Out Of His Depth, page 12
“There you are Lucy babe!” said Igor excitedly as he introduced his new friends to her and ushered her onto the stool next to him. The three women said hello and made their excuses and left them to talk, although talking wasn’t easy over the bouncing of the music and shouting of the guests. “What are you drinking?”
“Mojito,” replied Lucy “you should know that!” she said, shouting over the noise. “Good day?”
“Ah, usual,” said Igor, “Dealing with complaints, telling people where things are after nearly two weeks on board, calming people who are worrying about trouble on ship. But I smile, I always smile. Don’t let it make me miserable. How about you?”
“Yeah, did a couple of sets this afternoon and I’m on again at eleven in the ??? lounge. Late finish for me. I’ll be knackered tomorrow.”
“And your boyfriend?”
“Igor!”
“Oh come on. You two always together. I see you walking to dining room earlier. Not a problem if you like older man. Like I do.” Igor beamed at Lucy and sipped his drink through his straw.
“Well, as you brought it up, you said you had some info for me. For John anyway.”
Igor put his drink on the bar and steadied himself with his right hand and fished his phone out of his pocket, tapping at the image gallery and showing the screen to Lucy. It was a photograph of part of an email sent to the housekeeping department asking them to clean room 11376 Howard. Lucy took her phone out of her tiny handbag and sent Barker a message repeating the basics.
Howard, 11376. Good luck.
“Right, business over,” Lucy said, putting her drink down and grabbing Igor by the hand, “We’re here to dance. Come on.”
Igor slid off his stool and followed Lucy to the opposite end of the room onto the sparkling dance floor.
Chapter 65
Barker’s phone pinged again, as he sat in the Piano Lounge near the Atrium nursing a glass of craft beer while pretending to be interested in the music and watching people drift in looking for seats after dinner and before going to see the show in the theatre. Another message from Lucy. A name and a number.
“That was quick,” he thought. He’d only left her twenty minutes ago after dinner in the Four Seasons restaurant. Lucy had surprised him this time with a quiet table for two in a corner where they could ‘talk business’ but it was hard for him not to imagine it was more than that. He enjoyed her company and while they were involved in this… whatever it was, he could pretend it would go on forever. But they were nearing the final port and in a few days would he ever see her again? She would carry on singing on cruise ships and he would head back to Spain to continue rebuilding his lonely life. He wondered whether he cared about solving crimes any more but shook himself out of his melancholy and re-read the name and number she’d sent him.
Howard, 11376. Good luck.
“Part-timer,” he said to himself as he swigged the last of his beer, stood up, and patted the silver disc in his trouser pocket just to make sure it was still there.
The timing was good since the cabin stewards would have been into everyone’s room to turn down their beds, so wouldn’t be around to wonder who the stranger was letting himself into room 11736.
Chapter 66
Lucy climbed up on the barstool and picked up her drink from where she’d left it ten minutes before. Igor followed her from the dance floor and did the same.
“The DJ is rubbish,” Igor announced, “I can’t dance to this.”
“I agree,” replied Lucy between sips of Mojito, “Never mind. He’ll play something better in a few minutes. Let’s sit down over there.”
Lucy led Igor a few metres across the room to a booth next to a bank of windows overlooking the bow of the ship. They couldn’t see out as the sun had long gone down and the blackness gave no clue as to where they were or where they might be heading.
“Pee break,” Igor said as he put his drink down on the table in front of Lucy without sitting down, “Back in five.”
“Oh, OK,” said Lucy, suddenly left on her own as Igor turned and walked towards the entrance lobby where the bathrooms were. She picked up his drink, stood up and carried it back to the bar, and sat back on the stool again, “At least I can talk to the staff here,” she said as she smiled at Yulia from Ukraine who was drying glasses and tidying the counter-top.
***
Ten minutes passed before the conversation with Yulia, interspersed with serving drinks to customers, had to come to an end while she went to stock up on spirits. Lucy suddenly remembered she’d moved from where Igor thought she’d be sat, and she span around and scanned the seats and the busy, noisy room. He might have been dragged to the dance floor by those friendly guests as he came back in, but she couldn’t see the top of his head, which was normally the best way to spot his skinny six-foot frame in a crowd. She waited a few more minutes before messaging him:
Having trouble?
Igor’s phone was always glued to his palm, unless he was working, or dancing, and even then it was in his back pocket. So Lucy’s nerves started jangling a little when he hadn’t replied five minutes later. She got up and wandered out into the lobby by the bathroom entrances. No sign of Igor talking to passengers, so she walked back to the bar to look for help.
“Yulia!” she shouted after waiting a few seconds for her to finish serving a customer, “is Martin working tonight?”
“Yes, he’s over there waiting tables,” Yulia replied point in the general direction of the dance floor.
“Thank you,”
Lucy waited until Martin had taken a couple of orders and made his way back in her direction before stopping him.
“Martin I need a favour.”
“Sure Lucy, what is it?”
“I came in with Igor and he went to the bathroom about fifteen, twenty minutes ago and hasn’t come back. It’s not like him. And he’s not answering my messages. Would you go take a look for me?”
“Sure. His battery must’ve died. He always has his phone. I’ll pass these orders to Yulia and go take a look.”
Two minutes later Martin walked back and shook his head at Lucy, “No sign of him.”
XI
DAY TWELVE: AT SEA
Chapter 67
Just after 4.45 am, a tall, muscular man with short dark-brown hair, wearing an all-white officer’s uniform, walked confidently through a door from Deck Sixteen and round the corner to the forward staircase and made his way down thirteen decks. He chose not to use the elevators because that might mean waiting a short while even at this time of night, there would be a polite ‘ping’ as the lift arrived, and he might possibly be engaged in conversation by a drunk or an insomniac. Walking was much quieter and more anonymous. People would simply nod admiringly at the officer doing his duties or clocking off for the night, and then immediately forget him.
Once he got down to Deck Three he turned out of the staircase and to his right, onto the port side of the ship, then turned left and slowed down to check the room numbers. He found the one he wanted, looked around, put his wrist up to the door handle, and pushed it down very slowly when the LED on it flashed.
Inside, the room was pitch black and warm. He closed the door as quietly as possible without it making a click and stood behind it in the darkness waiting for his eyes to adjust to what little light there was coming in under the door and from the moon outside creeping through the curtains. He knew the layout of the room anyway, they were all the same. But he waited until he could see the outlines of the walls and furniture so that he wouldn’t bump into anything. More importantly, he listened hard. As he hoped, he heard the sound of someone breathing in and out from a deep sleep under the covers on the bed. He stepped once towards the corner of the bed and waited again. The sleeper didn’t move or change breathing pattern so he hadn’t been heard.
Shuffling two steps sideways along the side of the bed towards the headboard, the man noticed the person in the bed was the woman he was expecting to be there, lying on her left side under a duvet and facing away from him with her legs tucked up towards her waist. Good. Less chance of a struggle. He pulled a small bottle from his left trouser pocket and unscrewed the lid. From his right pocket he took out a handkerchief and poured the contents of the bottle onto it, putting the bottle back into his left pocket. He turned to his left and bent forwards so he was in line with the sleeping woman’s body. He leaned over her and hovered his right hand, carrying the soaked hanky, over her head. Then in one movement he lifted his right leg and straddled her hips with all his weight while at the same time pushing her head into the pillow with his left hand and clamping the hanky over her mouth and nose with his right.
In the space of four or five seconds, Lucy woke with a start from a deep sleep, felt a heavy weight pressing her down into the mattress, tried to wriggle free, gasped for air and then succumbed to the chemical vapour on whatever was covering her face.
The man in the white uniform was half as heavy again as Lucy, and despite her efforts, had no problem keeping her held down for a few seconds until she fell unconscious. Now he just had to get her out of the room without anyone noticing.
Chapter 68
On Deck Nine a wheelchair sat outside the door of room number 9148. When the door opened, a man in an engineer’s uniform slipped out quietly and ran around the back of the chair, pulling it back slightly, so the man that followed him, carrying a small middle-aged woman who appeared to be asleep, could deposit her into the chair. The woman’s head lolled to one side as she was propped up. The first man took a blanket out of a pocket on the back of the chair and wedged it around the woman. The second man stood back in the doorway and let the first man push the wheelchair away down the corridor, then he closed the door silently, turned and walked the opposite way.
In the room across the corridor Barker turned over in his sleep.
Chapter 69
Lucy’s head was pounding and she could hardly move. She managed to open her eyes a little, but in the darkness she was disorientated and didn’t understand what was going on. She could see a figure opening her wardrobe and rifling through her clothes on the rails, but who could that be? What time was it? Nothing made any sense, but she knew something was wrong and tried to work out what she could do. She couldn’t attack him. She felt so heavy. Then she saw a small handbag on the bedside table and began to drag herself across the bed. The man in the wardrobe had his back to her and was making enough noise not to notice as she edged further across. Lucy got to the far edge of the bed nearest the window and made a desperate lunge with her right arm to grab the handbag, falling out of the bed and onto the floor, scattering the contents.
The man turned around when he heard the bang and threw the dress he was holding onto the bed and ran round to the other side, where he saw Lucy instinctively trying to get up. He stood astride her, sat down across her waist, pinning her down on her back, and took out the handkerchief he used before and pressed it across her nose and mouth. Unable to resist, Lucy fell into unconsciousness again.
Chapter 70
Barker wasn’t a heavy sleeper, especially since he’d been living alone. Laura had imposed a rule that cell phones weren’t allowed in their bedroom because of all the notifications he would get at all hours, disturbing their sleep. On the ship he had no choice but to have it in the room, but in the middle of the Atlantic it was unlikely to receive anything so he’d reluctantly left it on his bedside table. So when it pinged in the middle of the night and woke him from a light doze, he wondered if it was just telling him it was low on charge. He rolled over intending to turn it off so he could attempt to get some sleep and glanced at a notification on the screen.
Margaret Gibson - Atrium, Deck Five
“What? Why is that there?” He sat up in the dark with the screen lighting his face and swiped to unlock the phone. The ship’s Sea Star app opened up and told him the latest location of Margaret Gibson, apparently travelling through the Atrium.
“At four-fifteen in the morning?” said Barker to himself. “Who is Margaret Gibson anyway, and why do I need to know?”
The fog in his half-asleep mind cleared slowly and locked onto the fact that he and Lucy had been in a stateroom in the name of ‘Gibson’ the previous night, and he couldn’t help feeling a little flutter of panic. He sat up straighter and stared at the screen again when it clicked up another notification.
Margaret Gibson – Emporium, Deck Five
“So now she’s going shopping.”
Barker twisted out from under his covers and sat on the edge of the bed and switched on the lamp on the table next to him, bathing the room in a soft warm white glow, and tried to work out what this meant and whether he should be worried. It could be a coincidence couldn’t it? There could be more than one Gibson on the ship, surely? But why would it be alerting him? How had Margaret Gibson’s Sea Star been registered to his phone?
“Lucy!” Barker’s mind cleared in an instant and he remembered Lucy going through a handbag in the Gibson stateroom. She’d picked out the competition ticket and given it to him, then gone through some of the other bits and pieces. Like a typical man he had shut his mind to what else was in the handbag, but she could easily have picked up Margaret’s Sea Star and kept it. When they’d got back to her room afterwards, she’d asked Barker for his cell phone and he’d thought nothing of it. She must’ve registered it then.
Barker took a swig of water out of the glass on the table next to the bed, stood up and grabbed some spare clothes from a pile on the sofa and put them on.
Chapter 71
Lucy’s head throbbed as she slowly drifted into consciousness from a deep sleep. As thoughts began to form in her mind she wondered why she was so tired. Had she been drinking the night before? What else would explain the banging headache? If it hadn’t been for that, she thought, she could just drift off back to sleep and wait until she was feeling fresher. Obviously, waking now wasn’t a good idea. Her body wasn’t ready. Then she wondered if she’d overslept and that possibility shot enough adrenaline through her veins to make it impossible to drift off again until she could wake and check the time.
She could hear noises nearby. Not outside in the corridors, but inside the room. They were unfamiliar, muffled, occasional noises that didn’t make any sense. She tried to open her eyes but didn’t succeed. Everything was dark. She felt cold, not like she was in her warm bed under the duvet. Her shoulders were bare, and her feet felt wrong, like she was wearing shoes. In bed? Her mind was clearing slowly and a chink of light crept in at the bottom of her vision, but she still couldn’t open her eyes properly. It felt like her eyelids were moving but nothing was happening.
Lucy suddenly realised that the noise was voices, and the memory of the man in her room shocked her awake with a jolt. She seemed to be sat down with her back against something, a wall maybe, or the bed where she’d fallen? What was she wearing? Where was this? She was slumped, but as she woke, she wriggled and tried to sit up. Then she realised her hands were tied together behind her back and she couldn’t support herself, so slid sideways to her left onto the floor.
One of the voices got closer and the words began to clear. She felt a presence in front of her and a pair of hands on her shoulders lifted her back upright and then moved to her feet and stretched them straight out in front of her. More comfortable but no less confused.
“Where…what going?” Lucy managed, still coming round.
“Ah, there you are,” said another voice coming from a different direction than the owner of the hands that had helped her. “I thought I’d overdone it and finished you off. That wasn’t in the plan. I hope you’re OK. You’ll feel better soon.”
The voice was close to her, somewhere on her left side, and down at her level now, as if someone – a man - was crouching next to her.
“After all, we need you. You’re the key to the next phase.”
The voice was familiar but her head wasn’t straight yet and she couldn’t place him.
“I’m sorry it worked out this way Lucy. You got mixed up in something that’s not your fault.”
Then it clicked in Lucy’s brain. “Michael?”
“Ah, there she is.’ The voice replied, “Back in the land of the living.”
“What the hell Michael? Where am I? What are you doing to me?”
“You, my friend, are chief liaison officer. All part of the plan.”
“Chief what? What plan? Was it you in my room last night?”
“Yes, it was me. It was a bit trickier than I thought, but I got you here in the end. Nobody saw us, but I had my cover story ready just in case. A woman who’d had a few too many being carried to safety by an officer. Nobody would have thought anything of it. I even got you dressed for the occasion.”
Lucy could tell she was wearing some sort of dress that felt familiar and must’ve stuck a pair of heels on her feet as he’d carried her from her room to wherever they were now.
“Could’ve put a bra on me!” she shouted indignantly, but shuddered, “On second thoughts, maybe not.”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before Lucy,” Michael replied.
“Piss off!” Lucy shouted but flinched as a hard slap hit her left cheek and she gasped for air.
“You’re not in a position to be abusive here Lucy. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but you’re going to have to do what you’re told. I’ll have someone fetch you a coffee to help you come round and then maybe you’ll feel a bit more helpful.”
