Cold Grave (23 page)

‘What they don’t acknowledge,’ Alessandro interrupted, ‘is how much this company puts back into the environment. It supports numerous local economies, employs environmental officers, and complies with a strict code of conduct.’

Fitz slowed to pat his leg, as if willing it into better action. Again, Anya felt the enormity of the vessel. She had read statistics like it being longer than the Eiffel Tower on its side, but walking even a fraction of the length hit home. Her legs felt as if they had walked the equivalent of city blocks, and they had only just reached midship. It was easy to see how FitzHarris’s job played havoc with his leg injury. By now, he was perspiring and taking shorter, sharper breaths.

His walkie-talkie crackled and he stopped to take the call, and maybe catch his breath.

‘Fire. Where?’

Anya’s heart raced. God, please let Ben be safe.

Fitz’s eyes squinted as he listened. ‘Go on.’

Alessandro dialled his own phone.

‘Put Chef on.’

It was the kitchen, a world away from the kids’ club. Anya doubted Fitz would have wasted time on an update if an emergency was in progress.

‘Right. Fill in the report and have it on my desk by lunch. And take the restraints off the poor guy. He’s sweating and nervous ’cause he thinks he’ll be fired and sent home at the next port. And get the doc to see his hands. He needs treatment for those burns.’

Alessandro hung up. ‘I’m needed up on the bridge. See you soon, I hope.’

FitzHarris checked his watch. ‘We need to get a move on.’

Anya grabbed his arm. ‘Excuse me? Fire?’

‘It’s nothing. A kitchen hand spilt oil on the hotplate, then tried to put out the flames with boiling water. Given the amount of fries served every day, it’s a wonder it doesn’t happen more often. One of my men restrained the kitchen hand because he looked guilty. See what I have to work with? A terrorist alert then every incompetent kitchen hand is a saboteur.’

Anya was relieved it was under control. Clearly, the crew was on edge after hearing about the attack. It was still unclear where she and Fitz were headed. She had assumed they would return to Carlos’s cabin but they were on the wrong level.

‘Are you going to search the cabins of the other men in bowling shirts?’

‘Not exactly.’

They turned another corridor dogleg and were back where they had been the day before. To the side of the corridor was a cleaning trolley, piled with sheets, soaps, shampoo and conditioner refills. One of the rooms had its door open. Inside, a Filipino man was finishing the corners on the bed and immediately responded to Fitz’s tap.

She wondered what Fitz was playing at. Was this what Mats Anderson wanted him to do? Keep her occupied and always in sight?

‘Ah, Mr FitzHarris, I have those things for you.’ The man looked at Anya and back to Fitz.

‘It’s okay, she’s with me.’

The man moved back to his trolley and collected two white bags from beneath the lowest shelf, with something written in black texta on each one. A third, larger one was handed over with a proud grin.

‘This was on my cart while I cleaned that corridor, as you requested.’

‘Excellent work, Testino. And you labelled them?’

In exchange for the larger bag, Fitz handed over what looked like fifty dollars in US currency. According to Junta that was a whole month’s wages.

‘Thank you very much. If there is
anything
else you need . . .’

‘There was one thing. Can you check what room you had to clean vomit from after the first night at sea?’

‘Ah, I remember. Room 1080.’

A middle-aged couple arrived behind them. The three moved to the wall to let them past. ‘Good morning,’ the steward slipped the money into his front pocket. ‘If there is anything you need, please call me.’

‘Thanks, Testino, but our room is perfect,’ the wife answered and opened her door. ‘And we love the bunny you made with the towels.’

With them back in their cabin, the steward turned back to Fitz. ‘The guests were angry about the smell. Only it was not just vomit. Someone had gone to the toilet on the floor as well.’

Fitz clutched the bags tighter. ‘Don’t tell me they crapped on it.’

Testino’s eyes widened. ‘No, Mister, it was urine.’

‘Dirty sons of . . .’ Fitz took a sideways glance at Anya. ‘Well, you’re doing a great job, Testino, keep up the great work.’

Further along, the pair stopped at a locked storage room. Fitz opened it with his electronic pass key. It had shelves filled with toilet paper, soap and cleaning bottles marked ‘carpet’ and ‘bathroom’.

Inside, Fitz opened the first bag. Marked 1087. It had come from Brian Peterson’s shared room. The stench was foul. Fitz pulled on some gloves he’d retrieved from his jacket pocket. ‘I’d offer you a pair, but I figure dead bodies and gore are more your style. Me, I’m a trash man. It’s amazing how much you can tell from someone’s garbage.’ He pointed to a large green bag-dispenser. ‘Would you do the honours?’

‘I still don’t see why you’re bothering.’ Anya peeled off a bag, and opened the top. ‘If they had drugs in their cabin, they could have put them down the toilet, or in any of the thousands of bins on board. Or even overboard.’

‘You’re thinking like a smart perp. Look who we’re dealing with. These guys are adolescent. Where does every teenager hide their secret stash? Their bedroom, even though that’s the first place parents check. Peterson thinks we’ve already searched his room, remember?’ He eyed the bounty. ‘Testino bagged up every cabin’s trash separately. So what’s in the trolley’s bag came from people putting it there in the corridor.’

Anya had to credit the idea, but was unsure how much information it would glean. Without a chain of evidence, it would be impossible to prove anything had come from the rooms of the men. This could all be a show for her benefit. His aim could have been to keep her close to discover exactly what she knew and planned to do with that information.

Fitz started with the largest bag, the one from the room steward’s trolley. He rummaged through it. ‘Most things bought before boarding would have been used and disposed of by now. Guests have unpacked, and don’t have to carry handbags or wallets. Receipts fit into their cabin trash bins, and we know leftover food should, so . . .’ He pulled out a small, blue velvet jewellery box and flipped it open. The ring container was empty.

‘Okay. Someone’s getting engaged. The ring’s a surprise and he doesn’t want the girl to know.’

‘Or,’ Anya thought from experience, ‘she’s bought herself a ring and is already wearing it. When he asks where it came from, she’ll say, “What this old thing? I’ve had it for ages.”’

‘I’m going with my version. A woman would just hide the ring box under something else in the trash, or in the covered bin in the bathroom. Men never go there. Which is why a man put it in the trolley bin. He knows a woman might otherwise notice it.’

She had to admit he made another good point. Martin would never have looked in the rubbish bin, or laundry hamper, for that matter.

Fitz grinned. ‘Hello. It’s a water bottle, minus the label.’ He grabbed a pen from his jacket pocket and lifted the bottle out, avoiding any chance of touching it further with his gloves.

Anya waited for the story behind this item.

‘Okay, Doctor, what do you make of it?’

‘It’s an empty bottle. Someone refilled it after coming on board. Maybe they’re environmentalists.’ Anya could barely hide her sarcasm.

‘It’s a different shape from the ones used on the ship. So it has to have been brought on board. You can get cold drinks on all the activity decks, and anything but alcohol is free on tap.’

She looked at it. The label had been removed, or had fallen off over time.

‘This is exactly the reason I asked Testino to collect their waste.’

Anya assumed he meant that the bottle had been placed there by one of the men. He asked her to pass him another plastic bag, to which he transferred the prize. ‘I’d bet a month’s salary this had GHB in it. And it should have at least some of our boys’ fingerprints on it.’

If not Lilly’s, she thought.

The next bag was from Genny’s room, or Genitalia, as he was known. In the top were two used condoms.

‘Either the human tripod and his buddies don’t get much action, or they don’t care for little raincoats,’ Fitz deduced.

That meant there was a greater chance forensic technicians could find DNA on at least one of the samples she had collected from Lilly’s body in the morgue, confirming one or more had sex with her before she died.

‘What the—?’ Fitz pulled out a series of half-chewed remnants of pizza and large numbers of crusts. ‘Did you know that guests eat more than three hundred and fifty thousand pizzas every cruise? We just solved the mystery of where they go.’ He ripped off the gloves. ‘That’s it for them.’ He sounded disappointed.

‘Let’s see what Brian Peterson dumped after our visit.’ He replaced the gloves with fresh ones. Anya remained skeptical as Fitz removed clumps of half-eaten pasta in what had been a cheesy, creamy sauce, stuck to receipts from onboard bottle shops along with the daily newsletter. It also contained a number of used condoms, coffee cups and an empty cigarette carton.

‘And I thought I was unhealthy. Hang on . . .’ He dug around for anything in the corners. ‘There’s something else.’ After groping around, he held something small and blue, flicking off the creamy coating with the lip of the white bag. It was a one-gigabyte SD card in an eight-gigabyte container. ‘Someone upgraded. It could be empty, but it’s still worth a look.’

‘Surely they wouldn’t be so stupid as to throw away incriminating photos?’ It seemed too obvious. Anya was starting to suspect FitzHarris was setting her up, or playing some kind of charade.

FitzHarris raised his eyebrows. ‘You’d be surprised. Maybe one of them chucked it out in a drunken haze, or accidentally.’ He started to put the card away.

Anya pulled out her phone to take photos of the evidence. The company may want to hide what happened, but she intended to do everything she could, for the Chans’ sake. It irked her if FitzHarris was just wasting her time. Although, she thought, he didn’t have to reach in and pull out the memory card. She would never have known it was there. Alternatively, he could have planted it there to make it appear he was conducting a proper investigation. Her mind raced with the possibilities.

‘What are you doing?’ FitzHarris snapped off his gloves.

‘Documenting what you found. I’m supposed to be a witness, remember, so I might as well record the date, time and location of the find. That bottle, especially, could become important evidence, don’t you think?’

‘Sure. Given the FBI don’t care and we’re here on our own,’ Fitz added.

21

With the rubbish sorted, FitzHarris asked Anya if she would accompany him back to the medical centre. He took a digital camera from the centre’s office and explained that the staff used it to photograph unusual rashes and get second opinions from major medical centres. What he did not go into was how he knew exactly where to find the camera in the filing cabinet.

He removed the SD card from his trouser pocket and replaced it with the one from the camera. Scanning through, it was empty.

‘We knew it was a long shot . . .’ He didn’t sound that upset. ‘We’ve got nothing on those lowlifes to say they were even with Lilly on deck one. She could have slept anywhere. Laura’s going through the footage trying to find when she resurfaced on the pool deck, but it could take her a while.’

He switched the cards back and threw the empty one from Peterson’s cabin in the rubbish bin.

He unlocked the filing cabinet and retrieved a hessian sack and his forensic kitbag from the bottom drawer. Inside the sack was a black biker jacket.

‘Out of everything in his cabin – family snaps, wages, souvenirs – this is all he wanted?’

Anya shrugged. It made no sense to her either. The leather on the sleeves and collar were cracking, suggesting it was cheap and could have been bought at a tourist market. The jacket was lined with polar-fleece material, and had a black hoodie attached from the inside. Printed in bright colours on the back were a skull, flowers and, of all things, a unicorn. Small, round rhinestones were embedded in the textured paint, a poor imitation of an Ed Hardy design.