The Armada Legacy. Scott Mariani

were crumbling.

      ‘No, no,’ Amal protested. Making an effort to speak coherently, he said very carefully, ‘I don’t want to be responsible for spoiling your evening. You go.’

      ‘Hurry up and decide, guys,’ Sam said irritably, and headed towards the exit with a glance at her watch.

      Brooke sighed. ‘What about you?’

      ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m still sober enough to call a cab.’

      ‘Are you sure? I’ve got no problem going back to the guesthouse with you. The party doesn’t mean that much to me.’

      He wagged a finger at her. ‘You came here to have a good time. Now go. I … I command it.’

      Sam was waving at them from the open doorway, mouthing ‘come on’ and gesticulating at the waiting Jaguar outside.

      ‘You’re quite sure?’ Brooke asked Amal.

      ‘Go and have fun,’ he muttered with a sickly smile. ‘Go. Go.’

      She made her decision. ‘Oh, what the hell. I’ll see you for breakfast, then,’ she said. ‘Sleep well, and take care, all right?’

      Amal watched as she left the building. The Jag’s engine was purring gently, its exhaust billowing in the cold night air. He couldn’t make out the face of the driver, but recognised Sir Roger Forsyte in the back seat. Sam opened the rear door of the Jag, climbed in and slid along to the middle to make room for Brooke. With a final glance back at Amal, Brooke climbed in after her and closed the door.

      The Jaguar took off towards the gates.

      That was the last he saw of her.

       Chapter Five

      The pale light of the Sunday morning sun hauled Amal up from the dark, dreamless depths, and with consciousness came the first rush of nausea. ‘Oh God,’ he groaned.

      He lay miserably curled up under the covers for a while, nursing his throbbing headache and cursing himself for having drunk so much. What the hell had possessed him? A vision of a tall, frosted glass kept appearing in his mind, making his stomach threaten to flip. He realised he was fully clothed under the duvet. ‘Oh, God,’ he repeated. ‘Why? Why?’

      Gradually, the scattered pieces of his memory fitted themselves back together to form a coherent picture of the previous night. He remembered calling the taxi from the country club – nothing at all about the car coming to pick him up, or the journey to the guesthouse. Only the vaguest recollection of letting himself in the door and managing to stagger up to bed.

      Once he was fairly certain that the slightest movement wasn’t going to trigger off a violent spate of vomiting, Amal gingerly hauled himself out of bed. He kicked off his shoes and left a trail of scattered clothing on the way to the bathroom. Showered, changed and feeling marginally more human, he left his room. It was twenty past eight. Brooke’s door across the landing was shut. He tapped lightly on it and murmured her name. When he got no reply, he figured she must either be downstairs or had come back so late last night that she was still sleeping.

      Amal tramped heavily downstairs. The frying grease smell that wafted up to meet him was almost more than he could bear, but he managed not to puke as he wandered into the breakfast room.

      No Brooke. No anybody, except for the landlady, Mrs Sheenan, who was in the adjoining kitchen frying up a mound of eggs and bacon that would have fattened the Irish Army.

      Mrs Sheenan didn’t appear to notice his presence, or hear his mumbled ‘Good morning’. That was partly due to the fact that she was half deaf – something he and Brooke had discovered when they’d checked in to the place the day before – and partly due to the blaring TV in the kitchen, which was turned up to full volume.

      Amal dragged himself over to a table by the window, where Mrs Sheenan would be bound to notice him sooner or later. He couldn’t stomach food, but yearned for a comforting mug of hot, sugary tea. He sat there for a few moments, gazing towards the misty bay and thinking how strangely out of his element he felt in this place, and then felt suddenly angry with himself for being so ungrateful towards as generous and warm-hearted a friend as Brooke. He started brooding once again over the way he’d let her down by going and getting wasted. What a prat. He could only hope it hadn’t totally ruined her evening.

      Eight twenty-five. Amal was lucid enough by now to remember that they’d have to check out in about an hour and forty minutes’ time to catch their flight back to London. If Brooke wasn’t awake soon he’d have to go and rouse her. Then again, he thought, she might have been up for hours and be about to return any moment, rosy-cheeked and tousle-haired from a brisk walk or a run on the windy beach. That was more her style.

      Amal’s thoughts were punctured by Mrs Sheenan, who had suddenly registered his presence and begun fussing over him, frying pan in hand, screeching in a voice that pierced through his skull. Yes, he’d slept fine, thank you. Yes, the room was lovely and warm. But her broad, toothy smile vanished as, averting his eyes from the pool of grease swilling in the pan, he informed her as politely as he could that he didn’t want any bacon.

      ‘Oh,’ she said, scanning his face and then pursing her lips in extreme disapproval. ‘You must be one of them Muslins.’

      ‘I’m just not hungry … really, a cup of tea would be fine.’

      ‘Just tea, is it.’ Mrs Sheenan sighed loudly and returned to the kitchen to dump her frying pan with a crash on the stove.

      ‘You haven’t seen my friend Brooke this morning, have you?’ Amal called after her through the open door. He had to make an effort to raise his voice over the din of the television. The kitchen was now reverberating to the opening theme of the local RTÉ news.

      ‘Eh?’ Mrs Sheenan screwed up her face with a hand cupped behind her ear, then glanced back at the television. ‘Shall I turn it down?’ she bawled, making a move for the remote control. ‘You’ve an awful quiet voice.’

      ‘I was asking—’ Amal began.

      He stopped mid-sentence as he realised what had just come on TV. He burst out of his chair and hurried towards the kitchen, his hangover suddenly forgotten. ‘No!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t turn it down!’

      Too late: Mrs Sheenan had pressed the mute button. Amal stopped in the doorway and gaped at the screen.

      The soundless television picture was of a wrecked car on a winding country road, in the middle of a rugged, empty landscape that looked shockingly familiar to Amal.

      The black Jaguar had skidded into the opposite verge and smashed into a huge rock. Wreckage was scattered across the road. Teams of police were milling around the vehicle, blue lights swirling in the early morning mist.

      As Amal went on staring in increasing horror, he saw a team of paramedics loading a bagged-up body on a gurney into the back of an ambulance. A close-up of the car showed what were unmistakably bullet holes punched through the black bodywork. The rear window was shattered and the rear wheels shredded, the tyres clearly blown out by the gunfire.

      ‘No, no, no, this can’t be happening,’ Amal murmured. He blinked his eyes tightly shut and then opened them again.

      It was happening.

      Mrs Sheenan gave a derisory snort. ‘There you go. Another eejit gone and killed himself.’

      The silent picture changed to a shot of Sir Roger Forsyte, followed by one of Sam Sheldrake. ‘Turn the sound on!’ Amal yelled. Flustered, Mrs Sheenan fumbled with the remote. Now the picture showed the face of a stocky-looking man in his forties whom Amal didn’t recognise.

      At that moment, Mrs Sheenan managed to get the sound back on.

       ‘… found a short