Passenger 13

by Scott Mariani

  Ben turned off his Maglite. He crouched behind the desk, completely still and silent in the darkness.

  The footsteps stopped right outside the study. Someone reached out and nudged the door half open. Torchlight shone inside the room.

  And from the source of the brilliant white beam, there was the unmistakable metallic click-clunk of a well-oiled revolver mechanism being cocked, ready to fire.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The footsteps moved closer inside the room. The torch beam swept from side to side. Ben tucked himself in tightly behind the desk, but he knew that he had zero chance of remaining hidden for long.

  The torch beam flashed across the desk. Ben saw his own shadow appear on the floor. He had a split second to react before the intruder did.

  Nobody, not even a trained SAS soldier, really wants to launch themselves, unarmed and blind, at someone holding a cocked and loaded revolver. But under the circumstances, Ben didn’t have a lot of choice. Surprise was his only advantage, and he used it. With a roar he burst out from behind the desk, shining his own torch straight back at the intruder’s face. And hurled himself at the guy in a flying leap.

  There was no deafening gunshot while he was in the air. Ben’s shoulder connected with what felt like the intruder’s midriff, driving him violently backwards against the wall. The intruder let out a grunt of pain and shock. The torch beam slashed upwards to point at the ceiling, then fell towards the floor. There was the distinct thump of a chunky revolver landing on the rug.

  Pinning the wildly struggling intruder down hard with a knee to the throat, Ben reached for the switch of the side lamp.

  And with a shock, recognised the face staring up at him as that of Mrs Martínez, Nick’s PA.

  He instantly relaxed the pressure on her neck before she blacked out. She was wheezing and clutching her throat as he hauled her to her feet and set her down in a chair. ‘I wasn’t expecting to meet you again so soon, Mrs Martínez,’ he said.

  ‘How did you get in here?’ she gasped, rubbing her neck.

  Ben stooped to pick up the fallen revolver. It was a Smith & Wesson Model 28, the ‘Highway Patrolman’ version of their large-framed .357 hand cannon. Four inch barrel, blue steel. Enough firepower to stop a Freightliner truck. The US Highway Patrol had used them to stop runaway vehicles by blasting holes in the engine blocks.

  ‘That’s a lot of handgun for a nice lady like you to be carrying around,’ Ben said. He eased the hammer down. Pushed the knurled catch behind the recoil shield and flipped out the cylinder to see the six bright brass cartridges stamped FEDERAL .357 MAGNUM. He tipped the rounds out into his palm, dropped them in his pocket and laid the unloaded pistol on the desk. He could see her eyeing it. ‘Did I hurt you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Her throat and jaw were turning a fine red, but it would fade in an hour or two. He wasn’t so sure the pain in his side would ease as fast. His little altercation with Beard’s boys earlier hadn’t done his healing wound too many favours, and leaping up from behind the desk just now had added an unpleasantly sharp new dimension to the discomfort that had him worrying about busted stitches.

  ‘You want to know why I broke into Nick’s house, Mrs Martínez, and I’ll level with you,’ Ben said. ‘I’m here because people aren’t answering my questions and I get the feeling my presence on this island is less than welcome in some quarters. I don’t think Nick would have minded me coming to check out his place. Now, you level with me. I’m wondering why someone with a key to the front door would come armed with a flashlight and a Magnum.’

  ‘What questions?’ she said.

  ‘Ones that would help me understand the truth of what really happened out there that day.’

  She hesitated. ‘I’ll answer your questions if you’ll let me go over to that bookcase.’ She pointed across the other side of the study.

  ‘What’s that? The old “hidden weapon in the bookcase” trick?’

  ‘Please. I’m not that stupid.’

  ‘What’s in the bookcase?’

  ‘You’ll understand.’

  ‘Slowly,’ he said.

  Avoiding his eye, she crossed the room, stopped at the bookcase and gazed along the rows of titles. Most of Nick’s collection seemed to be aviation-related. She plucked at the spine of a big, thick leather ring-bound book, slid it out and held it tight against her chest.

  ‘Now set it down on that table and step away from it,’ Ben said.

  She did as he said. Ben approached the table and flipped open the leather cover. It was a photo album, nothing more.

  ‘I need to see something,’ she said. ‘It’s important.’

  ‘Be my guest,’ Ben said.

  Mrs Martínez flipped through a few pages of the album. She stopped, pressed a finger to one of the pages, stooped a little to peer at it more closely, then flipped another page and did the same again. She looked up at Ben, studying his face with the same careful scrutiny he’d noticed that afternoon at the CIC offices. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Now I know for sure.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘What I came here tonight to find out. I thought I recognised you when you walked into the office today. But I needed to be sure that you were the same Ben Hope Nick used to talk about.’ She spun the album round on the table so he could see the picture. It was a shot taken at Hilary Chapman’s engagement party. Ben was in the background, holding a glass.

  ‘And here,’ she said, flipping back a page to another shot of some of the men of A Squadron, looking hot and exhausted in filthy fatigues, sitting around a clearing in some tropical hellhole that could have been either of the SAS’s jungle training grounds in Belize or Borneo. There was Ben in the middle, his face partially blacked, in the process of field-stripping an AR-15 rifle. Technically speaking, Nick shouldn’t have even had such potentially compromising photos in his possession, though sneaking the occasional memento home wasn’t uncommon practice.

  ‘You haven’t changed a lot,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks. So now you know who I am, Mrs Martínez, will you talk to me?’

  ‘Call me Tamara,’ she said. ‘And yes, if Nick trusted you as a friend, then that’s good enough for me.’

  Ben saw the connection right away. ‘Tamara, as in the large capital T in Nick’s address book, next to a mobile number?’

  She nodded. ‘You’ve been straight with me, now it’s my turn. Nick and I were having an affair for the last eighteen months. That’s to say, I was having an affair with him. I was the one that was married with two kids. It was our secret, obviously. A very well-kept one, until now. I even had a secret phone he used to call me on.’ She paused a long time, then added softly, ‘I loved him so much.’

  Now Ben understood the depth of pain in her eyes. She hadn’t just lost a work colleague.

  ‘Why the gun, Tamara?’

  ‘It’s my husband’s. I don’t normally …’

  ‘Walk about the island packing a pistol?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, this is one of the safest places in the world. But I’m scared. I’m scared to death.’ The tears in her eyes caught the light. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. But the words building up in her throat were too strong to be hemmed in and after a few moments’ hesitation she blurted it out.

  ‘Nick didn’t kill himself,’ she said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘I don’t think we should hang around here too long,’ Ben said after a beat.

  Tamara sniffed, wiped a tear. ‘We can go back to my place. It’s okay – there’s nobody there right now but me and the maid. You follow me.’

  After tidying up behind them and making sure nobody was lurking around outside, they left the villa by the front door. Tamara had parked her Mazda people carrier among the shadows of the trees. Ben watched her climb in and her car lights come on, then got into the Wrangler and followed. They drove eastwards across the island for a few miles, to an area called Omega Bay Estates. The Mazda led the way into what was obvious
ly a prestigious and highly expensive gated community, and pulled up outside a sprawling house set far back from the road.

  ‘Where’s your husband?’ Ben asked as she led him inside. The tears had dried up now.

  ‘Dwight? Away on some legal conference. He’ll be gone another ten days. Even if he was here,’ she added with a grimace, ‘he’d be off sailing around the bay on that damn boat of his. And the twins are staying with my mom in Miami.’

  Where Nick’s place was unassumingly tasteful and comfortable, the Martínez residence purposefully screamed ‘rich lawyer’ as loudly as it could and shoved its opulence right in your face. Ben got the impression that wasn’t down to Tamara’s influence. He paused to look at a photo of Dwight Martínez on a sideboard, posing with his motor yacht in the background, a sleek white vessel with the name Santa Clara on her bows.

  Dwight might have been a fine figure of a man in his youth, but Ben doubted it. He was almost perfectly spherical in shape, all three hundred pounds of him, with thin sandy hair that looked glued on and a smile that was more like a sneer. Ben glanced covertly back at Tamara and muttered ‘Jesus’ under his breath.

  ‘Let’s get a drink,’ she said, and led him towards the kitchen. In the passage was a reproduction antique display cabinet filled with shotguns – a showy brace of Purdeys, a couple of skeet guns and a short-barrelled Remington semi-auto that looked as if it was kept for home defence. ‘Dwight’s quite the sportsman,’ Ben commented as he followed Tamara into the enormous kitchen.

  ‘Don’t get me started. Pity any poor creature that crawls or flies when he and his law cronies get together. You want a beer?’

  ‘I’d sooner have a scotch,’ he said.

  ‘Sounds good to me.’ Tamara opened a cupboard, fetched out a bottle of Bowmore and two glasses. Ben walked over to the long breakfast bar and pulled out a stool. ‘Mind if I smoke?’

  She shook her head as she poured out the drinks. ‘Go ahead. There’s an ashtray on the side.’

  ‘Want one?’

  ‘Uh-uh. I quit months ago.’

  Ben lit up. Clanged the Zippo shut and blew out smoke. Tamara joined him at the breakfast bar, setting the bottle down between them on the marble top. Handed him his glass and took a long, deep gulp of her own, as if she really needed it. ‘This has been a tough time for me,’ she said in the controlled voice of someone battling their emotions.

  Ben didn’t reply. Looking at her he could see a strong-willed woman bravely trying to hold it together, trapped in a nowhere marriage and unable to grieve openly for the man she’d loved. He knew there were times she must veer close to the edge. He understood it. He’d been there in the past, and would certainly find himself there again in the future. Some things didn’t go away.

  ‘Nick said you didn’t have any family,’ she said. ‘Is that still how it is for you?’

  ‘That’s still how it is,’ Ben said.

  ‘I think he told me you’re from Ireland? You don’t sound it.’

  ‘I wasn’t born there,’ he said. ‘But I love Ireland. My mother was from Galway. I have a home there.’ He pictured it in his mind: a large rambling old house close to the rocky shore where he loved to spend time alone whenever he could, sometimes sitting for hours gazing out to sea. He often missed it.

  ‘You talk about your mother in the past tense,’ Tamara said.

  ‘She died a long time ago.’

  When Tamara understood he wasn’t going to elaborate, she asked, ‘Do you have any other family?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s just me and Winnie. She was my parents’ housekeeper. She moved with me to Ireland after they died and now she just looks after the place for me when I’m not around. A mad old bat, and it drives her crazy trying to keep me in line,’ he added with a smile, which quickly dropped from his face. ‘She’s the only family I have left now.’

  Tamara sensed there was something paining him, something he kept bottled up deep inside and didn’t want to talk about. ‘You want a top-up?’ she asked him.

  He nodded, and slid his half-empty glass across for her to refill.

  ‘Why are you here on Grand Cayman, Ben?’ she said. ‘You don’t believe this bullshit about suicide either, do you?’

  ‘Let’s start from the beginning,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you know.’

  ‘I know Ni—’ she started, then broke off. ‘I knew Nick. He told me all about his history – the divorce, the breakdown, his depression, how he’d left the army under a cloud. He didn’t try to hide anything from me. But that was years ago. He wasn’t depressed any more. He was one of the most contented people I’ve ever known. Did you see that yellow plane outside the office?’

  ‘The Sea Otter.’

  ‘Nick rescued it from a scrapyard and restored it himself. His pride and joy. He was like a boy with it – any excuse, he was in the air. He had a passion for it that was so infectious, he even got me learning to fly. Nick loved planes, he loved this island, and the new life he’d created here …’ Tamara paused a moment, swallowed and added in a choked voice, ‘And he loved me. That’s why this Cifuentes stuff made no sense to me, no sense at all.’

  ‘Cifuentes?’

  ‘Dr Carlos Maria Cifuentes. This psychiatrist in Miami who was allegedly treating Nick for severe bipolar disorder and prescribing antidepressants for about the last nine months. At least that’s what the police report said.’ Tamara shook her head vehemently. ‘But there’s no way Nick would have touched that stuff, let alone go all the way to Miami for it. He swore he’d never go near antidepressant meds again, after all the horrendous side effects he’d had in the past. He wouldn’t even take painkillers for a headache. And most of all, if he’d been suffering, I know he wouldn’t have kept it from me. He’d have reached out to me for help.’ Tamara was working hard to stay composed, but it was a struggle for her and she was knocking back the whisky as she talked.

  ‘So I called the clinic. Guess what. They’d never heard of a Dr Carlos Maria Cifuentes. The whole thing was fabricated to make people believe that Nick would have done that. Of all the reporters that came swarming over this whole island picking over the bones, wouldn’t you think at least one would have checked it out and seen what was going on? No. Of course not. The bastards.’

  Tamara’s voice had risen to a breathless pitch of anger. She stopped suddenly, breathing hard, and collected herself. ‘You know, even if Nick had wanted to die, he’d never had done it in a way that could harm someone else. Mark and Cindy, the co-pilot and flight attendant – they were two of our best friends. And they’d just gotten engaged. And all those poor people – and the children …’ She closed her eyes.

  Ben told her about his investigations that day: his visit to Bob Drummond’s place; Drummond’s unexplained and somewhat sudden disappearance; the mysterious black Chevy Blazer; the men outside his hotel.

  ‘Who were they?’ Tamara said, frowning.

  ‘Just heavies for hire, local Cayman boys. They didn’t even know who they were working for. But the two in the car – they might have been a different matter.’

  Tamara shook her head in bewilderment. ‘So what the hell is going on?’

  Both their glasses were empty. Ben reached for the bottle and filled them again. ‘Before, I didn’t know what to think. Now, I think there’s only one possible scenario that makes any sense.’ He looked at her. ‘You’re right. Nick didn’t take that plane down. Someone else did. Maybe some kind of sabotage. Right now, I’d go with a bomb. Whatever it was, Nick was forced to crash-land in the sea. Maybe he hit the reef accidentally – I don’t know. Whether everyone else was killed right away, I don’t know either. But what I do know is that Nick was alive long enough after the crash to call his daughter, to leave her a message to say goodbye. I’m sure he’d have called you, too, if he’d had time. He obviously didn’t. As to what happened next … well, that’s what I intend to find out.’

  Tamara said nothing, just stared into her drink.

  Ben went on. ‘Wh
oever’s behind this whole thing must have known that Nick called Hilary. That could mean they were tapping her phone, but I don’t think that’s likely. What I think is more likely is that someone retrieved Nick’s phone from the wreck and was able to trace his call to her. They didn’t know how much he’d been able to tell her about what had happened. So they couldn’t take any chances. She had to be silenced, and all trace of the message had to disappear.’ He paused to take a gulp of whisky. ‘And it could have been avoided, if I hadn’t acted like a jerk. I didn’t listen to her. I let her run out into the road and they mowed her down like a daisy.’

  ‘Hold on. You mean—?’

  ‘You hadn’t heard?’

  ‘I’ve been avoiding the TV, the radio, the newspapers, everything,’ Tamara breathed. She closed her eyes and rested her head in her hands. ‘Oh my God. Oh Christ. I can’t bear this.’

  ‘And now the moment I land on Grand Cayman and start poking around, someone’s not happy about it,’ Ben said. ‘And they’re going to get a lot more unhappy about it, because I haven’t even started yet.’

  She looked at him. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to find the people responsible and kill them all,’ he said.

  Tamara’s face had turned pale. ‘Give me one of those cigarettes.’

  ‘I thought you’d quit.’

  ‘I just started again.’ Tamara cupped her hand lightly over Ben’s as he lit the cigarette for her. She coughed. ‘These are strong.’

  ‘They’re Jordanian,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about Dwight. He seems to make a lot of money.’

  ‘A gross amount. He made partner last year.’

  ‘Can you be absolutely sure you and Nick kept your relationship secret from everyone?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Are you saying that Dwight—?’

  ‘Jealous husbands have been known to do rash things. It takes money and connections to make murder look like an accident and cover your tracks halfway around the world.’