Page 70 of The Sunken Truth

“What did you want to ask me then?” Kurt said.

For a moment Flynn was distracted. While PC Hill walked into the back, the sergeant and Superintendent Brand arrived from the opposite direction. Sergeant Proctor gave him an encouraging nod while the two men quietly positioned themselves at the other desk.

As his heart rate increased, Flynn forced himself to focus on Kurt. “I have some questions about the ancient cigar box you handed over to Eustace Tremayne.”

“Okay,” he said with a nonchalant sigh. “What about it?”

“You’re not denying giving it to him?”

“No.”

“And he paid you two thousand pounds for it?”

“No. I gave him the box. And then, out of the goodness of his heart, he gave me some money to help me with my travels. He heard my mum is ill and wanted to help me out with getting back to her.” His lip curled. “The money wasn’t in exchange for the box and you can’t prove otherwise.”

He was right on that point, but Flynn wasn’t overly concerned about the sale of the item. “Can you tell me when you discovered the artefact and why you kept it quiet?”

“I found it on Wednesday morning.”

“Was that around the same time that Ryan’s air hose was cut?”

“Yes, but I was nowhere near Ryan.”

“Really? Because he claimed he’d just found an artefact and someone took it out of his hands.”

“Not me,” he said, sounding bored by the conversation.

“And when you surfaced, why didn’t you mention that you’d found something?”

His chest rose and fell as he sighed. “When I surfaced, Ryan was raving about someone cutting his oxygen supply because he found something. Funnily enough, I didn’t feel very safe admitting that I’d also found something.”

“You thought whoever did it might come after you, too?”

He shrugged. “It didn’t seem worth taking any chances.”

“Why didn’t you mention this when I spoke to you yesterday?”

“I’ve been worried about my mum. It must have slipped my mind.”

“Right,” Flynn said tightly. “Can you explain exactly when you found the cigar box? Maybe fill me in on the events of Wednesday morning, which you failed to mention yesterday…”

“I found the box on the seabed. When I pulled it out of the sand, I looked around and the whole place had turned murky. I saw Ryan and Lily heading for the surface, but they were going slow so it didn’t occur to me there was anything wrong.”

“And then you swam back to the boat?”

“Yeah. We went back along the seabed to see if we could find anything else. When we got back to the boat, I was about to announce what I’d found, but then Ryan was screeching about someone cutting his hose. I made a quick decision to keep what I’d found to myself.”

“But Benji knew about it too, I assume?”

“Yeah. He agreed it might be better to keep quiet.”

Flynn pondered the story. “After you sold the box, did you split the money with Benji?”

“I already told you, I didn’t sell it.”

“Yeah, it was reward money or a gift, or whatever wordingyou want to use that means it wasn’t a criminal offence, but did you share that money with Benji?”

Again, he gave his annoying shrug. “I told him I’d give him something.”