‘Nice place,’ he said, looking around him. The coffee was hot and strong. He took a big gulp and felt better. ‘A bit more sophisto than Le Val.’
‘I love Le Val,’ she said. ‘I’d swap it for this place any day.’
‘I love it too,’ he said quietly. Felt a twinge as he remembered the troubles there waiting for him.
‘Won’t you sit down? You look tired.’
‘I’m fine.’
She looked at him with concern. ‘What’s happening, Ben? Last time I saw you, you were running off to Bruges. Where now?’
‘Germany,’ he said.
‘Ruth?’
He nodded. ‘It’s her, Brooke. I saw a picture. No doubts.’
‘I really hope you find her. Just remember what I said, about asking for help if you need it.’
‘I haven’t forgotten.’
‘There’s danger, isn’t there?’ she said, anxiously.
‘A bit,’ he admitted. He finished the last of the coffee, put down the empty Pink Panther mug and turned to go. ‘You be careful, won’t you?’
‘Don’t worry about me.’
‘That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me, Ben Hope. Of course I worry about you. You drive me completely nuts with worry sometimes.’ Her cheeks had flushed red, and Ben was taken aback by the depth of emotion in her voice. She stepped quickly over towards him, put her arms around him and pressed her ear to his chest. Then looked up at him, and there was a tear rolling out of her eye and across the curve of her cheek. He reached up and gently dabbed it away with his fingers. Kissed her gently on the forehead. Then moved his mouth down and kissed her cheek, tasted the salty taste of the tear. Her skin felt soft against his lips.
She tensed and pulled away from him. ‘Don’t play with me,’ she said quietly.
He frowned. ‘I’m not.’
‘I know you don’t like me,’ she said.
‘What are you talking about? Of course I like you. I like you a lot.’
‘But not the way I like you, Ben. Get it now?’ The words seemed to come out against her will, as if they’d been kept submerged for a long time and she hadn’t meant for them to come bubbling up.
He said nothing. Just looked at her, and could see the anguish in her face. It was a look he’d never seen before. It quickly turned to an angry blush, and she stepped away from him and went back to her coffee.
‘Shit. I shouldn’t have said that. Forget it, OK?’
Ben couldn’t find the words for what he wanted to say. Before he had a chance to speak, Sabrina walked into the room, bringing a wafting scent of soap with her.
‘I’d better be going,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
Chapter Forty-Two
Ben dropped the travel-stained Audi off at the rental place at Heathrow, boarded a flight for Brussels, and less than an hour later he was firing up his Mini for the drive to the Black Forest.
By late afternoon he was arriving in the town of Offenburg near the French–German border, a postcard-perfect little place surrounded by vineyards and filled with quaint old timber-frame houses and churches, outdoor markets and flower gardens. He checked into a small hotel, showered and then went down to the lobby to scour a regional business directory for local firms selling anything related with ceramics. There were a few arts and crafts shops around Offenburg, a gallery and a local pottery somewhere just outside the town that looked promising. By the time he’d worked up his list, the hotel bar was opening. He was first in. Downed a glass of Schnapps and then hit the road, deciding to start with the closest place and work his way outwards.
As detective work went, this was doing it the old-fashioned way, the hard way. In each of the ceramics and crafts shops he went to, showing the people there the picture taken by Lenny Salt that he’d transferred onto his phone, he got either a suspicious look followed by an offhand ‘never seen her’ or a completely blank stare. Then he tried the art gallery, but a guy in a suit who might have been a funeral director informed him that they dealt only with paintings.
The warmth of the day was cooling as the sun began its downward dip in the sky, and the wind was picking up. Ben’s list was running a little short by now, but there was still the pottery shop on the edge of town. He found it easily enough, a kilometre or so into the peaceful countryside.
He’d been expecting something in keeping with the neat, prim little town nearby. This wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind. The place was thirty yards back off the road at the end of a rutted driveway. As he stepped out of the car, some rangy chickens pecking in the dirt scattered and ran. A rusted sign for the pottery creaked to and fro in the breeze, and the stone buildings were just a year or two from dereliction, with the roof sagging dramatically in the middle. He walked around the building. The only sign of life about the place was the singing of the birds in the trees overhead. Weeds tufted up thickly through the cracked paving, and when he peered through the grimy window panes he saw nothing but uninhabited rooms littered with junk.
A little further up the road, Ben came across a farmhouse and knocked on the door. There was a furious barking of dogs inside, and then the sound of locks and bolts being opened before the door swung ajar and a little old man with a white beard squinted up at him and asked what he wanted. A Jack Russell terrier snarled at Ben from behind his legs.
‘It closed down six, seven months ago,’ the old man said when Ben asked him about the pottery place. ‘Empty now.’
Ben showed him the picture. ‘I wondered if you might have seen this woman there?’
The old man screwed up his face and peered at it, his nose almost touching the screen. ‘She might have been one of them. Might not. Hard to say, I don’t remember too good. There was a bunch of them in the place. Young people. They ran it together. Like hippies.’
‘You mean like a co-operative?’
‘Something like that,’ the old man said with a shrug.
Ben asked if he knew who owned the building. The old man shrugged again, then shut the door and Ben heard the rattle of the locks and bolts.
He looked at his watch. It was getting too late in the day to make the kind of calls he needed to make to track the owners down. He dragged his heels back to the car and drove off.
So far, things weren’t looking too promising. Maybe a forty per cent chance that this was even the right place. And a ninety per cent chance that its former occupants could be just about anywhere in Europe now.
Missing scientists. An SS general with a strange secret. A snatch attempt against a wealthy industrialist. And now some kind of bohemian commune that sold ceramics out of a semi-derelict farm shop in the Black Forest countryside.
He spent that night staring up at the ceiling of his hotel bedroom and counting the minutes until dawn. He drifted off sometime before first light, and woke to the rays of the sun creeping up the flower-patterned wallpaper by his bed. He threw off the covers, dressed quickly and grabbed a coffee in the breakfast room, waiting impatiently for the day to start. As soon as the hands on his watch hit 9 a.m., he started phoning round estate agents.
His enquiries drew blanks all the way. It seemed that whoever had let the co-operative make use of the building hadn’t gone through an agent – or at least not one in the region. Maybe a more casual agreement, then, cash only. Maybe the place had been rent-free. It couldn’t be worth much to live there.
But whatever the arrangement, someone had to be paying local taxes on the property. Which meant that somewhere there was a record on file that would lead him to the owner and then – with a bit of persuasion – to the people who’d last lived in it.
He checked a map of Offenburg and found that the Rathaus or town council office wasn’t far from his hotel. The sun had disappeared behind iron-grey clouds and there was a chill in the air as he walked through the streets. The Rathaus was an imposing red and cream building on the corner of a street of neat old timber-framed houses. He pushed through the main entrance and walked across the reception foyer
to the desk, where he spoke to an austere-looking woman with thin lips and dead eyes who seemed to enjoy informing him that unless he was a police officer or a licensed private investigator with proper ID to show her, there was no way she was going to disclose the identity or home address of the owner of the former pottery outside Offenburg. He stared hard at her for a long moment, until a flicker of nervousness appeared in those lifeless eyes. With that small victory won, he turned and pushed back out of the main entrance.
Out in the street, he looked up at the building. Below the arched clock tower was a balcony, and the stonework around the windows was ornately sculpted in classical German style. But he wasn’t admiring the architecture. He was thinking about how easy it would be to get in there after dark, and find the records himself.
Easy enough. Fuck it. He hadn’t come all this way to be put off by a sadistic petty bureaucrat. He walked away, already putting together his plan in his head. It wouldn’t be the first government building he’d broken into.
But until dark, all he had on his hands was more time to kill. He couldn’t bear the thought of sitting it out in the hotel, and he didn’t feel like exploring the town much either. He walked back to where he’d parked the Mini, threw himself behind the wheel and punched the little car out through the traffic into the countryside. But if he’d thought that driving around aimlessly was going to help him get his mind off things, he knew right away that it was over-optimistic. As he drove, the road in front of him became the tunnel of his thoughts and he could feel despondency wrapping its arms around him. A weight of emotion settled heavy in his chest. Had he lost Ruth forever? Was this just going to fizzle out?
Up ahead on the winding country road, he saw a line of horse riders, four of them, moving in single file, and he instinctively slowed the car and edged out to the left to pass them without scaring their mounts. He glanced at them as he purred by in second gear. The string was led by two women on big hunters, followed by a teenage boy on a grey and a little girl of about nine bringing up the rear. She sat astride her sturdily-built pony as if it was the most treasured thing to her in the world.
The leader gave Ben a nod and mouthed a thank you as the Mini passed by. He waved back glumly, put his foot on the pedal and accelerated gently away.
Then, fifty yards up the road, he stopped the car.
He looked back in the mirror. Watched the easy ambling gait of the big hunter up front, the sway of the rider’s hips astride the saddle. Heard the clip-clop of horseshoes on tarmac.
The riders came closer, and he pretended to be searching for something in the glove box but was watching them all the way. As they trotted past the car, he stared again at the little girl.
Not at her. At what she was wearing. Zipped up tight to her neck was a little green fleece jacket with an equestrian logo on it.
His fingers were trembling a little as he took out his phone and scrolled up the picture of Ruth standing there looking cold and windswept on the library steps in St Peter’s Square in Manchester.
She was wearing the exact same type of fleece that the little girl was wearing. Same logo, same cut, same colour. He’d been too busy trying to make out her features to pay attention to the clothes. But now he realised that she was wearing exactly the kind of equestrian gear that the Ruth of his memories would have grown up wanting to wear.
With Ruth, it had been horses, horses, horses. What had started out as a fun activity for her at the age of four had quickly turned into a serious passion. By the age of seven, she’d been an accomplished junior rider with a whole wall of trophies and rosettes, and the dream she always talked about of becoming a champion show jumper had been looking more realistic with every new competition. The house had always been full of little riding boots and hats, bits of tack, horse pictures and books, hoof picks and all kinds of other equestrian paraphernalia. Those were the memories that made Ben smile.
Then his mind drifted to the ones that didn’t. The memory of coming home from North Africa as a family of three and knowing that it was his fault. Of his mother, her face a mask of agony as she lay sobbing on Ruth’s bed, clutching a little riding jacket as though Ruth was still inside it. Of the terrible months that had passed before his father had finally gathered up all the boots and riding hats, her tack and her saddle, and sealed them inside a packing case.
Ben returned to the present. Thought of the person Ruth was now. Whatever her life story had been, whatever the reason why she’d never tried to find her lost family, was there a small part of her that was still the Ruth he’d known? A part of her that still loved horses, wanted to be around them?
Further up the road was a little white sign on a post. He couldn’t make it out from that distance, but when the line of riders reached it they turned right up a track and out of sight.
He slipped the car into gear and followed. The sign at the side of the road bore a picture of a horse and the name of what appeared to be some kind of equestrian centre. Pulling up at the entrance to the track, he saw the riders pass through an open gate and up towards a large yard surrounded by stable-blocks. Behind the stables was an office with a car park, and he drove in and pulled up on the gravel next to a 4×4 hitched to a trailer.
Stepping out of the car, he looked around. He’d been in a hundred of these kinds of places with his sister. The smell of hay and straw, horse feed and manure filled his nostrils as he walked over towards the office. The two young women in boots and jodhpurs who were sitting at a desk over mugs of coffee and sharing a joke about something looked up at him as he stepped inside. One was about seventeen, stumpy with bad skin, and gazed at him through thick glasses. The other might have been a couple of years older, more self-assured, and gave him a smile. On her jacket was a name tag that said ‘Hannah’. She had the broad shoulders and slender waist of a serious rider. An instructor, he thought.
He showed them the picture on his phone and asked if they knew the person in it. Blank looks, an exchange of rapid German, and they shook their heads.
‘Can you tell me if there are any other stables or riding schools in this area?’
The stumpy one went on staring at him through her glasses, but Hannah smiled again and said there were four. Politely ignoring the seductive looks she was giving him, he jotted down the details.
‘Shame I can’t drive you there myself,’ she said. ‘I’m working. But we’re having a barbecue here tonight, if you fancy coming along.’
These German girls. He politely declined.
It took him two hours to drive around the countryside and find the first three places on his list. More horsey smells and sounds, more young women in riding gear. No sign of Ruth and nobody who seemed to know her. The peak of energy that had surged through him was beginning to wane again.
His spirits sank even more as he drove up to the last place on the list, eleven miles out of Offenburg, in the early afternoon. The establishment looked more like a country club than a riding school. The horses in the neatly-fenced paddocks were gleaming Arabs and thoroughbreds, and two little guys in uniforms jumped out to rake up the tyre tracks he’d left in the gravel.
He thought about driving off, then shrugged and slammed the door and wandered about the buildings. A talented young rider was cantering around the sand school with her feet out of the stirrups and her arms out like a plane. Grooms were leading nervy horses up and down the yard. Everything very slick, professional and expensive.
‘Can I help you?’ said a voice in German, cutting sharply across the stable-yard, not too friendly.
Ben turned to see a guy walking up to him who looked like a managerial type. Late forties, balding, gut and glasses and the angry red face of someone in a state of permanent belligerence.
‘Maybe you can.’ He showed the guy the picture on the phone. ‘Do you know her?’
The manager stared at it for a second, frowned and then glanced up at Ben. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m her brother,’ Ben said. It sounded weird to hear himself say it. br />
‘You’re her brother?’ the guy echoed doubtfully. ‘You know her?’
‘This is a members-only establishment,’ the guy said. ‘You are trespassing.’ He snapped his fingers.
Ten yards away in an open stable, a very large groom in a blue overall was standing up to his knees in soiled straw and piling it into a barrow with a pitchfork. He was well over six and a half feet tall, and it seemed that whatever time he didn’t spend mucking out horses, he spent pumping weights the size of truck tyres. At the sound of his manager’s snapping fingers he instantly jumped to attention and strode over, trailing bits of straw and clutching the pitchfork like a gladiator’s trident in his meaty fist. He stopped at his boss’ shoulder and grinned down at Ben. His hair was cropped in a buzz-cut and his face looked like it had been beaten out of Kevlar, with eyes so far apart it was impossible to focus on both at once.
‘You have thirty seconds to get the fuck out of here,’ the manager said. ‘Unless you want Johann to put his fork up your arse.’
Ben looked up at Johann and thought about how he’d go about breaking the guy in half. Violence was one option. Reasonable was another. He decided to go with reasonable.
‘Johann, maybe you know her?’ he said, and held up the phone for him to see.
Johann said nothing. The wide-set eyes darted at the picture, then back at Ben.
‘Now get out,’ the manager said with a smirk. ‘Johann, make sure he leaves.’
Ben slipped the phone back in his pocket, turned and headed back towards the car park with Johann’s muscular escort a pace behind him.
‘You don’t have to see me out,’ he told the big guy. ‘I’m not here to cause trouble. I was just looking for my sister, that’s all.’
Johann’s wide, flat face seemed to twitch, as though the effort of thinking was like turning over a big truck engine inside his head. Ben looked at him, and saw that behind the scowl were the eyes of a child.
When the giant spoke, the voice was deep and slow. ‘Your sister?’ he rumbled.