Valley of Death

by Scott Mariani

  She walked around to the passenger side, on the left like in the UK. A throwback to the olden days of the British Empire. Ben walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in behind the wheel. The car smelled brand new. He was glad to be free of Prem, and also glad to have their own transport. He was fast running out of countries where he wasn’t banned from booking a rental vehicle. He had absolutely no idea why. Weren’t rental companies insured against their property getting shot to pieces, blown up, flattened or sunk in canals?

  Brooke got in the passenger side. Her hair brushed his face as they settled in. ‘It’s keyless,’ she said. ‘You just press the button.’

  Ben had already found it. The Jaguar purred into life, not as whisper-softly as the Maybach, but you couldn’t have everything. He pulled out of the garage and started down the driveway, pausing for a peacock that strutted unhurriedly across their path. The gates wafted open for them at the bottom of the drive. Brooke guided him left and down the street. Ben was breathing in her perfume and remembering the last occasion they’d travelled in a car together. It had been back in England, during the short time they’d rented a house in the Jericho district of Oxford. A totally different life, filled with wedding plans and the excitement of the big day looming. Ben had quit Le Val and handed the reins over to Jeff, not intending to return. Those days had been over for him, he’d promised himself and Brooke. Having resumed the theology studies he’d abandoned many years earlier, he’d been looking ahead to a whole new future.

  And look at us now, he reflected. Brooke married to someone else, and him back in the same old game as before, with the added twist that he had to help her get her beloved husband back. Life could be strangely ironic at times. His life, especially.

  When the armed guards at the gated checkpoint saw Brooke in the Jaguar’s passenger seat they waved them through with friendly smiles and barely a glance at her driver. ‘It’s like living on a bloody military base,’ she said bitterly. ‘You’d know all about that, I suppose.’

  ‘Just a little bit,’ Ben said.

  ‘But at least it’s safe. I should never have made him leave home that night. It’s all my fault.’

  ‘It happened,’ Ben said. ‘We can’t change it. We can only deal with it.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘So don’t beat yourself up.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll try.’

  ‘Anyhow, what were you going to do, stay hunkered down behind locked gates forever? If they wanted him, sooner or later they’d have had their chance.’

  ‘They,’ she said. ‘Whoever they are.’

  ‘That’s what we’re going to figure out.’

  ‘Ben?’

  He turned, and saw she was looking at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Thanks for being here.’

  ‘It’s what I do,’ he said.

  The twenty-minute route that Brooke and Amal had followed on foot took just three or four by car. Beyond the limits of the serene, upscale residential area they entered a profusion of narrower, humbler and dingier streets crammed to the maximum with activity. Row after row of food stalls and street vendors sprawled over the pavements. Ben fell into line with the slow-moving procession of cars and motor scooters and tuk-tuks that filtered through the jostling crowds of pedestrians. Gangs of children swarmed around the Jaguar, clamouring and waving through the tinted glass.

  ‘We can stop here and walk the rest of the way,’ Brooke said. Ben pulled over and wedged the car into a parking space between two stalls. The throng of kids closed around them. As Brooke stepped out she tossed them some coins and said something in Hindi that seemed to please them. The biggest kid grabbed the lion’s share of the money and planted himself beside the car like a terrier on guard duty.

  ‘I’ve been learning a bit of the language,’ she explained to Ben, with a shrug that could have been a little self-conscious.

  ‘What did you say to them?’

  ‘That there’d be more rupees if we come back and find the car still in one piece,’ she said. ‘Come on, it’s this way.’

  Ben accompanied her through the food market, pressing their way between jostling bodies. The air was intense with the smell of motor fumes mingled with the scents of herbs and exotic spices and aromatic basmati rice and grilled mutton kebab from the vendors up and down the street. The place easily rivalled the grand bazaars of Marrakech, Tehran and Istanbul for sheer buzz and hubbub. Seafood merchants were pulling in scrums of customers for fresh crab and clams and shrimp. There were handicrafts and tourist trinkets and clothes and more exotic varieties of fruit and vegetables than Ben could identify. They passed cafés and small restaurants and musicians and stalls selling mountains of chillies and okra and nuts and teas, all adding to the sensory overload of smells, sounds and colours.

  Brooke’s fair skin and auburn hair were drawing a lot of looks from men. Hence the shawl that covered her shoulders and protected her from more prying eyes. Ben threw back a few warning glances at the oglers, who quickly looked away. The white knight, protecting the damsel. Who, in this instance, was someone else’s damsel. Another painful reminder, but he only had himself to blame.

  ‘It happened down there.’ Brooke pointed down a narrow lane to their left, and turned off the main street away from the bustle. Ben followed. There were no stalls along here, and just enough space for a vehicle to squeeze between the crumbly buildings. She stopped and looked uncomfortably around her, then at Ben. ‘This is it. The restaurant we wanted to go to is at the bottom of this lane. Needless to say, we didn’t get that far.’

  ‘Pretty public spot to pull off a kidnapping,’ he commented.

  ‘It’s so much busier by day. There was hardly anyone around to witness what happened. And if anyone did, they soon disappeared.’

  Ben stood in the middle of the lane and turned a slow three-sixty, scanning details and forming a scene in his mind. He pictured a couple walking. Not a happy pair, because of the troubles weighing on their minds. But things were about to get much worse for them.

  He said, ‘Okay, describe it to me.’

  Chapter 12

  Brooke said, ‘By the time we got here I was already regretting that I’d dragged him out of the house. We’d walked in silence for the last few minutes. I was annoyed that he wouldn’t tell me what Kabir had told him, and I could sense that he was feeling bad about the whole thing. I think he really wanted to share it with me. Maybe he would have, over dinner, or later that evening. But there was no later that evening.’

  She turned to face back towards the lane entrance. ‘The van came from that direction. It turned into the lane, came right for us and screeched to a halt right here.’ She pointed at the ground. ‘You can still see the tyre marks.’

  Ben had already clocked the black stains on the road. Nothing of any great forensic value to discern from those, except that a heavy vehicle had come to an abrupt stop and shed some rubber.

  ‘It happened so fast that neither of us reacted in time. We were caught like a couple of deer in the headlights. Totally defenceless.’

  Ben said, ‘How many guys?’

  ‘Six, not counting the driver. He stayed behind the wheel while the rest of them jumped out. One from the front passenger seat, two from a sliding door on the side, and the other three from the back. They were all wearing ski masks. All about average height, average build, give or take, except for one who was kind of stumpy, built like a fireplug or a fire hydrant, one of those things. Solid. And very hairy.’

  ‘Hairy?’

  ‘Like an animal. He had tufts of it sticking out from under the neck of his ski mask, and more at the wrists.’

  Small and hairy, like an animal. Ben made a mental note of it. Distinguishing features were a good thing to know about.

  Brooke said, ‘And another of them was much bigger than the rest.’

  ‘How much bigger?’

  ‘A lot. Really big. Probably a foot taller than you. More, even.’

  ‘Come on. Seriously?’ Ben was a
shade under six feet, not the tallest man in the world by any means, but there weren’t many men who towered over him by that kind of margin.

  ‘Seriously. And built super-wide, too. A real hulk. Probably pumped full of steroids.’

  Ben made a mental note of that, too. A guy that large would be easy to spot. Maybe not so easy to neutralise, if it came to it. But he could worry about that if and when the situation arose. He said, ‘Okay. Go on.’

  ‘They were on us in seconds. Of course, I had no idea what was happening. I thought they were coming for both of us. Muggers, or a rape gang. Forty percent of all the rapes in India happen in Delhi. They beat up the men, hold them down at knifepoint and make them watch as they line up to go to work on the women.’ Brooke shuddered. ‘But then they made straight for Amal, and I realised that wasn’t what they wanted. He was just standing there, like paralysed. I suppose I was too. Two of them grabbed his arms and started dragging him towards the van. He turned to look at me. He was so terrified. He yelled at me to run, get away.’

  Ben knew that Brooke wouldn’t have run, in that situation. She was one of the toughest, bravest women he’d ever met. In unarmed combat training sessions at Le Val she’d been able to hold her own against much stronger and heavier male sparring partners.

  She went on, ‘Amal’s a gentle soul. He’s never so much as thrown a punch in his life. But I wasn’t about to stand there and let him be snatched off the street like that. I rushed in and collared one of the bastards.’

  ‘The stumpy, hairy one or the massive one?’

  ‘Neither,’ she said. ‘This one was about medium height, medium build. I punched him in the mouth, and when he went down I yanked his mask off.’

  ‘You saw his face?’

  ‘I can still see it now,’ she replied. ‘He’s an Indian, as you might expect given that we’re in India. Swarthy complexion, dark hair, mid-thirties. He was sat there dumped on the ground looking up at me with these big bulging eyes full of hate. He has a missing front tooth.’

  Ben made another mental note. Bulging eyes, missing tooth. ‘Was it already missing, or did you knock it out when you hit him?’

  ‘It was lying on the pavement. I didn’t notice it until afterwards. And his mouth was bleeding. So I’d say it was me.’

  Ben had to smile in satisfaction at the visual image. He added bruised lip to his mental note. That was, assuming he caught up with the kidnappers before the bruising had time to go down. Which he had every intention of doing.

  ‘I picked up the tooth and gave it to the police,’ Brooke said. ‘They’ve still got it, far as I know. I was hoping it’d help to find the guy. Can they DNA teeth?’

  Ben nodded. ‘Tooth enamel’s one of the best sources for DNA samples. But the police in India are known for being way behind on the technology. They don’t have any kind of database to match samples with. So I’d be surprised if they turn up anything there, but it was good thinking on your part.’

  She gave a sour grunt. ‘Fabulous.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  Brooke continued the account, glancing here and there as though she was reliving the action all over again. ‘Meanwhile the rest of them were dragging Amal closer to the van, right there. He was struggling, but couldn’t do a thing. I was screaming at the top of my voice. I could see a few people hanging around, but nobody came to help. I went to grab another of the bastards and pull him off Amal. Then the big hulk I told you about, he lunged towards me and caught me by the arm. Very, very quick for a guy his size. His hand was like a pincer. I tried to put him in a wrist lock, the way you showed me once. Nambudo?’

  ‘Aikido.’

  ‘But he was too strong. He held onto me like he was going to stuff me into the van, too. For a second I was certain they were going to take both of us.’

  ‘You got away?’

  ‘No, they let me go. One seemed to be the gang leader. He yelled in Hindi at the big one, “No! Not the woman, only the man!”’

  Ben said, ‘That suggests it was definitely a targeted attack. They weren’t interested in you, only in Amal.’

  ‘Seems that way to me, too.’

  ‘What did the leader look like?’

  ‘About your height, about your build. Fairly muscular, but lean with it.’

  As relieved as he was by the fact, Ben found it strange that they hadn’t taken her too. What kidnapper wouldn’t benefit from capturing two hostages for the price of one? But then, this whole case was strange. The lack of a ransom demand was the most disconcerting thing of all.

  Brooke went on, ‘So the big bastard let go of my arm and shoved me away so hard I fell over. Everything spilled out of my handbag. He must have thought I was going to snatch up my phone and snap a picture of him and his buddies, because he stamped on it and smashed it to pieces. Meanwhile, the one I’d knocked down was getting to his feet, and they had Amal in the back of the van. I started running over to try to do more to help him, but then two of them pulled out pistols and pointed them in my face. They looked as if they meant it. I was afraid they were going to shoot me. What else could I do? I backed off.’

  ‘You did the right thing, Brooke. There was nothing more you could have done.’

  ‘You’d have done more.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure about that.’

  ‘I know you would, Ben. You’d have taken those weapons off them and rammed them down their throats, sideways. You wouldn’t have let them take him.’

  ‘Sometimes you have to let it go. Happens to the best.’

  ‘I failed.’

  ‘You need to get that out of your head,’ he said. ‘Because you’re right, they probably would have shot you. And then you’d be dead. And if you were dead, there’d have been nobody to call in my help. And Amal would have been on his own. No winners in that situation.’

  She smiled weakly. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  ‘Plus, it would upset me just a little if you were dead.’

  ‘Thanks. Still, whatever happens, I won’t make that mistake ever again.’ She reached across her side for the little embroidered handbag and unzipped it. She dipped her hand inside and came out with something that made Ben’s eyebrows rise. Now he knew why the bag had looked heavy on its strap.

  ‘Where the hell did you get that?’

  The pistol was a Browning Hi-Power, almost identical to the one Ben kept at the armoury at Le Val. One of his all-time favourite personal defence weapons, for its ruggedness, balance and deadly effectiveness. Nine-millimetre Parabellum. Thirteen-round magazine capacity, plus one in the chamber. All steel, the way guns used to be.

  ‘It’s Kabir’s,’ she said. ‘He keeps it in a bedside drawer at the house, for personal protection. Showed it to me once, much to Amal’s disapproval. He hates guns.’

  ‘That figures.’ Ben didn’t hate them, even though he knew too well what they could do. Nor did he love them, and he mistrusted people who did. In his way of thinking, they were simply tools. Ones to be treated with great caution and respect. Sadly, they often weren’t.

  ‘After the kidnapping, I sneaked in there and borrowed it. I should have done it sooner. If only I’d had it with me that night, things might have gone differently. But carrying it makes me feel more comfortable.’

  Ben took it from her hand and examined it. It was old and scuffed, but well maintained and smelling of fresh oil. The magazine was fully loaded up. Nine-millimetre full metal jackets, the cartridge rims marked with the head stamp of the Indian government’s Ordnance Factories Board. Military ammo. Not available to civilians. Ben wondered where Kabir had managed to procure this kind of hardware from.

  He said, ‘Might have gone differently for Kabir, too, if he’d taken it on his trip.’

  He went to hand the pistol back to Brooke, but she waved it away. ‘You hold onto it. You can handle it better than I can.’

  ‘I’m hoping I won’t need it.’

  ‘What’s that saying you told me once? Better to have it and not need it than t
o need it and not have it. It’s a truth I never fully appreciated until now.’

  Ben tucked the gun into his waistband, in that old familiar place behind his right hip where he was convinced he had a Browning-shaped hollow from all the years of carrying one concealed. He untucked his shirt and let it hang loose to hide the pistol’s butt. He said to Brooke, ‘Finish the story.’

  ‘There’s not much more to tell. They all jumped aboard the van and slammed the doors and took off down the street, leaving me standing there alone. The couple of witnesses were long gone. I wanted to call for help, but my phone was in pieces. I ran down to the bottom of the lane and told the staff at the restaurant what had just happened. Or tried to. I was in such a state of shock that I probably wasn’t making much sense. One of the waiters called the police for me. When they finally turned up, I led them back here and described things pretty much the way I just did to you.’

  ‘What about the van’s registration number?’

  ‘Got it, memorised it, told it to the police. It was a local plate, with a DL for Delhi. Took four days for them to come back to me and tell me it was a stolen vehicle. I’d already guessed as much.’

  ‘Okay,’ Ben said. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘That’s all of it,’ she replied with a deep sigh. ‘Every last detail I can remember. Which basically adds up to zero. We have nothing.’

  Ben shook his head. ‘We don’t have nothing.’

  Chapter 13

  The street kids had done their duty and the Jaguar was still in one piece. Brooke paid them off with more rupees, then turned to Ben. ‘You want to get something to eat? We’re in the right place for it. Or we could have lunch at the house.’

  ‘Later,’ he said, getting into the car. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘And we’re not going back to the house. Not just yet.’

  ‘Fine with me,’ she said. ‘What did you have in mind?’

  ‘This Mr Prajapati of yours. The best private investigator in Delhi.’

  ‘He’s not mine,’ Brooke replied, a touch irritably as she got in the passenger seat. ‘I told you, Amal hired him to look for Kabir, then I hired him to look for Amal.’