“Doesn’t change anything.” Black said. “We knew he got on. And we know he didn’t get off.”
They spoke to the Coastguard, which confirmed that there had been no reports of a body floating in the waters between Lornea and the mainland, but also that there rarely was, on the not infrequent occasions that someone went into the water from a vessel, either by accident or design. The problem was the depth of the water, and the currents, which tended to pull a body out to sea, not onto the land.
“Could he have swum ashore?” West asked, already knowing the likely answer. She had a history as a competitive swimmer, so had no particular issue imagining someone fit and healthy covering the distance, even if they’d gone in midway between the island and the mainland. But she knew the distance wasn’t the main issue.
“It’s forty two degrees in the water right now,” the coastguard agent replied. “Without a wetsuit, or survival suit, you’re looking at half-an-hour absolute maximum, but it’s much more likely that the cold would slow down the muscles quicker than that. People think they can swim, but their arms and legs just stop working. We’ve seen people drown in just a few minutes. And that’s if he didn’t black out when he went over the side of the ferry.”
West ran her hands through her hair again, and was only dimly aware of Black putting a cup of coffee on her desk.
The car was an enigma. There were no records showing any vehicles registered in Wheatley’s name – though he did have a license to drive. And running the license plates from the car recovered from the ferry quickly showed it be a rental from a small car hire firm in Boston. Their records showed it had been rented three days previously under the name of Hans Hass, aged twenty-five-years old. According to state and federal records, Mr Hass didn’t actually exist.
“Hans Hass?” Black said, as they pondered this discovery. “Weird name. Do you think it could be an anagram?” He grabbed a blank piece of paper, and wrote the letters down in a large circle, and started trying different combinations. West watched him for a few moments, then turned back to her computer, where she typed the name into the search bar of her web browser.
“Hans Hass,” she read, a few moments later, “was an internationally famous marine biologist and underwater diving pioneer. He was known for being among the first scientists to popularize coral reefs, stingrays and sharks, becoming something of an early celebrity in the field. He was particularly known for his pioneering use of technology, including underwater cameras.”
Black stopped what he was doing, looked at his results for a moment then screwed the paper into a ball.
“Hmmm.”
The hire firm kept on file photocopies of the documents Hass had used, and these were quickly shown to be fairly crude fakes. Meanwhile the forensics team examining the actual car found no end of fingerprints and fibers, as might be imaged with a rental. Most were not on record, but plenty were found to come from Billy Wheatley.
In the afternoon, West and Black went to search Wheatley’s Boston apartment. It was clearly a moment of great excitement for his housemates, who gathered outside while the team broke down the door to his dorm room. West told Black to wait outside with the other students while she pulled on a pair of silicone gloves and went inside.
It was a fairly typical student room, not unfamiliar to her from her own student days. The bed, wardrobe and desk were all cheap, and well used, but the computer equipment on the desk wasn’t. Wheatley had an expensive looking second monitor, alongside that of his laptop, which looked expensive enough on its own. The computer was quickly unplugged and taken away, for further investigation.
Most of the paperwork in the room seemed to relate to the course Wheatley was studying, yet West did find a wire frame document holder, on the windowsill, which held various different designs of posters for the campaign against Fonchem. They focused on the habitat destruction for sea-dragons, and from these West learned they were a type of seahorse type creature that was only found in this area. The room was neat. Nothing else looked out of place or wrong.
After the search, West and Black interviewed Wheatley’s housemates, one after the other, in the apartment’s communal dining room. They got the same story from each of them. Wheatley hadn’t adjusted well to college life. He didn’t go out with the others. He didn’t seem to have made any real friends there. Most of the time he stayed in his room, doing stuff on his computer – they didn’t know what. A lad named Guy Musgrove seemed to be the most forthcoming. He claimed to have been the one to make the most effort with Wheatley, in the first weeks after they both arrived.
“You said he was a loner,” Black led the questioning, while West sat back and watched. “Did he ever go out?”
The boy shook his head, his eyes wide with the excitement of what was happening. “We kind of made him, a few times when he first got here. But he was…” He looked away, and seemed to be searching for the right word. “Kind of arrogant, you know? Like he was too good for us.”
“Uh huh,” Black nodded. “You ever see him with other friends? A girlfriend, anything like that?”
“No. He didn’t seem to have any other friends. He was like a loner. Say, you guys are really saying he was actually doing a bombing campaign, the whole time he was here?”
Black scratched at his ear irritably. “We’re not saying anything. We’re asking you what he was like, when he was staying here. That’s all.”
“Sure.”
“So, he have any girlfriends? Or other friends we might want to talk to?”
Musgrave shook his head. “Oh wait, there was someone.”
West sat
