pal.’
‘I happen to be a British citizen, pal. England is my country,’ Amal shot back in fury. ‘And I suppose you think I’m a suspect too? It’s outrageous. Brooke and I were here for a bloody party, that’s the beginning and end of it. We went through all this yesterday, over and over. Instead of standing here wasting time with these ridiculous allegations, why don’t you go and do your job, you colossal great prick?’
‘Amal,’ Ben said, putting a hand on his arm to quiet him. The cop’s eyes were beginning to burn with a dangerous light, and he was quite capable of having Amal dragged away to a cosy little cell if he carried on like this. ‘My friend’s upset,’ Ben said to Hanratty. ‘We’ll be getting out of your way now.’
‘Delighted to hear it,’ Hanratty snorted. He was about to say more when his phone rang and he wheeled back towards the bothy to take the call.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lynch said, seeing the look in Ben’s eyes. ‘It’s not me.’
‘I know,’ Ben said.
‘The moment I hear anything more, I’ll call you, okay? But you have to promise me to stay out of this and leave the investigating to us.’
‘I promise,’ Ben said. Lynch nodded, then turned to follow Hanratty back up the slope.
‘It’s just unbelievable,’ Amal was raging as they got back into the car. ‘Brooke a suspect? Based on what?’
‘It’s time for you to go home,’ Ben said.
Amal looked at him with hurt and confusion in his eyes. ‘So that’s it? No protest, no nothing? How can you just accept this shit from Hanratty, after all the things you said before? I thought you were going to do something. That’s why I thought you could help, because you had expertise in this kind of thing.’
‘There’s nothing more we can do here,’ Ben told him. ‘It’s over.’
Amal boggled at him. ‘It’s over? Are you serious?’
‘We’ll go back and get your stuff,’ Ben said. ‘Then I’ll take you to the airport.’
Amal stared. His throat gave a quiver. ‘You think she’s dead, don’t you? That’s why you’re giving up.’
Ben didn’t reply. He started the engine and put the car in reverse.
‘Why can’t you just be straight with me and say so? That’s right, just go silent on me again. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand any of it.’ Amal slumped despairingly in his seat as Ben backed the car away from the police vehicles and turned it round in the narrow road.
Arriving back at the guesthouse, they found a Garda patrol car parked outside and two officers loading the rest of Brooke’s things into the back of it, sealed up in plastic evidence bags. Mrs Sheenan was watching from the doorway in her curlers, dressing gown and slippers, extremely displeased to have been roused so early from her bed and even more mortified that her establishment had been ransacked by the Garda like it was a den for common criminals. It would be the talk of the village for evermore. Amal tried in vain to mollify her and explain what was happening, then gave it up to go to his room and start packing to leave.
Ben watched the police car disappear down the street before returning inside to check flight times and book Amal a seat on the first plane to London that morning. Minutes later, they were back in the BMW and setting off.
Amal looked deep in thought all the way to Derry Airport, privately chewing over something with a set expression on his face. As they were about to part, he turned to Ben. ‘Listen, I, ah, I don’t generally go around telling people this, but I do actually have some family connections. Fairly powerful ones, in fact. And I have my own money, a lot of money. I believe that Brooke is alive. I’d do anything – I mean anything – to find her. Whatever it takes. You understand me?’
‘I understand you,’ Ben said. He thanked him. Left him standing clutching his bags and headed back towards the car.
The truth was, he’d only wanted Amal out of the way. He knew what he had to do next, and that it was something he needed to do alone.
Because as he’d been standing there on the dark, rainswept roadside in the middle of the Poisoned Glen listening to Amal ranting at Lynch and Hanratty, Ben had suddenly remembered.
With the realisation of what had happened to Forsyte, the situation was suddenly totally altered. Things were about to turn an awful lot uglier than they already were.
Ben also knew now that there was no point in crossing back into the Republic. He was already on the side of the border he needed to be. Sitting behind the wheel of the BMW at Derry Airport, he took out his phone and dialled a number in Italy. After a few rings he heard a familiar, warm voice that would normally have made him smile. ‘Pronto?’ she said.
‘Hello, Mirella.’
‘Ben!’ She was delighted to hear from him. ‘Are you coming to see us again?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘What is wrong?’ she asked, hearing the tone of his voice.
‘I need to talk to Boonzie, Mirella. Is he there?’
‘I will call him,’ she said anxiously. A muffled clattering on the line as Mirella laid down the phone and went off to fetch her husband. Ben could hear her voice in the background shouting ‘Archibald!’. Boonzie would never have tolerated anyone but his beloved wife calling him by his real name. After a few moments, his gruff Scots voice came on the line.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve been following the British news,’ Ben said.
‘What’s going on?’ Ben could see the grizzled, granite-faced Scot standing there, his eyes narrowing in concern.
‘I have a problem, Boonzie.’
Boonzie McCulloch had been a long-serving 22 SAS sergeant, and a mentor and friend of Ben’s for many years, before he’d astounded everyone by quitting the army to settle in the south of Italy and set up a smallholding with a vivacious black-haired Neapolitan beauty he’d fallen head over heels in love with while on a few days’ leave. The flinty, battle-hardened fifty-nine-year-old had found his own private heaven at last, contentedly working his sun-kissed couple of hectares to produce the basil and tomato crop that Mirella turned into gourmet bottled sauces the local restaurant trade couldn’t do without.
But the soft life hadn’t got to Boonzie completely. He still had a few aces up his sleeve, like the small arsenal of military weaponry that had got Ben out of a sticky moment in Rome the year before. And because the SAS had always been so much more deeply embroiled in matters of political secrecy and delicacy than other British army regiments, he still carried around with him a headful of the kind of privileged information that the likes of Detective Inspector Hanratty wouldn’t have had access to in a thousand years.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Boonzie muttered when Ben had finished quickly filling him in. ‘Need help?’ He’d always been the
