‘But this L. Moss hasn’t come forward for his refund?’
‘There’d be a record of it if he had.’
‘Then maybe Moss was on one of the flights before the crash?’
‘Could have been anytime between the twenty-first and the twenty-third,’ she said, nodding. ‘Or else it could have been in the last couple of days.’
‘Then even if his name and booking details somehow got accidentally wiped off the computer records, the flight steward would still have had a record of him boarding the plane.’
‘Theoretically. Why are you asking all this?’
‘Can you check?’ Ben asked.
‘I can try.’ Tamara glanced at her watch. ‘Jack and Mort will have landed on Little Cayman around now. I don’t think they’ve got more than a couple of passengers. Let me see if I can call the flight attendant direct on her cell.’ She put the desk phone on speaker and hit a speed dial button. ‘Hi, Jo, got a moment? Need to confirm a boarding reference to see if we need to refund this person or not, but I can’t find any record of it at this end. Customer’s name is Moss, Mr L. Moss. If he did fly, it was sometime before we shut down, or sometime since we started up again.’
‘L. Moss?’ a woman’s voice said over the speaker. ‘Nope. Don’t think so. Wouldn’t be any of mine.’
‘You sure you don’t remember him?’
‘Pretty sure. You know me.’
‘Okay, thanks, Jo.’ Tamara ended the call. ‘You know, he could still turn up,’ she said to Ben. ‘He might call anytime, yelling for his money back along with all the others.’
‘I can think of one reason why he wouldn’t do that,’ Ben said.
‘What reason?’
‘We could be looking at the crash flight’s thirteenth passenger.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Tamara stared at him. ‘Moss couldn’t have been on board,’ she protested. ‘They recovered all the bodies … except for Fay Duggan and the little Dutch boy.’
‘In an ocean full of sharks and barracuda, that doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t there,’ Ben said.
Tamara blanched and sat down heavily in the desk chair. ‘But …’ she began, then fell silent and bit her lip in agitation. ‘The security video,’ she said suddenly. ‘That would tell us right away. Everyone boarding an inter-island flight gets filmed on surveillance camera at either end. Nick hated the idea, but the authorities insisted on it after 9/11. Not that anyone ever checks the footage.’
‘Can we view it on here?’ Ben said, pointing at the computer.
Tamara nodded. ‘I can narrow it right down to the date and time.’ While she was clicking keys, Ben got up and went over to the coffee machine for a fresh cup.
‘Christ,’ she said after a few moments.
He turned. ‘Found it?’
‘Hold on.’ She clicked more keys. ‘Shit. I don’t believe this.’
‘What?’
‘It’s not here,’ she said. ‘It’s not giving me anything.’
Ben stepped up behind her chair. ‘Try the previous day.’
Tamara keyed in the date July 22 and hit Enter. Almost instantly, the video footage appeared onscreen: a high-resolution digital image of a line a line of passengers waiting to board. Most of them were wearing shorts and T-shirts, floppy hats, dark glasses, cameras on straps. A little girl was skipping up and down dragging a teddy by the leg.
Tamara stopped the playback. ‘Let me try again,’ she muttered, typing July 23 back in and stabbing the Enter key.
Nothing. Blackness.
She turned to Ben. ‘It’s been deleted,’ she gasped.
‘Who else has had access to the system?’
‘Nobody.’
‘Are you sure?’
Ben walked away from the desk, thinking furiously. In his mind’s eye, he played back his memory of the pretty blonde who’d been arranging flowers in the CIC lobby the day before. He remembered the curious way she’d watched him leave.
Shortly after that, the black Chevy Blazer had seemed to pick up his trail. Almost as if it had been waiting for him. The same black car that might, just might, have picked Bob Drummond up from his place several days before and magicked him away somewhere.
‘What about Jennifer?’ Ben said.
Tamara looked taken aback. ‘Jennifer Pritchard? The temp?’
‘Where is she now?’ he asked.
‘She called in sick first thing this morning.’
‘How long has she worked here?’
‘Only since July 22. She came through an agency.’
‘The day before the crash. CIC had been advertising a vacancy?’
Tamara nodded. ‘Like I said, business had been picking up like crazy. She came with all the right paperwork, Ben. References, qualifications, the works. We knew all about her.’
Ben shook his head. ‘You don’t know anything about her. If you don’t believe me, call her at home, right now.’
‘Now? To say what?’
‘I’ll talk to her,’ he said. ‘Just make the call. Go ahead.’
Tamara got the number from the files and picked up the phone. She dialled. Waited a moment, then looked at Ben. ‘There’s no dial tone.’
‘That’s because the number doesn’t exist,’ Ben said. ‘Call the agency. They’ll tell you they never had a Jennifer Pritchard on their records.’
‘This is insane,’ Tamara said.
She checked. Ben had been right.
‘You’re never going to see her again,’ he said. ‘She was planted here to delete information from your system. Now she’s gone.’
‘But then why was she still here until yesterday?’
‘Because of how suspicious it would’ve looked if she’d upped and vanished right afterwards,’ Ben said. ‘And because it takes a few days for a new story this big to die down to nothing. They might have been worried about somebody like me turning up asking questions. They needed someone to listen at doors, to call in the troops to check out anyone who might still be snooping around.’
‘Who’s they?’
‘That’s simple enough,’ Ben said. ‘The same people who don’t want it known that the crash flight had a thirteenth passenger,’ Ben said. ‘Namely a Mr L. Moss.’
Tamara gaped at him. She shuddered. ‘Oh, my God. What do we do?’
‘First thing, you need to get off this island. It’s dangerous for you here. Go and get your kids from your mother’s place in Miami and take them on a holiday somewhere. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Okay?’
She hesitated, then nodded sullenly. ‘Okay.’
‘Call me when you get there. Don’t use your regular phone, use the secret one you used for calling Nick.’
‘What about you?’ Tamara said, looking at him with big eyes.
‘I need to borrow a couple more things from Dwight,’ Ben said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The lawyer’s fifty-foot motor yacht, the Santa Clara, was moored at Harbour House Marina a few miles from George Town, off North Sound Bay. Tamara had been quite happy to let Ben have the keys to her husband’s pride and joy, and after returning to his hotel to grab a couple of hours’ sleep and a shower, Ben made his way to Harbour House, strolled out along the jetty where scores of gleaming boats and yachts rocked gently on the swell, and climbed on board.
In the handsome wheelhouse, he quickly familiarised himself with the controls and set the GPS navigation system on a course for Little Cayman. The twin 500-horsepower engines fired up with a throaty burble. He slipped the moorings, the stern and bow thrusters pushed the boat away from its dock, and they were off.
Ben crossed the calm blue waters of North Sound at a steady fifteen knots cruising speed. His course took him through main channel between the northern tip of the island and the jagged outcrop of Fisherman’s Rock, after which he was in open sea. Once Grand Cayman had disappeared entirely over the southern horizon, Ben was able to let the motor yacht more or less steer herself. Now and then he sighted another vessel, mostly smaller boats, apart from the cruise liner that passed by, huge even at more than a mile off.