“Well, your father likes to keep a few of us back, as it were. Cards up one’s sleeve and so forth. There’d be no need to mention poor old Samuel to one’s daughter. Old acquaintance half forgot and all that.”
And yet, she thought, you’re here and indeed right in front of me. A stranger with a glass eye. She had noticed it about him as soon as he had sat down. It was like a marble, its blue not quite matching the live one.
“Where were you stationed with my father, Mr. Rockhold?”
“Gibraltar. Days of our life. Thought they’d never end, as the song goes.”
“Jimmie says he had a miserable time there.”
“Well, you know how it is. Can’t have everything your own way, can you? No one ever has it all their own way. Jimmie was a bad fit for the old discipline part.”
“But now you’re in Hydra.”
“So it seems.”
“Are you just passing by?”
“Well, now we’ve come to it, haven’t we?”
He put a hand on each knee and she saw that the sweat on his face had finally dried. She looked down at the previously unnoticed crack in the glass top of the table and cursed herself for having missed it. It was a sign that not everything was as it appeared. Because it was not in Jimmie’s character to let a cracked table go unnoticed for more than twenty-four hours. The visitor said that he was, if one could put it this way, a confidant of Jimmie, rather than merely a friend, and that—since she had asked—he was here on a bit of business for the Codringtons.
“But, my dear,” he said, “you haven’t told me where they are. It’s rather unfortunate if I’ve missed them.”
“They left for the mainland last week. I’m afraid they didn’t tell me where they were going—they never do. They up and leave on a whim all the time. I think my stepmother feels a little claustrophobic on the island.”
“So they might have gone to Athens for a few days?”
“It’s possible. They haven’t called yet—but we’re not always on the best terms anyway. It’s not usual for them to call me.”
“How vexing. For both of us!”
“It’s not vexing, Mr. Rockhold. It’s always been like this. We don’t have the ideal father–daughter relationship, I’m afraid.”
“So I gathered.”
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”
Rockhold waved a hand. “Not at all. The sun is shining, is it not?”
“Where are you staying?”
“At a very nice hotel in town. I’m quite happy there. A young man recommended it to me and so far it hasn’t disappointed. I’m used to improvising, you know. Maybe, if you are free, we might have dinner sometime. What do you say?”
Suddenly trapped by an affable invitation, she stammered that she would be glad to. Before she could come up with an excuse he had locked her into the following night at the Sunset.
“Unless something comes up,” she tried desperately.
“Do things often come up on Hydra? By the way,” he went on, “you should get that table fixed. It might break completely the next time you put something down on it.”
The tea finished, they stood and Rockhold went back into the hall and put on his straw hat. A thermometer hung on the wall there and the mercury showed a temperature of 72, and that was in the cool part of the house. She let him out and they were pleasant to each other, though her heart was beating wildly with resentment and fear. Who was he and why was he there? He stepped out into the hurtful sunlight and winced, but with a certain amount of humor.
“Furnace, isn’t it?” He laughed.
“You should eat at the Bratseras,” she said. “The food is really quite good.”
“Is it? Funnily enough, that’s where I’m staying.”
“If my father calls, I’ll let you know.”
“You do that, my dear Naomi. I’ll be anxious otherwise.”
“He won’t call, though.”
Rockhold looked at her from under the hat’s brim, and his eyes were cool and unassuming. “You never know with him. He’s an unpredictable creature of the deep.”
—
Sam was about to tell Naomi that this was almost certainly the man she and Toby had seen in the port that morning, but she held back and thought better of it. Naomi would start asking questions about Toby, and she wanted to keep him out of it. But they were both thinking the same thing. Something had gone wrong and the thing they had feared had come to pass. I need to get out of this as soon as possible, Sam thought to herself. For in any case how did I get into this in the first place? I’m such a skatofatsa idiot. But she knew it was too late. Naomi gave her a reassuring smile and said, “It’ll be all right. I’ll play along with him.”
“What does he want?”
“No way of knowing. But he’s not just a friend. He’s something more.”
Sam pursed her lips and her fury was contained behind them. She said, “I knew an investigator would get involved.”
“If that’s what he is.”
“Of course it’s what he is. What about the Greek police?”
“If he’s an investigator,” Naomi said slowly, “I have a feeling he’ll keep the Greek police at bay for a while.”
“You hope.”
“He came and he’ll go,” Naomi said. “I’ll handle him if that’s what he is.”
“You’ll handle him?”
“He’s a canny old codger, that’s all. He was with my father in the army. He’s harmless. Just nosing around.”
“But why?”
“Maybe he was expecting a call from Jimmie and it never came. We have to expect this sort of thing. We just have to play it cool.”
Sam flared up for a moment.
“I knew we should have just gone to the police. Now we have to play cat and mouse with one of your dad’s army buddies? How do you know he’s just an army buddy?”
“Well, as I said, he’s not the police, is he? That’s the good part.”
The hysteria rose in both their voices, and yet they were not shouting, they were barely whispering. “You better think fast,” Sam said. “Or we’re fucked.” Naomi reminded her that they were doing this for Faoud, not for themselves, and after it had all blown over it would be different.
Sam lowered her voice, which had been rising, on the off chance that her family were close by, making their way back across the fields.
“Did it occur to you that he might’ve been using you?”
Naomi was so astonished that she merely blinked.
“Using me?”
“Maybe he didn’t care if he had to kill them or not, he just wanted the cash.”
“But I gave it to him.”
“Because you’re a white girl. Of course you gave it to him. He knew you felt guilty, and he took advantage.”
“That’s absurd, and you know it.”
“No, I don’t know it. I don’t know anything. All I know is that you and I are stuck on this tiny island with an old man who likes to ask questions. It’s starting to freak me out.”