When Octavia left, Kieran and I stood together on the bank, watching the water move past the lock. I thanked him, and he shook his head, embarrassed by thanks, as he always was. He had done what anyone would do, he said. I told him that was not true, that most people would have looked away, and that he had not. The Danube moved on, indifferent and beautiful, and I thought about how much of my life had been spent on that river, and how close I had come to ending in it. Kieran had seen what happened, and now he had said it aloud, to a detective, on the record. Landon could call me confused. He could call the audit an old woman's fancy. He could not call the river a liar, and he could not make Kieran unsee what he had seen.
Chapter 21
— The Hearing Is Set
The letter came on a Tuesday, delivered by hand to the small flat in Vienna where I was staying, and I knew what it was before I opened it, because Zane had telephoned the night before to warn me. The Danube shipping authority had agreed to hear the case. A formal hearing would be held in Vienna, in the authority's hearing room, and both sides would be invited to present their evidence. The date was set for three weeks from that Tuesday, which gave us time to prepare, but not time to waste. I read the letter twice, standing by the window, and then I sat down and read it a third time, slowly, because I wanted every word to settle. It was official, it was real, and it meant that Landon would have to answer, not to gossip, not to the board, but to a panel that could take his licence, his company, and his freedom.
Zane came that afternoon, and we went through the letter together, line by line. The hearing would consider the sale of the Wachau Queen and the Vienna Star, the question of whether the power of attorney had authorised that sale, and the question of whether the company had been defrauded through Alpen Trade. It would also consider the events on the Danube Empress, and whether I had been pushed. The panel would hear witnesses, examine documents, and then make its findings. Zane explained that the authority had the power to suspend Landon's right to operate, to order the boats returned, and to refer the matter to the criminal courts if it found evidence of fraud. That last part mattered most. Octavia's investigation and the hearing would run side by side, and what was said in one room could be used in the other.
We made a list that afternoon, sitting at my kitchen table with the letter between us, of everything we would need. The logbook, of course, with certified copies, and the original kept safe until the day. The bank records Wesley had found, showing the money flowing to Alpen Trade. The original power of attorney, from the locked cabinet, and the partnership agreement, which said the fleet could not be sold without both founders' signatures. Renata's statement, and Yvonne's, and Kieran's, and Fenella's agreement to testify about the sale. The invoices themselves, the fake ones, set beside the logbook entries that proved no such repairs had ever been done. Zane wrote it all down in his neat hand, and he told me to gather each piece and to keep a copy of everything, in case anything was lost or, as he put it delicately, interfered with.
Octavia telephoned that evening. She had received her own copy of the letter, and she was pleased. A hearing date, she said, changed everything. It gave Landon a deadline, and men like Landon made mistakes when they had a deadline. She told me she would continue her interviews, and that she would have her own file ready for the hearing, including Kieran's signed statement and her notes from Renata and Yvonne. She warned me that Landon would now move quickly, that he would try to settle the matter quietly, or to discredit the witnesses, or to produce new papers that made the sale look proper. She told me to tell her at once if anyone approached me, or Wesley, or any of the witnesses, with an offer or a threat. I promised I would, and I meant it. I had spent too long gathering proof to let it be frightened away now.
The next days were full of small, practical work, the kind of work I had done all my life. I telephoned Gwendolen, my oldest friend, and asked her to come to Vienna, because her memory of the company's early days, and of Nelson's promise, would matter. I telephoned Fenella, and confirmed that she would testify, and that the boats were safe where they were moored. I sat with Wesley, going over the bank records once more, checking every transfer, every date, every name. He had done the work well, better than I could have done it myself, and he had kept copies in two places, as I had taught him to do with anything that mattered. He told me he was not afraid of the hearing, only impatient for it, and I understood that feeling, because I shared it. Waiting had been the hardest part of all of this, harder than the river, harder than the cold.
Landon, of course, heard about the hearing within a day. Zane told me that the board had been informed, and that Rhys had called an emergency meeting, though no decision had been taken. I imagined Landon in his office, reading the same letter I had read, and I wondered what he felt. Fear, I hoped. Shame, perhaps. But I knew my son, and I knew that fear in Landon usually turned into anger, and anger into a new lie. I would not let myself be drawn into guessing. The date was set, the room was booked, the panel would sit, and the evidence would be laid out, piece by piece, in front of people who had no reason to protect him. That was all I needed to know. The hearing was set, and for the first time since the night on the river, I felt the future tilt back toward me, like a boat righting itself after a wave.