Distress Signals

An Incredibly Gripping Psychological Thriller with a Twist You Won't See Coming

Catherine Ryan Howard

• Publisher: Corvus
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781782398400
• eBook ISBN: 9781782398394
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

AN IRISH TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER
ONE OF AMAZON UK'S 'RISING STAR' BEST DEBUTS OF 2016
WINNER: BEST MYSTERY, INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARDS 2017 USA
SHORTLISTED FOR BOOKS ARE MY BAG IBA CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2016
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA JOHN CREASEY NEW BLOOD DAGGER 2017
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 BORD GAIS ENERGY IRISH BOOK AWARDS (CRIME) Did she leave, or was she taken? The day Adam Dunne's girlfriend, Sarah, fails to return from a Barcelona business trip, his perfect life begins to fall apart. Days later, the arrival of her passport and a note that reads 'I'm sorry - S' sets off real alarm bells. He vows to do whatever it takes to find her. Adam is puzzled when he connects Sarah to a cruise ship called the Celebrate - and to a woman, Estelle, who disappeared from the same ship in eerily similar circumstances almost exactly a year before. To get the answers, Adam must confront some difficult truths about his relationship with Sarah. He must do things of which he never thought himself capable. And he must try to outwit a predator who seems to have found the perfect hunting ground... Distress Signals is a highly confident and accomplished debut novel, impeccably sustained, with not a false note. The exploration of the often murky backstage workings of the luxury liner world is fascinating, and there is a psychologically acute portrait of a killer that is genuinely moving. We will hear a great deal more of this author. - Irish Times

Part One

LOVE IS BLINDNESS

Corinne

Even at 5:45 a.m. the Celebrate’s crew deck wasn’t empty.

Something fleshy and pink and snoring was splayed on an inflatable chair bobbing at one end of the swimming pool. A young stewardess reclined on a sun-lounger, smoking, her red and yellow uniform revealing that she worked the breakfast buffet and either slept in her clothes or stored them in a ball on the floor of her crew cabin. Huddled around one of the plastic tables, three security guards argued in English about a soccer match and some goal that should never have been allowed.

Shifts ran constantly and around the clock; the midnight buffet clear-up finishing only minutes before the breakfast prep had to start. It was always someone’s spare moment before work or smoke break or post-shift crash. With the crew quarters impossibly cramped, below the water line and always smelling faintly of seawater and sewage (and, sometimes, not so faintly), everyone dashed outside to the crew deck whenever they could.

Blinking in the sunshine, Corinne stepped out onto it now and paused for a moment while her eyes adjusted to the light. There was an unoccupied table and chairs on the portside. Careful not to spill either of the two coffees she was carrying, she headed for it.

As she passed the table of security guards, Corinne felt the gaze of one of them crawling up her cabin attendant’s uniform to her face. The flash of him she’d caught with her peripheral vision left a vague impression of youth, broad shoulders and closely cut blond hair. The man’s eyes, she felt sure, stayed on her all the way to the table and lingered after she sat down.

She didn’t entertain for a second the notion that this attention was down to admiration or attraction. He was at least three decades her junior and Corinne’s face wore many more years than she’d lived. On top of that her hair was grey, her body weak and painfully thin. That left mild interest (What is a woman of her age doing working on a cruise ship?), which was fine, but also suspicion (What is she really doing here?) and recognition (Don’t I know her from somewhere?), which were not.

The table was unsteady on its legs and Corinne had to lean her elbows on it to keep it from rocking. It was also missing its parasol and one off-white plastic leg was pockmarked with cigarette burns – ‘crew grade’, in company-speak. Everything the crew had was second-hand, from the flat, stained pillows on their bunks to the chipped crockery in their mess, all of it already used and abused by paying passengers until Blue Wave deemed it no longer good enough for them.

Corinne sipped her coffee until she felt the guard’s attention fade and a quick glance confirmed his focus was back on the football debate. Then she checked her watch. She had about five minutes before Lydia arrived, tired and wired after her overnight shift.

Lydia was her cabin-mate and, over the past week – the first for both of them aboard the Celebrate – they had fallen into a pleasant routine. They met for coffee on the crew deck just after Lydia finished her shift and before Corinne started hers, and again in the mess just as Corinne was ending her work day and Lydia was gearing up for another one. Lydia was very young – only twenty-one – and had never been away from her home in the north of England before. Corinne suspected the girl found comfort in the company of a woman her mother’s age. Not that Corinne minded in the least. Lydia was a warm, cheerful girl, and it was nice to have someone to talk to about normal, everyday things. The world outside the shadow.

There was just enough time. Corinne pulled a small notebook from a pocket in her uniform skirt and laid it on the table beside her coffee cup, angling her body so that nobody else would be able to read what was on its pages.

The bridge towered into the sky behind her. All the crew’s outdoor space was sunk into the bow, another cabin attendant had told her, because there was nothing else a cruise ship could do with the open deck immediately below the bridge. You couldn’t put bright lights there for safety reasons, and paying passengers needed bright lights. So with the curved white walls of the bow rising up around them, the crew had the only swimming pool on board that didn’t offer a view of the sea.

For all Corinne knew, he could be one of the officers at the Celebrate’s helm right now, boring holes into her back. From what she’d seen on TV and in movies, officers on the bridge had access to binoculars. She couldn’t take any chances.

The sea breeze blew the notebook open, flipping a few pages with rapid-fire speed. Corinne pressed a hand to it to stop it from blowing away. It was a small diary, the week-to-a-view kind, with her own small, neat handwriting filling the spaces for the last four days with short notat...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• Prologue: Adam
• Part One: Love is Blindness
• Part Two: Lost at Sea
• Part Three: The Bay of Angels
• Part Four: Dark Waters
• Epilogue: Six Months Later
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgements
• Read on for an exclusive early extract from Catherine Ryan Howard’s electrifying new thriller
• About the Author
• Copyright