Aston saw something flicker in Rinne’s eyes. Perhaps a flash of curiosity?
“What makes you think something happened to him?”
“I just told you. He left and never came back. It’s out of character. And Holloway might be,” he paused right on the precipice of calling the billionaire a ‘colossal asshole’, “overbearing at times, but he pays well and is no more demanding than most of the bosses I’ve had.”
Rinne smirked, picked up his cigarette again, and held it in front of his face. “I quit smoking years ago, but I keep one of these in my desk at all times. I like to take it out and hold it just to remind myself I have the will to resist.” He lapsed into silence for a span of five seconds and then gave his head a shake as if trying to wake from a dream. “We will ask around after your friend, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about. After all, there isn’t much to do here except drink. This town is small, but we have plenty of lonely wives with ample free time on their hands while their husbands are off working on fishing boats and the like. He probably fell in with one of them and is embarrassed to face you all again. Or, he’s still enjoying himself. It’s happened before.”
“I don’t think so.” Aston bit off each word.
“Of course you don’t. Now, unless you have anything more to tell me, I have work to do.”
Aston knew a dismissal when he heard one. He sprang from his seat a bit too fast, upending his chair. He didn’t bother picking it up; he was angry with Rinne for not taking Dave’s disappearance seriously and furious with himself for having bothered. He stalked from the room, stopped just outside the doorway, and turned around.
“There is one more thing. Dave rowed to shore, but when we got to town, his dinghy wasn’t there. We’ve also been all over the lake and haven’t found it anywhere along the shore or floating on the water. If he got here safely, wouldn’t his boat be somewhere nearby?”
Now he had Rinne’s attention. The superintendent rose halfway to his feet, palms flat on the desk. His flinty eyes bored into Aston. Finally, he sank back into his chair.
“Thank you for that. I’ll look into it. Please close the door behind you.”
Aston complied. It took all his willpower not to slam it, but he managed. What the hell, he wondered, was Rinne’s problem?
Chapter 22
Aston took his time returning to Merenneito. He told himself he was merely maintaining the illusion that he’d gone out to do some thorough inspection of promising spots along the shoreline. The truth was, he was in no hurry to get back to the ship. Holloway was insufferable, Laine an oddball, and Slater an enigma. He couldn’t escape the feeling there was something suspicious about her late-night wandering.
When he drew within sight of the ship, he saw Holloway out on the deck. The man was excitedly doing a piece to camera, waving his hands about and talking rapidly. Though Aston couldn’t make out the words, he could tell the tone was upbeat, bordering on manic. Just the sound of Holloway’s voice set his teeth on edge.
“Think about the paycheck,” he told himself. “He’s paying you to put up with his crap. You can do that.” He hoped it was true.
He stopped rowing some ten feet out so as not to ruin the take with splashing and watched as his momentum carried him in. Carly moved along the side and turned the camera to him as he bumped up against the Merenneito’s dive platform and hopped aboard.
“Did you get any good shots?” Slater called down, presumably keeping up the ruse for Holloway’s benefit. She rested her arms on the deck rail and, as she leaned forward, Aston couldn’t help but notice the curve of her breasts. The memory of the night they’d spent together stirred something deep within him, but he forced it down.
“Did you hear me?” she asked. “Any results from your work on shore?”
Aston couldn’t bring himself to play along, still furious at the bemusing reception he’d got from Rinne. He managed a shake of his head, a wave of his camera, and a tight smile before heading up to the deck. What did it matter how he came across? Slater’s production people would edit the footage to craft each person’s image just so. He wondered if he’d even recognize himself when the program aired.
“Okay, everybody, let’s head to the bridge!” Holloway called out. “We’ve got a lot to discuss.”
Carly moved at the periphery, filming the crew as they gathered around the table. Holloway’s enthusiasm grated on Aston’s nerves, but he tried to ignore it. Slater cast him a sidelong glance and raised an eyebrow. Aston shook his head slightly, mouthed, later.
“So Joaquin has found something very interesting,” Holloway said, after ensuring the camera was on him. “It took several hours of painstaking searching, all morning in fact, but we’ve located a part of the lake here where the salinity is sky high!” He jabbed a finger at their map.
“Sky high?” Aston asked. “Really?” Even if they did find a connection with the sea, the salinity should be noticeably higher than that of the lake water in other spots, but not substantial by any stretch.
“Hardly,” Joaquin admitted. “But it’s high, especially as this should all be fresh water.”
“And not far from where you spotted those skates,” Makkonen put in.
“You’re taking a renewed interest in our endeavor here,” Aston said to the old captain. “And here I thought we were just an annoyance to you.”
Makkonen grinned. “I’ve been ferrying all kinds of people around this lake for decades and they’ve all largely bored me. For the first time, you lot are presenting me with something I’ve never seen before.”
“A man is never too old for surprises,” Holloway declared, like it was some great wisdom.
Joaquin broke the moment of uncomfortable silence. “I’ve compared the salinity in several locations and there are quite a few spots where it’s not entirely fresh water. But this location is positively brackish. We’re about to do some close sonar to see if we can spot the channel.”
“That’s what I was just explaining on camera,” Holloway said. He turned to Makkonen. “Captain, if you please.”
The Merenneito rumbled into life and Makkonen started the familiar grid pattern to get a detailed sonar map. The crew busied themselves, gathering the data, making print outs, but generally killing time until the results were in. It took less than an hour.
“That’s a pretty big space.” Laine’s flat tone hid his emotions. Did he consider the size of the channel a good thing or bad?
The printout showed a three-dimensional representation of the lake bed, with a wide channel like a deep scar in the bedrock heading in toward the shore. Several other channels and grooves in the rock ran nearby, but the central chasm was impossible to ignore.
“Must be twenty meters… sixty feet deep at least as it carves into the bedrock there,” Aston said, pointing. “And probably the same width, getting deeper as it goes back.”
“Then it channels away underground,” Slater said. “How far out is that, where the channel goes under?”
Laine made some measurements. “One hundred and eighty-three feet from the shoreline,” he said. “Starting at a depth of seventy-two feet before it drops away.”
“And we’re right in the middle of the high-salinity area Joaquin found,” Holloway said. “So it’s fair to assume that underwater cave leads to a passage that itself leads all the way to the Gulf of Bothnia.”
“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Aston said. “Geology is a fickle thing. It’s almost certainly not a single passage to the ocean.” He held up a hand to stay any argument and went on. “It could be, but it’s more likely to be a whole network of fissures and caverns, some possibly rising up above the water level, others branching into dead ends or running deeper and rejoining different chasms.”