Scott Mariani - Valley of Death

Ben led Phoebe Kite towards the living room. It was a part of the house where he spent little time personally, preferring the cosiness of the farmhouse kitchen and its proximity to the wine rack and whisky cupboard. But he sensed that she wanted to talk to him in private. The presence of two other men, especially a slightly inebriated Jeff Dekker, would only make her more edgy. He could feel the tension emanating from her, like a crackle of static electricity in the air.

‘This is nice,’ she said distractedly as he showed her into the room and flipped on a light switch.

‘Please, take a seat,’ he said, motioning at the sofa he never sat on, opposite the big-screen TV he never watched. Idle relaxation wasn’t a big part of his lifestyle. ‘Can I offer you a drink?’

Under the soft lighting of the living room side lamps, she looked more uncannily like her sister than ever. She perched on the edge of the sofa, eyes downcast, knees and feet together with her hands clasped in her lap and the handbag still looped over her shoulder. Uptight.

She replied, ‘No, thank you, I’m fine.’

‘What about your taxi outside? You want me to send him away? Wherever it is you have to return to tonight, I’m happy to drive you there myself.’

She made a thin-lipped smile. ‘That’s very kind. But he can wait.’

‘Whatever you prefer.’ Ben moved across to an armchair and sat, so as not to stand over her. Back when he’d worked as a freelancer he’d been used to dealing with a lot of extremely, and understandably, nervous clients. He was good at putting them at their ease. He smiled. In his most reassuring tone he said, ‘Now, you’ve clearly come a long way to see me, so I get the impression it must be for an important reason.’

She nodded. ‘It is. Terribly important.’

‘Then how about you tell me what this is all about?’

Phoebe Kite looked up at him, and for the first time he could see the depth of the distress in her eyes. Green eyes, pure emerald, so much like Brooke’s that it was almost painful for Ben to return her gaze.

Phoebe Kite said, ‘I need your help.’

When people said that to Ben, it was never a trivial request. In his line of work, it had always tended to mean that something very, very serious and life-threatening had happened.

‘I gathered as much. Then what can I do for you?’

She shifted in her seat. Covered her mouth and gave a little cough. ‘Or perhaps I should say, we need your help.’

‘We? As in, you and your husband Marshall?’

‘No, I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Marshall’s … well, he’s Marshall. He’s always embroiled in some business dispute or other. But we’re not in any real trouble. Not your kind of trouble. Sorry, that came out wrong. I meant—’

‘I understand. It’s okay. But tell me, if this isn’t about you—’

‘It’s about Brooke,’ she said in a voice taut with emotion, and Ben felt an icy blade sink all the way through his guts and pin him to the armchair.

‘Something’s happened to Brooke?’ When he said it, the words sounded remote and far away, as though someone else had spoken them. He was suddenly numb.

Phoebe nodded agitatedly and started chewing her lip. Her hands were clasped so tightly in her lap that her fingers were pinched bloodless and white. ‘Yes. No. I mean, sort of.’

Ben stared at her and said, ‘Sort of what?’

‘What I’m trying to say is that something awful has happened. Not to Brooke personally. To her husband.’

The mixed emotions that flooded through Ben were polarised to opposite extremes. At the same time as the relief melted away the acute terror of something having happened to Brooke, Phoebe’s words were a slap in the face that actually made him flinch.

Brooke, married. Even though their relationship had ended a long time ago now, the idea of it was like being whipped by nettles.

The involuntary thought passed through his mind: Please don’t let it be Rupert Shannon . Long before she and Ben had got together, Brooke had had a brief involvement with the pumped-up, Porsche-driving, self-adoring buffoon who’d managed to push himself up the ranks of the British military thanks to lofty family connections.

If she was back with him, there truly was no God after all.

On the other hand, if something nasty had befallen Rupert Shannon, maybe there was a God, and it was time for Ben to start praying to Him again.

Ben shoved that unworthy thought out of his mind, swallowed hard and said, ‘I didn’t know she was married.’

Phoebe nodded. ‘Oh, yes, for a while now. I think you know her husband. Amal Ray?’

Ben remembered Amal well. He’d been a friend and former neighbour of Brooke’s, dating back to when she’d had an apartment in Richmond, Surrey. Amal had been an aspiring playwright who somehow seemed able to maintain a leisured lifestyle, despite having no job and zero theatrical successes to his name. He was likeable in a neurotic sort of way, bookish and nervy, the kind of guy who looked as though he was rushing around even when he was standing still. Ben had always suspected that Amal harboured a secret admiration for Brooke that went beyond the bounds of friendship, though he’d never have imagined it could be reciprocal. He seemed like the last man on earth she’d be drawn to. Brooke, so full of passion, who loved excitement, thrived on the thrill of the challenge and could handle herself in a difficult spot. He couldn’t imagine two people more different. The idea of them together was unthinkable.

But Ben wasn’t about to let his deeply hurt personal feelings stand in the way of his concern for a friend in trouble. ‘What happened?’

‘Amal’s been kidnapped.’

‘Kidnapped?’ Ben was genuinely amazed. The idea of innocent people being snatched off the streets or from their homes was hardly anything new to him. For years after quitting the military, he’d worked on the right side of the booming kidnap and ransom industry, liberating victims and dispensing to the bad guys the fate they had coming. He, of all people, knew how widespread and pernicious the abduction trade was.

But the thought of Amal Ray falling victim to it seemed crazy. The guy fitted the profile of a kidnap victim about as well as he filled the bill as a potential life partner for a woman like Brooke.

Phoebe nodded. ‘That’s why I’m here. Because that’s what you do, isn’t it? Help people in that sort of situation?’

Ben could have replied, ‘Used to do.’ Instead he asked, ‘When did this happen?’

‘Eight days ago.’

‘Where, in London?’

‘No, in India. That’s where he’s from.’

‘He moved back there?’ Brooke, living the married life in India. It was hard to imagine.

‘No, they still live in London. Amal was on a trip back to Delhi when it happened.’