When Jude had visited Ben’s French home and place of business, an old farm called Le Val, in mid-January while Ben was still convalescing from his injuries, the two of them had had their first real chance to sit down and talk. Among other things, they’d discussed Jude’s growing disenchantment with his Marine Biology degree course at Portsmouth University. Ben, who’d cut his own Theology studies short twenty years earlier and often wished he hadn’t, had encouraged him to see it through to the end.
Jude wasn’t so sure where his future lay. There were times when Ben could see in his newfound son the same restlessness of spirit that had driven him in his own headstrong, sometimes foolhardy younger days, and wished the boy had taken more after Michaela than himself.
Those worries aside, Ben had deeply enjoyed Jude’s visit. When it was over and he’d driven him back to the ferry port at Cherbourg, he’d suddenly realised how much he was going to miss Jude’s company until the next time they’d meet.
Then it had been back to business. The Le Val Tactical Training Centre was still overbooked with people wanting to acquire the specialised skills it had to offer, skills that only men like Ben, his business partner, ex-SBS commando Jeff Dekker and their team of instructors were qualified to teach. The training schedule at Le Val had never been so busy, which made a Sunday morning getaway like this one all the more welcome.
With a final heave, Ben hauled himself up onto the cliff’s summit. He knelt in the grass, dusted his hands and looked down. The moored kayak was a tiny red sliver far below.
‘There, that wasn’t so difficult,’ he murmured to himself. His heart rate was steady and he wasn’t out of breath. Not in disgraceful shape for an old man, he thought. He mightn’t have bet on still being able to fly through ‘sickeners’, the gruelling SAS selection tests he’d endured long ago, but he was pretty sure that he’d give young squaddies half his age or less a decent run for their money.
Ben stood up, unzipped a compartment of his waist pack and took out a small bottle of mineral water. He cracked the seal and drank, then spent a few moments gazing out to sea, the breeze ruffling his thick blond hair, as he considered whether to take the long, easy footpath back down to the shore or descend the way he’d come.
The phone buzzed inside his waist pack before he could decide. He answered, expecting the call to be from Jeff Dekker with some work-related query or other.
It wasn’t Jeff.
‘Am I talking to Ben Hope?’ someone said on the other end.
A man’s voice, shaky, uncertain. Ben was certain he’d heard the voice before; but where?
‘Who is this?’ Very few people had this number.
‘My name’s Amal,’ the voice replied. ‘Amal Ray. We met once, around Christmas time. Brooke’s upstairs neighbour.’
Ben remembered him perfectly well, and if it hadn’t been for the tension and anxiety he could hear in the guy’s voice, he might have responded with something like, ‘Hi, Amal, it’s a pleasure to hear from you.’ Instead he frowned and stayed silent.
‘Something’s happened to Brooke,’ Amal said. ‘Something terrible.’
A constant thin drizzle was slanting down out of the dark afternoon sky as the Ryanair flight from London Stansted touched down at City of Derry Airport, a few miles east of the border between Ulster and the Irish Republic.
There was a hard set to Ben’s face as he strode from the plane. Outwardly, he was calm, but a violent storm was raging inside and he fought to contain his impatience going through passport control and customs. His only luggage was the battered and well-travelled old green canvas army bag into which he’d thrown a few things before dashing away from Le Val, leaving everything in the hands of Jeff Dekker.
Jeff had been as shocked as Ben to hear the news of Brooke’s disappearance. ‘Just call if you need me,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll be there.’
Amal was waiting nervously for Ben near the airport entrance. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked several years older than when Ben had last seen him.
There was no time for greetings. ‘Anything new?’ Ben asked, and Amal morosely shook his head. They left the terminal in silence and went outside into the gathering dusk. The drizzle had intensified, and Ben turned up the collar of his scuffed leather jacket. He motioned at the smattering of vehicles in the car parking area. ‘Which is ours?’ His final instruction to Amal over the phone earlier that day had been to hire the fastest car he could find locally.
‘That one,’ Amal said, and bleeped a key at a dark blue BMW saloon. ‘Hope it’s okay. It was the best I could get.’
Ben tossed his bag into the back of the car. ‘I’ll drive,’ he said, taking the keys. Amal didn’t argue, and climbed into the passenger side. Before he’d shut his door, Ben was already gunning the car backwards out of its parking space. The tyres squealed on the damp concrete as they took off for the exit. Ben aimed the car westwards, heading for the N13. ‘Now tell me everything,’ he said.
Amal closed his eyes and let out a sigh. ‘What more is there to say? I already told you everything on the phone.’
‘Let’s go through it again. Starting from the beginning.’
Amal miserably recounted the whole thing: Brooke’s idea for getting him out of London; the media event at Castlebane Country Club; how he’d got too drunk to go on to the party afterwards and she’d reluctantly gone off without him; how that had been the last he’d seen of her. Ben listened and pushed the BMW on hard and fast as Amal talked, overtaking traffic and keeping an eye on the mirror, on the lookout for police. He didn’t want anyone slowing him down.
‘It’s all about this Forsyte guy, isn’t it?’ Amal said, interrupting himself. ‘Surely it must have been him they were after?’
Ben had used every moment of his journey from France to plough through all he could find online about Sir Roger Forsyte, the company he’d founded, Neptune Marine Exploration, and its various highly lucrative exploits over the years salvaging sunken treasures around the world’s oceans. Despite the wealth of material available, from reams of newspaper articles to spreads and interviews in National Geographic and other publications, Ben had noticed that the details of Forsyte’s past career, prior to NME’s founding in 1994, seemed just a little hazy. As his flight had crossed westwards over England, he’d wondered why that might be.
He’d also been pondering over where he’d heard the name Roger Forsyte before. The bell it was ringing in his mind was distant and faint, but it was ringing nonetheless and he was frustrated that he couldn’t make more of it.
‘Seems that way,’ he replied to Amal’s question. ‘Successful businessman, just made a killing and splashing it all over the media. He’s the primary target for a kidnap and ransom job. The others just happened to be there. Wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘It’s a nightmare,’ Amal said, on the edge of panic. ‘Oh, God, it’s a nightmare. It isn’t really happening. Tell me it isn’t happening.’
‘It’s happening. Take a breath. Focus, keep talking.’
Amal took several deep breaths to compose himself. ‘What more is there to say? I got up this morning, saw the news and realised Brooke hadn’t come back, so I called the cops. They call them the Garda here.’
‘Yeah,