Passenger 13 (Ben Hope eBook originals)

by Scott Mariani

  Back out in the reception area was a young blonde in a short skirt whom Ben took to be Jennifer, the temp. She was pretty, with blue eyes and an elfin quality about her. She threw Ben a glance, smiled coyly and busied herself arranging some flowers in a vase as he headed for the exit. He didn’t make a big deal of noticing it, but he was aware of the way she watched him through the glass all the way back to his Jeep, the elfin look gone, replaced with an inscrutable expression that Ben couldn’t quite fathom.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ben headed back down south towards George Town, on the road running parallel to Seven Mile Beach with the sweep of white sands and the spectacular view across the West Bay to his right. Watching the sun sink closer towards the sea and bathe the whole island in a shimmering copper haze, he could understand what had brought his old friend to this idyllic place.

  A couple of miles from the Cayman Islands Charter office, a black SUV was parked in a lay-by off a long empty straight. Ben sped past, then saw in his mirror that the black car was indicating to pull out behind him.

  Its driver wasn’t hanging about. By the time the vehicle was filling his rear-view mirror, Ben had started paying more attention to it. A Chevy Blazer four-wheel-drive, big and bulky, dark-tinted windows, bull bars and extra driving lamps on the front. It was sticking too close to his tail. He eased off on the gas, letting the Jeep slow to just over fifty, expecting the Blazer to pass him.

  It didn’t. Instead it matched his speed, still sticking much too close. Ben slowed the Jeep down to a crawl. The Blazer slowed down too. Ben hit the gas and roared the Jeep up to seventy. The Blazer followed suit, making no attempt to hide the fact that it was deliberately tailing him.

  Ben remembered what Drummond’s landlady had said about her tenant taking off with some men in a big black car. Interesting, he thought, and hit the brakes and slewed hard over to the dusty verge.

  It probably wasn’t what a detective would have done. But then, Ben didn’t pretend to be a detective.

  He climbed out of the Jeep. The Blazer had stopped twenty yards behind, just sitting there. Ben walked up the verge towards it. The vehicle’s black bonnet was filmed over with dust. Behind the tinted windscreen he could see two men in the front seats. Their eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, but they were fixed right on him.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Ben said, in a tone that wasn’t friendly, wasn’t hostile.

  The men kept staring at him. Neither moved until he was just a few feet from the front of the Blazer – then the driver slammed it into drive, pulled aggressively back out into the road and went speeding off in a cloud of dust.

  Ben watched it go, then started walking back towards the Jeep.

  Definitely interesting.

  * * *

  Ben drove back through the falling dusk to the hotel, showered, opened up his holdall and changed into a fresh black T-shirt and black jeans. He never had been too imaginative when it came to his wardrobe. He slipped his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans, then wandered down to the bar and ordered a steak with a green salad and a glass of red wine. He took his meal outside onto the patio and sat watching the colours of the sunset, listened to the breakers crashing in against the rocks.

  All his life, he’d loved the sea. The sound relaxed him, helped him think. Taking the folded postcard from his wallet, he spent a while staring at Nick Chapman’s address near Rum Point. It was time to make another visit, one that Ben’s instincts told him was best kept nocturnal. He took his time over a second glass of wine. By now the ocean was dark, just the distant white crests of the waves visible under the moon.

  It was sometime after ten when he went up to his room, grabbed his leather jacket and headed out into the night, twirling the Jeep keys thoughtfully around his finger. The warmth of the day was cooling fast in the ocean breeze, and he shrugged on the jacket, wincing a little at the pull on his stitches.

  Ben was still a few yards from the Jeep when the group of men appeared out of the shadows and quickly converged on him.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  There were four of them, all over six feet, all built on a fairly grand scale – somewhere between eleven and twelve hundred pounds of tattooed muscle and lard ambling up towards him. And judging by the lethal assortment of hardware they’d brought along to play with, it wasn’t to ask the time.

  The four stopped, forming a semi-circle cutting Ben off from his Jeep. Nobody spoke. The only sound was the rhythmic meaty thwack as one of them slapped the thick of his aluminium baseball bat against his palm. One of his companions was casually swinging a bolo knife. Maybe fourteen inches of black leaf-shaped blade, just this side of a machete, and Ben guessed every one of those inches was shaving sharp. With a rattling chink-chink, another of the men unravelled a length of heavy steel chain from his fist.

  The biggest of the men, standing around six-five in denim and biker boots, seemed to be the leader. In the hierarchy of moronic bruisers, size was always the dominant factor. The survival knife stuck crossways in his belt was some cheap mail-order job with a sawback blade and knuckleduster hilt. His head was shaved and gleaming under the moonlight. A line of tattooed teardrops ran down his cheek from his right eye, disappearing into the thick black beard that hung halfway down his chest, fashioned into twin spikes, rigid with hairspray. Going for the demonic look, Ben guessed.

  ‘You guys look like you’re auditioning for a part,’ he said. ‘Or did you escape from a freak show somewhere?’

  The black beard opened in a grin, showing a glint of a gold tooth. ‘We’re the reception committee, motherfucker,’ he said in a voice that was about half an octave lower than was human.

  ‘I get it,’ Ben said. ‘You’re what they call the frighteners.’ He smiled. ‘Here to intimidate me.’

  ‘Smart guy.’

  ‘I catch on fast. So when does the frightening part begin? I have to be somewhere.’

  The baseball bat kept on slap-slapping. The bearded guy fingered the hilt of his survival knife. ‘How do you feel about wiping someone else’s ass, little man?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Ben said, genuinely intrigued.

  ‘See, most folks would find the idea of wiping someone else’s ass is pretty fuckin’ repellent, no?’

  The guy waited for Ben to comment. When he realised Ben wasn’t going to, he went on in his bass rumble. ‘Say you had to wipe asses for a livin’, like if you was carin’ for old folks or somethin’. Sure, to start with, every time you had to wipe an ass you’d feel like pukin’ afterwards. Or maybe even while you was doin’ it. But after a while, you’d get used to that shit. Then wipin’ some old fucker’s ass wouldn’t seem like nuthin’. You could wipe a hundred asses before breakfast. Now, see the point I’m makin’ …’

  Ben had been waiting for the point.

  ‘The point I’m makin’ is that in my line of work, it ain’t wipin’ asses. It’s spillin’ blood. You get me? And I’ve been doin’ this shit so long I can’t even remember a time when spatterin’ some fucker’s blood all over the sidewalk made me feel one way or the other. This is what I do. You hear what I’m sayin’, motherfucker? Talking about you. You’re gonna get fucked up permanent, right here, right now.’

  Ben’s hand went slowly to his jeans pocket. He took out his cigarettes and lighter. Clanged open his Zippo and lit up. Through a cloud of smoke he said, ‘Well, Beard, that was a pretty good speech. You certainly have a gift for metaphor. Out of curiosity, did you have to look up the word “repellent”?’

  Beard’s cocky grin twisted into a scowl and he slipped his fingers inside the knuckleduster hilt of his knife. The slap-slapping behind him stopped.

  ‘Listen to this asshole,’ muttered the one with the chain.

  ‘I don’t get to hear speeches like that very often,’ Ben said. ‘In my line of work we don’t generally have time for them.’

  ‘Your line of work,’ Beard repeated, just a little uncertainly. The grin returned, but there was a touch of nervousness to it now.

&
nbsp; ‘I appreciate you guys have to make a living too,’ Ben said. ‘But this is one occupational hazard you don’t want to have to deal with. So I think you ought to turn around and head back to the bar you just came from, call your boss and tell him he shouldn’t send you on jobs where you’re so badly out of your depth.’

  Two seconds of silence. Then the survival knife was out of Beard’s belt and swinging through the air.

  Here we go, Ben thought. The downward slash. Hallmark of the truly amateurish knife fighter, the guy who’s learned all he knows from third-rate movies, has got lucky once or twice while dealing with people even more clueless than him, and is confirmed in his vision of himself as a formidable urban warrior. It would have been much too easy to twist the knife out of Beard’s hand, break three of his fingers in the loop of the hilt and then embed the thick blade right in the top of his skull.

  Ben didn’t do that. Instead he twisted it out of Beard’s hand, broke three fingers in the loop of the hilt, used Beard’s ears as handles to drive his face down into his rising knee and then sent the blade whirling with a meaty thunk deep into the right thigh of the guy who was coming up flailing the chain.

  With a scream that drowned out Beard’s, the man let go of the chain and clapped his hands in a gibbering panic to where the knuckleduster hilt was protruding from his leg. The chain’s momentum carried it hissing though the air a couple of feet, until it connected with the face of his associate with the bolo knife.

  Hard. Ben heard the crack of bone over the thwack of the impact. The bolo dropped to the ground as its owner keeled over like a felled tree, clutching at his shattered nose and cheekbone, either too shocked to make a sound or choked by the broken bits of teeth in his throat.

  The fight had lasted about three seconds so far. Ben stepped over the writhing, groaning Beard towards the last of the attackers who was still standing. The guy swung his baseball bat a couple of times, but his heart wasn’t in it. ‘Fuck,’ he muttered in a hollow voice, then turned and ran like hell, still clutching the bat. Ben watched him go. He was a much better sprinter than he was a fighter.

  Taking a draw on his cigarette, Ben walked over to Bolo and stamped on his face, twice. A few feet away, his friend Mr Chain was making a high-pitched agonised keening as he tried to yank the knife blade out of his thigh. It had missed the femoral artery by an inch or two but there was still a lot of blood spilling across the concrete. Ben decided he’d had enough of the guy’s noise, and shut him up with a kick to the head that sent him slumping over sideways and bounced his skull off the ground.

  Beard was trying groggily to get up, raising his body off the concrete with his left hand, the broken fingers of his right tucked tight between his legs. Ben’s boot swiped his left arm out from under him and rolled him over on his back. Beard stared up at him in terror. His nose was split open and bleeding almost as profusely as Chain’s leg.

  Ben crouched down next to him and flicked cigarette ash on the guy’s face. ‘Just you and me now, Beard,’ he said. ‘I reckon as you’re the leader of the gang, that qualifies you as its spokesman too. So speak. Who sent you?’

  ‘I … I don’t …’ Beard gasped.

  ‘You’re not really going to give me the “I don’t know” routine, are you?’

  ‘Listen, mister … I swear …’

  ‘Fine,’ Ben said. He dug the Zippo back out of his jeans pocket. Flipped open the lid and thumbed the wheel. The spark ignited the fuel inside to produce the warm flickering orange flame and that smell Ben loved.

  The flame from Beard’s beard as its rigid spikes went up like a magnesium flare was considerably brighter, and the stink of burning hair and skin far less pleasant.

  Beard shrieked in terror. None too gently, Ben used the man’s denim jacket to beat the fire out.

  ‘Didn’t your mother warn you about using too much hairspray?’ Ben said. ‘That stuff’s flammable.’

  ‘You crazy sonofabitch!’ Beard screamed.

  ‘I think I asked you a question,’ Ben said. ‘Not going to ask you a second time.’

  Beard’s eyes bulged in his scorched, blackened face. ‘I don’t fucking know! This guy offered us ten grand cash. Gave us your picture. It’s in my pocket.’ He pointed wildly with his good hand.

  Ben yanked the photo out. It had been taken from inside a car, and showed him walking towards it. His Jeep was in the background, parked on the side of the stretch of road alongside Seven Mile Beach. Easy enough to figure out who his photographer had been: one of the two men in the black Chevy Blazer.

  ‘Some guy hired you? That’s all you know? A guy in a bar?’

  Beard nodded desperately.

  Ben showed him the lighter again. ‘Sure? You still have a bit left on that side. How about I even you up?’

  ‘No! Yes! I swear!’

  Ben nodded. He supposed that a man with a burning beard would always tell the truth. It sounded a little like a Chinese proverb.

  ‘Get yourself another job, mate,’ he said, and walked to the Jeep.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Cayman Kai was a cove on the wooded north side of the island, close to Rum Point beach. Nick Chapman’s home had been a simple, elegant white bungalow with a broad veranda, surrounded by trees and privately situated at the side of a narrow coastal inlet with its own boat dock.

  The place was all in darkness. As Ben got out of the car, he could hear music and laughter wafting across on the breeze from the nearby restaurant on Rum Point. He glanced around him: nobody was about, and the nearest neighbours were a good distance away beyond the whispering trees. He tried the front door, then the back. Finding them both locked, he turned his attention to the window catches: exactly the flimsy low-security kind of affair he’d have expected to find on an island with one of the lowest crime rates on the planet. In moments, he was inside.

  The window he’d come through was that of the master bedroom. Ben stood perfectly immobile and utterly silent for a long time in the shadows, listening to the sounds of the house, hearing no sign of movement from anywhere. He reached into his pocket for the mini-Maglite he’d bought earlier in George Town, and cast the strong, thin beam of light around the room.

  A mosquito net shrouded the double bed. A vase of dying flowers stood on the bedside table. On one white wall hung a large framed Escher print, the one with the never-ending staircase. On the opposite wall hung a picture of Nick and his team standing grinning next to a Cayman Air Charter Trislander on a grassy airfield. The aircraft had a pearly white new paint job and everyone looked ready to burst with excitement. This must have been CIC’s inaugural launch. Nick himself looked tanned and fit and immensely proud.

  Below that one was a photo portrait of Hilary, aged about fifteen, together with another from her graduation day.

  Ben felt strange, and a little ashamed, to be breaking into the home of his dead friend. He left the bedroom and moved on through the house, treading quietly and cautiously, darting the torch beam as he went.

  The police didn’t seem to have turned the place over too roughly looking for clues. Everything was more or less tidy, down to the perfectly-squared rugs on the tiled floors and the ordered arrangement of cushions on the living room sofa. Most of the walls were covered with photos of the bright golden-yellow Sea Otter and other aircraft, as well as a collection of spectacular aerial shots of the island that showed the depth of Nick’s passion for the place.

  Satisfied that he was completely alone, Ben spent some time in Nick’s study, holding the shaft of the mini-Maglite between his teeth to sift through the papers in the drawers of the large antique desk, in the hope that he might find something the cops had missed.

  He’d no real idea what he was looking for, but searching made him nervous. There was a lingering anxiety at the back of his mind that no amount of rational denial could completely erase: the fear of uncovering some evidence that Nick had been in the kind of trouble from which only suicide offered a refuge – irredeemable debts, maybe – or signs t
hat the depression had returned.

  What if – just what if – Nick really had ended his own life? The thought made Ben’s mind swim. Then what had happened to Hilary? Was her death some bizarre coincidence? Like the fact that someone on this island obviously didn’t like Ben going around asking questions? And if Nick hadn’t killed himself, then what was the alternative? For all the hours Ben had spent going over and over it in his mind, he could think of nothing.

  There was nothing in Nick’s desk, either. No demands from the bank, no nasty letters threatening litigation, no doctor’s prescriptions or empty pill bottles, no telltale Prozac capsule rolling loose in the bottom of a drawer. All Ben found among Nick’s business documents were routine bits of paperwork and correspondence that gave the impression that CIC wasn’t just solvent, it was booming. Inside a Manila file were some preliminary architect sketches for a major extension to the office buildings at West End, and a letter giving an estimated completion date in eight months’ time. Ben studied the sketches and shook his head. Did people suffering from chronic depression make plans like this?

  The bottom drawer contained Nick’s private papers. Ben went through them guiltily. No sign of a Last Will and Testament. A cheery letter from Hilary, dated six months ago, with a few snaps of her on holiday somewhere with a girlfriend. An assortment of receipts and product guarantees. A handwritten list of forty or so names, headed ‘party guests’.

  A man contemplating suicide, planning a big get-together?

  Ben put everything back as he’d found it and started going through the address book by the phone. Again, he could find nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing, except for the somewhat cryptic phone number at the back of the book. It had no name next to it, only a capital letter T that had been heavily circled as though it had some special significance.

  Ben used his own phone to dial the number, and got straight through to an answering service. He switched off before the message prompt.