‘A long time ago now,’ Bradbury said. ‘But it’s still very raw. So we tried to have another, but again it was hard for us. We were on the point of giving up, and talking about adoption, when Jane conceived. It seemed like a miracle to us. Nine months later we had the perfect little girl.’
‘I remember her well,’ Ben said. ‘She was lovely. And bright.’
‘She still is,’ Bradbury replied. ‘But for so many years we were terrified of losing her. Irrational, of course. Her health’s always been excellent. But these things leave a mark on you. I admit we spoiled her. And I’m afraid we perhaps didn’t bring her up quite the way we should have.’
‘What is she doing now?’
‘She went on to become a brilliant academic. She’s never really had to try. She sailed through her studies. Archaeology. First class from Magdalen. She was all set for a glittering career. Biblical archaeology is a major field of study. It’s a relatively new science, and Zoë has been one of its pioneers. She was part of the team that found those ostraka in Tunisia last year.’
Ben nodded. Ostrakon, from the Greek, meaning shell. In its plural form, it was the name archaeologists gave to fragments of earthenware that once served as cheap writing materials. Ostraka had been widely used in ancient times for recording contracts, accounts, sales registers, as well as manuscripts and religious scripture.
‘I read about that find,’ he said. ‘I had no idea I knew the person responsible for it.’
‘That was such a wonderful moment for her,’ Bradbury replied. ‘In fact, what her team discovered was the biggest haul of intact ostraka found since the 1910 excavation in Israel. They were buried deep under the ruins of an ancient temple. An amazing find.’
‘She’s clever,’ Ben said.
‘She’s exceptional. But that’s not all she’s done. She’s written papers and co-authored a book on the life of the Greek sage Papias. She’s even been on television a few times, interviewed on an archaeology channel.’
‘You sound very proud of her.’
The professor smiled. Then the shadow fell back over his face. His chin sank down to his chest. He fingered the pipe. It had gone out. ‘Professionally, academically, she’s wonderful. But her private life, and our personal relationship with her, is a disaster.’ Bradbury raised his hands and let them flop down on his thighs. A gesture of helplessness. ‘What can I say? She’s wild. Has been since the age of fifteen. We just couldn’t control her. She was in trouble with the law a few times for petty crimes. Shoplifting, picking pockets. We used to find stolen items in her room. It was all a joke to her. We hoped she would grow out of her wildness in time, but she didn’t. Drinking. Parties. All kinds of reckless behaviour. It’s been fighting and difficulty all the way. She’s argumentative, aggressive, terribly headstrong, always has to have it her way. It takes very little to provoke her into a quarrel.’ He looked up at Ben with red-rimmed eyes. ‘And I know it’s our fault. We spoiled her completely, because we felt so lucky to have been given a second chance at having a child.’
Ben had been sipping his wine steadily as Bradbury talked. He filled his glass again. ‘Let’s talk straight, Tom. You told me you were concerned that she wasn’t here. Has she gone missing?’
Bradbury nodded. ‘Nearly a week now.’
‘And you think she’s in some kind of trouble?’
‘We don’t know what to think.’
‘A week isn’t a long time, under the circumstances. You said yourself, she’s wild. She’ll turn up.’
‘I wish I could believe that.’
‘You’re telling me all this because of what I used to do.’
‘Yes.’
‘So you’ll listen to my professional opinion.’
Bradbury shrugged. ‘Yes.’
‘People do go AWOL from time to time,’ Ben said. ‘Now, if someone does go missing and there’s clear evidence that something has happened to them, there are things we can do to get them back. But you need to distinguish between a legitimate missing persons case and someone who’s just a little wayward, argues with her parents, likes to have fun and has gone off the radar for a short while.’
‘She’s done it before – gone off the radar as you say,’ Bradbury said. ‘We’re realistic. We can accept a lot of things. We accept that she’s free and likes to enjoy herself. Sexually, I mean.’ He flushed with embarrassment. ‘But this time it’s different. This time it’s really strange, and we have the most terrible feeling about it.’
‘So what makes this time different?’
‘The money. I mean, where did all that money come from?’
‘What money?’
‘I’m sorry. Let me backtrack. Zoë was working on an excavation project in Turkey. It was meant to last until the end of August. But then the next thing we knew, she left it early and was on Corfu. We have some friends there. She was staying with them for a while.’ Bradbury paused. ‘Then, suddenly, she seemed to have all this money. She’s a doctoral student. She doesn’t have money, at least no more than she needs. According to our friends she was suddenly loaded with it. Thousands. And the way she was spending it, it was as though it would never run out. Started partying all the time, coming home drunk with a different man every night.’
‘I know that shocks you, but –’
Bradbury shook his head. ‘That’s not really the point. She had a row with our friends, and then she moved out. She booked into the most expensive hotel on the island. Until she was kicked out of there for causing disruption. Then she rented a villa on the coast. Big place, luxurious, expensive. Partying all day and all night, from what our friends heard.’
‘Go on.’
‘And then she just vanished. We had a drunken message on our phone late one night, a week ago. Saying she was flying back to Britain and would be here the next morning. That was it. We’re still waiting. Nobody seems to know where she went. We’ve tried all the numbers we could think of. She’s no longer at the villa. Nor in any hotel. The Corfu airport people said she didn’t get on the plane. She just seemed to vanish.’ He looked earnestly at Ben. ‘So, what do you make of it?’
Ben thought for a moment. ‘Let’s go through it. You say the money issue is perplexing you. Fine. But you also told me she has plenty of boyfriends. How do you know she hasn’t hooked up with a rich one? The evidence is simply that she hasn’t left Corfu. She’s a fine-looking girl. There are lots of wealthy young guys out there enjoying the good life. She could be sitting on the deck of a yacht somewhere right now, as far away from harm as anyone could ever be.’
‘That’s true,’ Bradbury agreed.
‘Then there are credit cards. You spend a couple of hundred on your Barclaycard, the next thing you get a letter offering you a loan, and they up your credit limit another couple of grand to boot. That could easily explain where she got a pile of cash from.’
‘That makes sense too,’ Bradbury admitted.
‘So what makes you think anything’s wrong?’
‘It’s hard to explain,’ Bradbury said. ‘It’s just a feeling. It’s not just our protectiveness. This time is different.’ He leaned forwards in his chair and looked Ben in the eye. ‘We would be so grateful to you, Ben. All we ask is that you travel there and find her. Make sure she’s all right. That she’s not involved in drugs, or some awful thing like pornography …’ There was a tortured edge in his voice.
‘Come on,’ Ben said. ‘Why would she be?’
Bradbury stared at him. His hand was gripping the table edge. ‘Will you help us? We trust you.’
Ben was silent.
‘We’re desperate, Ben. It’s not that we want you to persuade her to come back here, or anything like that. Just find her, make sure she’s safe and well. And ask her to please, please get in touch with us. Tell her we’re sorry for all the quarrels and anything we might have said. And that we love her.’
Ben didn’t reply.
‘We’ve thought of flying out there ourselves and looking for her,’ Bradbu
ry said. ‘But even if we did find her, she’d never want to talk to us. She’d only go into one of her moods – start accusing us of parental interference or something, and run a mile. I know what she’s like, and it would only make things worse.’ Bradbury grimaced. ‘We need an outsider, someone who’s a friend of the family but more objective. Someone who can approach her, who would know how to handle this.’
Ben drained his glass and put it down on the table. ‘I’m sorry for what’s happened to your family, Tom. Truly, I am.’
Bradbury bit his lip.
‘But I can’t help you,’ Ben said.
‘Naturally, you’d be paid,’ Bradbury said, looking agitated. ‘I should have mentioned that. We have savings. I can pay ten thousand. That should cover all the expenses with plenty left over. I can do an internet bank transfer. The funds would be in your account instantly. I’m just sorry I can’t pay more.’
Ben smiled. ‘It’s not the money. I’d do it for nothing. But I’m retired. That’s why I’m here. I’m finished with all that. Trying hard to put that life behind me.’
‘But this would be different,’ Bradbury said. ‘This is nothing compared to the things you’ve been involved in. Please. I’m begging you.’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t.’ Ben paused. ‘But let me tell you what I will do. If you want someone you can trust to go out there and find Zoë, there is a guy I would recommend …’
When he left the Bradburys’ place Ben walked straight back to his flat. He picked up the phone and punched a number into the keypad. Charlie answered.
‘That thing you were asking me about,’ Ben said. ‘Would you still be interested, if I told you an opportunity had come up?’
Charlie didn’t need time to decide. ‘I’d be interested.’
‘Good. Now listen.’ Ben told him in careful detail what Bradbury was offering.
‘That would take care of the mortgage for a year,’ Charlie said. ‘But I already know what Rhonda will say.’
‘All you have to do is find Zoë. You don’t have to try to bring her back. She shouldn’t be too hard to track down, by the sound of it. Just follow the party music and the trail of empty bottles. All her parents want to know is that she’s safe. The most you’d need to do is persuade her to make contact with them.’
‘It sounds easy.’
‘That’s because it is easy,’ Ben said. ‘It’s low season there at the moment, so you won’t even make much of a hole in the ten grand. You can tell Rhonda that all you’re doing is delivering a message – surely that won’t be a problem for her? This is the Greek Islands, not Afghanistan. And you’ll be there and back inside five days, maximum.’
‘I’m interested,’ Charlie said again.
‘I need to call the Bradburys right now and tell them yes or no. It’s your decision.’
‘Count me in,’ Charlie said.
Chapter Thirteen
At that moment, one and a half thousand miles away on the tiny Greek island of Paxos, Zoë Bradbury was being roughly shoved and prodded down the beach, back towards the jetty where she’d tried to escape four days before.
It was the first daylight she’d seen since then. For four days she’d been tied down to the bed, only allowed free when she screamed to be allowed to use the toilet. For four days, they’d been questioning her around the clock.
The whole time, she was racking her brains to remember. Who was she? Sometimes there was just nothing there, nothing but a big empty blank. But then, every so often, it felt like something was stirring in her mind, as though the drifting fragments of memory wanted to gel together and fall into focus. Faces, voices, places. They hovered tantalisingly in her head. But just when they seemed so close and she tried to reach out to them, they would suddenly dissolve back into the mist.
She stared for hours at the tiny scar on her finger. A childhood injury, maybe. But how had she got it? She had no idea. A thousand other questions crowded and jostled in her mind. Where was she from? Who were her family and friends? What was her life like?
And then there was the most horrifying question of all. What did these people want with her?
As her initial acute terror faded into a new kind of steady, chilling horror, she watched and listened to her captors. Two of the men never spoke to her and she saw little of them. It was the woman and the fair-haired guy she had the most contact with. The woman had a hard look about her, but there were times when it seemed to melt a little, and she spoke more kindly.
The fair-haired guy was a psychopath. Zoë hated him profoundly, and the only thing that had kept her going throughout those endless hours had been her fantasy of somehow getting free, getting that gun or the knife from him, and using it on him.
But however they tried to get the information out of her, whether the threats were implicit or whether they were obscenely violent and screamed in her face, none of it was working. She could see they were getting increasingly desperate.
Then a new thought had come into her mind. What if her memory did come back to her? What would they do to her, once they had whatever it was they wanted?
She had a good idea what the fair-haired man wanted to do, if the woman let him. Maybe her amnesia was the only thing keeping her alive.
And now they were taking her somewhere. But where? Had they finally given up on her? Her heart raced at the thought. Maybe they were letting her go, taking her home.
Or maybe the time had come when they’d decided it was pointless, and they were going to finish it. End her life. Here, now, today. Her hands began to shake.
The fair-haired guy’s pistol was pressing hard against her spine as he shoved her across the beach. ‘Move it,’ he muttered. She tried to walk faster, but the soft sand was heavy going in her bare feet, and her legs felt like jelly. She stumbled. A rough hand grabbed her arm and jerked her up to her feet. The gun stabbed painfully into her.
She risked a glance over her shoulder. The man was glowering at her. Behind him, the woman was following with a pensive look on her face, checking her watch and gazing up at the sky. The other two men tagged along quietly with blank expressions. One of them was holding a gun loosely against his side.
Zoë trembled violently. They were going to kill her. She knew it.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ the low voice said behind her. ‘You want to run.’ He chuckled. ‘So run. I want you to run, so I can shoot you down.’
‘Keep your mouth shut,’ the woman snapped at him.
They reached the edge of the sand. Zoë was shoved towards the wooden jetty. She stepped up onto it, feeling the hard salt-encrusted planks against the bare soles of her feet. They followed. Were they going to drown her?
Then she heard it. The distant buzz of an aircraft approaching. She shielded her eyes and looked up to see a white dot against the sky. She kept watching it as she walked slowly along the jetty.
The white dot grew bigger until she could make out its shape. It was a small seaplane.
They reached the end of the jetty. The clattery rumble of the seaplane’s twin engines filled her ears as it sank lower and lower in the air. Its underside skimmed the waves, bounced and then touched down, sending up a fan of spray. It settled in the water and came round in a wide arc, leaving a churning white wake. It drew up level with the jetty and sat bobbing in the water. The spinning props settled down to an idle. The sound of the engines was deafening and Zoë cupped her hands over her ears. The gun was still pressed hard to her back.
A hatch opened in the slim fuselage, and a man peered out. He stared coldly at her, then nodded to the others. He and another man moored the plane up to the jetty and slid out an extending gangway, like a narrow bridge over the water. Zoë felt herself being pushed towards it. She staggered across the wobbling gangway into the plane. It was hot and cramped inside. A strange man thrust her down into a seat.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she gasped in terror.
The fair-haired guy appeared in the hatch, and for a moment she froze at the
thought that he was coming with her. Then the woman put a hand on his shoulder and shook her head at him. He seemed to protest, then relented. He stepped aside and it was the two other men, the quiet ones, who climbed into the plane and sat down beside Zoë. They ignored her completely. Then the hatch was shut, and she felt the vibrations mount as the twin aircraft engines revved up for takeoff.
Hudson and Kaplan stood and watched the plane skim across the waves. It climbed into the blue sky and became a fading white dot. Then it was gone.
‘Out of our hands,’ Kaplan said.
Hudson cast a sullen look at her. He’d been counting on getting on the plane and being there when they went to work on the girl. After days and days on this rock, now he’d been cheated. ‘Then we can get out of here,’ he muttered.
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘We have other work to do.’
Chapter Fourteen
Oxford
The tenth day
It had been a blur of time for Ben as he sat endlessly hunched over the desk in his flat, deep in study, completely immersed in textbooks and dictionaries and piles of notes, stopping only to eat and sleep. No phone calls, no visitors. It was a time of total focus, and his mind thrived on the concentration. It helped him forget.
By afternoon on the third day of it, his eyes were burning. The spread-out papers on his desk were turning into a mountain. The coffee at his elbow had gone cold hours ago, neglected while he’d been trying to decipher page after page of knotty Hebrew. It was driving him crazy, but as the lessons of twenty years ago slowly filtered back into his brain, things were coming into focus for him.
For the first time in days, his phone rang. He felt its pulsing buzz in his pocket, dug it out and answered. It felt strange to hear his own voice again.
It was Charlie. He sounded far away, anxious and agitated.
‘Ben, I need your help.’
Ben leaned his weight back in the reclining swivel chair and rubbed his eyes, light-headed from concentration. He forced himself back into the present. ‘Where are you?’
The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET Page 71