Valley of Death

Ben shoved that unworthy thought out of his mind, swallowed hard and said, ‘I didn’t know she was married.’

Phoebe nodded. ‘Oh, yes, for a while now. I think you know her husband. Amal Ray?’

Ben remembered Amal well. He’d been a friend and former neighbour of Brooke’s, dating back to when she’d had an apartment in Richmond, Surrey. Amal had been an aspiring playwright who somehow seemed able to maintain a leisured lifestyle, despite having no job and zero theatrical successes to his name. He was likeable in a neurotic sort of way, bookish and nervy, the kind of guy who looked as though he was rushing around even when he was standing still. Ben had always suspected that Amal harboured a secret admiration for Brooke that went beyond the bounds of friendship, though he’d never have imagined it could be reciprocal. He seemed like the last man on earth she’d be drawn to. Brooke, so full of passion, who loved excitement, thrived on the thrill of the challenge and could handle herself in a difficult spot. He couldn’t imagine two people more different. The idea of them together was unthinkable.

But Ben wasn’t about to let his deeply hurt personal feelings stand in the way of his concern for a friend in trouble. ‘What happened?’

‘Amal’s been kidnapped.’

‘Kidnapped?’ Ben was genuinely amazed. The idea of innocent people being snatched off the streets or from their homes was hardly anything new to him. For years after quitting the military, he’d worked on the right side of the booming kidnap and ransom industry, liberating victims and dispensing to the bad guys the fate they had coming. He, of all people, knew how widespread and pernicious the abduction trade was.

But the thought of Amal Ray falling victim to it seemed crazy. The guy fitted the profile of a kidnap victim about as well as he filled the bill as a potential life partner for a woman like Brooke.

Phoebe nodded. ‘That’s why I’m here. Because that’s what you do, isn’t it? Help people in that sort of situation?’

Ben could have replied, ‘Used to do.’ Instead he asked, ‘When did this happen?’

‘Eight days ago.’

‘Where, in London?’

‘No, in India. That’s where he’s from.’

‘He moved back there?’ Brooke, living the married life in India. It was hard to imagine.

‘No, they still live in London. Amal was on a trip back to Delhi when it happened.’

‘Okay,’ Ben said. ‘What’s the deal? How much are the kidnappers asking for?’

Identifying the motive for the crime, which ninety-nine per cent of the time was financial, was a vital first step. It also offered a reasonable indication that the kidnappers intended to keep their victim alive, at least until they got their hands on the cash. After that, it could go in all kinds of ways. Extremely unpleasant ones, for the victims and their loved ones.

‘They’re not,’ she said.

Ben looked at her. ‘You mean there’s been no ransom demand? Not a letter, or a phone call, or an email, in eight days?’

She shook her head. ‘No contact at all. Nothing.’

Ben pursed his lips, thinking hard. This wasn’t just unusual. It was bad. Even worse than the typical kidnap situation. Because it deviated from the set pattern. The longer kidnappers held their victims, the higher the risk of being caught. Plus, they weren’t interested in playing nursemaid. They were only in it for quick gains. Hence, things tended to move quickly, with the first ransom demand being issued within twenty-four hours, often less. If families paid up too readily, the first demand was invariably followed by a second, bleeding them for more.

But no ransom demand at all was weird. Ben paused a moment then said, ‘So we don’t even know why Amal was taken, let alone by whom?’

She shook her head again. ‘No, he’s simply vanished. Just like Kabir.’

‘Kabir?’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘He’s disappeared, too. Three weeks ago. It all started with him.’

‘I think you’d better explain. I’m not following.’

Phoebe sighed. ‘I’m sorry. It’s all so complicated that I can barely keep up with it myself. Kabir is Kabir Ray. Amal’s younger brother, an archaeologist in Delhi.’

‘And Kabir was kidnapped too?’

‘Not exactly. He and two of his work colleagues were attacked. It happened in some remote part of India, miles and miles from anywhere. His colleagues were shot dead.’

This was sounding more serious now, and getting stranger by the second. Ben had a hundred questions, but kept quiet and let her go on.

Phoebe said, ‘The local police there think Kabir was killed along with them, but there was no sign of his body, only theirs. After days and days of frantically worrying and hearing nothing new, Amal flew out there himself to try to find out what had happened to his brother – talk to the police, piece together clues or whatever. Next thing, this dreadful kidnapping. A gang of masked men snatched him right off the street and bundled him into a van. Brooke was with him. It happened right in front of her. Poor Brooke. Poor Amal.’

Ben felt his stomach fill with butterflies. ‘Was Brooke hurt?’

‘No, but it’s so awful.’ Phoebe plucked a tissue from her pocket and started dabbing at her eyes, which had turned pink and begun streaming tears as she talked. ‘I don’t know what to make of it. I’m at my wits’ end. Mr Hope—’

‘You can call me Ben.’

She sniffed, nodded. ‘Ben – please say you’ll help her find out who did this and bring Amal back to her safe and sound. She’s in a terrible state.’

Ben was trying to make sense of all this. A kidnapping with no ransom demand. A deadly shooting in another part of the country. He was thinking reprisals, enemies, someone with a grudge against the family. Or had the brothers been into something that put them in danger?

He asked, ‘Do the police see the two disappearances as connected?’

‘As far as I know, no. They seem to think bandits were responsible for what happened to Kabir and his friends. That part of India is crawling with them, apparently. But not Delhi. I mean, it’s a modern, safe city. Like London.’

Ben looked at her and wondered how anyone could be so disconnected from reality. He said, ‘So as far as the authorities are concerned, these are two separate, coincidental events.’

She nodded. ‘That’s what Mr Prajapati seems to believe, too.’

‘Who’s Mr Prajapati?’

‘He’s supposedly the best private investigator in the capital. Brooke employed him to help search for Amal. She doesn’t think the police are doing enough.’

‘I see.’

Phoebe gazed at him imploringly with her wet, bruised-looking eyes. ‘I’m begging you. After all she’s told me about you in the past, your military background, your experience with kidnapped children, the amazing things you’ve done for so many people, I know that if anyone can find out who’s behind this horrible thing and bring Amal back home, it’s you.’

Chapter 5

Ben leaned back and thought about it for a minute. His past history, both before and after he’d quit the regiment to go freelance, wasn’t a subject for open discussion. SAS guys were famously, and justifiably, cagey in the extreme. Partly out of pure habit, partly because they were strictly bound by the Official Secrets Act, and partly to protect themselves and their families from being targeted for reprisal attacks. He didn’t like the things he’d done being talked about. But he also knew that Brooke was discreet and would have revealed only the broadest outline of the facts to her sister.

He said, ‘Let me get this straight. You’re here by your own volition? Brooke didn’t send you?’

She appeared flustered by his question. ‘I … no … it was my idea. She doesn’t know I’m here. I googled your name and found the Le Val Tactical Training Centre online.’

‘You could have saved yourself a trip. We do have email, telephones, all the trappings of modern-day communication technology.’

Phoebe’s cheeks flushed red and her gaze dropped towards her lap. ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t speak to me. I … I thought that if I met you face to face, I might have a better chance of getting you to agree to help. Will you?’

‘Help, as in, fly out to India?’

She nodded, her face brightening with renewed optimism. ‘There’s a direct flight from Charles de Gaulle in Paris tonight at eleven.’

He stared at her as if she were crazy. ‘You’re taking a lot for granted, Mrs Kite. Even if I said yes, Paris is more than a three-hour drive from here. I’d have to down tools and leave right away.’

‘I know it’s a lot to ask,’ she said. ‘But Brooke would be so grateful. She’s still out there, staying at the Ray family home, isolated in a strange country and having to deal with this nightmare basically all alone.’

‘There’s also the matter of applying for a travel visa. I wasn’t actually planning on taking a trip to India any time soon. It could take days to get the paperwork sorted.’

Phoebe brushed that concern aside. ‘I don’t think you would need to worry about the red tape. The Rays are an important business family with a lot of money and all the right diplomatic connections to get you into the country, no questions asked.’

‘I see. So let’s say I agreed. What would I be doing exactly? Working alongside this Mr Prajapati character, the best private detective in Delhi, who seems to have sussed the whole thing out already? How does he feel about the arrangement? Does he even know he’s being allocated a new assistant?’

‘I understand what you’re thinking. You’re upset that Brooke hasn’t asked you herself.’

Ben shrugged. ‘I just think that if she wanted me to get involved, she’d have got in touch directly. She knows where I am.’

‘Please don’t blame her. She’s terribly distraught by all this.’

‘I’m sure she is. And she has my deepest sympathies. But it sounds to me as though she’s already dealing with it. It also seems to me that the last thing she needs is me turning up there, unexpected and uninvited, to complicate her situation and bring back a lot of bad feelings. Our relationship isn’t exactly as cordial as it used to be. We haven’t spoken in a long while, and the last time we did wasn’t too pleasant.’

‘I’m aware of that. She told me.’

‘And the fact that she hired someone else to help with this situation, instead of contacting me, makes it pretty clear where she stands. Wouldn’t you agree?’

Crestfallen, Phoebe said in a low voice, ‘Then I take it you won’t help?’

‘It’s not my decision to make, Mrs Kite. It was unnecessary for you to come here.’

‘I thought …’

‘I know. You tried. That was a good thing to do.’

‘She loved you so much.’

Ben felt a fresh blade of pain pierce his body. ‘I loved her. She still matters a great deal to me. All the more reason for not hurting her all over again. She doesn’t want me there.’

‘What about Amal? Don’t you care?’

‘Of course I care. I like Amal. But there’s nothing I can do for him, except pray it all works out. Which I’m sure it will. If the Ray family are rich, it points to a clear financial motivation for snatching him and there’ll be a ransom demand any day now. If they pay up, there’s every chance of getting him back without a scratch. It’s just a routine business transaction. Happens all the time. The police know what they’re doing.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

Most of what he’d just said was a lie. Intended to reassure, but a long way from the dark reality of the kidnap and ransom world. In a high percentage of cases, whether they paid off the crooks or not, families never saw their loved ones alive again. That was Ben’s whole reason for having become what he’d called a ‘crisis response consultant’. His own ways and means of getting the victims home safe had generally involved the rapid and permanent elimination of the kidnappers, while having as little as possible to do with the bungling efforts of law enforcement officials.

But, as he’d said, this one was out of his hands.

Phoebe looked deflated. She glanced towards the window, through which the lights of the taxi could be seen casting pools of light on the yard cobblestones.

‘I suppose I’d better go,’ she sighed. ‘I can catch the nine o’clock flight back to Heathrow.’

Ben stood up. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink, for the road? You look as though you need one.’

She stood up too. ‘That’s fine, thanks. I’ll have a gin and tonic on the plane. Or perhaps two or three of them. God, I must look a mess.’

‘Try and get some rest,’ Ben said. ‘Brooke, too. I know how tough this must be for her.’

As he was showing her out through the entrance hall, she hesitated, hovered nervously in the doorway and then turned to look at him with a strange expression on her face.

She said, ‘I can’t leave here without telling you the truth.’

‘The truth?’

‘She made me promise, you see. But I’d rather betray her trust than go back empty-handed.’

‘Promise?’

Phoebe nodded uncomfortably. ‘I lied. Brooke did send me to ask for your help. She practically forced me to come and talk to you.’

‘But she didn’t want me to know, so she made you pretend it was all your idea.’

‘She desperately needs you there, Ben. She’s just too proud and embarrassed to admit it. But there was nobody else to run to. Prajapati, the private investigator, is even more useless than the police. You’re her one and only hope. Her words.’

Ben said nothing.

‘One final time. On my knees. For my sister’s sake. For Amal’s. For all of us. Please, please will you help us?’

Chapter 6

Once Ben had relented and said yes, he had to move fast. As Phoebe departed in the taxi his first job was to break the news to Jeff and Tuesday that something had come up and he had to leave immediately. ‘Sorry to leave you in the lurch like this, guys.’

Neither of them could get over Brooke being married, but their concern overrode their surprise. ‘What’s your take on the kidnap?’ Jeff asked. He’d sobered up as sharp as a fighter pilot, his own worries forgotten. His eyes were full of concern.

‘The usual,’ Ben said, rubbing thumb and fingers together. The universal sign for money.

Jeff raised an eyebrow. ‘Writing plays must pay a hell of a lot better than I thought.’

‘Family wealth. A lot of it, or so I’m told.’

Tuesday said, ‘I can’t see Brooke marrying into money. Not her style.’

‘No,’ Ben agreed. ‘That’s what I thought, too. Maybe I was wrong about her, but that’s not important now. What matters is getting Amal out of this.’

‘You want us to come along?’ Jeff asked. Ben knew from repeated experience that his friends were both perfectly prepared to drop everything, clients and all, to be at his side in a time of need. But this was a personal thing, and Ben wanted to face it alone.

He shook his head. ‘Thanks, but—’

‘I get it. Call if you need us, okay?’

Next, Ben threw some clothes and personal items into his old green canvas bag, then spent exactly forty-five seconds under the shower, changed and pulled on his boots and grabbed his bag and jacket, patted the dog and ran out to the barn where he kept his BMW Alpina. It was a fast car, which was very much needed to shave time off his journey to Paris and catch the 23.00 flight. Seconds counted.

Here we go again, he thought as he sped out from the gates of Le Val and accelerated hard away with the BMW’s twin beams carving a tunnel into the darkness. It was like a curse. Every time he tried to settle into a steady routine, another crisis would come out of the blue to turn his life upside-down once more. He was worried for Amal, but what troubled him almost as much was the prospect of meeting Brooke under these circumstances. He lit up a cigarette, shoved on a jazz CD and turned the stereo system up full blast to drive that haunting prospect out of his thoughts. The Zoe Rahman Trio, playing ‘Red Squirrel’.

He was scorching eastwards along Autoroute 13 at over 150 kilometres an hour, passing Rouen and about halfway to Paris, when his phone rang. He answered it on the hands-free, muting the music.

It was Phoebe. Cherbourg to London was only a thirty-five-minute flight and she was already back in the UK.

‘It’s all arranged,’ she told him. ‘You’re booked on the flight, first class, naturally. Ticket will be waiting for you when you get there.’ She gave him a code number to write down. ‘It’s a direct flight, no stopovers. You land at Indira Gandhi International at ten thirty-five tomorrow morning, local time. There’ll be a car to pick you up from the airport.’

‘And the visa?’

‘Just like I told you, not a problem.’ It seemed that Amal had an uncle with high-up Indian government connections influential enough to cut through the bureaucracy and open up a magic VIP portal through which Ben could waltz unimpeded. It was his first whiff of the Ray family’s status. He suspected it wouldn’t be the last.

‘You don’t know how much this means to Brooke,’ Phoebe said.

So much that she can’t call me herself, he thought. Again, he had to shove that bad thought out of his head. She probably wasn’t looking forward to the meeting any more than he was. ‘How’s she doing?’ he asked.

‘Three guesses how she’s doing. Her husband’s missing. She doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive. She’s a mess.’

It had often struck Ben as curious that so many of the women in his life had the title of ‘Dr’. But they were all different kinds of doctors. Dr Roberta Ryder was an American with a biology PhD. Dr Sandrine Lacombe made her living fixing broken bodies and patching up gunshot victims, as she’d done for Jeff Dekker when Ben first met her. While Dr Brooke Marcel had earned her credentials as an expert in psychology, specialising in studying the devastating effects that violent abduction, incarceration and living under constant lethal threat in the most appalling conditions imaginable, for months or even years, could have on the human mind. Nobody understood hostage psychology better. That was how Brooke had come to be employed at Le Val as a visiting lecturer, helping specialist operatives gain insights into the minds of those they might be sent in to rescue.

Brooke also had enough knowledge of the kidnap game to be all too aware of just how bad it was for its victims. There was a high chance she’d never see Amal again, and she knew it. Little wonder she was a mess.

Ben asked, ‘I’m assuming there’s still no ransom demand?’

‘Nope. Zero contact from these shitty bastards who’re holding him. That can’t be a good thing, can it?’

Ben chose not to answer that. ‘And no more progress reports from the police or the private investigator?’

‘If there had been, I would have told you.’ Phoebe’s tone was snappish. He put it down to stress and didn’t blame her for it. She paused, then said in a softer voice, ‘Please say you’ll get Amal back, Ben.’

It was foolish to make promises in this situation. But he did it anyway. ‘I’ll get Amal back.’ One way or another. In one piece, or in several. He kept those dark thoughts to himself as he ended the call.

Ben pushed the car harder into the night. He made it to Charles de Gaulle airport in just over three hours without getting pulled over for speeding, which meant the French traffic police must be slacking on the job. As Phoebe had said, the ticket was ready and waiting for him at the check-in desk. He impatiently whiled away the time before his flight was called, and then he was stretched out on a plush seat in a half-empty first-class section with a glass of single malt scotch, straight, no ice. The benefits of luxury travel. With eight hours ahead of him in which he had nothing much to do except try not to think about meeting Brooke again, the whisky would be the first of several.

After a couple of drinks he ate a light meal from the excellent first-class menu, then had a couple more drinks, then closed his eyes. Still thinking about it. Then again, as long as he was preoccupied with one thing, he couldn’t feel so bad about the other.

He fleetingly wondered where Sandrine was at this moment, and what she was doing. Then he wondered how he’d feel if, say, a couple of years into the future, he heard that Sandrine had married some guy and that he, Ben, was now just a distant and semi-forgotten part of her past. He wasn’t sure how much it would hurt him. Maybe a little. But not the way he was hurting now. Maybe that was how love was measured, he thought: by how brutally it could rip your heart out and feed it through a blender. By that definition, he knew that he must still feel more than he’d realised for Brooke Marcel.

No, not Brooke Marcel, he corrected himself. She’d be Brooke Ray now.

Brooke Ray.

Shit. Time for another drink. Eight hours was plenty of time to sober up.

Eight hours later and fully sober, Ben stepped out into the hazy Delhi sunshine with his bag on his shoulder and began taking in the sights and colours and smells of India. It was mid-morning, local time, and cooler than he’d expected – only about 30°C and rising as he crossed the tarmac towards the arrivals terminal.

Then again, his expectations were a little vague. He’d travelled the whole world several times around, missing only a few spots, but India nonetheless wasn’t a country he knew well. His last visit had been a brief stopover en route to Indonesia, the very same trip that had triggered the end of his relationship with Brooke. It seemed ironic that he was returning here now, under these circumstances.

They say nothing prepares you for the dirt, poverty and chaos of India, but the airport was clean and modern and well organised. Ben passed under a big sign welcoming the new arrivals to the country and was approaching the immigration counter when a well-dressed man with swept-back white hair and a clipped moustache intercepted him with a smile and a handshake, and introduced himself as Vivaan Banerjee of the Indian Foreign Office.

The government man led Ben away from the crowds to a private room, where he made pleasant small talk while checking Ben’s identification papers. ‘This is just a formality,’ he kept insisting as he apologetically asked for signatures on a couple of official documents, and Ben had the strangest feeling of being inducted into some old boys’ club. It was another whiff of the Ray family’s power and influence. Who needs a travel visa, when you have friends in the right places?

With a flourish Banerjee produced an ink stamp and set about vigorously thumping the signed documents as though there were cockroaches lurking under them. Then he grasped Ben’s hand like a long-lost friend and wished him a pleasant stay in India. Ben wondered if Banerjee knew why he was really here, and if that was the reason why the official seemed to be studiously avoiding any mention of the current crisis affecting the Ray family. Maybe now Ben was in the club, the police would be ordered from on high to turn a blind eye if the hunt for Amal got rough.

After he finished with Banerjee, Ben headed for the exit. Phoebe had said there would be a car to pick him up at the airport. As he was walking through the busy lobby, past a life-size statue of two Asiatic elephants penned behind a railing as though they might suddenly rampage and start flattening the public, a young Indian guy picked him out from the crowd and came hurrying over.

‘Mr Hope? Delighted to meet you, sir. My name is Prem Sharma. I work for the Ray family. Please, come this way.’

Prem was about thirty, slender and handsome, with expressive dark eyes and thick black hair. He wore a light grey suit, nicely tailored, silk shirt, expensive watch, quality handmade shoes. His employers clearly paid him well. He carried Ben’s battered canvas bag as diligently as if it had been a Ralph Lauren suitcase and led him outside to a gleaming black Mercedes-Benz S-Class Maybach Pullman limousine longer than some river barges Ben had seen. Yet more evidence of the wealth Brooke had married into.