Clutching it now, she sneaked out of the bedroom and onto the landing, crouching to peer through the wooden railing. She shrank herself down as small as possible, almost too afraid to look. Her heart was thumping so loudly, she was scared it would give her away to whoever had entered the cabin.
The open-plan space below was all lit up. From her vantage point in the shadows, Erin had a clear view of the whole living area, as well as the open doorway leading out onto the veranda.
There were four men inside the cabin. One was standing with his back to her. He was tall and broad and silver-haired, wearing a tan sports jacket, chinos, loafers. The second and third were standing by the window. Younger men, maybe late thirties, lean and serious-looking, one with dark hair cropped military-style and the other with a thin blonde ponytail. Both wore jeans and T-shirts.
The fourth man Erin could see was short and heavy, with black curly hair and a beard. He’d made himself comfortable in one of the cabin’s plush armchairs.
What was happening? How had they got past the alarm system? If they were burglars, Erin thought, they were pretty damn relaxed about it. The large silver-haired man had already served out cut-crystal glasses of liquor from a decanter and was heading back towards the sideboard to pour one for himself.
It was as he turned round that Erin recognised his face.
She heaved a sigh of relief and her fingers relaxed on the grip of her handgun.
It was Angela’s husband. Of course! She should have known that large, imposing figure anywhere. He and his guests were talking business, but Erin couldn’t make out much of the conversation. She was suddenly too busy worrying about what the hell she was going to say to explain her presence here at the cabin. Angela obviously hadn’t told him it was being used by one of her employees. What would his reaction be? Embarrassment, probably. Irritation. Annoyance. Perhaps outright anger. But she couldn’t very well just hide up here out of sight in the man’s home.
She was about to make her presence known – come what may – when the situation downstairs suddenly changed.
Angela’s husband abruptly set down his glass and signalled to the two younger men by the window. Instantly, without a word, they also put down their drinks and stepped quickly over to where the bearded man was sitting. Before he could stop them, they’d grabbed his arms and turfed him out of his armchair. He sprawled on the rug. Then it got worse. Calmly, almost casually and out of nowhere, the two produced expandable batons, the kind the cops used, that telescoped out to full length at the flick of a wrist. The bearded man’s cries and protests were swiftly silenced as they began raining brutal blows on his head and body.
‘Not here,’ Angela’s husband said. ‘Get him outside.’
Erin watched in growing horror as the two hard-faced men dragged their bleeding victim to the door and out onto the moonlit veranda. The bearded man tried to struggle to his feet.
That was when it got worse again. She almost let out a scream as she saw the short-haired one take out a pistol from a concealed holster. Two loud stunning blasts filled the cabin as he shot the bearded man in the left knee, then in the right. The boom of the gunshots was followed by a howl as the victim crumpled and rolled in agony on the veranda.
The silver-haired man simply watched impassively.
Erin couldn’t believe what she was seeing. This was Angela’s husband!
Nobody would ever believe her … unless …
Erin scrambled back through the shadows into the bedroom. Grabbing her phone with a trembling hand, she activated the video recording function and crept back out onto the landing. If they saw her, they’d kill her. Even armed, she wouldn’t stand a chance against these men.
The bearded man was dragging himself across the veranda away from them, wailing in pain and terror as he clawed his way forward, one hand behind the other. Angela’s husband continued to watch, the way someone would watch a bug crawl across the floor. At his signal, the ponytailed man stepped up alongside the victim, took out a pistol and fired a deafening shot through one of his hands.
The wailing became a tortured screech. The other three men began to laugh. The other one shot him now, this time through the thigh. Then once more, blowing fingers off his other hand. The screaming became continuous.
Erin could hardly keep the tiny video camera steady in her shaking hands.
‘Hell with this,’ Angela’s husband said. ‘I’m tired of this prick’s hollering.’ He reached under his jacket and came out with a large shiny revolver that glittered in the moonlight. He thumbed back the hammer, aimed at the back of the bearded man’s head and pulled the trigger.
The blast and flame were far greater than the other gunshots. The crawling man was thrown forward on his face in an explosion of blood, twitched violently and then lay still.
Angela’s husband twirled the revolver theatrically around his trigger finger, like a movie cowboy, and then thrust it back in its holster. ‘All right,’ he said to the others. ‘Stick this piece of garbage in the van. You can chop his ass up and get rid of it later.’
‘Okay, boss.’
‘Ah, shit, I got blood on my goddamn brogues.’
‘Sorry, boss.’
‘What the hell. Gonna take a leak,’ Angela’s husband announced.
Erin watched, quaking, as the body was dragged down the veranda steps and away towards the trees. All three of the men had moved away from the cabin. This was her one and only chance to get out of here. She turned off the phone, stumbled back inside the bedroom and snatched her backpack. She threw the phone into it. Some of her other things were strewn about the room, but there just wasn’t time to retrieve them.
With the pack on her shoulder and the pistol held out in front of her, she scurried barefoot down the stairs. She felt naked and vulnerable under the lights of the main room. One of the men had only to turn and glance back at the cabin, and she’d be spotted right away. If that happened, she knew the exchange of gunfire would be very brief – and that she wouldn’t survive it.
She almost retched as she picked a path around the bloodslick on the veranda and the broad trail of it down the steps. Just a few yards, and she would be in the shadow of the trees. Her legs were shaking so badly, she was terrified she’d fall over.
Angela’s husband had strolled casually over to a tree and was urinating against it with his feet braced apart and his back to her, left hand on his hip, whistling to himself. She passed within twenty feet of him, close enough to hear the patter of his stream on the ground. The other two had carried the body to a white van that was parked across from the cabin, just a pale outline under the shadows of the trees. She could hear their low voices. They were turning. Heading back. They were going to see her.
She ducked into the dark bushes just in time and crouched there, holding her breath, petrified that the slightest rustle would betray her presence. One of the men walked by so close that she could smell the minty odour on his breath, like gum. It was the one with the ponytail. He paused, seemed to stiffen like an animal when it senses something. Through the leaves she could see his face half-lit by the moon and the glow from the cabin. The gleam of his eyes.
‘What is it, Billy Bob?’ the other one said.
The one called Billy Bob stood still, so close that Erin could have reached out of the bushes and touched him.
‘Nuthin’,’ Billy Bob said, and walked on.
Angela’s husband had zipped himself up and was strolling back towards the cabin, complaining in a loud voice about the goddamn mess. The other two exchanged glances. The one called Billy Bob grinned. They followed him back inside.
And Erin clambered out of her hiding place in the bushes and ran like she’d never run before.
Chapter Two
The Galway coast
Republic of Ireland
Two days later
It was cold for the time of year, and the steady breeze from the sea made him turn up the collar of his old leather jacket. The pale early evening sun was begin
ning to drop lower over the Atlantic horizon, casting his shadow long and dark over the empty, pebbly beach as he walked.
Ben Hope was alone out here, and glad to be. He walked slowly, because he had nowhere in particular to go. He didn’t even know why he’d come to this place. Now and then he paused in his step to stare out to sea, as if somehow the iron-grey ocean would give him the answers he was looking for.
He had lived here once. Spent many hours standing in this very spot, watching the waves roll in and crash against the rocks. It seemed a long time ago now. Just as he had in the old days, he bent and scooped up a handful of pebbles from the stony beach to fling into the surf. He watched them disappear one by one in the hissing foam.
‘Fuck it,’ he muttered to himself after the last pebble was gone. He turned his back on the water and started making his way towards the big house.
As he got closer, he paused again and gazed at it. The Victorian building stood perched on rock overlooking the long, curved stretch of its own private beach. He knew the house very well indeed, as it had once belonged to him. But he’d been away long enough to have forgotten just how large and imposing it looked.
It’d always been too big for him, just one guy rattling around with only his elderly, harried, ever-fussing housekeeper for company. In any case, he’d been away so often that it had felt more like a base than a proper home. The roving, spartan existence of a freelance kidnap rescue specialist had often seemed hard to distinguish from the harsh military life he’d known before that.
The house looked different now, and even though he’d expected it to, it gave him a strange pang to see how it had changed.
Funny, he thought: when the place had been his, he hadn’t cared much for it, never thinking about it on his frequent travels around the world; but now he could feel a creeping sense of nostalgia.
Stupid. What am I doing here? he asked himself once again.
Where the pebbly beach ended, stone steps led up towards the back of the house. The iron safety railing was new. Health and safety regulations, he guessed. So was the large conservatory that the new owners had added where the sea-facing terrace used to be. The dropping sun reflected in its glass panes.
Ben walked around the side of the house, along a neat path that hadn’t been there during his time. At the front of the house, he stopped and looked up. Of all the unfamiliar additions to his former home, the most striking was the sign over the front door that said ‘Pebble Beach Guesthouse’. It was a strange feeling, looking at it. Like something telling him definitively ‘this is no longer yours’. You no longer belong here.
Final. Irreversible.
So where did he belong? He didn’t know any more.
He was just about to turn away, feeling defeated and sad, when he heard a voice.
‘Mr Hope?’
He turned to see a hefty woman in her late fifties smiling at him. Dressed in a baggy black dress, her grey-flecked hair wrenched back into a bun, there was a matronly look about her. Unlike the house, she didn’t seem to have changed since he’d last seen her, the day the sale had gone through. Maybe a little thicker about the hips, but it was hard to tell. She’d probably been built like a sideboard since the age of twenty.
‘Mrs Henry,’ he said, forcing a smile. ‘It’s good to see you again.’
‘And you,’ she said, smiling back.
‘How’s business?’ he asked, for want of anything better to ask.
‘Can’t complain. What brings you back out to Galway? On holiday?’
‘Something like that,’ he said. ‘Is Mr Henry well?’
‘Much better since the hip operation, thank you. He’s out on the golf course today. Won’t be home until later. He’ll be sorry he missed seeing you.’
‘Likewise,’ Ben said, quietly relieved that he wouldn’t have to get dragged into a conversation about the absurd game of golf, which he recalled seemed to be all Bryan Henry could talk about with any enthusiasm, other than his gammy hip. How the man even managed to hit the ball straight with eyes like that was anybody’s guess. The right one looked at you, the left one looked for you.
‘Come inside and have a drink,’ Mrs Henry said brightly. ‘We’ve just had the new bar put in.’
Ben followed her inside. More strange memories struck him everywhere he looked. The dark period woodwork of the entrance hall had been stripped out to create a bright modern reception area. Full of pride, Mrs Henry led him down the passage to what had once been his living and dining rooms, the wall between them knocked down. He inwardly winced at the floral wallpaper and tacky paintings. Through an archway that hadn’t been there before, he could see into the new conservatory, filled with tables neatly set for Sunday dinner. On the other side of the room was the bar, and beyond that a lounge area where a couple of septuagenarian guests were sitting placidly reading in the silence.
A young woman sat in an armchair by the window. Ben glanced at her just long enough to see that she was in her early thirties or thereabouts, with sandy hair cut short, giving her an elfin kind of look. She was wearing light blue jeans and a white T-shirt. There was a mini laptop open on a low table in front of her, next to a half-finished glass of red wine and a small, square jotter from which she seemed to be busily copying handwritten notes into the computer. Someone was obviously having a working vacation.
Ben looked back at Mrs Henry to see she was watching him expectantly. ‘Well?’ she prompted him at last. ‘What do you think?’
‘Love what you’ve done with the place,’ he forced himself to say.
‘Really? I’m so glad.’ Mrs Henry wedged herself in behind the bar and picked up a glass. ‘What can I get you, Mr Hope? On the house, naturally.’
Lies and flattery could get you anywhere. ‘Thanks. I’ll have a Guinness.’
As she was finishing pouring it for him – the proper touch with the shamrock on top – the bell rang in reception and she hurried off to attend to business. Left on his own, Ben perched himself on a bar stool and sipped the cold Guinness. He thought about all the times he’d got drunk in this room and poor old long-suffering Winnie had had to bring him strong black coffee to help sober him up.
He sighed quietly to himself and shook his head. He’d been a screw-up then, and he was one now. What a mess he’d made of his life. The woman he loved despised him. His own son, Jude, would barely speak to him. His sister, Ruth, thought he was a lowlife.
Nice job. Well done.
It was two months since Ben had walked out on his fiancée, Brooke Marcel, virtually on the eve of their wedding. The way he’d seen it, he’d had no choice but to help a friend in need. The way Brooke had seen it, the friend in need was a very attractive old flame who’d mesmerised him into running off with her to get involved in yet another of the crazy, high-risk adventures that littered his past life.
When Ben had returned to England two weeks after they’d been due to get married, he’d been hoping he could pick up the pieces with her, try to make her understand why he’d needed to do what he’d done. Then, fix a new wedding date and get back on with the life they’d planned together. But it hadn’t worked out that way. The house in Oxford was empty. Brooke was no longer there, and had taken all her things with her: everything except the little neck chain he’d once bought as a gift for her. It was lying on the bedside table, snapped in half. Next to it had been a handwritten note. Just four scribbled words.
Don’t look for me.
Brooke knew all about Ben, his past, his skills. She knew about the kidnap victims he’d retrieved from the most cunning hiding places their captors could have kept them in, and brought them home safe.
She knew he could find anyone.
But she didn’t want him to even try to find her. It was the most painful thing she could have said to him.
He couldn’t let go that easily. He had to try. Had to see her. Thinking she might have returned to her former place in Richmond, he’d called only to find that a new tenant had moved in. Next, Ben had tried call
ing Brooke’s friend and former upstairs neighbour, Amal.
When they’d last spoken, Amal had been warm and friendly. Not any more.
‘She isn’t here.’
‘I know that already. But do you know where she went? I really need to speak to her.’
‘I don’t know where she is,’ Amal said in the same cold tone. ‘But if I did, Ben, you’d be the last person I’d tell.’ Then he hung up before Ben could say more.
After that, Ben had tried calling Jude on his mobile. It had taken two days of trying, and when he’d finally got through, his twenty-year-old son had given him the same frosty reception as Amal. ‘I’m not surprised she’s gone off. She cried for a solid week after you left and you never called once to ask how she was. Basically, you’ve been a real shit to her.’
‘I would never have hurt her on purpose.’
‘You walked out on her! I was there, remember? How did you think that would make her feel?’
‘I need to talk to her. Explain things. If she calls you, tell her—’
‘Forget it, I’m not going to tell her anything,’ Jude interrupted him. ‘And take my advice: don’t go chasing after her. We all know you were in the SAS and can track anyone anywhere on the planet, and all that stuff. But Brooke doesn’t want to see you. Leave her alone. Come to that, leave me alone too, okay?’
‘Jude, listen—’
‘Oh, just fuck off, Dad.’
Lastly, Ruth. ‘What do you expect, Ben? You let her down. You let us all down. And what about my plane? The insurers are going wild.’
These days, Ben’s younger sister was the CEO of the huge corporation she’d inherited from her adoptive father, Swiss billionaire Maximilian Steiner. The plane she was talking about was a Steiner Industries prototype turboprop that Ben had borrowed. Ostensibly, he’d only wanted it for the short trip from Oxfordshire to northern France and back. Ruth was having trouble understanding how her two-million-euro baby had ended up at the bottom of Lake Toba in Indonesia.
The Forgotten Holocaust (Ben Hope, Book 10) Page 2
