by Ruth Ware
“Do you know her well?” I asked. Alexander shook his head.
“Never met her. Richard spends half his life on a plane, but she almost never leaves Norway. It’s totally alien to me—as you know, I live for travel; I can’t imagine confining yourself to a petty little country like Norway when the restaurants and capitals of the world await. Never to taste sucking pig at elBulli, or sample the glorious fusion of cultures that is Gaggan in Bangkok! But I suppose it’s a reaction against her upbringing—I believe she lost her parents in a plane crash at the age of eight or nine, and spent the rest of her life being shuttled around the boarding schools of Europe by her grandparents. I imagine you might choose to go the other way as an adult.”
He picked up his fork, and we were just starting to eat when there was a noise at the door, and I looked up to see Cole walking unsteadily across to the table.
“Mr. Lederer!” A stewardess hurried to take an extra chair from the ones at the side of the room. “Miss Blacklock, might I ask you to just . . .”
I moved my plate and chair slightly and she put a seat at the head of the table for Cole, who slumped heavily down. His hand was bandaged, and he looked as if he’d been drinking.
“No, I won’t have champagne,” he said in answer to Hanni gliding up with a tray. “I’ll have a Scotch.”
Hanni nodded and hurried away, and Cole sat back in his chair and passed a hand over his unshaven face.
“Sorry about your camera,” I said cautiously. He scowled, and I saw that he was very drunk already.
“It’s a fucking nightmare,” he said. “And the worst of it is, it’s my own bloody fault. I should have backed it up.”
“Are all the shots gone?” I asked. Cole shrugged.
“No idea, but probably, yes. Got a guy back in London who might be able to get some of the data off, but it’s showing fuck all when I put it in my computer, it’s not even reading the card.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said. My heart was beating fast. I wasn’t sure if this was sensible, but I figured I had nothing to lose now. “Was it just stuff from the voyage? I thought I saw one shot from somewhere else . . . ?”
“Oh, yeah, I was swapping the cards over, it had a few shots from a shoot I did a couple of weeks back at the Magellan.”
I knew the Magellan—it was a very exclusive all-male members club in Piccadilly, founded as a meeting place for diplomats and what the club described as “gentlemen travelers.” No women were allowed as members, but female guests were permitted, and I had attended functions there once or twice in Rowan’s stead.
“Are you a member?” I asked. He gave a snort.
“Not bloody likely. Not my style, even if they’d let me in, which is doubtful. Too crusty for my taste—anywhere that won’t let you wear jeans isn’t for me. The Frontline is more my cup of tea. Alexander’s a member, though. So is Bullmer, I think. You know the drill, you have to be either too posh to function or rich as shit, and fortunately I’m not either.”
His last remark fell into a lull in conversation from the rest of the table, the words painfully loud and noticeably slurred in the silence, and I saw a few heads turn, and Anne glance at the steward with a nod that I interpreted as Get his food over there before the whiskey.
“What were you doing there, then?” I said, keeping my voice low, as if I could persuade him to moderate his tone by osmosis.
“Pictures for Harper’s.” His plate arrived and he began spearing foodstuffs at random, shoving the fragile architectural morsels into his mouth seemingly without even tasting them. “Some launch, I think. Can’t remember. Christ.” He looked down at his hand, the fork awkwardly balanced against the bandage. “This is sodding painful. There’s no way I’m trailing round Trondheim cathedral tomorrow, I’m going to the doctor to get this checked out and get some decent painkillers.”
After dinner finished, we took our coffee through to the lounge, and I found myself standing next to Owen White, both of us staring out the long window, into the fog. He nodded politely but seemed in no hurry to open the conversation. I tried to think what Rowan would do. Charm him? Or brush him off and go and talk to someone of more immediate use to Velocity? Archer, perhaps?
I glanced over my shoulder at Archer and saw that he was very, very drunk and had pinned Hanni into a corner of the room, her back to the window, his broad frame effectively blocking her exit. Hanni was holding a jug of coffee in one hand and was smiling politely but with a trace of wariness. She said something and gestured to the coffeepot, obviously as a way of taking her leave, but he laughed and put one heavy arm around her shoulders in a gesture of avuncular possession that made my flesh creep a little.
Hanni said something else that I didn’t catch, and then slipped out from under his grip with what looked like practiced dexterity. For a moment Archer’s face looked a mixture of foolishness and fury, but then he seemed to shrug it off and moved across to talk to Ben.
I turned back to Owen White with a sigh, though I was not sure whether it was a sigh of relief for Hanni, or resignation at my own reluctance to deal with unpleasant people, even for the sake of my career.
Owen, by contrast, seemed reassuringly harmless, though I realized, as I looked covertly at his profile in the reflection of the darkened, foggy window, that I had no real idea whether he would be of use to Velocity or not. Ben had said he was an investor, but White had kept himself to himself so much this voyage that I had no clear impression of what he actually did. Perhaps he would be the perfect angel investor for the group, if Velocity’s owner ever decided to go into some more profitable area. In any case, I had no desire to go across to the other side of the room.
“So, um,” I began awkwardly, “I feel slightly like we haven’t been properly introduced. My name is Laura Blacklock. I’m a travel journalist.”
“Owen White,” he said simply, but there was no sense of dismissal in his tone, I got the impression that he was just a man of few words. He held out his hand, and I shook it clumsily with my left, which was holding a petit four, but seemed better than my right, which was holding a hot cup of coffee.
“So what brings you to the Aurora, Mr. White?”
“I work for an investment group,” he said, and took a long sip of his coffee. “Bullmer was, I think, hoping I’d recommend the Aurora as an investment opportunity.”
“But . . . from what you were saying to Tina, that won’t be the case?” I said cautiously, wondering if it was bad manners to admit overhearing, though I could hardly have helped it. He nodded, not seeming offended.
“That’s so. I must admit, it’s not really my area, but I was flattered to be asked and too venal to pass up the chance of a free trip. As I was saying to Tina, it’s a shame Solberg couldn’t make it.”
“He was supposed to have cabin ten, wasn’t he?” I asked. Owen White nodded. It occurred to me suddenly that I had no real idea of who the missing Solberg was, or why he hadn’t come. “Did you—I mean, do you know him? Solberg, I mean?”
“Yes, fairly well. We’re in the same area. He’s based in Norway, while my head office is back in London, but it’s a small world that we operate in. One gets to know all one’s competitors. It must be the same in travel journalism, I imagine.” He smiled as he popped a petit four in his mouth, and I smiled back, acknowledging the truth of his remark.
“So, if this is more his cup of tea, why didn’t he come?” I asked.
Owen White said nothing, and for a moment I wondered if I’d gone too far, been too bold with my questioning, but then he swallowed and I realized he was simply having trouble with his petit four.
“There was a break-in,” he said around a mouthful of bits of nut, and swallowed again, trying to clear his mouth. “At his house, I believe. His passport was taken, but I think that was only part of the reason he didn’t come—his wife and children were home, from what I understand, and were rather shaken
up. And say what you will about Scandinavian businesses . . .” He paused again and swallowed, heroically this time. “They do understand the importance of putting family first. Dear me, I advise you not to try this nougat unless you have very good teeth, I think I may have loosened a filling.”
“Not the nougat!” I heard over my shoulder, as I was trying to process what I had just heard and piece this revelation together with my own break-in. I turned to see Alexander bearing down on us both. “Owen, please tell me you haven’t.”
“I did.” Owen took a gulp of coffee and swilled it around his mouth, wincing slightly. “To my regret.”
“The stuff should carry a dental health warning at the very least. You”—he pointed at me—“an investigative report is what’s needed. Velocity’s no-punches-pulled exposé of Richard Bullmer’s shady links with the cosmetic dentistry industry. What with that and the other incident, I should think future guests of this cruise liner will find it very hard to get health insurance, don’t you?”
“Other incident?” I said sharply, trying to remember what I’d told Alexander. I was sure I hadn’t mentioned the full story of the accident to him. Had Lars related the conversation in the hot tub? “What other incident are you talking about?”
“Why,” Alexander said, his eyes opened almost theatrically wide, “Cole’s hand. Of course. What were you thinking of?”
After coffee, the group began to break up—Owen disappearing quietly without a good-bye, and Lars taking a loud leave with a joke about Chloe. Bullmer was still nowhere to be seen, nor was Anne.
“Come for a snifter of something in the bar?” Tina said to me as I placed my empty cup on a side table. “Alexander’s going to have a tinkle on the baby grand in there.”
“I—I’m not sure,” I said. I was still pondering what Owen White had told me over coffee about Solberg’s break-in. What did it mean? “I might turn in.”
“Ben?” Tina purred. He looked at me.
“Lo? Want me to walk you back to your cabin?”
“No need, I’m fine,” I said, and turned to go. I was almost at the door when I felt a hand catch at my wrist and turned. It was Ben.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “What’s going on?”
“Ben.” I glanced behind him at the other guests, laughing and chatting obliviously as the stewards cleared up around them. “Let’s not do this here. Nothing’s going on.”
“Then why were you acting so weird all through dinner? You saw me saving you a chair and you deliberately ignored me.”
“Nothing’s going on.” There was a painful pressure in my temples, as if the anger I’d been suppressing all night was taking its toll.
“I don’t believe you. Come on, Lo, spit it out.”
“You lied to me.” It burst out in a furious whisper, before I could consider the wisdom of the accusation. Ben looked taken aback.
“What? No, I didn’t!”
“Really?” I hissed. “So you never left the cabin when everyone was playing poker?”
“No!” It was his turn to glance over his shoulder now at the other guests. Tina was looking across at us, and he turned back, lowering his voice. “No, I didn’t— Oh, no, wait, I did go and get my wallet. But that wasn’t a lie—not really.”
“Not a lie? You told me categorically no one left that cabin. And then I find out from Cole not only that you did leave, but anyone else could have left, too, while you weren’t there.”
“But that’s different,” he muttered. “I left, God, I don’t know when, but it was early in the evening. It wasn’t round the time you were talking about.”
“So why lie about it?”
“It wasn’t a lie! I just didn’t think. Jesus, Lo—”
But I didn’t let him finish. I pulled my wrist out of his grip and hurried away, through the doors and into the corridor, leaving him gaping after me.
I was so busy thinking about Ben that as I rounded the corner near the upper-deck toilet, I almost tripped over Anne Bullmer. She was leaning back against the wall as if steeling herself for something, although whether to return to the party, or make her way back to her cabin, I wasn’t sure. She looked extremely tired, her face gray, the shadows around her eyes darker than ever.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” I gasped, and then, thinking of the bruise on her collarbone, “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
She smiled, the fine skin around her mouth crinkling, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes.
“I’m fine, I’m just very tired. Sometimes . . .” She swallowed, and her voice cracked for a moment, something in the cut-glass English accent slipping. “Sometimes it all just seems too much—d’you know what I mean? Such a performance.”
“I do,” I said sympathetically.
“If you’ll excuse me, I am going to bed,” she said, and I nodded and turned to make my own way back aft, down the flight of stairs that led to the rear set of cabins.
I was almost at the door of my suite when I heard an angry voice from behind me.
“Lo. Lo, wait, you can’t make those kind of accusations and walk away.”
Shit. Ben. I felt a strong urge to slip inside my cabin and slam the door, but I made myself turn to face him, my back against the door.
“I didn’t make any accusations. I just said what I’d been told.”
“You pretty much implied you’re suspecting me now! We’ve known each other more than ten years! Do you realize how that makes me feel—that you could accuse me of lying like that?”
There was genuine hurt in his voice, but I refused to let myself soften. It had been Ben’s favorite tactic in arguments, when we were together, to divert the discussion away from whatever was annoying me to the fact that I’d hurt his feelings and was acting irrationally. Time and again I’d ended up apologizing for the fact that I’d upset him—my own feelings completely ignored, and always, in the process, we’d somehow wound up losing sight of the issue that had provoked the disagreement in the first place. I wasn’t falling for it now.
“I’m not making you feel anything,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I’m stating facts.”
“Facts? Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Ridiculous?” I folded my arms. “What does that mean?”
“I mean,” he said hotly, “that you’re acting completely paranoid. You’re seeing bogeymen behind every corner! Maybe Nilsson—”
He stopped. I clenched my fist around my delicate evening bag, feeling the solid bulk of my phone beneath the slippery sequins.
“Go on? Maybe Nilsson . . . what?”
“Nothing.”
“Maybe Nilsson was right? Maybe I am imagining things?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But it was what you were implying, right?”
“I’m just asking you to take a step back and look at yourself, Lo. Look at this rationally, I mean.”
I forced myself to keep a hold on my temper and smiled.
“I am rational. But I’m very happy to take a step back.” And with that, I opened my suite door, stepped inside, and slammed it in his face.
“Lo!” I heard from outside, and a thump on the door. Then a pause. “Lo.”
I said nothing, just slid the bolt and the chain across. No one was getting through that door without a battering ram. Least of all Ben Howard.
“Lo!” He banged again. “Look, will you just talk to me? This is really getting out of hand. Will you at least tell me what you’re going to say to the police tomorrow?” He paused, waiting for me to reply. “Are you even listening?”
Ignoring him, I threw my bag on the bed, stripped off my evening gown, and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door and turning on the taps to drown out the sounds from outside. When at last I stepped into the scaldingly hot water and turned off the taps, the only sound I could hear was the gentle hum of the extracto
r fan. Thank God. He must have given up at last.
I had left my phone in the bedroom, so I wasn’t sure what time it was when I climbed out of the bath, but my fingers were waterlogged and wrinkled, and I felt heavy with sleep, but in a good way, quite unlike the nervous, edgy exhaustion of the last day or two. As I cleaned my teeth, dried my hair, and belted the white bathrobe around myself, I thought of the good night’s sleep I would have, and the logical, carefully rehearsed story I would give to the police tomorrow.
And then . . . Christ. I felt almost weak with relief thinking about it. Then I would get a bus or a train or whatever bloody transport Trondheim possessed and get myself to the nearest airport and home.
When I opened the door to the cabin, I held my breath, half expecting Ben’s hammering and shouting to start up again, but there was no sound. I walked cautiously to the door, my feet silent on the thick pale carpet, and, lifting the cover to the spy hole, I looked out into the corridor. There was no one there. At least no one I could make out—in spite of the fisheye lens, I could only see part of the corridor, but unless Ben were lying on the floor beneath my door, he was gone.
I let out a sigh and picked up my abandoned evening bag to check the time on my phone and set the alarm for tomorrow. I wasn’t waiting for a call from Karla—I wanted to be up and off the boat as soon as possible.
But my phone wasn’t inside.
I turned the bag upside down, shaking it out but knowing it was fruitless—the bag was small and light, and there was no way anything heavier than a postcard could have been concealed inside. It wasn’t on the bed. Could it have slipped onto the floor?
I tried to think clearly.
I could have left it at the dinner table—but I hadn’t taken it out of my bag, and in any case, I had a clear memory of feeling it inside my evening bag during the argument with Ben. And I would have noticed its weight missing when I threw the bag on the bed.
