‘He didn’t say where he was calling from?’
‘He wasn’t on the line long enough. We called the police right away. They’re working on tracing the call. Ben, you’ve got to get back here.’
This changed everything.
‘I’m on my way,’ he said.
‘The police just left a few minutes ago,’ Jessica told him when he arrived at the house just over three hours later. He wasn’t entirely sorry to hear that he’d missed them. Cops were as uneasy in his presence as he felt in theirs. It wasn’t a harmonious relationship he had with them, never had been, never would be.
‘There have been developments since I called you,’ she said. Jumpy with contained excitement, she led him into a huge, plush living room where a phone sat on a low table. Moments later, Mike joined them. ‘Ben, thank Christ you’re here. Sorry we had to call you back from Dover so urgently, but under the circumstances . . .’
‘What’s happening?’
‘Since we called you earlier, lots. The mobile number turned out to be a foreign one. Interpol are involved now. They’ve traced the phone’s owner. It’s registered to a man called Barberini. Gianni Barberini. Apparently, he’s a doctor in Turin.’
‘A dermatologist,’ Jessica corrected him.
‘What do the police make of it?’ Ben asked.
‘They seem as baffled by it as we are,’ Mike replied. ‘Last we heard, they were still trying to track down this Dr Barberini’s whereabouts. He’s not at home. They said he was away at some conference, or something. We’ve been waiting for more. And hoping you could make sense of this.’
‘Let me hear the message,’ Ben said.
Mike replayed it from the answerphone. The line was a bad one, with an echo and lots of background noise. ‘Mum? It’s me,’ said a boy’s voice.
‘That’s definitely him?’ Ben asked Jessica, and she gave a quick, certain nod.
‘Mum, I’m …I’m okay,’ Carl blurted, speaking in hesitant snatches over the background noise, which sounded to Ben like voices, as if the boy had been calling from the middle of a crowd of people. But there was another noise too, distorted and hard to identify. A kind of screech, followed by what sounded like a muffled bang. Ben couldn’t make it out at all.
‘I just wanted to say …I love you, mum. I—’ Carl’s voice was lost for a second amid some kind of commotion. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said suddenly. And there the message ended.
Jessica was looking fraught and gnawing at her thumb. ‘That’s all there is,’ Mike said anxiously. ‘What do you make of it, Ben?’
‘It’s definitely some kind of public place,’ Ben said. ‘Indoors, and crowded. A bar, maybe, or a café. But that other sound …let me hear it again.’
Mike replayed the message. Ben closed his eyes, concentrating hard on the strange noises in the background. They seemed to be coming from further away, which meant they must have been pretty loud. ‘What is that?’ he muttered to himself.
‘The police think it might be fireworks,’ Jessica said. ‘The high-pitched screech, then the loud bang. What else makes a sound like that?’
‘Maybe,’ Ben said. ‘But in the middle of the day?’
‘They have technicians working on it,’ Mike said. ‘Apparently they can separate out the frequencies or something, and use filters to clean them up.’
Ben looked at his watch. It was getting late, but there was still time if he hurried. He pulled out his car key.
‘Where are you going?’ Mike asked.
‘Italy,’ Ben said.
9
IT WAS GETTING towards midnight by the time Ben’s flight touched down at the Aeroporto di Torino in the middle of a rainstorm. As he was leaving the airport, Jessica called again.
‘They found Barberini,’ she said, and for a second Ben thought she was going to tell him that he was dead, too. ‘Found him?’ he asked.
‘I mean, they have him. He turned up at his home in Turin at eight o’clock this evening, and the Italian police were waiting for him there. They took him for questioning. As far as we can tell, they’re still talking to him.’
‘Any feedback yet?’ Ben asked as he spotted the car rental place across the way and began heading for it, head down through the lashing rain.
‘They’re keeping us updated. I don’t think he’s been charged with anything. It’s been confirmed he was on the list of delegates at that conference, and his alibi checks out. He totally denies any involvement in the abduction. Says he’s never heard of Drew or Carl, and doesn’t know anyone from Jersey. But listen to this.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘They found fingerprints on his phone. The police faxed Interpol a set of Carl’s taken from his room, and we had a call twenty minutes ago saying they’re a match. So Barberini’s lying. He was involved.’
‘Or else Carl just used his phone to make the call,’ Ben said. ‘With any luck, we’ll soon find out. I’m in Turin now.’
‘Turin?’ Jessica said, sounding perplexed. ‘But I thought Drew had taken Carl to Milan. That’s where the call was from, wasn’t it?’
‘I’ll be in touch,’ Ben said, and cut her off.
At nearly twelve-thirty a.m., a very resentful and sullen Dottore Gianni Barberini was finally released from police questioning, demanding to be taken home in an unmarked car so that his nosy neighbours wouldn’t take him for some kind of a damned criminal. The pouring rain just pissed him off all the more. All the way from the Posto di Polizia to his villa in one of the more affluent neighbourhoods of the city, he grumbled sourly at the plain-clothes driver, who was just as irritable as he was for having to ferry this arrogant prick home, and made no reply.
It was ten to one by the time Barberini climbed wearily out of the car and tramped up his long, curving driveway, cursing the rain and glancing up at the master bedroom windows to ensure that Germana hadn’t stayed up waiting for him. The lights were all off – thank God. His wife could be a terrible bitch if she was disturbed late at night. In fact, he reflected sourly as he approached the house, she’d been a terrible bitch for most of the miserable thirty-two years he’d been married to her.
Rather than risk waking her and face all kinds of wrath and yet more goddamn inquisition that night, he made for the separate entrance to the suite of rooms he used for his private dermatology practice here at the villa. Above it was his little sanctuary, his personal den, where he often slept on the sofa bed after working late, or sometimes just to get away from Germana. He loved it in there, undisturbed, just him and his collection …He paused at the door, fumbling keys with one eye on her window, dreading that her bedroom light might come on at any moment. Where was the key? Ah – got it.
‘Gianni Barberini?’ said a voice behind him.
Barberini whirled around and his eyes opened wide at the sight of the stranger standing there. He hadn’t heard anyone sneak up behind him. The guy had moved like a ghost. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded indignantly.
‘Someone who’s going to ask you a few questions.’
Barberini glared at him. The blond-haired stranger didn’t look much like an Italian. Didn’t sound like one, either. He spoke the language fluently enough, but the accent was foreign. A Swiss, maybe? A Kraut? ‘What’s the matter with you people? I’ve just spent the last seven hours giving my statement over and over. That not enough for you bastard cops?’
‘I’m not a cop,’ Ben said. ‘But some people say I’m a bit of a bastard, so you’d best get talking to me before I start to get nasty.’
Barberini stared at Ben for a moment, the cocksure belligerence in his eyes turning to uncertainty.
‘Lead the way,’ Ben said, motioning towards the door.
Barberini hesitated, then did what he was told. They walked through a comfortable little waiting area into the consulting room, then through that to a nicely decorated office lined with medical certificates and books. At the far end of the office, an open-tread stairway led upwards to the floor above.
/> ‘We can talk in here,’ Barberini said nervously as they emerged in his den.
Ben looked around him at the room. ‘Very cosy. So this is your little hobby room, is it?’
‘Look, whoever you are, I don’t know anything about a missing kid. I swear it. I’m telling the truth, just like I told the cops. I got the rail tickets to prove it. Hotel bill. Everything.’
‘You were in Milano for a conference?’
‘Yeah, for two days. A European Society for Pediatric Dermatology seminar. Top of the agenda was the latest research from Kiel University into infantile haemangiomas.’
‘You can spare me the jargon. I take it you weren’t one of the speakers?’
‘No, I was just attending it. First day was good. Afterwards I spent the evening with Davide Gagliardo, a medical colleague from Bologna. He’s already corroborated my story. Second day wasn’t so interesting, so I left for a while and went to a coffee bar for a break. I called my wife from there to tell her not to wait up for me tonight because I’d be home late. I didn’t think it would be so fucking late.’
‘Go on with the story,’ Ben said, with just enough menace in his voice to keep Barberini on edge.
‘Anyway, so that’s why I had my phone out, see? I’m sitting there finishing my coffee, then I see this guy at the next table eating a cannoncini alla crema – that’s a pastry.’
‘I know what it is,’ Ben said, eyeing him coldly. When people recounted their stories in this much elaborate detail, they were usually full of shit.
‘Right. I’m thinking how I’d like one of those myself. The waiter’s right across the room and I’m in a hurry, so I go over to the counter to order one. Left my stuff at the table. My back was turned maybe a minute, maybe two. When I come back, I notice how the phone isn’t where I left it, like someone had moved it. I thought maybe a waiter or someone had nudged it as they passed by.’
‘So you wouldn’t know if a twelve-year-old boy picked it up while your back was turned?’
‘Hey, listen. The place was full of people. I didn’t even see a kid, let alone speak to him or have anything to do with him, okay? That’s the whole truth, and I’ve got evidence to back up all of it. The first I heard about this kidnapping business is when I got home tonight and the police were waiting for me.’ Barberini’s face was flushed. ‘That’s it. You’ve heard all there is to hear. So now would you kindly leave my home, before I call the cops? Hey, be careful with that. It’s extremely valuable. Please, put it down.’
As Barberini had been talking, Ben had gone over to one of several trophy cabinets that lined the walls of the Italian’s little den. Except they weren’t filled with trophies. From the moment they’d come in, Ben had noticed the large collection of old motor racing memorabilia that cluttered the room. ‘What, this?’ he said innocently, holding the racing helmet he’d picked off a display unit.
‘Yes, that,’ Barberini said, turning pale. ‘It’s the helmet Mario Andretti wore when he won the South African Grand Prix in 1971.’
‘Really?’ Ben lobbed it casually across to him, like a ball.
Barberini leaped forward with a squawk to catch the helmet, and clutched it to his breast as if he’d just rescued a holy relic from the barbarian hordes. ‘Don’t mess with my collection,’ he muttered.
It was far from being the only holy relic in the room. On one wall was a giant signed poster of Ayrton Senna. A steering wheel was encased behind glass, with a photo of a beaming, goggled Jim Clark in the cockpit of a sixties’-era Lotus. A whole corner was dominated by a vintage twelve-cylinder Ferrari demonstration engine on a stand, part of its casing cut away to reveal its lovingly oiled innards. Pictures everywhere. Cars, cars, cars. You could almost smell the high-octane fuel and burning rubber and hear the shriek of high-performance engines revving sky-high.
Ben was putting it together in his mind. ‘Quite the racing car freak, aren’t you, doctor? You must spend a lot of time and money on this stuff.’
Barberini reverently replaced the precious helmet on its unit and turned angrily to face Ben. ‘Never mind what I am,’ he blustered. ‘You haven’t even told me who you are. You better show me some ID. What right have you got to come in here, asking me all these questions and manhandle my property like that?’
‘I never did think it was fireworks,’ Ben said.
‘Fireworks?’ Barberini snarled at him. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. But there’ll be some fireworks in a minute if you don’t get out of my house.’ He stamped over to a desk, yanked open a drawer and pulled out something small and black.
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Ben said, eyeing the little Beretta .25 auto that Barberini was pointing at him.
‘And I wouldn’t come a step closer,’ Barberini said with a twisted smile. ‘Unless you want a keyhole in your belly.’
10
BEN STOOD VERY still, staring at the gun.
‘Not so tough now, are we?’ Barberini chuckled.
‘You can’t shoot me,’ Ben said.
‘Want a bet? Self defence. The cops will drag you to the morgue and give me a medal. One less scumbag in the world.’
‘No, I mean you can’t shoot me because the safety’s on,’ Ben said, pointing. ‘Let me show you how it works.’ In two steps, he’d walked up to the gaping Barberini and twisted the gun sharply out of his hand.
‘Aagh! You son of a whore! You broke my finger!’
‘You’re a doctor,’ Ben said. ‘You should know it’s not broken. Now this,’ he went on, holding up the tiny pistol, ‘is what we call a mouse gun. Probably wouldn’t have pierced my jacket. Not very accurate, either. I’ll bet I couldn’t even hit that signed Ayrton Senna poster from here. Let’s have a try.’ He flicked off the safety catch and took careful aim.
‘Please!’ Barberini cried out. ‘Not that! It’s irreplaceable!’
‘I imagine so,’ Ben said. ‘All right, then let’s see if we can put a dent in a Ferrari flat-twelve cylinder head. I doubt it, personally.’ He pointed the gun at the engine on the stand.
‘No! I beg you!’ Barberini was virtually crying.
Ben lowered the pistol. ‘Not that either? Then tell me, doctor. How was the Grand Prix?’
There was a moment’s dead silence in the room. Then Barberini, ashen-faced and trembling, said, ‘I know who you are now.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes, I do. You’re not searching for any missing kid. You’re a fucking private eye. Germana hired you, didn’t she? My darling wife. And I suppose you know all about Claudia?’
Ben shook his head. ‘I’m not interested in some pretty young thing you ran off to meet when you were pretending to be in Milan and getting one of your doctor buddies to cover up for you. The hotel bill – that was a nice touch, by the way. Fooled the police, at any rate.’
‘Then what do you want?’ Barberini moaned, nursing his twisted finger.
‘Not all your story was a lie, I’ll give you that,’ Ben said. ‘I believe that you were in a café. I believe you turned your back for a moment, and that the boy happened to be there and took the opportunity to use your phone. But you weren’t there by yourself, and you weren’t at any conference. While the boy was calling on your phone, there was a noise outside. Hard to tell what it was at first. It was a car crash, and no ordinary car, either. Sounded like quite a smash. Was the driver badly hurt?’
Barberini knew there was no longer any point in pretending. ‘He walked away from it,’ he muttered. ‘A few cuts and bruises. He was lucky.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ Ben said. ‘Now, I can easily find out what Grand Prix took place this afternoon within driving distance of here. But you’re going to save me the trouble. Aren’t you, doctor?’
‘Monaco,’ Barberini groaned, shoulders sagging. The admission was obviously a lot more painful than his twisted finger.
‘You were in Monaco this afternoon?’
‘Yeah, yeah. You got me. I wasn’t in Milan. I never went to t
he conference. You were right, I got my pal Davide to cover up for me so I could spend some time with Claudia and catch the GP. We were at medical school together. I cover for him, sometimes.’
‘So he’s another one who cheats on his wife,’ Ben said.
‘Look, you don’t know Germana,’ Barberini protested. ‘She makes my life a misery.’
‘I suppose Davide says the same about Mrs Gagliardo,’ Ben replied. ‘The fact is, I really don’t give a shit about your domestic affairs. But I’m betting Germana would be interested to know what you’ve been up to. I know she’s at home, because I saw her at the bedroom window earlier. So unless you want me to go and wake her up and have a little chat with her, you’re going to tell me exactly where you were when the crash happened this afternoon in Monaco.’
11
IT WAS LESS than a three-hour drive from Turin to Monaco, especially the way Ben drove, and at that time of night the motorway was virtually deserted. He called Jessica’s number from the road.
‘Sorry to wake you in the wee hours,’ he said when she picked up.
‘I wasn’t sleeping anyway. I hardly do these days.’
‘Any more news?’
‘Carl hasn’t called again. Nothing from the police. What’s happening at your end?’
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Is Drew a race fan?’
‘Horses?’
‘Cars.’
‘No, he could never stand motor racing.’
‘What about Carl?’
‘Never expressed an interest. Why are you asking? Have you found something?’
‘Get some sleep, Jessica. You sound knackered.’ Ben ended the call and went back to wondering what the hell Drew Hunter was doing in Monaco. And how a kidnapped boy had been able to walk into a café and make a phone call to his mother. This case was getting stranger by the hour.
‘Fuck it,’ he muttered to himself as the car sped into the night. There was nothing for it but to keep pushing on and see where the trail led him.
Bring Him Back Page 5