Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
Everything is happening too quickly now.
Mick and Sasha at least died a day apart, but discovering Bridget like this makes me feel like I’ve skipped forward in time.
I sit and watch her motionless body from across the room.
Her mouth has traces of white, and there’s a stain on the chequered carpet in front of her, but I can’t bring myself to go any closer.
Through my tear-blurred vision, she still looks perfect.
My joyful life-loving Bridget would never have killed herself. The killer clearly wanted us to believe it was a suicide, but we’re way past that now. Images of how it could have happened flash through my mind, but I try to block them out.
I’m waiting for the news that Clara is dead in a stairwell somewhere. That would complete my shame. A full set of people I failed to do anything to help because I was on that stupid macho mission.
I need a spark to bring me back to life, and the soft electronic chime over the speaker system provides it.
“Jake…” Ade mutters in the same hurt, frightened tone as when we found Ryan’s body.
He takes ages to say anything more, as if he’s hoping I’ll respond.
“Jake… we found Clara…” At first, I don’t understand why he’s taking so long, then I realise that someone must be talking to him in the background whenever he lets go of the button.
“Jake, Clara’s safe. She was sheltering with the captain. Meet us back in the main lounge.”
My deep, almost physical relief manifests itself as a melancholy wail. It sounds as if a previously silent monster has emerged from the depths of my ribcage. It takes the rest of my strength to move the mattress out of the way, and I stop in the doorway, unable to look back at Bridget.
My head is full of her laughter. I remember when we were last happy together.
I remember sitting in the cinema with her head on my shoulder and her hand in mine.
I remember her nineteenth birthday when I brought her roses, and she took one from the bouquet to hit me with it for being soppy and then kissed me so sweetly I thought I could die happy right there and then.
I remember only the good times that we shared and none of the bad, and then I force myself out into the corridor with a crossbow still in my hand.
My sorrow turns to anger, and I know I have to keep going. I have a clear understanding that, if I make it through the night, I’ll be okay. It’s almost as if the light of morning will save me, but first I have to find whoever hurt Bridget and stop the chain of violence.
When I finally make it to the lounge, I try to slide the door across, but it won’t open.
I bang my fist against it, and I catch the sound of muffled footsteps before Ade appears.
I hurry inside, and he locks it again by pressing a smooth metal panel on the wall.
Clara is sitting on the floor by the sofa with her knees pulled up to her chin, and Tom is at the dining table with his head in his hands.
I can’t think about them yet as I’m suddenly furious again.
“The doors have locks?” I practically scream at our billionaire companion.
Ade’s mouth goes down on one side. “Yeah, of course.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” I half consider shooting him with the crossbow. “She might still be alive if you’d told us.”
He steps away from me, evidently aware of the murderous glint in my eye. “Shabeer gave you the tour, didn’t he? He knows to explain that sort of thing.”
“No, Mick did it.” Tom doesn’t look up, but his gravelly voice travels over to us. “You were locked away in your suite, being all mysterious.”
Ade at least looks repentant as he turns back to me. “I’m sorry, Jake. I really am, but I don’t think it would have changed much.”
The image of Bridget lying dead is still with me, and all the hate I’ve ever felt for Ade comes surging back.
I feel it in every muscle in my body, and for about five seconds I wonder if I should grab him around the neck and strangle him.
Before I can decide whether this is an excellent idea or just a very good one, a little voice interrupts.
“Who’s dead?” Clara’s bottom lip shakes between sentences. “You said she’d still be alive if we could have locked the doors. You can’t be talking about Sasha. So who did you mean?”
I hold on to the crossbow but drop my coat to the floor before replying.
“Bridget.” Just saying this feels like I’ve been hit with a sledgehammer.
It’s not exactly Schrodinger’s Cat, but speaking her name out loud seems to confirm that she’s gone.
“I forced my way into the room, and she was lying there with a bottle of vodka and a bunch of pills. It could have happened hours ago – back when we didn’t know whether the first deaths were a coincidence.
Finding Ryan in the beach club with a knife through his heart pretty much rules out suicide, though. ”
Clara puts her hand out to touch me, then pulls it away again.
Perhaps she’s scared that I’m to blame. I referred to the killer as some hazy, abstract force, but there’s a 99 per cent chance that it’s one of us.
I doubt the captain is secretly bumping off his passengers while also piloting the boat, and we’ve seen no evidence of there being anyone else here.
“I’m so sorry, Jake.” Ade’s voice is tinged with his unique brand of soulful empathy. “I know how much she means to you. I can’t begin…”
What I can’t say is which of us is faking it. We were arts students, so hardly the most unpretentious sorts, but I wouldn’t be able to sit here and say pretty things if I’d just murdered four people. But then, for all the mistakes I’ve made, I’m not the sort to kill someone in the first place.
“Poor Bridget,” Tom says from the far side of the room beyond the half-closed partition. “She was nice. Why did one of you have to kill her?”
I’ve never liked Tom. He has the air of a man who thinks that people should be impressed by him for no reason whatsoever.
We’ve never really argued or traded insults, but we lived together for two years and I can’t think of a single happy memory we shared.
This makes it all the weirder that he should sound like the rational, caring one among us.
It doesn’t last.
“I’m serious.” His voice is immediately louder, his tone more aggressive. “Tell me which of you did it and why!”
I came here to ask that very question. “I’m the one holding the crossbow,” I remind them, but that sounds like I’m confessing, so I repeat Tom’s question. “Which of you did it?”
“This is ridiculous.” Ade perches on a cabinet on the other side of the door, so that we are spaced out on three points of the compass.
“Why is it ridiculous?” Tom’s reply shoots from him like a bullet. “We need to know who killed my Sasha. Who killed any of them?”
Ade glances at Clara to check that she’s noticed they’re the only sane ones remaining.
“Answer the question!” I repeat, the weapon still clutched tightly in my hand – the love of my life still dead downstairs.
“How can I?” He opens his eyes wider to show his frustration. “If I knew who killed our friends, I would tell you.”
Something about his unflappable self-confidence offends me.
I look at Tom, who we all suspected from the beginning, and I wonder if he is just a scapegoat.
I look at Clara and see the terrified girl she always was.
Ade’s the one who knows the ship best. He is the one who wanted us all here.
So I concentrate on him for the first time.
“Every time we’ve discussed it, I’ve gone along with the idea that you didn’t have any reason to hurt our friends, but that’s just not true.”
He crosses his arms and looks unimpressed. “Oh, so you’re going to do a Tom now, are you? Come on then. Let’s get it over with.”
I ignore him as the pieces fall into place.
“You had plenty of reasons to hate Ryan. I didn’t put it together at first, but when I saw you standing over his body, it came back to me.
” I point one finger in place of the crossbow.
“He mentioned that he got into trouble for selling bootlegs of our band from the early days. I got a cheque for compensation, and you told me just tonight that you had copies of them. Were you the one who set your lawyers on him? Maybe you couldn’t stand the idea of your supposed superfan ripping you off. Was that why you brought him out here?”
“That was Ryan?” His jaw hangs open for a moment before he says anything more. “I had nothing to do with the trial. I didn’t even know it was him.”
“Which is what you would say if you were the killer,” Tom helpfully shouts over.
“There’s something else.” Alarm bells have been ringing in my head all night, and I’m finally listening to them. “Ryan said that you were nearby when he got to the spot where Clara had fallen overboard. He said that it was beside a corridor, and you could have crept out to push her.”
“What are you talking about?” Ade pulls his shoulders back and suddenly looks less patient. He’s always been stronger than me, but I finally see just how dangerous he is. “Clara wasn’t pushed. She felt a bit dizzy and fell. Stop trying to twist what happened.”
Tom and I look at the girl who has tried to stay out of arguments all night. Her eyes flick between us, and I can tell she doesn’t want to say anything, but there’s no choice.
“I don’t know what happened,” she mutters with her eyes half closed.
“I couldn’t comprehend it at the time, but the sensation of falling was so strong that it did almost feel as if someone had pushed me.
The bang to my head made it impossible to be—” Her voice breaks as she looks at Ade.
“I’m sorry. I’m not saying it was you, but… ”
“And then there’s Sasha,” I say when her voice tails off, and I rediscover my own.
“What about her?” It’s clear from the way Tom sways as he stares at me that his ghosts are still tormenting him.
He climbs to his feet with all the composure of a barfly at the end of a heavy night, and it looks like he wants to confront Ade, but the effort is too much.
He drags a chair over from the table. Like everything on board, it looks well-made and expensive, but he practically tosses it into the centre of the room to sit before us. “Tell me what he did to my wife.”
“Jake…” Ade says with a laugh in his voice. He’s trying to remind me that, beneath it all, we’re still friends.
Tom’s response tears out of him. “Tell me!”
“It was years ago,” I reply when Ade won’t. Now that the time has come to reveal their secret, I can’t do it. I’m sick with rage for everything that has happened here, but I don’t know that Ade’s to blame, and I’m already starting to back down. “Ade told me that it meant nothing to either of them.”
Clara sends a disapproving glance up to me, nonetheless. “None of this is going to explain why people died.” She pulls her legs underneath her, and her voice takes on a desperate tone. “Please don’t go any further.”
Tom won’t listen. “Jake, what were you just saying?” His voice has changed. It’s harsher, more working class, as if he wants to convince us that he’s tougher than he really is. “Just tell me.”
Ade must realise that the moment of reckoning he told us he wanted has finally arrived as he answers for me.
“It wasn’t long after you and Sasha got together.
” He speaks in the candid, slightly noble manner of so many celebrity interviews.
“We always used to flirt, but there was nothing to it at first. One Friday night in March, you went out with your rugby mates, and the rest of us had too much to drink. Jake and Bridget disappeared off together. Clara fell asleep, which only left Sasha and me in the kitchen. We were still drinking, still being silly, and at some point…”
“It’s not true.” Tom can only say this in a whisper, but he soon repeats it with more conviction. “It can’t be true because Sasha would never have done that to me.”
I’d always assumed that he’d worked out what happened, so it’s hard to say whether his reaction is genuine. He and Sasha argued for weeks after that night and seemed close to breaking up. It was only when he asked her to go travelling in the summer that they were suddenly solid again.
“She loved me!” He’s screaming now – sucking in air to propel it back out again with the force of both lungs. “You’re a liar, Ade. You’re lying now because you killed her. You killed my Sasha, and Bridget and Ryan too for all I know.”
This statement is as much a plea as an accusation. He desperately wants to feel as if he’s come to the right conclusion, because the uncertainty is killing him. It’s not Tom’s behaviour that most alarms me, though. It’s Ade’s.
He opens his mouth but doesn’t say anything in just the same way he did years earlier. Just before he told me what happened between him and Sasha, he paused as if he’d changed his mind. This time, he stays quiet, and I know there’s something he can’t bring himself to admit.