The same time, deck 5
Tiago Álvarez stepped out of the atrium cabin (as inner cabins on the Sultan with a view of the shopping mall were called) and greeted an elderly lady who was walking towards him from the spa area in a dressing gown. Delighted by the unexpected attention paid her by the young man, she gave him a beaming smile and coyly touched her candyfloss hair that had just been blow-dried.
Tiago didn’t have to turn around to know that the woman was looking back at him. The Argentinian was well aware of the effect he had on women of all ages. They loved his dark skin, his black, curly locks, which hairspray could barely tame, and his dreamy eyes that also betrayed a hint of melancholy helplessness.
Happily humming to himself (he was always pleased when people liked him), he headed to the front of the ship, in the direction of the Atlantic Bar. In the last third of the corridor he stopped by the door of an outer cabin, shaking his head.
Of the twenty-three years he’d been on this earth, he’d spent the last six on cruise ships almost without a break. Much had changed since his maiden voyage on the MS Puertos from Lisbon to Tenerife: the ships had become larger, the cabins more affordable and the food better. But the passengers had remained as stupid as ever.
How brainless must you be to use the ‘Please tidy my room’ sign? he thought, eyeing the green paper hanger dangling from the cabin doorknob.
Quite apart from the fact that it didn’t summon the chambermaids any sooner, it was also the perfect invitation for thieves: ‘Come on in; there’s nobody at home!’
He sighed at such stupidity and turned the sign around to the ‘Please do not disturb’ side. Then, having made sure no one was watching him, he put his key into the card slot and opened the door.
‘Thanks, Stacy,’ he whispered as he thought of the front office trainee who he’d done it with in the computer room at reception. She was tall, blond, loud, and not his type at all, but sex with the women who looked after the passengers was always the simplest way of facilitating his work. All staff at reception had a master key they could use for guests who’d mislaid their own or were interested in viewing a different category of cabin. While shagging, Tiago had swapped his key card with that of his ladyfriend. At some point the following morning Stacy had noticed that her universal key wasn’t working any more. Assuming that the magnetic strip on her card was damaged, she’d issued herself with another one.
Child’s play if you knew how to do it. And had the right Romeo qualities.
As Tiago checked out the cabin he’d entered, a smile of satisfaction appeared on his face. This was nothing like the pigsty he’d found in the previous room. The scumbag in the last atrium cabin – a pensioner from Switzerland travelling on his own, according to the travel documents in the desk drawer – had spread half his dinner in the bed and chucked his dirty underwear on the floor. Tiago hated this lack of respect. Didn’t those bastards know the time pressure that a chambermaid was under? That they only earned a few cents per room?
All he found in this cabin, the third of his ‘breakfast shift’ today, were the inevitable traces of the night: crumpled sheets, a used water glass on the bedside table, jeans and underwear scrunched up on the sofa. But no gnawed chicken wings on the carpet, while even the bathroom looked like what you might expect from a civilised person. In the previous cabin, by contrast, the old fart had quite clearly got the flannel mixed up with toilet paper. Nor had he found it necessary to use the loo brush after doing his business. This impertinence had been the last straw that prompted Tiago’s revenge. He really ought not to waste any time in his ‘work’, but the minute it had taken to remove the skid marks from the flannel with the pensioner’s toothbrush was worth it.
Such a shame I won’t be there when the old fart is slobbering all over the bristles tonight, Tiago thought in amusement as he opened the cupboard housing the built-in safe.
There were only a handful of hotel safe systems and Tiago knew them all. It usually took him a while to crack the general code, but here on the Sultan that wasn’t necessary. Here you opened the safe with the cabin key. It couldn’t get any better.
‘What have we got here, then?’ he asked himself as he examined the school ID card, which he’d found amongst cheap fashion jewellery, an iPod and some European cash. The young girl with her dyed hair and defiant stare suited the black jump boots and exclusively sombre clothes hanging here in the wardrobe. He read the name: Lisa Stiller.
If I had a fifteen-year-old daughter I wouldn’t let her have a nose stud, Tiago thought. He was conservative in such matters. The body of a woman, especially that of a girl, was sacred to him. He even regarded pierced ears as abuse, to say nothing of tattoos and piercings elsewhere.
With the palm of his hand Tiago stroked the felt-lined bottom of the safe and came across a brand-new screwdriver and small spray can.
Black paint?
Surely Lisa wasn’t planning on decorating the ship with graffiti?
He put the can back and counted the cash. One hundred and forty euros and sixty cents. Probably the sum of her pocket money. As she didn’t have a purse she probably hadn’t even counted it, but Tiago wouldn’t take more than ten. Never more than ten per cent was his golden rule. And never personal objects which, in the worst-case scenario, could be traced back to their owners. When the sums were little the victims always imagined they’d mislaid the money themselves.
‘You must have lost it, darling. Why would a thief leave your watch, all your jewellery and a large wad of money?’
It took a bit longer his way, but the Tiago method was foolproof. His passage in the inner cabin cost him $2,400 for the Cadiz–Oslo–New York legs, and so far he’d pocketed $2,200. By the time he changed ships in New York and set sail for Canada, he’d have a further $2,500. Not bad if your expenses were zero and you could live your life on a permanent holiday like a millionaire.
Tiago took two five-euro notes. As he was putting back the rest of the money he noticed an envelope leaning upright in the right-hand corner of the safe.
Another financial cushion? Perhaps a present from granny for the trip?
Overcome by curiosity he opened the padded envelope. At that moment an unexpected noise made him aware of an unforgivable error.
An error he’d made while entering the cabin and which he ought to have realised the moment he’d had the school ID in his hands, if not earlier. How could I be so stupid? Tiago thought before diving over the bed towards the balcony.
But he was too slow.
No teenager travels on a cruise ship alone!
The connecting door, which he hadn’t checked, opened and he had no time to hide on the balcony to avoid being caught by the cleaning lady, who at that moment entered the cabin and who…
… was drunk?
Crouching on all fours behind the tall bed, Tiago watched what was happening with the help of the mirror set above the desk next to the television.
The way the chambermaid, with her white housecoat and archaic-looking bonnet, had staggered into the room, Tiago’s initial thought was that she must have been drinking.
Then he saw the two men behind her, saw the fist of one of them hit her in the back, which is why the young woman lost her balance and as she fell hit her head on the door of the cupboard he’d opened.