Dead Calm (A Dylan Scott Mystery) (9 page)

“It seems I can’t. He gave me a different phone.”

“What do you mean?”

“The call he made last night was via a flip-out phone—like Luke’s Motorola. He just gave me an iPhone.”

Bev looked at him long and hard. “What does that mean?”

“It could mean a number of things,” Dylan said. “Some innocent and some not. For all I know, he could be using a burn phone.”

“What’s one of those?”

“A burn phone? A phone that can’t be traced. They’re used the world over by crooks.”

Bev said nothing. She looked at him, her eyes reflecting a host of thoughts and questions. She even opened her mouth to speak once, but no words came.

“My, you two are looking very serious. Has someone died?”

Dylan turned his attention to his mother and kids. Freya was wearing a new hat that covered most of her head and boasted two felt antlers almost a foot long. Luke was carrying a bag that contained his own purchases.

“No one’s died.” Bev gave Luke an extra-tight hug that soon had him wriggling free.

“Except Hanna Larsen.”

Everyone ignored him and they returned to the ship.

As they stepped aboard, passengers were still in party mood. To be fair, they had been ever since the momentous occasion of crossing the Arctic Circle. Nothing changed, of course, but Dylan had experienced the same thrill as everyone else. There
was
something special about being north of that invisible line. It was as if the cruise was only just beginning. People had decided they were sure to see the northern lights now.

“Hot chocolate, anyone?” Bev asked. “Dylan?”

“No, thanks. You go ahead. I need to check something. I’ll catch up with you later.”

Dylan knew where the reception desk was. He simply didn’t know which deck it was on. Bill Carr was right in that it was easy to get lost on the ship. The decks looked the same. After walking round in circles, he found it.

A young girl was standing behind it looking slim, smart and ultra-efficient in her ship’s uniform.

“How may I help you?” she asked with only a hint of a Norwegian accent.

“If I wanted to set up a meeting with someone on this ship,” he said, “how would I go about arranging it?”

“Simple.” She gave him a beaming smile through perfectly painted pink lips. “We have space adjacent to the conference room. If you tell me when you’d like to book a room, how many delegates and what time, I will make the necessary arrangements.”

“It’s that easy?”

“Of course.”

“It’s just that I was talking to—” he dropped his voice to a dignified whisper, “—Hanna Larsen, poor woman. I was talking to her on our first night aboard and she said there had been problems with a meeting she was supposed to have with Sigurd and Mathias Jorstad.”

“No.” Frowning, she shook her head and tapped away at her computer keyboard. “No, not at all. I think you have misunderstood. Mr. Sigurd Jorstad booked the room and I checked with Mrs. Larsen myself to make sure it was convenient for her to meet them that morning.”

“Ah. I must have been mistaken. And I have to say that Mrs. Larsen seemed a little confused about the meeting. I gather she planned to sell land to the Jorstads so she was perhaps a little excited.”

The girl’s expression was blank. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what the meeting was about.”

“No matter. Thanks for that. I’ll check how many delegates will be attending and come back and see you. Thanks very much for your help.”

“You’re welcome.”

He headed back to the stairs. Double doors opened and a blast of music escaped. Hadn’t Bev said something about not wanting to miss the evening’s entertainment?

He forgot the music and thought about the Jorstad brothers. It didn’t make sense. Even if they wanted Hanna Larsen dead, they wouldn’t kill her before they were due to meet her. They would at least listen to what she had to say. For all they knew, she might have decided to sell them her precious land. Also, as Mathias had said, the legal eagles would be dealing with her estate now so they wouldn’t necessarily benefit.

He’d bet that Hanna Larsen’s daughter would inherit. She lived in Tromsø so it would make sense for her to sell her mother’s property to the Jorstads and have done with it. But that wasn’t necessarily the case.

Little would have been gained by having Hanna killed.

He pushed open double doors, walked four paces and was hit by what felt like a brick wall. It was in fact a Welshman. Mike Lloyd had marched straight at him and walloped his right shoulder.

“Don’t mention it,” Dylan murmured, but Lloyd didn’t hear. He carried on walking, his face like thunder.

Lloyd vanished through a door marked No Passengers Beyond This Point. The warning was posted in English and Norwegian so Dylan couldn’t claim he’d misunderstood.

He peered through a square of glass in the door and was in time to see Lloyd knock on another door, tap his foot as he waited for a response, and then march inside.

Ignoring the notice banning passengers, Dylan entered the crew’s quarters and crept as quietly as he could up to that door. He was about to put his ear to it but there was no need for that. The ship’s captain, Melgarde, was demonstrating his grasp of the finer points of the English language.

“How the fuck dare you?” Dylan didn’t catch Lloyd’s response if there was one. “You’re on the probation, you fucker. How the fuck dare you?”

Lloyd’s response was too quiet to hear.

“I have to tell the police fuckers that my fucking men make me look like fucking idiot. Why? We have passenger claim someone went to dead woman’s cabin and you don’t think the fuck to tell anyone?” Melgarde’s voice was rising to the point of hysteria. “Now police think I’m the fucking idiot. Idiot to have you on my ship, that’s what I am.”

Lloyd said something that could have been “I didn’t want to waste your time. After all—”

“I have to tell police. They want to know why no one mention it before, you fucker.”

Again Lloyd spoke but it was impossible to make out what he said.

“Yes, of course she died of a fucking attack of the heart. That’s not important. The important thing is our passengers and the police. Passengers pay, we have to treat them like the fucking gods, yes?”

Dylan had the feeling this would be a quick chat so he crept back to the door and away from the staff’s quarters.

The captain had redeemed himself. Dylan had thought he planned to ignore him too, but no, he’d passed on his concerns to the police. Good for him.

Dylan made a mental note to buy Lloyd a drink when he next saw him. He’d unintentionally put the bloke in a lose-lose situation. Melgarde seemed one of those difficult-to-please individuals and Dylan would bet that if Lloyd had told him that a passenger wasn’t convinced Hanna Larsen had died of natural causes, he would have been bollocked for time wasting.

He’d buy Lloyd a drink. And be prepared to have it thrown in his face.

As he headed back to the main part of the ship, he caught another blast of loud music. Although he’d been told he was attending the evening’s entertainment, it would have to wait.

The conference room with its half-dozen computers made available for passengers’ use was empty so Dylan sat in front of one of the machines and fired it up. He checked his emails, but there was nothing of interest and certainly nothing that couldn’t wait until he returned to England.

He spent the next half hour searching for information on Sigurd and Mathias Jorstad. The men, their father and the chemical company seemed squeaky clean, and he was about to give up when he saw a name he recognised. Vidar Freberg. How the hell did he know that name?

He read on and discovered that Freberg, an ex-employee, had been arrested and spent a month in prison for assaulting Sigurd Jorstad at the chemical factory. He’d been adamant that the Jorstads had made false claims about the safety properties of a chemical used at their plant. The Jorstads had labelled him as some sort of harmless nutter.

He was about to switch off the machine when a sound alerted him to a new email. He opened it.

That was just a warning. Keep out of things that don’t concern you or he won’t miss next time.

Beneath the message was a picture of a big blue car. Not
the
car. A car.

“Fuck!”

The door opened and Dylan closed the email before swivelling round in his chair to see Bev scowling at him. She was wearing a short black dress, her blond hair was shining and tamed, and her makeup had been carefully applied.

“I knew you’d be here,” she said.

“I was just coming.” He cleared his internet browsing history and switched off the machine. “Do I need to change?”

“Yes.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll meet you in the bar in five minutes, okay?”

“What is tonight’s entertainment anyway?”

“I told you. It’s music and dancing, a talent show—it’ll be great. Everyone’s looking forward to it.”

“It sounds just up my street,” he said, and Bev, laughing in a despairing way, punched him on the arm.

He walked slowly back to the cabin wondering who the hell wanted him scared off. The email had been sent to his website address and that was accessible to anyone who cared to look.

Christ, Bev was shaken enough as it was and she believed joyriding teenagers had been responsible. If she knew the truth—

Who knew he’d been asking questions? The Jorstads, Tom Jackson, the women his mother had quizzed, the ship’s captain—it would be easier to work out who
didn’t
know.

Shit!

So what had this crazy bastard done? Followed them off the ship, stolen a car, rejoiced when they chose to eat at a restaurant in a narrow side street?

He preferred the notion of thrill-seeking teenagers. That had been a fairly easy one to believe. The car had been old, big and a little battered, just the sort of thing students would drive until it gasped its last.

He carefully pushed open the cabin door and automatically tensed. He had a good look before walking inside. A quick check of the bathroom and the balcony reassured him that all was as it should be.

As he dressed, his mind ran round in circles. The Jorstads were Norwegians and probably had dozens of people eager to drive a speeding car at someone if the price was right.

Vidar Freberg! Damn it, he knew he’d seen that name before. When boarding the ship, they’d all had to wait for a steward to show them to their cabins. Right by Dylan’s feet had been a large blue suitcase. Flight tags had still been attached to the handle and the name shown had been Vidar Freberg.

He tried to put a face to the owner but, as far as he could remember, there had been no owner. He hadn’t paid it any attention at the time but he was damned if he could remember seeing anyone with that case.

If he hadn’t been with his luggage, what had happened to it? The ship’s staff wouldn’t simply throw it in a lost luggage area. Freberg must be on this ship.

If he wasn’t, if only his suitcase was—

Dylan didn’t like the direction his thoughts were taking. Maybe Freberg wasn’t the harmless nutter the Jorstads believed him to be. Perhaps the idea of blowing an entire ship, and especially the Jorstad brothers, to kingdom come appealed to him.

Chapter Fifteen

“Do we have to see him, Bill?”

“Yes.” Bill stood behind Maud to check his tie in the mirror. “We can hardly refuse, can we?”

“I don’t see why not.” Maud applied another coat of lipstick and pouted in the mirror.

“We’ll have a quick drink with him,” Bill said. “It won’t hurt us. We don’t have to stay long.”

He had no wish to talk to Vidar Freberg either, but the sight of him had come as such a shock that Bill hadn’t been able to think straight.

“What a surprise,” Freberg had said. “We must catch up with each other over a drink. It will be just us three this time. No Hanna Larsen, eh?”

Bill had been too taken aback to do more than stammer, “Yes. Well, we’ll look forward to it.”

It should have been fairly easy to avoid people on the ship but, this afternoon, he’d seen Freberg again.

“The ballroom at eight o’clock?” Freberg had suggested.

“Sounds good,” Bill had said.

If it was difficult to avoid people on the
Midnight Sun,
it was damn near impossible to invent excuses. Stuck on a ship, one couldn’t claim dinner parties, weekends away or other pressing engagements.

“Freberg’s okay.” He gave Maud’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “It won’t hurt us to talk to him.”

“But I’ve given everyone the impression I didn’t know Hanna Larsen. It just seemed easier that way.”

“So? Me, too. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does, Bill. Everyone’s talking about her. Questions are being asked.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bill said again. “We had a chat with her last year, that’s all. Only Freberg knows about that.”

Maud tugged on her bottom lip, her brows drawn together in a frown. “Exactly. Which will be why he’s so keen to talk to us.”

“He isn’t. He’s only being polite. He was as surprised as I was to find someone he knew on the ship. Well, apart from the Jorstads. I assume he knows they’re aboard. That’s probably why he’s here.”

“I expect he wants to quiz us about them. He’s obsessed.”

“Then it’ll be a very quick chat, won’t it?” Bill gave her a smile. “We know nothing about the Jorstads, do we?”

“Adam does.”

“Stop worrying about nothing, Maud. Come on.” He gave her his hand and helped her to her feet. “You look wonderful. Freberg will be too busy admiring you to care about Hanna Larsen or Adam.”