The Forgotten Holocaust (Ben Hope, Book 10) (7 page)

‘Healy, you couldn’t find your own arsehole in the dark,’ Ben said. ‘But maybe you’ll be able to find the hospital exit. Or do I have to call the matron to escort you out?’

The detectives stood up. Healy’s cheeks were flushed red and Nash was looking at the floor. Healy said something about needing to speak to Ben again as the inquiry progressed.

Ben said nothing more to them. Healy pulled open a gap in the screen around the bed, and through it Ben watched them file out of the ward.

He sat for a while, thinking about Kristen. It was only now that he was left alone that the reality of her death properly sank in. He gritted his teeth tightly at the thought of what those men had done to her. Kept picturing her lying there with blood oozing from the stab wounds all over her body. Bloody holes where her blue-grey eyes had been. Her throat gashed wide open, windpipe severed. Blood pooling on the stones, seeping into the ground.

He couldn’t bear it any longer.

He called for the nurse.

Fifteen minutes later, he was dressed and ready to check himself out of the hospital, despite Dr Prendergast’s protests that they should keep him under observation for at least twenty-hour hours. ‘If I drop dead of a brain haemorrhage in the hospital car park, you can tell me you told me so,’ he said to Dr Prendergast.

In a bathroom off the ward, he peeled the dressing away from his brow and quickly inspected the stitched-up gash under the hairline.

He’d live.

‘Fuck it,’ he said to the mirror. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Ben didn’t return to the cottage for a few hours. The bus he took back from the hospital wound its unhurried way back through several villages and finally dropped him on the main road, quarter of a mile from Pebble Beach. From there, avoiding the guesthouse, he cut across a patch of wasteground and down a rocky slope that joined the coastal path where it curved around the headland. A short way further on was a little cove he’d discovered years ago. It was a place he knew he’d be alone, and solitude was what he needed.

He found a place to sit among a cluster of rocks overhanging the water, and took out his cigarettes. He lit one mechanically, shielding the Zippo flame from the wind with a cupped hand. He stared out to sea, watched the hissing foam boil around the foot of the rocks. The cigarette didn’t taste of anything much. He plucked it from his lips and tossed it into the surf where it fizzed briefly and then was gone.

He barely noticed the grey swell. All he could see was the choice that now lay in front of him.

It was a simple matter of two options. Left, or right. Black, or white.

The first option was to step back, yield to the police and trust them to deal with this. He’d meet with Kristen’s family, offer condolences and support. He’d hang around here for as long as necessary, do whatever he could to assist the authorities, but remain firmly in the background. He could be passive, patient and calm. Take a back seat and stay there.

But as he sat there, he knew in his heart that could never happen. He’d never been passive in his life, let alone supportive towards the authorities – two ingrained habits that right now didn’t seem a good time to start trying to break. That led him to the second option.

He thought again about Kristen, replayed one more time in his mind the brief period they’d spent together, and the way it had ended. He’d barely known her, and yet he couldn’t have felt the responsibility more heavily. Maybe it was because he felt so powerless to fix other things in his life that this pressed on him so much. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t care to ponder the reasons too closely. He just knew what felt right to him. In fact, he realised, there never had been a choice. This had to be finished his way, the way he’d always done things. The only way he really knew. No matter how hard he tried to stay off that road, it kept calling him back. Maybe it always would.

From the cove, he walked back along the beach. It was after lunchtime but he wasn’t hungry. He passed his cottage at a distance and barely glanced at it. He passed the crime scene, saw the police tape flapping in the wind and the Garda Land Rover parked on the shingle. Nearby, a pair of chunky, unfit-looking cops were scratching slowly about for whatever clues bare rocks could yield up. He had no doubt that pretty soon, they’d retire empty-handed to their vehicle and go trundling back to the comfort of the police canteen for their pie and chips.

Ben walked on towards the guesthouse. Inside, he found the reception desk unoccupied. While nobody was about, he grabbed the register and flipped it around on the desk to check for the names of the Belgian guests Healy had said had witnessed the attack. They weren’t hard to find. Monsieur and Madame Goudier had been staying for most of the week and were scheduled to leave tomorrow.

‘Room five,’ Ben said to himself as he headed for the stairs. Before he got there, what had once been the door to his office, now with a sign that said ‘STAFF ONLY’, swung open and Mrs Henry appeared in the passage. Her eyes were red and puffy. She stopped dead when she saw him, took one look at his battered face and instantly broke out blubbering.

I don’t need this now
, Ben thought as the tears flowed and the words flowed faster.

‘That poor girl,’ Mrs Henry repeated over and over, though Ben got the impression that she was generally more concerned with the impact this would have on bookings. The media hadn’t stopped pestering her all morning, she complained, and they were whipping up a storm that their poor fragile business could surely never weather. What kind of reputation would they have now that it wasn’t safe to walk the beach with all these maniacs and killers lurking about the place? If things got any worse, Bryan might have to give up his golf club membership. It would be the end of him.

Ben briefly expressed his sympathies for Bryan’s imperilled sporting career. He pointed up the stairs. ‘Which is room five?’

‘That’d be the Goodyears’,’ Mrs Henry sniffed, mopping the corner of her eye with another tissue. ‘They’re in the conservatory, finishing their lunch. Though they could hardly eat a thing, poor souls, after the shock they’ve had.’ It didn’t seem to occur to her to ask why Ben wanted to speak to them, and he didn’t feel the need to explain. As quickly as he could, he detached himself from her and headed for the conservatory.

A gloomy pall seemed to have descended on the guesthouse, and the few guests having lunch in the conservatory were eating quietly, just a murmur of occasional conversation and the clinking of cutlery. Ben spotted the middle-aged couple from the unmistakably European way they were dressed. They were both lean, as if they did a lot of sports or hiking. The man’s hair was silvery and swept back from his high forehead, while his wife’s was an expensively coiffured bottle-blonde. They were sitting in silence at a table in the corner, drinking an after-lunch pot of coffee. Even at a distance, they looked obviously upset and shaken by the horror of what they’d witnessed yesterday. They didn’t notice Ben walk up to them.

‘Monsieur and Madame Goudier?’ he said.

They looked up at him, startled. ‘I am Bernard Goudier,’ the man said in accented English. ‘This is my wife Joelle. And you are …?’

‘Hope, Ben Hope. I’m sorry to interrupt your coffee,’ Ben said, switching to French. In the amazed silence, he motioned at the empty chair at their table. ‘May I join you for a moment? This won’t take long.’

‘What won’t take long?’

‘I’d like to talk to you about yesterday,’ Ben said. ‘A few questions, and I’ll leave you in peace.’

The Goudiers both stared, too taken aback to say no as he pulled out the empty chair and sat down. ‘You’re not from the police,’ Joelle Goudier said. She had perfect teeth and smelled of Chanel.

‘No, I’m the man you witnessed trying to stop the attack.’

‘I see you were hurt,’ Bernard Goudier said, glancing at Ben’s cut.

‘I’ll survive. But as you might have noticed, I didn’t get to see all that happened. I’m just trying to flesh out the picture.’

The Belgian gave a dry smile. ‘Is it normal in Ireland for civilians to conduct their own inquiry?’

‘It’s not normal for a young woman to be murdered on this beach, either. You’re the only witnesses. Please. Is there anything else you can remember about the incident?’

‘We told the police everything,’ said Joelle Goudier. ‘Bernard and I had spent the afternoon walking and we were returning towards the guesthouse when we heard an engine revving loudly, and turned to see a big, black car—’

‘A Range Rover V6 Sport,’ her husband filled in for her.

‘—veer off the road and drive very fast towards the beach. We soon realised who they were chasing. The poor woman began to run as they got out of the car and chased her. She dropped the bag she was carrying, and one of the attackers picked it up. For a moment I thought that would be the end, that they would leave her alone now that they had stolen from her. But no, they continued chasing her. Then we saw you come to help her. You were very brave, Monsieur.’

‘I have an interest in birdwatching,’ Bernard Goudier explained, ‘and I’d been hoping to get a close sighting of a sandwich tern that afternoon, as they’re around at this time of year. I use excellent binoculars, Zeiss Victory HT ten-by-fifties, which is why, even though the sun was setting, I had a very good view of the man who took out the knife.’

‘Was it the one in the green hooded top, or the one in the navy jacket?’ Ben asked.

‘Jacket. I thought he looked like a soldier. And it was a military-issue knife.’

Ben looked at him. ‘May I ask how you would know that?’

‘It happens that another of my interests is collecting militaria,’ Goudier said. ‘Insignia, medals, also items such as bayonets and knives. The weapon used was a United States Marine Corps fighting and utility knife. Seven-inch blackened blade, clip point, leather handle.’

‘A Ka-Bar,’ Ben said, and the Belgian nodded. ‘You told the police these details?’ Ben asked him.

‘Naturally,’ Goudier said. ‘Anyhow, when the man produced the weapon, the woman was in extreme terror and tried to get away from him. That was when she disappeared out of my sight, behind a large rock. The man in the navy jacket stepped after her with the knife in his hand. He seemed very calm, deliberate. I soon lost sight of him too, but I could see the other man, the one in green, watching. I knew what was happening. It was sickening. The man was smiling.’

‘Smiling,’ Ben said, his fists tightening.

‘As if he was enjoying the spectacle of the woman being butchered. As if it was just an amusing game for them. And I could do nothing but watch. I was so shocked that I was simply paralysed for several moments.’

Goudier looked as if he could spit into his coffee. ‘Then the man in the navy jacket reappeared. He still looked very calm, like someone who does this every day. He began to walk towards where you were lying unconscious, and I knew that his intention was to kill you too, in cold blood. That was when I regained my wits. I had to do something, so I started running towards them, waving my arms like a lunatic and shouting at the top of my voice. The men saw me and ran back to their car.’

‘Then I have you to thank for saving my life,’ Ben said. ‘But you risked your own. You might have regretted it.’

‘What I regret is that I didn’t act sooner,’ Goudier said. ‘I won’t ever forget the look on that poor girl’s face.’

Joelle Goudier reached across and clutched her husband’s hand. ‘Then we called the police,’ she said. ‘But of course it was too late. What a terrible, horrible thing to happen.’

‘And I apologise to you both for making you relive it,’ Ben said, getting up.

‘Can we buy you a drink, Monsieur Hope?’ Bernard Goudier asked.

‘No, thanks. Have a safe journey home.’

As Ben walked back along the beach, the wind blew more dark clouds in from the sea and the gusting curtains of rain soaked him to the core. He didn’t try to hurry out of the weather. He was too busy thinking about the knife.

Bernard Goudier seemed to be a man who paid attention to details. The exact type of Range Rover. The precise model and magnification of Zeiss optics. Maybe he was a little anal-retentive. But maybe that wasn’t always a bad thing. In this case, it meant Ben could be fairly certain the Belgian was being accurate when he’d said that the killing tool had been a USMC Ka-Bar.

Which might possibly be a significant detail. It was a weapon Ben had come across many times, and personally used on several occasions to do things he didn’t really want to remember. Light and handy at just over a pound in weight, with a murderous seven-inch Bowie-style blade and grippy handle made of stacked, hard-lacquered leather washers, the American-made knife had been in military service since World War II. Along with the British Fairbairn-Sykes commando dagger, it was one of the most famous and recognisable pieces of edged weaponry of all time, used in every modern American war from Vietnam to Iraq.

Assuming that Detective Inspector Healy had the wits to understand what Goudier had told him, the cop was most likely supposing that a type of weapon so easily available from a thousand mail-order outfits to anybody over eighteen wasn’t a key indicator in this case. Ben could see two problems with that:

One, Healy’s stamping ground was a place with the lowest violent crime rate in the whole of the British Isles.

Two, the guy was an idiot.

An
inexperienced
idiot, who’d probably never dealt with a single stabbing before and wouldn’t stop to think that the vast majority of knives used in crime were kitchen knives. Ubiquitous, cheap to obtain, not a big deal to throw away after the dirty was done.

The Ka-Bar, on the other hand, was an expensive and sought-after specialist tool. Which instantly set this case apart. No low-end thug would contemplate kitting themselves out with such a high-end item to butcher somebody, only to have to chuck it away afterwards. But a trained killer, someone used to handling such weapons and proficient in their use … that person might.

Ben was building a profile in his mind. A profile of two men who’d done this kind of work before and knew the kind of gear that suited them for the job. Men who had no problem taking the risk of carrying a piece of concealed military hardware about with them in public. Who’d come through an extensive and rigorous training, possibly several years long over the course of a military career – and not at the spit-and-polish, square-bashing level of a simple squaddie either. Which meant that, in the darker corners of the civilian world where they could find employment, their deadly skills wouldn’t come cheap.

No matter how much they enjoyed using them.

Now the question was where the money came from, and why. Who was financing these guys? Someone with contacts and resources, who also had some reason to feel threatened by whatever it was that Kristen Hall had dug up in the course of her research travels in Ireland. The wrong kind of knowledge had killed more people than bullets. There was no question in Ben’s mind that Kristen had been one of that kind of casualty.

Knowledge of what? Find the answer, reveal the motive. Find the motive, and the money trail would lead right back to source.

Only one problem there. Ben had nothing to go on.

By the time he reached the cottage, he was drenched and his head had begun to ache badly again now that the last dose of painkillers he’d taken at the hospital was wearing off. He felt suddenly weak, almost despairing. Something had to take the edge off. Something.

The whisky bottle and tumbler stood on the dresser where he’d left them yesterday evening. Before he’d even thought about drying himself off and getting out of his damp clothes, he impulsively made a beeline for the booze. The bottle was empty, but there was still a couple of inches in the tumbler.

He reached out to snatch it up – then stopped as the realisation hit him, full force, that this was the same glass of whisky he’d been about to gulp down at the very moment Kristen was being attacked. He drew his hand back and stood for a moment staring at the tumbler.

What the hell are you doing?

He reached out again, picked the glass up together with the empty bottle and marched into the kitchen. He tossed the bottle in the recycling bin, then resolutely poured the contents of the glass down the sink. Then he marched back into the other room, grabbed the box containing the rest of his whisky stash and carried it, jinking and clinking, to the kitchen sink. He dumped it heavily on the draining board. Thrust his hand inside the box and yanked out the first bottle by the neck, like a chicken about to be placed on the block for slaughter. For an instant of terrible weakness, he gazed at the familiar label and the warm caramel-hued liquid inside the clear glass. He sighed, then ripped open the foil, plucked out the cork and upended the bottle over the sink.

Seven bottles, over one gallon of ten-year-old cask-strength Islay single malt. By the time the last of it had washed down the plughole, Ben’s eyes and nose were full of the fumes and the small kitchen reeked like a distillery.

‘There,’ he said fiercely.

The afternoon rain was falling steadily outside, streaming down the windows. His head was aching worse. But he didn’t care. He kicked off his shoes and went digging in his luggage for the pair of trainers he remembered having packed but hadn’t worn in weeks. The moment he’d finished lacing them up, he launched himself out of the cottage door and into the rain.

Once upon a time, he’d run this beach every day. End to end, taking in the whole curve of shingle from beyond his former home all around the headland, there was a five-mile stretch that had been his regular morning exercise, to which he’d added the punishing regimen of press-ups, sit-ups and crunches that had kept him at peak fitness. He could spend hours at it without getting out of breath. Damned if he wasn’t going to prove to himself he could get back into that condition again.

The pain and breathlessness were already on him after the first mile, but he just gritted his teeth and kept on through the rain, letting his anger and remorse push him harder. His feet pounded over the rocks, every step jarring his aching head. His muscles screamed. His lungs felt raw as he gasped in as much rainwater as air. On and on, willing himself to keep moving by reciting inside his head the motivational lines from the James Elroy Flecker poem,
The Golden Road to Samarkand
, that had for many years been an unofficial motto of his old regiment and were inscribed on the clock tower at the SAS headquarters in Hereford:

We are the pilgrims, master; we shall go

Always a little further: it may be

Beyond the last blue mountain barred with snow,

Across that angry or that glimmering sea.

When he eventually staggered back inside the cottage, he could barely stand. He left a wet trail across the varnished living room floorboards before collapsing in an armchair near the dresser. His legs and calves were inflamed beyond pain. Groaning, he lifted his right leg to rest his ankle on his other knee, unlaced his wet, dirty trainer, peeled it off along with the wet sock and flung it carelessly across the room. He let his bare right foot flop down to the floor like a dead piece of meat, then went to remove his left shoe.

As the sole of his bare left foot slapped heavily to the floorboards, a lancing pain jolted all up his leg. He winced loudly and bent down to inspect the sole of his foot, then swore as he saw the thin, triangular shard of glass stuck into the flesh. He grasped the shard between finger and thumb and plucked it out. A trickle of blood ran down his foot and dripped to the floor. The cut wasn’t bad, but now he was even more annoyed with himself that he couldn’t manage to sweep up a bit of broken glass without leaving half of it lying about.

Cursing, he got down on his hands and knees to search for more fragments that might have found their way under the armchair, an accident waiting to happen. He grabbed the bottom edge of the armchair’s frame and tipped it up a few inches to reveal a dusty square patch on the floorboards. There were no more shards of broken glass under there.

But there was something else.

He reached underneath the armchair and retrieved it.

It was a black leather pouch. And it wasn’t his.