with a football, bouncing it skilfully like a basketball player with a rhythmic slap of rubber against pavement. He ran round the edge of the tables, chortling to himself, bouncing the ball as he went. A couple of women at a nearby table smiled as he ran by them.
As Charlie reached for the coffeepot to top himself up, Ben twisted in his seat, admiring the kid’s skill with the ball. The kid was too intent on keeping the rhythm going to notice anyone watching him. But then he missed a bounce and the ball went sideways and hit the leg of the table where the small man with the computer was sitting. The man swore at the boy in some language that Ben didn’t recognise over the traffic noise. His face was lean and angular, and his eyes blazed for a second. The kid picked up his ball and backed off.
‘I wish that damn brat would go and play somewhere else,’ Charlie said.
Ben turned back to face him. ‘Just tell me what Nikos Karapiperis told you.’
Charlie continued. ‘They’d been seeing each other, discreetly, for a while. It started as a one-night stand. Apparently she had quite a few of those. Then it got more serious, and they saw each other again and again. He was pretty frank with me. He’d had flings with girls before, but this was different. He was beginning to really care for her. Liked buying her things, he said. But then, suddenly, she didn’t need his money any more. She had plenty of her own.’
‘Did you find out where she was getting it?’
Charlie nodded. ‘It came from the States. Someone sent her an international money order for twenty thousand dollars. She wouldn’t tell Nikos who sent it, but she did tell him that there’d be more of it coming her way very soon.’
‘More?’
‘A lot more. The kind of money that would free her up for the rest of her life, she said. Apparently she was talking about coming back and buying a big house here, settling. She said she’d never have to work again. So if it’s true, we must be talking millions.’ Charlie paused. ‘But here’s the really strange bit.’
Ben blinked. ‘What?’
‘She never told him who sent the money, but she said it was all because of some prophecy.’
‘What prophecy?’
‘That was all Nikos knew. She was vague about it. The prophecy had something to do with the money. I have no idea what that means. Someone predicted that she’d win the lottery?’
‘When was the last time he saw her?’ Ben asked.
‘At the party she threw on her last night here, the night before she was due to catch the flight back to England. He didn’t really want to be seen at her parties, but he drove down there and hung around for a while, trying to keep a low profile as best he could. He was there until around eleven-thirty. They had an arrangement that afterwards, she’d ride her scooter up to his hideaway. They were going to spend a last night there. He was supposed to wait for her at his place.’ Charlie reached back across for the coffeepot and refilled his cup.
‘But she never got there,’ Ben said.
Charlie shook his head. ‘That’s the moment where we lose track of her. Sometime between Nikos leaving the party, around eleven-thirty, and the time she should have turned up at his place, she disappeared.’
‘Did you say she was using a scooter?’
‘One of those big fancy super-scoots. It was a rental. She never returned it. It’s disappeared too.’
‘So maybe we’re looking at a road accident. A little drunk, after the party. She could be lying in a ditch somewhere.’
‘Maybe,’ Charlie said. ‘But there’s more to it. Nikos said he thought something weird happened at the party. He knew she liked men, and there were a lot of much younger and fitter guys than him there. So he was keeping an eye on her. Jealous type.’
‘Go on,’ Ben said.
‘Apparently there was this guy hanging around her. Nikos described him as young, early thirties or thereabouts, good-looking, fair hair. He came in with a woman, but soon afterwards he started flirting a lot with Zoë. Said his name was Rick. Nikos thought he sounded American.’
‘What about the woman?’
‘Could have been Greek, according to Nikos. But he didn’t hear her talk at all, and he didn’t take a lot of notice of her. He was more worried about this Rick character, because it looked like Zoë was responding to him. Then Nikos said Rick went to the bar and fixed her a drink. He couldn’t be sure, but he said there was something furtive about the way he did it. He was standing with his back to the room. Nikos thought maybe he was slipping something into the glass.’
Shit, Ben thought. He’d been here before. At best it was a guy loading the dice by slipping a woman an aphrodisiac. A little worse than that, it could be a date- rape setup. The worst possibility was abduction. And that was the option that seemed to fit the picture. ‘This isn’t good,’ he said.
‘Nikos wasn’t totally sure of what he saw,’ Charlie said. ‘But he went over and butted in right away. Asked her for a dance. While he was at it, he spilled the drink, kind of accidentally-on-purpose, just in case there was something in it. They danced, and he warned her about Rick. Told her to stop the party and come away as soon as she could. She argued with him, and he was scared she was going to cause a scene and draw attention to him. He warned her again to stay away from this Rick guy and not to touch any drinks anyone gave her. Then he left, went back up to his hideaway and waited for her.’
‘How do we know she even intended to go to his place? She could have been stringing him along.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Charlie said. ‘Because then she wouldn’t have let him put her baggage in his Mercedes earlier that day, and drive it up to the hideaway. A rucksack with all her clothes and things. And a travel pouch with her passport, money, plane tickets, the works. She was serious about going up there to meet him.’
‘So it looks as though perhaps this Rick person didn’t give up so easily,’ Ben said. ‘What happened next?’
‘When Zoë didn’t turn up that night, Nikos tried to call the landline at the villa. No reply. Then he went down there. It was all closed up, empty. The scooter was gone. She’d vanished. That’s when he began to worry.’
‘And he couldn’t call the police about the disappearance,’ Ben said. ‘He’d have to let out about their relationship, and he’d have been scared that if she just turned up after a couple of days, he would have compromised himself for nothing.’
Charlie nodded. ‘He was in a fix. When he heard that I was asking questions and I told him I was employed by her family, he was very happy to give me her stuff.’
‘Where is it now?’
Charlie pointed upwards to a window. ‘The rucksack is in my room upstairs. The pouch is right here.’ He reached over and grabbed a plastic shopping bag off the seat next to him.
Ben took out the travel pouch and sifted through it. The contents were all the usual items a traveller would carry. Passport. Mobile phone. A fabric purse, stuffed with euro banknotes, all five hundreds. He counted quickly through the cash and stopped at six thousand.
‘There’s more cash in the rucksack, under her clothes,’ Charlie said. ‘She made a good dent in the twenty grand, but she still had quite a bit left.’
‘I think you’re right,’ Ben said. ‘She must have been serious about joining Nikos. Nobody walks away from that much money.’
He rummaged deeper in the bag. Her air tickets were folded in a glossy travel agent’s paper wallet. He opened it. The destination was Heathrow via Athens, dated the day she’d disappeared. Under the tickets was a little book, good-quality leather jacket. An address book. From its crisp edges he could see it had been bought recently. He picked it up and flipped through it, looking for a Rick. Rick was what worried him the most.
But