The Armada Legacy (7 page)

Lynch frowned. ‘Who
are
you?’

‘I told you who I am. I’m a friend of Brooke Marcel who was in that car.’

‘No, I mean, who are you really? You’ve got experience at this kind of thing, haven’t you?’

‘More than your friend there, for sure,’ Ben said, with a dismissive gesture at the distant figure of Hanratty, who was marching back over to the Land Rovers and barking orders at the forensic team.

Ben had had enough of this place. He was about to turn back towards the car, but the expression in Lynch’s eyes made him hesitate. He slipped his wallet and a ballpoint from his inside pocket and pulled out one of his business cards, slightly crumpled. It bore the name Le Val Tactical Training Centre in bold letters, with his name below. For the sake of appearances, it showed his former military rank – something Ben had never liked but which Jeff Dekker had persuaded him would impress clients.

Ben scribbled his mobile number on the back of the card and handed it to Lynch. ‘The web address is there too, if you want to check me out,’ he told her. ‘It’ll give you an idea of my background and what I do.’ In fact, the information about him on the website had been trimmed and edited down to the barest possible minimum. Little of what he’d done in his life, both during and since his military days, could be stuck up online for all to see.

But the card alone was enough. Lynch glanced at it and raised an eyebrow. ‘All right, I’m impressed. Do I call you Major Hope?’

‘It’s just Ben now,’ he said.

‘So what did you mean when you said you came here to help, Ben?’

‘I came here to find Brooke. That’s what I’m going to do.’

‘This is a police investigation. We don’t normally invite civilians to come on board.’

‘I didn’t ask to be invited. I’ll do this with you or without you.’

‘I have to caution you to stay out of it. For your own sake as well as hers, and that of the other victims.’

‘Of course. The last thing you need is a crazy guy like me messing the whole thing up.’

Lynch looked at him. ‘I understand that this a very difficult time for you. You’re upset and frightened. The police have a victim support counselling service …’

‘What frightens me the most is that prick Hanratty,’ Ben said.

‘I’m serious,’ she warned. ‘You can’t go meddling in this on your own. I don’t want to have to arrest you.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You don’t.’

Her eyes narrowed for an instant as she sensed the quiet menace in his voice. Then she seemed to soften. ‘Look. There’s nothing you can do here.’

‘You’re still waiting for the ransom demand, correct?’ he said after a pause.

Lynch hesitated to reply. ‘There has been no contact as yet, no. They’re still up at Carrick Manor.’

‘Carrick Manor?’

‘That’s where the party was supposed to take place,’ Amal put in. ‘The big house.’

‘Forsyte’s land base during the salvage project,’ Lynch said, ‘while he wasn’t supervising the operation from on board his ship. They’re expecting the ransom demand call either to come through there, or to the company’s main offices in Southampton.’

Ben pointed past Lynch’s shoulder. ‘Now, that cordoned area on the left side of the road. What’s that?’

Lynch didn’t need to look round to know which area he was talking about. She pursed her lips. ‘You think I can’t see what you’re doing, trying to prise information out of me? I told you, you can’t get invol—’

‘It’s where the body of the driver, Lander, was found, isn’t it?’ Ben cut across her.

She rolled her eyes, nodded reluctantly.

‘Thirty yards back from the crash site,’ Ben said. ‘Ideas?’

‘You’re pretty damn persistent, aren’t you, Mr Hope?’

‘Just Ben. And yes, I can be. Tell me something, Kay. Lander’s body. Apart from the gunshots, what other injuries did he have?’

She looked at him.

‘Crush injuries, for instance? Like he’d been run over?’

‘Y-yes,’ she blurted, her eyes opening wider. ‘There were tyre marks on the body that matched the tread pattern of the Jaguar. But how … ?’

‘Indicating that the car was driven over the top of him after he’d been shot. I thought so. And I’m guessing that there are traces of paint on the front right wing of the car. White or blue?’

‘White,’ Lynch said, staring at him.

Ben nodded. ‘So it was blue before. It was an overspray,’ he explained. ‘Figures.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Just from looking around,’ he said. ‘This is how I see it. The car was coming along this road when it was overtaken and forced to stop by a white van. A Ford Transit, maybe, or a Fiat Ducato, something like that, bought cheap and repainted in a hurry.’ His eyes were fixed on the scene, as if he were watching the events unfold in front of him in real time. ‘Lander, the driver, gets out of the Jaguar to have it out with the van’s occupants, who have already stepped out of their vehicle. I’d say two of them, at least. He’s got no idea of their intentions, not until it’s too late. They open fire on him from near the van, shooting in this direction. Just a short burst, three rounds apiece. The empty cases are ejected into the left-side verge.’

‘We found half a dozen of them there,’ Lynch muttered.

‘Lander goes down at the side of the road. Brooke, Forsyte and his PA must have seen it all happen right in front of them. It’s at this point that someone inside the Jaguar takes charge of the situation and gets behind the wheel.’

‘That’s more or less what we figured out, too,’ Lynch said, still stupefied but struggling to hide it. ‘One of them tried to make a break for it. Probably Forsyte. That’s what the DI says, at any rate.’

Ben was certain it had been Brooke. He knew the way she responded in a tight spot, and this was exactly what she’d have done here. The stab of proud admiration he felt was quickly swallowed up by a fresh surge of grief and anxiety. He reined in his emotions and pressed on.

‘Now whoever’s taken the wheel of the Jaguar needs to get out of there by the most direct route. They’ve got the van in front of them partially blocking the way, and Lander’s body in between. But there’s no other way round, no choice but to aim straight ahead. That’s what I’d have done. The car goes right over Lander’s body and rams into the left wing of the van from an angle, shunting it far enough aside to the right to create a gap. Hence the traces of white paint on the car’s wing, and the sideways tyre marks on the road. The gunmen must have had to jump out of the way as the Jaguar forced its way through. But as the car accelerates up the road, they open fire on it. Now they’re shooting in the opposite direction and the empty cases are flying this way, bouncing off the tarmac into the right-side verge. There’ll be a lot more there besides the one I found. They take out the tyres and the car loses control.’

Lynch finished for him. ‘The victims are moved out of the car and transferred into the van, leaving Lander’s body behind. That pretty much sums it up. Well, you’ve certainly put this together, haven’t you?’

‘You’d have to confirm it with your genius friend Hanratty,’ Ben said. ‘But that’s how I see it happening.’

‘And now what?’ Amal said restlessly. ‘What’s being done?’

‘All that can be done,’ Lynch told him. ‘You need to believe that. And you,’ she said, facing Ben, ‘need to go home, sit tight and get some rest.’

Ben shook his head. ‘What I need is to be kept informed. I can’t be left on the outside. If there are developments I don’t want to be seeing them on the TV along with the rest of the public half a day later.’

Lynch said nothing.

‘Will you do that for me, Kay? Please. I’m not asking for a lot.’

‘Hanratty—’

‘Doesn’t need to know. He’s been ignorant all his life. A little more can’t hurt him.’

Lynch held up Ben’s business card. ‘It’s this tactical stuff that concerns me. You’re not going to do anything silly, are you?’

‘If I promise not to do anything silly, will you help me?’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ Lynch replied after a beat.

Chapter Ten

‘So where to now?’ Amal asked, slumping heavily into the passenger seat.

‘Castlebane Country Club,’ Ben replied. He twisted the key in the ignition. The BMW’s engine roared into life, the tyres rasped and the car reversed hard down the road until he stamped on the brake and slewed round to face the direction they’d come from.

Ben didn’t need to ask Amal the way. He’d already studied the map and found the same winding coastal route the Jaguar had taken the night before – besides which, he had precious little trust in his companion’s navigational skills. He glanced in the rear-view mirror at the retreating figure of Kay Lynch, who was walking back to rejoin Hanratty, then put his foot down.

Amal was getting the hang of Ben’s driving by now. He gripped his door handle tightly, braced himself for the acceleration and closed his eyes as they hurtled into the first set of bends.

Not long afterwards, the BMW was one of the steady procession of vehicles entering the country club’s illuminated gateway and filling up the car park. The drizzle had finally petered out and the clouds were breaking up to reveal a clear and starry sky. There were no police vehicles anywhere to be seen outside the country club, but then Ben hardly expected any. He looked at his watch and saw that it had taken twelve minutes to cover the distance between here and the scene of the kidnapping. Assuming that Wally Lander had made similar time in the Jaguar, that pretty much tallied with the official estimate of when the attack had taken place.

It was now quarter to eight. Brooke had been missing for twenty-one hours and forty minutes.

With Amal silently in tow he walked up to the building, climbed the steps and pushed through the heavy door into the foyer.

Ben took in his surroundings. The carpet was red and lush. Faux olde-worlde decor designed to impress the nouveau-riche golfing and tennis crowd. Glossy oak panelling. Display cabinets filled with polished silver trophies. Whirring overhead fans that mimicked the colonial era. Artificial foliage spilling out from reproduction antique urns. A stream of mostly middle-aged and elderly couples was filtering into the foyer behind him, heading towards the busy restaurant area he could see through an open doorway to the right of the reception desk and being greeted by a solemn-looking maitre d’. It was clearly business as usual at the Castlebane Country Club. The events of the night before seemed to have left barely a ripple.

The smell of food from the restaurant reached Ben’s nostrils; it occurred to him that he’d eaten nothing at all since leaving France. He shoved the thought to the back of his mind and wandered deeper inside the foyer. A young woman looked up at him with a frown from behind the reception desk. He glanced at the arriving diners in their suits and ties and dresses and pearls, then at Amal in his silk polo-neck and expensive designer coat. Catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror, he saw an unshaven and tousle-haired character in a scuffed old leather jacket, faded denim shirt, well-worn jeans and combat boots who didn’t exactly fit with the place’s dress code. That was tough shit. He returned the woman’s gaze with a cold glare and she averted her eyes.

‘I’m pretty sure that’s where we were last night,’ Amal whispered, pointing at a gleaming double doorway off to the left. ‘It’s a ballroom, or something. I don’t remember it so well.’

Then it was time to refresh Amal’s memory, Ben thought. He headed for the doorway. The woman at reception threw him another glance, but nobody tried to stop him. The doors glided open. Ben walked through, Amal followed, and they found themselves inside a vast room, empty except for the stacks of tables and velvet-backed chairs that lined the far wall.

‘This is it,’ Amal said, gazing around, slowly remembering. ‘At least, I think it is. It all looks so different.’

‘Is it or isn’t it?’ Ben said testily. Impatience flared up inside him for a moment, then subsided as he told himself to go easy. Amal was just as upset as he was.

‘It is, definitely. But they’ve cleared everything away. It’s weird, as if none of these things had happened. Shouldn’t the police have made them keep the place the way it was? For evidence, or whatever?’

‘Hanratty,’ Ben grunted. ‘Never mind him for now.’

‘It’s coming back to me,’ Amal muttered, narrowing his eyes to slits and cocking his head to one side as though that would help him visualise the scene more clearly. He turned to motion at a large expanse of empty floor in the corner nearest the door. ‘That’s where the bar was.’ He grimaced as if to say,
the less said about that the better
. ‘Over there was a curtain, with all the exhibits and stuff behind it. To the left of it was the stage, with a speaking podium and a big screen. That’s where Forsyte and that other guy gave their speeches.’

‘What other guy was that?’

‘One of the company employees. I only got a quick glimpse of him when I turned round at some point to see where Brooke was.’

‘This is while you were sitting at the bar?’

Amal sighed and nodded.

‘With your back to the room.’

Amal sighed and nodded again. ‘I remember … I remember that he was a younger guy than Forsyte. Quite small, sandy hair. Forsyte introduced him as … as some kind of manager. Dive team manager, something like that. His name was … I don’t know. Baxter? Baker?’

‘Butler,’ Ben said, remembering the name from the Neptune Marine Exploration website. ‘Simon Butler. But I’m not so interested in him right now. Take a minute, look around and see if anything else jogs your memory. Anything at all that might have seemed unusual at the time, or maybe has struck you since as odd. Anyone hanging around Forsyte, for example, or acting out of the ordinary.’ As he said it, he was painfully aware that the kind of things a trained eye could pick out would go quite unnoticed by an ordinary observer. Especially one who’d made a point of hitting the bar.

Amal looked anxiously around him for a few moments. ‘I don’t know. The place was full of people. Journalists firing questions, photographers everywhere. I’ve never been to anything like that before. I wouldn’t know what was strange and what wasn’t. Anyway,’ he admitted miserably, ‘I wasn’t even paying a lot of attention. I was too busy drowning my pathetic little sorrows in bloody gin and tonic. And Brooke – poor Brooke – what’s happened to her? It’s all my fault …’ He ran quaking fingers through his hair, dug the balls of his thumbs into his eyes. His breathing was ragged, as though he was about to burst into tears.