Day Four by Sarah Lotz Page B

if I use the bathroom, Helen?’ Elise said.
    ‘Of course.’ Helen smiled at her. Elise was one of those people who always announced whenever she had to go to the bathroom. Helen found it endearing rather than annoying.
    ‘Helen?’ Elise said, hesitating outside the bathroom door. ‘Helen? I think there’s someone in there.’
    ‘There can’t be.’
    Elise knocked on the door. ‘Hello?’ Elise pressed her ear to the door, then gestured for Helen to join her. ‘Listen.’
    Elise was right. A faint sound was coming from within – a woman’s voice humming a jazzy tune. Al Jolson, something like that. Helen dampened a spark of grief before it spread – Graham would have been able to identify it. She knocked on the door. ‘Hello? Is someone in there?’ The humming stopped abruptly. ‘It might be coming from the cabin next door.’
    ‘You think?’
    ‘What else could it be? Here, try the handle.’
    ‘Uh-uh,’ Elise said. ‘You do it.’
    Helen hesitated, then opened the door. The scent of lavender wafted out, but the bathroom was empty.
    Elise shivered. ‘Ugh. That gave me the jitters.’
    She disappeared inside and Helen made her way back to Celine. The air inside the cabin was stifling, and she moved towards the balcony to crank the door open, catching her breath as a flicker of movement caught her eye. There was someone behind her – a man – she could see his reflection in the glass of the balcony door. Tall, broad-shouldered, his face a blur. Slowly, heart in her throat, she turned around.
    The room was empty.
    She almost screamed when the toilet whooshed in the bathroom. Elise emerged, shaking her hands to dry them. ‘Helen? You okay?’
    Helen forced herself to smile. ‘I’m fine.’
    ‘I tell you, I hope Maddie hurries up. I’m going to get us a drink.’
    While Elise poured them both hefty doubles, Helen glanced at the balcony door again. Stress, that was all it was. Exhaustion. Her mind playing tricks on her.
    ‘Here’s mud in your eye,’ Elise winked, handing her a glass. Helen wasn’t much of a whiskey drinker, but she knocked it back gratefully, the burn as it slid down her throat bringing her back to herself. They perched on the bed.
    The sound of a cheer filtered down from the Lido deck above them, and Elise clinked her glass against Helen’s. ‘Happy New Year, hon.’
    ‘Happy New Year.’
    ‘Happy New Year, Celine,’ Elise said.
    Celine raised her head slowly, and then she gave them a smile full of intelligence, and, Helen thought, something that looked very much like malice. ‘It will be,’ she said. ‘You’ll see.’

The Angel of Mercy
    Jesse still didn’t dare breathe through his nose. He’d seen (and smelled) far worse – he’d interned at Makiwane Hospital, for fuck sakes – but the odour of stomach acid and decomposition in this confined environment was really getting to him. His first death on board, and right in the middle of everything else he had to deal with.
    Ram, the more senior of the two security guys waiting at the door, cleared his throat. ‘How much longer will you be, doctor?’
    ‘I’m about done.’ Jesse hated to admit it, but the ship’s security staff intimidated the crap out of him, and none more so than Ram, who was something of a legend. According to Martha, the font of all ship gossip, Ram was an ex-Gurkha, a veteran of Afghanistan, and someone you seriously didn’t want to mess with. Devi, the guard with him, was more of a mystery. He was almost a head taller than his boss, and unlike the other security staff, was clean-shaven – the others tended to sport identical moustaches. Jesse hadn’t spoken to him before, although he’d seen him once or twice in the crew bar.
    ‘Can you tell us time of death?’ This from Devi. His boss glanced at him sharply.
    ‘I’m not a pathologist,’ Jesse sighed. He’d taken the girl’s core temperature, factoring in that the air-con would have been blasting out before the ship stopped. The