‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? I can feel it. Oh, God.’
Ben cut the engine and flung open his door. ‘Stay in the car.’
‘You must be kidding. I’m coming too.’
‘I said, stay in the damn car.’ Whatever was in that building, Ben didn’t want Amal to see it. He jumped out of the BMW and sprinted up the steep, slippery path towards the bothy. The building had no door, just a crude stone doorway thick with moss. Ben ran inside. The earth floor was damp-smelling from the long winter months. That wasn’t all he could smell. The place was rank with the stink of death.
The bothy was filled with people and activity and bright lights, but they couldn’t have been there more than forty-five minutes or so. Before that it had been empty and silent. Empty, apart from its grisly occupants.
Almost the first person Ben saw as he rushed in was Kay Lynch. She was standing near the entrance, looking drawn and pallid. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t say much in my text,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I couldn’t get away from Hanratty.’
‘Where are they?’ Ben said. He was breathless, but not from the fifty-yard sprint up the hill.
‘Over there,’ she said, motioning towards the far corner, where the forensics team were clustered around something Ben couldn’t see.
‘It’s not a pretty sight. Are you sure you—’
Ben was already pushing past her. With his heart in his mouth he shoved two cops out of the way and saw what the forensics team were attending to under the white glare of their lights.
‘They were found by the farmer who lives over the hill,’ Lynch said from behind his shoulder. ‘He was looking for a missing sheep when his dog picked up the scent of blood and ran in here. The poor fellow’s being treated for shock now.’
Lying sprawled on the floor were the corpses of a man and a woman. The woman was face down in the dirt. She wore a green cardigan over a red dress. Her bare legs were kicked out at unnatural angles and one of her shoes was missing. From the blueish hue of her skin it was clear that she’d been dead for some time. The right side of her head had been blown away at extreme close range by a gunshot. Her blond hair was thickly matted with congealed blood and pulped brains.
‘Samantha Sheldrake, Forsyte’s PA,’ Lynch said.
Ben felt suddenly dizzy and had to lean against the stone wall. He was boiling with anger at Lynch for not having said more in her message. She could have spared him the torture of the last half hour. But he was too overcome by a strange mixture of relief and horror to say anything. After a few moments his breathing had slowed a little and he turned to look at the other corpse.
Roger Forsyte was recognisable from his pictures, although he looked very different in death, especially after such an obviously horrible death. His face was twisted in agony and terror. His pupils had rolled completely under his lids, so that just the ghoulish white eyeballs stared up at the ceiling. There was no gunshot wound. Forsyte had died some other way. Something much worse.
He had no hands. Somebody had chopped his arms off a few inches above the wrist and tossed the severed body parts across the bothy. From the quantity of blood that had sprayed over the rough walls, saturated his clothing and soaked into the floor, it had been done while he was still alive. Corpses didn’t bleed this much.
The double amputation looked as though it had been carried out with a heavy blade: an axe or a butcher’s cleaver. The shock of such an injury could be fatal, but not always. In his SAS days Ben had seen enough poor limbless survivors of African war atrocities to know that the human body could withstand the most brutal acts of mutilation. No, it wasn’t the hacking off of his hands that had killed Sir Roger Forsyte. Ben observed the telltale signs – the leprous pallor of the skin, the grotesque swelling, the tongue protruding from the lips. Extreme pain, then creeping muscle paralysis and eventual asphyxia. Maybe an hour to death, maybe two. Not a good end. Whoever had done this had intended to make Forsyte suffer, and they’d got what they wanted.
‘He’s been poisoned,’ Ben said.
Lynch gave a dark little smile. ‘In the Poisoned Glen. Someone’s idea of a joke? Looks as if you might have been right, too. There goes our whole kidnap theory.’
And with it had gone any remnant of a chance that getting Brooke back might be as simple as paying over whatever ransom the kidnappers demanded in return for Forsyte. Even if they’d wanted more for the women than the insurance policy could cover, Ben would have happily sold Le Val and reduced himself to a pauper to bring her back.
But that faintest, most tentative shred of hope was dead now. For all he knew, Brooke was dead too, her body dumped elsewhere for another passerby to find, hours, days, weeks from now. Or she might have tried to escape and be lying hurt or dying in a ditch somewhere, anywhere.
Lynch must have been able to read his thoughts from the strain on his face. ‘We’ll keep searching for her. The Dog Support Unit came up from Dublin during the night. We might turn up evidence that she was here. It’s not the end. Not yet.’
Ben didn’t reply. The sight of Forsyte’s mutilated body had set something jangling deep in his memory. He couldn’t bring it into focus; it was like a word on the tip of his tongue that wouldn’t come, gnawing at him, teasing him through the mist of fear and stress and confusion that was clouding his mind. What was it?
Just when it seemed about to come to him, the sound of an angry voice interrupted his thoughts – a voice that was becoming way too familiar for Ben’s liking. Hanratty had spotted him at last.
‘I don’t believe this! Who let him in here? Lynch! Did you tell him about this?’
Ben turned away and stepped out into the rain. It was pouring even harder now, but he could barely feel the cold water running down his face and soaking his hair and clothes. He gritted his teeth and tried to focus on the vague, fleeting memory that still eluded him. What the hell was it that seeing Forsyte’s severed hands had triggered in his mind?
From fifty yards away, Amal had seen Ben emerge from the bothy. He swung the BMW’s passenger door open. The inside light shone on his worried face. ‘Well?’ he called out nervously, expecting the worst.
Ben trudged down the muddy path. ‘There are two bodies in there,’ he said to Amal. ‘Brooke’s not one of them. It’s Forsyte and his PA.’
The tension dropped from Amal’s face. He climbed out of the car. The rain began to spot on his expensive coat. ‘Then she’s alive. I mean, it’s awful. For the others, that is … but Brooke’s alive. Thank God!’
Ben wasn’t sure he had anything to thank God for.
‘She must be alive, mustn’t she?’ Amal said, seeing the look in Ben’s eyes. ‘This is good news, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’
But Ben couldn’t give him that reassurance. They both turned to look as Kay Lynch came down the path from the bothy and joined them beside the car. ‘I’m grateful to you for letting me know about this, Kay,’ Ben said sincerely. His anger with her hadn’t lasted more than a minute or two.
‘I’m sorry it wasn’t better news,’ she said. ‘And I’m afraid there’s something else you should know. The Inspector’s on the phone to Scotland Yard right now. He’s requesting for a search warrant to be issued for your friend Dr Marcel’s home in Richmond.’
‘What? Why!?’ Amal exploded.
Lynch gave a shrug. ‘Because he thinks that in the light of this turn of events, her disappearance looks suspicious. He’s dispatched a patrol car to Sea View Guest House to collect the rest of her belongings for examination. He says we can’t afford to assume she isn’t implicated somehow.’
‘Implicated?’ Amal yelled.
‘Don’t tell me you agree with Hanratty about this,’ Ben said to Lynch.
‘He’s my superior. I don’t have an opinion. Not one that matters, at any rate. And I’ve already told you far more than I should. I’m sticking my neck right out here.’
‘It’s insane!’ Amal shouted. ‘It’s absolute cretinous imbecility of the highest order! What kind of utter mor
on would—?’
Lynch glanced over her shoulder. ‘I’d keep my voice down, if I were you. Here he comes.’
Hanratty marched down the muddy slope towards them. ‘Well, well. Having a party, are we? Fancy you two just happening to turn up again.’ He glowered at Lynch, then turned to face Amal and stabbed a stubby finger into his chest. ‘You,’ he said, blowing spittle, veins standing out on his forehead, ‘had better not be thinking of going back to your own country, wherever that is. The situation has changed now, and you’re mixed up in it, pal.’
‘I happen to be a British citizen, pal. England is my country,’ Amal shot back in fury. ‘And I suppose you think I’m a suspect too? It’s outrageous. Brooke and I were here for a bloody party, that’s the beginning and end of it. We went through all this yesterday, over and over. Instead of standing here wasting time with these ridiculous allegations, why don’t you go and do your job, you colossal great prick?’
‘Amal,’ Ben said, putting a hand on his arm to quiet him. The cop’s eyes were beginning to burn with a dangerous light, and he was quite capable of having Amal dragged away to a cosy little cell if he carried on like this. ‘My friend’s upset,’ Ben said to Hanratty. ‘We’ll be getting out of your way now.’
‘Delighted to hear it,’ Hanratty snorted. He was about to say more when his phone rang and he wheeled back towards the bothy to take the call.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lynch said, seeing the look in Ben’s eyes. ‘It’s not me.’
‘I know,’ Ben said.
‘The moment I hear anything more, I’ll call you, okay? But you have to promise me to stay out of this and leave the investigating to us.’
‘I promise,’ Ben said. Lynch nodded, then turned to follow Hanratty back up the slope.
‘It’s just unbelievable,’ Amal was raging as they got back into the car. ‘Brooke a suspect? Based on what?’
‘It’s time for you to go home,’ Ben said.
Amal looked at him with hurt and confusion in his eyes. ‘So that’s it? No protest, no nothing? How can you just accept this shit from Hanratty, after all the things you said before? I thought you were going to do something. That’s why I thought you could help, because you had expertise in this kind of thing.’
‘There’s nothing more we can do here,’ Ben told him. ‘It’s over.’
Amal boggled at him. ‘It’s over? Are you serious?’
‘We’ll go back and get your stuff,’ Ben said. ‘Then I’ll take you to the airport.’
Amal stared. His throat gave a quiver. ‘You think she’s dead, don’t you? That’s why you’re giving up.’
Ben didn’t reply. He started the engine and put the car in reverse.
‘Why can’t you just be straight with me and say so? That’s right, just go silent on me again. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand any of it.’ Amal slumped despairingly in his seat as Ben backed the car away from the police vehicles and turned it round in the narrow road.
Arriving back at the guesthouse, they found a Garda patrol car parked outside and two officers loading the rest of Brooke’s things into the back of it, sealed up in plastic evidence bags. Mrs Sheenan was watching from the doorway in her curlers, dressing gown and slippers, extremely displeased to have been roused so early from her bed and even more mortified that her establishment had been ransacked by the Garda like it was a den for common criminals. It would be the talk of the village for evermore. Amal tried in vain to mollify her and explain what was happening, then gave it up to go to his room and start packing to leave.
Ben watched the police car disappear down the street before returning inside to check flight times and book Amal a seat on the first plane to London that morning. Minutes later, they were back in the BMW and setting off.
Amal looked deep in thought all the way to Derry Airport, privately chewing over something with a set expression on his face. As they were about to part, he turned to Ben. ‘Listen, I, ah, I don’t generally go around telling people this, but I do actually have some family connections. Fairly powerful ones, in fact. And I have my own money, a lot of money. I believe that Brooke is alive. I’d do anything – I mean anything – to find her. Whatever it takes. You understand me?’
‘I understand you,’ Ben said. He thanked him. Left him standing clutching his bags and headed back towards the car.
The truth was, he’d only wanted Amal out of the way. He knew what he had to do next, and that it was something he needed to do alone.
Because as he’d been standing there on the dark, rainswept roadside in the middle of the Poisoned Glen listening to Amal ranting at Lynch and Hanratty, Ben had suddenly remembered.
Chapter Fourteen
With the realisation of what had happened to Forsyte, the situation was suddenly totally altered. Things were about to turn an awful lot uglier than they already were.
Ben also knew now that there was no point in crossing back into the Republic. He was already on the side of the border he needed to be. Sitting behind the wheel of the BMW at Derry Airport, he took out his phone and dialled a number in Italy. After a few rings he heard a familiar, warm voice that would normally have made him smile. ‘Pronto?’ she said.
‘Hello, Mirella.’
‘Ben!’ She was delighted to hear from him. ‘Are you coming to see us again?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘What is wrong?’ she asked, hearing the tone of his voice.
‘I need to talk to Boonzie, Mirella. Is he there?’
‘I will call him,’ she said anxiously. A muffled clattering on the line as Mirella laid down the phone and went off to fetch her husband. Ben could hear her voice in the background shouting ‘Archibald!’. Boonzie would never have tolerated anyone but his beloved wife calling him by his real name. After a few moments, his gruff Scots voice came on the line.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve been following the British news,’ Ben said.
‘What’s going on?’ Ben could see the grizzled, granite-faced Scot standing there, his eyes narrowing in concern.
‘I have a problem, Boonzie.’
Boonzie McCulloch had been a long-serving 22 SAS sergeant, and a mentor and friend of Ben’s for many years, before he’d astounded everyone by quitting the army to settle in the south of Italy and set up a smallholding with a vivacious black-haired Neapolitan beauty he’d fallen head over heels in love with while on a few days’ leave. The flinty, battle-hardened fifty-nine-year-old had found his own private heaven at last, contentedly working his sun-kissed couple of hectares to produce the basil and tomato crop that Mirella turned into gourmet bottled sauces the local restaurant trade couldn’t do without.
But the soft life hadn’t got to Boonzie completely. He still had a few aces up his sleeve, like the small arsenal of military weaponry that had got Ben out of a sticky moment in Rome the year before. And because the SAS had always been so much more deeply embroiled in matters of political secrecy and delicacy than other British army regiments, he still carried around with him a headful of the kind of privileged information that the likes of Detective Inspector Hanratty wouldn’t have had access to in a thousand years.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Boonzie muttered when Ben had finished quickly filling him in. ‘Need help?’ He’d always been the practical type. Ben knew it would take only one word for him to lay down everything and be on the first flight to Ireland.
‘I just need to know I’m on the right track. Forsyte. Roger Forsyte. It was before my time, but it’s ringing bells.’
‘Aye, me too, laddie. Big fuckin’ bells. In some ears they havnae stopped ringing since Belfast, 1979.’
Ben nodded, but it wasn’t much of a relief to have it confirmed that his hunch had been correct. ‘The Liam Doyle incident.’
‘Think it was maybe my second stint in that godforsaken hole,’ Boonzie said, ‘maybe my third, when they found Doyle’s body. This shit was happening all the time, but they’d normally just blow your brains oot, not chop both your arms off that way. Nasty.’
‘About six inches above the wrist?’
‘With a cleaver,’ Boonzie said. ‘While he was still alive.’
‘Just like Forsyte.’
‘Then they put a nine-milly between his eyes and dumped the body out in the sticks in County Antrim. It was never confirmed that Doyle was IRA. Neither were the rest of the rumours, like who’d done it. A lot of folks were certain it wisnae the handiwork of the UVF or any of the other Loyalist bunch, though Lord knows some o’ those fuckers were even worse than the Republican boys. Let’s just say that in certain circles, it wisnae any secret who wiz behind it.’
‘And Forsyte?’
‘Roger Forsyte,’ Boonzie said. ‘Hold on a sec. I’m looking him up on the internet.’ Ben could hear a tapping of keys. ‘Here he is. Oh, aye. Marine Exploration?’ Boonzie gave a dark chuckle. ‘So that’s what former MI5 agents end up doing, digging up sunken treasure? There’s a lot of digging up to be done in Northern Ireland too. A lot of dead bodies were put in the ground in those years, and yer man’d know where to find half of them.’
‘You’re sure? Forsyte was MI5?’
‘You can bet your arse on it, Ben. I’ve seen that face before. These bastards were all over the place. And I heard the name Forsyte mentioned more than a couple of times.’
‘I need facts, Boonzie. Not surmises.’
‘Trust me. He was mixed up deep in this shite.’
Although it had taken place a decade or so before Ben had joined the army and while he was still a boy, he’d heard enough about that unsavoury chapter in Ulster’s history to know of the scandal that had erupted over the Liam Doyle incident. It was later to be overshadowed by the events of Operation Flavius during the Thatcher era, when three unarmed suspected Provisional IRA members had been shot dead in Gibraltar by the SAS amid strong concerns about government cover-ups and misinformation – but at the time the cruel, unusual nature of Liam Doyle’s murder and the mass of rumours surrounding it had sparked off a great deal of heat. Many Catholic Republicans had been convinced that the brutal killing had been sanctioned by British Intelligence.