The Doomsday Prophecy. Scott Mariani

carry. Passport. Mobile phone. A fabric purse, stuffed with euro banknotes, all five hundreds. He counted quickly through the cash and stopped at six thousand.

      ‘There’s more cash in the rucksack, under her clothes,’ Charlie said. ‘She made a good dent in the twenty grand, but she still had quite a bit left.’

      ‘I think you’re right,’ Ben said. ‘She must have been serious about joining Nikos. Nobody walks away from that much money.’

      He rummaged deeper in the bag. Her air tickets were folded in a glossy travel agent’s paper wallet. He opened it. The destination was Heathrow via Athens, dated the day she’d disappeared. Under the tickets was a little book, good-quality leather jacket. An address book. From its crisp edges he could see it had been bought recently. He picked it up and flipped through it, looking for a Rick. Rick was what worried him the most.

      But it was a long shot. As he’d expected, there was nothing. He flipped through the pages and took note of the names she’d written in it. There were few entries. A handful of numbers with the 01865 Oxford code. One of those numbers was her parents’. Then there were some overseas numbers. Someone called Augusta Vale. Someone else called Cleaver. That seemed to be either a nickname or a surname. Or else maybe a company name. There were no addresses, just phone numbers. The Vale and Cleaver numbers had the international prefix for the USA.

      ‘Who or what is Cleaver?’ Ben asked. Charlie just shook his head. Ben flipped a few more pages, and a business card dropped out onto the table. He picked it up. The card read: ‘Steve McClusky, Attorney’. The address printed under the name was in Savannah, Georgia, USA. He slipped it into his pocket. ‘Apart from the money and the clothes, is there anything else in her rucksack?’

      ‘Nothing else,’ Charlie said. ‘I went through it all.’

      ‘Then this is all we have to go on.’ Ben thought about the money from America. And Rick, the American at the party. ‘A lot of US connections. Did Nikos mention anything about that?’

      ‘Apart from the fact the money came from there, no.’

      ‘Then I think I’d like to meet him and talk about this, in case he knows something. Can you arrange it?’

      ‘It’s not going to be possible, Ben.’

      ‘I understand it’s delicate for him. Tell him it’ll be very discreet. All we want is to ask him a few more questions.’

      ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Charlie said. ‘You can’t talk to him.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘You think I’d have called you all the way here for nothing?’ Charlie picked up the folded newspaper, opened it out and handed it to Ben. ‘Front-page news, yesterday. You don’t have to read Greek to get the idea.’

      Ben ran his eye down the page and it settled on a grainy black-and-white photo. The picture showed a couple of police cars and a bunch of uniformed officers standing outside what looked like a small villa surrounded by trees. Next to that picture was another, of a man’s face. The man looked to be in his mid-forties. Olive skin, strong features, moustache, greying at the temples. There was a little caption under the picture.

      ‘Don’t tell me,’ Ben said.

      Charlie nodded. ‘I said this was serious, didn’t I? As soon as I heard he was dead, that’s when I called you. The house in the picture is the hilltop place. That’s where they found him. It’s the talk of the island.’

      ‘Who found him?’

      ‘Somebody tipped off the cops. He was dead long before they got there. Massive heroin OD, and they found drugs all over the house. It looks like he was involved in it big-time. Either OD’d by accident, or it was suicide or murder. Nobody knows. The police are all over the place. It’s already turning into the biggest scandal they’ve seen here for years. Nothing like this ever happens on Corfu.’

      Ben was thinking hard. None of this was making sense. The drugs and the sudden appearance of the money went well together. Heroin, cash and death. A classic combination. But if Nikos and Zoë were mixed up in some kind of drugs business, the story he’d told Charlie was bizarre. He wouldn’t even have approached Charlie. Wouldn’t have drawn attention to himself like that. Unless there was something else they were missing.

      And what about the prophecy? He couldn’t even begin to understand what that could be about.

      ‘And there’s another thing,’ Charlie said. ‘Someone’s been tailing me.’

      ‘Since when?’

      ‘Since pretty soon after I got here. After I started asking questions about Zoë Bradbury.’

      ‘You’re sure about that?’

      Charlie nodded. ‘I’m certain. They’re good, but not that good that I didn’t spot them. They’re working as a team.’

      ‘How many?’

      ‘Three for sure, maybe a fourth. A woman.’

      Ben frowned. If a former SAS soldier said he was being followed, that was how it was. ‘What about now?’

      Charlie shook his head. ‘Pretty sure I lost them. So what do we do? Do we tell the cops what we know? Just hand it over to them?’

      ‘I don’t like dealing with the police,’ Ben said, ‘unless I absolutely have to.’

      ‘Then I don’t see any way ahead,’ Charlie said. ‘At least, not for me. This was meant to be a straightforward job. That’s what I told Rhonda.’

      The kid with the ball was making another pass through the tables, bouncing it as he went. He ran past the table where the man with the laptop had been. It was empty. The guy had left. The boy suddenly stumbled, and the ball bounced away from him. He ran after it, towards the edge of the pavement. The ball rolled into the road.

      Out of the corner of his eye, Ben was suddenly aware of what was happening. There was a van coming down the street. It was green, battered, some kind of delivery vehicle, moving fast, in a hurry to get somewhere. And the boy was chasing his ball right out into its path.

      Charlie was talking, but Ben didn’t hear. He turned and looked at the oncoming van. The driver was talking to his passenger, eyes off the road. He hadn’t seen the child.

      The ball stopped rolling. The kid crouched to pick it up. Saw the van and froze, wide-eyed. It wasn’t slowing down, and Ben realized with a chill of fear that it couldn’t stop in time to avoid him.

      When the mind is working at extreme speed, things seem to happen in ultra-slow motion. Ben burst out of his chair and launched himself into the road. Cleared the six yards between him and the kid. He bent low as he sprinted, wrapped an arm around the boy’s waist and scooped him off the ground. He heard a grunt of air escape from the kid’s lungs with the impact.

      The van was almost on them. Ben dived across its path and hit the ground sliding, using his body as a shield to protect the child from the road surface. The kid was screaming.

      The van brakes screeched and the wheels locked up, leaving snakes of rubber on the road. It slewed around and came to a halt at a crazy angle between Ben and the café terrace, rocking on its suspension.

      Time restarted. Ben could hear cries and shouts from the tables as people realized what had happened. He could feel where his shoulder had scraped the tarmac, pain beginning to register. Over the bonnet of the van he could see Charlie up on his feet on the café terrace, staring wildly, one hand gripping the back of his chair.

      Then the world exploded.

       Chapter Sixteen

      One instant, a café terrace, families and friends sitting having breakfast. The next, a blast of fire engulfed everything, blew everything apart.