The Armada Legacy Read online

  But out of all the friction, a fledgling relationship was slowly developing between Ben and Jude – not so much that of a father and a son, but more like two friends, or even two brothers, one of whom just happened to be twenty years older than the other. The fact that Ben had recently rescued Jude from the hands of a secretive and ruthless government agency called the Trimble Group, who were blackmailing Ben into acting as their gun-for-hire, had helped more than anything to forge their friendship.

  When Jude had visited Ben’s French home and place of business, an old farm called Le Val, in mid-January while Ben was still convalescing from his injuries, the two of them had had their first real chance to sit down and talk. Among other things, they’d discussed Jude’s growing disenchantment with his Marine Biology degree course at Portsmouth University. Ben, who’d cut his own Theology studies short twenty years earlier and often wished he hadn’t, had encouraged him to see it through to the end.

  Jude wasn’t so sure where his future lay. There were times when Ben could see in his newfound son the same restlessness of spirit that had driven him in his own headstrong, sometimes foolhardy younger days, and wished the boy had taken more after Michaela than himself.

  Those worries aside, Ben had deeply enjoyed Jude’s visit. When it was over and he’d driven him back to the ferry port at Cherbourg, he’d suddenly realised how much he was going to miss Jude’s company until the next time they’d meet.

  Then it had been back to business. The Le Val Tactical Training Centre was still overbooked with people wanting to acquire the specialised skills it had to offer, skills that only men like Ben, his business partner, ex-SBS commando Jeff Dekker and their team of instructors were qualified to teach. The training schedule at Le Val had never been so busy, which made a Sunday morning getaway like this one all the more welcome.

  With a final heave, Ben hauled himself up onto the cliff’s summit. He knelt in the grass, dusted his hands and looked down. The moored kayak was a tiny red sliver far below.

  ‘There, that wasn’t so difficult,’ he murmured to himself. His heart rate was steady and he wasn’t out of breath. Not in disgraceful shape for an old man, he thought. He mightn’t have bet on still being able to fly through ‘sickeners’, the gruelling SAS selection tests he’d endured long ago, but he was pretty sure that he’d give young squaddies half his age or less a decent run for their money.

  Ben stood up, unzipped a compartment of his waist pack and took out a small bottle of mineral water. He cracked the seal and drank, then spent a few moments gazing out to sea, the breeze ruffling his thick blond hair, as he considered whether to take the long, easy footpath back down to the shore or descend the way he’d come.

  The phone buzzed inside his waist pack before he could decide. He answered, expecting the call to be from Jeff Dekker with some work-related query or other.

  It wasn’t Jeff.

  ‘Am I talking to Ben Hope?’ someone said on the other end.

  A man’s voice, shaky, uncertain. Ben was certain he’d heard the voice before; but where?

  ‘Who is this?’ Very few people had this number.

  ‘My name’s Amal,’ the voice replied. ‘Amal Ray. We met once, around Christmas time. Brooke’s upstairs neighbour.’

  Ben remembered him perfectly well, and if it hadn’t been for the tension and anxiety he could hear in the guy’s voice, he might have responded with something like, ‘Hi, Amal, it’s a pleasure to hear from you.’ Instead he frowned and stayed silent.

  ‘Something’s happened to Brooke,’ Amal said. ‘Something terrible.’

  Chapter Seven

  A constant thin drizzle was slanting down out of the dark afternoon sky as the Ryanair flight from London Stansted touched down at City of Derry Airport, a few miles east of the border between Ulster and the Irish Republic.

  There was a hard set to Ben’s face as he strode from the plane. Outwardly, he was calm, but a violent storm was raging inside and he fought to contain his impatience going through passport control and customs. His only luggage was the battered and well-travelled old green canvas army bag into which he’d thrown a few things before dashing away from Le Val, leaving everything in the hands of Jeff Dekker.

  Jeff had been as shocked as Ben to hear the news of Brooke’s disappearance. ‘Just call if you need me,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll be there.’

  Amal was waiting nervously for Ben near the airport entrance. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked several years older than when Ben had last seen him.

  There was no time for greetings. ‘Anything new?’ Ben asked, and Amal morosely shook his head. They left the terminal in silence and went outside into the gathering dusk. The drizzle had intensified, and Ben turned up the collar of his scuffed leather jacket. He motioned at the smattering of vehicles in the car parking area. ‘Which is ours?’ His final instruction to Amal over the phone earlier that day had been to hire the fastest car he could find locally.

  ‘That one,’ Amal said, and bleeped a key at a dark blue BMW saloon. ‘Hope it’s okay. It was the best I could get.’

  Ben tossed his bag into the back of the car. ‘I’ll drive,’ he said, taking the keys. Amal didn’t argue, and climbed into the passenger side. Before he’d shut his door, Ben was already gunning the car backwards out of its parking space. The tyres squealed on the damp concrete as they took off for the exit. Ben aimed the car westwards, heading for the N13. ‘Now tell me everything,’ he said.

  Amal closed his eyes and let out a sigh. ‘What more is there to say? I already told you everything on the phone.’

  ‘Let’s go through it again. Starting from the beginning.’

  Amal miserably recounted the whole thing: Brooke’s idea for getting him out of London; the media event at Castlebane Country Club; how he’d got too drunk to go on to the party afterwards and she’d reluctantly gone off without him; how that had been the last he’d seen of her. Ben listened and pushed the BMW on hard and fast as Amal talked, overtaking traffic and keeping an eye on the mirror, on the lookout for police. He didn’t want anyone slowing him down.

  ‘It’s all about this Forsyte guy, isn’t it?’ Amal said, interrupting himself. ‘Surely it must have been him they were after?’

  Ben had used every moment of his journey from France to plough through all he could find online about Sir Roger Forsyte, the company he’d founded, Neptune Marine Exploration, and its various highly lucrative exploits over the years salvaging sunken treasures around the world’s oceans. Despite the wealth of material available, from reams of newspaper articles to spreads and interviews in National Geographic and other publications, Ben had noticed that the details of Forsyte’s past career, prior to NME’s founding in 1994, seemed just a little hazy. As his flight had crossed westwards over England, he’d wondered why that might be.

  He’d also been pondering over where he’d heard the name Roger Forsyte before. The bell it was ringing in his mind was distant and faint, but it was ringing nonetheless and he was frustrated that he couldn’t make more of it.

  ‘Seems that way,’ he replied to Amal’s question. ‘Successful businessman, just made a killing and splashing it all over the media. He’s the primary target for a kidnap and ransom job. The others just happened to be there. Wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘It’s a nightmare,’ Amal said, on the edge of panic. ‘Oh, God, it’s a nightmare. It isn’t really happening. Tell me it isn’t happening.’

  ‘It’s happening. Take a breath. Focus, keep talking.’

  Amal took several deep breaths to compose himself. ‘What more is there to say? I got up this morning, saw the news and realised Brooke hadn’t come back, so I called the cops. They call them the Garda here.’

  ‘Yeah, I know that. Go on.’

  ‘It took ages for them to send a car out. When they finally got there, they gathered some of Brooke’s personal things and sealed them in these plastic pouches …’

  ‘For DNA sampling.’

  ‘I can’t belie
ve they even have that kind of technology in this backwater.’

  ‘They probably have to send them to Dublin. Go on.’

  ‘Well, then they put me in the police car and drove me miles to the nearest proper town, a place called Letter-something …’

  ‘Letterkenny.’

  ‘They took me into this tiny room with no windows. I spent over an hour there giving my statement to this angry, racist little bastard who’s in charge of the case. Felt like I was being interrogated.’

  Border signs flashed by as the speeding BMW passed from Northern Ireland into the Republic. When Ben had first known the place as a young soldier the border had been thick with heavily-armed checkpoints, and vehicles passed through under the stern eye of a British Army GPMG gunner with his finger on the trigger. Those days were all but over now, but the memories of the Troubles were soaked like blood into the land.

  ‘What’s the name of the detective in charge?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Hanratty. Detective Inspector Hanratty. Real charmer. Needless to say, they’d never heard of Brooke being in the car until I told them. At first, I reckon they thought I was some kind of crank. Next thing you know they’re grilling me as if it was me who was under investigation. Anyway, when I finally managed to get away from the police station I wandered up the road and found this café where you can actually go online. That’s when I thought about looking you up. Brooke’s told me a little about what you used to do for a living, and the business you run now in France. God knows how I remembered the name of it. I called and spoke to a guy named Jeff who gave me your mobile number.’ Amal shrugged wearily. ‘That’s it. We should never have come to this bloody place. It’s all because of me and that stupid play …’

  ‘Never mind the stupid play,’ Ben said. ‘What else can you tell me?’

  ‘Only what I’ve seen on TV. When Forsyte’s car didn’t turn up for the party last night, the people waiting for him at the big house just assumed at first that he’d been delayed by the media, or whatever. Then more time went by, no sign of him, and they started making phone calls. It wasn’t until the middle of the night that anyone called the cops. Even then, the police didn’t lift a finger until after the car’d been found by some guy on his way home from work early this morning.’ Amal glanced anxiously at Ben. ‘They’ll be looking for them, won’t they? I mean, surely they’ll be doing everything they can …’

  ‘There are standard procedures,’ Ben said, cautiously. ‘First priority is to establish contact with the kidnappers. Forsyte’s been divorced for years. No siblings, no children, so the ransom demand will probably be made to the company itself. Meanwhile, it’s a question of combing over the crime scene to see what they can dig up, fingerprinting everything in sight, bringing in the sniffer dogs, taking any evidence back to the lab for analysis. They’ll want to talk to staff at the country club for anyone who might have seen anything, and check out CCTV footage. Round up every photographer who was at the media event, and check through all their images for anything suspicious – someone hanging around, looking out of place. Go through the records of local vehicle rental companies during the last week or so for anything paid in cash. Liaise with the Coastguard and check the registers of any boats in and out of local harbours, as well as spot-checks on vessels. Call out the air support unit to scout for possible safehouses, empty farm buildings, disused industrial units, where kidnappers might try to hide a victim.’

  ‘Sounds pretty thorough,’ Amal said, sounding marginally more optimistic.

  Ben agreed, in principle. But the caution in his tone was because he also knew that this particular crime had occurred in one of the sleepiest parts of rural Ireland, even more slothlike in its ways than Galway, where he’d lived for a number of years. The place was so neglected by the authorities that it had come to be known as ‘the forgotten county’. Even at the height of the Troubles in the seventies and eighties, when the occasional IRA incident would take place on the Republic side of the border, there had been comparatively little for the Garda to deal with – hence they had even less experience of this kind of contingency than the most parochial police force in England. The local cops would most likely have had to send out to faraway Dublin for a forensic investigation team equipped and specialised enough for the job.

  In short, Ben would have been extremely surprised if Detective Inspector Hanratty had got his thumb out of his arse to do half the things he’d just described to Amal.

  ‘Lastly,’ he said, ‘they should be talking to all the Neptune Marine Exploration employees, checking phone records and finding out if anyone’s been unfairly dismissed recently or might have any kind of grudge against Forsyte. In a case like this they’ll study the victim’s background and history for significant enemies, and to check whether Forsyte might have any financial problems of his own, like gambling debts, dangerous and expensive habits, the kind of thing that might cause someone to stage their own kidnap for ransom.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not unheard of.’ The speedometer needle climbed above the ninety mark as Ben urged the powerful BMW past a slow-moving truck.

  ‘I can’t believe that,’ Amal said. ‘But then, nothing makes sense to me. Like, for instance, if someone kidnapped Forsyte for ransom, why did they take Brooke and Sam? They’re not rich like Forsyte. Nobody can pay millions to get them back. Is it because they were witnesses?’

  Ben shook his head. ‘No. You can shoot a witness, like they shot Forsyte’s driver. It’s more than that. From a kidnapper’s point of view, female hostages give you better leverage, more bargaining power. Nobody wants to see them get hurt, so ransoms get paid faster.’ His voice sounded detached, but speaking those words cost him a lot of pain. The moment he’d said them, he wished he’d kept his innermost thoughts bottled up more tightly.

  ‘Leverage? Oh, Jesus.’ The horror in Amal’s eyes reflected what was in Ben’s own mind. Images of severed body parts sent in the mail. Torture. Or worse. ‘They won’t harm them, will they? Will they? Answer me. They won’t do anything to Brooke, will they? Ben?’

  Ben’s fists clenched around the steering wheel. He was silent for a beat, swallowing back the rising tide of crazed anxiety that made him want to scream and pound the dashboard to pieces.

  Then he said quietly, ‘I’ll get her back.’

  And the voice inside his head replied: if she’s still alive.

  Chapter Eight

  Evening had fallen like a black shroud and their conversation had lapsed into a heavy silence by the time Ben stopped the car. He cut the engine but left the headlights on, spilling a broad pool of white light across the road and carving through the slowly-drifting fog of drizzle.

  Amal looked up from his lap as if emerging from a trance, and saw that Ben was checking his phone. ‘You expecting a call?’ he asked.

  ‘From a guy called Starkey,’ Ben muttered, frowning at the phone.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Amal asked, but Ben was too preoccupied to answer. There had been no call. He tutted and shoved the phone back in his pocket.

  ‘What is this place?’ Amal said, peering through the glass.

  Ben said nothing. He got out of the car. The night felt damp. He could hear the whisper of the Atlantic in the distance, and smell the salt tang in the air.

  ‘This is where they were taken, isn’t it?’ Amal said ominously, climbing out of the passenger side and hugging his coat tightly around him.

  Ben just nodded grimly. He wanted to break into a run, but forced himself to walk calmly towards the lights and activity he could see up ahead. As he made his way up the road he glanced left and right, up and down, drinking in details.

  He hadn’t walked far when he paused in his stride. Faintly discernible on the glistening wet road surface by the glow of the BMW’s headlamps were the traces of heavy skid marks where a car had pulled to an emergency stop. He considered them for a moment and then continued a few steps further, before pausing again and turning to look to his left, where a small sectio
n of the roadside verge had been cordoned off with markers and police tape.

  A short distance further up the road was a second set of tyre marks. The vehicle that had made them had a wider wheel track than the first, and judging by the curve of the marks it had overtaken at speed and then swerved across the road from right to left, screeching to a stop. What was odd about the second set of tyre marks was the additional smudge of rubber that seemed to indicate that the vehicle had been shunted sideways after coming to a halt. He pictured it in his mind.

  Ben knelt down and pressed a fingertip against the cold, wet road. Lifting it back up, he examined the tiny flake of paint stuck to it. It was white on one side, blue on the other.

  He flicked it away, stood up and walked on again. Some thirty yards ahead on the right-hand side of the road, a large area of the verge and the ground beyond was barricaded off and illuminated by blazing halogen floodlights perched up on tall masts, haloed by drifting moisture. Rows of cones and a temporary traffic control had been set up to filter what few vehicles might pass by through the narrowed gap. Three Garda Land Rovers were parked off-road, casting their flashing blue glow over the rugged ground.

  Tucked in in single file behind the row of cones sat an empty Toyota Avensis patrol car, an ageing unmarked Vauxhall Vectra and a van that Ben guessed belonged to the forensic team he could see combing the large field to the right of the road, their reflective vests shining yellow in the distance. The van’s number plate bore the county identifier D for Dublin: his guess about the forensics guys having to come all the way from the Garda HQ in the capital had been correct. That didn’t make him feel any better.

  He wasn’t hugely surprised either to see that, some twenty hours or so after the fact, the cops were only now getting themselves organised to conduct a proper search and remove the crashed Jaguar XF from the scene. A pair of uniformed officers were standing back watching as the vehicle was winched up onto a flatbed lorry. All that would be left behind were the skid marks and the pieces of debris littering the verge at the foot of the large roadside rock that Ben could make out in the glow of the recovery vehicle’s swirling orange light. The Jaguar’s front end was badly crumpled and it was obvious it had hit the rock at some speed after skidding violently to the right.