Passenger 13

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.