Valley of Death

by Scott Mariani

  But there was no floor. Hashim went over the edge of the prominence. He hung there for just a moment, scrabbling desperately with his fingertips raking rough stone, and then he lost his grip and fell into space with a cry, spread eagled in mid-air like a free-fall jumper. He cartwheeled end over end and then hit the water with a splash, belly down. From that height it was like hitting concrete. The swirling current closed over him and sucked his broken body down into the depths.

  Ben didn’t see any of it. The instant Hashim went down, Samunder attacked. The giant might not have been too bright, but he was smart enough not to make the same mistake as Hashim. Throwing down his cumbersome rifle he came in with his huge fists and smashed a blow into Ben’s chest that knocked him off his feet and almost sent him over the edge after Hashim. Kabir swung his torch into Samunder’s face and caught him across the bridge of the nose, breaking it with a crunch. Samunder roared and flailed out a huge arm in a backhand sweep and Kabir was flung hard against the rock wall. Amal let out a wild yell and tried to punch Samunder with his good arm. Samunder just flicked him aside and came stamping towards where Ben lay close to the edge of the drop, wanting to crush and trample him to death.

  And that was when the old lady suddenly came to life. A thin bony hand slipped into the folds of her sari and came out with a knife that she planted in the small of Samunder’s back. As though she’d been waiting all this time for the right moment to stick it to one of these men she perceived to be the hated dacoits who had long persecuted and terrorised her people.

  It was like sticking a hat pin into a berserk gorilla. But it was enough to stop his charge. Samunder arched over backwards, reaching with both hands behind him to try to pluck out the knife. By then Ben was springing back up to his feet. His musings about how many bullets it would take to bring the big guy down had been answered. The number was zero. He closed in on Samunder and launched a stamping kick that drove his right kneecap in on itself. The leg folded the wrong way and Samunder went down on that knee with a bellow of rage and pain, lopsided like a listing building.

  Then the other knee, with the same result. Now the big guy was evened up and his screaming mouth was chest high to Ben, covered in blood from his broken nose. Ben grabbed him by the hair and drove his head downwards and the solid ram of his own kneecap upwards simultaneously to meet in a savage impact midway, and felt Samunder’s teeth crack, and what was left of his nose get crunched flat in a ruin of splintered bone. Two legs disabled, his face caved in; the damage would have been enough to drive the fight out of almost anybody. Ben would have let it go then, given the option. Enough would have been enough. But with a guy like this, you didn’t let it go. He was like a wounded bull, enraged past the point of no return. You had to finish it, or he’d finish you.

  Ben kept a hold of Samunder’s hair and dashed the bloody pulp of his face against the rock floor. Once, twice, three times, and Samunder was still screaming and struggling so Ben did it three times more. The guy’s weight was unbelievable. Ben couldn’t have kept it up much longer. But after six brutal impacts he was beginning to feel the fight go out of his opponent. With his last reserves of strength and energy Ben grabbed him under the arms and dragged him and pitched him over the drop. He stood on the edge and watched the huge body spin end over end and then break the restless surface of the water far below with a white foamy explosion like a depth charge going off.

  And then it was over.

  Chapter 70

  The arrival of a beaten-up, flame-scorched, bullet-holed ex-Indian Army off-road truck at the civic hospital in Jind wasn’t an everyday occurrence, least of all when it turned out that two of its passengers were the missing Ray brothers from Delhi, whom many of the medical personnel had read about in the news. Amal was whisked off in a wheelchair to have his arm attended to, while Kabir reluctantly submitted to a rigorous inspection of his healing gunshot wound and general state of health. The old lady and the young girl had long since been returned to their village, safe, sound, and sworn to secrecy.

  Which left Ben alone and pretty much ignored by the nurses and doctors, and that was fine by him, despite a few minor injuries of his own. His muscles were stiff and sore all over, and his right shoulder joint still hurt from where it had come close to getting dislocated, and some of the thorn scratches on his legs had gone quite deep. He had a spreading purple bruise on his chest where Samunder had punched him, and his knee ached from having come into hard contact with the guy’s face. Not to mention the torn and bruised knuckles on both his hands. But none of it was anything he hadn’t gone through before, and in his estimation it didn’t warrant suffering the indignities of a medical examination.

  It had taken a good few hours to reach Jind and evening had fallen outside. Suddenly feeling very tired, he wandered the corridors of the hospital in search of a cup of strong black coffee, a payphone, and a cigarette vending machine, in that order, although of course the last proved to be too much to hope for. But the coffee was strong and black. He found a small dark waiting area off the main corridor near the reception foyer, which nobody seemed to be using. It had a view of the floodlit car park with the incongruous army truck in it, and the traffic zipping by in the street beyond. It felt odd to be back in civilisation again. He’d soon adjust. He always did.

  He settled back in a bendy plastic chair facing the window and took his time sipping from his paper cup, enjoying a few minutes of peace and quiet in the knowledge that a whole bureaucratic shit storm was about to erupt as the news of the Ray brothers’ return got out. When he’d procrastinated long enough, he drained the last dregs of his coffee, thought here we go and walked back out into the corridor to feed some coins into the payphone.

  Brooke answered her mobile on the second ring, sounding breathless and anxious as though she’d been hovering over the phone all this time. ‘Hello?’

  ‘We’re in Jind,’ he said.

  ‘Who’s in Jind?’

  ‘All of us.’

  It took some explaining, by the end of which Brooke was crying and in a wild rush to get off the phone, saying she was on her way.

  She was there in under two hours. Ben was working on his sixth large paper cup of black coffee and still resting his weary muscles in the empty, unlit waiting area when he saw the motorcade come speeding in off the street and screech to a halt in the car park. Brooke and Samarth had come in his silver Bentley. In the rear sat a white-haired, well-dressed elderly couple whom Ben had never seen before, though he could guess he was looking at old Basu and Aparna, the Ray family patriarch and matriarch. Second in the convoy was an unmarked police car containing the familiar happy, smiling faces of detectives Lamba, Savarkar and Agarwal. Behind them was a black government sedan with Vivaan Banerjee of the Indian Foreign Office riding in the back, along with some clipped-looking white guy Ben presumed to be a British Embassy suit.

  Unseen behind the glass of the dark waiting room, he watched the arrivals get out of their cars. Brooke was out before anyone else, all buzzing and jittery with agitation. Her hair was a mess, her face was tear-streaked, her nose and cheeks were red and she didn’t seem to know whether to weep or laugh. A dishevelled Samarth stepped quickly from the driver’s side of the Bentley and opened up the rear to help the elderly couple out. They were both in their eighties, and in different ways bore a strong family resemblance to their three sons. Basu and his wife were both as much aglow with excitement as could be expected of a couple who’d been catapulted from the crushing grief of losing two children to the sudden and totally unanticipated prospect of a joyful family reunion, all within the space of two hours.

  Brooke led the way towards the hospital entrance at a virtual run. Samarth followed, holding his mother’s elbow in one hand and a small travel bag in the other. His old father was weeping openly. The rest of the procession tagged behind in more sedate fashion, the cops smoking and looking sour, the government guys in restrained conversation together. Lamba paused to look uninterestedly at the truck. Then he mov
ed on to rejoin his buddies, and the whole group were lost from view of Ben’s dark window. Moments later, he heard the urgent patter of footsteps on tiled floor and the sound of raised voices as they entered the reception lobby.

  He had little desire to spend the next several hours talking to the government suits, still less to get the inevitable third degree from Lamba’s gang. That wasn’t his main reluctance, however. A strange feeling inside made him prefer not to be present when Brooke was reunited with Amal. He stayed in the dark waiting area and went on quietly sipping his coffee. The voices and footsteps passed by his door and moved on. Minutes ticked by. Nobody came to look for him. He felt foolish and cowardly to be hiding like this.

  A whole half hour had passed when he heard the creak of the door and turned to see a figure walk inside the waiting area. He’d been found.

  The figure felt for a light switch, clicked it on, and the dark room lit up under bright overhead neons.

  ‘There you are. I’ve been looking for you.’

  It wasn’t one of the cops, nor was it a government suit. To Ben’s greater relief, it wasn’t Brooke either. Kabir was smiling as he walked into the room. His thick black hair was neatly combed, and he was wearing a crisp new shirt and jeans. From the travel bag, Ben guessed.

  ‘How is he?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s fine. They’ve set the arm, and now they’re waiting for the plaster to dry. He’s been pumped full of God knows what and needs to rest for a good few days. My parents are with him now. Brooke, too. I spoke with her briefly a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Is she okay?’

  ‘Overwhelmed, I’d say. A lot of mixed feelings. Relief, elation, sadness, disappointment.’

  ‘Sadness and disappointment about what?’

  ‘I think that she kind of expected to see you here.’

  Ben paused a beat. ‘What about you?’

  Kabir shrugged. ‘For a guy who thought he was going to die today, not so bad. The doctors were actually pretty impressed with how well I’ve healed up. I’ll soon put the weight back on and get fit again. But never mind me.’ He eyed Ben inquisitively.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ Ben said. Which was relatively true, in a physical sense. The strange mood he’d been in since seeing Brooke in the car park was still hovering over him.

  Kabir sat in a bendy plastic chair next to Ben’s, facing the window with the view over the car park. The journey to Jind had been fast and fraught, and they hadn’t had a lot of time to talk until now. ‘I never thanked you for what you’ve done,’ Kabir said.

  ‘I should be the one thanking you. If you hadn’t sprung that surprise on Takshak I mightn’t have had much of a chance. You gave me the edge I needed.’

  ‘I figured you were up to something from the first moment they turned up at the village. I saw you pick up those scissors. I tried to distract him then, too, so he wouldn’t notice. Then all the way to the place I kept wondering when you might make your move.’

  ‘You timed it well,’ Ben said. ‘The rest just slipped into place.’

  ‘Is that what you call it?’

  ‘It is what it is. I don’t like violence.’

  ‘But you do it so well. I always thought my brother’s friends were all a bunch of annoying writers and theatrical types. How wrong could I have been?’

  ‘Where are the police?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Right at this moment? Hanging around outside Amal’s treatment room and being rather grumpy and impatient as they wait to talk to Brooke.’

  ‘What will she tell them?’

  ‘The same official version of the story I told them, when they cornered me just now. Which will also be the account Amal gives them when they speak to him. You can be sure of that. Namely, that Amal’s kidnappers were all shot to death in the firefight with the local police following an anonymous tip-off. Tragically, it seems that none of the officers survived either. Whereupon Amal found himself wandering free and just happened to make his way to the same remote village where I’d turned up weeks earlier. Then the two of us just happened to find one of the kidnappers’ trucks, and managed to get back safe. End of story.’

  ‘Hell of a coincidence.’

  ‘They’ll just have to take it or leave it. The villagers will corroborate the story, if anyone even bothers to check. Personally, I think the detectives will be happy just to wrap the case up and move on.’

  ‘So who called Brooke from the hospital?’

  Kabir grinned. ‘Why, I did, of course. We’re family.’

  ‘So they don’t need to talk to anyone else?’

  ‘As I understand it, you were never really officially here,’ Kabir said.

  ‘Not entirely true. I signed some papers for your Mr Banerjee.’

  ‘Which can easily be unsigned. Or made to disappear entirely. Don’t forget, we Rays are still able to pull a string or two. And there’s certainly no official record to suggest that you travelled anywhere near Rakhigarhi. Why would you?’

  Ben sat gazing down at the floor and said nothing.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Kabir asked.

  ‘No,’ Ben replied. ‘I was just thinking about things.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll be thinking about going home soon.’

  Ben nodded. ‘No reason not to.’

  Kabir glanced back over his shoulder, in the direction of the doorway. He stood up and put out his hand. ‘It was good meeting you, Ben. I hope we meet again one day.’

  ‘You’re leaving?’

  ‘No, I’m staying. I need to go and be with my family. It’s not every day their son comes back from the dead. Besides, I think someone wants to speak with you in private.’

  Ben turned to look. Brooke was standing in the doorway.

  Chapter 71

  Kabir left, and then Ben and Brooke were alone. Her face was less flushed than he’d seen it through the window. More composed. He stood up to meet her as she walked over to him. It felt to him like a replay of the day he’d arrived in Delhi. His heart was beating. He felt more nervous now than he had when he’d been in the thick of the fight with Takshak.

  ‘I thought you were with Amal,’ he said.

  ‘I just left him. He’s asleep now.’

  ‘He’ll be okay.’

  ‘Thanks to you. Kabir told me what happened. This is just incredible, Ben. It’s—’ She shook her head, lost for words. ‘Oh, God. Come here.’ She pressed herself against him and wrapped her arms so tightly around his body that he thought he was going to suffocate. When she let him go at last, her eyes were full of tears again. She wiped them away with her hand.

  He said, ‘I’m glad I was able to do something right for you, for once.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Kabir said the police were waiting to talk to you.’

  She made a face. ‘That Lamba’s such an ass. I sent them away, told them I’d talk to them all they like once we’re back in the city, but not before. I mean, give us some space, for God’s sake. Two hours ago we didn’t know who was dead or alive.’ She paused, then added, ‘They don’t know you’re here, don’t worry.’

  Ben smiled. ‘I’m not worried about them.’

  ‘You want to get some air?’ she said. ‘I hate the smell of hospitals.’

  They stepped out into the corridor and glanced left and right in case Lamba and his detectives were prowling nearby, but the corridor was empty. The two of them found a side exit and walked outside into the night. It was the perfect evening, warm and still, and the stars were out. There was a path running alongside the building, with a little lawned garden opposite. They walked in silence for a while, side by side, very close together.

  Ben had so many things he wanted to say. He spent a long moment trying to find the right words. ‘Amal told me—’ Then he faltered. Maybe he shouldn’t say anything.

  But it was out now, and too late to take it back. Brooke looked at him. ‘Said what?’

  ‘When we were out there. He told me some personal stuff.’

  Sh
e looked away. ‘I think I know what. Did he tell you that our marriage isn’t working?’

  ‘Is it that bad between you two?’

  She shrugged, then gave a sad nod. ‘I admit, it’s true. It’s been breaking down steadily for a while now. Almost from the start. We should never have got together. We both know it.’

  ‘I’m sorry. How come you never told me?’

  ‘You mean, like, my husband’s been kidnapped and maybe murdered, and by the way we were thinking of splitting up?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘It’s been talked about. Neither of us has the courage to actually do anything about it. So we just keep sort of plodding forwards day by day, each trying to avoid the issue. Not a great strategy. I don’t know how much longer it can drag on for.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

  ‘What else did he tell you?’ she asked.

  Ben hesitated to reply.

  ‘Did he tell you why? Because I was in love with someone else?’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘Am.’

  Ben didn’t answer.

  They walked a few more steps in silence, as though too much had been said and they needed a few moments to let the dust settle before saying anything more. She asked, ‘Are you going back home now?’

  ‘Soon enough,’ he said. ‘I’ve done what I came here to do.’

  ‘To Le Val?’

  ‘It’s the only home I have,’ he replied.

  ‘I loved it there so much. You have no idea how I miss it.’

  The words on the tip of his tongue were ‘It’s not the same without you.’ But he left them unsaid.

  She stopped walking. Turned to face him, reached out and clasped both his hands in hers. ‘Let me come with you. Just for a few days.’

  He could see she meant it. ‘You can’t be serious. Your husband’s in hospital. He needs you.’

  ‘He doesn’t really. He has his family all around him. And he’ll spend most of the next week sleeping, anyway. What do I have to offer?’