Ben Hope

‘I said it crossed my mind. I didn’t say it stayed there very long. Got to consider every possibility, Brooke. Even if it’s just trying it on for size to tell what doesn’t fit.’

Brooke threw herself back in her seat and closed her eyes. Ben fished in a pocket for his pack of Gauloises, tapped one out and lit it, rolled down his window to let the smoke out and went on driving in silence.

After a pause Brooke said in a softer tone, ‘I’m sorry I lashed out at you just then. It was wrong.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘It’s not your fault. It’s that idiot and the things he said. He made me so angry.’

‘Maybe I should have shot him. We could go back, if you like.’

Brooke gave just a flicker of a smile, and fell silent for another long pause. Then she said, ‘The thing is, though, the reason he touched such a nerve is because I must think, deep down, that he’s right.’ It was just like her to analyse everything psychologically, even at times like this.

Ben replied, ‘You can persuade yourself rationally that Amal’s dead. But do you feel it? Do you believe it in your heart?’

‘I’m so tired I don’t know what to believe. What do you think?’

‘I think Prajapati seemed very sure of himself, considering he seems to have damn all proof to support his opinion.’

‘But what if it’s true? How do we know it isn’t?’

‘We have no reason to suppose it is.’

Her lips tightened. ‘You don’t have to humour me, Ben. I’m not a child. Let’s say Amal’s not going to make it out of this. Or he’s dead already, like Prajapati says. What then?’

‘The usual things. You’d bury him, mourn him, and move on. Like everyone does.’

‘I don’t mean that. I mean, what then?’

‘Then we’d move on to the next phase. The hunt would switch gears and become about finding the people who did it. But it’s too early to start talking this way.’

‘And if they could be found? You’ll take them down?’

Ben looked at her and saw the seriousness in her eyes. She wanted them dead, no mistake. He nodded slowly. ‘You said it yourself, Brooke. Whatever it takes to make this right.’

‘You’d do that for me?’

‘And for Amal,’ Ben said. ‘He’s my friend too.’

She reached out and touched his hand where it rested on the wheel. Her fingers lingered for a moment, then she drew her hand quickly away. ‘What about Kabir?’

‘If you’re right that the two cases are connected, then it means the same bad guys are behind both crimes. In which case, we get the people who took Amal, we’re also getting the ones who got Kabir. Two birds with one stone.’

‘And if I’m wrong, and the two aren’t connected at all?’

‘Then all we can do is take it step by step. It’s a process of elimination. Forget about Prajapati. Even if he hadn’t just taken himself out of the equation, he’s of no use to us. Which takes us to the next name on the list, Samarth. At this point, I’d like to be introduced.’

‘Why now?’

Ben replied, ‘Because he’s the only one of the three brothers still available to talk to. Because I’m a visitor in his home and it’s the polite thing to do. And because he might actually know something that could lead us to the next level.’

They passed a busy street-side kebab stall and the aromas of chargrilled lamb and chicken with hot chilli peppers and spicy okra wafted through the car’s open window. Brooke asked, ‘Not hungry yet?’

‘I want to keep moving.’

‘Same here.’ She reached for her handbag, took out her purse and riffled around until she found a business card. Black with gold edging and script, expensive and glossy. ‘Here it is. Ray Enterprises, Connaught Place. That’s the main business district, where all the big corporate offices are.’ She copied the postal code into the on-board sat nav and peered at the screen for directions. ‘You need to get turned around here.’

‘Let’s do it.’ Ben dropped a gear and the Jaguar’s engine growled happily as he cut across the lanes of chaotic traffic to head back in the opposite direction.

That was when he spotted the car in the rear-view mirror. A dusty white Toyota sedan had peeled suddenly out from the traffic flow and pulled a sharp U-turn in his wake. In any other country Ben had travelled in, it would have been the kind of manoeuvre that elicited a symphony of honking horns from angry motorists. Evidently not in India, where nobody seemed to care much what you did on the road, but it caught Ben’s eye nonetheless. Not exactly subtle.

Someone was following them.

Chapter 16

Ben kept it to himself, because he didn’t want to alarm Brooke. Not until he was sure he was right. Then she’d find out soon enough, depending on what happened next.

He took the next right turn, veering sharply into the junction at the last moment. A motor rickshaw driver and a couple of pedestrians had to move fast to get out of his path. Brooke glanced at the sat nav and said, ‘What are you doing? This is the wrong way.’

‘Sorry, my mistake,’ he replied. In the mirror he saw the white Toyota follow them into the junction. Hanging back, keeping its distance, allowing a few other vehicles to filter in between itself and the Jaguar. It had passed the first test. Or failed it, depending on one’s point of view. One more, and Ben would be sure. He said, ‘Let me pull in here and get turned around again.’

He clicked on his indicator, steered nearer the kerb and slowed. A battered taxi sedan, two tuk-tuks and a motorcycle buzzed past. The white Toyota didn’t. It had slowed too, and hovered at the kerbside forty metres behind the Jaguar as though anticipating their next move. Ben waited for a gap in the traffic, then threw the Jag around with a squeal of tyres and accelerated back towards the junction.

Right on cue, the Toyota U-turned and followed.

Brooke still had no idea what was going on, and Ben had decided to say nothing yet. Connaught Place and the Ray Enterprises HQ were twenty minutes away, which he hoped was enough of a distance to provide him with a chance to lose their tail. He left her alone with her thoughts as he followed the sat nav west across the city, cutting and diving into gaps, braking hard now and then to avoid facilitating the suicide of various scooterists and pedestrians, and all the while watching the white Toyota in his mirror. He’d already memorised its Delhi registration number. The glare of the sunlight made it hard to see through its windscreen, but he thought he could see the shapes of two guys inside.

He wondered who they could be. Goons working for Prajapati? Possible, though unlikely.

A traffic light up ahead was changing from green to amber. Ben saw his chance and put his foot down, and the Jaguar surged through just as the light turned red. Some way behind them, the driver of the Toyota had to make a quick decision. He raced through the red, almost collided with a truck, swerved to avoid a motorbike, and kept on the Jaguar’s tail. Ben switched lanes a couple of times, took a couple more turns as directed by the sat nav. He was momentarily distracted by a bus that was trying to force its way up the wrong side of him. Then when he looked in the rear-view mirror again, expecting the Toyota still to be there, it was gone. He slowed a little to let traffic stream past and check that the Toyota wasn’t just lurking further back. Definitely no longer there.

Maybe he’d imagined it, he thought. Then again, he was experienced enough to be pretty damn sure he hadn’t. The stunt back there at the traffic lights had probably been the deciding factor, when the Toyota’s driver had taken the bait and drawn too much attention to himself. It had been time to bail out.

But just because the Toyota had dropped out of the game didn’t mean it was over. Vehicle surveillance, done properly, almost never involved a single tail. The Toyota had most likely passed the baton to another of the surveillance team. The new player could be another car, a van, bike, or even a helicopter if their resources stretched that far. Ben kept glancing around him for a likely suspect, but could see nothing. The view through the Jaguar’s sunroof showed a clear sky above. If someone was still following them, they were being a damn sight more discreet about it than the Toyota. The question was, who might that someone be, and what was their intention?

‘You’re awfully pensive,’ Brooke said.

‘Focusing on driving. This traffic’s terrible.’

‘Welcome to Delhi. Better get used to it.’

Soon afterwards they reached the headquarters of Ray Enterprises. Connaught Place, and the impressive steel and glass tower itself, were a galaxy away from Prateek Prajapati’s seedy neighbourhood. Just a few miles across the city, the slick, contemporary corporate architecture of the business centre rivalled anything London or New York had to offer. This was the world Brooke had married into. Switching off that thought the instant it flashed through his mind, Ben turned down a ramp to the building’s underground car park. Nobody followed them inside. Something to worry about later, Ben decided.

They found a parking space, left the car and walked to a lift. Surveillance cameras watched from every angle. A sign said NO SMOKING WITHIN 15 FEET OF ANYWHERE, which struck Ben as a bit Draconian and tempted him to light another Gauloise just out of defiance. Eight security guys would probably appear and threaten to shoot him if he dared to.

The lift was spacious and modern, and nobody had been keeping chickens in it any time recently. The soft music wafting through its sound system sounded distinctly unIndian to Ben’s ears. He asked, ‘What floor?’

Brooke replied, ‘Top.’

‘Silly question.’ He pressed the button for the eighteenth floor. The doors hissed shut.

‘Samarth has the whole floor to himself. I hope he’s there,’ she added fretfully. ‘We should have called ahead.’

‘If he’s half the workaholic he’s cracked up to be, he’ll be there.’

The lift whooshed upwards. Ben watched the illuminated floor numbers on a panel above the doors tick off, all the way up to eighteen. Then Brooke said, ‘Here we are,’ and to the sound of a two-tone chime the sliding doors hissed open again to reveal the plush surroundings of the company CEO’s personal domain. There wasn’t a dusty plastic plant in sight, the air conditioning worked beautifully, and a secretary or PA a third of the age of Prajapati’s receptionist and much more attractive in her manner greeted them warmly when Brooke walked up to the desk and introduced herself as Mr Ray’s sister-in-law. The PA checked the computer, slim fingers skipping over the keyboard. She wore a ring on her thumb and a name tag marked ‘Salena’.

‘He has a two o’clock meeting, but I believe he’s free for a few minutes. Please hold on while I check for you.’ Salena picked up the phone, spoke briefly in Hindi, then motioned towards a door at the end of a passage and said, ‘Please go through, Mrs Ray. He’ll be very happy to see you.’ Her dark eyes lingered on Ben, and she flashed him a coy smile.

‘Pretty,’ Brooke said in an undertone as they left the reception area.

‘Is she? I hadn’t noticed.’

‘I’ll bet you hadn’t.’

Brooke was about to knock at the door when it opened, and Ben met Samarth Ray for the first time.

Chapter 17

Samarth was several years older and a couple of inches taller than Amal, the same height as Ben at just under six feet. The fraternal similarity was discernible, but you’d have had to look twice. Where Amal was somewhat slight of build and not the sportiest of people, Samarth had the athletic look of a guy who played squash and worked out in the gym four times a week. And while Amal played up to his writerly image by slouching about most of the time in jogging pants and T-shirts, his elder brother was immaculately tailored and carried himself as ramrod-straight as an army colonel. The light grey silk three-piece looked Italian, like his shoes, and the gold ingot on his wrist was Swiss. His thick hair was swept back from a high brow, greying just enough at the temples to add to the look of urbane polish. But for all the veneer of dynamism and success about the man, the signs of stress, fatigue and grief were only thinly hidden below the surface.

Samarth embraced Brooke with real tenderness and invited them into his office. Floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides offered a sweeping panorama of the city. The furnishings were as tasteful and expensive as those at the house.

‘I apologise for dropping in on you out of the blue like this,’ Brooke said.

Samarth touched her arm and replied graciously, ‘It’s always a joy to see you, my dear, even under these tragic circumstances.’ His English was as polished as his appearance, with barely a trace of an accent.

‘I’d like to introduce you to my friend Benedict Hope.’

‘Just Ben,’ Ben said as they shook hands. Samarth’s grip was strong and dry. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Mr Ray. Please may I offer my condolences at this difficult time.’

‘You’re very kind. Thank you. Now, to what do I owe this pleasure?’

‘I came to tell you some news,’ Brooke said. ‘Both bad and good.’

Samarth replied sadly, ‘Given the choice, it’s always better to hear the bad news first. Can anything you have to tell me be worse than what’s already happened?’

‘I had a meeting with Prajapati this morning. There’s been no progress in the investigation.’

‘Unfortunately that comes as no great surprise to me,’ Samarth said.

‘And he’s resigning from the case.’

‘Again, not entirely unexpected. And not entirely negative news, from my perspective. I was never persuaded that he needed to be hired in the first place.’

Brooke said, ‘We need all the help we can get, Samarth. And that’s why I brought Ben to meet you.’

Samarth looked at Ben. ‘Is this the good news?’

Brooke said, ‘There’s nobody more expert when it comes to finding people. He’s come to India to offer us his services.’

Samarth gave Ben a sad smile. ‘Your reputation precedes you, Mr Hope. You’re the military man of whom my brother has spoken with such great admiration. A genuine hero, I gather.’

‘Ex-military man,’ Ben said. ‘As for a hero, I don’t know. But I do know the world of kidnap and ransom. I’m here to do anything I can possibly do to help resolve this situation.’

‘I’m touched by your kindness, Mr Hope. Please, won’t you sit?’ Samarth stepped across to a plush white leather armchair by the window, and slumped in it as though suddenly deflated by so much worry.

Ben perched on the edge of an armchair opposite. Brooke settled on a chair by Samarth’s desk. Ben said, ‘Mr Ray, I know you’re a busy man, so I’ll get straight to the point. It seems that Amal had reason to believe he knew why Kabir disappeared, and who might be responsible for the attack on him and his associates. We’re working on a possible theory that Amal’s own disappearance might be connected.’

Samarth looked blank for a moment, then frown lines etched his face. ‘I don’t understand. Connected in what way?’

Brooke said, ‘Amal told me that Kabir confided a secret to him, just before he left for Rakhigarhi.’

‘A secret? I’m sorry, again I don’t understand what you mean. What kind of secret?’

‘We think it concerned Kabir’s work,’ Ben said. ‘Some discovery he’d made, something he’d found, that he was very excited by and shared with Amal. Something of great importance or value. We’re speculating that it could be some archaeological find, but we don’t know what. I was hoping that you might be able to shed light on the matter. It could provide us with a real insight into what’s happened, not just to Kabir but to Amal as well.’

Samarth began tapping at the arm of his chair with a finger. ‘Are you saying that you believe my brothers’ disappearances to be the work of a single abductor?’

‘Perhaps more than one, but working together. We can’t be sure of that yet.’

Samarth placed his hands in front of him on his lap and laced his fingers together with a thoughtful, sombre expression. ‘It strikes me that this theory you’re working on is really little more than a hypothesis. Do you have any tangible evidence to support it?’

‘Only what Amal told Brooke the night of the kidnap. That he’d found something.’

‘That’s it? He found something?’

‘That’s it,’ Ben said. ‘At this point I’m simply trying to build a picture.’

Brooke said, ‘Samarth, did Kabir tell you what he told Amal? About his work, this thing he’d found?’

Samarth reflected for a moment, then slowly, gravely shook his head. ‘No, I don’t recall his mentioning anything of that nature. I’m afraid I have no idea what this thing could be.’

Brooke looked crestfallen. ‘Are you sure? It might just have been in passing. Some small detail that might not have seemed important at the time.’

Samarth nodded. ‘Quite sure. Whatever conversation my two brothers might have had, I wasn’t party to it.’ The weary sadness had drained out of his expression, replaced by something colder and harder. He pursed his lips, paused a moment longer, then said, ‘Brooke, Mr Hope—’

‘Please call me Ben,’ Ben said.

‘I understand your desire to seek answers to the many mysteries surrounding these terrible recent events. Who feels that pressing motivation more painfully than I?’

Ben sensed a ‘but’ coming.

Samarth went on, ‘However, if you will allow me to speak frankly, I don’t consider this to be a productive line of enquiry. Believe me, I wish it were. But as you admit yourselves, you have no evidence to back it up. It’s just pure conjecture. Speculation. One might say, wishful thinking. Or, to use another expression, it seems to me you’re clutching at straws.’

Brooke stared at her brother-in-law. ‘Were you there, the night Amal was taken?’

Samarth levelly returned her gaze. ‘You know that I wasn’t. It’s a foolish question.’

‘No, you weren’t. But if you had been, and you’d heard what Amal said, seen the look in his eyes, you wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it. He meant it, Samarth. He knew something. There’s more to this than anyone reali—’

Samarth cut her off. ‘As I’ve made clear more than once, Brooke, I was unhappy with the involvement of a private detective in our family affairs. Now that Mr Prajapati is no longer in the picture I’m just as unwilling to reopen the case up to another investigator, however decent his intentions, and however much I appreciate his travelling all the way to India to offer his services.’

Samarth turned to Ben. ‘Naturally, I will be more than happy to reimburse any expenses you may have incurred, Mr Hope. Please submit your invoice to my secretary, and it will be taken care of immediately. Then it remains only for me to thank you for your concern, and to wish you a pleasant journey home.’

Brooke’s cheeks had reddened and she looked perplexed. ‘Samarth, your father was very keen to have Ben come to help us. He pulled a lot of strings to cut through the red tape and speed things along.’

Samarth replied, ‘I’m well aware of the calls that my father made to his friends at the Foreign Office, Vivaan Banerjee and others. He still commands a huge deal of respect and influence. But as much as it pains me to say it, my father is old and sick and no longer the man he once was. His decisions aren’t always the right ones. Just as I’ve had to assume control of running the business he founded, there are times when I must take charge of other matters, for the good of the family.’

‘For the good of the family,’ Brooke repeated, sounding dumbfounded.

‘Indeed. The loss of two sons has been an unimaginably devastating blow to my parents. I now find myself facing the heart-breaking prospect of organising one brother’s funeral, which has already been delayed too long, and preparing myself to organise the other. This is a time for what’s left of our family to try to find solace and mourn our loved ones. It’s not a time for raising false hopes in the pursuit of some unsubstantiated wishful theory that can only cause more pain and suffering. Surely you must see that?’

‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing. How can you just make these assumptions?’

Samarth heaved a sigh. He got up from his chair and approached Brooke with an outstretched hand of sympathy. ‘My brother found a fine woman. I sincerely admire your strength and resolve, Brooke. I urge you to find within yourself the strength to accept the truth that is glaring us all in the face. My brothers aren’t coming back. You know that, don’t you? Deep down you believe it as much as I do.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. There was a crack in her voice and the muscles of her face were tight.

‘Help her to understand, Mr Hope,’ Samarth said. ‘Explain to her that with no ransom demand, this is no ordinary kidnapping.’

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