At the edge of the quay I collapsed onto the concrete, gasping and coughing and shaking, and then I got to my hands and knees and looked up, first at the Aurora and then towards the little town in front of me.
It wasn’t Bergen. I had no idea where we were, but it was a small town, barely even a village, and this late at night there was not a soul about. The smattering of cafés and bars that lined the quayside were all closed. There were a few lights in shop windows, but the only establishment I could see that looked as if I might stand a chance of finding someone to open the door was a hotel overlooking the quay.
Trembling, I got to my feet, lurched over the low chain that fenced off the sheer drop to the sea, and half walked, half staggered across the quayside towards the hotel. The Aurora’s engine had picked up a notch, and there was an urgency to it now. As I crossed the seemingly endless concrete apron of the quay, it rose again in pitch, and there was the sound of sloshing water, and as I glanced fearfully behind me, I saw the boat begin to pull slowly away, its prow pointing out into the fjord, its motors grinding and thrumming as it inched slowly away from the shore.
I looked quickly away, filled with a kind of superstition, as if just turning to look at the boat could attract the attention of the people on board.
As I reached the steps up to the hotel door, the sound of the engine picked up, and I felt my legs give way as I banged, banged, banged on the door. I heard a voice saying “Please, please, oh please somebody come . . .” And then the door opened and the light and warmth flooded out, and I felt myself helped upright and over the threshold to safety.
Some half hour later I was huddled in a wicker armchair, wrapped in a synthetic red blanket, in the dimly lit, glassed-in terrace overlooking the bay. I had a cup of coffee in my hands, but I was too tired to drink it, and I could hear voices in the background, speaking in . . . Norwegian, I supposed it must be. I was overwhelmingly tired. I felt as if I hadn’t slept properly in days—which perhaps I hadn’t, and my chin kept nodding onto my chest and then jerking back up as I remembered where I was, and what I’d escaped from. Had it been real, that nightmare of the beautiful boat, with its coffin-like cell, far beneath the waves? Or was this all one long hallucination?
I was half dozing and half watching the still black lights of the bay, the Aurora a distant speck far up the fjord, moving west, when I heard a voice over my shoulder.
“Miss?”
I looked up. It was a man wearing a slightly skewed name tag reading ERIK FOSSUM—GENERAL MANAGER. He looked as if he had been dragged from his bed, his hair rumpled and his shirt buttons awry, and he passed a hand over an unshaven chin as he sat down in the armchair opposite me.
“Hello,” I said, wearily. I’d gone through my story with the man at the desk—at least as much of it as I thought safe to give, and as much as his English would permit. He was obviously the night porter, and he looked and sounded more Spanish or Turkish than Norwegian, although his Norwegian seemed to be better than his English, which was fine when it came to stock phrases about checking in and opening hours, but not up to a garbled tale of mixed identity and police.
I had seen him showing the only ID I had with me—Anne’s—to the manager, and heard his low, guarded tones, and heard my own name repeated several times.
Now the man sitting opposite me folded his fingers and smiled, slightly nervously.
“Miss—Black Lock, is that right?” He pronounced it as two words. I nodded.
“I don’t completely understand—my night manager tried to explain—how do you have Anne Bullmer’s credit cards? We know Anne and Richard well; they stay here sometimes. Are you a friend?”
I put my hands over my face, as if I could press back the tiredness that was threatening to overwhelm me.
“I—it’s a really long story. Please, can I use your phone? I have to contact the police.”
I had made up my mind as I hung, dripping and exhausted, over the polished check-in desk. In spite of my promise to Carrie, this was my only chance to save her. I didn’t for one second believe that Richard would let her live. She knew too much, had screwed too much up. And without the headscarf I had no chance of passing myself off as Anne, and without Carrie’s passport I had no chance of posing as Carrie, and both were lost somewhere in the bay, fathoms down. Only Anne’s purse had survived, miraculously still in the pocket of the Lycra stretch pants as I crawled up the ladder, out of the water.
“Of course,” Erik said sympathetically. “Would you like me to phone them? They may not have an English speaker on duty at this time of night. I must warn you, we don’t have a police station in the town, the nearest one is a few hours away in the next . . . what’s the word. The next valley. It will probably be tomorrow before someone can come out.”
“Please tell them it’s urgent, though,” I said wearily. “The sooner, the better. I can pay for a bed. I have money.”