I brace myself when I go into my cabin, but my digital recorder is exactly where I left it. My laptop is still locked in the case under my bed. There’s nothing else in the room that either Eino or Wolf could have seen that tells them anything I don’t want them to know. I’ve never kept a diary – who needs that hanging over them? My secrets stay safe in my head where they can’t hurt anyone.
Or anyone else, at least.
Putting John’s bag down on the bed, I empty the water from the glass on the desk and unsnap the seal from my duty-free rum. I take a neat, burning mouthful, and mumble a quiet apology to John for the invasion of his privacy. Then I pull his rucksack towards me and get started.
It’s good-quality but small, with padded shoulder straps and a waist support: the kind of rucksack a serious walker might take for a day-long hike.
In the outer pocket I find a passport, boarding passes and a printout of an email from Annabel. There’s a battered leather wallet containing some bank cards, fifteen pounds in notes. His driving licence has no endorsements and is one year from renewal.
Somehow it’s this that drives home the reality of what’s happened here. I can’t get the picture of John in that cabin out of my head. A room small enough to cross in a few strides, behind an airtight fireproof door. A single window the size of a tea tray, the white world beyond it warped by two-inch glass. A thousand miles from home, among absolute strangers.
What a place to die.
I put the licence back in the wallet, followed by the money, but then I feel something lodged in the lining. It’s a small plastic sheath no bigger than a credit card, stuffed with folded paper. I grab my tweezers from beside the sink, then sit back down and pull the contents out carefully and lay them on the bed. The first object is a photograph, the plasticky film on the front of it peeling off with age. Passport-sized: the kind you get in a booth.
The image is yellowing, but it shows three faces, close up, laughing. A dark-skinned woman with big sunglasses and a 1980s perm, holding a plump-faced mixed-race baby girl next to her cheek. And, on the other side, John, much younger. His hair thicker and darker, wearing un-ironic ombre-tinted glasses.
I look back at the picture, studying the happy family. Except that John lived alone, didn’t he? So somewhere along the way, the happy family got broken.
I go back to the transparent wallet, containing a yellowed fold of card. I ease it out and smooth it onto the table.
It’s an order of service for a funeral. The oval-shaped photo on the front shows a young man, Caucasian with dark hair. Underneath the image is the name Kelvin Pearce, and dates that would have made him seventeen when he died in 2001.
Inside are detailed some prayers, the titles of hymns and readings. The exit music is given as ‘Have a Nice Day’ by the Stereophonics. On the back page there is a short obituary of a boy who played sports, who liked expeditions with his youth group. Though there’s no mention of family, there are a couple of unusually acerbic lines in there that suggest they have been written by someone still in the anger stage of grief:
Every day without you is a day without sunshine. You had your whole life ahead of you. You loved your Scout group more than anything, but the man who should have looked after you let you die. May God keep you safe, and may He help us to forgive.
I leave it flat on the duvet, thinking: Scouts. Was John a Scout leader?
Digging back into the bag, my fingers close over something coin-shaped. But when I bring it out, it’s not currency, but a medallion of some kind. The word Recovery is embossed along one edge; a triangle, with a large V in the middle.
There’s a knock at the cabin door. I pick up my glass and go to open it.
It’s Gaia. ‘I was wondering how you were.’
‘Were you? Why?’ I frown and put the rum to my lips.
‘There are better ways to deal with it, you know.’
‘Deal with what?’
‘Whatever you’re using that for.’
I hold her eyeline as I swallow again, drawing my lips back from my teeth as it burns on its way down.
‘Yeah, but this is quicker,’ I say, raising the glass towards her. ‘Tempt you?’
With barely disguised contempt – more for the drinking than for me personally, I think – she lets her eyes drift over my shoulder into the room. I close the door between us a little more.
‘What can I do for you, Gaia?’
‘Just wondered what you’re doing with that bag. If you’re keeping it safe.’
It’s more than she’s said to me this whole trip. Then something occurs to me – something that she and John had in common was work related to substance abuse. For him, it was a guiding principle in his work with young people: to keep them clean. And Gaia specifically helps people with addictions to look after their pets.
I put the glass on the floor and show her the coin.
‘This is your kind of thing, isn’t it?’ I say, holding it up, one side, then the other. ‘Drug rehab stuff maybe?’
She puts both hands in her pockets, doesn’t even look at it. ‘Maybe you should leave it all where it is. For his family. Did you consider that?’
‘Sorry, Gaia, did I say something—’
‘Doesn’t it feel rather grubby?’ Her voice is tight, the sinews in her neck rigid. ‘Going through a dead man’s things. Oh, you too, huh?’ she says as Tori appears from the passageway. Gaia moves to let her pass. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Have another drink, why don’t you. Make it a party.’
‘O … kay,’ Tori says. ‘Goodnight, Gaia! Sleep well.’ She turns back to me, one eyebrow up. All friendly. ‘What was that about?’
‘I have no idea.’ I go back into my cabin and Tori follows without invitation, nudging the door shut behind her with her foot.
‘Annabel’s asked around about that mess you mentioned,’ she says, like everything’s fine. ‘Someone being seasick?’
‘Oh, that’s what it was? Seasickness. Glad you’ve been able to diagnose that, rather than – oh, I don’t know, poisoning, or someone throwing up after seeing a dead body or committing a murder, or something.’
It goes hard in the space between us. It goes black.
‘Okay, Dee. Fine.’ Tori lets it drift off, then nods at the bag. ‘You find anything?’
‘Picture of him with a baby.’ I tell her about the order of service, but all she does is shrug.
‘Weird thing to keep.’
It’s more than weird. But I’m still so angry with her that I barely know how to keep the conversation civil.
‘What do you want, Tor?’ I unzip a side pocket of the bag.
She brings her arms from behind her back. In one hand are two stemmed glasses; in the other is a bottle of champagne.
‘Peace offering?’ She waggles it seductively, trying to make me laugh.
And I want to, I do. I want us to crack it open and talk shit and scroll through the Instagrams of people we hate, and just be Dee and Tori again.
But the woman standing here now, trying to pretend that she hasn’t spent the last few days setting fire to our friendship: she’s not the Tori I used to do that with.
I don’t know how, and I’ve no idea why, but that woman is gone for good.
People’s lives are at risk here, and not only hers. So whatever this is, here with the bubbles and the silly grins, it’s not enough.