The Pretender's Gold

by Scott Mariani

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Backlit by the patrol car lights, Ben walked over to the first cop and knelt beside him. The guy stirred and groaned, showing signs of wanting to wake up. So Ben tapped him on the skull and put him to sleep again, then went through his coat pockets. Same result. Another bulging wallet containing a thick wad of cash. He sniffed that one, too. The name on the police ID was PC Douglas Rennie.

  Ben tossed the wallet to Grace, and she caught it one-handed. He said, ‘This payoff happened so recently, the notes smell like they just came out of the machine. And whoever gave these jokers all this cash also gave them these little toys to play with.’

  He tossed her the shock prod, which Grace deftly caught with her other hand. He said, ‘Four thousand volts gives quite a jolt, as you saw. People use them on pigs and cattle. Those things have skin like leather. We don’t. It hurts like hell, but that didn’t stop your colleague PC Rennie from wanting to use his on you. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think they’re part of official police kit.’

  Grace stared at the banknotes she was clutching in one hand, then at the shock prod in the other, then down at Rennie, then up at Ben. ‘I don’t—’

  He said, ‘I do. Because if you’re an officer playing by the rules, you’ve got to account to your superiors for every time you use your Taser. These two were working off the books. Hence the need to keep it under the table and improvise a little. Hence also the other item of kit they’re not using tonight.’ He pointed. ‘Look at their uniforms. No body cams. Most forces are issued them now, including yours. But this was one “arrest” they didn’t want anyone to see.’

  He left her struggling with her inevitable conclusions and went back over to the slumped heap that was PC Murray Brown. The phone that the cop had used to make his call moments earlier was still in his coat pocket. Ben fished it out. ‘Just like he was using this to tell his bosses that he’d found us, instead of calling it in by radio. One look at our faces, they knew it was us, because they’d been tipped off in advance. It’s a no-brainer, Grace. No other way to see it. Now do you understand?’

  Ben checked the phone and saw that Brown’s call had been to another mobile. He would have bet all the cops’ payoff money that the number belonged to a disposable pay-as-you-go job, bought for cash, no names, no questions. The call record showed that several more calls had been made that day, to and from the same number. Nothing before then.

  Grace said, ‘Yeah, I think I do understand. So what the hell are we going to do now?’

  ‘Much as I’d love to make a citizens’ arrest and watch these chumps getting dragged off to jail, we have no way of knowing who else in the local force has been bought off. So I vote we get out of here. But first I want to make sure our friends Murray and Dougie can’t follow us, when they wake up.’

  Ben walked over to the police car, stepping over the unresponsive PC Brown. He opened up the driver’s side and groped about under the steering wheel until he found the bonnet release latch, tugged it and heard the pop of the lid. Then he walked over to the edge of the road, where Brown’s torch lay. He picked it up. A solid fistful of black metal tube, about a foot and a half long. Just the job, for what he had in mind. He carried the torch over to the car and tucked it between his knees while he lifted the bonnet lid the rest of the way up and held it in place with its support strut. Once that was done he snatched the torch back out from between his knees, turned it on and shone the strong beam around the engine compartment in search of the battery.

  Ben was no kind of an expert car mechanic, and had pretty much forgotten everything of the army courses he’d been made to take back in the day, the aim of which was to teach Special Forces operatives how to reactivate derelict old motors they might need for transport deep behind enemy lines, when things got rough. Or how to sabotage working vehicles in order to compromise enemy movements, which was more to the point in this instance. But even a nonmechanic like him knew what a battery looked like. A square plastic box with two metal terminals about twelve inches apart, positive and negative. Brimming with volatile chemicals and large amounts of latent electrical energy that could all too easily be abused, for destructive purposes. That was one army course Ben remembered well.

  He yanked the red and black plastic covers off the battery terminals. Laid the metal torch sideways across the battery so that it was touching both contacts, shorting out the battery. Sparks fizzed, and kept fizzing. The current flowing across the shorted terminals would generate a lot of heat very quickly. Ben closed the bonnet lid, jamming the torch in place. As he turned and started walking back towards Grace and the Mercedes, thick acrid smoke was already billowing out from under the bonnet, followed seconds later by the first flash of flame. It wouldn’t be long before the patrol car caught fire. He grabbed PC Brown by the ankles and dragged him a few feet further from the vehicle, so he wouldn’t burn to death. Sometimes you needed to show consideration for your enemies.

  Grace watched the flames pouring and curling out from under the patrol car’s bonnet with her hands on her hips and a raised eyebrow. ‘Couldn’t you just have slashed the tyres or something?’

  ‘It’s a chilly night,’ Ben said. ‘We wouldn’t want your police colleagues to get hypothermia.’

  ‘Not to mention that you have a flair for the dramatic. Admit it.’

  ‘Something tells me things are going to get more dramatic from here,’ he said.

  Chapter 46

  They got back in the Mercedes and took off, leaving the burning police car and the two unconscious cops by the roadside. Grace sat in silence, frowning deeply. Ben lit a Gauloise. It was still two hours before daybreak. The snow had died away and the clouds had rolled aside to uncover an inky sky studded with bright stars. He turned off the road two miles later at the first exit, and followed a maze of narrowing lanes for several more miles until their route took them close by the edge of a still, milkily starlit body of water with looming black hills in the background.

  The sat nav showed that they were close by the shores of Loch Bà. The place was as desolate and empty as any wilderness Ben had travelled in. He turned off the road and bumped over rocks to pull up on the slope of the shore, the car’s nose pointing down at the glistening water.

  ‘This is a good spot,’ he told Grace.

  ‘For what, sightseeing?’

  ‘We need to dump this car,’ Ben replied. ‘It’s got a big red flag on it. And I couldn’t have returned it to the rental company anyway.’

  ‘You could have said you were shot at by bandits.’

  ‘That probably happens all the time around here, doesn’t it?’

  She sighed. ‘Damn it, I was getting to like this car. And we’re miles from anywhere.’

  ‘We shouldn’t have too far to walk to find alternative transport,’ Ben said.

  ‘You’re not going to find a bus out here at this hour, or any other.’

  ‘A bus wasn’t what I had in mind.’

  ‘Not too many car rental outlets either. For what good it would do you.’

  ‘Don’t rub it in,’ Ben said.

  Ben got out of the Mercedes and Grace reluctantly followed. The stars cast their light over the dappled waters of Loch Bà. They gathered their things from the back of the car. Ben made the choice to leave the crossbow, the ghillie suit and the unused night-vision goggles behind. He regretted ditching them, but he needed to travel light. Then he put the transmission in neutral, let off the handbrake, and they stood back and watched as the Mercedes rolled down the slope. Slowly at first, then gathering speed, bumping over the rocks and snow, until it splashed nose-first into the loch. Ben had chosen the spot well. In moments the deep black waters closed over the bonnet, then the roof; and then it was gone.

  He sensed Grace’s tension and put his arm around her shoulders to give her a reassuring squeeze. Said softly, ‘It’s going to be okay. Trust me.’

  Grace was shaking her head. ‘It’s not, though, is it? I can’t beli
eve what’s happening. It’s like I’m having a weird dream that I can’t wake up from.’

  ‘Then let’s prove that we’re not dreaming,’ he said. ‘We can do that with one call.’

  ‘To who?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But I can guess.’ Ben took out the phone he’d captured from Murray Brown. Slid his thumb over the screen to unlock it, and saw that there was just one bar of reception out here in the wilderness. One was enough. He redialled the number Brown had called earlier. It rang several times, then just as Ben was expecting the call to go to voicemail a gruff voice, irritable with lack of sleep, grumbled ‘Macleod. So what’s happening, Murray? Do you have them or what?’

  Ben’s guess had been dead right. He smiled and said, ‘Detective Inspector Fergus Macleod?’ As he said the name, he glanced at Grace and saw her flinch as though she’d been slapped.

  Grace wasn’t the only surprised one. There was a stunned silence on the other end. A smart guy would have ended the call right away. Except it was already too late, even for that.

  ‘Murray can’t come to the phone right now,’ Ben said. ‘He’s too busy having a party with all that money you gave him. I presume it wasn’t your own money. You were just passing it down the line, weren’t you?’

  ‘H-Hope?’ Macleod stammered.

  ‘Give your boss a message from me,’ Ben said. ‘Tell him that I have something he wants. Tell him that if he’s interested, he can phone this number and we’ll talk business.’ He ended the call.

  Grace’s expression was as tight as violin strings, her mouth a thin clamped line. Ben said, ‘So there it is. Sorry, Grace, but your bosses Macleod and Coull are in on this whole thing. Supplementing their police pay by moonlighting for the main man.’

  Grace said tersely, ‘Charles Stuart.’

  Ben nodded. ‘Ninety-nine per cent for sure. First we find out that a member of the Dishonourables, the gang that killed Jamie McGlashan and tried to kill us, is working for Stuart. Now this. Doesn’t take a fortune to persuade the likes of Macleod and Coull to switch sides. Especially if they’re also mixed up in murder, attempted murder, and maybe kidnapping too. And Stuart has a lot of money. The kind that buys a great deal of influence and protection. With enough resources on tap, you can even own the local law.’

  ‘We’re living in modern-day Scotland. It’s not the Wild West.’

  ‘Times change,’ Ben said. ‘But people don’t. Power and money hold as much sway over men’s minds as they did all through history. That’s not my opinion. That’s a fact.’

  ‘But what did you mean, “Tell your boss we have something he wants”? We don’t, do we?’

  ‘No, but we can trick him into thinking we do, and we can use that to draw him out. Macleod will already have told him by now, and he’ll be going crazy wondering what we’re offering him. When he gets in touch, then we’ll be able to eliminate that one per cent of doubt that Stuart is the person behind all this.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ she said sourly.

  ‘You won’t have to. I don’t think he’ll hang around too long to call. In the meantime, let’s get moving. We’ve a lot of ground to cover.’

  All that was left of the sunken Mercedes was a few bubbles and spreading ripples on the starlit surface of the loch. Ben shouldered his bag. They turned away from the shore and started walking over the rough ground back towards the road. Grace asked, ‘Which way?’

  ‘Left,’ he said, pointing.

  ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘If in doubt, I always turn left. Doesn’t really matter which way we go. We’re bound to find something sooner or later.’

  ‘Fine, then left it is.’

  They headed up the road, keeping to the apex where the snow was thinnest. Hitching a ride to the nearest town or village was an option that floated in Ben’s mind. Out here you would hear a car or truck coming from a mile away, but the only sound was the soft moan of the wind and the crunch of frozen snow under their feet. Ben had Brown’s phone in his hand and kept waiting for it to ring.

  Nobody called. Ben and Grace kept walking, speaking very little, both of them focused on keeping moving and staying warm. They walked a mile of the lonely, dark, winding road without seeing the slightest sign of human habitation. Then another. After a long silence she asked, ‘Do you think Boonzie’s still alive?’

  ‘I have to,’ he replied.

  ‘And that Stuart’s got him?’

  ‘That’s what I believe.’

  ‘If they thought he knew where the gold was …’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘They’d torture him,’ Ben said. ‘For days on end. Until he talked.’

  ‘Who are these people, who would do such things?’

  ‘Dead men walking,’ Ben said. ‘That’s who they are.’

  On they walked. Then, at exactly eight a.m., with the dawn still some forty-five minutes away, Brown’s phone began to buzz in Ben’s hand.

  Chapter 47

  It was a man’s voice on the phone, deep and resonant, not old, but not young, with an accent whose audible Scottish-born origins had been smoothed around the edges by decades of international business travel. He sounded outwardly calm and cool, but Ben sensed an undertone of agitation, like ocean currents swirling beneath Arctic sheet ice. The voice said, ‘Am I to presume that I’m speaking with Mr Ben Hope? Or perhaps I should address you as Major?’

  Ben replied, ‘And am I to presume that I’m talking to Mr Charles Stuart?’

  ‘We meet at last. I wish I could say it was a pleasure.’

  ‘That’s the nice thing about business negotiations,’ Ben said. ‘You don’t have to like the people you’re dealing with.’

  ‘I take it, then, that I’m correctly informed and you wish to do business with me?’

  ‘When one person is in possession of something that the other would do anything to obtain, a sober commercial transaction is the more mature way to resolve things for everyone’s benefit. As opposed to, say, going to war. I don’t think that either of us wants to do this the hard way.’

  ‘As I think you know, I’m fully prepared for that option.’

  ‘Nobody’s ever fully prepared for a war,’ Ben said. ‘I’m offering you a far preferable alternative. One that you get to walk away from unhurt.’

  ‘Then you do have something that I want?’ Stuart was doing his best to sound composed, but as they circled the main issue it was becoming harder for him to contain his anticipation.

  ‘I’d say you want it more than anything else in the world,’ Ben said. ‘Considering the risks you’re obviously prepared to take to get hold of it.’

  ‘You have my attention. So what exactly are you putting on the table here?’

  ‘Rather than take my word for it,’ Ben said, ‘why don’t you let me show you? Give me an email address and you can see for yourself, right now.’

  Stuart reeled off the address. Ben took out his own phone and sent him the image of the gold coin that Mirella had forwarded to him three days ago. Ben waited for the email to land. When it did, he could almost palpably sense Stuart getting all pepped up and jumpy on the end of the line. Ben said, ‘If that looks like something you might be interested in, then I can tell you it’s only a tiny sample of what I’ve got. There are thousands more.’

  Now Stuart was fairly hopping. ‘How many thousands?’

  ‘As part of our negotiation process, you’ll be allowed to view the merchandise in person, and count and recount them to your heart’s content,’ Ben told him. ‘For the purposes of this discussion, suffice to say that there are enough of the damn things to fill two medium-size vans. Except if you did, the weight would bust the suspension. It took us weeks to dig it all up. Took even longer to count it all, once we’d smuggled it away and stashed it safely where nobody could find it.’

  ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘Right from under your nose, Stuart. It’s been sitting buried in the middle of the Loch Ardaich pine forest all these years. Personally, I
have no interest in where it originally came from or who put it there. If it was up to me, I’d melt the whole bloody lot of it down into bars.’

  ‘If you did that, it would instantly be worth half as much. This is about historical value, not just gold.’

  ‘Yeah, well, history isn’t my thing, Stuart. And a pile of obsolete currency isn’t much use to me. But of all the people in the world who’d love to get their hands on them, something tells me you’re first in line. Are you ready to make me an offer I can’t refuse?’

  Stuart warned, ‘You’d better not be leading me on, Hope.’

  ‘I always deliver on my promises,’ Ben replied. ‘Trust me when I say that you’ll get what’s coming to you.’

  ‘Then let’s get this started. How do you wish to proceed?’

  ‘Are you at home right now?’

  ‘I have several homes,’ Stuart said ostentatiously. ‘I’m presently staying here at my Scottish residence, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Then here’s what you’re going to do,’ Ben told him. ‘If you can bear to come down off your high perch and mix with us poor common folks for a couple of hours. You’re going to take a drive out to Kinlochardaich. I presume you know where that is.’

  ‘Is that your current location?’

  ‘My current location is of no concern to you,’ Ben said. ‘But I’ll be at the village pub at one o’clock this afternoon. Not because I’m interested in socialising with a scumbag like yourself, but because it’s a public place where I can be reasonably assured that you can’t bring your henchmen to cause trouble for me.’

  Stuart chuckled. ‘You’re a very careful man, aren’t you?’

  ‘Which is why, if I catch even the tiniest whiff of a trick or a trap, this deal is instantly void and you can forget about ever seeing a single one of these coins. I’ll simply go to another buyer. I have several more interested parties already lined up.’