Amals thoughts were punctured by Mrs Sheenan, who had suddenly registered his presence and begun fussing over him, frying pan in hand, screeching in a voice that pierced through his skull. Yes, hed slept fine, thank you. Yes, the room was lovely and warm. But her broad, toothy smile vanished as, averting his eyes from the pool of grease swilling in the pan, he informed her as politely as he could that he didnt want any bacon.
Oh, she said, scanning his face and then pursing her lips in extreme disapproval. You must be one of them Muslins.
Im just not hungry really, a cup of tea would be fine.
Just tea, is it. Mrs Sheenan sighed loudly and returned to the kitchen to dump her frying pan with a crash on the stove.
You havent seen my friend Brooke this morning, have you? Amal called after her through the open door. He had to make an effort to raise his voice over the din of the television. The kitchen was now reverberating to the opening theme of the local RTÉ news.
Eh? Mrs Sheenan screwed up her face with a hand cupped behind her ear, then glanced back at the television. Shall I turn it down? she bawled, making a move for the remote control. Youve an awful quiet voice.
I was asking Amal began.
He stopped mid-sentence as he realised what had just come on TV. He burst out of his chair and hurried towards the kitchen, his hangover suddenly forgotten. No! he yelled. Dont turn it down!
Too late: Mrs Sheenan had pressed the mute button. Amal stopped in the doorway and gaped at the screen.
The soundless television picture was of a wrecked car on a winding country road, in the middle of a rugged, empty landscape that looked shockingly familiar to Amal.
The black Jaguar had skidded into the opposite verge and smashed into a huge rock. Wreckage was scattered across the road. Teams of police were milling around the vehicle, blue lights swirling in the early morning mist.
As Amal went on staring in increasing horror, he saw a team of paramedics loading a bagged-up body on a gurney into the back of an ambulance. A close-up of the car showed what were unmistakably bullet holes punched through the black bodywork. The rear window was shattered and the rear wheels shredded, the tyres clearly blown out by the gunfire.
No, no, no, this cant be happening, Amal murmured. He blinked his eyes tightly shut and then opened them again.
It was happening.
Mrs Sheenan gave a derisory snort. There you go. Another eejit gone and killed himself.
The silent picture changed to a shot of Sir Roger Forsyte, followed by one of Sam Sheldrake. Turn the sound on! Amal yelled. Flustered, Mrs Sheenan fumbled with the remote. Now the picture showed the face of a stocky-looking man in his forties whom Amal didnt recognise.
At that moment, Mrs Sheenan managed to get the sound back on.
found a short distance from the vehicle, has been identified as Wallace Lander, forty-two, a former British soldier employed as a driver by Sir Roger. Early reports suggest that Mr Lander was gunned down by at least two automatic weapons, killing him instantly. Police sources have confirmed that both Sir Roger and Miss Sheldrake remain missing, presumed kidnapped by the attackers.
Amal slumped in a kitchen chair and numbly absorbed what he could. It barely seemed real to him. The empty, bullet-riddled car wreck had been discovered before dawn that morning by a night shift worker returning home from a local packing plant. Police had traced the Jaguar to a luxury car hire firm in Derry, and confirmed that the vehicle had been leased to Sir Roger Forsytes company, Neptune Marine Exploration. Forsyte was known to have been en route from Castlebane Country Club to nearby Carrick Manor, his temporary base in the area, when the attack took place. Witnesses had reported seeing the Jaguar leave the country club shortly before ten oclock that evening; it was estimated that the incident had occurred at approximately 10.05 p.m.
Amals breath was coming in short gasps as he anticipated the mention of a third passenger. Any moment now, Brookes face would be on the screen, with the news that shed been found dead like the cars driver, or snatched by the kidnappers. But there was nothing at all.
An idea came to him, like a flash of white light. Maybe Brooke had changed her mind at the last minute maybe she hadnt gone off to the party at all, but had got out of the car and taken a taxi back to the guesthouse, assumed he was already in bed and not wanted to disturb him? The wild notion suddenly seemed utterly convincing. Headache and nausea forgotten, he leaped to his feet, ran upstairs and hammered on her door. Brooke? Are you there? She had to be. Come on, Brooke. Be there. Come on.
Silence. Amal burst into the room and saw it was empty: the bed neatly made, unslept in, Brookes clothes folded on top of the sheet, her travel bag sitting on the rug nearby, the novel shed been reading propped open on the bedside table. Amal dashed into the ensuite bathroom, but all there was of Brooke were her toothbrush and hairbrush by the sink, her little wash-bag and shower cap on the shelf.
His head was spinning as he thundered back downstairs. Youre sure you didnt see her this morning? he quizzed Mrs Sheenan.
Who?
My friend! Brooke! The woman I was here with. With some effort, he managed to drag it out of Mrs Sheenan that he was definitely the only guest whod come down to breakfast that day.
That was when the panic set in for real. Amal began to tremble violently, first his hands, then his whole body, feeling weak and jittery as though his knees might buckle under him. His brow was damp with cold sweat.
I have to call the police, he said.
Chapter Six
Near Étretat, Normandy coast, France
Ben Hope hauled the Explorer sea kayak onto the little tongue of shingle, wiped his hands on his wetsuit and gazed up at the towering white cliff. The saltiness of the cold air was on his lips. Circling gulls screeched overhead. All right, he said, as much to himself as to the cliff, lets see what youre made of.
Sunday morning, and the relaxed pace of life in the little corner of rural France Ben now called home was going on much as it always had. He could hear a church bell chiming from a kilometre or so away inland, summoning to Mass those locals who werent enjoying a late breakfast, pottering about their homes, feeding their chickens or still lazing in their beds.
Ben Hopes way of relaxing was a little different from most peoples. The stretch of shoreline hed driven the ancient Land Rover to that morning with his kayak lashed to the roof was known locally as the Côte DAlbâtre, the Alabaster Coast, for the chalky whiteness of its sheer, gale-battered cliffs. Nineteenth-century painters had travelled here to depict them; writers and poets had been inspired by them today he was going to climb them. Partly just because they were there, and because Bens idea of pleasure was to set himself challenges that normal folks would have done anything to avoid, and also partly because doing this kind of thing helped him to forget all the churning thoughts that otherwise tended to crowd his mind these days.
After securing the kayak and warming up his muscles with some bends and stretches, he pulled on his rock-climbing shoes and gloves, strapped the lightweight waist pack around his middle, then walked up to the foot of the cliff and reached for his first handhold. He paused as a jolt of pain ran up his arm.
The two bullet wounds sustained on Christmas Day were well healed now. Theyd both come from the same small-calibre handgun, but even a .25 could do terrible damage at close range. Ben had been lucky. The first shot had glanced off his ribs and passed on through; only the second, lodged in his shoulder, had caused any difficulty to the surgeon whod pulled it out. Now there was just a little stiffness, some pain from time to time and another couple of scars to add to the collection of war wounds Ben had accumulated over the last twenty years. The man holding the gun had come off very much worse.
Ben waited for the twinge to pass, then launched himself upwards.
The rock face was sheer. As he made his way higher and higher, the wind whistled around him and the hiss of the surf on the rocks below grew fainter. The summit approached, inch by careful inch. Hand over hand, the pain only served to drive him on, energy exploding inside him and a kind of fierce joy filling his heart.
But even suspended from his fingers and toes halfway up a high vertical slope with a dizzy drop beneath him, he found he couldnt shut out his thoughts completely. Which wasnt entirely a surprise, considering that hed recently come through just about the most tumultuous episode of a life that nobody could have called boring. Few things could shock Ben any longer, but the discovery just before Christmas that he had a grown-up son hed never known about had hit him like an express train. Hed been reeling from it ever since.
He hadnt told Brooke about it hadnt been able to bring himself to, though hed been on the verge of telling her a dozen times over the phone during the last few weeks. Now that they were speaking again and there seemed to be a faint hope of reconciliation, Ben was extremely wary of complicating matters and placing an added strain on their slowly-mending relationship. The right time would come.
He hadnt told Brooke about it hadnt been able to bring himself to, though hed been on the verge of telling her a dozen times over the phone during the last few weeks. Now that they were speaking again and there seemed to be a faint hope of reconciliation, Ben was extremely wary of complicating matters and placing an added strain on their slowly-mending relationship. The right time would come.
Bens sons name was Jude Arundel, and until the age of twenty hed taken for granted that his parents were Simeon and Michaela, the vicar and vicars wife of the Oxfordshire village of Little Denton. In reality, Simeon had raised Jude as his own son despite knowing full well that the boy had been the product of a brief romance between Ben and Michaela, back when theyd all been students together at Oxford.