Chapter Twelve
JILL WESTCOTT CALLS out, ‘Ted, there’s a man here from the Coast Guard.’
Ted Westcott appears from somewhere deeper inside the house. Ramirez rises as the other man steps forward and shakes his hand. The clasp is firm. He’s freshly showered and neatly dressed.
‘Thank you for coming,’ Ted Westcott says. ‘Have they – have they found Greg?’
‘No, I’m sorry,’ Ramirez says. ‘Search and Rescue would have contacted you if they had.’ He watches the other man, who appears upset.
His wife stands quietly beside him, putting a hand on his arm as if to comfort him.
He says, ‘Mr and Mrs Westcott, I’m Special Agent Paul Ramirez, with the Coast Guard Investigative Service. ’ He shows them his badge.
‘Please, just call us Jill and Ted,’ the other man says.
‘Okay. I’d like to ask you some questions, if that’s all right.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Ted says. ‘We’ll get you some coffee. What would you like?’
‘Just regular would be fine. Milk, no sugar.’
‘We can do a cappuccino, a latte, a cortado, anything you like,’ Jill offers.
He gives her a small smile. ‘Regular would be fine.’
She slips down the hall presumably into the kitchen to make his coffee while Ted takes a seat on the velvet sofa opposite and Ramirez sits back down again in the comfortable leather chair.
He pulls a small recorder out of his messenger bag and places it on the large, low coffee table next to several glossy, oversize books.
One, he notes, is about historic brownstones.
Their house is probably featured in the book, he thinks, a little cynically.
‘I hope you’re okay if I record our interview?
’ he asks. ‘I want to be as accurate as possible.’
‘That’s fine,’ Ted says, ‘Of course.’
Jill enters the room, puts his coffee down on the coffee table, then settles beside her husband, her hand resting on his thigh protectively.
They look surprisingly well, Ramirez observes.
In his experience, people usually look wiped out after surviving a harrowing misadventure at sea, especially when there has been loss of life.
The room smells of furniture polish, leather, and good coffee.
It smells of money. He begins. ‘I won’t take up too much of your time.
I have all the basic information already,’ he says, ‘having read your statement and the accident report. But I would still like to hear what happened from both of you directly.’
‘I understand,’ Ted says.
They go over it again, and Ramirez listens to their account, watching for any inconsistencies with the accident report they’d written, and with what they’d said to the Coast Guard officer yesterday.
He doesn’t hear any. They don’t appear to be lying or trying to make themselves out to be better than they are.
Their account of how Greg Westcott went overboard makes sense.
The winds were bad, the waves high. Greg lost his balance when the boat tipped.
Water had been washing across the deck, and it was slippery.
They have expressed remorse that they weren’t able to save him.
The efforts they made – tossing rings into the sea, immediately circling, making the Mayday call to the Coast Guard, scanning the water with and without binoculars – were all the correct ones.
They remained in the area, even when it was dangerous to do so, until help arrived.
They did everything right. They have accurately reported the weather conditions as they were.
They have admitted they had all been drinking a bit.
He’s about to turn off the recorder at the end of the interview. He tells them he thinks he has everything he needs. ‘I’ll just examine the boat, check the camera footage, and then I think we’ll be done.’
‘Camera footage?’ Ted asks.
Ramirez looks at him. It’s the first sign of discomfort he’s detected in Ted Westcott. He glances at Jill and her eyes also show a flicker of something – alarm or distress – but then it’s gone. It gives him pause.
‘Yes. I believe the Fortune Seeker had some surveillance cameras that had been recently installed, for security purposes. It’s something more and more boat owners are doing.
I’ll review the footage, see if there’s anything that can shed any further light on the accident, or give us ideas on how to prevent more such things happening in the future. ’
Ted nods without speaking, looking down at the coffee table rather than meeting his eyes.
Ramirez turns off the recorder, packs it away, and rises, acutely aware that the atmosphere has changed with the mention of cameras.
He doesn’t in fact know if there are cameras on the boat at all.
It’s just something he threw out there, to see how they would react.
It’s true that more and more people are installing them.
Ted Westcott and his wife clearly weren’t aware of any cameras on his brother’s boat, and maybe there aren’t any.
But now Ramirez finds himself hoping there are.
Ted closes the door behind Ramirez, his heart pounding, and watches him through the glass until he climbs into his car and drives away. He turns to face Jill, whose face is ashen.
She hisses, ‘What the fuck? Cameras? Did he have cameras on the boat, Ted?’
There’s raw fear in her voice, and a terrible accusation. If there were cameras on the boat, he should have known. And she’s right. ‘I didn’t see any cameras, did you?’ he asks stupidly, blinking rapidly.
‘No, but they might be hidden – so you won’t notice them.’ She explosively adds, ‘Fuck!’
‘Greg never said he put cameras on the boat,’ Ted says anxiously, ‘and he usually told me about any upgrades. He liked to brag about them.’
‘Cameras aren’t really an upgrade though, are they?’ she cries, panicking. Her eyes are huge and frightened.
He knows he has fucked up. He can’t let her see how rattled he is.
‘I don’t think we should panic,’ he says, forcing himself to remain calm.
‘Think about it. All the movement on that boat, the waves, the water crashing over – and the camera would have had to catch the exact moment when I pushed him overboard, and it’s not likely, is it? ’
She cries, ‘I don’t know! But even if the camera didn’t catch you pushing him – would they be able to tell that Greg fell off the boat and that we didn’t call for help for another twenty minutes?
I mean, there’s usually a time signature, isn’t there?
And the Coast Guard would log the time of the call.
’ Her voice has risen in pitch, become shrill.
‘They could see that we kept going, that we didn’t stop and try to save him! ’
He looks back at her, trying to hide his fear. The shock has made him unusually calm. ‘Let’s not panic,’ he says coolly. ‘There may not be any cameras at all.’
‘He said there were!’
‘If there are security cameras, they were probably only on in port, for anti-theft, vandalism – why would you turn security cameras on when you’re out at sea?
’ But he’s thinking, feverishly, it would be just like fucking Greg, to put security cameras on the boat and not tell him and catch him out as a murderer.
Just like Greg, to have the last fucking laugh.
Now his calmness is evaporating; he can feel hysteria mounting; his heart is beating too fast, too hard.
She stares back at him, her blue eyes cold. He’s never seen her eyes like that. He can see her thinking, behind those cold eyes – she didn’t shove his brother overboard, he did.