The Armada Legacy. Scott Mariani

not interested in being on your company payroll. Like I told you, I’m here for my own reasons.’

      Maxwell shrugged. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Here’s my number, in case you change your mind.’

      Ben pocketed the card. ‘No need to see me out, Sergeant,’ he said to Lynch. ‘I was leaving anyway.’

      ‘What are we going to do now?’ Amal asked as they headed back towards the car.

      ‘I don’t know, Amal,’ Ben said. ‘Right now, I really don’t know what to do.’

       Chapter Twelve

      There was nothing more to say on the drive back to the guesthouse. When they arrived, Ben took his bag from the back seat of the car and followed Amal up the steps to the door. Amal had gone very quiet and was visibly upset as he let them inside. Mrs Sheenan was nowhere to be seen, but there was a TV blasting from somewhere upstairs. Ben was grateful not to have to speak to anyone.

      Amal led him to the first floor, showed him Brooke’s room and announced in a shaky murmur that he needed to be alone for a while. Shuffling like an old man, he disappeared into his own room.

      Ben stood for a long time outside Brooke’s door before he eventually reached out and grasped the handle. He slowly opened the door, summoned up his strength and walked in.

      She had never been one to wear a lot of perfume, but the subtle, fresh scent in the air was so familiar that for a weird, disorientated moment or two he fully expected to find her sitting there on the bed. She wasn’t.

      Of course she wasn’t. Sickening reality closed back in on him. He shut the door, feeling numb and utterly deflated and more tired than he could remember having felt for many, many years.

       Where are you, Brooke?

      He wanted to scream it, but at that moment he would barely have had the energy to raise his voice above a whisper.

      He unslung his bag from his shoulder and laid it down with his leather jacket, then gazed around him at the room. Brooke’s travel holdall was sitting next to an armchair, unzipped. The slender reading glasses she sometimes wore at night, and a novel by an author he knew she liked, were sitting on the bedside table. Lying neatly folded on the pillow were the lightweight jogging bottoms she wore in bed, along with her favourite faded old pyjama top.

      They suddenly seemed so much more a part of her now that she wasn’t here. He reached down and stroked them with his fingertips. Closed his eyes a moment, then moved away from the bed and walked into her little ensuite bathroom. On the tiled surface by the sink were some of her things that the police hadn’t taken away: her wash bag, her little jar of face cream, and several other of those familiar little items he remembered seeing in the bathroom at Le Val and at her place in Richmond, that signalled the warmth of her presence close by and made him feel happy to be alive.

      Now there was only emptiness.

      He couldn’t stop seeing her face in his mind, thinking of the last time they’d been together. If only those stupid, senseless arguments between them had never happened. She’d have been with him at Le Val, far away from all this mess. Or maybe it would have been him here with her in Ireland instead of Amal – he might have been there to protect her when it happened.

      He had to believe she was alive. It couldn’t be any other way.

      Mustn’t be any other way.

      He looked in the oval mirror above the sink. The face that stared back at him was one he barely recognised, gaunt and pale, with a terrible look in its eyes. A sudden gushing torrent of rage welled up inside him. More than rage. Hatred. Hatred for whoever had done this, whoever had taken her like this. If they harmed her … if they did anything to her … He lashed out with his fist and his reflection distorted into a web of cracks.

      Fragments of glass tinkled down into the sink. He gazed at his bloody knuckles. There was no pain; it was as if he’d become completely detached from his physical body.

       Where are you, Brooke?

      He mopped the blood up with a piece of toilet paper, flushed it away and walked stiffly back into the bedroom. Turned off the main light and clicked on the bedside lamp. Knelt down by his bag, undid the straps, rummaged inside for his whisky flask and shook it, feeling the slosh of the liquid inside. He slumped on the edge of the bed and unscrewed the steel cap. He was about to drain most of the flask’s contents in one gulp when he stopped himself.

      No. This wasn’t the way. This wasn’t going to bring her back. He tightened the cap and tossed the flask into his bag.

      But then another thought hit him like a kick in the face and almost made him reach for the flask again.

      If it’s not about ransom, he heard Julian Maxwell’s voice say in his mind, If it’s not about ransom, what’s going on?

      And then his own reply, coming back to him like a faraway echo: You might need to re-evaluate the whole situation … You might want to consider other reasons …

      What if they’d all been getting this horribly, dreadfully wrong – him, the police, the company executives, Amal, everyone? What if their whole basic assumption was flawed, and this wasn’t about Roger Forsyte at all? What if he hadn’t been the target?

      What if the target had been Brooke?

      The idea left Ben stunned, winded. It was possible. Off-the-charts crazy, but possible, that this was some kind of reprisal against him. A sick, twisted punishment for something he’d done in his past. A relative of someone he’d killed or had put away, perhaps – had Jack Glass had a brother? – or maybe one of the many other enemies Ben had made over the years who were still out there.

      Then wouldn’t the kidnapper have wanted Ben to know the truth, just to hurt him even more? Wouldn’t they have contacted Le Val?

      Maybe they had, it occurred to him. A call could have come after he’d left. The phone could be ringing right this moment in the empty house; an email could be pinging into an unattended inbox.

      Get a grip on yourself, he thought angrily. Jeff’s there. Jeff would have told you about it.

      But the thought wouldn’t stop haunting him, and neither would the awful visions that kept circling through his head.

      ‘I’m going to find you, Brooke,’ he said out loud. ‘I’m going to …’

      His voice trailed off into a croak. He sank his head into Brooke’s pillow and clutched her clothes tightly to his face, like a child needing comfort. His vision blurred. His tears moistened the pyjama top. The pain felt like too much to bear.

      For the next hour he lay there curled up, staring at the door, praying for it to open and for Brooke to walk through it with a cheery greeting and a smile on her face. But time passed on and on, and the door stayed shut. He turned off the bedside light and went on staring into the darkness for what seemed a lifetime before he eventually slipped away into a shallow and restless state of unconsciousness.

      When Ben awoke, it was still dark. His phone was thrumming in his jeans pocket. Instantly alert, heart thumping, he turned on the light and grabbed the phone to reply. This is it, the voice said in his mind. This is when you get your payback.

      But there was nobody on the line, no mysterious voice from the past to make his worst nightmare come true. It was a text message alert.

      The text was from Kay Lynch. Ben’s heart almost stopped when he read its opening words.

       Think u need 2 know. Found bodies.

       Chapter