Passenger 13 (5 page)

Another door swung open at the far end of the office and a woman walked in. She was maybe thirty-six, thirty-seven. Tall and straight, tanned, dark-haired, wearing it in a loose ponytail. She was halfway to the desk and reaching out to pick up a file from a stack when she suddenly registered Ben’s presence in the room and froze, looking at him with wide eyes. ‘Who are you?’

‘I was looking for the manager,’ Ben said.

‘I’m Mrs Martínez, Mr Chapman’s personal assistant. I’m acting manager in his … his absence.’ Her voice was strong but the tightness in her throat threatened to overwhelm it at the mention of his name. She covered her emotion, cleared her throat and added firmly, ‘And you can’t come in here. Maybe you didn’t see the sign that says “staff only”?’

‘There’s nobody in reception.’

She rolled her eyes and tutted. ‘Jennifer. That damn temp’s always on a coffee break. I’ll buzz Rachel. She’ll take your booking.’

‘I’m not interested in making a booking.’

‘Right. You want flying lessons? Then you need to see Phil in the blue building behind the hangar area.’

Ben shook his head. ‘I didn’t come here for lessons either.’

She cocked her head to one side and put her hands on her hips. ‘Then may I ask what it is you do want?’

‘I have some questions about your late employer, Nick Chapman. I won’t take up much of your time.’

The PA let out a sigh. ‘I thought you media people were all gone now. Haven’t you had enough?’

Ben was already tired of playing games. He came straight out with the truth, as simple as he could make it. ‘I’m not a reporter. My name’s Ben Hope. I was a friend of Nick’s and I’ve come here to find out what really happened to him.’

Mrs Martínez flinched noticeably at his words. She narrowed her eyes, looking hard at him, seeming to scrutinise every detail of his face. After a long beat she replied slowly and carefully, ‘If you’d been watching the news, you’d know what happened.’

‘I don’t always believe the news,’ Ben said.

‘Listen, everyone here is very upset. We really don’t want to be pestered right now. The press have been flocking around here like goddamned vultures every day.’

‘Just a couple of questions and I’ll be gone.’

‘Please,’ she said. ‘Nobody here wants to answer any questions. Just go away. Leave me alone, okay?’ She considered a moment, then added, ‘I mean, leave us all alone.’ Before she could stop it, tears had welled up in her eyes and were rolling down her face. She wiped them away.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ Ben said. ‘I’m very sorry.’ There was a stack of headed compliment slips on a little stand on the desk next to a computer terminal. He grabbed one and picked up a pen that was lying nearby. ‘This is my number,’ he said, writing. ‘Call me if you change your mind.’

Back out in the reception area was a young blonde in a short skirt whom Ben took to be Jennifer, the temp. She was pretty, with blue eyes and an elfin quality about her. She threw Ben a glance, smiled coyly and busied herself arranging some flowers in a vase as he headed for the exit. He didn’t make a big deal of noticing it, but he was aware of the way she watched him through the glass all the way back to his Jeep, the elfin look gone, replaced with an inscrutable expression that Ben couldn’t quite fathom.

CHAPTER TEN

Ben headed back down south towards George Town, on the road running parallel to Seven Mile Beach with the sweep of white sands and the spectacular view across the West Bay to his right. Watching the sun sink closer towards the sea and bathe the whole island in a shimmering copper haze, he could understand what had brought his old friend to this idyllic place.

A couple of miles from the Cayman Islands Charter office, a black SUV was parked in a lay-by off a long empty straight. Ben sped past, then saw in his mirror that the black car was indicating to pull out behind him.

Its driver wasn’t hanging about. By the time the vehicle was filling his rear-view mirror, Ben had started paying more attention to it. A Chevy Blazer four-wheel-drive, big and bulky, dark-tinted windows, bull bars and extra driving lamps on the front. It was sticking too close to his tail. He eased off on the gas, letting the Jeep slow to just over fifty, expecting the Blazer to pass him.

It didn’t. Instead it matched his speed, still sticking much too close. Ben slowed the Jeep down to a crawl. The Blazer slowed down too. Ben hit the gas and roared the Jeep up to seventy. The Blazer followed suit, making no attempt to hide the fact that it was deliberately tailing him.

Ben remembered what Drummond’s landlady had said about her tenant taking off with some men in a big black car.
Interesting
, he thought, and hit the brakes and slewed hard over to the dusty verge.

It probably wasn’t what a detective would have done. But then, Ben didn’t pretend to be a detective.

He climbed out of the Jeep. The Blazer had stopped twenty yards behind, just sitting there. Ben walked up the verge towards it. The vehicle’s black bonnet was filmed over with dust. Behind the tinted windscreen he could see two men in the front seats. Their eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, but they were fixed right on him.

‘Can I help you?’ Ben said, in a tone that wasn’t friendly, wasn’t hostile.

The men kept staring at him. Neither moved until he was just a few feet from the front of the Blazer – then the driver slammed it into drive, pulled aggressively back out into the road and went speeding off in a cloud of dust.

Ben watched it go, then started walking back towards the Jeep.

Definitely interesting.

* * *

Ben drove back through the falling dusk to the hotel, showered, opened up his holdall and changed into a fresh black T-shirt and black jeans. He never had been too imaginative when it came to his wardrobe. He slipped his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans, then wandered down to the bar and ordered a steak with a green salad and a glass of red wine. He took his meal outside onto the patio and sat watching the colours of the sunset, listened to the breakers crashing in against the rocks.

All his life, he’d loved the sea. The sound relaxed him, helped him think. Taking the folded postcard from his wallet, he spent a while staring at Nick Chapman’s address near Rum Point. It was time to make another visit, one that Ben’s instincts told him was best kept nocturnal. He took his time over a second glass of wine. By now the ocean was dark, just the distant white crests of the waves visible under the moon.

It was sometime after ten when he went up to his room, grabbed his leather jacket and headed out into the night, twirling the Jeep keys thoughtfully around his finger. The warmth of the day was cooling fast in the ocean breeze, and he shrugged on the jacket, wincing a little at the pull on his stitches.

Ben was still a few yards from the Jeep when the group of men appeared out of the shadows and quickly converged on him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There were four of them, all over six feet, all built on a fairly grand scale – somewhere between eleven and twelve hundred pounds of tattooed muscle and lard ambling up towards him. And judging by the lethal assortment of hardware they’d brought along to play with, it wasn’t to ask the time.

The four stopped, forming a semi-circle cutting Ben off from his Jeep. Nobody spoke. The only sound was the rhythmic meaty thwack as one of them slapped the thick of his aluminium baseball bat against his palm. One of his companions was casually swinging a bolo knife. Maybe fourteen inches of black leaf-shaped blade, just this side of a machete, and Ben guessed every one of those inches was shaving sharp. With a rattling
chink-chink
, another of the men unravelled a length of heavy steel chain from his fist.

The biggest of the men, standing around six-five in denim and biker boots, seemed to be the leader. In the hierarchy of moronic bruisers, size was always the dominant factor. The survival knife stuck crossways in his belt was some cheap mail-order job with a sawback blade and knuckleduster hilt. His head was shaved and gleaming under the moonlight. A line of tattooed teardrops ran down his cheek from his right eye, disappearing into the thick black beard that hung halfway down his chest, fashioned into twin spikes, rigid with hairspray. Going for the demonic look, Ben guessed.

‘You guys look like you’re auditioning for a part,’ he said. ‘Or did you escape from a freak show somewhere?’

The black beard opened in a grin, showing a glint of a gold tooth. ‘We’re the reception committee, motherfucker,’ he said in a voice that was about half an octave lower than was human.

‘I get it,’ Ben said. ‘You’re what they call the frighteners.’ He smiled. ‘Here to intimidate me.’

‘Smart guy.’

‘I catch on fast. So when does the frightening part begin? I have to be somewhere.’

The baseball bat kept on slap-slapping. The bearded guy fingered the hilt of his survival knife. ‘How do you feel about wiping someone else’s ass, little man?’

‘Excuse me?’ Ben said, genuinely intrigued.

‘See, most folks would find the idea of wiping someone else’s ass is pretty fuckin’ repellent, no?’

The guy waited for Ben to comment. When he realised Ben wasn’t going to, he went on in his bass rumble. ‘Say you had to wipe asses for a livin’, like if you was carin’ for old folks or somethin’. Sure, to start with, every time you had to wipe an ass you’d feel like pukin’ afterwards. Or maybe even while you was doin’ it. But after a while, you’d get used to that shit. Then wipin’ some old fucker’s ass wouldn’t seem like nuthin’. You could wipe a hundred asses before breakfast. Now, see the point I’m makin’ …’

Ben had been waiting for the point.

‘The point I’m makin’ is that in my line of work, it ain’t wipin’ asses. It’s spillin’ blood. You get me? And I’ve been doin’ this shit so long I can’t even remember a time when spatterin’ some fucker’s blood all over the sidewalk made me feel one way or the other. This is what I do. You hear what I’m sayin’, motherfucker? Talking about you. You’re gonna get fucked up permanent, right here, right now.’

Ben’s hand went slowly to his jeans pocket. He took out his cigarettes and lighter. Clanged open his Zippo and lit up. Through a cloud of smoke he said, ‘Well, Beard, that was a pretty good speech. You certainly have a gift for metaphor. Out of curiosity, did you have to look up the word “repellent”?’

Beard’s cocky grin twisted into a scowl and he slipped his fingers inside the knuckleduster hilt of his knife. The slap-slapping behind him stopped.

‘Listen to this asshole,’ muttered the one with the chain.

‘I don’t get to hear speeches like that very often,’ Ben said. ‘In my line of work we don’t generally have time for them.’

‘Your line of work,’ Beard repeated, just a little uncertainly. The grin returned, but there was a touch of nervousness to it now.

‘I appreciate you guys have to make a living too,’ Ben said. ‘But this is one occupational hazard you don’t want to have to deal with. So I think you ought to turn around and head back to the bar you just came from, call your boss and tell him he shouldn’t send you on jobs where you’re so badly out of your depth.’

Two seconds of silence. Then the survival knife was out of Beard’s belt and swinging through the air.

Here we go
, Ben thought. The downward slash. Hallmark of the truly amateurish knife fighter, the guy who’s learned all he knows from third-rate movies, has got lucky once or twice while dealing with people even more clueless than him, and is confirmed in his vision of himself as a formidable urban warrior. It would have been much too easy to twist the knife out of Beard’s hand, break three of his fingers in the loop of the hilt and then embed the thick blade right in the top of his skull.

Ben didn’t do that. Instead he twisted it out of Beard’s hand, broke three fingers in the loop of the hilt, used Beard’s ears as handles to drive his face down into his rising knee and then sent the blade whirling with a meaty
thunk
deep into the right thigh of the guy who was coming up flailing the chain.

With a scream that drowned out Beard’s, the man let go of the chain and clapped his hands in a gibbering panic to where the knuckleduster hilt was protruding from his leg. The chain’s momentum carried it hissing though the air a couple of feet, until it connected with the face of his associate with the bolo knife.

Hard. Ben heard the crack of bone over the thwack of the impact. The bolo dropped to the ground as its owner keeled over like a felled tree, clutching at his shattered nose and cheekbone, either too shocked to make a sound or choked by the broken bits of teeth in his throat.

The fight had lasted about three seconds so far. Ben stepped over the writhing, groaning Beard towards the last of the attackers who was still standing. The guy swung his baseball bat a couple of times, but his heart wasn’t in it. ‘Fuck,’ he muttered in a hollow voice, then turned and ran like hell, still clutching the bat. Ben watched him go. He was a much better sprinter than he was a fighter.

Taking a draw on his cigarette, Ben walked over to Bolo and stamped on his face, twice. A few feet away, his friend Mr Chain was making a high-pitched agonised keening as he tried to yank the knife blade out of his thigh. It had missed the femoral artery by an inch or two but there was still a lot of blood spilling across the concrete. Ben decided he’d had enough of the guy’s noise, and shut him up with a kick to the head that sent him slumping over sideways and bounced his skull off the ground.