The Pretender's Gold

by Scott Mariani

  But Mirella’s reply shocked him even more. ‘He’s missing.’

  Ben stayed grimly silent as Mirella told him the story that had played out over the last few days. She explained how Boonzie had travelled to the Highlands of Scotland to visit his nephew Ewan, who’d been having some trouble. Ben hadn’t even known Boonzie had a nephew. He went on listening as she described the backstory of Ewan’s partner in the surveying business, recently drowned in an apparent accident that Ewan thought he had reason to suspect to be foul play.

  The more Mirella talked, the faster the words came streaming out. Ben had to close his eyes and focus hard to keep up with the stream. He interrupted her flow with, ‘Hold on. Why did he think that?’

  ‘Because he received an anonymous phone call from a person claiming to be a witness to a crime,’ Mirella replied. ‘They said they saw some men murdering Ewan’s friend.’

  As she went on explaining what she knew about the mystery witness, Ben listened hard and tried to make sense of it all. ‘So Boonzie – Archibald – went there to help Ewan do what? Track down this salmon fisherman guy?’

  ‘And find out what happened to Ross. But now Ewan is hurt, too. Archibald thought the same people who killed Ross had tried to kill him.’

  ‘Are the local police involved in this?’

  ‘He went to speak to them, but he wasn’t impressed. He decided to go his own way. You know him, how independent-minded he can be. And he doesn’t trust the police, at the best of times.’

  Ben certainly did know him, and could also resonate with his reasons for going it alone. But it sounded like Boonzie had got himself into something bad, and that worried Ben. He asked, ‘When did you last speak to him?’

  ‘Two days ago. He doesn’t use a mobile phone. He called me from his nephew’s house. That was when he told me what happened to Ewan, how badly he was hurt, and how the police weren’t going to be of any help. Then I told him about the email that had come for him.’

  ‘What email?’

  ‘From his nephew.’ Mirella repeated to Ben what she’d already told her husband, reading out the short text of Ewan’s message verbatim. She described the image file that Ewan had attached with it. ‘It was a photo of a gold coin. The thing that Ross was supposed to have found. That’s all I know.’

  Ben frowned at the mention of the coin. In his experience, gold and murder went together like strawberries and ice cream, and this made the suspicions of foul play seem more plausible. He said, ‘Can you send me the image file?’, and told her the email address to send it to.

  Mirella was marginally more savvy with newfangled gadgetry than her technophobe husband. ‘I’m doing it now.’

  Moments later, the email pinged into Ben’s inbox. He put the call on speaker while he opened up the file and scrutinised the picture. It was a good photo, focused sharp and up-close. No question that it was a gold coin. An old one, showing the date 1745. Probably valuable, though at this point Ben had no clear idea.

  ‘What the hell is this about, Mirella?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied helplessly. ‘Archibald didn’t say much when I told him about it. But he sounded as though it was no surprise. Like he already knew something.’

  ‘Did he say what he was going to do next? Where he was heading after Ewan’s house?’

  ‘If he had a plan, he didn’t tell me what it was. He just promised me he’d be home soon, and not to worry. But I am, Ben. I’m so desperately worried. He promised to keep in touch. Said he’d call twice a day to tell me where he was and what was happening. But it’s been two whole days and I haven’t heard anything from him at all! I keep imagining all kinds of terrible things. I’m going crazy here on my own. I had to talk to you.’

  Ben said nothing for a few moments, thinking about his friend. Boonzie McCulloch was one of the toughest old war dogs Ben had ever known, and he’d known a few. The kind of guy you’d thank God was on your side, and not the enemy’s. Boonzie was also famously reticent when it came to talking about his past exploits. Ben was certain that even Mirella knew only a fraction of what her husband had been through, and survived, in his time.

  ‘He’s pretty resilient, Mirella. The fact that you haven’t heard from him might not mean he’s in trouble. It’s possible that he’s gone to ground for a while, and can’t call you. Maybe he will, any time now. And then everything will be okay again.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ she said, in a voice that sounded hollow, drained of energy. ‘Something he’d never have wanted me to tell anyone. He made me swear to keep quiet about it. Like if it was never talked about, it wouldn’t be real any more and it would just go away. But it is real. And it isn’t going away so easily.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What are you talking about?’

  And then she told him about Boonzie’s illness.

  Chapter 13

  Mirella said, ‘I could tell he was having a problem. He seemed tired a lot more often than usual, and sometimes he looked pale. Something was obviously bothering him, but he kept insisting that he was fine and would get irritable if I pestered him about it. Then about six months ago, he finally confessed that he’d been getting increasingly severe chest pains and was becoming worried about them.’

  Ben asked, ‘How serious is it?’

  ‘I persuaded him to see a private specialist in Campobasso. The doctor ran some tests and soon diagnosed heart disease. Said there was a risk of cardiac arrest if the condition was left untreated. Archibald just brushed it off, didn’t want to accept the diagnosis. When we got home, he wouldn’t even talk about it. I was so angry and upset. That man is as stubborn as a mule.’

  Tell me about it, Ben thought. He waited anxiously to hear more.

  ‘Anyway, of course, the pains got worse. Eventually he agreed that something had to be done. Two months ago, he went into hospital to be fitted with a pacemaker.’

  This was news, even though Ben and Boonzie kept in touch regularly. ‘I spoke with him just six weeks or so ago. I thought he sounded a little tired, but he never mentioned a single word to me about operations and pacemakers.’

  ‘And he’d have hated anyone knowing. Even more than he hates having it. He’s not as strong as he used to be, and he has to take all these pills every day. Of course, he works twice as hard to prove himself. But he’s struggling, Ben, I can tell. He’s been getting fainting attacks. I read that some of these defibrillation implants can malfunction sometimes, or that all kinds of complications can happen, even a year after the operation. When he told me he needed to go to Scotland I begged him to stay, but he wouldn’t listen. What if something happened to him there? Why else wouldn’t he have called me again in two whole days?’

  ‘We don’t know that, Mirella,’ Ben said, lowering his voice to sound more reassuring.

  ‘I already called the hospital, in case he might have been taken there. It’s in a town called Fort William. The only patient there with the surname McCulloch was his nephew Ewan. But that doesn’t mean nothing has happened. The town is miles from where Ewan lives. It’s a remote place, deep in the hills. Archibald could be out there somewhere, with nobody to help if he got into trouble. He could have fainted again, or had a bad attack, and nobody might even know about it until—’ Mirella’s voice had reached a peak of anxiety and now broke apart into a sob.

  Ben was quiet for a long time. Then he said, ‘Tell me the name of the place.’

  She read it out for him, struggling with the strange foreign spelling. Ben noted it down and was instantly putting together his plan.

  ‘Here’s what we’re going to do, Mirella. I’ll get there as quickly as I can. You need to stay by the phone and call me immediately if you hear from him. Okay?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I need as much information from you as possible to help me find him,’ Ben said. ‘For example, did he rent a car at the airport?’ Knowing what kind of vehicle Boonzie was using would be a useful asset. The registration number, even better. There
were ways of bluffing that kind of knowledge out of rental companies.

  ‘He went by train.’

  Ben considered the kind of remote local stations the area would have, not a car rental outlet for miles around. ‘Then how’s he travelling?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. What about other contacts there? Does he know anyone else in the village, did he mention any names to you? A friend of Ewan’s, perhaps? Or maybe he booked a place to stay, like a hotel or guesthouse?’

  ‘He never mentioned anything about that to me.’

  Ben said nothing. He’d have little to go on when he got there. But that wasn’t anything new to him.

  Mirella said, ‘I don’t know how to thank you for this, Ben. I didn’t know who else to turn to. I couldn’t go to Scotland alone. I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Ben told her. ‘That’s what you have me for. Finding people is what I do best, and I will find him. That’s a promise.’

  And that was how, within just a few hours, Ben was getting ready to set off on another unexpected mission. They had a habit of coming his way just when he was settling back into a steady routine and life seemed comparatively normal and peaceful. He never turned down people in need of his help. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to fail to be there for one of his oldest and closest friends in the world.

  Back at Le Val, Ben’s work schedule for the next few days was quickly rejuggled. Classes were cancelled, while others had to be reassigned to the stalwart Tuesday Fletcher, who was already covering for the workload Jeff couldn’t handle with one arm in a sling. Needless to say, both men would have happily dropped everything and closed Le Val’s doors to come with him to Scotland, but Ben wouldn’t have it. Even Jeff had to admit he wouldn’t be of much use with a fractured wrist.

  ‘Anyhow,’ Ben said, ‘it’s hardly a three-man job. The old bugger is probably having the time of his life up there, and just forgot to call home.’

  Privately, he wished he could be that confident. A tingling sensation was gnawing inside him. It was a sense of deep foreboding, as though some part of his mind predicted that he was walking into danger. He tried to shake off the feeling, but it hung over him like a cloud.

  Cherbourg was the nearest airport to Le Val, and the first available flight to Inverness was leaving late that evening. Ben booked his ticket online, then packed a few items into his battered, much-travelled canvas army bag. It was going to get chilly up north. Thermal gear and winter socks? Check. His warmest pair of waterproof combat boots? Check. Cold weather Norgi Top? Check. Spare packs of cigarettes? Essential. After sharing a light dinner with Jeff and Tuesday in the cosy surroundings of the old farmhouse kitchen, no wine, he shrugged on his old brown leather jacket, said a warm goodbye to Storm and walked out to the Alpina with his bag.

  The winter’s night was crisp and frosty, and the forecast had threatened snow. As Ben drove to the airport he kept glancing at his phone in its cradle on the dash, plumbed into the car’s speaker system in readiness for Mirella’s call to say that she’d finally received contact from Boonzie and all was well. He would have loved nothing more than to be able to turn back towards home. But the call didn’t come, and turning back was not an option. He chain-smoked Gauloises cigarettes all the way to Cherbourg to alleviate his worry. That didn’t do much good, either.

  Ben’s plane was on time, for what it was worth. The flight was a frustrating twelve-hour marathon that took him a staggered route via Lyon and Amsterdam and soon made him wish that he’d just driven the thousand or so kilometres direct. He checked his phone at each stop-off. Nothing from Mirella. Then, after a delay to clear snow from the runway, he finally boarded the KLM jet for the third leg of his journey.

  Every wasted hour only made him fret all the more. When they eventually got into the air, Ben closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but he couldn’t force his mind to relax. Old memories flooded his thoughts. Some good, some less good. Some very nasty indeed.

  A number of years had passed since his last journey to the Scottish Highlands. It had been back in 2004, at a time when he’d not long been out of the regiment. His objective on that occasion had been to spring an unannounced visit on a former Special Forces commanding officer, a man named Liam Falconer. That trip had not gone well, at least not for Falconer and several of his entourage. That was the price he’d paid for having involved himself in some secret operations he shouldn’t have, dark and shadowy even by the standards of the black-ops world Ben had just left.

  Men had died. Ben had been the one who had killed them. He did not enjoy taking lives. It was something he had been trained to do out of necessity, and he did it proficiently enough to have ensured that he’d been the only person to walk out of that situation.

  He hoped nothing bad awaited him in Scotland this time around, but he sensed that he was hoping in vain. The feeling of foreboding had not left him. It was growing deeper and more threatening with every mile he came nearer to his destination. The same familiar adrenalin-tinged dread he’d experienced so many times in the past as a soldier heading into the heart of war.

  Boonzie McCulloch, where the hell are you?

  Chapter 14

  At last, too many long and grinding hours after leaving France, Ben’s plane dropped down out of a cold grey sky and he got his first glimpse of Inverness. The quiet airport lay seven miles from the city and had once been a military airfield. Now it was the Gateway to the Highlands and Islands, standing in lonely isolation against a backdrop of misty hills and the distant North Sea.

  Disembarking, Ben was glad he’d brought warm clothes. The piercing wind felt as though it was roaring straight down from Iceland, and the sleet promised to turn to snow if the temperature dropped any lower.

  His first action was to call Mirella and find out what he already knew, deep inside: still no contact from Boonzie. It was now the third day since she’d last heard from him. ‘I’ll find him,’ Ben assured her.

  But he had to get there first.

  He hunted for a car rental place and was relieved to find a small independent firm that obviously hadn’t heard about the near-blanket ban imposed on him by most of their larger competitors. For some peculiar reason the latter seemed to object to having their vehicles returned to them riddled with holes, burnt or blown up. But he resolved to take extra care this time around.

  The village of Kinlochardaich, Boonzie’s last known location, lay seventy miles inland to the south-west. Ben required a car that could get him to his destination as quickly as possible and was rugged enough to handle the remoter parts of the western Highlands in winter, since there was no telling what kinds of roads or conditions he might meet out there. The answer to his needs was a big, chunky Mercedes four-wheel-drive. Fast and comfortable, a tad luxurious for his needs, but sturdy as hell.

  His route was the A82, one of the most famous highways in Scotland since for miles it closely hugged the shoreline of Loch Ness, home of the fabled creature. Ben was too concerned about reaching his target to take in the views across the rippling, mysterious waters of the loch. With the wipers slapping away the sleet and the Merc’s heater belching full blast he ripped by the ruins of Urquhart Castle and the village of Drumnadrochit, empty of holidaymakers at this time of the year but peppered everywhere with signs for Nessieland and monster theme tours. From Fort Augustus the road followed the Caledonian Canal through Glen Mor and along Loch Lochy. More endless, beautiful scenery that Ben flatly ignored as he pressed the big Mercedes along. Road signs were bilingual, in English and Gaelic.

  Rather than rely on GPS he had a map of the area imprinted on his mind. The seventy miles took him just over an hour, by which time his winding path had led him deep into ever-remoter country and his car was alone on the road for long periods. The thickening sleet slapped the windscreen and the outside temperature fell to just above zero, but inside was a bubble of warmth. His first glimpse of his destination was the eastern e
dge of Loch Ardaich, its restless grey waters surrounded by forest and rocky hills whose tops were shrouded in mist. He followed a lonely signpost directing him towards the village of Kinlochardaich, and not long afterwards he was making his way through the quiet, narrow streets.

  The houses were mostly grey stone, settled into themselves with the passing of a century or more. He passed an old church with a graveyard, and a village filling station with a workshop and a couple of pumps, a village shop and post office; and soon after that he found the street whose name Mirella had given him.

  Ewan’s address would have been one of Boonzie’s first ports of call when he arrived here, aside from visiting his nephew in the hospital, so it would also be Ben’s. He parked in an empty space directly in front of Ewan’s home, which was in a terraced row right on the street. He got out of the Mercedes, stretched his legs and back after the drive, lit up a Gauloise and then locked the car and walked up to the house. The sleet had died off, but the wind was chilly and Ben thought he could smell snow in the air.

  As expected, the house was closed up. Ben peered through the front room window but couldn’t see anything through the net curtains. He came away from the front door and walked a little way up the street to where a gap between the houses led, he guessed, around the back.

  His guess was right. Ewan’s back yard was a small area of wasteland, weedy and neglected. Ben stood for a moment, drinking in details. He noticed the patch of ground where a vehicle had stood until recently. A van-sized vehicle, judging by the spaces between the bare-earth wheel impressions in the dirt. A single dark oil stain had bled into the ground, the lack of individual splotches telling him that the vehicle had not been moved for a long time prior to being driven away.

  He also noticed the discarded set of diesel glow plugs that someone had pulled out of its engine and tossed into the weeds. They weren’t rusty enough to have been there longer than a couple of days. Nearby lay a crumpled strip of emery cloth, reddened from where someone had been polishing up corroded metal.