LITMIR.BIZ

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to him that he’d eaten nothing at all since leaving France. He shoved the thought to the back of his mind and wandered deeper inside the foyer. A young woman looked up at him with a frown from behind the reception desk. He glanced at the arriving diners in their suits and ties and dresses and pearls, then at Amal in his silk polo-neck and expensive designer coat. Catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror, he saw an unshaven and tousle-haired character in a scuffed old leather jacket, faded denim shirt, well-worn jeans and combat boots who didn’t exactly fit with the place’s dress code. That was tough shit. He returned the woman’s gaze with a cold glare and she averted her eyes.

      ‘I’m pretty sure that’s where we were last night,’ Amal whispered, pointing at a gleaming double doorway off to the left. ‘It’s a ballroom, or something. I don’t remember it so well.’

      Then it was time to refresh Amal’s memory, Ben thought. He headed for the doorway. The woman at reception threw him another glance, but nobody tried to stop him. The doors glided open. Ben walked through, Amal followed, and they found themselves inside a vast room, empty except for the stacks of tables and velvet-backed chairs that lined the far wall.

      ‘This is it,’ Amal said, gazing around, slowly remembering. ‘At least, I think it is. It all looks so different.’

      ‘Is it or isn’t it?’ Ben said testily. Impatience flared up inside him for a moment, then subsided as he told himself to go easy. Amal was just as upset as he was.

      ‘It is, definitely. But they’ve cleared everything away. It’s weird, as if none of these things had happened. Shouldn’t the police have made them keep the place the way it was? For evidence, or whatever?’

      ‘Hanratty,’ Ben grunted. ‘Never mind him for now.’

      ‘It’s coming back to me,’ Amal muttered, narrowing his eyes to slits and cocking his head to one side as though that would help him visualise the scene more clearly. He turned to motion at a large expanse of empty floor in the corner nearest the door. ‘That’s where the bar was.’ He grimaced as if to say, the less said about that the better. ‘Over there was a curtain, with all the exhibits and stuff behind it. To the left of it was the stage, with a speaking podium and a big screen. That’s where Forsyte and that other guy gave their speeches.’

      ‘What other guy was that?’

      ‘One of the company employees. I only got a quick glimpse of him when I turned round at some point to see where Brooke was.’

      ‘This is while you were sitting at the bar?’

      Amal sighed and nodded.

      ‘With your back to the room.’

      Amal sighed and nodded again. ‘I remember … I remember that he was a younger guy than Forsyte. Quite small, sandy hair. Forsyte introduced him as … as some kind of manager. Dive team manager, something like that. His name was … I don’t know. Baxter? Baker?’

      ‘Butler,’ Ben said, remembering the name from the Neptune Marine Exploration website. ‘Simon Butler. But I’m not so interested in him right now. Take a minute, look around and see if anything else jogs your memory. Anything at all that might have seemed unusual at the time, or maybe has struck you since as odd. Anyone hanging around Forsyte, for example, or acting out of the ordinary.’ As he said it, he was painfully aware that the kind of things a trained eye could pick out would go quite unnoticed by an ordinary observer. Especially one who’d made a point of hitting the bar.

      Amal looked anxiously around him for a few moments. ‘I don’t know. The place was full of people. Journalists firing questions, photographers everywhere. I’ve never been to anything like that before. I wouldn’t know what was strange and what wasn’t. Anyway,’ he admitted miserably, ‘I wasn’t even paying a lot of attention. I was too busy drowning my pathetic little sorrows in bloody gin and tonic. And Brooke – poor Brooke – what’s happened to her? It’s all my fault …’ He ran quaking fingers through his hair, dug the balls of his thumbs into his eyes. His breathing was ragged, as though he was about to burst into tears.

      ‘Nobody’s blaming you,’ Ben said. ‘Lay that idea aside. Get a grip, Amal. You’re no use to me otherwise.’ He was conscious of the harshness in his tone. In a softer voice he asked, ‘You want to go into the lounge bar for a drink? You look like you could use one.’

      Amal shook his head vigorously. ‘No way. Never again. I swear.’

      Ben fought back his own desire to drain the place dry of every drop of liquor they had. Anything to slow his mind down, dull the thoughts that kept spinning round and round inside his head, threatening to drive him crazy. ‘All right,’ he said, taking the BMW key from his pocket. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

      ‘Are we going back to the guesthouse?’ Amal asked as they headed outside towards the car.

      Ben’s jaw tightened. He wanted, needed, to keep moving. ‘Not yet.’ He bleeped the central locking open and slid behind the wheel. ‘There are some people I’d like to talk to.’

      ‘People?’

      ‘At Carrick Manor.’

      ‘But how do we find the place?’

      ‘There’s something called Google Maps nowadays. I thought you writers knew these things.’

      ‘I’m not really that kind of … never mind.’ Amal closed his door and Ben fired the car up again.

      They were three or four miles from Castlebane Country Club and speeding inland when Ben’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He dug it out urgently and answered without slackening his pressure on the gas. ‘Thanks for calling back, Mike.’

      ‘No problem, mate,’ said the raspy voice on the other end. ‘Gather you’ve got a bit of trouble. Sorry to hear it. Anyway, I’ve dug up the info you asked for. Not a word to anyone, mind, or it’s my arse. It’s only because it’s you.’

      ‘Appreciated,’ Ben said. ‘Fire away.’

      ‘All right. Neptune Marine Exploration took out a comprehensive K&R policy four years ago with Rochester and Saunders. Apparently they’d had a near miss with Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden while hauling up some shipwreck or other, and got jumpy in case they were less lucky the next time. Deal was brokered by that greedy bastard Ronnie Galloway.’

      ‘I don’t know him. What’s the coverage?’

      ‘Twelve million. That’s pretty much all I can tell you.’

      ‘It’s plenty. I owe you one, Mike.’

      ‘Or two. Good luck, mate.’

      Ben ended the call. He knew the name Rochester and Saunders well. Operating from a glittering glass tower in central London, they were one of the top players in their field and provided kidnap and ransom insurance services to high-risk corporate employees, VIPs and other potential kidnap targets all over the globe.

      As Ben had known all too well for too many years, kidnap and ransom was a booming industry, not just for those who did it but also for those who could claim to offer protection from it. Long before he’d given up active field work to move to France and set up Le Val, he’d now and then been hired as a freelance negotiator by the insurance companies, to maintain contact with kidnappers, obtain the crucial proof of life, smooth along the negotiations and do everything humanly possible to ensure the early release, unharmed, of the hostages.

      Occasionally, other ways and means – more or less peaceable, more or less legitimate – became necessary to get them out. In those cases, the insurance companies were no longer involved. Nobody was, not officially. Those contingencies, and the direct action needed to resolve them, had been Ben’s particular area of expertise.

      A lot of K&R operatives had come from a military background – some, like Ben, from 22 SAS and other Special Forces units; Mike Starkey had been a twenty-year veteran of the London Met before switching careers. Many of the guys knew each other well, and because their work tended to take

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