28
I followed the herd out of the terminal waiting room and up the boarding ramp onto a massive drive-on, drive-off ferry. When I saw that we all had to pass through a metal detector I felt relieved I'd left the P7 with my other stuff in the station's luggage lockers. I was using Nick Davidson's passport. The woman who swiped it at passport control was one of the few immigration officers who'd ever looked at the picture.
Few of my fellow foot passengers appeared anything like as prosperous as the Finns I was used to seeing. I guessed they were Estonians. They all seemed to be wearing fake-fur Cossack-style hats and a lot of leather. Several were in old and shabby full-length quilted coats.
They were toting enormous plastic shopping bags, all stuffed to the brim with everything from blankets to huge cartons of rice. In each case, the whole extended family seemed to have come along for the ride, kids, wives, grannies, everybody going hubbahubba to each other in Estonian.
My plan had been to keep out of the way and curl up somewhere quiet and crash out, but once on board I realized there was no chance of that.
The air was filled with the hinging and whirring of video games and one-armed jacks overlaid with kids screaming up and down the hallways, their parents in hot pursuit.
Sometimes, walking sideways to get out of the way of kids and people with their big bundles of whatever coming from the other direction, I saw where the main crowd was headed-toward the bars and snack bar. If I couldn't sleep I might as well eat.
The crowd thinned as the hallway opened up into a large bar area. Like the hallways, all the walls were covered with mahogany effect veneer, giving it a dark, depressing feel. This area seemed to be full of well-dressed Finns, who had driven their cars aboard before us. They were laughing and joking noisily among themselves, throwing drinks down their throats like condemned men. I guessed they were booze cruisers, going over to Tallinn to stock up on duty free.
These guys didn't have shopping bags and reeked of disposable income.
Their ski jackets were top-of-the-range labels, and their thick overcoats were wool, probably cashmere. Underneath, they all sported big chunky sweaters with crew or turtle necks. The only thing they had in common with the Estonians was a love of tobacco. There was already a layer of smoke covering the ceiling, waiting its turn to be sucked out by the overworked heating system.
The currency desk was just the other end of the bar. I lined up and changed $100 U.S. into whatever the local money was called. I didn't even bother looking at exchange rates to see if I was being ripped off.
What was I going to do, take my business elsewhere?
Eventually, fighting my way to the snack bar, I picked up a tray and joined the line. I wasn't particularly bothered about the wait; it was going to be a long journey, and it wasn't as if I was itching to get back and join the lushes in the bar.
Twenty minutes later I was sitting with a family at a bolted-down plastic table. The father, who looked over fifty-five but was probably under forty, still had his wool hat on. His wife looked about ten years older than him. There were four kids, each attacking a large plate of pale, undercooked fries. Mine looked the same, plus I had a couple of scary-looking red sausages.
The sound of laughter echoed from the bar, along with piped muzak-badly performed cover versions of Michael Jackson and George Michael. Thankfully the ship's safety briefing, which started then carried on forever in about five languages, cut wannabe George off in his prime.
As I tucked into my fries and franks, the husband pulled out a pack of cigarettes and he and his wife lit up. They smoked contentedly in my face, flicking the ash onto their empty plates, finally stubbing out their butts so they sizzled in the ketchup. I decided it was time for a walk. Their kids could finish off my food.
We were now in open sea and the boat rocked from side to side and plunged up and down. Children were having great fun in the hallways being thrown from wall to wall, and their parents were telling them off much more quietly. In fact, many of them looked paler than the fries I'd left on my plate.
I passed the newsstand. The only thing they had in English was another guidebook to Estonia; I decided to go back to the bar and read my own.
The Finns, undeterred by the heavy seas, were swigging back Koff beer, or at least trying to. The swell meant there was as much liquid on the floor as there was going down their throats.
The only seat was at the end of a semicircular booth, where six Finns in their late thirties three men and three women all expensively dressed, were smoking Camels and downing vodka. I gave them a fuck-off smile as I settled down on the red, leather-look plastic and opened the guidebook.
Estonia, I was told, sandwiched between Latvia and Russia, was about the size of Switzerland and only two or three hours' drive from St.
Petersburg. It had a population of 1.5 million, the size of Geneva, and if that was the best they could find to say about it, it must be a pretty mind-numbing place.
Estonians seemed to have suffered all the rigors of life as a former Soviet republic. They'd had food coupons, breadlines, fuel shortages, and inflation higher than the World Trade Center. All in all it sounded a pretty grim place, a bit like a giant Baltic version of a South London housing project.
The pictures of the old city center of Tallinn showed medieval walls, turrets, and needle-pointed towers. I couldn't wait to see the 'gabled roots' which the guide extolled. When I read on I discovered that most of the country's investment had been in this one tiny area, and that almost everywhere else they hadn't had gas or water since the Russians left in the early nineties. But then again, tourists wouldn't go that far out of town, would they?
I sat there with my eyes closed, deeply bored. There was no way I was going to socialize with the Finns. I had work to do on the other side, and besides, from what I saw I doubted I could keep up with their drinking, especially the women.
I sank as low as I could in the seat to avoid the rising cigarette smoke, which was now a solid fog above me. The ferry was slewing about big time, and now and again the propellers roared as if they'd come right out of the water, accompanied by a collective amusement park cry of 'Whooooa!' from the crowd in the bar. There was nothing but darkness to be seen from the window, but I knew there was plenty of ice out there somewhere.
I crossed my arms over my chest, let my chin drop and tried to sleep.
Not that it was going to happen, but whenever there's a lull, it pays to recharge the batteries.
An announcement over the PA system sort of woke me up, though I wasn't too sure if I'd been sleeping. I guessed it was telling us what fantastic bargains were to be had in the ferry's duty-free shops, but then I heard the word Tallinn. The system carried on with its multilingual address, eventually coming to English. It seemed we had about thirty minutes before docking.
I packed the book in the backpack, along with my new woolen hat and washing kit, and wandered down the corridor. People were walking like drunks due to the swell, and now and again I had to put my hand up on the wall to stop myself falling. Following signs to the rest rooms, I slid aside a dark wood-veneered door and walked down a flight of stairs.
A couple of guys were chatting in the men's room, zipping up and lighting cigarettes as they left. There was as much alcohol on the floor as there was on the ground in the bar; the only difference was it had been through people's kidneys first. The room was boiling hot, making the smell even worse.
I trod carefully toward the urinals. Each one had a pool of dark yellow fluid slowly seeping past the piled-up cigarette butts blocking its path. I found one that wasn't so full it would splash back on me, got my left hand up against the bulkhead to steady myself and unzipped, listening to the relentless throb of the engines.
The toilet door was pushed open and another couple of guys came in. By the look of their GoreTex jackets they were Finns. I was sorting myself out, trying to zip up with one hand while using the other to stop me falling over. The boy in black headed for the vacant toilet stall behind me, and the other lurked by the row of sinks to my left.
His green jacket reflected on the stainless-steel pipes that ran from the water dispenser for the urinals above my head. I couldn't see what he was actually doing because the pipe's shape distorted him like a fairground mirror, but whatever it was, it just looked wrong. At the same time I heard the rustle of GoreTex and saw black in the reflection, too.
I turned just in time to see an arm raised, ready to do my back some serious damage with some kind of
