‘Anything else?’ says Costa.
‘Look at this.’ I hold out my phone and scroll to the pictures of the skid marks in the mud that I took yesterday when Christina and I walked up from Crooks’ Bay. ‘Look at the tyre tracks – an odd pair. The tracks caught my eye. I remember Damien complaining that the Jeep was driving badly because the replacement wheel wasn’t compatible with the others. If the tracks match the treads on the tyres, there’s your proof that it was driven down to Crooks’ Bay.’
‘But not who was driving it!’ Costa mutters. ‘Send me the pictures,’ he says. ‘I’ll get my team to check out the tyres and talk to the mechanic who changed the wheel.’
He could be more gracious. It’s a key piece of evidence. Once again, I get that sinking feeling I’m top of his list of suspects.
‘I’ve got a question for you,’ says Costa. ‘The child’s swimsuit was left behind in the cave. That seems very careless. Why would the abductor discard a key item of incriminating evidence?’
‘Maybe she’s distracted. She must have changed Katie into dry clothes in the cave. Perhaps she’s under so much pressure from Damien that she’s losing her head – she could have just forgotten it by mistake. Or maybe the swimsuit was a decoy – to make it look like murder. The abandoned swimsuit makes Katie’s disappearance look like a case of a stranger abduction by a paedophile. So this draws the attention away from those closest to her. It changes the line of enquiry, confuses and stalls the police hunt, gives time for Katie to be taken away to another secret location while all the focus and effort of the police investigation is on the crime scene at Crooks’ Bay.’
I’m feeling quite pleased with myself. I dip my hand in the water and lean over to peer down at the corals just below the surface.
‘What’s more, I’m convinced it was Christina who defaced my mirror with lipstick on the first night,’ I say. ‘I caught a glimpse of her sneaking out of my room. She’s enjoying herself playing games with us – leaving death threats on the mirror, pretending Katie’s purse was planted in her handbag – all to make it look like Katie’s been targeted by a psychopath. She’ll do anything to derail the investigation and deflect the suspicion from herself. She’s not behaving logically.’
‘And you’re not thinking logically…’ says Costa. He settles himself down beside me on the wooden bench, so close our thighs are touching. His bulk is enough to intimidate me and he knows it. But I’m determined to make him hear me out.
‘Christina came on a few sailing holidays to the Caribbean with her family when she was a teenager. She must know someone here who could have been duped or bribed into hiding Katie away for a few days. It seems like a great plan. But it all falls apart when Damien goes on a bender at the casino and is arrested for reckless driving the next morning.’
‘It’s a great story,’ he says, ‘What does Christina do next, once she’s installed Katie in her hiding place?’
I shift along the bench.
‘She steals back to the hotel, changes into her evening gear, and makes her way down to the play area. Then she makes her grand entrance in the hotel lobby, and so the drama begins. You know the rest…’
I stop uncertainly.
‘Well, you’ve certainly got a good imagination.’ He grins at me.
His phone bleeps and he checks the message, his face inscrutable as he scans down the screen. He taps out another response then looks up.
He’s not smiling any more. The boat rocks wildly as he stands up and leans over me, drags me up from the bench, grabs my wrists and pins them firmly behind my back.
‘You’ve really got a nerve,’ he says, ‘trying to make a fool out of me.’
Then he pulls me forward, towering over me, crushing my frame against his chest. I can feel his heart thumping against my cheek.
‘There’s just one problem with your story. I don’t believe it. It’s second-rate fiction and first-rate fabrication,’ he says in a low voice, bending his head down towards my ear. Suddenly, he loses patience. ‘I haven’t got time for this. Katie’s life is at stake.’
With one hand he traps both my wrists in the small of my back and with the other he yanks my ponytail, pulling my head back until I’m looking up at the dazzling sky and my body is arched backwards, almost horizontal to the water.
‘From everything you’ve just told me, you could be the accomplice!’
His eyes are locked on mine.
‘Look at me,’ he says in a dark tone. ‘It’s my turn to tell you a story.’
He cups the palm of one hand behind my head, like a ballet cavalier supporting his female partner. Though he’s still bearing down on me at least this stops me toppling back into the water.
‘There’s another woman who could have walked off that beach with Katie without drawing any attention to herself… another woman that Katie would have followed without having a meltdown… another woman who’d been seen by everyone, coming and going with Katie down to the beach and round the hotel… and that woman is you. My hunch is that you stole her in plain daylight.’
‘That’s just ridiculous,’ I say, with a strangled laugh.
‘Not so ridiculous.’ His lips are tight and for a moment I think he’s going to spit in my face. But he releases his hand and shoves me upright, not a minute too soon. My head is spinning and I’m about to be sick. ‘My turn now. In my version, you and Damien are deep in this together. Your claims about the spiked cocktail are a pack of lies. All the tests came back negative. Damien is your lover and partner-in-crime. You targeted Christina in New York because she’s rich, and vulnerable, and alone. You saw she was lonely and fragile and preyed on her and her innocent child.’
There’s no possible excuse for interrogating me in this way. The power has gone to his head.
‘While Damien seduced her, you made yourself useful, even indispensable. Christina became more and more dependent on you to take care of Katie while she was working long hours in the office. Her short evenings and weekends were spent with Damien who bewitched her with romance and sex. In the meantime, Katie formed a strong attachment to you, and Christina was so grateful that she let you interfere more and more in her personal life, giving you unlimited and unsupervised access to her flat, her financial affairs and her online communications. Day-by-day, you found out everything about her and were in a position to monitor and control her every move.’
I hang my head as Costa berates me.
‘So Christina believed you to be her faithful friend and employee and Katie’s devoted and trustworthy carer. And she believed Damien was in love with her. But she was being deceived by both of you. While the money she was earning in Manhattan was being spent on Damien’s gambling debts, he was also cheating on her by carrying on a wild, sex-crazed love affair with you.’
‘No, no,’ I cry. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I scarcely know him. Christina always made a point of keeping us apart.’
Costa laughs loudly as if I’ve just made the most hilarious joke.
‘I’ve just been sent the results of the forensic tests on the Jeep, and the search of the hotel rooms. You saw me looking at the emails. Made for very interesting reading. The evidence confirms that you are indeed very well-acquainted with Damien, that you know each other intimately, in fact. Your DNA is all over the Jeep, mingled with Damien’s. How do you explain that?’ He makes an offensive gesture with his fingers.
‘Not only that but Christina’s room is riddled with your fingerprints – the drawers, the cupboard, the safe: all the evidence we need to show you’ve been acting in a highly suspicious manner, rifling through all her personal belongings.’
Abruptly, Costa flips me round so that I’m facing the ocean.
This time he crouches behind me, hooks one arm round my waist, and forces my neck forward until I’m looking down into the water.
He’s enjoying this too much.
‘Is she down there, Scarlett, is she down there in the ocean? What did that sad bastard do to her? What have you
done with Katie? You can trust me, Scarlett.’
‘If this is your interrogation technique, it’s certainly not professional,’ I say as I hang bent double over the water, entirely at his mercy. Just because he knows he can get away with it! How dare he!
Yet I can’t deny that his methods are compelling. Perversely, there’s something about knowing that I’m completely within the power of this trumped-up bully that gives an almost erotic edge to my fear. The urge to confess something, anything, if only to please him, is overpowering.
‘You’d never get away with this in England,’ I say, struggling to escape his hold. I’ve read enough trashy detective stories to know that exerting undue pressure on a witness renders the evidence inadmissible.
‘I make the rules around here,’ he says grimly. ‘I’ve been doing some research of my own, Scarlett. I know you’re not the person you claim to be. You lied to Christina. You don’t have a childcare qualification. You dropped out of college after two years. Your certificates are all forgeries.’ I squirm to get free but I’m held in a vice. ‘And after dropping out of college, you worked as a waitress at the High Kicks pole dancing club in Soho…’
So that’s why he thinks he can get away with treating me like this!
‘… before moving to New York, where you spent six months training to be a croupier at the Great Gatsby Casino on Long Island – that’s until you were sacked from your job for having an affair with one of the regular punters. Came to light when he started winning a bit too often! After a couple of months living off friends, you then signed up for a modelling agency with a sideline in soft porn and completed several assignments before taking up your position as a nanny working for Christina. It’s not exactly an exemplary record for a “childcare professional”.’ He pauses for dramatic effect and to take a breath.
I have to admit it doesn’t sound great. But he’s twisted it all – made it sound so much worse than it really is.
He loosens his grip enough to allow me to stand up straight but he’s still got my arms pinned behind my back.
‘How did you dig up all this dirt on me? You’re making me sound like a criminal?’
‘It’s called the Internet, darling. Carried out a few technical searches myself, last night – I’m not a complete caveman! And I have friends in London. I can call in a few favours when it comes to information sharing. Can you deny it? You’re a fake and a fraud.’ He leans in closer and whispers in my ear. ‘Let’s face it Scarlett, you’ve got history’
I know he’s trying to force a confession out of me but this is going too far. ‘For God’s sake let me go.’
But he continues. ‘And my guess is that the Great Gatsby Casino is where you hooked up with Damien who was there 24/7 indulging his gambling habit, and together the pair of you came up with the plan to swindle Christina by abducting her child.’
‘Now I get it. So that’s why you got Lennie to show me round,’ I say. ‘You asked him to check me out.’
Still standing behind me, he takes my hands in his and brings them up in front of my face.
‘Lennie’s got sharp eyes. He stalks the tables and watches the punters’ hands with the eyes of a hawk. He’s got a fixation with them – how a punter deals the cards, shuffles the pack, throws out his chips. He’s looking out for cheats but it’s helped me out a few times too.’
I wrench my hands out of his.
‘You’ve got beautiful hands, Scarlett. You wouldn’t hurt Katie with these beautiful hands now, would you?’
‘I would never lay a finger on Katie,’ I say. ‘And I think you know that.’
Costa ignores my protest.
‘Lennie never forgets a pair of hands and most of the island’s scum passes through BJ’s at some time or another. Now funny thing is, he could tell from the way you deal the cards that you’re a pro.’
‘You’ve got it all wrong. It’s just absurd to think Damien and I could be partners-in-crime. I despise the guy. And whatever you think of me, and my lifestyle, I swear I never set eyes on Damien until I started working for Christina. The first time I met him was in her apartment in Manhattan. You would never dream of interrogating Christina in this disgustingly inappropriate way,’ I shout.
‘You know, Scarlett, in my book, there’s a double-barrelled name for girls who dress and act like you. If you go around half naked, what do you expect?’
If he weren’t a policeman, I would slap him.
‘Sit down,’ he says coldly, pointing to the bench ‘I haven’t finished yet. Calm down. So, this is my version. On that fateful day you take Katie to the beach. You play with her by the water for a while. Then you take her for a walk along the coast. You pass a few people as you stroll along the sand, smile and say hello. There’s nothing to arouse any suspicion, a charming sight, an attractive young woman and a sweet little girl, walking hand-in-hand, collecting shells in a red bucket. You walk as far as Crooks’ Bay. There you change Katie out of her swimsuit back into her clothes. You leave the swimsuit in the cave to make it look like she’s been abducted and murdered. You meet up with Damien who takes Katie away in the boat and leaves her at the pre-arranged hiding place. You walk back to the beach and pretend to fall asleep on the sand. Sometime later the yellow lilo launched at the reef by Damien drifts into view. You raise the alarm and the rescue operation begins. The next morning you go out early and Damien picks you up along the coastal road. You’re planning to go on together to the place Katie is hidden. God knows what you are intending to do with her. But your base instincts get the better of you both and you decide to stop en route. He fucks you in the Jeep and we arrest Damien for reckless driving. But we’re no closer to finding Katie.’
At last he backs away and I slide off the bench and sit huddled in the bow of the rowing boat.
‘Now what we really need to know, is what have you two perverts done with her, is she dead or alive, and where in God’s name have you hidden her?’
‘You’re crazy,’ I say, looking up. ‘I’m doing everything I can to help in the search for Katie. As you know, I spent hours working to get that social media campaign up and running on top of volunteering for all the searches on the ground. I came out this morning because I had an idea which might help you to find Katie. I didn’t expect you to attack and insult me and falsely accuse me. You won’t bully me into a confession. I won’t let you intimidate me with your distortions and lies.’
Costa’s face is set, indifferent. ‘None of that proves you are innocent. In fact, most of it is unwanted interference.’
‘You’re not going to get away with this’ I say. ‘I’m going to report you for assault.’
‘All in a day’s work,’ he retorts. ‘It’s a different world out here.’
‘Flunking my exams and dropping out of college doesn’t make me a child abductor,’ I say. ‘And my jobs working as a waitress and trainee croupier and as a model for the photographic agency were all entirely legitimate gap year jobs. I took up anything I could get because I had to earn good money to clear my university loans, not because I’m some kind of depraved nymphomaniac. Once I’d cleared my debts, I went straight back to look for a job in childcare. That was what I really wanted to do.’
I warm to my theme, outraged and indignant.
‘As for what happened in the Jeep. Shame on you, for being so insulting. I was in fear of my life. Letting Damien think he could seduce me was the only way I could get him to stop the car for long enough for the police cars to catch up with us. And it worked. Thanks to me, you’ve got him under lock and key.’
Costa looks a little sheepish at last, thank God, sitting at the other end of the boat, looking out to sea.
‘You’re as bad as him. Just because you’re a police officer doesn’t give you the right to abuse me in this way.’
He holds up his hands.
‘And my fingerprints are all over Christina’s room because I was searching for clues – something that your lot should have done days ago. I’ve already given you pl
enty of information to show that Christina is somehow mixed up in all of this but we need to work out how and why.’
All at once I’m exhausted. I curl up on the wooden planks, hold my head in my hands and sob loudly. All the pain and sadness of the last few days hits me.
I miss Katie.
After a minute or two, Costa comes over and pats me gently on the shoulder.
‘Relax, Scarlett, relax. I’m sorry. I was too hard with you. Got carried away.’ His tone is soothing. I’m not taken in – he’s playing the two roles in this interrogation – both bad cop and good cop.
‘Why won’t you take me seriously?’
‘I’m just doing my job. Come on, Scarlett. Cheer up. Crying doesn’t suit you. Tell me where she is, Scarlett. It’s not too late. I can get you out of this mess. I want to be your friend. You’re an impressionable young thing. Misguided. I know he made you do it. We can sort this out. We can make it right.’
This time he lets me push him away.
‘So you still don’t believe me?’ I say. ‘Take me back to the hotel.’
*
As the boat approaches the harbour, I turn to Costa.
‘There’s something else you need to know. I had my doubts about Christina but deep down I really didn’t want to believe that she was involved in the abduction of Katie – until yesterday. I know she loves her little girl… and nothing I’ve said changes that. But what finally convinced me to share my suspicions with you was what I witnessed yesterday afternoon down at Crooks’ Bay. That cowboy overseeing the search down there, DC Kramer, I think that was his name, well, she’s had dealings with him before. He seemed to know her pretty well.’
Costa cuts the engine.
‘And as far as I could make out, he arranged to meet her last night at the Coco Shack.’
He stands there, looking out over the harbour in silence for a full two minutes then he turns.
‘Well, Scarlett, that’s the most interesting thing you’ve said to me all day.’
*
Driving back to the hotel, Costa goes some way to apologising.
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