Page 26 of The Sunken Truth (Lily Larkin Mysteries #5)

Chapter Twenty-Six

After loitering around the harbour for a while, Flynn found a fisherman willing to take him over to St Martin’s.

Zack dropped him at the quay and gave Flynn his number, telling him to call when he was ready to leave.

He’d call in on a friend but didn’t want to be much longer than an hour, given the way the wind was picking up.

With the clock ticking, Flynn contemplated going straight to visit Harry and Nat, but decided it was worth calling in at the pub to speak to the landlord first. The more information he had before he spoke to the Wrights, the better.

Glancing around the rustic pub with its homely atmosphere, he wished he wasn’t in a hurry and that he wasn’t on duty. Maybe he’d come back with Lily sometime.

His eyes drifted overhead as he walked towards the bar. Fairy lights twined around twigs and branches added to the rustic atmosphere.

“Hello!” the barman said. “We haven’t met before. I’ve heard about you, though. PC Grainger, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He extended his hand across the bar. “Are you Calvin Richards, by any chance? ”

“That’s me. I’m not in any bother, am I?”

“Not at all,” Flynn said. “I was hoping I might ask you a few questions though.”

“Of course. Do you want to come into the back?”

Flynn glanced around. Only a couple of tables were occupied, and no one was close enough to overhear. “I think it’s fine here. It won’t take long… it’s about Nat Wright. I understand she’s a regular patron of yours?”

Calvin’s shoulders sank and he moved around the bar to perch on the stool beside Flynn. “She was a regular. I recently had to cut her off because of an unpaid bar bill.”

Flynn nodded. “That’s what I’d heard.”

“She came in yesterday and settled it in full. I felt bad for her. She was clearly embarrassed. Full of apologies, she was.”

“Do you know her well?”

“Well enough.” He kept his voice to a low whisper. “I knew she was having some marital problems. There have been whispers for a while about Harry having a gambling problem. I couldn’t tell you if it’s true.”

Flynn stared at the spirit dispensers on the back wall. It seemed to be a pretty big coincidence that Nat had paid off her bar bill right after the incident at the dive site.

Strange that Eustace hadn’t mentioned someone handing something to him, but then again maybe he wanted to keep it to himself, or return it to the sea if he deemed it to be cursed.

“Thanks,” Flynn said, realising the landlord was looking at him expectantly. “That’s helpful.”

“Is it?”

Flynn grunted. “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

“Is there something going on I should know about?”

“No.” Flynn offered his hand again and thanked Calvin for his help.

On his way out of the pub, he checked his watch, then picked up his pace on the sandy path. The hedge at the side of the lane shuddered against gusts which seemed to gather strength by the minute.

He wasn’t at all surprised by the message from Zack which pinged on his phone just as he was reaching Harry and Nat’s place.

How long you going to be? he asked. I don’t like the look of this weather.

Flynn tapped rapidly. Give me fifteen minutes?

A thumbs up emoji came through.

It didn’t take Nat long to answer when Flynn rang the bell – possibly because he pressed it three times in quick succession like an impatient child.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“I need to speak with you and Harry again. I hope it’s not a bad time.”

She glanced behind him, eyes darting up to the foreboding grey clouds. “It’s fine. Come in.”

As he closed the door behind him, Nat shouted up the stairs to Harry, then led him through to the kitchen. “Have a seat.”

Thunder rumbled and he shook his head, not keen to sit. His eyes shifted to the hall as footsteps sounded on the stairs.

“Hi,” Harry said, a puzzled ring to the single syllable.

“I’ll get straight to the point,” Flynn said as more thunder sounded in the distance.

“I’m still looking into the incident at the wreck.

Whatever Ryan found out there hasn’t been discovered by the dive crews, which leads me to believe someone took it from the dive site immediately after Ryan’s hose was cut. ”

“Okay,” Harry said, an impatient bite to his words. “We already told you what we know.”

“Yes. But it’s come to my attention that the two of you have been having financial difficulties.”

“And?” Harry snapped, taking a protective step in front of his wife.

Flynn eyed the man levelly. “And if I have my facts right, Nat paid off a large bar bill yesterday, which had been outstanding for some time.”

Nat pressed her lips together and moved to sit at the small table by the wall.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Harry asked, pulling his shoulders back as he took a step towards Flynn.

“Surely you can see how it looks.”

Nat exhaled a shaky breath. “It looks as though I sabotaged Ryan’s gear to get my hands on something from the shipwreck, which I could then sell to pay off our debts.”

“Is that what happened?” Flynn asked.

“No.” Nat shook her head. “I would never do that.”

Ignoring Harry’s threatening stance, Flynn stepped around him and approached his wife. “It would be really helpful if you could explain how you did get the money, so I can put the timing down to coincidence.”

“Of course it was a coincidence,” Harry said, anger rife in his tone. “Nat would never hurt anyone, or do anything that might cause harm.”

Nat beckoned to her husband and pulled out the chair beside her. “There’s no point in getting het up with PC Grainger. He’s only doing his job.”

Resignedly, Harry sat beside Nat and took her hand. “It’s all my fault,” he grumbled.

“It’s not,” Nat said, before switching her attention to Flynn. “We have been having financial difficulties. Which I dealt with by spending too many evenings in the pub. I ran up a bill that I couldn’t pay, so that didn’t exactly help matters.”

She took a breath. “We’ve both been trying to get ourselves sorted.

We agreed we wouldn’t take on seasonal staff this year, and we’d work our arses off to get out of the hole we’d got ourselves in.

It was tough going, but we were managing.

Then we had a couple of incidents… equipment needing to be replaced and a couple of unexpected bills.

You know how it is? Then we had that group making a fuss about payment and it just felt like the final straw. ”

Flynn waited patiently while Nat wiped a stray tear from the corner of her eye.

“I called my sister and told her I’d take her up on her offer of a loan. Up until then, I’d declined because I knew Harry would be too proud to accept help from my family.”

“That’s how you paid off the bar bill?” Flynn asked.

She nodded and reached for her phone. “I can show you my bank account with the money going in.” A moment later, she held the phone out and he saw that there was a payment of three thousand pounds deposited the previous day.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m sorry to have to pry into your private lives.”

“I’d rather you know the truth of it,” Nat said. “Better that than you think we sabotaged Ryan’s dive equipment.”

“We might have made some bad decisions,” Harry said. “But we’d never do something like that. No matter how bad things were.”

“Thank you for explaining,” Flynn said as rain tapped gently at the window. “I need to get back to St Mary’s before I get stranded here.”

“Do you need a ride?” Harry asked .

“No, thank you. Hopefully Zack is waiting for me.”

Rain was coming down in earnest when he stepped outside. Pulling his hood up, he took off towards the jetty at a run.