“I’m— I don’t know.” He shoved his hands into his unruly hair again, gripping the roots as if he could somehow grasp an excuse out of his head if he pulled hard enough. “He ran into me on the way back from breakfast, stopped me in the corridor, and started saying he was concerned about you—stuff about noises in the night—I was hungover, I actually couldn’t really work out what he was on about. I thought he was talking about the break-in at first. Then he starts on about you being in a fragile state— Jesus, Lo, I’m sorry, it’s not like I went and knocked his door down desperate for a chat. What was he on about?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I took the coffee he held out. It was too hot to drink, and I held it in my lap.
“It does. It’s clearly knocked you for six. Did something happen last night?”
About 95 percent of me wanted to tell Ben Howard to piss off, and that he had forfeited the right to my trust by blabbing about my private life and reliability as a witness to Nilsson. Unfortunately the remaining 5 percent seemed to be particularly forceful.
“I . . .” I swallowed against the ache in my throat, and the desire to tell someone what had happened. Maybe if I told Ben he could suggest something I’d not thought of? He was a reporter, after all. And, though it hurt to admit it, a pretty respected one.
I took a deep breath and then relayed the story I’d told Nilsson the night before, gabbling this time, desperate to make my case convincing.
“And the thing is she was there, Ben,” I finished. “You have to believe me!”
“Whoa, whoa,” Ben said. He blinked. “Of course I believe you.”
“You do?” I was so surprised, I put down the cup of coffee with a crack on the glass tabletop. “Really?”
“Of course I do. I’ve never known you to imagine anything.”
“Nilsson doesn’t.”
“I can see why Nilsson doesn’t want to believe you,” Ben said. “I mean, we all know that crime on cruise ships is a pretty murky area.”
I nodded. I knew as well as he did—as well as any travel journalist did—the rumors that abounded about cruise ships. It’s not that the owners are any more criminal than any other area of the travel industry, it’s just that there’s an inherent gray area surrounding crime committed at sea.
The Aurora wasn’t like some ships I’d written about, which were more like floating cities than boats, but it had the same contradictory legal status in international waters. Even in cases of well-documented disappearances, things get brushed under the carpet. Without a clear police jurisdiction to take control, the investigation is too often left to the onboard security services, who’re employed by the cruise liner and can’t afford to ruffle feathers, even if they wanted to.
I rubbed my arms, feeling suddenly cold, in spite of the fuggy warmth of the cabin. I’d gone in to Ben to bawl him out with the aim of making myself feel better. The last thing I expected was for him to back up my unease.
“The thing that worries me most . . .” I said slowly, then stopped.
“What?” Ben prompted.
“She . . . she lent me a mascara. That was how I met her—I didn’t know the cabin was empty, and I banged on the door to ask if I could borrow one.”
“Right . . .” Ben took another gulp of coffee. His face over the top of the cup was puzzled, clearly not seeing where this was leading. “And?”
“And . . . it’s gone.”
“What—the mascara? What d’you mean, gone?”
“It’s gone. It was taken out of my cabin while I was with Nilsson. Everything else I could almost write off—but if there’s nothing going on, why take the mascara? It was the only concrete thing I had to show that there was someone in that cabin, and now it’s gone.”
Ben got up and went to the veranda, pulling the gauze curtains shut, although it seemed an odd, unnecessary gesture. I had the strange, fleeting impression that he didn’t want to face me and was thinking about what to say.
Then he turned and sat back down on the end of the bed, his expression pure businesslike determination.
“Who else knew about it?”
“About the mascara?” It was a good question, and one, I realized with a touch of chagrin, that I had not thought to ask myself. “Um .