The gate led to a bumpy track and into a farmyard that had seen better days. ‘This is it,’ she told him. ‘Pull up by the barn over there. Stop the engine and give me back the key. Right. Now get out.’
Ben did as he was told, glancing around him as he stepped out onto the hardcore yard. He’d more than half expected to be greeted by a bunch of hard-faced guys toting sawn-off shotguns and pistols – maybe Flanagan among them, if he’d made it to the getaway van, still nursing his punctured glute and mad for revenge.
As it was, there was no sign of life in the place. A heavy silence hung over the dilapidated outbuildings and the old farmhouse. Ben was baffled, but said nothing.
Tara climbed out of the car, holding the .357 more loosely now but still watching him closely. ‘Over to the house,’ she directed him, and made him stand a few paces away as she unlocked the front door. It swung open with a creak and she motioned for Ben to go in first.
The farmhouse was sparsely furnished and the decor hadn’t been refreshed since about 1956, but it smelled clean. Tara walked Ben down a passage to a laminated door, from behind which he could hear the sound of a TV. Beyond the door was a small sitting room, dark with the curtains drawn. Tara waved Ben inside.
Sitting slumped and immobile in a chintzy elbow chair, half silhouetted by the glow of the television screen and the light of a dim table lamp behind him, was the room’s only occupant. The old man didn’t respond as they walked in. His eyes were closed, his jaw hanging slackly half-open with a trail of drool running down off his chin. His white hair was shaggy and unkempt, and his body looked wasted and withered under his clothes as if he’d been sitting there for years on end.
At first Ben thought he was dead, but then saw the very slow, very shallow rise and fall of his emaciated chest as he slept. The table behind him was almost completely covered with an array of tubs and bottles of medicines.
Tara padded over to the TV and switched it off. With great care and gentleness, she plucked a tissue from a box on the table and used it to clean up the dribble of saliva from the old man’s mouth and chin. Then she turned to Ben. ‘Here he is,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Fergus Doyle. My uncle.’
Chapter Nineteen
Ben looked at her and saw she was totally earnest. The revolver was uncocked now, and pointed at the floor rather than at him. He took a step closer to the old man’s chair, softly so as not to wake him, and ran his eye over the collection of medicine bottles that littered the table. Among them was a doctor’s prescription. He picked it up, held it in the light of the lamp and saw the name on it: Fergus R. Doyle, with his date of birth.
‘Satisfied?’ Tara asked.
Ben replaced the slip of paper on the table and peered more closely at the old man. Under the mass of wrinkles was the same ugly, mean-looking face he’d studied in the photos earlier that evening. It was Doyle, for sure. He wasn’t seventy yet, but he looked well over ninety. Whatever disease had struck him down had caused terrible ravages, and judging from the quantity of painkillers on the table his waking hours must have been filled with agony.
‘All right,’ Ben said.
‘Now you see him,’ Tara said. ‘You can see how harmless he is. You can see how stupid and impossible it is that he could ever be a threat to anyone any more, and how he couldn’t have taken anything from you. You can see it, can’t you?’
Behind the old man’s chair was a shelving unit crammed with books. Ben noticed several titles about multiple sclerosis, and another called Stroke Recovery: A Patient’s Guide. But the majority of Doyle’s reading material was composed of evangelical Christian literature. The nearby sideboard was covered with more pamphlets and leaflets, as well as a copy of the Bible so well thumbed that its cover was mostly tape.
‘He’s peaceful,’ Tara said. ‘I don’t want to wake him.’ She motioned towards the door. ‘We can talk in the other room.’
The other room was a tiny kitchen. The table was blue Formica and the linoleum was ridged and cracked, but everything was clean and tidy. ‘I come here to look after him,’ she explained. ‘A nurse visits a couple of times a week, but I do the cleaning and stuff, see to it that he eats properly.’
‘What happened to him?’ Ben asked, still trying to understand.
‘The multiple sclerosis was diagnosed more than fifteen years back. Then about six years ago he had his stroke. Since then, he’s done little but sit in that chair and watch TV. I don’t even think he understands much of what he’s seeing any more.’
Ben was silent.
‘I know he was a bad man once,’ Tara said. ‘Like, really really bad. I’ve heard the stories. But he’s not like that now. I was still just a wee girl when he turned his back on violence and found God. Please believe me. He wouldn’t harm a fly, even if he could. He’s my uncle and I love him.’
‘This isn’t the kind of story I’d have expected from someone who was just pointing a Smith and Wesson at me,’ Ben said.
Tara looked at the gun in her hand, then flipped out the cylinder, dumped the six tarnished hollowpoint cartridges into her left palm and slipped them in the pocket of her jeans. She set the unloaded revolver on the tabletop with a clunk. ‘It was his, from years ago. I found it among his stuff once while I was cleaning. I’ve always been scared that one day someone would come looking for him. You know, to settle an old score, ancient history that ought to have been laid to rest. That’s why I need to protect him. Anyone starts poking around asking about my Uncle Ferg, believe me, I’ll hear about it. It was Michael O’Rourke, the barman at the Spinning Jenny, who called me earlier, told me there was someone nosing about asking questions. I went over straight away. Then I heard the shots.’
‘Seems you’re not the only one protecting your uncle.’
She shrugged. ‘If you got yourself in trouble back there, it was nothing to do with me. What did you expect, going into a pub like The Spinning Jenny and stirring folks up with a lot of questions? This is Belfast. The past doesn’t die here. These guys think they’re still fighting for the cause. Fergus Doyle is a legend to them. They don’t see what I see. They don’t know him like I do. They’re just cowboys. But it’s not their fault that there’ll never be real, proper peace in Ulster, not for a hundred more years. It’s thanks to you lot. Thanks to the English who started this whole frigging mess of shite in the first place.’
‘I’m half Irish,’ Ben said. ‘Just so you know.’
She snorted. ‘Well whoopee-doo. You want a medal or something?’
‘I’m glad you brought me here, Tara.’
‘I could have shot you. I’ll kill anyone who tries to harm him.’
‘I appreciate that.’
‘I still could.’
‘I appreciate that too.’
‘But it’s not what I want,’ she said. ‘What I want is for all this to be over, for people to understand that Fergus Doyle is just this poor old man who wants to be left alone so he can die in peace. It won’t be long before he goes.’ A tear began to form in the corner of her eye. ‘I wanted you to see him and know how wrong you were.’
Ben said nothing.
‘The person you said was missing,’ Tara said. ‘I think I saw it on TV. Is it anything to do with that sunken treasure guy, Forsythe?’
Ben nodded. ‘Forsyte. Roger Forsyte.’
‘They said there were women in the car with him. She was one of them, wasn’t she? They took her too?’
Ben nodded again.
‘You love her a lot, don’t you? I can see it in your face. Is she your wife? Girlfriend?’
‘She was,’ Ben said quietly. ‘We split up.’
‘I hope you find her. I hope she’s okay. I really do mean that.’
‘I hope so too,’ he said. ‘Thanks, Tara. You’re the sweetest girl that ever pointed a loaded revolver at me.’
She smiled sadly. ‘I don’t even know your name.’
‘It’s not important,’ he said.
‘S’pose I should give you a lift back in
to town.’
‘If you could take me back to my car. I need to get moving.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘I don’t know that yet,’ he admitted. He was only just beginning to realise how lost he felt now that his one and only lead had vapourised before his eyes.
‘You won’t tell anyone, will you? Where Uncle Fergus is, I mean. In case anyone might …’
‘Not a living soul.’
By the time Tara drove Ben back to his car, the police had long since disappeared from the scene of the shooting. There would be a few interrogations going on now, but none of the men Ben had left behind him in the alleyways could have any notion of who he was.
Tara left him with a few last words that he barely heard. He climbed into the BMW and watched the Honda vanish into the distance.
Then he was alone again, alone with the pressing knowledge that the trail had gone cold under his feet. He’d never felt so alone; so desolate; so weary.
It was 2.38 p.m. Brooke had been missing for forty hours and thirty-three minutes.
He didn’t think he was ever going to see her again.
Chapter Twenty
‘Get out, bitch.’
Everything a terrifying whirl of impressions, the man’s fingers iron-tight round her arm as he hauled her out of the car. The unwavering gun never more than a few inches from her face. Sam’s whimpers and pleas as the three of them were bundled into the back of the van. The slamming of doors; the rocking, juddering journey inside the hard bare metal shell of the van.
‘Out. Get out.’ More guns. Being prodded and marched roughly away from the road, up a grassy slope to a dark building, echoey inside. The smell of fear and damp earth and the sound of Sam’s crying next to her and suddenly, a dazzling floodlight that made her blink. She was aware of men standing all around, just shapes behind the glare.
One in particular. He stood so close to the bright light that Brooke could hardly see more than his tall outline, but she could tell he was watching her curiously; intently.
Then he spoke, not to Brooke but to Forsyte. ‘The case, if you please.’ His English was clipped, too perfect to be native. What was that accent? Not European.
‘I told you before. It isn’t for sale.’ Forsyte, trying to master his fear and almost succeeding.
Half blinded by the light, Brooke thought she saw the tall figure motion to one of his men. Sam’s cries became shrill and then were obliterated by an explosion that pierced Brooke’s eardrums in the enclosed space.
Sam’s body sprawling lifelessly to the earth floor. The numb shock of disbelief. More screams now, Forsyte’s cries of rage turning to a screech of horror. The men closing on him, grabbing his arms, shoving him down to his knees. The glitter of the blade being drawn from its scabbard. Forsyte shouting wildly out ‘No! Please! No!’ Then the men holding his right arm down on the floor and the rise and fall of the blade. The awful meaty crunch and the inhuman wail of agony. The hand holding the case rolling away across the floor, the steel cuff still attached to the severed wrist.
Then the same again with the other arm. Forsyte’s terrible, animal scream echoing around the walls.
Brooke could feel the pistol at her head and knew it was over for her, too. Waiting … waiting … for the gunshot that was going to put her down there on the floor with Sam.
Then the voice of the tall man behind the light: ‘Not that one. I want her.’
I want her …
Brooke awoke with a sharp gasp. She was breathing hard and covered in sweat. She blinked, blinked again, disorientated by the vividness of the nightmare. Except that it had been no dream. The experience was going to stay with her for the rest of her life.
However long that might be.
As her confusion melted away, she realised she was in a bed: a massive four-poster with drapes and a canopy. The sheets felt cool and satiny to the touch. She swept them off her and saw she was wearing a silk nightdress she’d never seen before and certainly wouldn’t have worn out of choice.
Someone had undressed her. The thought made her squirm.
She sat up straight in the bed. She felt woozy and there was a bitter taste on her lips. She knew why. Whoever had brought her here, taken off her clothes and put her into this damn nightdress, had drugged her. ‘Bastards,’ she muttered, then clamped her mouth shut in case someone was listening.
She swung her legs out of the bed and got up. The floor was cool against her bare feet. She could hear the soft whisper of an air conditioning unit, and smell the scent of flowers. On the little bedside table was a glass of water and, neatly coiled up next to it, Brooke’s little gold neck-chain that someone had removed. What the hell was happening?
As she ventured away from the bed her legs felt weak and unsteady with the aftereffects of the dope. How long had the bastards kept her under? What had they done to her while she was unconscious? She was filled with helpless fury.
The room was in semi-darkness, just a line of sunlight shining round the edge of the window blinds. Brooke fumbled round for a way of opening them. They were metal and seemed to be electrically operated somehow, but she couldn’t find a switch anywhere. She turned on a lamp instead and looked around her.
The bedroom was the biggest she’d ever seen. Flowers were everywhere, orchids and heliconias and other exotic species whose names she could only guess at, spilling from vases and filling the room with their colour and perfume. The furniture was antique, the floor was white marble inlaid with lapis lazuli. On a beautiful ornate table had been left a neat stack of books, together with a collection of the latest fashion magazines and some CDs, all classical.
How thoughtful of her kidnappers to provide entertainment. She furiously dashed the lot on the floor, then overturned the table. The effort made her dizzy.
At each end of the room was a gleaming white door. Forcing herself to walk straight, Brooke stormed over to one of them and wrenched it open. It led to an enormous luxury bathroom that smelled of lavender, shelf upon shelf stocked with an absurd array of beauty products and perfumes. Gold-plated toilet roll holder, she thought. Great.
She slammed that door, crossed the room to the other and stepped through into a living room. Like the bedroom, it was shaded by metallic window blinds with no obvious means of opening them. She turned on a light switch.
The living room looked like something out of the grandest kind of hotel. Plush armchairs and sofas, rich Persian rugs, framed oil paintings on the walls. A bowl of fruit, a variety of gourmet snacks and a carafe of iced lemon water had been left for her on one of the two massive antique sideboards while she was asleep. Her eye was drawn to the ornate clock on the marble mantelpiece. Its hands read eight-forty. In the morning, she supposed. How long had she been here?
There was a set of double doors at the far end of the living room. She tried them: locked, naturally. She pounded on the doors and yelled a few times, but there was no response from outside. She raced to the nearest window and tried once more to find the switch for the blind. Nothing seemed to make them open – nothing, until she grabbed a heavy brass table lamp from one of the sideboards, smashed the shade away, ripped the wire from the wall and used the lamp like a hatchet to strike the blind repeatedly with all her strength until it finally came away from its mountings and crashed to the floor at her feet.
Golden light streamed into the room, making her blink. She shielded her eyes from the glare and looked out.
It wasn’t the freshly-painted black iron bars on the other side of the thick glass of the window that made her gasp. It was the landscape that lay beyond them.
‘Oh, my God,’ she breathed.
It damn sure wasn’t Ireland. And it wasn’t London, either. She’d never seen a place like this before, not for real.
Beyond a sweep of white buildings, gardens, hangars and roadways, all contained within the same high stone-walled perimeter, the tropical jungle stretched away to a seemingly infinite and lushly verdant horizon. Large birds more colourful
than the flowers in her room wheeled and squawked against the unbroken expanse of pure, deep blue sky.
Brooke watched in amazement as one of them glided down to land on the roof of one the buildings just fifty feet from her window, folded its broad red and yellow wings and strutted along the ridge of terracotta tiles to scrape at a piece of moss with its huge nutcracker beak. It was a macaw.
‘I’m in South America,’ Brooke murmured to herself.
Chapter Twenty-One
Ben drove. He had nowhere to go, no destination in mind, no longer any plan to work to. He just kept moving because he needed something to do in order to prevent the black despair from swallowing him up.
He’d been so sure he was on the right track. Like a predator steadily closing in on its quarry, that single-minded certainty of purpose had been his only focus, the only thing sustaining him. It seemed ridiculous now, bitterly ridiculous and pathetic.
As he sat there mechanically going through the motions to keep the car on the road, he struggled to get his thoughts in order. But if he was hoping for some miracle of inspiration to strike him out of nowhere, it wasn’t happening. Smoking a cigarette often helped him think; he lit a Gauloise, but it tasted bad and felt self-indulgent, as if he no longer deserved such pleasures. After a few shallow puffs he flicked it out of the window.
He’d been driving aimlessly on and on like that for almost an hour when his phone went off. He had to summon up all his energy just to answer it.
‘It’s Kay Lynch,’ said the familiar voice on the line. ‘How are you holding up?’
‘What do you think?’ he muttered.
‘You don’t sound so good.’
‘I’ll be doing a lot better if you tell me you’ve found her.’
‘I wish I could do that, Ben. We’re still searching.’
The Armada Legacy Page 11