and he held open the door as we hurried inside, just as Tina rounded the corner of the deck.
After the roar of the wind the corridor was suddenly quiet, and stiflingly hot, and we watched in silence as Tina strolled to the rail and leaned over, just a few paces upwind of where I had vomited moments before.
“If you want to know the truth,” Ben said, looking out through the glass at Tina’s unconscious back, “my money would be on her. She’s a stone-cold bitch.”
I looked at him in shock. Ben had sometimes been hostile about the women he worked with, but I’d never heard such naked dislike in his voice.
“Excuse me? Because she’s an ambitious woman?”
“Not just that. You haven’t worked with her, I have. I’ve met a few careerists in my time, but she’s in another league. I swear she’d kill for a story or a promotion, and it’s women she seems to pick on. I can’t stand women like that. They’re their own worst enemy.”
I kept silent. There was something close to misogyny in his words and tone, but at the same time, it was so uncomfortably close to what Rowan had said that I wasn’t sure if I could dismiss it as just that.
But Tina had been downstairs in the spa with me when the message appeared. And then there was her defensiveness earlier this morning. . . .
“I asked her where she was last night,” I said, half reluctantly. “She was really odd. Very aggressive. She said I shouldn’t go about making enemies.”
“Oh that,” Ben said. He smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile, there was something rather unkind about it. “You won’t get her to admit it, but I happen to know she was with Josef.”
“Josef? As in, cabin attendant Josef? Are you kidding me?”
“Nope. I got it from Alexander during the tour. He saw Josef tiptoeing out of Tina’s cabin in the early hours in a state of—let’s just say déshabillé.”
“Blimey.”
“Blimey indeed. Who’d have thought Josef’s devotion to passenger comfort would extend so far. He’s not really my type, but I wonder if I could persuade Ulla to do the same. . . .”
I didn’t laugh. Not with the narrow, sunless rooms just a couple of decks beneath where we were standing right now.
How far might someone go to escape their confines?
But then Tina turned from where she was smoking at the rail and caught sight of me and Ben inside the boat. She flicked her cigarette over the rail and gave me a little wink before making her way back along the deck, and I felt suddenly vile at the thought of all the men chuckling about her little adventure behind her back.
“What about Alexander, then, if it comes to that?” I said accusingly. “His cabin’s aft, along with ours. And what was he doing spying on Tina in the middle of the night?”
Ben snorted.
“Are you kidding me? He must be three hundred and fifty pounds. I can’t see him lifting an adult woman over a rail.”
“He wasn’t playing poker, so we’ve no idea where he was, apart from the fact that he was prowling around in the early hours of the morning.” I remembered, too, with a sudden chill, that he had been in the photo on Cole’s camera.
“He’s the size of a walrus. Plus he’s got a heart condition. Have you ever seen him take the stairs? Or, more to the point, heard him? He sounds like a steam train, and you start to worry when he gets to the top that he’ll kark it and fall back on you. I can’t imagine him overcoming anyone in a struggle.”
“She could have been very drunk. Or drugged. I bet anyone could tip an unconscious woman overboard—it would be just a matter of leverage.”
“If she was unconscious, then what about the scream?” Ben said, and I felt a sudden pulse of fury run through me.
“God, do you know what, I’m so fed up with everyone picking at and questioning me as if I should have the answers to all this. I don’t know, Ben. I don’t know what to think anymore. All right?”
“All right,” he said mildly. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean it like that. I was just thinking aloud. Alexander—”
“Taking my name in vain?” came a voice from up the corridor, and we both swung around. I felt my cheeks go scarlet. How long had Alexander been there? Had he heard my speculations?
“Oh, hello, Belhomme,” Ben said smoothly. He didn’t seem at