The boats were coming home. The proof was gathered. The witnesses were ready. All that remained was to walk back into the open, and to let the river, and the truth, do the rest.
Chapter 19
— Detective Octavia
I met Octavia on a grey morning in Vienna, in a small office above a tram stop, where the radiators ticked and the smell of coffee drifted in from the corridor. She was not what I had expected from the word detective. She was younger than I had imagined, perhaps in her forties, with dark hair pulled back and a calm, watchful face, and she listened the way good river pilots listen to the water, without interrupting the current. Zane had arranged the meeting. He had told me she was thorough and discreet, and that she had handled fraud cases before, cases where the paper trail mattered more than any shouting. I sat across from her with my hands folded around a cup she had poured for me, and I told her everything, from the beginning, without hurrying and without leaving out the parts that made me look foolish.
I told her about the anniversary cruise on the Danube Empress, about the dusk light over the Wachau Valley, about the hands on my back and the cold shock of the river. I told her about Kieran pulling me from the water at his lock, and about the days in his cottage when I had been too weak to do more than breathe and think. I told her about the fake maintenance invoices, the phantom repairs paid to Alpen Trade, and the audit I had been about to call when Landon decided that I had to go. I told her about the limited power of attorney I had signed in a sickroom years ago, medical decisions only, and how Landon had used it to sell the Wachau Queen and the Vienna Star to Fenella Waverly for a fraction of their worth. Octavia wrote nothing down at first. She simply watched me, and when I stopped, she asked me to start again, slowly, with dates.
So I did. I gave her the dates of the invoices I remembered, the dates of the cruise, the dates when the two boats had left Vienna. I described the logbook, my handwritten record of forty years of real repairs, kept in ink, one entry for every genuine piece of work done on every boat in the fleet. I described the bank records Wesley had found, showing money flowing from the company to Alpen Trade and onward to Landon. I described Renata overhearing Landon and Xavier arguing about the invoices, and Yvonne overhearing Landon say that she has to go, the night before the cruise. I described the locked cabinet in the company archive, and the partnership agreement inside it, which said the fleet could not be sold without both founders' signatures. Nelson was gone, and his signature could not be given, and that fact alone should have stopped the sale.
She asked to see the logbook. I had brought it with me, wrapped in oilcloth, and I laid it on her desk with both hands, the way I might lay down something sacred. She opened it carefully, turning pages that smelled of ink and river air, and she read several entries aloud, checking the dates against a list she had already made. She asked me to explain the shorthand I used, the marks for hull work and engine work, the notes in the margins when a repair had been delayed by weather. She asked whether anyone else had ever written in the book. No one, I said. Only me, for forty years. She closed it gently and told me she would need certified copies, and that the original should go into a safe place, not carried around Vienna in my bag. I agreed, though parting with it, even for a day, felt like leaving a child behind.
Before I left, Octavia told me what would happen next. She would speak to Kieran first, because his account was the heart of the matter, the only eyes that had seen what happened on the deck. Then she would speak to Renata and Yvonne, separately, and to Wesley about the bank records. Then she would speak to Fenella, and to Zane, and to the people at the shipping office who had processed the sale. She would not speak to Landon or Xavier yet. She wanted the paper in place before she gave them a chance to shape their story. She warned me that Landon would hear about the investigation soon enough, through the board, through the office, through the gossip that travels faster than any boat on the Danube. She told me not to be frightened when that happened, and not to answer him if he called. Let him call her instead, she said, and gave me her card.