Laura Marlin Mysteries 2: Kidnap in the Caribbean

  After a delicious lunch of chips slathered with ketchup and ice cream sundaes piled high with honeycomb, banana, chocolate sprinkles and marshmallows, they went from deck to deck, mapping out their days.

  ‘We could have seafood tonight, curry tomorrow and fish and chips on Wednesday,’ suggested Tariq. ‘And maybe because the weather is still a bit grey and blowy, we should go ice-skating this afternoon? I’ve never tried it before. There weren’t a lot of ice rinks in Bangladesh.’

  ‘Ice-skating on a ship – sounds brilliant!’ agreed Laura. ‘How about going to the water park if it’s sunny tomorrow morning, followed by … ooh, I don’t know, nine holes of miniature golf. If you’re feeling brave, we could try the rock climbing wall on Wednesday.’

  Tariq laughed. ‘We could have ice cream sundaes every day and in the evenings we could try the whirlpool, the sauna, or the theatre.’

  Laura giggled. ‘How will we fit it all in?’ Then she felt a twinge of guilt. ‘Poor uncle Calvin. It’s so unfair that we get to enjoy ourselves while he’s trapped in his cabin.’

  ‘It is unfair,’ agreed Tariq, ‘but my foster father says that sometimes injuries or illnesses are nature’s way of telling people to slow down. Your uncle seems pretty exhausted from work. Besides, he’ll have lots of fun in Antigua.’

  Laura smiled. ‘You could be right. He did look pretty happy when we took him the ice cream sundae, and it was a bonus finding the latest Matt Walker book in the gift shop. He could hardly wait for us to leave so he could start it.’

  The highlight of the afternoon was when a pod of dolphins appeared. At the time Laura and Tariq were standing on a viewing point on the prow of the ship watching as the world they knew gave way to a shifting landscape of bold, dark blue. It parted before the white bow of the Ocean Empress, throwing up diamond droplets.

  Laura looked down and felt almost giddy. Below that silken surface were marine worlds as teeming with life as London, New York or Rome. Thousands of leagues beneath the sea, there were creatures as enigmatic as the giant squid. There were sharks with mouths as big as doors. There were forests of pulsing coral and shipwrecks and navy submarines. And yet none of it was visible. The uniform blue of the sea was like a theatre curtain, hiding a performance.

  Occasionally that curtain lifted to reveal a glimpse of the spectacle below. If whales and seals are the actors of the ocean, dolphins are the acrobats. Out of the blue, twelve of them soared to the surface on the crest of a wave and began racing the ship, performing somersaults and gravity-defying leaps at astonishing speed. They ducked and dived like quicksilver. Watching them, it was quite impossible not to feel happy. They were in love with life; glorying in their strength and freedom.

  Afterwards, Laura and Tariq tried ice-skating. It was hard to say which of them was worse than the other and they spent most of the time in a heap on the ice, laughing until their sides hurt. There was something quite surreal about trying to skate on a ship rolling on the Atlantic. It was very entertaining.

  By dinnertime, they’d worked up an enormous appetite, which they’d decided could only be satisfied by an equally enormous seafood platter. First, though, they’d checked on Calvin Redfern. A room service waiter had brought him the cheeseburger Laura had ordered for him, but it lay untouched. He was fast asleep.

  Laura filled up his water glass and smoothed the cover over him, her heart contracting. Under normal circumstances, her uncle exuded strength. It distressed her to see him looking so vulnerable.

  ‘He’ll be as good as new before you know it,’ Tariq said gently. ‘He’s like a sleeping lion. It won’t be long before he roars again.’

  Laura smiled. A sleeping lion was a lovely image. Tariq was right. Calvin Redfern would be stronger than ever in no time.

  It was early when they walked into the Happy Clam but already it was buzzing. There was another seafood restaurant with starched tablecloths, shiny wine glasses and waiters dressed in black and white, but it hadn’t been inviting at all. The Happy Clam looked much more friendly. It had rustic wooden tables, red-checked tablecloths and a buffet groaning with prawns, lobsters, oysters and so many species of fish Laura marvelled that there were any left in the sea.

  She and Tariq loaded their plates with garlic prawns, rice and big chunks of lemon and settled down at an empty table. It was delicious food and they positively beamed as they tucked into it. Unfortunately, their peace was soon shattered. Five minutes after they sat down, the volume in the restaurant rose by several decibels. When they glanced up, Jimmy’s parents were bearing down on them. Their son had proceeded directly to the buffet table, where he was wresting a lobster with claws as big as spades onto his plate.

  ‘You don’t mind if we join you, do you?’ cried his mum, plonking herself down beside Laura. ‘The posh restaurant claimed to be full, which I’m certain was a blatant lie, and now this place is crammed to the gills.’

  Bob thrust out a meaty paw. ‘Bob and Rita Gannet, how do you do?’

  Laura rescued her hand and discreetly wiped it on her napkin under the table. ‘I’m Laura and this is Tariq.’

  Bob flagged down a waiter. ‘Two beers, two tropical juices, and two fish and chips with all the trimmings.’

  The waiter opened his mouth as if to protest that the whole point of a buffet restaurant was that customers served themselves, thought better of it, and grunted assent.

  Jimmy returned with a towering platter. Rita introduced him to Laura and Tariq, but his cheeks were stuffed with lobster and although he nodded and mumbled a greeting he avoided their eyes.

  ‘Where are your parents, kids?’ asked Rita, squeezing ketchup onto her chips. ‘At the theatre? In the casino?’

  Laura opened her mouth to say that they were with her uncle who was lying injured in his cabin, but he was such an intensely private man and so loathed being an invalid that it felt almost as if she’d be betraying him. ‘We’re travelling alone,’ she said.

  Tariq looked at her in surprise. So did the Gannets.

  ‘What, without a guardian?’ Rita wanted to know.

  ‘Not exactly.’ Laura admitted. ‘We’re with my uncle but not with him, if you see what I mean.’

  Bob chuckled and waggled a chip at her. ‘I get it. He’s wearing an invisibility cloak!’

  Laura had to make an effort not to roll her eyes. ‘No, that’s not it at all. He’s real and he is on the ship, it’s just that he’s under deep cover.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Tariq, not quite sure where she was going with this, but willing to support her all the same. And so far everything was true. Calvin Redern was deep under cover – the bed cover.

  Jimmy gave up trying to pretend he wasn’t remotely interested in them and sat up in his chair. His lobster was forgotten.

  Rita smiled indulgently. ‘You mean, like a spy?’

  ‘No, I mean he’s a detective,’ Laura told her. ‘He used to be – ‘she corrected herself – ‘still is, one of the best in the world. As good as Matt Walker. Matt’s a fictional detective, but he’s so brilliant he might as well be real. He’s real to me.’

  ‘So lemme get this shhtraight,’ said Bob, his words muffled by a mouthful of fish. ‘Your uncle who is not here really is here, and Matt Walker, whoever he is, is not real but you think he is, and both of them are detectives?’

  ‘Umm … I suppose so, yes.’

  ‘Who is he hunting?’ Jimmy said, pushing his plate away. ‘Your uncle, I mean. Who’s he after? Is it something to do with the sinister man with the binoculars?’

  ‘What sinister man?’ Bob wanted to know.

  ‘Jimmy, sweetheart, if there’s a scary stranger on the ship, I want to know about it,’ Rita said anxiously. Her voice rose. ‘How many times have I warned you about stranger danger?’

  ‘There is no sinister man, Mrs Gannet,’ Laura said. ‘He’s making it up.’

  ‘He often does that,’ Rita told her. ‘Jimmy, are you telling stories again?’

  Jimmy scowled. ‘Am not.’


  Laura scowled back. ‘Okay, what did he look like?’

  ‘Weird. I only noticed him because everyone on the dock was smiling or excited or busy and he was like a stiff black insect, staring.’

  Beneath the table, Laura’s skin suddenly crawled as if a hundred beetles were marching across it. Tariq went still in his chair. The image was too specific to be invented.

  Laura thought of her uncle, laid up in his cabin. It was bad enough that he had two sprained ankles, but his fall could have been so much worse. What if it hadn’t been an accident? But, no, that was impossible. He’d tripped going down the steps because he was in a hurry. Not even the Straight A gang could have organised that.

  ‘Even if there was a weird man – and I’m not saying there was – he would hardly have been looking at me and Tariq,’ she told Jimmy. ‘We’re two ordinary kids enjoying a holiday with our uncle.’

  ‘Your detective uncle,’ he pointed out. ‘Detectives have lots of enemies. Anyway, you still haven’t told us why he’s under cover.’

  And I’m not going to, you annoying little brat, Laura wanted to say, but she stabbed a roll with her butter knife instead.

  ‘Are there criminals walking around the ship?’ Jimmy persisted.

  ‘Ooh, I do hope not,’ said Rita, looking at the queue for the buffet counter as if she expected any murderers and thieves to be wearing placards.

  ‘Don’t be a dodo,’ boomed Bob, pounding a paw on the table. The salt and pepper leapt into the air. ‘As if they’d allow criminals on the Ocean Empress.’

  Several people glanced their way and a woman at the next table giggled nervously.

  Laura couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid as to say that her uncle was a detective, much less than he was under cover. If she’d said he was a little under the weather, they’d have imagined he was seasick and the whole conversation would have been over by now.

  ‘Besides,’ Bob was saying, ‘I think they’re making it up. It’s pure fantasy.’

  Tariq had been silent throughout, but now he sat up. ‘Sir, if there’s one thing Laura never does, it’s lie. She’s too loyal to her uncle to tell you, but the truth is he’s not very well at the moment and is unable to join us for meals. However, he was once a brilliant detective and Laura takes after him. She’s a pretty fine investigator herself. She’ll be as good as Matt Walker when she’s older.’

  ‘I’m going to be a detective too,’ announced Jimmy. He’d been tucking into a trifle and had a cream moustache with chocolate sprinkles. ‘Only I’m going to be even better than Matt Walker. And fifty times better than your invisible uncle.’

  Laura had an overwhelming desire to leap across the table and shove his face in his trifle. ‘I bet you don’t even know who Matt Walker is,’ she said scornfully.

  ‘Do too.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Do.’

  Rita wiped her mouth on her napkin and put an arm around her son. ‘But honey, only yesterday you were telling us you wanted to be a submarine commander. And before that you said your dream was to be an engineer and build a skyscraper.’

  Jimmy shoved an enormous portion of trifle into his mouth, smiled angelically and said: ‘Well, now I’m going to be the best detective in the world!’

  ‘Of course you are, hon,’ smiled Rita. To the other children she said: ‘He’s very bright, our Jimmy. Top of the class he is in every subject. Loves science and maths, don’t you, sweetie?’

  Bob signalled to the waiter to bring him a portion of lemon meringue pie from the dessert counter. ‘Laura, Tariq, I apologise for doubting you. Clearly you and your mysterious uncle are not to be trifled with. Trifle – get it, tee hee. Better still, you obviously have a lot in common with my son, so you’ll have lots to chat about over the next week or so. How nice, Jimmy, that you have two new friends.’

  As soon as they were outside, Laura put her hands over her face and let out a muffled scream. ‘Two new friends! Lots to chat about during the voyage! They’ve got to be kidding.’

  ‘It’s a big ship,’ said Tariq. ‘Hopefully we’ll never see them again.’

  ‘That’s what you said this morning and we’ve just had to suffer through an entire dinner with them. As if that aggravating boy could be a better detective than Uncle Calvin. Fifty times better! I couldn’t believe my ears.’

  ‘Maybe he thought it was a way to make us like him – to say he wanted to be a detective. He seems lonely. I know he’s a bit irritating, but maybe we should give him a chance. You were kind to me when I was the loneliest boy on earth, and that turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.’

  ‘Yes, but you were the nicest, bravest, most wonderful person I’d ever met, and he’s … he’s the most infuriating.’ She stopped. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Tariq.’

  He grinned. ‘Like what?’

  ‘With that look that makes me feel as if I’d walk across hot coals if you asked me to.’

  ‘This look.’ He put on his wounded fawn expression.

  She couldn’t help giggling. ‘I’m absolutely not promising anything, but … oh, all right, I’ll think about it.’

  Laura was still smiling when they reached the stairs to Deck C. She was about to start down the steps when she noticed a small hook in the wall level with the second step, at around ankle height. There was a matching one on the other side.

  That got her thinking. Her uncle had fallen because he’d tripped in the darkness on what he thought was a loose carpet string. Only trouble was, there was no carpet on the steps. There was just steel and a strip of industrial rubber that was well secured and highly unlikely to be the cause of two sprained ankles.

  The hooks made Laura suspicious. They reminded her of Matt Walker’s first case: The Rocking Horse Mystery. He’d investigated the death of a millionaire businessman who’d fallen and hit his head on a marble fireplace in a seemingly empty room. It turned out that a rival had set up a tripwire – a strand of near invisible fishing line secured between two armchairs at ankle-height. It was designed to topple the man in the exact spot where he was likely to do himself most damage.

  In order for someone to do the same thing to Calvin Redfern, they’d have had to hide nearby so that the tripwire didn’t kill or injure anybody else. On the right side of the stairwell was a narrow, dark space just wide enough to accommodate a very slim man. Or a woman.

  Tariq looked up at her. ‘Is everything all right?’

  Laura skipped down the remaining stairs and unlocked the cabin. She was allowing her imagination to get the better of her. Thousands of people took tumbles down steps every year without imagining it involved a hidden assassin.

  She smiled. ‘I’m fine. How about we take Skye on deck and try to make friends with a waiter or chef? I’d like to find him a nice juicy bone for his dinner.’

  FOR A SIBERIAN HUSKY like Skye, genetically programmed to run through snow for hours at a stretch, pulling heavy sledges, a cruise ship was not the best environment. Laura spent a lot of the first day worrying about how he was going to cope with being cooped up in a cabin with only a limited amount of exercise in the mornings and evenings. Until, that is, she met Fernando.

  Fernando was a waiter who seemed to spend more time smoking on deck than carrying trays, but he was dog crazy. When Laura and Tariq showed up at the galley door looking for a bone for Skye, he went into raptures over the husky.

  ‘Oh my,’ he said, palms pressed to his cheeks, ‘never did I think I would have such a lucky day as this. A Siberian husky – a champion among dogs – on board the Ocean Empress. Oh my, life suddenly looks very much brighter.’

  Not only did he immediately rush away to fetch Skye a T-bone steak, he had an exercise solution – one he used with his own greyhound back in New York.

  Laura couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘A treadmill?’

  ‘You mean, one of those running machines in a gym?’ Tariq asked.

  Fernando grinned. ‘Wait till you see for your
self.’

  It turned out that the manager of the ship gym was his best friend and glad to assist them. As soon as Fernando had finished his shift, he introduced everyone and showed Laura how to train Skye to use the treadmill. At first, the husky was scared of the noise the machine made, but in no time at all he was sprinting along as if he were competing in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska. He caused quite a sensation among the other passengers. Fernando was very impressed.

  ‘You’d never know he only had three legs. He’d give Mattie, my greyhound, a run for her money and she’s like a pocket rocket.’

  He was so taken with Skye and Skye with him that Laura agreed right away when he begged her to allow him to exercise the husky in his free time.

  ‘This is the thing that will save my sanity. Otherwise all I do is miss Mattie and get bored. Nothing to look forward to but ocean, more ocean and more ocean.’

  Laura found it extraordinary that anyone could get bored on the floating city that was the Ocean Empress, where it was possible to try half a dozen different activities and eat in a different restaurant every day of the cruise.

  On their third day at sea, a Tuesday, she and Tariq spent the morning playing mini golf and chatting to her uncle. Lunch was a fudge sundae for each of them. They’d had so many pancakes for breakfast they couldn’t fit in anything else.

  In the afternoon, the last of the clouds blew away and a silky blue sky arched over the ship. Sea birds wheeled overhead. Passengers in bikinis and board shorts baked on sun loungers, sipping exotic cocktails with umbrellas in them.

  Laura and Tariq had a lovely time shooting down water slides and kayaking along fake rapids. It was a relief to know that Skye was happy and taken care of. Calvin Redfern had woken that morning in a lot of pain, but for now he was engrossed in his Matt Walker book and finding comfort in a large chocolate cake.