Ben nodded, swallowed hard. ‘I don’t know how it could have happened so fast. I only took my eyes off her for a few seconds. But then she was…gone.’ He shrugged. ‘Just gone, just like that.’
His heart felt like a huge bubble ready to burst. He put his head in his hands, shaking it slowly from side to side. ‘She just wasn’t there any more. I never heard her cry out. I didn’t see a thing. Everything around me was normal. It was as though I’d dreamed the whole thing. As though she’d never existed.’
‘She had not simply wandered off.’
Ben took his head out of his hands and sat straighter. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s a lucrative trade, and the people who take them are expert professionals. Everything that could be done was done–police, consulate, months of searching. We never found a trace.’
The bubble burst. He’d held it back for so long. Something was pierced inside him, a sense of gushing. He hadn’t cried since those days, except in his dreams. ‘And it was all my fault, because I turned my back on her. I lost her.’
‘You have never loved anyone since,’ Pascal said. It wasn’t a question.
‘I don’t know how to love,’ Ben said, collecting himself. ‘I can’t remember the last time I was really happy. I don’t know what it feels like.’
‘God loves you, Benedict.’
‘God’s no more a friend to me than whisky is.’
‘You lost faith.’
‘I tried to keep faith then. At first I prayed every day that she’d be found. I prayed for forgiveness. I knew God wasn’t listening to me, but I kept on believing and I kept on praying.’
‘And what about your family?’
‘My mother never forgave me. She couldn’t stand the sight of me. I couldn’t blame her. Then she went into a deep depression. One day her bedroom door was locked. My father and I shouted and beat on it, but she wasn’t answering. She’d taken a massive overdose of sleeping-pills. I was eighteen, just starting my theology studies.’
Pascal nodded sadly. And your father?’
‘He went downhill fast after we lost Ruth, and Mum’s death made him worse. My only consolation was that I thought he’d forgiven me.’ Ben sighed. ‘I was home on vacation. I went into his study. I can’t even remember why. I think I needed some paper. He wasn’t around. I found his diary.’
‘You read it?’
And I found out what he really thought. The truth was, he hated me. He blamed me for everything, didn’t think I deserved to live after what I’d brought on the family. I couldn’t go back to university after that. I lost interest in everything. My father died soon after.’
‘What did you do then, my son?’
‘I can’t remember much about the first year. I bummed around Europe a lot, tried to lose myself. After a while I came home, sold up the house. I moved to Ireland with Winnie, our housekeeper. Then I joined the army. I couldn’t think of what else to do. I hated myself. I was full of rage, and put every bit of it into my training. I was the most disciplined and motivated recruit they’d ever seen. They had no idea what was behind it. Then, in time, I became a very good soldier. I had a certain attitude. A certain hardness. I was wild, and they made use of that. I ended up doing a lot of things that I don’t like to talk about.’
He hesitated before going on, and his mind filled briefly with memories, images, sounds, smells. He shook his head to clear them. ‘In the end I realized the army wasn’t what I wanted. I hated everything it stood for. I came home, tried to get my life back together. After a while I was contacted to find a missing teenager. It was in the south of Italy. When it was over and the kid was safe, I realized that I’d found what I wanted to do.’ He looked up at Pascal. ‘That was four years ago.’
‘You found that by returning missing people to their loved ones, you were healing the wound caused by the loss of Ruth.’
Ben nodded. ‘Every time I brought one home safe, it drove me on to the next job. It was like an addiction. It still is.’
Pascal smiled. ‘You have been through much pain. I am glad you trusted me enough to speak of it, Benedict. Trust is a great healer. Trust and time.’
‘Time hasn’t healed me,’ said Ben. ‘The pain gets duller, but deeper.’
‘You believe that finding the cure for this little girl Ruth will help you to cleanse out the demon of guilt.’
‘I wouldn’t have taken this assignment otherwise.’
‘I hope you succeed, Ben, for the girl’s sake and for yours. But I think that true redemption, true peace, must come from deeper within. You must learn to trust, to open your heart, and to find love within yourself. Only then will your wounds heal.’
‘You make it sound easy,’ Ben said.
Pascal smiled. ‘You have already started out on your path by confessing your secret to me. There is no salvation in burying your feelings. It may hurt to draw the poison from the wound–at such times we come face to face with the demon. But once it is brought to the surface and released, you may find freedom.’
Wax from the candle dripped onto Ben’s hand as he crept into the church of Saint-Jean. The door was never locked, not even at two in the morning. His legs were still weak and shaky as he made his way up the aisle. Shadows flickered all around him in the empty, silent building. He fell to his knees in front of the altar and his candlelight shone on the gleaming white statue of Christ above him.
Ben bowed his head and prayed.
The trail was leading Luc Simon south. It was easy to follow–it was a trail of bullets and dead men.
A farmer in Le Puy in mid-France had reported shots heard and two cars involved in a chase on rural roads. When the police found the field where the gun battle had taken place they’d discovered three dead men, two wrecked cars shot to pieces, weapons and spent cartridge cases lying everywhere. Neither car was registered to anyone, and the BMW had been reported stolen a couple of days earlier in Lyon.
More interestingly, inside the other car, a silver Peugeot with Paris plates, they’d found prints that matched Roberta Ryder’s. Among the many spent cases found in the grass were eighteen 9mm empties that had come from the same Browning-type pistol as those found in the Mercedes limo and at the scene of the riverside killings.
Ben Hope might as well have carved his name on a tree.
The Institut Legrand, near Limoux, southern France Three months earlier
‘Oh shit–look, Jules, he’s done it again!’
Klaus Rheinfeld’s padded cell was covered in blood. As the two male psychiatric nurses entered the small, cube-shaped room, its occupant looked up from his handiwork like a child caught in the act of some forbidden game. His wizened face crinkled into a grin, and they saw that he’d knocked out two more teeth. He’d torn open his pyjama top and used the jagged teeth to reopen the strange wound pattern on his chest.
‘Looks like time to increase your dose again,’ muttered the male nurse in charge as Rheinfeld was led out of the cell. ‘Better get the cleaners in here,’ he said to his assistant. ‘Take him to the clinic, give him a shot of diazepam and put him into some clean clothes. Make sure his nails are cut really short, too. He’s got a visitor coming in a couple of hours.’
‘That Italian woman again?’
Rheinfeld’s ears pricked up at the mention of his visitor. ‘Anna!’ he sang. ‘Anna…like Anna. Anna is my friend.’ He spat at the nurses. ‘Hate you’