between them had never happened. She’d have been with him at Le Val, far away from all this mess. Or maybe it would have been him here with her in Ireland instead of Amal – he might have been there to protect her when it happened.
He had to believe she was alive. It couldn’t be any other way.
Mustn’t be any other way.
He looked in the oval mirror above the sink. The face that stared back at him was one he barely recognised, gaunt and pale, with a terrible look in its eyes. A sudden gushing torrent of rage welled up inside him. More than rage. Hatred. Hatred for whoever had done this, whoever had taken her like this. If they harmed her … if they did anything to her … He lashed out with his fist and his reflection distorted into a web of cracks.
Fragments of glass tinkled down into the sink. He gazed at his bloody knuckles. There was no pain; it was as if he’d become completely detached from his physical body.
Where are you, Brooke?
He mopped the blood up with a piece of toilet paper, flushed it away and walked stiffly back into the bedroom. Turned off the main light and clicked on the bedside lamp. Knelt down by his bag, undid the straps, rummaged inside for his whisky flask and shook it, feeling the slosh of the liquid inside. He slumped on the edge of the bed and unscrewed the steel cap. He was about to drain most of the flask’s contents in one gulp when he stopped himself.
No. This wasn’t the way. This wasn’t going to bring her back. He tightened the cap and tossed the flask into his bag.
But then another thought hit him like a kick in the face and almost made him reach for the flask again.
If it’s not about ransom, he heard Julian Maxwell’s voice say in his mind, If it’s not about ransom, what’s going on?
And then his own reply, coming back to him like a faraway echo: You might need to re-evaluate the whole situation … You might want to consider other reasons …
What if they’d all been getting this horribly, dreadfully wrong – him, the police, the company executives, Amal, everyone? What if their whole basic assumption was flawed, and this wasn’t about Roger Forsyte at all? What if he hadn’t been the target?
What if the target had been Brooke?
The idea left Ben stunned, winded. It was possible. Off-the-charts crazy, but possible, that this was some kind of reprisal against him. A sick, twisted punishment for something he’d done in his past. A relative of someone he’d killed or had put away, perhaps – had Jack Glass had a brother? – or maybe one of the many other enemies Ben had made over the years who were still out there.
Then wouldn’t the kidnapper have wanted Ben to know the truth, just to hurt him even more? Wouldn’t they have contacted Le Val?
Maybe they had, it occurred to him. A call could have come after he’d left. The phone could be ringing right this moment in the empty house; an email could be pinging into an unattended inbox.
Get a grip on yourself, he thought angrily. Jeff’s there. Jeff would have told you about it.
But the thought wouldn’t stop haunting him, and neither would the awful visions that kept circling through his head.
‘I’m going to find you, Brooke,’ he said out loud. ‘I’m going to …’
His voice trailed off into a croak. He sank his head into Brooke’s pillow and clutched her clothes tightly to his face, like a child needing comfort. His vision blurred. His tears moistened the pyjama top. The pain felt like too much to bear.
For the next hour he lay there curled up, staring at the door, praying for it to open and for Brooke to walk through it with a cheery greeting and a smile on her face. But time passed on and on, and the door stayed shut. He turned off the bedside light and went on staring into the darkness for what seemed a lifetime before he eventually slipped away into a shallow and restless state of unconsciousness.
When Ben awoke, it was still dark. His phone was thrumming in his jeans pocket. Instantly alert, heart thumping, he turned on the light and grabbed the phone to reply. This is it, the voice said in his mind. This is when you get your payback.
But there was nobody on the line, no mysterious voice from the past to make his worst nightmare come true. It was a text message alert.
The text was from Kay Lynch. Ben’s heart almost stopped when he read its opening words.
Think u need 2 know. Found bodies.
The location given in the brief message was just a few miles from the abduction spot, deep within the heart of the rugged Glenveagh National Park, in an area of lakes and valleys known as the Poisoned Glen.
Twenty-seven frantic minutes had gone by since Ben had received Lynch’s text. Still an hour to go before the first red shards of dawn would come creeping over the hills. Racing towards the scene he saw the blue lights of the Garda vehicles through the darkness and the sheeting rain, and brought the BMW to a slithering halt inches behind them.
On a grassy slope fifty yards from the roadside was the only building in sight, a tumbledown old stone bothy. A century or two ago the tiny primitive structure would have served as a refuge for shepherds – nowadays it was more likely to be used by tramps and drug addicts.
This was the place. Light shone from its only window. There were figures in reflective Garda vests moving in and out of the single entrance. Thick electric cables snaked down the slope, hooked up to the forensic investigation van that had been at the kidnap site the previous evening.
‘Brooke’s in there, isn’t she?’ Amal whispered. His eyes were red and puffy.
‘We don’t know that, Amal,’ Ben replied through clenched teeth. Until the last minute before setting off, he’d been resolved not to wake him up and bring him out here. He regretted his change of mind now.
‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? I can feel it. Oh, God.’
Ben cut the engine and flung open his door. ‘Stay in the car.’
‘You must be kidding. I’m coming too.’
‘I said, stay in the damn car.’ Whatever was in that building, Ben didn’t want Amal to see it. He jumped out of the BMW and sprinted up the steep, slippery path towards the bothy. The building had no door, just a crude stone doorway thick with moss. Ben ran inside. The earth floor was damp-smelling from the long winter months. That wasn’t all he could smell. The place was rank with the stink of death.
The bothy was filled with people and activity and bright lights, but they couldn’t have been there more than forty-five minutes or so. Before that it had been empty and silent. Empty, apart from its grisly occupants.
Almost the first person Ben saw as he rushed in was Kay Lynch. She was standing near the entrance, looking drawn and pallid. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t say much in my text,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I couldn’t get away from Hanratty.’
‘Where
