Valley of Death

‘Nice.’

‘So after endless days of going nuts in London, Amal decided he had to fly out to be here in person, and he jumped on the first plane.’

‘You didn’t come with him?’

‘No, I had a conference I couldn’t get out of. I came out to join him a few days later.’

‘Did Amal go to Rakhigarhi and visit the spot where it happened?’

Brooke shook her head. ‘You know Amal. He wasn’t made for roughing it. He freaks out any time he ventures more than ten miles from a major city. He stayed here in Delhi while making a thousand phone calls to Captain Dada’s office. Then he went to see Prajapati and employed him to travel out to Rakhigarhi and visit the crime scene on his behalf. Prajapati spoke to the law enforcement officials there and came back satisfied their take on the situation was probably right, and that Kabir had almost certainly been killed along with his two associates, and that it was time to accept it, close the case and move on. Shit happens, basically.’

‘Nothing like thorough police work,’ Ben said.

‘Amal called me that night. He was very upset. He wouldn’t accept that his brother was dead. Kept insisting that Kabir must be lying injured somewhere, and the police had just missed it, and they weren’t trying hard enough and needed to widen the search. He had a big argument with Samarth about it.’

‘The eldest brother.’

‘Samarth had already spoken to Captain Dada on the phone and believed he must be right. Amal was furious with him.’

‘What about you?’ Ben asked. He could see the questions in her eyes.

Brooke clutched her drink in one hand and raised the other in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I didn’t know what to tell him. The police had searched the whole area and found nothing. Their conclusions seemed to make sense to me too, at the time.’

‘At the time,’ Ben said. ‘But now you’re not so sure?’

‘Neither are you,’ she replied. ‘Or you wouldn’t be asking me all these questions about Kabir. First one brother goes missing, then the other. It can’t be just a coincidence, can it? You see it that way, too, don’t you?’

‘I’m only trying to build a picture in my mind, Brooke. Maybe it is just a coincidence. Maybe the police are right, and the incident in Rakhigarhi was nothing more than just a tragic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that we need to look in a totally different place to figure out why this thing has happened to Amal.’

‘Or maybe they’re wrong,’ Brooke said. ‘In fact, the more I think about it, the more certain I am that there’s more to this.’

Ben looked at her and could see she was resolute. ‘Based on what?’

‘Based on something Amal said to me, the night those bastards took him.’

Chapter 10

Ben asked, ‘What did Amal say to you?’

Brooke fell silent, and her gaze seemed to turn inwards as though she was reimagining the scene from that night. ‘When I arrived in Delhi, I’d never seen him so miserable and depressed. He felt like nobody was listening to him, he felt betrayed by Samarth who seemed to just want to accept what the police were saying at face value, and he was frantic at the idea that Kabir was lying somewhere badly hurt and suffering, maybe even dying. I wish I’d never suggested it now, but I had the idea that going out for a meal together that evening might cheer him up. There’s a big food district only about twenty minutes’ walk from here, with a lot of great restaurants. He was reluctant at first, but then agreed that a walk and a nice dinner out would do him good. We never got there.’

Brooke choked up as she finished speaking, and had to pause for a few moments as she dabbed her eyes. She took another long sip of her scotch. Ben wished she’d stop drinking. She clasped the glass with both hands in her lap and stared at it, shaking her head. Her eyes were pink and brimming again. She was gripping the glass so tightly that Ben was afraid it would break and cut her. ‘Oh God, what’s going to happen to him?’

‘You don’t want to focus on those kinds of thoughts,’ Ben said. ‘You need to believe he’s all right.’

She flashed her tearful eyes on him. ‘You know perfectly well you’re only saying that. Don’t try to bullshit me. He’s either dead already or he’s sitting in some dark hole, absolutely terrified out of his mind. He’s not strong, Ben. He’ll fall apart under this kind of strain.’

Ben leaned forward and reached out, gently took the glass from her fingers and laid it on the coffee table in front of her. ‘So what did he say?’ he prompted her softly.

Brooke closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. After a few more moments she was collected enough to resume the story.

‘It was as we were walking. It was a lovely evening, cool and peaceful. I’d hoped a stroll would relax him, but he couldn’t stop going over and over the whole thing, about how too little was being done to find his brother, and how he was absolutely certain that this wasn’t just some random bandit attack as everyone thought. I said to him, “Amal, how can you really be so sure it wasn’t?” Like you, I thought maybe the police were actually right and that Amal should listen to Samarth. I couldn’t bear to see him torturing himself that way. But then he stopped walking, and he turned to me in the middle of the street, and he looked at me and said, “There’s something else about Kabir. Something I know that I haven’t told you, or anyone. It changes everything.”’

Ben asked, ‘Something, like what?’

Brooke slowly shook her head. ‘I wish I knew.’

‘He didn’t say?’

‘I could tell he wanted to, but couldn’t bring himself to. It was gnawing at him.’

Ben frowned. ‘Not even a hint?’

‘I only know what little I was able to get out of him. He said that Kabir called him a few days before leaving on his trip, very excited, and confided something really important. Not just your typical run-of-the-mill secret. Something huge.’

‘If the trip was related to his work, this archaeological project you said he was working on, then presumably this piece of information relates to that as well?’

‘It’s a fair assumption.’

‘In which case, what are the possibilities?’

Brooke shrugged. ‘Archaeologists dig stuff up. Maybe Kabir did, too.’

‘A discovery? Of what?’

‘I don’t know, Ben. You tell me.’

Ben mulled it over for a moment or two, then decided that it was all too vague to even try to speculate about. ‘And Amal thought this secret, or discovery, or whatever it is, of Kabir’s might have had some bearing on the reason for the attack?’

Brooke nodded. ‘That was why he was so convinced it wasn’t just some random incident. But whatever it is, Kabir had made him promise not to tell anyone.’

‘Not even you? His own wife?’ It was hard for Ben to say that last bit.

‘That’s what I said to him, too. Asked him why he couldn’t share it with me, if it was so important. Especially if it meant something about what happened.’

‘And his reply?’

‘He said to me, “He’s my brother, Brooke. Please don’t ask me to betray his trust.”’

‘Okay, fair enough. But why would Amal hold this information back from the police, if it might have shed some different kind of light on the investigation?’

‘I asked him the same question. He said a promise was a promise, and that was the end of it.’

‘Is Amal normally this stubborn?’

‘Look, I know you think of him as just this bookish nerd,’ Brooke said.

Ben held up his palms in defence. ‘Did I ever call him that?’

‘But he has principles. If he felt it was wrong to betray his brother’s trust, wild horses couldn’t drag it out of him.’

‘I’m sure. You’d have to give him a Chinese burn to get him to talk, or twist his earlobe or something.’

She gave him a resentful look. ‘That’s a low thing to say, Ben.’

‘I’m sorry. It might help us, too, if we had any clue what it was. You don’t have any idea?’

‘None.’

‘That’s just great. Nice to have so much to go on.’

‘One thing we can be sure of,’ Brooke said. ‘Kabir had some kind of big, important secret apparently connected with his trip to Rakhigarhi. And Amal was in on it too. Next thing, both brothers have disappeared, first one and then the other. The confidential information is what connects them.’

‘Maybe.’

Her cheeks flushed. ‘Not maybe, Ben. Definitely. It means Amal was right. There’s more to this than a chance bandit attack. Has to be. And it also has to mean that whatever happened to him is somehow involved with what happened to Kabir. It can’t possibly be a coincidence.’

‘And all we have to do is find out what this secret was that Kabir made his brother swear never to tell a soul about. Bingo, our first inkling of a lead.’

‘If anyone can find out, you can,’ she said.

‘Do you think he’d have told his other brother?’

‘Samarth?’

‘If Kabir told him what he told Amal, he might share it with us.’

Brooke thought about it, then shook her head. ‘From the way Amal talked, I doubt that Kabir confided in anyone else within the family. The two younger brothers have a closer relationship than with Samarth. He’s always kept himself at a distance. There’s some tension there.’

‘What kind of tension?’

‘This is India. Traditions are still very strong here. It had always been understood that all three brothers would enter the family business, take over from their father when he retired, and work together to expand the empire that old Basu had founded. But Amal and Kabir both chose to go their own ways, which caused a certain amount of bad blood between them and Samarth. Their father too, though he’s really quite sweet once you get to know him. He’s the reason I was able to get you here so fast. A couple of favours were called in from some very high-level people.’

‘So I gathered. Let’s get back to the events of that evening. You say you never made it to the restaurant. The snatch happened on the walk?’

‘Just before we got there. Not long after we’d had that conversation.’

‘I think you’ve been cooped up in this room long enough. Let’s get some air. Do you have a car?’

She looked momentarily blank, thrown by the apparent change of subject. ‘There’s a Jag house car that I use as a runaround. It’s down in the garage. Or else we could get Prem to drive us in the Maybach.’

Jaguars. S-Class Pullman limousines. Back when they were an item, Brooke’s drive had been a clapped-out Suzuki jeep. Ben said, ‘Let’s leave Prem out of it.’

‘Where are we going?’

He replied, ‘To the food district.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘We’re not going there to eat. I want to see the crime scene for myself. You’re going to take me to the spot Amal was kidnapped.’

Chapter 11

The sun outside was more intense as midday approached. The air felt as hot and heavy and moist as steam, trapped under the pale sky. Ben’s shirt began to stick to his back the moment he left the air-conditioned cool of the house, but despite the heat Brooke had wrapped a light shawl around her bare shoulders. Green and yellow silk, with a paisley pattern. It looked good on her. She carried a small embroidered handbag, or a clutch purse, or whatever woman termed these accessories, on a thin strap. Ethnic fashion wear, probably bought locally for a fraction of what some trendy London boutique would charge. The handbag seemed to hang heavy on its strap. It always mystified Ben what women carried around in those things.

Bees and giant dragonflies buzzed about the flower beds as she led him across the garden and down a path to the Ray residence’s garage block, a stretched-out and low open-fronted building painted white to match the house, with exotic ivy growing up its walls. ‘I suppose you could call it the family fleet,’ she said, showing Ben the row of cars inside under the shade. All lined up neatly facing outwards, all immaculately waxed and polished. Prem had parked the limousine in a space at the end of the row, dwarfing the bright red Ferrari next to it.

‘Whose is the flying tomato?’ Ben asked. ‘Amal’s?’

‘Amal doesn’t drive,’ she replied. ‘That’s Kabir’s. The Audi roadster is Prem’s. The little yellow Fiat belongs to Esha, Samarth’s wife. She doesn’t get out much, though.’

‘So I gathered. Unlike her husband, who’s never at home.’

‘He parks his Bentley there,’ Brooke said, pointing at an empty space next to the tiny Fiat. ‘He’s usually home by six or seven, if it’s not a busy day at the office. You might get to meet him later.’

The silver Jaguar that Brooke used as general transport occupied the far end of the row. It was the latest F-Pace SUV model, compact and boxy. But its plain-Jane exterior was wrapped around a five-litre supercharged V8 engine. Whatever the Rays owned, it seemingly had to be top of the spec list. By contrast, Esha Ray’s choice of a cheap and cheerful Fiat seemed a little out of place.

Ben pointed at it and said, ‘Not exactly your typical millionaire’s ride.’

Brooke shrugged. ‘She used to drive a Porsche 911. She loved that car, but she sold it a few weeks ago. Actually, Samarth made her sell it.’

‘Made her?’

‘Said the insurance premium was too pricey for a woman’s runaround. That’s what she told me, anyway.’

‘I suppose rich folks don’t get that way by spending money unnecessarily,’ Ben said.

Brooke shrugged again. ‘Whatever. Listen, do you mind driving? I’m a bit light-headed from the whisky.’

‘I think I can just about manage that.’

She walked around to the passenger side, on the left like in the UK. A throwback to the olden days of the British Empire. Ben walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in behind the wheel. The car smelled brand new. He was glad to be free of Prem, and also glad to have their own transport. He was fast running out of countries where he wasn’t banned from booking a rental vehicle. He had absolutely no idea why. Weren’t rental companies insured against their property getting shot to pieces, blown up, flattened or sunk in canals?

Brooke got in the passenger side. Her hair brushed his face as they settled in. ‘It’s keyless,’ she said. ‘You just press the button.’

Ben had already found it. The Jaguar purred into life, not as whisper-softly as the Maybach, but you couldn’t have everything. He pulled out of the garage and started down the driveway, pausing for a peacock that strutted unhurriedly across their path. The gates wafted open for them at the bottom of the drive. Brooke guided him left and down the street. Ben was breathing in her perfume and remembering the last occasion they’d travelled in a car together. It had been back in England, during the short time they’d rented a house in the Jericho district of Oxford. A totally different life, filled with wedding plans and the excitement of the big day looming. Ben had quit Le Val and handed the reins over to Jeff, not intending to return. Those days had been over for him, he’d promised himself and Brooke. Having resumed the theology studies he’d abandoned many years earlier, he’d been looking ahead to a whole new future.

And look at us now, he reflected. Brooke married to someone else, and him back in the same old game as before, with the added twist that he had to help her get her beloved husband back. Life could be strangely ironic at times. His life, especially.

When the armed guards at the gated checkpoint saw Brooke in the Jaguar’s passenger seat they waved them through with friendly smiles and barely a glance at her driver. ‘It’s like living on a bloody military base,’ she said bitterly. ‘You’d know all about that, I suppose.’

‘Just a little bit,’ Ben said.

‘But at least it’s safe. I should never have made him leave home that night. It’s all my fault.’

‘It happened,’ Ben said. ‘We can’t change it. We can only deal with it.’

‘I suppose.’

‘So don’t beat yourself up.’

‘Okay. I’ll try.’

‘Anyhow, what were you going to do, stay hunkered down behind locked gates forever? If they wanted him, sooner or later they’d have had their chance.’

‘They,’ she said. ‘Whoever they are.’

‘That’s what we’re going to figure out.’

‘Ben?’

He turned, and saw she was looking at him. ‘What?’

‘Thanks for being here.’

‘It’s what I do,’ he said.

The twenty-minute route that Brooke and Amal had followed on foot took just three or four by car. Beyond the limits of the serene, upscale residential area they entered a profusion of narrower, humbler and dingier streets crammed to the maximum with activity. Row after row of food stalls and street vendors sprawled over the pavements. Ben fell into line with the slow-moving procession of cars and motor scooters and tuk-tuks that filtered through the jostling crowds of pedestrians. Gangs of children swarmed around the Jaguar, clamouring and waving through the tinted glass.

‘We can stop here and walk the rest of the way,’ Brooke said. Ben pulled over and wedged the car into a parking space between two stalls. The throng of kids closed around them. As Brooke stepped out she tossed them some coins and said something in Hindi that seemed to please them. The biggest kid grabbed the lion’s share of the money and planted himself beside the car like a terrier on guard duty.

‘I’ve been learning a bit of the language,’ she explained to Ben, with a shrug that could have been a little self-conscious.

‘What did you say to them?’

‘That there’d be more rupees if we come back and find the car still in one piece,’ she said. ‘Come on, it’s this way.’

Ben accompanied her through the food market, pressing their way between jostling bodies. The air was intense with the smell of motor fumes mingled with the scents of herbs and exotic spices and aromatic basmati rice and grilled mutton kebab from the vendors up and down the street. The place easily rivalled the grand bazaars of Marrakech, Tehran and Istanbul for sheer buzz and hubbub. Seafood merchants were pulling in scrums of customers for fresh crab and clams and shrimp. There were handicrafts and tourist trinkets and clothes and more exotic varieties of fruit and vegetables than Ben could identify. They passed cafés and small restaurants and musicians and stalls selling mountains of chillies and okra and nuts and teas, all adding to the sensory overload of smells, sounds and colours.

Brooke’s fair skin and auburn hair were drawing a lot of looks from men. Hence the shawl that covered her shoulders and protected her from more prying eyes. Ben threw back a few warning glances at the oglers, who quickly looked away. The white knight, protecting the damsel. Who, in this instance, was someone else’s damsel. Another painful reminder, but he only had himself to blame.

‘It happened down there.’ Brooke pointed down a narrow lane to their left, and turned off the main street away from the bustle. Ben followed. There were no stalls along here, and just enough space for a vehicle to squeeze between the crumbly buildings. She stopped and looked uncomfortably around her, then at Ben. ‘This is it. The restaurant we wanted to go to is at the bottom of this lane. Needless to say, we didn’t get that far.’

‘Pretty public spot to pull off a kidnapping,’ he commented.

‘It’s so much busier by day. There was hardly anyone around to witness what happened. And if anyone did, they soon disappeared.’

Ben stood in the middle of the lane and turned a slow three-sixty, scanning details and forming a scene in his mind. He pictured a couple walking. Not a happy pair, because of the troubles weighing on their minds. But things were about to get much worse for them.

He said, ‘Okay, describe it to me.’

Chapter 12

Brooke said, ‘By the time we got here I was already regretting that I’d dragged him out of the house. We’d walked in silence for the last few minutes. I was annoyed that he wouldn’t tell me what Kabir had told him, and I could sense that he was feeling bad about the whole thing. I think he really wanted to share it with me. Maybe he would have, over dinner, or later that evening. But there was no later that evening.’

She turned to face back towards the lane entrance. ‘The van came from that direction. It turned into the lane, came right for us and screeched to a halt right here.’ She pointed at the ground. ‘You can still see the tyre marks.’

Ben had already clocked the black stains on the road. Nothing of any great forensic value to discern from those, except that a heavy vehicle had come to an abrupt stop and shed some rubber.

‘It happened so fast that neither of us reacted in time. We were caught like a couple of deer in the headlights. Totally defenceless.’

Ben said, ‘How many guys?’

‘Six, not counting the driver. He stayed behind the wheel while the rest of them jumped out. One from the front passenger seat, two from a sliding door on the side, and the other three from the back. They were all wearing ski masks. All about average height, average build, give or take, except for one who was kind of stumpy, built like a fireplug or a fire hydrant, one of those things. Solid. And very hairy.’

‘Hairy?’

‘Like an animal. He had tufts of it sticking out from under the neck of his ski mask, and more at the wrists.’

Small and hairy, like an animal. Ben made a mental note of it. Distinguishing features were a good thing to know about.

Brooke said, ‘And another of them was much bigger than the rest.’

‘How much bigger?’

‘A lot. Really big. Probably a foot taller than you. More, even.’

‘Come on. Seriously?’ Ben was a shade under six feet, not the tallest man in the world by any means, but there weren’t many men who towered over him by that kind of margin.

‘Seriously. And built super-wide, too. A real hulk. Probably pumped full of steroids.’

Ben made a mental note of that, too. A guy that large would be easy to spot. Maybe not so easy to neutralise, if it came to it. But he could worry about that if and when the situation arose. He said, ‘Okay. Go on.’

‘They were on us in seconds. Of course, I had no idea what was happening. I thought they were coming for both of us. Muggers, or a rape gang. Forty percent of all the rapes in India happen in Delhi. They beat up the men, hold them down at knifepoint and make them watch as they line up to go to work on the women.’ Brooke shuddered. ‘But then they made straight for Amal, and I realised that wasn’t what they wanted. He was just standing there, like paralysed. I suppose I was too. Two of them grabbed his arms and started dragging him towards the van. He turned to look at me. He was so terrified. He yelled at me to run, get away.’

Ben knew that Brooke wouldn’t have run, in that situation. She was one of the toughest, bravest women he’d ever met. In unarmed combat training sessions at Le Val she’d been able to hold her own against much stronger and heavier male sparring partners.

She went on, ‘Amal’s a gentle soul. He’s never so much as thrown a punch in his life. But I wasn’t about to stand there and let him be snatched off the street like that. I rushed in and collared one of the bastards.’

‘The stumpy, hairy one or the massive one?’

‘Neither,’ she said. ‘This one was about medium height, medium build. I punched him in the mouth, and when he went down I yanked his mask off.’

‘You saw his face?’

‘I can still see it now,’ she replied. ‘He’s an Indian, as you might expect given that we’re in India. Swarthy complexion, dark hair, mid-thirties. He was sat there dumped on the ground looking up at me with these big bulging eyes full of hate. He has a missing front tooth.’

Ben made another mental note. Bulging eyes, missing tooth. ‘Was it already missing, or did you knock it out when you hit him?’

‘It was lying on the pavement. I didn’t notice it until afterwards. And his mouth was bleeding. So I’d say it was me.’