Death Surge by Pauline Rowson Page B

third time, while Xander is still married to number one, Diona, and has two daughters, aged fifteen and thirteen.’
    ‘Do they sail?’
    ‘Of course.’
    It wasn’t relevant. They were too young to be of interest to Johnnie, because the idea had flitted through Horton’s mind that Xander might have wanted Johnnie out of the way if one of his daughters had become rather too keen on him. ‘And Giorgos, does he have children?’ Horton asked.
    ‘A son, Yannis, aged fifteen from his first marriage, another son, Zoi, aged ten from his second marriage and a girl, Theodora, from the third, aged four.’
    So that ruled out that theory.
    She continued: ‘Christos Andreadis is not in the best of health, having suffered two heart attacks, and he no longer takes an active part in the business, but he’s still a very strong influence and is fully aware of what is going on.’
    ‘And is that anything illegal?’
    ‘Not that we have discovered.’
    Evasive. ‘But you’re still checking.’ He thought he detected a hint of hesitation before she answered.
    ‘Xander Andreadis races yachts around the world. He goes in and out of ports, but we have no reason to suspect him of any illegal activity, or his brother, who doesn’t sail.’
    No
reason
perhaps, but
suspicion
maybe. And was that why she was here and interested in Johnnie’s disappearance? Did she suspect that Johnnie had discovered something about Xander Andreadis’s sailing exploits that had prompted his disappearance? If that was the case then it didn’t bode well for Johnnie, he thought with trepidation. And it meant she must have called in to her bosses as soon as she got the missing persons report from the local cop shop. It crossed his mind that her arrival at Cowes might not be purely for the racing or to be reunited with her family. Perhaps she was working. But if so, then had she and her bosses expected Xander Andreadis to show up? Or had they been waiting for Johnnie? If the latter, though, surely she would have discovered he’d gone missing before now and alerted the police. Perhaps she had – but not the local force, clearly.
    A prickling sensation between his shoulder blades made him wonder if she’d alerted Europol and Interpol. And now that Johnnie’s absence had been brought to the attention of the local police she’d been ordered in to help find him. Perhaps she and her bosses hadn’t known that Johnnie was the nephew of a local copper.
    ‘So on to your second point,’ she said, placing her mug carefully on the table in front of her and holding his gaze. ‘You’re correct, I have moved in the same exalted sailing circuits as Andreadis, not only because of competing in races but also because my father is a personal friend of Christos.’
    He might have known. ‘And that means you know Xander Andreadis.’
    She nodded. And knowing what he did about her father that made her appearance at Cowes Week even more suspect, along with his growing conviction that she must know her father worked for British Intelligence.
    She said, ‘Xander was here in July.’
    ‘That recent!’
    ‘For the Cowes to St Malo race. One of his yachts,
Medussa
, was entered. He was here from the tenth of July to the seventeenth.’ Before he could ask, she added, ‘You’re wondering if Johnnie was with him.’
    He nodded and drank his coffee.
    ‘He wasn’t on
Medussa
with Xander, but he might have been on-board Xander’s personal Superyacht,
Calista.
It was moored off the Island. You might remember seeing it – a 1930s retro design fore-and-aft rigged yacht, with three closed decks. Two hundred and sixty feet long, with an owner’s suite on the lower deck and four guest cabins.’
    A classic beauty, and he had seen it, but he’d had no idea who it had belonged to. The fact that Cantelli had said none of the family had seen Johnnie since January should have meant he wasn’t on-board … but Horton had an uncomfortable feeling that he might have been, and this