Page 35 of Deep Waters

Harry paused with a shell halfway to his mouth to follow his line of sight.

A young woman with long brown hair, fastened in a ponytail, turned at the sound of her name. Antoni raised his hand and beckoned her over. Her expression was miserable and barely improved as she came towards them. Harry recognised her as a part-time waitress at the Seagull Café. She was usually so cheerful and friendly with the customers. The change in her mood today was startling.

“Hey,” Antoni said, “how are you?”

“I’m okay,” she answered. Her face told a different story.

Her eyes were tracked with thin red lines. The skin below was puffy and dark. It was obvious she had been crying…and recently.

“You’re not going to work, are you?” Antoni asked.

She nodded. “I’m going to be late.”

“Can’t you get some time off?”

She looked impatient. “I’d rather not. I want to work and keep busy. It stops me from thinking too much.”

“Okay. Well, look after yourself.”

“I will,” she said, already walking away. “I have to go. It was nice to see you.” She disappeared into the crowd.

Harry gave Antoni a quizzical look. “What was that about?”

“Gemma Payne. Niko’s ex-girlfriend.”

“Ah…right.” Now her cried-out look made sense. “She seems to have taken it hard. How long had they been separated?”

“Not long. They split some time over the summer. Niko wouldn’t tell his parents the reason why, but we heard rumours that Gemma dumped him when he cheated on her.”

“Oh, shit. The poor girl. I guess she still has strong feelings for him.”

Antoni nodded, taking another forkful of crayfish. He chewed, swallowed, then said, “I think she wanted to get engaged. That’s what Niko told his parents, anyway. They thought he was too young, so I don’t think they were greatly upset when they stopped seeing each other. Still, it must be painful for her now. Your feelings for a person don’t stop just because you have split.”

Harry sensed a barb in Antoni’s last comment and didn’t respond. He had been the one to call ‘time’ on their own relationship. Antoni had made no secret that was not what he wanted and had tried more than once to get back with Harry. Though things between them were amicable, Harry suspected Antoni wouldn’t take much persuading to start again now. As far as he was aware, there had been no one else in Antoni’s life since they’d broken up.

“Niko was twenty? Right?” he asked, swerving around Antoni’s remark.

“Yes. Gemma is the same age, more or less. There may be a month or two on either side of their birthdays.”

“So, who was this other person? The one he left her for?”

Antoni gazed at the passing crowd. “I have no idea. A young man like that will always keep secrets from his family and friends. I doubt it matters. It was probably nothing—a one-night stand or such like. He was likely just doing what everyone his age should do and just enjoying himself.”

* * * *

Like most working men’s clubs, the Nyemouth club looked like it hadn’t been updated since the seventies or eighties. The wallpaper was a dull shade of yellowish brown, showing the stains from decades of tobacco smoke. The heavily patterned carpets were dirty and threadbare. The only sigh of modernisation was the fifty-inch TV mounted on the wall in the far corner. It was playing horse racing, which Christian suspected had been shown in here every day for forty years.

It was filled with the typical daytime drinking crowd—old men who nursed their pints and made them last, the drunks who could be found in any town, propping up whatever bar served the cheapest drinks. A bored-looking bartender in his late sixties looked put out every time a customer disturbed him from his newspaper for another drink.

What a depressing place.

Christian’s investigation had brought him here as a last resort. He’d spent the day trying to find out as much as he could about the murders of Niko Jasinski and Ike Meeker. Though there was plenty of gossip to be heard throughout Nyemouth, there did not appear to be much substance to any of it. Idle speculation was all it had turned out to be.

He’d spent the morning in his hotel room searching the internet. Dominic had said something the other night that had stuck with him—that Niko had made money on the side with an OnlyFans account. As he’d tried to look further into the matter, he’d soon realised what a useless task it was. OnlyFans alone had well over a million content creators, and there were so many other sites offering a similar kind of service. The chance of locating Niko’s profile in a sea of false identities and alter-egos was nil.

He wondered how relevant the fact was, if it was even true, to the case. So what if Niko was an online sex worker? It was hardly a big deal these days. One of Christian’s friends in Manchester, Mark, an intensive care nurse, had been supplementing his income by selling daddy-themed sex videos for years. Mark made no secret of what he did, and most of his friends knew about it.

Though sex would always add spice to a murder investigation, Christian doubted it had anything to do with Niko or Ike’s deaths, and quickly abandoned the search. He tried contacting Marie Baxter-Booth, the TV reporter he’d met on Tuesday, with no success. He left a message but had no hope she would call him back. She was likely off in another part of the county, covering another story. The news station would have no further interest in Nyemouth until there was an arrest or another murder.

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