Chapter 15 Nina

Chapter 15

?Nina

Thirty minutes later I am getting in the taxi she has booked for me in spite of my protestations.

With the address of the harbor construction company Oksana knows to have worked on the excavation in hand, and with her advice to also see the marina while I am there and lunch at Milos, I slip into the hot leather seat of an island cab.

At the marina gates I disembark my ride and let the sea breeze cool my hot cheeks as I walk the walls, my eyes scanning for the building number written on the slip in my hand.

I think of the note, folded in my bag, and its exhortation to: Leave. Now. And I think of Oksana's take on my predicament—no "or else"—and her odd disclosure about the sheer amount of rock removed from the site of the house when it was constructed. I think of that locked basement door and what might lie behind it—and now of how much house there really is down there.

I shiver as I pass under the awning of a building, the sun blocked suddenly by its shade.

This is the door I have been looking for: M. Loman and Sons, Logistics Solutions.

It is underwhelming, a dusty brown tinted-glass door, the brass name plaque beside it scratched and rusting. Next door a bustling boat shop and marina chandlery. There is no buzzer or bell and beyond the door only a staircase up, its thinning carpet balding on the rungs. I push through the entry door and, unclear as to what else to do, decide to head straight up the narrow staircase to the first floor. The landing reveals only one open door, beyond it a small grubby office where a tall, broad-shouldered man, in his thirties, in worn construction clothing, looks up at me with surprise.

"Hello? Can I help you?" he asks. He's American, and his tone clearly implies that he assumes I have wandered into the wrong building.

"I hope so," I tell him. "I was hoping to speak to someone about work that was done on a house near Pond Bay several years back. Anderssen's Opening?"

The man squints and straightens, then lets out a "Humph?"—the name clearly not resonating. "Where is that again, just remind me? You're the owner?" he asks after a moment.

"It's out near Pond Bay, the house on the clifftop. I've just taken ownership of it, yes," I tell him, with no small sense of awkwardness.

He nods, then thinks a moment. "Lemme get my dad. He's the boss."

I feel my body relax slightly as he disappears into the office and through a connecting doorway. I wait in the humid little hallway, the sounds of the marina filtering through to me from outside. The man returns with a slightly short but older, similarly uniformed man, who smiles generously before stretching out a hand.

"Mick Loman. I hear we worked on your building?"

I shake his hand, and again relax a little more. He seems nice, sensible, someone who might be able to get to the bottom of all this and put my concerns to rest. If he worked on the build he should know my father, he should know all about the house.

"Nina Hepworth. Yes, I was just asking about Anderssen's Opening—sorry, the house on the clifftop. If you remembered working on it? Or had any information about its construction?"

Mick looks back at his son briefly before turning to give me a confused smile. "Yes, Nina Hepworth. Yes, we've spoken. I sent you the floor plans, didn't I?" He pulls a confused face now, as if I have gone completely doolally but he's being very restrained about the whole thing. I am genuinely lost for words. I look between them completely back-footed, and for a second I even consider that he may be right and we have spoken and I am mad.

He continues, "You said you'd received them. Of course, they weren't the full plans, obviously. I mean, I did explain on the phone that we were only given area plans. But the ones I sent you were all we had to work from at the time—"

I raise a hand to stop him. "I'm sorry. I think there's been some kind of misunderstanding here. I've never spoken to you before. You or your son. I didn't even know about this company until this morning."

The pair exchange a glance, a shred of concern.

"Okay. Well," Mick starts decisively, ushering me into the office. "Let's take a quick look at the emails and perhaps that will jog your memory."

I follow the father toward his desktop inside the messy office, a growing sense of unreality imbuing what is happening, but I am careful to keep my one eye on the son as he hangs back, just in case I am walking into something. The warning on the note this morning blazes brightly in my mind.

Mick brings up an email thread on his computer but suddenly seems to remember something and blocks my view of the screen. He calls over to his son: "Can you get the contracts, Joe. NDAs. Bottom drawer."

Joe drops from view and rises with a small paper folder. He brings it over to Mick.

"Sorry to have to do this but do you have any ID on you, Nina?" he asks.

"You want me to sign a form?" I ask, confused.

"No, I just need to see some ID," he tells me plainly.

Bemused, and more than a little concerned, I cautiously root out my passport from my handbag and open it to the picture page without handing it over. Mick squints at the photo and then my face before rereading my name once more. He lets out a huff, clearly as baffled by the situation as I am.

"Okay. So, Nina. Obviously, we just needed to check it was you before discussing the NDAs. But here they are as you requested. Signed." He opens the folder to show me two slightly dog-eared, signed nondisclosure agreements. I bend to inspect the counter signature: it is my name but it is not my handwriting. I pull up quickly to find them both staring at me.

"You think I made you sign these? You think we spoke on the phone, emailed?" I ask Mick.

He nods, then turns his desktop screen toward me so I can see the email chain I have apparently been involved in. It has been running for months. I look at the email address, apparently my email address, and I do not recognize it. But I make a mental note of it.

"You first got in contact just over three months ago now. It's been on and off since then."

I take in the horror of what he is telling me and quickly jump to my own defense.

"Well, that's not me. I don't know who you spoke to. I only found out about the house a week ago."

The father and son share a look again.

"What was this person in contact with you about?" I ask. They hesitate for a second, unsure whether to tell me, confused as to whether the NDA they both signed prevents them from telling me, as I am not the person they contracted it with—or if the NDA itself is null and void for precisely that reason. They land on the side of the latter.

"She wanted the plans. And then she wanted the plans to be unavailable to third parties, hence the NDA. But it seems we might have made an error of judgment in terms of this person's credentials. Though why anyone would request the information she did, if she wasn't you, is beyond me. It's not like she could have done anything with it. And then to prevent us from passing on the information—I can't see why anyone would bother," Mick confides with a shrug.

"Can I see the building plans?" I ask.

Joe wordlessly turns to look in a large filing cabinet.

"Of course," he says, before continuing, "I mean, it was an impressive job, no doubt. A big dig, sure, but big digs aren't unusual out here. They're our bread and butter. So I don't know why someone would be particularly interested if the property wasn't theirs."

"Did the NDA she made you sign prevent you from passing information on to anyone? I mean, did anyone ask for the information and have to be turned down?"

Joe looks up. "Yeah, a solicitor firm a few weeks, maybe a month ago. But aside from that no one else has ever asked."

I realize that the solicitor firm must have been James's firm trying to sort out probate. But he told me he came up with nothing.

Joe lays out a partial architectural blueprint in front of me. I lean in to take a closer look, still wary of the two muscular men sharing this confined space with me.

The plan shows a partial outline of the basement. The locked room's dimensions are suddenly visible. I catch my breath.

"Oh my God. It's big." I jab a finger at the locked room's outline. "It's so much bigger than I thought."

Joe frowns. "You haven't visited the house yet?"

"No, I have. It's just locked. I can't get in there. That room. It's why I came here, to ask you."

"So you can't access the connecting rooms then," Mick asks. I flounder for a moment before his gaze draws mine back to the plans. Before the plans cut off, three additional rooms are visible branching off from the main locked room.

"Oh my God," I whisper. "And this is only a section of the plans. There could be more down there, can that be right?" I ask.

Mick's gaze holds mine.

"Yeah, we took a lot of bedrock out of that site. A lot. "