Brooke shook her head. ‘You know Amal. He wasn’t made for roughing it. He freaks out any time he ventures more than ten miles from a major city. He stayed here in Delhi while making a thousand phone calls to Captain Dada’s office. Then he went to see Prajapati and employed him to travel out to Rakhigarhi and visit the crime scene on his behalf. Prajapati spoke to the law enforcement officials there and came back satisfied their take on the situation was probably right, and that Kabir had almost certainly been killed along with his two associates, and that it was time to accept it, close the case and move on. Shit happens, basically.’
‘Nothing like thorough police work,’ Ben said.
‘Amal called me that night. He was very upset. He wouldn’t accept that his brother was dead. Kept insisting that Kabir must be lying injured somewhere, and the police had just missed it, and they weren’t trying hard enough and needed to widen the search. He had a big argument with Samarth about it.’
‘The eldest brother.’
‘Samarth had already spoken to Captain Dada on the phone and believed he must be right. Amal was furious with him.’
‘What about you?’ Ben asked. He could see the questions in her eyes.
Brooke clutched her drink in one hand and raised the other in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I didn’t know what to tell him. The police had searched the whole area and found nothing. Their conclusions seemed to make sense to me too, at the time.’
‘At the time,’ Ben said. ‘But now you’re not so sure?’
‘Neither are you,’ she replied. ‘Or you wouldn’t be asking me all these questions about Kabir. First one brother goes missing, then the other. It can’t be just a coincidence, can it? You see it that way, too, don’t you?’
‘I’m only trying to build a picture in my mind, Brooke. Maybe it is just a coincidence. Maybe the police are right, and the incident in Rakhigarhi was nothing more than just a tragic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that we need to look in a totally different place to figure out why this thing has happened to Amal.’
‘Or maybe they’re wrong,’ Brooke said. ‘In fact, the more I think about it, the more certain I am that there’s more to this.’
Ben looked at her and could see she was resolute. ‘Based on what?’
‘Based on something Amal said to me, the night those bastards took him.’
Ben asked, ‘What did Amal say to you?’
Brooke fell silent, and her gaze seemed to turn inwards as though she was reimagining the scene from that night. ‘When I arrived in Delhi, I’d never seen him so miserable and depressed. He felt like nobody was listening to him, he felt betrayed by Samarth who seemed to just want to accept what the police were saying at face value, and he was frantic at the idea that Kabir was lying somewhere badly hurt and suffering, maybe even dying. I wish I’d never suggested it now, but I had the idea that going out for a meal together that evening might cheer him up. There’s a big food district only about twenty minutes’ walk from here, with a lot of great restaurants. He was reluctant at first, but then agreed that a walk and a nice dinner out would do him good. We never got there.’
Brooke choked up as she finished speaking, and had to pause for a few moments as she dabbed her eyes. She took another long sip of her scotch. Ben wished she’d stop drinking. She clasped the glass with both hands in her lap and stared at it, shaking her head. Her eyes were pink and brimming again. She was gripping the glass so tightly that Ben was afraid it would break and cut her. ‘Oh God, what’s going to happen to him?’
‘You don’t want to focus on those kinds of thoughts,’ Ben said. ‘You need to believe he’s all right.’
She flashed her tearful eyes on him. ‘You know perfectly well you’re only saying that. Don’t try to bullshit me. He’s either dead already or he’s sitting in some dark hole, absolutely terrified out of his mind. He’s not strong, Ben. He’ll fall apart under this kind of strain.’
Ben leaned forward and reached out, gently took the glass from her fingers and laid it on the coffee table in front of her. ‘So what did he say?’ he prompted her softly.
Brooke closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. After a few more moments she was collected enough to resume the story.
‘It was as we were walking. It was a lovely evening, cool and peaceful. I’d hoped a stroll would relax him, but he couldn’t stop going over and over the whole thing, about how too little was being done to find his brother, and how he was absolutely certain that this wasn’t just some random bandit attack as everyone thought. I said to him, “Amal, how can you really be so sure it wasn’t?” Like you, I thought maybe the police were actually right and that Amal should listen to Samarth. I couldn’t bear to see him torturing himself that way. But then he stopped walking, and he turned to me in the middle of the street, and he looked at me and said, “There’s something else about Kabir. Something I know that I haven’t told you, or anyone. It changes everything.”’
Ben asked, ‘Something, like what?’
Brooke slowly shook her head. ‘I wish I knew.’
‘He didn’t say?’
‘I could tell he wanted to, but couldn’t bring himself to. It was gnawing at him.’
Ben frowned. ‘Not even a hint?’
‘I only know what little I was able to get out of him. He said that Kabir called him a few days before leaving on his trip, very excited, and confided something really important. Not just your typical run-of-the-mill secret. Something huge.’
‘If the trip was related to his work, this archaeological project you said he was working on, then presumably this piece of information relates to that as well?’
‘It’s a fair assumption.’
‘In which case, what are the possibilities?’
Brooke shrugged. ‘Archaeologists dig stuff up. Maybe Kabir did, too.’
‘A discovery? Of what?’
‘I don’t know, Ben. You tell me.’
Ben mulled it over for a moment or two, then decided that it was all too vague to even try to speculate about. ‘And Amal thought this secret, or discovery, or whatever it is, of Kabir’s might have had some bearing on the reason for the attack?’
Brooke nodded. ‘That was why he was so convinced it wasn’t just some random incident. But whatever it is, Kabir had made him promise not to tell anyone.’
‘Not even you? His own wife?’ It was hard for Ben to say that last bit.
‘That’s what I said to him, too. Asked him why he couldn’t share it with me, if it was so important. Especially if it meant something about what happened.’
‘And his reply?’
‘He
