The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET

by Scott Mariani

  ‘I was just leaving,’ Kirby said abruptly.

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘I told you, I have nothing to say to you,’ Kirby said, flushed. ‘I’d like you to leave.’

  ‘I came a very long way to talk to you, Dr Kirby. Just give me a few minutes. That’s all I ask, then I’m gone and you won’t see me again.’

  ‘I’m calling security.’ The historian made a grab for the phone that was half buried under the sea of paperwork on his desk.

  ‘Please don’t do that,’ Ben said.

  Kirby’s hand stopped short of the phone. His eyes were round and staring. ‘Are you threatening me?’

  ‘I’m not threatening you,’ Ben said. ‘You don’t have to be afraid. All I want is to ask you some questions about Morgan Paxton and the Akhenaten Project. I need to know what you know.’

  ‘Morgan’s dead,’ Kirby said.

  ‘I know that. And your number was in his pocket when he died. Were you and he working on the research together?’

  Kirby swallowed. ‘His father sent you here, didn’t he?’

  The mention of Harry Paxton brought a fresh image of Zara into Ben’s mind. He felt his blood rise. ‘No. I’m not working for Morgan’s father. I was in the army with him. And until two days ago, I thought he was my friend. I was wrong. When this is over, I’m going after him. But right now I need your help. I need it badly, Dr Kirby’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘My name’s Ben Hope. And I’m not here to hurt you. Trust me.’

  Kirby hesitated, frozen by indecision and nerves.

  ‘Please,’ Ben said.

  Kirby stared at him a second longer, then stabbed a button on the phone keypad. ‘Security? This is Dr Lawrence Kirby. There’s an intruder in my office.’

  There was nothing Ben could do to stop him. He could have taken the phone off him, or ripped the wire from the wall. But strong-arm tactics weren’t going to get him anywhere. He knew he had only seconds before security arrived and he needed to make the most of that time.

  ‘I know that Morgan was looking for treasure. I need to know where it is.’

  ‘That’s a surprise.’

  ‘I haven’t time to explain,’ Ben said. ‘How much do you know?’

  But before Kirby could answer, the door flew open and two security guards walked in. The older one was craggy, hardened-looking, the white hair contrasting with his red nose and the thread veins on his cheeks. Maybe a former boxer. His companion couldn’t have been more than twenty. Not long in uniform, Ben thought. Itching for some action.

  ‘This man burst into my office and has been threatening me,’ Kirby said, pointing at Ben. ‘I want him removed.’

  ‘Let’s go, son,’ the older guard said, reaching for Ben’s arm. ‘We don’t want any trouble.’

  ‘I’m not bringing any,’ Ben said. ‘I just wanted to talk to him about something.’

  Kirby grabbed his briefcase. ‘Well, I’ll leave it to you gentlemen to take care of He walked past Ben with his eyes on the floor, breezed through the doorway and was gone.

  ‘You’ll have to come with us,’ the craggy guard said. ‘We have to take details from you.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Ben said. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  The younger guard folded his arms. ‘That’s not what Dr Kirby said.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit what Dr Kirby said. I’m leaving now, and you’re going to let me.’

  ‘No chance, pal. You’re coming down to our office and we’re calling the police.’ He pronounced it ‘polis’.

  Ben made a step for the door. The younger guy grabbed his wrist. ‘I have to warn you, I’m a black belt in Aikido. I don’t want to have to hurt you.’

  He was unconscious before he hit the carpet.

  Ben turned to the older guy. ‘I didn’t come here looking for trouble. Best you don’t give me any, OK?’ He pointed to Kirby’s chair, and the old guy went over and sat down, fuming but knowing better than to get up.

  ‘Sensible,’ Ben said. ‘Give me your radio and mobile phone.’

  The guard wordlessly slid them across the desk and Ben shoved them in his pockets. ‘Now I’m leaving, and you’re going to sit quietly until this prick comes round.’ He ripped the phone wire out of the wall, and walked to the door. He threw a last warning look at the guard, left the room and locked the door behind him, leaving the key in the lock.

  He looked at his watch as he walked down the corridor towards the exit. Time was ticking by too fast. As he strode out of the entrance and headed for the car, he was already dialling up Google Maps on his phone and punching in the postcode that had been on the car insurance renewal form in Kirby’s office. The address came up as Drummond Manor, eight miles west of St Andrews.

  Ben slid inside the Mercedes and entered the details on his sat nav. Now to find Kirby and make him talk. Properly.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Lawrence Kirby knew he was a terrible driver, but he didn’t generally care and he cared even less today. As he sat peering over the wheel of his bright yellow Smart Car and lurched and stalled his way towards the old family home eight miles out in the countryside, he was thinking about this guy, Ben Hope, who’d accosted him in his office. And about Morgan, and about the treasure. He wondered how the hell Hope had managed to track him down so easily.

  Whatever it all meant, it scared the shit out of him. As he pulled in off the road, passed under the archway of trees and into the gravelled forecourt of Drummond Manor, he was wondering whether it was time to pack some stuff and take a holiday. Maybe take the sabbatical leave he’d cancelled the day he’d heard about Morgan’s death and bailed out of his Cairo trip.

  He climbed the steps to the big stone manor house, fumbled for the key in his pocket and pushed open the heavy oak door. Every time he walked inside the huge stone-floored entrance hall, he had the same thought: how much he hated all the crap his father had insisted on displaying on the walls. The stuffed trophy deer heads always seemed to watch him wherever he went, and their antlers made spiky shadows at night that freaked him out. He couldn’t stand the sight of the crossed sabres and muskets gathering dust on the carved wood panels, either. On a velvet panoply over the fireplace were two big ceremonial Kukhri knives, left over from His Lordship’s days as an officer with the Gurkha regiment.

  But the old man’s will hadn’t specified that his son, the new Laird of the manor, couldn’t just bung the offensive lot in a skip. And Kirby planned to do exactly that. He just hadn’t got around to it in the months since he’d inherited this rambling pile.

  He dumped his briefcase in the passage, walked through to the kitchen and made himself a mug of instant decaf. Carrying the thin brown liquid through to the only one of the manor’s many reception rooms that he ever used, he gazed out of the window across the overgrown lawns behind the house. Beyond a stone wall and a row of trees, he could see the derelict agricultural buildings in the background. The place had been a working farm once but, ever since the old man had got frail and sick, everything had fallen into decay. Abandoned stacks of hay bales were mouldering and turning black in the rusty barn. And the slurry pit was sure to be attracting rats. It was becoming a health hazard. He’d have to tear the whole lot down.

  That was Kirby’s last thought before he sensed a presence behind him and spun around in surprise to see two men striding fast towards him across the room. Two guns in his face. He dropped his coffee and let out a short scream. Fell to his knees.

  Neither man spoke a word as they grabbed his arms, hauled him roughly to his feet and marched him out of the room and down the passage. He struggled and pleaded. ‘What do you want with me?’ As they frogmarched him across the hall, he glanced up and saw with a shock of horror that there was an empty space where one of the Gurkha knives had hung.

  Oh Christ, they’re going to cut my head off.

  ‘What are you going to do to me?’ he screamed.

  They ignored him and dragged
him out of the front door. There was a white Suzuki mini-van sitting parked on the gravel outside. The back doors were open. The men shoved him towards it.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’

  No reply.

  All the strength had left Kirby’s legs and he was shaking with pure terror as they bundled him into the back. He slid across the bare metal floor, tried to scramble to his feet and whacked his head against the low roof. The doors slammed shut. There were no windows. Kirby was suddenly in darkness.

  The kidnappers walked around the van’s sides to the cab, pulled open their doors and climbed in. They spent a moment making their pistols safe and securing them inside the tactical concealment holsters they were both wearing under their jackets. They didn’t speak, but shared the quiet satisfaction of a job cleanly and quickly executed. Now it was time to get out of here and deliver the package to the place outside Glasgow that their cell used as a safehouse. Neither man had any clear idea of the purpose of this job-they only knew that a call had come in from overseas the night before, and it was from someone their bosses obeyed instantly. It had also been put in no uncertain terms to them that to mess this up would mean severe punishment.

  The driver twisted the key.

  Nothing happened. The van was stone dead.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said in Arabic.

  ‘What’s wrong with it? It was fine a minute ago,’ said the man in the passenger seat.

  The driver muttered another curse, reached down below the dash and yanked on the bonnet release mechanism. There was a dull clunk and the bonnet popped free of its catch and opened half an inch. He kicked open his door, jumped down from the van and walked around to the front.

  The passenger watched through the windscreen as his colleague lifted the bonnet and disappeared behind it. He heard some noises, then nothing. He stuck his head out of the window. ‘Hurry the fuck up,’ he yelled in Arabic. ‘We’ve got to get moving.’

  The bonnet crashed down with a clang that shook the van. The passenger looked, expecting to see his colleague wiping his hands and giving the thumbs-up-OK, sorted, let’s roll.

  But there was nobody there.

  He frowned, opened his door, climbed down. His footsteps crunched on the gravel as he walked around the front wing. He looked down and saw the driver’s legs sticking out as though he were lying on his back to work on the underside of the van.

  ‘Hey, what the fuck are you doing down there?’

  But then he saw the legs give a violent, spasmodic twitch.

  And he saw the blood that was pooling outwards from under the van and across the gravel.

  After that, he saw nothing more.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Ben cut the man’s throat in a swift sawing motion, stepped aside to avoid the blood spray and let the body slump to the ground. He laid the long, curved knife on the gravel between the two dead men and quickly checked them for any kind of ID. As he’d expected, there was nothing-but the moment he’d seen the van arrive and the two Middle Eastern guys get out, he’d known who had sent them. Kamal must have found the phone number in the blazer pocket and followed the same trail he had.

  There was a frenzied thumping and yelling coming from the back of the van. Ben walked around to the rear doors and opened them.

  Kirby looked crazed and dishevelled. ‘It’s you. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Just dropped by for a chat,’ Ben said. ‘I was about to talk to you, when I saw you had company. Decided to hang back and see what happened.’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘Right now, under the circumstances, I’d say I’m the best friend you have in the world,’ Ben said. ‘Ready to trust me yet?’

  Kirby lowered himself gingerly out of the back of the van and froze when he saw the two bodies. He put his hands to his face. ‘Oh, my God. You killed them.’

  ‘You’re right. Maybe I should have just reasoned with them. I’m sure we could have worked something out.’

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Kirby gasped.

  ‘You know perfectly well what’s going on,’ Ben said. ‘Your secret’s out, and everybody wants a piece. What did you think was going to happen?’

  ‘I’m calling the police.’ Kirby started staggering towards the house.

  Ben stopped him. ‘Not if you want to stay alive.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You call the police, I’m out of here. Then, when these guys don’t phone in or turn up, more are going to come. Sooner or later, they’ll get you, take you away, interrogate you and probably torture you to death. There’s nothing the police can do to prevent it. If that’s what you want, go and dial 999, and I’ll say goodbye.’

  Kirby’s shoulders slumped helplessly. ‘All right. Obviously I don’t want that. So what am I going to do?’

  ‘First you’re going to tell me where there’s a tool-shed with a wheelbarrow in it. And then you’re going to help me carry these bodies over to the slurry pit over there, where nobody’s ever going to go looking for them.’

  It took less than ten minutes to make the two kidnappers vanish. A concrete lane led from the side of the manor to the dilapidated farm buildings two hundred yards away beyond the trees, and Ben used the creaky old barrow that Kirby found for him to roll them one at a time to the edge of the slurry pit.

  At twenty yards, the stink of putrescent liquid dung was noxious. At ten it was overwhelming, and very few people would have got closer than five. Ben held his breath as he kicked back the bolts on the hatches and opened them up to reveal the filth underneath. He rolled one corpse in with his foot, then the other. Two brown splashes, a stream of bubbles as the slurry filled their lungs, and they were gone. The next time anyone saw them, there would be nothing but bones left. Nature was efficient that way. Ben tossed the bloody Kukhri knife in after them, slammed the hatches shut, slid the bolts home and moved away quickly towards cleaner air.

  Kirby was waiting for him beside the old hay barn, looking deeply perturbed and shaken. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Now let’s get out of here,’ Ben said. ‘My car, not yours.’

  He led Kirby to where he’d parked the SLK behind the trees, out of sight of the manor.

  ‘I feel sick,’ Kirby moaned as he settled into the car.

  Ben fired up the engine and the acceleration pressed them hard back in their seats as the car sped up the road. The countryside was open and the roads were quiet. He didn’t know where he was going-he just wanted to put distance between them and the house before finding somewhere they could talk. He drove fast along the winding coast road, between green fields dotted with sheep and spring lambs, drystone walls, little white cottages and farmhouses here and there in the distance. The sun was beginning to sink lower in the sky, casting a reddish glow over the sea.

  ‘Do you have to drive so fast?’ Kirby complained.

  ‘We’ve got to talk, Kirby.’

  ‘Stop the car,’ Kirby muttered in a strangled voice. Ben snatched a glance away from the road ahead and saw that the historian was deathly pale, slumped over in his seat, both hands pressed against his sternum.

  ‘I’m going to puke.’

  Ben hit the brakes and pulled over onto a grassy verge. Kirby’s door was swinging open as they rolled to a halt. He staggered out across the verge and leaned against a fencepost. Bent over double, he clutched his stomach and threw up violently.

  Ben let him get on with it for a minute or two, then got out of the car and walked over to join him. ‘It’s just stress,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a shock. Can we talk now?’

  ‘I need some air,’ Kirby muttered. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

  On the other side of the road, a little rocky path led downwards towards the shoreline. Kirby set off down it, and Ben followed. Minutes were passing. Minutes he couldn’t afford to lose. He was thousands of miles from where he needed to be, and getting nowhere. He could only hope this guy was worth the effort.

  Kirby paused by a big rock and took several deep breath
s. ‘Oh, Christ.’ He ran trembling fingers down his face. ‘How did I get into this? Those people, back there. Did they kill Morgan?’

  ‘It’s complicated. I don’t have time to go into every detail.’

  ‘I need to know.’

  Ben let out a sigh. ‘I suppose you’re entitled to an explanation.’ He ran quickly through what had happened. About the robbery, about Kamal, about Harry Paxton. But it was a simplified version in one major respect. There was no reason why anyone needed to know about Zara.

  ‘He’s blackmailing you?’ Kirby asked, amazed.

  Ben nodded. ‘Someone close to me stands to get hurt if I don’t retrieve whatever it is you and Morgan found. I’m on the clock. Can you help me, or not?’

  ‘It’s unbelievable,’ Kirby said. ‘Morgan always regretted having let on to his father about the discovery. He knew the old bastard was too interested in it for comfort.’

  ‘Now it’s your turn to talk,’ Ben said. ‘What’s the connection between you and Morgan? What’s this about?’

  ‘Morgan was my friend,’ Kirby muttered. ‘We were at university together. We went back a long way.’

  ‘So this was a joint project. You were in it together.’

  ‘It was Morgan’s brainchild, but we were both working on it. I was going to join him in Cairo. But then I heard about what happened. I’ve been crapping myself ever since. Just waiting for them to come after me.’ He looked up. ‘How did you know where to find me?’

  ‘I told you. Your number was scribbled on a piece of paper in Morgan’s pocket.’

  ‘Damn,’ Kirby said. ‘When Morgan went to Egypt, I was in the middle of moving here from Lancaster Uni. This is a new job for me. I called him on his mobile to tell him about my new number. He must have jotted it down on the first thing that came to hand.’

  ‘Fine. Now tell me what you know.’