she say what kind of problem?’
‘No, she wanted to speak to you about it. I think you’d better talk to her, mate. It sounds serious.’
It made sense to Ben that Mirella would rather talk to him, since Jeff didn’t know Ben’s old comrade Boonzie and his Italian wife as well as Ben did. But it didn’t make sense to Ben that it was Mirella, rather than Boonzie himself, who’d called. Something was obviously wrong.
Rather than let it wait until he got home, Ben punched Boonzie and Mirella’s landline number into his mobile. He sat in the car, watching the waves rolling in as the call connected and he heard the Italian dial tone. Storm had jumped into the back and was panting hot breath in Ben’s other ear and trying to lick his face. He gently pushed the dog away as Mirella’s voice came on the line, saying, ‘Pronto?’
Jeff had been right. She didn’t sound good at all.
Boonzie had learned Italian shortly after moving to Campobasso, and rather stubbornly insisted on speaking it with her all the time, so Mirella had never got to perfect her English. Which was fine, since Ben spoke Italian very well. ‘Mirella, it’s Ben.’
She sounded even more distraught, on the point of tears, as she thanked him for calling back so soon.
He asked, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s Archibald.’ Mirella never called her husband by his nickname. Given that Boonzie would typically threaten dire violence against anyone else who dared to refer to him any other way, very few people did.
Ben steeled himself for the news that his dear old friend had fallen critically ill, or had received some terrible medical diagnosis, been given a week to live or was already dead. Not that Boonzie was particularly ancient. Even if he had been, the grizzled old warrior was one of those people you expect to live for ever, carved out of granite and as enduring and immutable as a mountain range.
But Mirella’s reply shocked him even more. ‘He’s missing.’
Ben stayed grimly silent as Mirella told him the story that had played out over the last few days. She explained how Boonzie had travelled to the Highlands of Scotland to visit his nephew Ewan, who’d been having some trouble. Ben hadn’t even known Boonzie had a nephew. He went on listening as she described the backstory of Ewan’s partner in the surveying business, recently drowned in an apparent accident that Ewan thought he had reason to suspect to be foul play.
The more Mirella talked, the faster the words came streaming out. Ben had to close his eyes and focus hard to keep up with the stream. He interrupted her flow with, ‘Hold on. Why did he think that?’
‘Because he received an anonymous phone call from a person claiming to be a witness to a crime,’ Mirella replied. ‘They said they saw some men murdering Ewan’s friend.’
As she went on explaining what she knew about the mystery witness, Ben listened hard and tried to make sense of it all. ‘So Boonzie – Archibald – went there to help Ewan do what? Track down this salmon fisherman guy?’
‘And find out what happened to Ross. But now Ewan is hurt, too. Archibald thought the same people who killed Ross had tried to kill him.’
‘Are the local police involved in this?’
‘He went to speak to them, but he wasn’t impressed. He decided to go his own way. You know him, how independent-minded he can be. And he doesn’t trust the police, at the best of times.’
Ben certainly did know him, and could also resonate with his reasons for going it alone. But it sounded like Boonzie had got himself into something bad, and that worried Ben. He asked, ‘When did you last speak to him?’
‘Two days ago. He doesn’t use a mobile phone. He called me from his nephew’s house. That was when he told me what happened to Ewan, how badly he was hurt, and how the police weren’t going to be of any help. Then I told him about the email that had come for him.’
‘What email?’
‘From his nephew.’ Mirella repeated to Ben what she’d already told her husband, reading out the short text of Ewan’s message verbatim. She described the image file that Ewan had attached with it. ‘It was a photo of a gold coin. The thing that Ross was supposed to have found. That’s all I know.’
Ben frowned at the mention of the coin. In his experience, gold and murder went together like strawberries and ice cream, and this made the suspicions of foul play seem more plausible. He said, ‘Can you send me the image file?’, and told her the email address to send it to.
Mirella was marginally more savvy with newfangled gadgetry than her technophobe husband. ‘I’m doing it now.’
Moments later, the email pinged into Ben’s inbox. He put the call on speaker while he opened up the file and scrutinised the picture. It was a good photo, focused sharp and up-close. No question that it was a gold coin. An old one, showing the date 1745. Probably valuable, though at this point Ben had no clear idea.
‘What the hell is this about, Mirella?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied helplessly. ‘Archibald didn’t say much when I told him about it. But he sounded as though it was no surprise. Like he already knew something.’
‘Did he say what he was going to do next? Where he was heading after Ewan’s house?’
‘If he had a plan, he didn’t tell me what it was. He just promised me he’d be home soon, and not to worry. But I am, Ben. I’m so desperately worried. He promised to keep in touch. Said he’d call twice a day to tell me where he was and what was happening. But it’s been two whole days and I haven’t heard anything from him at all! I keep imagining all kinds of terrible things. I’m going crazy here on my own. I had to talk to you.’
Ben said nothing for a few moments, thinking about his friend. Boonzie McCulloch was one of the toughest old war dogs Ben had ever known, and he’d known a few. The kind of guy you’d thank God was on your side, and not the enemy’s. Boonzie was also famously reticent when it came to talking about his past exploits. Ben was certain that even Mirella knew only a fraction of what her husband had been through, and survived, in his time.
‘He’s pretty resilient, Mirella. The fact that you haven’t heard from him might not mean he’s in trouble. It’s possible that he’s gone to ground for a while, and can’t call you. Maybe he will, any time now. And then everything will be okay again.’
‘There’s something else,’ she said, in a voice that sounded hollow, drained of energy. ‘Something he’d never have wanted me to tell anyone. He made me swear to keep quiet about it. Like if it was never talked about, it wouldn’t be real any more and it would just go away. But it is real. And it isn’t going away so easily.’
‘I don’t understand. What are you talking about?’
And then she told him about Boonzie’s illness.
Mirella said, ‘I could tell he was having a problem. He seemed tired a lot more often than usual, and sometimes he looked pale. Something was
