Scott Mariani - Valley of Death

‘I see. So let’s say I agreed. What would I be doing exactly? Working alongside this Mr Prajapati character, the best private detective in Delhi, who seems to have sussed the whole thing out already? How does he feel about the arrangement? Does he even know he’s being allocated a new assistant?’

‘I understand what you’re thinking. You’re upset that Brooke hasn’t asked you herself.’

Ben shrugged. ‘I just think that if she wanted me to get involved, she’d have got in touch directly. She knows where I am.’

‘Please don’t blame her. She’s terribly distraught by all this.’

‘I’m sure she is. And she has my deepest sympathies. But it sounds to me as though she’s already dealing with it. It also seems to me that the last thing she needs is me turning up there, unexpected and uninvited, to complicate her situation and bring back a lot of bad feelings. Our relationship isn’t exactly as cordial as it used to be. We haven’t spoken in a long while, and the last time we did wasn’t too pleasant.’

‘I’m aware of that. She told me.’

‘And the fact that she hired someone else to help with this situation, instead of contacting me, makes it pretty clear where she stands. Wouldn’t you agree?’

Crestfallen, Phoebe said in a low voice, ‘Then I take it you won’t help?’

‘It’s not my decision to make, Mrs Kite. It was unnecessary for you to come here.’

‘I thought …’

‘I know. You tried. That was a good thing to do.’

‘She loved you so much.’

Ben felt a fresh blade of pain pierce his body. ‘I loved her. She still matters a great deal to me. All the more reason for not hurting her all over again. She doesn’t want me there.’

‘What about Amal? Don’t you care?’

‘Of course I care. I like Amal. But there’s nothing I can do for him, except pray it all works out. Which I’m sure it will. If the Ray family are rich, it points to a clear financial motivation for snatching him and there’ll be a ransom demand any day now. If they pay up, there’s every chance of getting him back without a scratch. It’s just a routine business transaction. Happens all the time. The police know what they’re doing.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

Most of what he’d just said was a lie. Intended to reassure, but a long way from the dark reality of the kidnap and ransom world. In a high percentage of cases, whether they paid off the crooks or not, families never saw their loved ones alive again. That was Ben’s whole reason for having become what he’d called a ‘crisis response consultant’. His own ways and means of getting the victims home safe had generally involved the rapid and permanent elimination of the kidnappers, while having as little as possible to do with the bungling efforts of law enforcement officials.

But, as he’d said, this one was out of his hands.

Phoebe looked deflated. She glanced towards the window, through which the lights of the taxi could be seen casting pools of light on the yard cobblestones.

‘I suppose I’d better go,’ she sighed. ‘I can catch the nine o’clock flight back to Heathrow.’

Ben stood up. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink, for the road? You look as though you need one.’

She stood up too. ‘That’s fine, thanks. I’ll have a gin and tonic on the plane. Or perhaps two or three of them. God, I must look a mess.’

‘Try and get some rest,’ Ben said. ‘Brooke, too. I know how tough this must be for her.’

As he was showing her out through the entrance hall, she hesitated, hovered nervously in the doorway and then turned to look at him with a strange expression on her face.

She said, ‘I can’t leave here without telling you the truth.’

‘The truth?’

‘She made me promise, you see. But I’d rather betray her trust than go back empty-handed.’

‘Promise?’

Phoebe nodded uncomfortably. ‘I lied. Brooke did send me to ask for your help. She practically forced me to come and talk to you.’

‘But she didn’t want me to know, so she made you pretend it was all your idea.’

‘She desperately needs you there, Ben. She’s just too proud and embarrassed to admit it. But there was nobody else to run to. Prajapati, the private investigator, is even more useless than the police. You’re her one and only hope. Her words.’

Ben said nothing.

‘One final time. On my knees. For my sister’s sake. For Amal’s. For all of us. Please, please will you help us?’

Once Ben had relented and said yes, he had to move fast. As Phoebe departed in the taxi his first job was to break the news to Jeff and Tuesday that something had come up and he had to leave immediately. ‘Sorry to leave you in the lurch like this, guys.’

Neither of them could get over Brooke being married, but their concern overrode their surprise. ‘What’s your take on the kidnap?’ Jeff asked. He’d sobered up as sharp as a fighter pilot, his own worries forgotten. His eyes were full of concern.

‘The usual,’ Ben said, rubbing thumb and fingers together. The universal sign for money.

Jeff raised an eyebrow. ‘Writing plays must pay a hell of a lot better than I thought.’

‘Family wealth. A lot of it, or so I’m told.’

Tuesday said, ‘I can’t see Brooke marrying into money. Not her style.’

‘No,’ Ben agreed. ‘That’s what I thought, too. Maybe I was wrong about her, but that’s not important now. What matters is getting Amal out of this.’

‘You want us to come along?’ Jeff asked. Ben knew from repeated experience that his friends were both perfectly prepared to drop everything, clients and all, to be at his side in a time of need. But this was a personal thing, and Ben wanted to face it alone.

He shook his head. ‘Thanks, but—’

‘I get it. Call if you need us, okay?’

Next, Ben threw some clothes and personal items into his old green canvas bag, then spent exactly forty-five seconds under the shower, changed and pulled on his boots and grabbed his bag and jacket, patted the dog and ran out to the barn where he kept his BMW Alpina. It was a fast car, which was very much needed to shave time off his journey to Paris and catch the 23.00 flight. Seconds counted.

Here we go again , he thought as he sped out from the gates of Le Val and accelerated hard away with the BMW’s twin beams carving a tunnel into the darkness. It was like a curse. Every time he tried to settle into a steady routine, another crisis would come out of the blue to turn his life upside-down once more. He was worried for Amal, but what troubled him almost as much was the prospect of meeting Brooke under these circumstances. He lit up a cigarette, shoved on a jazz CD and turned the stereo system up full blast to drive that haunting prospect out of his thoughts. The Zoe Rahman Trio, playing ‘Red Squirrel’.