wig. The only item I kept out was a hat. A man’s trilby which someone had trodden on, but I could bring it back to shape with some loving care and steam in the shower.
The dancers ought to thank me for clearing out the rubbish from their dressing rooms. They probably wouldn’t even notice the clear-up.
Fold and Die (Jordan Lacey Mysteries Book 8) Page 9