“Has he donated to expeditions before?”Brisk questions.This was Dot in police mode.What had triggered her?
“No.”
“And Andrew has been enrolled, what, twelve weeks?”
“About that.”
“How is he doing in class?”
“He gets average grades.Doesn’t take part in discussions unless it’s to say something negative.”Oliver was used to putting up with student attitudes and demanding donors.It was part and parcel of the job.
“What does Lucas do for a living?”
“He’s in shipping or some sort of export business.”
“You know him well?”
“Not really.We had a couple of meetings before I came up here.”
“Did the company finance the expedition, or him personally?”
“He did.”
She flicked to a web page and then swore when she noticed she had no reception.“Can you describe him to me?”
He retrieved his phone from his backpack.“I’ve got a photo.We took a bunch at the dinner he held.”He scrolled through until he found them and passed the phone to Dot, pointing to Lucas.“That’s him.”
She pressed a couple of buttons and shared the photos to her phone and then examined them closely, enlarging the photos to see who was in the background.She sucked in a breath as she zoomed in on the face of a guest.“Who is that?”
He took the phone from her and squinted, trying to make out the slightly blurry face.“I think he might be one of Lucas’s executives.Thought himself a bit of a photographer, so had a camera in front of his face most of the night.”
“Do you know his name?”She’d gone still, almost poker faced, as if she didn’t care about the answer, but her body positively vibrated with tension.
“Lee something.I asked him to send me the photos so I could do a couple of social media posts, but he hasn’t sent them through yet.”
“Do you have his email address?”
“No.I gave him mine.I was going to ask Lucas for it.”
Dot said nothing, but sent the photo to someone else.
“Who are you sending it to?”
She pressed her lips together.“Nhiari.”
“Isn’t she missing?”
Dot nodded, not looking at him.“Habit.”She spent a few more minutes reviewing the photos and then put her phone away.
Oliver frowned.She was lying, but he didn’t pry.
“Tell me about teaching.Do you enjoy it?”
Her question distracted him.He pressed his lips together.“Sometimes.So many students don’t understand the laborious nature of the work.It’s a lot of documenting and research, and depending on the depth of the find, it can be really short dives where you don’t have time to see everything.It requires a lot of patience and delayed gratification.”Something which was in short supply it seemed.
“Why teach then?”
“It was a requirement of my job at the museum.The museum provides a lecturer for the year.”
