Grace asked, ‘Okay, so what’s the plan?’
‘Show me the way to the sanatorium. I’ll drop you off there, then come back to the village. All being well, next time I see you I’ll have Stuart with me.’
‘You must be nuts if you think I’m hanging around in a spooky old building by myself for over an hour.’
‘I thought you didn’t believe in all that ghostly crap.’
‘And I’m totally famished. Couldn’t we grab a bite of breakfast first?’
‘Hell of a late breakfast,’ Ben said.
‘Call it an early lunch, then.’
‘There isn’t time.’
‘Come on. Twenty minutes, tops. We can afford it. After all that hiking in the freezing cold this morning, what I wouldn’t do for something warm and filling.’
‘More soya meat-surrogate with yesterday’s limp salad?’
‘I was actually thinking of whizzing us up a plate of bacon, eggs and beans. You look like you could do with it yourself.’
Ben had to admit it sounded good. ‘I think we can make time for that.’
‘My place, then. I’ve got all the necessaries in my wee kitchen.’
He shook his head. ‘No chance. After what happened last night, it’s a bad idea for either of us to go back there in case they’ve got more people waiting for us. Whereas nobody knows about the Gunn cottage.’
‘Your place, then. Except that it’ll be like an icebox in there. You drop me off, and I’ll get the fire lit and everything ready in two shakes of a lamb’s tail while you swing by the village store and pick up the food. Okay?’
The joys of domestic living. Too tired to argue with her, Ben shrugged again and said, ‘Whatever. Fine by me.’
And so it was decided. Ben pulled up outside the cottage long enough for Grace to hop out and catch the key that he tossed her. She gave him the crooked smile and said, ‘See you in a minute, babes. Don’t forget the cooking oil.’
He drove off still seeing that damned smile in his mind’s eye and wondering whether he’d ever been called ‘babes’ before. Not that he could recall. But then, he’d never started really getting to like a quirky, dark-haired Scottish policewoman before, either. And a voice in his head had to remind him that, in the midst of all that was happening, this was neither the time nor the place to start liking someone.
Confusing. Ben lit a Gauloise as he drove over to the village stores. The midday sky had choked up with white clouds and it was beginning to snow again. He parked the Mazda outside the shop and went inside. The same old guy with the bushy white moustache was tending the counter. They exchanged a nod and Ben set about culling the items he needed from the shelves. A pack of streaky bacon rashers, a box of farm-fresh eggs, a large tin of baked beans and the bottle of vegetable oil he’d been specifically ordered not to forget. He shelled out a twenty from the bent cops’ payoff cash, waited for his change, bagged up his stuff, thanked the old guy and walked back outside into the falling snow.
That was when PC Brown’s phone rang a second time.
Ben halted in the middle of the pavement. Large fluffy snowflakes settled on his hair and shoulders. A cold trickle went down the back of his neck. He didn’t move for a second. Brown’s phone kept ringing. Ben was wondering who was calling. He had a bad feeling about it.
Slowly, he reached into the pocket where the phone was and took it out. Hit reply and held it to his ear.
And then the worst happened.
Stuart’s familiar voice said, ‘Change of plan, Mr Hope.’
Whatever this was about, Ben didn’t like it. ‘So you’ve decided you don’t want what I have to offer?’
‘Not at all. I just decided to change the terms of our arrangement.’
‘Then there is no arrangement,’ Ben said.
Stuart gave a laugh. He sounded confident and in control. Almost happy. Ben didn’t like that either.
‘I think you’ll come around to seeing it differently,’ Stuart said. ‘Considering that now I have something else of yours that I’m sure you’d like to have back in relatively undamaged condition. All the time you and little Miss Kirk have been spending together lately, it seems you’ve grown quite fond. Call it a trade. You give me the gold. And you get to see her again, alive and intact. As opposed to diced up into small pieces.’
Ben said nothing. He felt suddenly very cold, as though his blood had frozen to a standstill. The world seemed to have tilted sideways. His feet felt cemented to the pavement.
Stuart chuckled again. ‘Hello? Are you there?’
Ben took a long, slow breath. The ice water in his veins began to grow hot as volcanic lava. ‘Where is she?’
Stuart said, ‘At this moment she’s on her way to my home, in the capable hands of two of my employees whom I had stationed at your cottage in your absence, awaiting your return from wherever it is you’ve been gallivanting off to. I understand she’s a little bruised, having put up quite a spirited fight. But otherwise unharmed. For the moment.’
‘If you hurt her, this will go badly for you.’
‘As if it wasn’t going to already, had I gone along with your plan? You must think I’m an idiot, if you expected me to believe I’d walk away unscathed from our so-called business meeting. So here are the new deal terms. If you prefer not to see Miss Kirk hacked up into dog meat, I suggest you get yourself over here as fast as you can.’
‘I know where to find you.’
‘Good. I don’t think I need to specify that you come alone, because now you really are alone. Then you can deliver me the merchandise. Whereupon you get your lady friend back, and we shake hands like gentlemen and carry on our separate ways. Agreed?’
‘Doesn’t sound as though I have much of a choice.’
‘None whatsoever, Mr Hope. Now I really think you ought to get on your way. I’m not the most patient man, and I’ve already waited far too long to get what’s mine.’
Chapter 50
As a child, Ben had been haunted by a nightmare that visited him often, always the same. In the dream he found himself trapped in an empty house, whose dark and menacing corridors he wandered alone, lost and frightened. The house had many doors, but every time he came to a door in the hope that behind it was a way out of his prison, he was too afraid to open it in case of some unimaginable terror lurking there. One by one, bit by bit, every possible escape route was closed off to him, until none remained and he knew that he was doomed to remain locked in there for ever with the monsters from the encroaching darkness. But dreams being dreams, just as all seemed lost Ben had always woken up and found himself mercifully transported back to the sanctuary of his bedroom, shaken but safe.
Now the nightmare was for real. He was trapped with no way out, no chance of waking up. Just the knowledge that only pain and death lay behind every door in front of him. He couldn’t afford trying to recruit outside help from the stalwart comrades he knew would rally to his side, because the sand would too quickly run out of the hourglass before he could make that happen. Couldn’t break the rule of a lifetime and run to the police, because there was no way to tell which of them he could trust and which were corrupt. Couldn’t leave Grace in the hands of Stuart and the Dishonourables. Couldn’t turn away from Boonzie, now that he knew for sure that his friend was alive and a prisoner.
Only one path remained open. Ben just had to accept that Stuart had him by both balls. And that his sole option was to face the man and do whatever he needed to do to make things all right. Or to die knowing that at least his friends hadn’t suffered alone.
If need be, Ben was good with that option.
There was a litter bin outside the village shop. He dumped the bag of groceries into it. Wouldn’t be needing them. Then snapped Brown’s phone in half and dropped the pieces in there, too. Would no longer be needing that, either. He felt suddenly clear-minded and focused as he walked to the Mazda, got behind the wheel and restarted the engine.
Here we go, then.
The map in his min
d told him how to get to Charles Stuart’s castle, just a few miles south of Kinlochardaich. He sped out of the village, wipers slapping away the beating snow, the tyres battling for grip on the icy road, and a deathly stillness in his heart.
Ben knew he was getting close to his destination when he reached the bottom of a long, wooded road and saw the estate gates in front of him. The spiked wrought-iron railings stood twenty feet high. A pair of stone lions, not much less than lifesize, eyed him from atop the tall gateposts. He pulled up and waited as two men emerged from a gatehouse. Neither of them looked like the kind of individual who might join up with the Dishonourables. Permanent security staff, Ben guessed. One of them stepped through an inset gate and approached the driver’s side of the Mazda, giving it the eye. Most visitors to the estate probably didn’t show up in twenty-year-old rust buckets stolen from dopeheads. Ben gave his name. The security guy signalled to his colleague and they opened up the main gates and waved him through.
The private road continued through the estate, ascending towards the foot of a tall mountain whose wintry slopes loomed above the trees, its peak wreathed in mist. Ben passed a keeper’s cottage and a field where Highland cattle foraged for grass among the snow. Finally, the tree-lined avenue turned a bend and Ben caught sight of Charles Stuart’s Scottish residence in all its grandeur before him.
The spectacular images on the company website hadn’t quite managed to convey the scale of the place. Nor its contrived artificiality. Carved into the foot of the snowy mountain, Stuart’s castle with its ivied turrets and towers and battlements was like some Hollywood set designer’s overblown fantasy made real, a wildly romanticised vision of a historical era that only really existed in movies where kilted heroes gallantly ran around rescuing beautiful ladies with long tresses, galloping white stallions through the heather-filled glens and battling their enemies on mountaintops with rapiers and claymores while delivering their stirring lines in a voice-coached twang that was more California than Caledonia.
Except that what was happening here inside these castle walls was very genuine. Nobody was acting. And any blood spilled would be real.
Ben passed between tall gates set into a perimeter wall and entered a courtyard. He pulled up at the foot of a broad sweep of stone steps, stepped out of the Mazda and was met there by three more men with grim faces and hard eyes. The man on the left, Ben had never seen before, but he had the look about him that the security guards on the gate hadn’t. The man on the right was the killer who had fled from the scene of Jamie McGlashan’s murder.
The one in the middle was Carl Hacker. He looked a little older and a little leaner than he had in Mad Monty’s file photographs. He was wearing a suit and tie that made him look like a corporate bodyguard or a secret service agent. Ben could see the lump of the concealed pistol under the tailored line of his suit. The other two were wearing bulkier jackets that made it harder to spot the hidden weapons underneath, but they were there. Ben could almost smell them. Like he could smell their nervousness at meeting him face to face.
‘Arms out to your sides,’ Hacker said. ‘Feet apart.’
Ben allowed himself to be frisked, which Hacker did very expertly and thoroughly while his two men searched the car and examined the contents of his bag. Ben had stopped off by the shores of Loch Ardaich en route to the castle, to dismantle his weapons and fling their components and ammunition into the deep, dark water.
Hacker took Ben’s wallet and phone. Said, ‘He’s clean.’
‘Nothing here either,’ Jamie McGlashan’s murderer called from the car. Hacker nodded. He took a step away from Ben and looked him hard in the eye. ‘So you’re the SAS high-roller we’ve all been dying to meet.’
‘And you’re the Pathfinder who lost his way.’
Hacker flushed an ugly colour. ‘Let’s go. He’s waiting for you.’
They escorted Ben up the steps to a tall carved-oak double doorway and inside a grand hall with a flagstone floor and mounted suits of armour clutching a pike and a halberd guarding the entrance. He momentarily wondered how easy it would be to snatch one of the polearms from its knight’s gauntlets and use it to disembowel all three of his escorts right there in the hallway. Probably not too hard, but he dismissed the idea.
‘This way,’ Hacker said. They led him from the hall down a wide corridor whose walls bristled with stuffed deer heads, with spiky antlers and staring glass eyes that seemed to watch you as you went by. Gleaming oak doors stood to the left and right. Like the ones in Ben’s nightmare, they might offer an escape from his predicament or they might lead to a painful death for him and his friends. He calmed the butterflies that were fluttering in his stomach, and walked on. At the bottom of the corridor was another tall double doorway. McGlashan’s killer and his associate stood closely at Ben’s sides as Hacker stepped to the door, knocked and pulled it open. Turning to Ben, he jerked his head and said, ‘In there.’
They ushered Ben through the doorway without touching him. Wise move, because one shove and someone would have earned themselves a snapped finger. He stepped into a palatially sized room with dark carved-wood panelling and rich fleur-de-lys drapes. The parquet flooring was like a mirror, the centre of its expanse covered with a lush hand-woven carpet of Celtic knot design. More gleaming suits of armour stood around the walls clutching two-handed broadswords. A rack held a decorative display of old flintlock muskets and Scottish daggers. At one end of the room was a vast sculpted stone fireplace in which a pile of logs was blazing fiercely. Above the mantelpiece hung an enormous gilt-framed oil painting of a historical figure.
At the other end of the room, standing gazing out of a ceiling-height leaded window overlooking the snowy castle grounds, was Charles Stuart.
Chapter 51
The great man slowly turned around as Ben stepped into the room. He was wearing a handsome tweed suit with an open-necked silk shirt and loafers. His silvery hair was slicked back and caught the light from the window. He was smiling the kind of self-congratulatory smile that he probably wore when he’d just come away triumphant from a boardroom battle or trampled one of his corporate rivals in a bidding war.
‘Ben Hope. Welcome to my humble abode. So glad you could make it.’
Hacker and Jamie McGlashan’s killer stepped into the room after Ben, the third guy remaining outside in the corridor. Hacker closed the door. He and his associate each stood to one side of the doorway, pistols now drawn and eyeing Ben warily, as though they expected him to try to tear their employer apart with his bare hands. That wasn’t actually too far away from Ben’s own thoughts, at that moment.
Ben repeated the question he’d asked earlier. ‘Where is she?’
Stuart made an airy gesture. ‘Somewhere nearby, where you’d never find her even if you could try. Hacker’s man Graham is looking after her, equipped with an extremely sharp knife that he’d just love to get stuck in with. But don’t worry, she’s in good health. Whether she remains so is dependent on the degree to which you’re prepared to cooperate.’
‘It would be in your best interests that she does,’ Ben said. ‘Because if anything happens to her, you and I are going to have a serious problem.’
‘I’d say you’re the one with the problem, to put it mildly.’
‘The worst that can happen to me is that I die trying. Nobody will ever be able to say I lived an unfulfilled life. Whereas you’d die knowing that you never even came close to getting the thing you most wanted.’
‘I’m a businessman,’ Stuart replied. ‘I understand all about leveraging a deal. Though I wouldn’t get too cocky if I were you. You’re not in a strong position here, to say the least.’
‘Boonzie McCulloch,’ Ben said.
‘What about him? Are you suddenly concerned about his welfare now?’ Stuart gave that triumphant smile again, even more widely. ‘Come, come. Surely you didn’t think you had me convinced earlier, when you so artfully pretended not to be? Nice try, but I know every trick in the book. I practically wro
te the damn thing myself.’
‘Then he’s alive.’
‘Oh, very much so, in no small part thanks to our efforts in keeping him that way. But only two kinds of people exist in my world, Mr Hope. The ones who can be of use to me, and the ones who can’t. Now that I have you exactly where I want you, I’m no longer feeling quite so motivated to play nursemaid to some sick old codger. Your friend just became surplus to requirements. Bad luck for him.’
‘Same terms apply,’ Ben said. ‘Boonzie gets hurt, you can say bye-bye to your precious loot.’
‘I really don’t give a damn if he lives or dies. I’m interested in one thing only. Getting what’s mine.’
Mine. Stuart’s eyes flashed with a sort of manic glee when he said the word. There was something wrong inside his head. Something deeper and more dysfunctional than just obsessive greed or cold-blooded acquisitiveness. Ben could see it stamped all over his face.
‘I don’t get it, Stuart. You’ve got everything in the world, and yet you’d risk it all for a bunch of shiny coins.’
Stuart chuckled. ‘Well, now, the word “bunch” would be something of an understatement, as you and I are both very well aware. To my certain knowledge, until your associate Ross Campbell got very lucky indeed, no more than a single bag of French Louis d’or had ever been recovered out of the one million, two hundred thousand livres of foreign aid that were secretly shipped to Scotland in September 1746 by French warships carrying munitions and funds to support the Jacobite uprising against the British crown.’
‘So you’re a historian now,’ Ben said.
‘Oh, I’m a little more than that. The man who led that uprising was my direct ancestor. That makes it highly personal to me.’
‘Bonnie Prince Charlie.’
‘None other. The seven large caskets containing the payroll for his rebel army were moved some twenty miles inland and buried in the ancient pine forest somewhere near the loch. Which means that the vast bulk of the gold has remained hidden there ever since, until now. In modern currency, something in the region of ten million pounds’ worth. But of course, I needn’t tell you that, since it seems you already have it in your possession.’
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