The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (40 page)

Oxfordshire

They switched taxis twice and rode around the countryside in buses until Ben satisfied himself that they weren’t being followed. Just as the sun was beginning to set, they boarded a red double-decker in the village of Eynsham heading back towards the city. The top deck was empty and they sat at the back so they could watch the road behind them.

‘What are we going to do now?’ she asked.

‘I think we both know that Oliver’s death wasn’t an accident, Leigh.’ Ben put his hand on hers and squeezed it lightly, looking into her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I almost wish it had been.’

She nodded sadly. ‘What was he doing there? What could have happened? He was just researching a book.’

He rubbed his temples, thinking hard. ‘Did the coroner establish time of death, more or less?’

‘He died at ten thirty-four p.m. Why?’

‘That’s too precise,’ Ben said. ‘Nobody can pinpoint the moment that accurately.’

‘Dad’s old wind-up watch,’ she replied. ‘Oliver always wore it to remember him by. It stopped…’ It was tough to say it. ‘It stopped when he went in the water.’ She sniffed. A tear welled up in her eye and she wiped it away.

‘Are you OK talking about this?’ he asked.

‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’

‘Here’s how I see it,’ he said. ‘Oliver witnessed something. Why, and where, we don’t know. We only know what he witnessed, and it looks like some kind of ritual execution. But he must have been seen somehow. They came after him, but it took them a while to catch up with him. Just over an hour’s gap from when he witnessed the crime to when he died.’

Leigh nodded and said nothing. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

‘I think he filmed the clip on a mobile,’ Ben went on. ‘Say he still had it with him when they caught him. Say the clip was still on it. They’d have thought they’d retrieved all the evidence.’

‘But then they saw my TV interview,’ Leigh said grimly.

He nodded. ‘Months had gone by. They’d covered all their tracks. Case closed. Then suddenly there’s a whole new threat. You announced you had all the research notes Oliver had been sending you, including material posted the day he died that you hadn’t looked at yet. What if he’d sent you a copy of the evidence? That’s when they knew they had to come after you as well.’

Leigh began to cry.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know this is hard for you. Do you want to stop?’

‘What I want is to find out what happened to him,’ she said through the tears. ‘But what can we do? Where do we even start? We can’t even go to the police.’

Ben shook his head.
‘We
are not going to do anything. It’s too dangerous for you. I’m going to take you somewhere safe, and then I’m going to go to Europe to start retracing Oliver’s footsteps. That’s the only way we’re going to figure this out.’

‘Where am I going to go?’

‘My place.’

‘Your place?’

‘It’s in Ireland. Very secluded, out on the west coast. You’ll be safe there. I’ll rent a car. We’ll drive up to Scotland. Ferry from Stranraer to Northern Ireland, and then across the border to Galway. That way, we avoid passport controls. Nobody will know where you are.’

Her tears had stopped now, a growing look of defiance on her face. ‘And meanwhile you hop on a flight and go off on your own?’

‘Something like that.’

She shook her head. ‘There’s no way, Ben, absolutely
no
way that I’m going to sit this out on some deserted beach in Ireland while you go off to the continent following Oliver’s trail on your own. This is my brother we’re talking about.’

‘What if I said you could come with me? You saw what happened today. People recognize your face. I can’t move around with you. I’d be better working on my own, and you’d be a lot safer.’

‘You’d be amazed what a scarf and a pair of shades can do. I’d keep my head down and not mention my name.’

‘And anyway, you can’t travel on your passport. It’s too traceable, and if there’s someone connected to the police involved in all of this, they’ll catch up with us the minute you step into Europe.’

‘What could the police have to do with this thing, Ben?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ he said.

Leigh thought for a while, gazing out of the window at the naked trees flashing by. The bus rocked and swayed on the bumpy road. She nodded to herself, as though a sudden idea had come to her. ‘There
is
one way we could get out of the country and into France without being noticed.’

Southampton

Two hours later

Orion’s belt was bright in the east and the moonlight rippled on the water of the marina near Southampton. Either side of the long jetty, rows of white yachts drifted gently on their moorings.

Chris Anderson stood on the deck of the
Isolde
, his sixty-foot yacht, sipping on a hot mug of coffee and listening to the lapping water. A car door slammed in the distance, and a minute later he recognized the unmistakable figure of Leigh approaching down the jetty.

He grinned. He’d been surprised to hear from her earlier that day, and was looking forward to seeing her again. It had been a while.

Chris’s jaw tightened as Leigh came closer. She wasn’t alone. There was a guy with her. Did he know him? He didn’t think so. A good-looking bastard, too, thick blond hair, athletic-looking in jeans and a leather jacket. A couple of inches taller than him, just under
six foot. Probably about five years younger than him, too. Chris sucked in his belly. He regretted now that he hadn’t played squash for a few weeks and had put on a few pounds. Who was the guy? Leigh hadn’t mentioned anything about a guest.

‘I’m still not too happy about this,’ Ben was saying as they neared the moored yacht. He could see Chris’s figure under the marina lights, a heavily built man wearing a thick white woollen fleece and a baseball cap, staring at him with a frown. ‘And I don’t think your ex-husband is thrilled either.’

‘Relax,’ Leigh said. ‘He’ll be fine.’ She skipped lightly over onto the deck and greeted Chris with a broad smile as he put his arm out to steady her. ‘Thanks for doing this at such short notice, Chris,’ she said. ‘I really appreciate it.’

She introduced them. Chris nodded curtly at Ben. ‘You never told me you were bringing a guest along,’ he said coldly.

Leigh put her hand on Chris’s shoulder and gave him a little kiss on the cheek.
‘Be nice’
, she warned him softly. She looked up to see the familiar face of Chris’s old skipper who was checking the rigging, and smiled. ‘Hey there, Mick.’

‘Long time no see,’ Mick called down. ‘Good to have you on board. Like old times.’

‘Hope I haven’t put you out too much,’ she said.

Mick jumped down on deck, wiping his hands. He was a small, hard, wiry man with dark eyes and a grey beard. ‘Nah, not a bit. A hop across the Channel’s just a stretch of the legs for the
Isolde
, even in December.’

‘You’re a star, Mick. This is my friend Ben. He’s coming too.’

‘Good to meet you, Ben.’

‘You too,’ Ben said. He looked admiringly at the yacht. ‘How long’s the crossing?’

Mick shrugged. ‘Hamble to Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue? Nine hours, give or take.’

‘Travelling a bit light, aren’t you?’ Chris observed. ‘No luggage?’

‘Just my credit card.’ Leigh grinned. ‘I’ll do some shopping when we get into Saint-Vaast.’

‘Whatever you say,’ Chris replied. ‘What happened to your knee?’

Leigh reached down to the rip in her jeans. ‘Oh, that. I tripped.’

‘You’re cut.’

‘It’s just a little graze. It’s nothing.’

Chris turned to Ben. ‘Welcome aboard the
Isolde
,’ he said with the merest touch of warmth. ‘I’ll show you to your cabins.’ Chris put the emphasis on the plural’s. He led them down below through the companionway

The interior of the yacht was surprisingly spacious and plush. ‘The woodwork is cherry,’ Chris said proudly, throwing a glance at Ben and stroking the varnished panels as he went by. ‘Handmade. She’s got it all. Oyster 61, classic model. Push-button everything. Done her share of ocean crossing, too, as Leigh will tell you. We’ve been everywhere in her. Madeira, St Lucia, Grenada. Remember that little pad we used to rent on Mustique, Leigh?’

‘Wasn’t that the place you got bitten on the arse by the monkey, and ended up in hospital?’ Leigh said flatly as she followed them down inside.

Chris cleared his throat and Ben suppressed a smile.

‘It’ll be strange for you, sleeping in the guest quarters instead of the master cabin,’ Chris said to Leigh.

‘I’ll survive,’ she said.

Chris showed Ben into the smallest of the
Isolde’s
three cabins. ‘You can put your things over there.’ In the light of the cabin he ran his eye up and down Ben’s scuffed old brown leather jacket and tatty-looking green canvas haversack. It looked heavy. Ben wedged it up on top of a storage unit above the bunk. His jacket sleeve rode up as he raised his arms, and Chris noticed the expensive diver’s watch on his wrist.

Within twenty minutes Mick was ready to cast off. The
Isolde’s
sails billowed in the breeze as they left the shore behind and headed into open waters.

Leigh felt obliged to spend time with Chris, so helped him to prepare dinner. Ben could feel her ex-husband’s eye on him and he took the opportunity to retreat to his tiny cabin. He took down his bag, sat back on his bunk and opened up the Mozart file.

Oliver’s notes were hard to read. Ben gazed for a while at the reference to
‘the Order of R—
’. It meant nothing to him, and he tossed the sheet down in frustration.

On another sheet, Oliver had been writing what looked like some kind of checklist of various historical facts and figures. In red ink he’d scrawled the word ‘ARNO’ and circled it three times. Beside it was a date
in late December, just two weeks before Oliver’s death. The writing underneath was burned away and Ben was unable to read it.

Then there were all the eagles. Oliver was a doodler. The margins that were still intact were filled with little drawings of eagles. Underneath one of them Oliver had scribbled in capitals:

T
HE
E
AGLE
?????

He’d gone over and over the words with his pen until they had worn almost through the paper. It was as though he was trying to make sense out of it, make the words speak to him. Had he understood it in the end?

By the time Leigh joined him later on, Ben had given up trying to make any sense out of the notes. She handed him a cup of coffee and sat next to him on the narrow bunk.

‘How’s it going?’ she said in a low voice. The partitions were thin, and she didn’t want Chris to overhear them.

‘Not so good,’ he replied quietly with a shake of the head. He picked up the fallen sheet and showed it to her. ‘I still can’t make out what this
Order of R—
is about. Then he’s scribbled all this stuff about eagles, and rivers.’

‘Rivers?’ She took the paper from him and he pointed out the circled word ‘ARNO’ in red. She peered at it curiously.

‘The river Arno is in Florence,’ he said. ‘Was Oliver there? There’s a date next to it.’

‘He never said anything about it to me.’

‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘It’s important. You’re the only person who knew where Oliver was going and what he was doing.’

She cupped her chin in her hands. ‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Think,’ he urged her.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Did the Mozart letter mention the river Arno? Was there anything in it that could have led Oliver to visit Florence?’

‘I don’t remember,’ she replied with a note of impatience. ‘It was years ago, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Try to remember,’ he said patiently. ‘If we can’t make sense of it we’ve got nothing to go on at all.’

‘Unless…’ she said. Her face lit up.

‘Unless what?’

‘We’re getting it wrong. Arno isn’t the river. Arno is a name.’

‘Whose name?’

‘The Italian collector,’ she said, remembering clearly now. ‘The one who bought the letter from Dad. He was Professor Arno.’

Ben remembered the series of digital snaps on the CD-ROM. The old man with the music books behind him in the background. ‘So Oliver went to see him?’

‘Must have,’ she said. ‘Which means Arno can’t be dead after all.’

‘But where?’

‘Ravenna,’ she said. ‘Remember Dante’s tomb? Oliver was there. And Arno taught at a music institute there, if I remember rightly.’

Ben thought for a moment. ‘Oliver must have wanted to see him about the letter. I think we should pay him a visit too.’

‘You think he might still have it?’ she asked.

‘He paid a lot of money for it when nobody else would touch it. It seems to me he’d hold on to it.’

‘What do you think might be in it?’

‘That’s what we’ll have to find out.’

They ate dinner in the yacht’s long saloon. Chris poured out chilled wine and served fish chowder with a green salad.

‘Leigh tells me you write film music,’ Ben said.

Chris nodded. ‘Mostly. You a movie fan, Ben?’

Ben shrugged. ‘I see the odd thing.’ He tried to remember the name of the last film he’d seen. It had been in Lisbon, on a job, six months ago. The potential informer he’d been tailing had wandered into a cinema. Ben had sat a couple of rows behind. After an hour the man had looked at his watch and left. Ben had followed, and five minutes later the man was lying in a heap down a backstreet. He couldn’t recall a thing about the movie. ‘What ones have you composed for?’ he asked.

‘My latest was
Outcast
, with Hampton Burnley. Know it?’

Ben shook his head.

‘Maybe you’re more of an opera guy,’ Chris said, glancing at Leigh.

‘Ben doesn’t get a lot of time for that kind of thing,’ she said.

‘So what do you do for a living, Ben?’

‘I’m retired.’

Chris looked surprised. ‘Retired? From what?’

Ben drank down the last of his wine. ‘Forces.’

The bottle was empty. Chris looked at it with a raised eyebrow and fetched another from the cooler. ‘RAF?’

‘Army’

‘Soldier boy. What rank were you?’

‘Major,’ Ben replied quietly.

Chris tried not to look impressed. ‘So what was your regiment, Major?’

Ben threw him a glance across the table. ‘It’s Ben. Nobody calls me Major any more.’

‘Ben and Oliver were army friends,’ Leigh said. ‘That’s how we met.’

‘So you two have known each other for a long time, then,’ Chris said icily, not taking his eyes off Ben.

‘But we haven’t been in touch for years,’ Leigh added.

Chris kept his eyes on Ben a while longer, then grunted to himself and went back to his food. The three of them finished the meal in silence, with just the sound of wind and water outside.

Ben went back to his cabin and sat quietly for a while, thinking. He checked the pistols again, stripping and cleaning them with well-practised, almost unconscious familiarity. Then he put everything back in his bag and shoved it up on top of the storage unit. He lay on the bunk for an hour, listening to the steady crash of the waves. The wind was rising, and the gentle motion of the
Isolde
was becoming more pronounced.

* * *

Around midnight, Leigh was thinking about bed. Across the table, Chris was sitting slumped in his chair glowering at the television. He’d barely said a word since dinner.

‘What is it, Chris?’

He was silent. His face darkened.

‘Come on. I know that look. What is it?’

He stabbed the remote and turned off the television. ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’

‘Who?’

‘Him. I remember now.
Ben.
The old flame. The one you were madly in love with. The one you wanted to marry.’

‘That was fifteen years ago, Chris.’

Chris laughed bitterly. ‘I knew there was something going on.’

‘There’s nothing going on.’

‘No? I heard the two of you whispering before. Alone in the cabin like teenagers.’ He snorted. ‘If I’d known what this trip was really about, I’d never have let you sweet-talk me into it. You must think I’m a real fool, a proper soft touch. Getting old Chris to ferry you and your boyfriend over to France for a dirty weekend. Scared the paparazzi will get wind of your little romance? Maybe I should just turn the boat around.’

‘You’re getting it all wrong, Chris.’

‘I can’t believe you’d do this to me. I haven’t forgotten, you know. All the stories about this guy who broke your heart so badly it took you years to get over him-now you’re running around with the bastard right under my nose, and you expect
me
to
help
you?
What did I ever do to you? I never broke your heart. You broke
my
fucking heart.’ He jabbed his finger several times against his chest. His face was turning red.

‘Yeah, when I caught you screwing that bimbo at my birthday party.’

Chris rolled his eyes. ‘One little transgression…how many times does a guy have to say he’s sorry?’

‘I don’t call it a little transgression.’

‘You were never there! You were always off singing somewhere.’

‘I was there that night,’ she said. They faced each other, hostility building up between them. Then she sighed. ‘Please, Chris. I don’t want to fight, OK? We’ve been over this before. You know as well as I do that it wasn’t working between us. We’re still friends, though, aren’t we?’

‘Retired,’ Chris muttered. ‘How old is this guy? What kind of a bum calls himself retired at his age? You know what army pensions are like? How do you know he’s not just after your money?’ He thought for a moment. ‘Did you buy him that watch?’ he demanded.

‘For Christ’s sake. Give me a break. It’s not like that.’

‘So what
is
it like? Why is he here?’

‘There are things I can’t explain right now. You have to trust me, OK?’ She looked at him earnestly. ‘I swear there is nothing between me and Ben. And I appreciate that you care, and that you’re helping me out like this. Really.’ She hugged him, and he squeezed her tight.

‘I miss you, Leigh,’ he said in a plaintive voice. He kissed her hair. ‘I think about you a lot, you know,’
he murmured. Then he moved back a little and tried to kiss her on the mouth. She pushed him away.

Ben had come out of the cabin and stood framed in the doorway.

Leigh abruptly broke away from Chris and they all stood frozen for a moment, staring at one another.

‘Sorry,’ Ben said quietly. ‘Didn’t mean to interrupt.’ He turned and headed for the companionway steps to go on deck.

The wind was much stronger than earlier, and he zipped his jacket to the neck. Cold swathes of rain were lashing across the
Isolde’s
bows from the east, and the sails fluttered and rippled loudly above the groan of the wind and the steady crash of waves. Mick was tending the wheel, wrapped in orange oilskins. They exchanged nods. Ben reached for his cigarettes and offered him one. He shielded the flame of his Zippo lighter from the breeze, inhaled deeply and looked out for a while across the dark, choppy water, narrowing his eyes against the cold spray and holding on to the rail.

The
Isolde’s
prow rose on the unsettled sea, climbing the crest of a big wave, then cleared it and plunged down into a trough with a huge splash of flying foam. Ben steadied himself against the swell as the deck under his feet sloped and settled. The sails crackled like fire.

‘Bit of weather up ahead,’ Mick said, interrupting his thoughts.

Ben looked up at the dark sky. Black clouds raced across the face of the moon. In the dim light he could see the white water of the breaking crests.

He stood on deck for a long time. There was no
point in going below. He wouldn’t sleep. His thoughts were confused and rambling, switching from one thing to another. Oliver. The Mozart letter. The video-clip. The murder. Langton Hall. The call from the police.

But he wasn’t just thinking about the mystery. His mind kept drifting to Leigh. The vision of her in Chris’s arms lingered stubbornly and perplexingly in his mind. Why did it make him feel so uncomfortable that she might still have feelings for her ex-husband?

What were these feelings he was having? Was he
jealous?
He resisted the idea. Yet he couldn’t stop thinking about the way it made him feel to be around her again.

She must be asleep now. He imagined her lying on her bunk, just a few feet away below deck, with her hair spread out on the pillow.

He smoked more cigarettes and sipped whisky from his flask, and forgot the rise and fall of the deck under his feet.

He barely noticed the growing storm until the
Isolde
lurched into a broach that made him stagger. The waves were roaring in with fierce intensity. The yacht hit another crest, climbed steeply and her bows crashed down. A wild turmoil of water and foam blinded Ben for a few seconds as he hung grimly on to the rail. His cigarette fizzled out and he threw the soggy stub into the sea.

In the cabin below, Leigh was tossing and turning restlessly in her bunk, trying to relax her mind. But it was no use. She couldn’t keep Ben Hope out of her head. What was wrong with her?

She checked her watch and saw that it was almost four in the morning. She wrapped herself in a blanket and went to make herself a coffee. The yacht was lurching and it was hard to walk.

Chris heard her moving about and came out of the master cabin, looking bleary-eyed and pale. As she drank her coffee he checked the computer for the latest Met Office weather report. ‘This blow should be over soon.’ He shot her a wild look. ‘Where’s your Major friend?’

‘Leave it alone, Chris. Isn’t he in his cabin?’

‘His door’s open. He’s not in there.’

‘Oh, right. And you thought he was in with me. You really don’t trust me, do you?’

Chris grunted and headed up to the deck. As he opened the hatch, a lash of spray caught him in the face and he spluttered. He cleared his eyes, shook his head and watched across the deck. Ben and Mick were working together, silently and doggedly, their oilskins glistening with rain. The Major seemed to know what he was doing, Chris thought. He swore under his breath, slicked back his dripping hair and went below again.

Halfway down the companionway steps, Chris had an idea. The Major was out of the way. An opportunity. He sneaked past the doorway of the saloon and quietly slipped into the open door of Ben’s cabin. He shut it carefully behind him and bolted it, then looked around the room. He lifted the green canvas bag down from above the bunk and started undoing the straps.