Valley of Death

by Scott Mariani

  ‘All I heard was money talk,’ Prem said. ‘It sounded like a done deal, but I didn’t get to listen in on the whole conversation. I think they had a bad line. Kabir moved away from the door and went out on his balcony to get a better reception.’

  ‘So you just let your imagination get the better of you. Whose idea was hiring Takshak and his gang? Yours? Hers?’

  ‘Esha didn’t know about the plan at first,’ Prem said. ‘I only told her later, after I’d made the first contact with them.’

  ‘Through a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy,’ Ben said.

  ‘A man who used to work for the company, and was sacked for stealing. I’d heard he was in with some bad people. I was scared to approach him.’

  ‘Hence the gun?’

  Prem nodded. ‘I bought it in a pawnshop. I don’t know if it’s legal, or if it even works. I just wanted it for show, in case there was any trouble. Next thing, I was in a car, and next thing after that I was having my first meeting with Takshak.’

  ‘Not his real name,’ Ben said.

  ‘It’s the only one I have for him. I don’t know anything about him.’

  ‘So you explained what the job was, and Takshak named his price.’

  ‘Two million rupees.’

  ‘Which you didn’t have. This is the real reason Esha had to sell her Porsche.’

  Prem nodded miserably. ‘We sold it for four million and gave him half up front, in cash.’

  ‘How many in the gang?’

  ‘Ten, a dozen, I’m not sure.’

  Ben did a quick calculation. Two million rupees might have sounded like a fortune but it converted to only about twenty grand sterling. Divided between a dozen guys, not exactly pay dirt. Every country in the world was filled with small-time crooks willing to do just about anything for pocket change, but Prem had found himself a real bunch of beauties.

  Ben said, ‘Okay, keep talking.’

  ‘Everything happened so fast. We only had a couple of days before Kabir was due to fly out there. We thought we had everything planned. Takshak and the men were to camp out in the general area, then look out for the helicopter incoming. It’s all rocks and empty desert there, you can see for miles. Then they were supposed to drive their trucks to the landing spot, do the job and get out of there. It was supposed to look like a bandit raid. You have to believe me that—’

  ‘That nobody was supposed to get hurt?’ Ben cut in. ‘I believe that’s what you told Takshak. But I can’t believe you could have been stupid enough to trust it wouldn’t happen. You were swimming with sharks, Prem. What did you expect?’

  ‘I never dealt with people like that before. Especially Takshak. The guy’s insane. I had to humour him all the time. I had no idea they’d actually shoot anyone. Afterwards they tried to say they’d seen the sun glint off something. Thought it was a gun. Then everything went to shit.’

  ‘Kabir wasn’t armed. He left his pistol here at the house.’

  ‘I know that,’ Prem protested. ‘I didn’t believe their story. I threatened them, demanded the money back, but they just laughed at me. Two dead men, and they make a joke about it. Those filthy pigs.’

  Ben said, ‘Hold on. Two dead men?’

  Chapter 47

  Prem suddenly fell silent, as though the air had been sucked out of him. Or, more correctly, Ben guessed, as though he’d realised that he’d said too much.

  Esha was still crying in the background. Ben ignored her and kept his eyes fixed on Prem as he repeated the question. ‘You said there were two dead men. Kabir and his associates Manish and Sai left Delhi for Rakhigarhi that day. None of them came back. By our count, that makes three, not two. Unless you know something we don’t.’

  Prem said nothing.

  ‘Prem? You were doing well until now. Don’t screw it up.’

  Prem breathed in, breathed out, and replied, ‘Okay, it’s true. There is something else. The fact is, Kabir got away.’

  Ben glanced at Brooke and caught the look of astonishment on her face. But it was Samarth who reacted first, starting out of his chair. ‘What? Kabir is alive?’

  Prem gave another sigh and replied, ‘I didn’t say that. There was a lot of shooting. Takshak thought they might have winged him. He fell down a slope. A steep one. They went down there after him and searched all over, but they couldn’t find him.’

  Samarth slumped back in the chair. It had been a fleeting moment of hope and now it was dashed. ‘They shot him.’

  Prem nodded. ‘It’s been over three weeks. If nobody’s seen him since, he must be dead by now. Maybe from the bullet, maybe from the fall. I’m so sorry.’

  Ben said, ‘You sound it.’

  Brooke was still clutching the Webley revolver. It was dangling loosely at her side, but she looked ready to bring it up to aim and plug Prem through the forehead with it. ‘Jesus Christ. And you never thought to tell anyone about this? Don’t you think that information might have been useful to the police at the time?’

  ‘I couldn’t run the risk of incriminating myself,’ Prem protested. ‘I mean, they’d have wondered how I knew and started asking all kinds of difficult questions.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, would the police have done anything differently, even if they’d known? This is India.’

  ‘Where life is cheap and people are animals,’ Ben said. ‘Just about the first thing you told me when I got here. And you’d know, wouldn’t you?’

  Brooke shook her head slowly in disgust. ‘You’re an even bigger piece of shit than I thought, Prem. There’s only one reason I’m not blowing your bloody brains out right now.’

  ‘I said I was sorry. I meant it. You think we weren’t devastated by what happened? You have no idea. Both of us. But what were we supposed to do? It was way past the point of no return. We were in too deep.’

  ‘So you went to Plan B,’ Ben said. ‘Which was to go back to Takshak and his gang with a new job, pay them the rest of the four million rupees to snatch Amal and ask them very nicely not to mess it up this time.’

  Prem opened his mouth to answer, but it was Esha Ray who spoke for him. ‘Don’t blame him for that. Blame me. Hate me all you want. I know I deserve it.’

  Brooke turned to look at her. ‘You?’

  ‘Kidnapping Amal was my idea,’ Esha Ray said. ‘And I wish I was dead. I’ll never forgive myself. Never.’

  ‘Samarth’s empty building? That was your idea too?’

  Esha said, ‘We did everything we could to make it comfortable for Amal. He’s family. We love him dearly, Brooke. I know you can’t believe me.’

  Brooke just stared at her.

  ‘We even bought the right kind of coffee for him. Prem’s idea, since he’d been preparing it for him here at the house. A comfortable bed, decent food, clean clothes. And this time, the men understood that nobody was to lay a finger on him. He was not harmed in any way, I promise. All we wanted was for him to tell us what Kabir told him.’

  ‘So you interrogated my husband through those hidden speakers in the ceiling.’

  ‘That was me,’ Prem admitted, shamefaced. ‘I used a device to alter my voice.’

  ‘And did he tell you what he knew?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Not at first. He denied knowing anything at all. Which I knew was impossible, based on what I’d heard of their conversation. It kind of threw us that he wouldn’t talk, because we had no way to pressure him, except to let Takshak’s guys into his cell to use force against him. And there was no way we were going down that road again. But then we came up with another idea.’

  ‘You threatened him,’ Brooke said. ‘At the very least. You scared the wits out of him. Or worse. Tell me you didn’t make him suffer somehow. Because he’d never have told you, otherwise. He wouldn’t even tell me, out of loyalty to Kabir.’

  ‘We leveraged him,’ Prem said. ‘What does it matter now?’

  ‘That’s a good word,’ Ben said. ‘“Leveraged”. But what does it mean?’

  ‘We told him—’ Prem sighed.


  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We told him we had his wife.’

  ‘And threatened to hurt her if he didn’t cooperate,’ Ben said.

  ‘We didn’t make that threat,’ Prem insisted. ‘Not specifically.’

  ‘But you made it implicitly. You let him believe it. You made him think that his kidnappers were going to start cutting bits off Brooke if he didn’t talk. Or maybe douse her with acid, since that’s obviously a favourite method of your little cronies. You forced him to confront the worst, darkest fears he could possibly imagine. In other words, you tortured him.’

  A tear welled up out of Brooke’s eye and rolled down her cheek. Then another, from the other eye. She wiped them away with the back of the hand holding the gun. Prem couldn’t look at her. He said again, ‘I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, we only had to use that threat just the one time. He broke right away.’

  ‘And he told you everything.’

  ‘As much as he knows. Which turned out to be not much more than we already knew. The two of us decided we’d have to let him go.’

  ‘But by then it was too late,’ Ben said. ‘Because Takshak’s people were getting tired of playing nursemaid, waiting for you pair of amateurs to get results when they thought there was quick and easy money at stake. Did you really think men like that were going to do all the work of digging up the loot for you and then content themselves with the smallest share? They’ve been looking to double-deal you from the beginning. And the moment you got Amal to start talking, you sealed his fate. They saw their chance to turn the tables on you and snatch him for themselves, right out from under your nose. For all they knew, he could lead them right to the money. X marks the spot. And their methods to force him to talk won’t be as gentle as yours. You want to see the kind of treatment they dish out to people, I can give you an apartment address in north Delhi where you can go and view it for yourself. A man you probably never even heard of, Haani Bhandarkar, died there tonight thanks to you.’

  Brooke had gone white. The tears were dry now. She said, ‘You started this whole thing and now it’s out of control. And whether Amal helps them find the damn treasure or not, they’ll kill him.’

  Chapter 48

  Brooke turned to face Esha Ray. ‘I thought you were my friend. My confidante. Someone I could really talk to. Someone I could trust. How could you have done this to us?’

  ‘They’re my brothers too,’ Esha said in a cracked voice.

  ‘Or were,’ Ben said. ‘Thanks to your actions, we might have to refer to them in the past tense from now on.’

  Esha screwed her eyes tight shut and hung her head. Prem seemed to have run out of words to say. All that remained was a hue of sorrow and regret so deep, so painful, that it left little room for anger.

  Though not for everyone present. Samarth glowered at the two of them. His eyes were rimmed with red, like a man who hadn’t slept for a week, and the fingers clenching the arms of his chair were as bloodless as a corpse’s. He said, ‘I hate you both. I would wish you dead, but instead I hope that you live to the age of a hundred and spend every moment of the rest of your days thinking about the lives that you destroyed.’

  ‘What’ll happen to us?’ Esha whispered.

  ‘The police will come and take you away,’ Ben said. ‘You’ll go to jail for a long, long time. When they eventually let you out, you’ll both be very old and grey and so feeble you can hardly walk. What you call love will have withered away to nothing but bitter memories, and even if you have a few years left, you’ll both be too ashamed to want to set eyes on each other again. That’s what’s going to happen. And the worst part is, you did it to yourselves. This is all on you.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Samarth said, pale and trembling. Fists clenched. Teeth bared. A man hungry for retribution. The crueller and more drawn-out the better. ‘Call the police. I want to watch as they’re dragged away in chains.’

  ‘They’ll get what’s coming to them,’ Ben said. ‘But not yet.’

  Samarth looked confused. ‘Why not yet?’

  ‘Because the last thing we want right now is a certain Detective Lamba and his goon squad swarming all over this house, poking into our affairs, asking a lot of questions, calling their brethren in Rakhigarhi and unbalancing a very delicate situation. Third World cops love nothing better than a good old shootout with armed bandits. Bad news for hostages.’

  ‘India is no longer part of the Third World.’

  ‘Go tell that to the police,’ Ben said.

  ‘But we need them. They’re the only hope for getting my brother out of the hands of these murderers.’

  Ben shook his head. ‘Believe me, Samarth. We don’t. And they’re not. Bringing the police in on this would be the same as shooting Amal yourself. That’s why I’m afraid I can’t allow you to make any calls to anyone.’

  ‘I don’t take orders from you!’ Samarth stood up and started marching towards the bureau where the old-fashioned dial telephone rested. Ben got there first. The hand moving towards the phone was snatched out of the air, while at the same instant the wire was ripped from the wall. Ben hated to damage a nice old instrument. But it was about to become a collateral casualty of war. With the hand that wasn’t still clutching Samarth’s wrist he snatched the phone and smashed it to the floor.

  ‘Remember what I said about necessity and violence,’ Ben said. ‘They don’t have to go together, but it’s up to you. The part about the broken arms still applies, too.’

  ‘Listen to him, Samarth,’ Brooke said. ‘He’s right. The police are certain to mess this up. We’ve seen it happen before. We have to think of Amal.’

  Samarth stopped struggling. Ben let him go. ‘Give me your mobile.’

  ‘I-I left it at the office.’

  Ben snapped his fingers. ‘Give.’

  Samarth hesitated, rubbing his sore wrist. Then took a sleek phone from his pocket, sheathed in a black leather wallet bearing a silver Apple logo. He handed it over. Ben yanked the phone out of its wallet and snapped it in half and dropped it on the floor with the remains of the dial phone. He said, ‘Samarth, as of this moment, you’re under house arrest.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a trust thing,’ Ben said. ‘You’ve just proved that you don’t warrant any. So, you will remain right here in this apartment. No contact with the outside world. You’ll go nowhere, see nobody, talk to nobody. Except your guard, who will be watching every move you make.’

  ‘And who is that? Some hired thug of your own? Another arm-breaker just like you? Why, you’re no different from the mindless criminal trash who have my brother.’

  ‘This is your guard,’ Ben said. He pointed at Brooke.

  ‘Her?’

  ‘She’ll make sure you don’t get up to mischief while I’m gone. Try not to give her a reason to shoot you.’

  ‘Me?’ Brooke said.

  Ben could hear the hurt in her voice. ‘This is how it has to be, Brooke. I’m sorry.’

  Except Ben wasn’t sorry at all. This was exactly where he needed Brooke to be. Safely tucked away at base in the heart of the most privileged and protected neighbourhood in India. As far away from trouble as she could be. Trouble was where he was heading, like steel to a magnet. It was his element.

  ‘I wanted to come with you,’ Brooke said.

  ‘But you can’t. I do this alone. My way. The only way.’

  Brooke absorbed his words and her expression turned from dismay to reluctance to acceptance. She nodded slowly. ‘But how can I guard him all on my own? Sooner or later I’ll need to sleep or use the bathroom.’

  ‘Lock him in a cupboard. Tie him to the radiator. Improvise. You’ll think of something. If he gives you any trouble, bang him over the head.’

  ‘And for how long do you intend to keep me a prisoner in my own home?’ Samarth demanded.

  ‘For as long as it takes. Maybe a couple of days. Maybe more.’

  ‘This is intolerable!’

  ‘Take it easy, Samarth. R
emember what we said about conducting ourselves in a civilised manner.’

  Samarth seemed about to protest, then relented. ‘Very well. I will give you no trouble.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But the domestic staff will be here in the morning. They’re going to wonder what on earth is happening.’

  ‘Not if you call them first thing and give them the rest of the week off. A special bonus for all their service.’

  Brooke motioned towards Prem and Esha, who were watching with haunted looks on their faces. ‘What about those two?’

  ‘Only one thing for them,’ Ben replied. ‘The same treatment they dished out to Amal.’ He turned back to Samarth. ‘This is a big house. I’m guessing it would have some kind of secure basement?’

  Samarth was quick to come up with his answer. He pointed at the floor. ‘Not as such. But there is a wine cellar right beneath where we stand. My father had it built many years ago, before this wing of the house was constructed over the top of it. It’s sunk ten feet below the ground. For optimum humidity and temperature control. The wines are extremely valuable, so naturally they have to be shielded from theft. The walls are thick stone and the sole access is a strong steel door, locked at all times. Impossible to break into, or to escape from.’

  Samarth was actually smiling, as though his only comfort in this personally humiliating moment was knowing that the culprits would be spending the next few days stuck in a hole beneath his feet.

  ‘You think it’s okay to keep them together?’ Brooke asked.

  Ben shrugged. ‘It’s the last time they’re going to see each other. Where’s the harm?’

  ‘You can’t lock us up down there,’ Prem complained. ‘It’s not human.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not human,’ Ben said.

  ‘It’s dark and cold. There’s nowhere to sleep except a bare earth floor. There’s no running water.’

  ‘But plenty of wine,’ Ben said. ‘If it was me, I’d take the opportunity to drink myself to death rather than spend the next several decades in an Indian prison. You think about that.’