Sometimes it wasn’t what was there — it was how you looked at it. You just needed to look with different eyes.
‘We’re approaching this thing from the wrong angle,’ Ben murmured after a long pause.
‘Tell me what you mean,’ Tamara said. ‘And don’t say “another angle”.’
‘You have the passenger list on file?’ he asked.
She tapped the screen in front of her.
‘Let me take a look,’ he said. ‘And maybe I will have that coffee after all.’
Ben spent the next half hour studying the computer with such intensity that, watching over his shoulder, Tamara thought he might melt the screen. With the CIC files in one window and running web searches in another, he systematically checked each of the twelve passengers’ names against local and international news reports, as well as whatever else he could dredge up from the internet.
He started with the four British nationals on the crash flight. Their profiles quickly came together. Colin and Sandra Hartnoll and their son Jamie had been on holiday from their home in Leeds: Colin Hartnoll had taught geography at a sixth-form college, Sandra had been a legal secretary, and Jamie had been taking a year off before University. The fourth Brit was Gordon Love, a retired private dentist who’d emigrated to Little Cayman some years earlier and had been travelling to London to visit his daughter, Helen, and her husband, Clive.
Then there were the De Groots, a family of four from Amsterdam. According to online news sources Ruud De Groot was an ophthalmologist; his wife Ursula was a stay-at-home mother taking care of little Jan, 8, and Carice, 11.
Ben could see nothing here at all. He moved on to the next on his list. Monica Steinhart, 28, originally from Long Island, had been a freelance diving instructor based on Little Cayman. On July 23 she’d been travelling across to Grand Cayman to take a class of novices out to Stingray City off the north point.
The last three passengers to meet their deaths that day had been tourists from Tampa, Florida: Jim Duggan, 22, a postgrad college student and his sister Fay, 19, together with her twenty-year-old boyfriend Terry Bassini, who worked in his father’s motorcycle customising business.
As far as Ben could see, all twelve had been just ordinary people, pursuing their ordinary lives. Whether it had been work or pleasure that had brought them together on board the doomed aircraft that day, there was nothing whatsoever to suggest anything more than just a horrible coincidence for all concerned.
‘What do these figures here mean?’ he asked Tamara, pointing at the six-digit numbers next to each name or group of names.
‘Booking references,’ she replied. ‘Nick always believed in keeping the system simple and easy. When a customer makes a booking, we issue them with a number. All they have to do is show up, quoting it when they give their name, for the flight steward to check against the records. That way there’s no hassle with issuing printed tickets. We also take a phone number and an address on the island, for security reasons. It all goes down together on our records.’
‘Okay,’ Ben murmured, and went on searching the screen.
‘What are you looking for exactly?’ she asked him.
‘I don’t know. But there’s something we’re missing here. I’m sure of it.’ He reached for his coffee. It was cold but he took a slurp anyway. ‘Tell me about the co-pilot, Brady.’
‘Mark? What’s to tell? He joined CIC just a few months after it started up. Before that, he was with a charter outfit in Nassau. He often rode co-pilot with Nick, sometimes the other way round.’
‘What else?’
Tamara sighed. ‘I think I told you already that he and Cindy — that’s Cindy Masterton, the flight attendant — were going to be married in the Fall. Nick was going to be their best man. What are you shooting at?’
‘Ghosts and shadows, so far.’ Ben said. ‘How many Trislanders does CIC have left? Two?’
‘Just one flying. The other’s grounded. Business is that bad.’
‘Who are the crew?’
‘Jack Burgess is the chief pilot, his co is Mort Clegg. Jo Sundermann is the flight attendant. They’ve all been with the company since the beginning. So have the flying school instructors, most of the office staff, even the nice old man who tends the grounds. CIC’s like a little family, Ben. Nothing sinister or corrupt going on. No secrets.’ She paused. ‘Well, just the secret that you already know about.’
There was a soft knock at the door, and a man Ben hadn’t seen before stepped nervously into the office. Mid thirties or thereabouts, thin and weedy, balding with thick glasses and protruding front teeth. He had three ballpoint pens in the breast pocket of his shirt and was clutching a sheaf of papers to his chest.
Tamara said, ‘Ben, this is Grant Singer, the company accountant. Grant, Ben was a good friend of Nick’s.’
Singer gave Ben a handshake like a damp facecloth. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt,’ he said hesitantly. ‘But I was just going through the bank records for the last month and there’s a discrepancy here that I need to run by you.’
Tamara hesitated, then said, ‘All right, I have a minute.’ The accountant spread his sheaf of papers across the far side of the desk and began going through them with her.
Ben got up from the desk, walked aimlessly around the office, thought about a cigarette. His mind was swirling with thoughts and questions, and he was only half-aware of what Singer was saying in his insistent, whining voice.
‘I don’t see anything,’ Tamara said.
‘There on the statement printout,’ Singer whined. ‘The payment reference number. Now look on our own records. How come it’s not there?’
‘Ask Wendy. She does all the data entry.’
‘I already did. She’s no idea what happened here. Without that information, we can’t refund the customer if he was booked on one of the cancelled flights.’
‘It’s only a few dollars, Grant,’ Tamara said. ‘Can’t we deal with this some other time? I’m kind of in the middle of something here. Tell you what, you leave the papers with me and I’ll go through them afterwards.’
‘Only a few dollars,’ the accountant muttered under his breath as he left the office. ‘Sorry about that,’ Tamara said when he’d gone. ‘Grant’s a valued member of the team but he gets a little anal sometimes. What’s up?’ she added, noticing Ben’s expression of puzzlement.
‘Can I have a look at those?’ he asked, walking around the desk to examine the accounts paperwork.
‘Why?’
‘Just a feeling.’
‘I shouldn’t let you see confidential business documents,’ Tamara said. ‘But hey, you’ve already seen everything else, so why not?’
Ben was already studying the anomalous figures that Singer had underlined in ballpoint. The payment in question had been made on July 21, two days before the crash: the sum of eighty-eight Cayman Islands Dollars, paid by credit card by a Mr L. Moss. As Singer had pointed out, there was no mention of an L. Moss on CIC’s own records. No payment, no payment reference, no phone, no address.
‘What flight did this Moss book on?’ Ben asked.
Tamara shrugged. ‘Well, that’s the whole point. There’s no way we can tell that right now.’
‘The information’s lost?’
‘It’s not lost,’ she said irritably. ‘I’m sure it’s just mislaid. Things are a little screwy at the moment, as you can imagine.’
‘Does CIC often mislay booking data?’
‘Of course not. Grant would have a heart attack.’
Ben was silent for a minute, then asked, ‘When did flights start running again after the crash?’
‘Jack and Mort went out again for the first time the day before yesterday,’ Tamara said. ‘They’re out right now, as we speak. But we’re still only firing on one cylinder. We’ve had to make a load of refunds, hundreds of customers either pissed off about losing their flights or scared to get on one of our planes. It’s pretty dire.’