Valley of Death

by Scott Mariani

  ‘Help her to understand, Mr Hope,’ Samarth said. ‘Explain to her that with no ransom demand, this is no ordinary kidnapping.’

  ‘It’s no ordinary kidnapping,’ Ben said. ‘That much is true.’

  Samarth clasped Brooke’s hand. She bowed her head and didn’t try to snatch it away. He said gently, ‘Listen to reason, my dear girl. Accept what you already know in your heart. Go back to England. Your home is there, not in India.’

  Brooke was too shocked and choked up with emotion to reply, so Ben spoke for her. ‘I understand how you feel, Mr Ray. You believe you’re acting in the best interests of your family, and I respect that. But I’m not just here for the family. I’m here for Brooke, because she asked me to come. And I intend to remain here, with her, until we come through this. One way or another. Because where I come from, we don’t start digging the grave until the body is pronounced dead.’

  Samarth let go of Brooke’s hand, stood straight and fixed Ben with a look of the utmost pain. ‘Have you ever lost a brother?’

  ‘A sister,’ Ben said. ‘Long ago. She was taken by human traffickers in Morocco, as a child. Vanished without a trace. It didn’t take the authorities long to call off the search.’

  ‘That’s a very sad story. You have my sympathies.’

  Ben nodded. ‘It was a bad time. Ruth’s disappearance and its aftermath tore my family apart. So trust me, I know what you’re going through right now. I’ve been there.’

  ‘Then you, of all people, must understand the need for my family to mourn our loved ones in peace and privacy.’

  ‘I do understand,’ Ben said. ‘And I’m sorry for your troubles. I hope there are no hard feelings.’

  ‘None,’ Samarth replied. Ben put out his hand, and Samarth took it, and they shook for the second and last time.

  ‘Just one thing you ought to know before I go,’ Ben said.

  Samarth asked, ‘What’s that?’

  Ben said, ‘I found my sister.’

  Chapter 18

  Back in the car, Brooke said, ‘So what does he think happened? It’s just a coincidence, and they’re dead, there’s nothing more to be done, no hope, and leave it at that?’ Her anger against Samarth seemed to have driven all her earlier doubts and uncertainty from her mind.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on the guy,’ Ben said. ‘He’s going through a lot. He looks pretty knackered. Which, incidentally, you do too.’

  ‘At least I’m not rolling over and giving up so easily. Give me a cigarette, will you?’

  ‘You don’t smoke.’

  ‘Now seems like a very good time to start.’

  Ben shrugged and lit a Gauloise for her, then one for himself. She drew too hard on it, and coughed out a great cloud of smoke.

  ‘Take it easy.’

  Brooke puffed another cloud and waved the cigarette agitatedly, making little smoke circles in the air. Apparently she wasn’t ready to take it easy just yet. ‘So it seems I’m not considered a family member. Well, that’s fine. Can we go back to the house, please? I’ve got a lot of packing to do.’

  He took his eyes off the chaotic traffic to shoot her a quizzical glance. ‘You’re not leaving, are you?’

  ‘Just because Samarth, the new self-appointed head of the family, said so? Get real. I’m staying right here. But I damn well won’t be an unwelcome guest in that house another day. Soon as I’m packed, I’m booking into a hotel.’

  ‘Let me help you sort yourself out. We’ll go there together.’

  She shook her head. ‘Thanks, but I need to be by myself for a while, okay? This is really hard for me. Anyhow, I want to say goodbye to Esha before I go, and that’s something I’d like to do alone.’

  ‘No problem. I have another lead to check out.’

  She was too distracted to ask what. ‘Hang onto the car if you need it. I’ll take a cab.’

  They returned to the house in silence. The checkpoint guys were all smiles again, but Brooke was so lost in her thoughts that she barely seemed to register them. Ben rolled up the long driveway of the Ray residence and halted in front of the house.

  ‘You sure you’re okay?’ he asked her as she opened her door.

  ‘I’m fine. I’ll call you from the hotel.’

  She looked so sad and pale and forlorn that his heart went out to her, and he almost got out of the car to take her in his arms and kiss her. Instead he just nodded and drove off. In the mirror he saw her small, tense figure disappear inside the big house.

  The quiet, leafy street was still just as empty as Ben drove away, the only other vehicle in sight being a domestic-brand light commercial van with painted-over side and rear windows, parked on the opposite kerb a little way up the road. Belonging to a tradesman, like a garden services firm or a plumbing contractor, come to service the fancy neighbourhood. Ben passed it and drove on in the direction of the food district.

  When he got there, he parked up and walked along the busy main drag, merging with the crowds of people and taking in the smells. Hunger had finally caught up with him, and he stopped at a BBQ grill stand where two guys in aprons were doing a brisk trade in seekh kebabs whose mouth-watering aroma carried for fifty yards up and down the street. He watched as they prepared the mix of lean ground chicken and lamb with an eclectic blend of finely powdered pepper, cardamom, mace, nutmeg, turmeric, mint, chilli, coriander and ginger, kneading it all up with their hands. The kebabs were speared on iron skewers and spent ten minutes sizzling and spitting over the coals before Ben took his late lunch back to the car, picking up a bottle of Maharaja beer from another stand to wash it down with.

  As he ate, he thought about Brooke and all the old feelings that had resurfaced since seeing her again. Then he put those thoughts to the back of his mind and took out his smartphone. It was time for some good old-fashioned detective work, chasing leads the hard way.

  When Brooke had said earlier that they had nothing to go on, he’d insisted that wasn’t so. Privately, he had to admit to himself that it was truer than he’d wanted to let her think. But since the trail seemed to lead back to Kabir and his mysterious discovery, however frail and tenuous that connection might seem right now, that was where Ben had decided to go looking. If it took him nowhere, he might have a problem. But he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

  In between bites of his kebabs, he ran an internet search on Captain Jabbar Dada, the police chief in Rakhigarhi, and called his office number. After some haggling with the staffer who insisted that the great man was much too busy to be disturbed, Ben was put through. He’d already decided that a straightforward, more or less honest approach was his best option. He thanked the captain for speaking to him and introduced himself as a friend of the Ray family and a private missing persons specialist from Europe, come to India to help locate the whereabouts of Kabir Ray.

  ‘I understand that you suspected the attack on Kabir and his associates to have been the work of dacoits, local bandits. Is your department still operating on that theory?’

  Dada was gruff and brisk in his manner at first, but lit up at the mention of bandits and seemed all too happy to talk about what was obviously his passion in life. He described himself as an ‘encounter specialist’, whose primary law enforcement priority was the total eradication of his province’s serious problem with dacoits, the roving and heavily-armed criminal gangs who caused untold mayhem and suffering in Haryana and elsewhere. The way Dada described it, he made it sound like a full-scale war was going on. Ben soon formed the impression that the captain probably enjoyed his work a little too much.

  ‘They are scum,’ Dada grated down the line. ‘They breed like rats, live in holes like rats and must be exterminated like rats. Nowhere in India is more rife with them than my province.’

  With a certain pomposity he described to Ben how he’d been personally appointed by the Director General of Police himself to lead a special task force, which had been instrumental in taking down some of the largest criminal gangs in India during a countryw
ide police sting called Operation Bawaria in 2005. Since that time, Dada’s unit had expanded both in size and achievements with hundreds of dead dacoits to its credit. In the captain’s proud opinion, which he was happy to share, his men were the best-armed SWAT team in the country. The unit even possessed its very own police patrol helicopter, which was unique in India and a testament to the stature of its commander. But for all their successes, Dada admitted frankly that his region’s bandit problem had been anything but eradicated.

  ‘It’s even worse now. The dacoits are robbing banks, attacking farms and villages, raping and murdering as they please. Last year our district Congress Committee president was assassinated. It took me eight months to track the dacoits who carried out the killing. One by one, we ran them to ground, cornered them like animals and finished them.’

  Listening, Ben wondered if the guy had the heads stuffed and mounted on the wall above his desk.

  ‘Until all the dacoits are slaughtered down to the last man, the wave of crime will just get worse,’ Dada said. ‘Sadly, we are still a long way from achieving that goal. Many more innocent victims, like your clients’ relative, will continue to suffer.’

  ‘Is there any actual evidence that bandits carried out the attack?’ Ben asked.

  ‘The evidence was all over the crime scene,’ Dada replied. ‘I was there, Mr Hope. And what I saw was no different from what I have seen many times before. When you have dead bodies shot to pieces, and blood spattered on the rocks, and hundreds of bullet casings everywhere, you know you are looking at the work of dacoits. These cutthroats will murder anyone for any reason. I understand that Kabir Ray was a wealthy young man. He was probably carrying cash, or wearing an expensive watch. Even a pair of nice shoes will get you killed. There is no need for any other explanation for what happened to him.’

  ‘Even though you never found a body.’

  ‘These bandits have a way of making people simply disappear,’ Dada said. ‘As do wild predators. This is India, Mr Hope. It is a very different place from your country.’

  ‘So I gather,’ Ben said, thinking it was time to wind this down. ‘I appreciate your talking to me, Captain. Sorry if I interrupted your day. Happy hunting.’

  Ben took another bite of kebab, then went on with his internet search. This time he keyed in ‘Professor Kabir Ray’, and was led to the website of the Institute of Archaeology, the academic wing of the Archaeological Survey of India. Its address was the Officers’ Mess building, Red Fort, New Delhi, and it offered two-year diploma courses in related fields like structural conservation, heritage and environment, epigraphy and numismatics, excavation and exploration, and museum management. The Department of Mysterious Secrets That Can Get You Killed or Kidnapped was disappointingly absent from the faculty site, but it was a reasonable start nonetheless. Ben noted down a contact number, called it and asked to speak to the Institute Director. After a short wait he was put through to a Professor Imran Gupta.

  Ben repeated the same introduction that he’d used with Dada. ‘Hello, my name is Ben Hope. I’m a friend of the Ray family, a private missing persons investigator based in Europe. I’m trying to locate the whereabouts of Kabir Ray.’

  At the mention of Kabir’s name the director sounded genuinely upset. ‘Everyone here is in such a state of shock. Nothing like this has ever happened before.’

  ‘I understand,’ Ben said. ‘I was hoping you might spare me a few minutes of your time.’

  There was a pause on the line, as Gupta momentarily got his hopes up. He said, ‘May I ask whether you are pursuing specific lines of enquiry, or clues, or whatever they’re called in your profession? I mean, should we be optimistic about the chances of seeing our dear friend again?’

  ‘It’s really too early to say, Professor Gupta. I’m just collating all the information I can for the moment. To that end, I was wondering if it’d be possible for me to come to speak to you, as well as anyone else at the Institute who knows Kabir well?’

  ‘Everyone knows Kabir. He is the most popular member of staff we have ever had here.’ The director was happy to do anything he could to assist, and readily agreed to a meeting that afternoon. Three thirty was the earliest he could manage, which meant Ben had no choice but to kill some time. He unhurriedly finished his kebabs, which tasted so good he went back to the grill stand and bought a couple more. With those and two Maharaja beers inside him, he fed the address of the Archaeology Institute into the Jaguar’s sat nav and set off for an exploratory reconnaissance of his route.

  His destination was to the north, in the crowded and dilapidated old part of the city that had once been the walled fortress-capital of the Mughal Empire, Shahjahanabad, until the days of the British Raj. As he was driving, his mind wandered back to Brooke. He was half expecting her to call him at any time to say she was on her way to a hotel and to arrange for him to meet her there later.

  But that train of thought came to an abrupt halt when he spotted an old friend in his rear-view mirror. He said, ‘Hello.’

  The white Toyota was back.

  Chapter 19

  This time his followers were being much more brazenly obvious about their intentions, making no attempt at all to shadow him covertly. The car sat right on Ben’s tail for a mile and a half through the traffic, coming up close enough for him to be able to clearly make out the shapes of the two guys sitting up front. There were another two in the back. None of the four appeared to be the giant hulk from Brooke’s account of Amal’s kidnappers. And since nobody inside the Toyota was doing much smiling, it was hard to tell whether any of them was missing any front teeth.

  But that didn’t rule out the possibility that the same guys were back looking for more. The Jaguar was easily traceable back to the Ray family. Which potentially added a whole and interesting new dimension to the situation.

  What to do about it? The way Ben saw it, he had three choices. One, he could simply wait to see what happened. Which might be nothing, but from the way they were acting his instinct told him they were building up to making a move. Two, he could pre-empt them by screeching to an unexpected halt in their path, getting out of the car and confronting them, gun in hand. Which might go a number of ways, including scaring them off, or else maybe provoking them into doing something rash like shooting him to death in the middle of the street. Not the best idea. Or three, he could put his foot down and give them the slip. The five-litre Jaguar was plenty fast enough to get away from just about anyone.

  Which Ben was seriously considering as his top option. There were just a couple of problems, however. Firstly, then he’d never get to find out who these people were or what they wanted, at least not until they caught up with him again. Secondly, the road congestion up ahead was thickening so much that the whole notion of escape might be about to become unfeasible.

  A few moments later, his fears on that score were proved right. There was suddenly nowhere to go as the traffic flow ground to a halt amid a chorus of honking horns. Peering beyond the ocean of brake lights ahead of him, Ben could see why. A heavily laden delivery tuk-tuk had overturned on a busy street corner and shed its load of fruit and vegetables all over the road. A large crowd had gathered to watch as dozens of motorists got out of their vehicles, yelling abuse at the bewildered driver, who was gamely trying to stop enterprising passersby from helping themselves to all the free merchandise that was suddenly up for grabs. It looked as if a fight was about to break out over a crate of melons. Some of the more civic-minded onlookers were getting together to heave the capsized tuk-tuk back upright again, so the obstruction could be cleared and the traffic could start moving once more.

  Unable to go any further until that happened, Ben came to a halt behind a barricade of stopped cars and trucks. The traffic ground to a stop around him. He glanced to his left and saw a dented, dirt-filmed yellow Peugeot taxicab pull up on that side of him. Then glanced to his right and saw a Kawasaki sports bike roll to a halt on the other. The rider was hunched low over the handlebars,
impatiently blipping the throttle. He was carrying a male pillion passenger, perched high up on the bike’s narrow tail. Both rider and pillion were wearing full-face helmets with black visors closed over their faces.

  Then Ben looked in the rear-view mirror and saw that the white Toyota had drawn up close behind him, sitting virtually bumper to bumper and boxing him in from behind. He could see all four men inside staring at him as though he owed them money. Then the driver turned to his front passenger and nodded. A meaningful kind of nod, not in response to a conversational question, but very clearly a signal saying ‘Okay, let’s do it.’ The passenger nodded back. Saying, ‘Here we go, then.’

  Even before it happened, Ben sensed what was coming next. And he was right. The white Toyota’s front doors opened, left and right simultaneously, and the two guys in front started getting out. Then the rear doors swung open as well, and the other two guys in the back stepped from the car.

  Unless they’d run out of petrol and elected to abandon their vehicle in the middle of the road, or decided they had time to saunter over to the nearest café for a drink and a bite before the traffic jam cleared, they obviously had a particular purpose in mind, one that involved him. And judging from the way all four men began approaching the Jaguar, Ben was pretty sure what that might be.

  Ben thought fuck it, killed his engine, opened the door and stepped out into the oppressive heat and smell of the street. All four guys stopped and stared at him. The driver was wearing a loose flowery shirt that hung over his belly. His right hand slipped under the hem and came out clutching a black pistol. His eyes were locked right on Ben and his expression was deadly serious. The gun came up in a two-handed hold. His front-seat passenger and the two guys from the back did the same. Four weapons pointing directly Ben’s way. Not much room for doubt.

  In the next instant the doors of the yellow Peugeot taxi flew open and three more men scrambled out. Just as armed, just as intently focused on Ben, and just as serious-looking.