said at last. “Maybe one of the other passengers saw something. Someone going in and out of the empty cabin, or whoever stole the mascara going into yours. Who’s in the aft cabins?”
“Um . . .” I counted them out on my fingers. “Well, there’s me in nine, you in eight. Alexander is in . . . I think it might be six?”
“Tina’s in five,” Ben said thoughtfully. “I saw her go in last night. Which means Archer must be in seven. Okay. Want to go and do some door stepping?”
“All right,” I said. For some reason, maybe it was the surge of anger, or the feeling of being believed, or maybe just the effect of having a plan, I was feeling better already. But then I caught sight of the clock on Ben’s laptop. “Shit, I can’t, not now. I’ve got this bloody ladies’ spa thing.”
“What time does it finish?” Ben asked.
“No idea. But I shouldn’t think it will run over lunchtime. What are the men supposed to be doing?”
Ben stood up and flicked through a brochure on the desk.
“Tour of the bridge. Nice and sexist—blokes get technology, women get aromatherapy. Oh, no, wait, there’s a men’s spa morning tomorrow. Maybe it’s just to do with space.” He picked up a pad and pen from the dressing table. “I need to be going, too, but let’s see what we can dig up this morning, and then we can rendezvous back here after lunch and door step the remaining passengers. After that we can take the whole lot to Bullmer. Maybe he can get the boat to divert—get the local police on board.”
I nodded. Nilsson hadn’t taken me seriously, but if we could find out something to corroborate my story—even just someone else who’d heard the splash, it would be a lot harder for Bullmer to ignore.
“I keep thinking about her,” I blurted as we reached the door. Ben stopped, his hand on the latch.
“What do you mean?”
“About the girl—the girl in Palmgren. What she must have felt when he went for her—whether she was alive when she went over. I keep thinking what it must have been like, the shock of the cold water, the sight of the boat pulling away . . .”
Had she screamed as the waves closed over her? Had she tried to call out, as the salt water flooded her lungs, her chest laboring as the cold bit harder and the oxygen leached from her blood, and she sank deeper and deeper . . . ?
And her body, drifting through the cold silent blackness of the deep ocean, white as bone, the fishes nibbling at her eyes, her hair floating in the current like a stream of dark smoke . . . All that I was thinking of, too, though I didn’t say it.
“Don’t,” Ben said. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you, Lo.”
“I know what it’s like,” I said, as he opened the door. “Don’t you see? I know what she must have felt like, when someone came for her in the middle of the night. That’s why I have to find out who did this to her.”
And because if I didn’t find out, they might come for me next.
- CHAPTER 16 -
Chloe and Tina were waiting in the spa when I arrived. Tina was leaning over the counter, reading something on the laptop Eva had left open behind the desk, and Chloe was ensconced deep in a luxuriously upholstered vintage leather chair, playing on her phone. I was surprised to see that without her makeup on, she looked completely different—the huge smoky eyes and jutting cheekbones of last night looking somehow faded and flat by the light of day.
She caught me looking at her in the mirror and grinned.
“Apparently I’m down for a facial, so I took it off. I told you, I’m quite the makeup artist.”
“Oh, I didn’t . . .” I trailed off, feeling myself blush.
“Contouring,” Chloe said. She swung the chair around to face me and winked. “Honestly, it’ll change your life. I could turn you into anyone from Kim Kardashian to Natalie Portman with what I’ve got in my cabin.”
I was just about to make a joking reply, when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye, and I saw with a shock that one of the full-length mirrors behind the desk was moving, swinging inwards. Another door? Seriously, how many concealed entrances did this boat have?
Tina’s head jerked up from the laptop as Eva