The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET

by Scott Mariani

  He took another step. As he came closer Glass’s mouth twisted into what used to be a smile. ‘Here we are again,’ he said. His voice was lumpy and fleshy.

  ‘Let her go, Jack. It’s no use.’

  Glass smiled. He pressed the point harder into Leigh’s stomach. She struggled in his arms.

  Ben winced. He took a step back. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

  ‘You took my life away, Hope,’ Glass said. ‘Now I’m going to take something away from you.’

  ‘You want a ransom,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll pay you whatever you want. I’ll give you the money to get your face fixed up. Whatever it takes. Let her go.’

  ‘You don’t get it,’ Glass shouted. ‘I don’t want money!’

  Ben felt ice in his heart. This wasn’t a kidnap. ‘Kroll’s dead,’ he said. ‘It’s over. Let her go and leave now. I won’t come after you.’

  Glass just smiled.

  ‘Please,’ Ben said. He took a step forward again. ‘Let her go.’

  Glass just smiled.

  ‘I promise you’ll be left alone,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll help you. I’ll help you get whatever it is you want. But you’ve got to do the right thing. You’ve got to let her go.’

  Glass grinned.

  ‘Take me,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t care. Take me instead. Let her go.’

  Across the misty piazza he could see people walking. A young couple. Behind them, a family. Someone pointed. There was a yell. Then another.

  That was what scared him most. That Glass just didn’t care any more.

  ‘Let her go!’ he shouted. Desperation was starting to rise.

  Glass was still grinning. Leigh struggled.

  Their eyes met. Ben looked into hers and he made her a promise he prayed he could keep.

  ‘This is for you, Hope!’ Glass screamed.

  Ben saw the intent flash through the man’s mutilated face and he knew what was coming. He saw the black gloved fingers tighten on the leather handle of the Ka-Bar. He saw the muscles of the right arm and shoulder tense under the heavy coat.

  ‘No, no, no—’

  The arm pushed. The knife drove in. Glass’s knuckles pressed against Leigh’s belly. She went rigid and drew in a sharp breath, the gasping sound of surprise people made when a cold blade pierced deep into their body. Ben had heard it before.

  Glass let her fall. She dropped like a puppet with the strings cut. Her knees folded under her. She hit the hard ground with the knife embedded in her stomach. It was in up to the hilt.

  A woman’s scream echoed across the piazza.

  Glass gave Ben a last look and ran. His footsteps echoed away down one of the backstreets.

  Ben rushed to Leigh and sank to his knees beside her. She was lying on her back, sprawled across the stone quay, coughing gouts of blood. It was leaking out all over her costume. He held her. His hands and face were sticky with it. There was so little he could do. The passers-by were running over. Someone screamed again. A young woman held her hand over her mouth.

  ‘Call a doctor! Ambulance!’ Ben yelled at them. Ashen faces peered down at him. Someone pulled out a phone.

  She was trying to speak to him. He pressed his face against hers. She convulsed. Her eyes were rolling in fear. He held her tight. He didn’t want to let her go.

  But she was going.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  She mouthed something in reply.

  He held her as her pulse became weaker and slower. Then weaker still. Then nothing.

  He shook her. There was blood everywhere. He was kneeling in a spreading pool of it.

  ‘The ambulance is coming,’ someone said in a hollow voice.

  Nothing. No pulse. Her eyes were open. There was no breath coming from her lips.

  He shook her again. ‘Fight!’ he screamed at her. ‘Fight it!’ The tears were mixing with the blood on his cheeks. They streamed down and dripped on her face.

  ‘She’s gone,’ said a voice overhead.

  He buried his face against her shoulder. She was soft and warm. His shoulders heaved as he clasped her tightly. He rocked her.

  ‘She’s gone,’ the voice said again. He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. He looked up. A young blonde woman was gazing down at him. Her face was contorted. She was crying too. She knelt down beside him and took his hand. ‘I’m a nurse,’ she said in English. ‘I’m sorry. She’s gone. There’s nothing more to be done.’

  Ben knelt there with his head hanging. The nurse reached out and closed Leigh’s eyes. Someone laid a coat over her. People were crying. An elderly woman blessed herself and muttered a prayer.

  People were coming out of the opera house. A crowd gathered quickly. There were cries of horror. A couple of voices said her name. Claudio ran out of the building. His hands were clutched to his face. There were sirens in the distance, growing louder.

  Everything faded. Ben’s mind became still. He couldn’t hear the noise. He could see only one thing. He opened his eyes. They were white against the streaks of blood. He stood up and looked down at Leigh’s shape under the coat.

  The crowd moved aside for him. Eyes followed him. Hands touched him, lips moved.

  He walked away. He looked up and saw someone at a window, waving to get his attention. It was an old woman. Her face was wild. She was gesticulating. Pointing down the shadowy backstreet. He understood what she was telling him.

  He began to walk, and then his walk quickened to a run, and then his footsteps were hammering under him and clapping off the walls of the twisty, murky alleyway.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Glass couldn’t run that fast. His injuries from Vienna were still too fresh to have healed and the pain in his shoulder was grinding.

  The backstreets of Venice were dark and deserted. The fog was coming down, settling heavily over the city. That was good. The fog would help him to slip away. He’d wait a while, hole up somewhere and try to heal, become strong again. He wanted Ben Hope to hurt during that time. Then he was going to come back and finish him. Do it right, slowly and properly. The way he would have, if that stupid old bastard Kroll hadn’t stopped him.

  The water slopped against the side of the canal. He limped on. Through the drifting mist he saw the arched bridge across the water. There were some steps leading down. He hobbled down them. They were slippery. Down near the waterline, the old pitted stone walls were slimy with green-black mossy scum.

  The little boat was moored down there, rocking gently in the shadow. He climbed into it and fired up the outboard motor. The boat burbled into life. Glass gripped the tiller and cast off. He turned the boat around, leaving a churning white wake in the darkness. A few hundred yards up the narrow canal he would pass Piazza San Marco and then he’d be heading for the open water of the Grand Canal.

  After that, he could disappear. Five minutes-and he would be gone.

  The dying echo of the outboard reached Ben’s ears. He got to the arched bridge. His heart was pounding and his sides were aching. He saw the ghost of the wake in the water, already breaking up, the foam dissipating against the scummy, streaked edges of the canal.

  He ran on. He could only see one thing. He was sharp and focused. It would be different later, when the pain and the grief would hit him. There’d be a lot of pain. But there was no room in his mind for that now.

  Glass had to be in the boat. There was nowhere else to run. If he got out of the narrow canals and into the broad waters, he could vanish all over again.

  A light cut through the fog. The purr of a powerful twin-prop motor. A fibreglass hull bumped gently on rubber buffers against the canal wall. Ben walked that way.

  The guy was in his late twenties or early thirties. He was well-dressed, well-groomed. He looked like someone who drove a fast boat, took a pride in it, took good care of it. He stiffened when he saw Ben approach out of the fog. ‘I need your boat,’ Ben said in Italian. ‘I’ll bring it back when I’m done.’

  The guy didn’t argue. Thirty seconds later the
speedboat kicked up a foaming wake and Ben powered hard down the dark canal.

  He reached the mouth of the canal. Glass was nowhere. Through the fog the lights blinked and reflected like stars on the wide, dark expanse ahead of him. Hundreds of boats out there, all going their own ways. Even on a cold winter’s night, Venice was a busy marine thoroughfare.

  He motored out into the open water. A bank of fog drifted in and suddenly he couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead. The water was black and the icy fog stung his skin. The boat drifted.

  Glass was nowhere.

  From the darkness he heard the revs of an outboard and the whoosh of bows slicing water. He was dazzled by a bright light and put his hands up to shield his eyes.

  The crash almost knocked him out of the boat.

  Glass slammed across his bows. Fibreglass splintered under the impact as the prow of Glass’s boat sliced through. The crippled boats fused together, lying transverse. Engine revs soared as Glass’s propeller rose out of the water.

  Then Glass hurled himself at Ben, attacking like a wild animal. A slamming punch threw Ben down in the boat, winded. Glass towered above him.

  The two locked boats were tacking in a tight circle. White foam churned. The airborne engine screamed. Water gushed in through the shattered bows of the speedboat. In three seconds it was closing over Ben’s chest as he lay on his back. They were sinking fast into the freezing water.

  ‘I was going to let you live a little while longer,’ Glass shouted over the engine roar. ‘Looks like I made a mistake.’

  Ben fought to get his wind. Glass bent down, picked him up by the collar of his jacket and hauled him to his feet. The man’s burnt face was twisted like a nightmare in the boat lights.

  Then the broad puckered forehead was heading for Ben’s face. Ben dodged it and punched a knee into Glass’s groin.

  Glass staggered back. ‘Pain?’ he yelled. ‘You can’t hurt me with pain.’ He stood upright and came on again, throwing himself bodily at Ben. Ben was driven backwards towards the exposed outboard propeller. He felt the scream of the spinning prop in his ear and the wind of it in his hair. A stab of agony as the blades sliced his shoulder.

  He kicked back and heard Glass grunt from the blow. They went down, wrestling frantically in the bottom of the sinking boat. Then Glass was on top, forcing him down into the water, fingers around his throat, thumbs pressing deep into his windpipe.

  Bubbles exploded from Ben’s mouth as he fought desperately to wrench the hands from his throat. But Glass’s strength was wild, and his was failing. He wasn’t going to make it. He was going to drown.

  So he prised the two little fingers away from the black fists and he snapped them. Left and right, snap, snap, both together.

  Glass let go with a scream. Ben’s arm flailed up out of the water and smashed what was left of Glass’s nose.

  Then Ben was back on top, up to his waist in water as he pinned Glass down with his knees. He drove the man’s head against the splintered fibreglass side of the boat. Felt a crunch. He did it again. He felt another crunch, saw the blood spurt.

  Jack Glass was a hard man to kill. This time Ben was going to make sure. He didn’t want to hear that Glass was dead. He wanted to see Glass dead. He hit him again. ‘You killed her!’ he was screaming. ‘You killed her!’

  The floor of the boat slid another foot into the black water. The spinning propeller hit the surface and foam flew. Then the boats slipped completely under and Ben was suddenly swimming loose, treading water. His suit and shoes made it hard to stay afloat.

  Glass’s head reared up out of the water two feet away, gasping for air, his mangled lips drawn back from his teeth.

  Ben forced Glass’s head under the icy water. Glass kicked, struggled, surfaced.

  Ben punched him and drove him down again, a hand on the top of his head to keep him under. Bubbles streamed up to the surface. Glass’s arms and legs thrashed, but more slowly now.

  Ben held him under a little longer.

  Glass’s struggles began to diminish. The stream of bubbles lessened.

  Ben held him under a little longer.

  Glass’s hand burst out from the water. The glove was gone. Melted fingers clawed at the air. Then the arm went limp. It flopped down with a splash.

  Ben felt the tension go out of Glass. His inert body drifted with the heave of the swell. He seemed to blink once with his remaining eye. His mouth opened and a single bubble rolled out. It rose slowly to the surface and popped.

  Then another bubble, a smaller one.

  Then none at all. His face was relaxed. His arms were splayed outwards to the sides, floating loose in the water, fingers limp and curled. His eye stared upwards.

  Ben let him go. Watched the body slip into the shadows.

  The siren of the police motor launch was closer now. Torchbeams swept and searched the water.

  Glass was finally gone. Ben floated in the freezing water, barely moving, staring down into the murky depths. The chill was numbing his body.

  He thought about Leigh. His beautiful wife. The pain began to take him.

  Then he kicked out and swam towards the quayside.

  Author’s Note

  Having trained as a classical pianist and had a deep interest in music all my life, I have always been intrigued by the story of Mozart and thought that the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death would make a great basis for a novel.

  Over the last two hundred years there has been much speculation as to what might have actually killed Mozart. The official, and apparently cast-iron, medical view is that he died of acute rheumatic fever, and that there is ‘no basis whatsoever’ to the idea that he was poisoned.

  Case closed? I don’t think so.

  In fact, it takes only a little probing beneath the surface to reveal that this version of events is far from conclusive. Over the years, different medical hypotheses have varied wildly. The fact alone that medical records from the time were so sketchy makes it very hard to support the sweeping statement that ‘Mozart could not have been poisoned’. The truth is, nobody can make such a claim.

  Modern medical experts conveniently overlook Mozart’s own conviction that he had been given ‘aqua toffana’. This was a blend of three lethal poisons-arsenic, belladonna (deadly nightshade) and lead. The colourless, tasteless and water-soluble formula gets its name from the infamous seventeenth-century Italian poisoner Giulia Toffana, who sold it to women ostensibly as a beauty treatment but also as a neat means of liberating themselves from unhappy marriages by dosing their husbands with it.

  The symptoms of Mozart’s fatal illness included painful joint swellings in his hands and feet, terrible stomach pain and colic, renal failure, vomiting and skin rashes. He also suffered from mental symptoms such as personality change, paranoid delusions and hallucinations, obsessive preoccupation with death, and severe depression. Loosely speaking, these symptoms could point to a diagnosis of rheumatic fever, streptococcal infection or any of the other conditions that doctors have proposed.

  But they also match with uncanny precision the collective toxic effects of aqua toffana’s three deadly ingredients: hallucinations and delusions, extreme worry and agitation, an obsession with death, depression and personality change, violent stomach pains and colic, renal failure, painful swelling of joints and extremities, skin rashes and so on. Small doses, given over time, could bring about exactly the kind of lingering death that Mozart suffered. The composer himself believed he was being poisoned up to six months before his death-hardly consistent with an acute illness that would have run its lethal course within days. His son Carl Thomas Mozart also later claimed that his father had been deliberately poisoned.

  Nobody will ever know the truth for sure. But I leave it to you to speculate…

  If there are reasonable grounds to suppose that Mozart might have been poisoned, who should we be pointing the finger at? The popular theory expounded in Peter Schaffer’s play and hit movie Amadeus is that Mozart may ha
ve been poisoned by rival composer Salieri. The notion that Salieri poisoned Mozart was around long before Amadeus, however-Pushkin composed poetry about it, and Rimsky-Korsakov even wrote an opera on the subject, called Mozart and Salieri.

  So did he do it? Nobody can be certain that he didn’t; however, the historical fact is that although the mentally ill Salieri later confessed to the crime, he was never punished for it and changed his testimony so often that nobody took his confession seriously.

  Another popular theory, as Leigh Llewellyn tells Ben Hope in the book, is that Mozart might have been murdered by the Freemasons for giving away Masonic secrets in his opera The Magic Flute. However-as Professor Arno tells us later in the story-this is inconsistent with the fact that Mozart was a star of the Masonic movement, a major public relations figure for Freemasonry at a time when it was coming under political fire.

  The Mozart Conspiracy is only a story. But as I was researching the historical background I became increasingly convinced that more sinister and far-reaching political forces could potentially have been involved in the composer’s demise. It is a fact that Freemasonry’s strong associations with the revolutionary movements taking place in France and America in the late eighteenth century were a source of great concern to aristocratic rulers across Europe. It is also a fact that the Viennese secret police were under Imperial instruction to spy on, and ultimately eradicate, the Masons. As a rising celebrity very much in the public eye and openly championing the pro-revolutionary ideology of Masonry, it is perfectly feasible that Mozart would have been targeted as a major threat.

  It’s only a story. Did it really happen this way? Again, I leave it up to the reader to decide.

  I know what I think.

  A CONVERSATION WITH SCOTT MARIANI

  Q: How long did it take you to carry out all the research for The Mozart Conspiracy?

  A: It’s an idea that has been in my mind for quite a few years. I’ve always been a big Mozart fan, and while browsing in a bookshop in Bologna, Italy, one day in 1997, I came across a fascinating little non-fiction book called Mozart’s Last Year, by the musicologist H.C Robbins Landon. That was when I started looking at the history behind Mozart in more depth, investigating many other sources of information as I became more involved with it. It was quite a few years before it occurred to me that this could form the back-story to a Ben Hope thriller!