Authors: Scott Mariani
Beard was trying groggily to get up, raising his body off the concrete with his left hand, the broken fingers of his right tucked tight between his legs. Ben’s boot swiped his left arm out from under him and rolled him over on his back. Beard stared up at him in terror. His nose was split open and bleeding almost as profusely as Chain’s leg.
Ben crouched down next to him and flicked cigarette ash on the guy’s face. ‘Just you and me now, Beard,’ he said. ‘I reckon as you’re the leader of the gang, that qualifies you as its spokesman too. So speak. Who sent you?’
‘I … I don’t …’ Beard gasped.
‘You’re not really going to give me the “I don’t know” routine, are you?’
‘Listen, mister … I swear …’
‘Fine,’ Ben said. He dug the Zippo back out of his jeans pocket. Flipped open the lid and thumbed the wheel. The spark ignited the fuel inside to produce the warm flickering orange flame and that smell Ben loved.
The flame from Beard’s beard as its rigid spikes went up like a magnesium flare was considerably brighter, and the stink of burning hair and skin far less pleasant.
Beard shrieked in terror. None too gently, Ben used the man’s denim jacket to beat the fire out.
‘Didn’t your mother warn you about using too much hairspray?’ Ben said. ‘That stuff’s flammable.’
‘You crazy sonofabitch!’ Beard screamed.
‘I think I asked you a question,’ Ben said. ‘Not going to ask you a second time.’
Beard’s eyes bulged in his scorched, blackened face. ‘I don’t fucking know! This guy offered us ten grand cash. Gave us your picture. It’s in my pocket.’ He pointed wildly with his good hand.
Ben yanked the photo out. It had been taken from inside a car, and showed him walking towards it. His Jeep was in the background, parked on the side of the stretch of road alongside Seven Mile Beach. Easy enough to figure out who his photographer had been: one of the two men in the black Chevy Blazer.
‘Some guy hired you? That’s all you know? A guy in a bar?’
Beard nodded desperately.
Ben showed him the lighter again. ‘Sure? You still have a bit left on that side. How about I even you up?’
‘No! Yes! I swear!’
Ben nodded. He supposed that a man with a burning beard would always tell the truth. It sounded a little like a Chinese proverb.
‘Get yourself another job, mate,’ he said, and walked to the Jeep.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Cayman Kai was a cove on the wooded north side of the island, close to Rum Point beach. Nick Chapman’s home had been a simple, elegant white bungalow with a broad veranda, surrounded by trees and privately situated at the side of a narrow coastal inlet with its own boat dock.
The place was all in darkness. As Ben got out of the car, he could hear music and laughter wafting across on the breeze from the nearby restaurant on Rum Point. He glanced around him: nobody was about, and the nearest neighbours were a good distance away beyond the whispering trees. He tried the front door, then the back. Finding them both locked, he turned his attention to the window catches: exactly the flimsy low-security kind of affair he’d have expected to find on an island with one of the lowest crime rates on the planet. In moments, he was inside.
The window he’d come through was that of the master bedroom. Ben stood perfectly immobile and utterly silent for a long time in the shadows, listening to the sounds of the house, hearing no sign of movement from anywhere. He reached into his pocket for the mini-Maglite he’d bought earlier in George Town, and cast the strong, thin beam of light around the room.
A mosquito net shrouded the double bed. A vase of dying flowers stood on the bedside table. On one white wall hung a large framed Escher print, the one with the never-ending staircase. On the opposite wall hung a picture of Nick and his team standing grinning next to a Cayman Air Charter Trislander on a grassy airfield. The aircraft had a pearly white new paint job and everyone looked ready to burst with excitement. This must have been CIC’s inaugural launch. Nick himself looked tanned and fit and immensely proud.
Below that one was a photo portrait of Hilary, aged about fifteen, together with another from her graduation day.
Ben felt strange, and a little ashamed, to be breaking into the home of his dead friend. He left the bedroom and moved on through the house, treading quietly and cautiously, darting the torch beam as he went.
The police didn’t seem to have turned the place over too roughly looking for clues. Everything was more or less tidy, down to the perfectly-squared rugs on the tiled floors and the ordered arrangement of cushions on the living room sofa. Most of the walls were covered with photos of the bright golden-yellow Sea Otter and other aircraft, as well as a collection of spectacular aerial shots of the island that showed the depth of Nick’s passion for the place.
Satisfied that he was completely alone, Ben spent some time in Nick’s study, holding the shaft of the mini-Maglite between his teeth to sift through the papers in the drawers of the large antique desk, in the hope that he might find something the cops had missed.
He’d no real idea what he was looking for, but searching made him nervous. There was a lingering anxiety at the back of his mind that no amount of rational denial could completely erase: the fear of uncovering some evidence that Nick had been in the kind of trouble from which only suicide offered a refuge – irredeemable debts, maybe – or signs that the depression had returned.
What if –
just what if
– Nick really had ended his own life? The thought made Ben’s mind swim. Then what had happened to Hilary? Was her death some bizarre coincidence? Like the fact that someone on this island obviously didn’t like Ben going around asking questions? And if Nick hadn’t killed himself, then what was the alternative? For all the hours Ben had spent going over and over it in his mind, he could think of nothing.
There was nothing in Nick’s desk, either. No demands from the bank, no nasty letters threatening litigation, no doctor’s prescriptions or empty pill bottles, no telltale Prozac capsule rolling loose in the bottom of a drawer. All Ben found among Nick’s business documents were routine bits of paperwork and correspondence that gave the impression that CIC wasn’t just solvent, it was booming. Inside a Manila file were some preliminary architect sketches for a major extension to the office buildings at West End, and a letter giving an estimated completion date in eight months’ time. Ben studied the sketches and shook his head.
Did people suffering from chronic depression make plans like this?
The bottom drawer contained Nick’s private papers. Ben went through them guiltily. No sign of a Last Will and Testament. A cheery letter from Hilary, dated six months ago, with a few snaps of her on holiday somewhere with a girlfriend. An assortment of receipts and product guarantees. A handwritten list of forty or so names, headed ‘party guests’.
A man contemplating suicide, planning a big get-together?
Ben put everything back as he’d found it and started going through the address book by the phone. Again, he could find nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing, except for the somewhat cryptic phone number at the back of the book. It had no name next to it, only a capital letter T that had been heavily circled as though it had some special significance.
Ben used his own phone to dial the number, and got straight through to an answering service. He switched off before the message prompt.
That was when he heard the click of a key turning in the front door lock, followed by the padding of tentative footsteps in the hallway outside the study. The beam of a torch swept by, shining under the crack in the door.
Ben turned off his Maglite. He crouched behind the desk, completely still and silent in the darkness.
The footsteps stopped right outside the study. Someone reached out and nudged the door half open. Torchlight shone inside the room.
And from the source of the brilliant white beam, there was the unmistakable metallic
click-clunk
of a well-oiled revolver mechanism being cocked, ready to fire.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The footsteps moved closer inside the room. The torch beam swept from side to side. Ben tucked himself in tightly behind the desk, but he knew that he had zero chance of remaining hidden for long.
The torch beam flashed across the desk. Ben saw his own shadow appear on the floor. He had a split second to react before the intruder did.
Nobody, not even a trained SAS soldier, really wants to launch themselves, unarmed and blind, at someone holding a cocked and loaded revolver. But under the circumstances, Ben didn’t have a lot of choice. Surprise was his only advantage, and he used it. With a roar he burst out from behind the desk, shining his own torch straight back at the intruder’s face. And hurled himself at the guy in a flying leap.
There was no deafening gunshot while he was in the air. Ben’s shoulder connected with what felt like the intruder’s midriff, driving him violently backwards against the wall. The intruder let out a grunt of pain and shock. The torch beam slashed upwards to point at the ceiling, then fell towards the floor. There was the distinct thump of a chunky revolver landing on the rug.
Pinning the wildly struggling intruder down hard with a knee to the throat, Ben reached for the switch of the side lamp.
And with a shock, recognised the face staring up at him as that of Mrs Martínez, Nick’s PA.
He instantly relaxed the pressure on her neck before she blacked out. She was wheezing and clutching her throat as he hauled her to her feet and set her down in a chair. ‘I wasn’t expecting to meet you again so soon, Mrs Martínez,’ he said.
‘How did you get in here?’ she gasped, rubbing her neck.
Ben stooped to pick up the fallen revolver. It was a Smith & Wesson Model 28, the ‘Highway Patrolman’ version of their large-framed .357 hand cannon. Four inch barrel, blue steel. Enough firepower to stop a Freightliner truck. The US Highway Patrol had used them to stop runaway vehicles by blasting holes in the engine blocks.
‘That’s a lot of handgun for a nice lady like you to be carrying around,’ Ben said. He eased the hammer down. Pushed the knurled catch behind the recoil shield and flipped out the cylinder to see the six bright brass cartridges stamped FEDERAL .357 MAGNUM. He tipped the rounds out into his palm, dropped them in his pocket and laid the unloaded pistol on the desk. He could see her eyeing it. ‘Did I hurt you?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine.’ Her throat and jaw were turning a fine red, but it would fade in an hour or two. He wasn’t so sure the pain in his side would ease as fast. His little altercation with Beard’s boys earlier hadn’t done his healing wound too many favours, and leaping up from behind the desk just now had added an unpleasantly sharp new dimension to the discomfort that had him worrying about busted stitches.
‘You want to know why I broke into Nick’s house, Mrs Martínez, and I’ll level with you,’ Ben said. ‘I’m here because people aren’t answering my questions and I get the feeling my presence on this island is less than welcome in some quarters. I don’t think Nick would have minded me coming to check out his place. Now, you level with me. I’m wondering why someone with a key to the front door would come armed with a flashlight and a Magnum.’
‘What questions?’ she said.
‘Ones that would help me understand the truth of what really happened out there that day.’
She hesitated. ‘I’ll answer your questions if you’ll let me go over to that bookcase.’ She pointed across the other side of the study.
‘What’s that? The old “hidden weapon in the bookcase” trick?’
‘Please. I’m not that stupid.’
‘What’s in the bookcase?’
‘You’ll understand.’
‘Slowly,’ he said.
Avoiding his eye, she crossed the room, stopped at the bookcase and gazed along the rows of titles. Most of Nick’s collection seemed to be aviation-related. She plucked at the spine of a big, thick leather ring-bound book, slid it out and held it tight against her chest.
‘Now set it down on that table and step away from it,’ Ben said.
She did as he said. Ben approached the table and flipped open the leather cover. It was a photo album, nothing more.
‘I need to see something,’ she said. ‘It’s important.’
‘Be my guest,’ Ben said.
Mrs Martínez flipped through a few pages of the album. She stopped, pressed a finger to one of the pages, stooped a little to peer at it more closely, then flipped another page and did the same again. She looked up at Ben, studying his face with the same careful scrutiny he’d noticed that afternoon at the CIC offices. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Now I know for sure.’
‘Know what?’
‘What I came here tonight to find out. I thought I recognised you when you walked into the office today. But I needed to be sure that you were the same Ben Hope Nick used to talk about.’ She spun the album round on the table so he could see the picture. It was a shot taken at Hilary Chapman’s engagement party. Ben was in the background, holding a glass.
‘And here,’ she said, flipping back a page to another shot of some of the men of A Squadron, looking hot and exhausted in filthy fatigues, sitting around a clearing in some tropical hellhole that could have been either of the SAS’s jungle training grounds in Belize or Borneo. There was Ben in the middle, his face partially blacked, in the process of field-stripping an AR-15 rifle. Technically speaking, Nick shouldn’t have even had such potentially compromising photos in his possession, though sneaking the occasional memento home wasn’t uncommon practice.