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Chapter Two
The Galway coast
Republic of Ireland
Two days later
It was cold for the time of year, and the steady breeze from the sea made him turn up the collar of his old leather jacket. The pale early evening sun was beginning to drop lower over the Atlantic horizon, casting his shadow long and dark over the empty, pebbly beach as he walked.
Ben Hope was alone out here, and glad to be. He walked slowly, because he had nowhere in particular to go. He didn’t even know why he’d come to this place. Now and then he paused in his step to stare out to sea, as if somehow the iron-grey ocean would give him the answers he was looking for.
He had lived here once. Spent many hours standing in this very spot, watching the waves roll in and crash against the rocks. It seemed a long time ago now. Just as he had in the old days, he bent and scooped up a handful of pebbles from the stony beach to fling into the surf. He watched them disappear one by one in the hissing foam.
‘Fuck it,’ he muttered to himself after the last pebble was gone. He turned his back on the water and started making his way towards the big house.
As he got closer, he paused again and gazed at it. The Victorian building stood perched on rock overlooking the long, curved stretch of its own private beach. He knew the house very well indeed, as it had once belonged to him. But he’d been away long enough to have forgotten just how large and imposing it looked.
It’d always been too big for him, just one guy rattling around with only his elderly, harried, ever-fussing housekeeper for company. In any case, he’d been away so often that it had felt more like a base than a proper home. The roving, spartan existence of a freelance kidnap rescue specialist had often seemed hard to distinguish from the harsh military life he’d known before that.
The house looked different now, and even though he’d expected it to, it gave him a strange pang to see how it had changed.
Funny, he thought: when the place had been his, he hadn’t cared much for it, never thinking about it on his frequent travels around the world; but now he could feel a creeping sense of nostalgia.
Stupid. What am I doing here? he asked himself once again.
Where the pebbly beach ended, stone steps led up towards the back of the house. The iron safety railing was new. Health and safety regulations, he guessed. So was the large conservatory that the new owners had added where the sea-facing terrace used to be. The dropping sun reflected in its glass panes.
Ben walked around the side of the house, along a neat path that hadn’t been there during his time. At the front of the house, he stopped and looked up. Of all the unfamiliar additions to his former home, the most striking was the sign over the front door that said ‘Pebble Beach Guesthouse’. It was a strange feeling, looking at it. Like something telling him definitively ‘this is no longer yours’. You no longer belong here.
Final. Irreversible.
So where did he belong? He didn’t know any more.
He was just about to turn away, feeling defeated and sad, when he heard a voice.
‘Mr Hope?’
He turned to see a hefty woman in her late fifties smiling at him. Dressed in a baggy black dress, her grey-flecked hair wrenched back into a bun, there was a matronly look about her. Unlike the house, she didn’t seem to have changed since he’d last seen her, the day the sale had gone through. Maybe a little thicker about the hips, but it was hard to tell. She’d probably been built like a sideboard since the age of twenty.
‘Mrs Henry,’ he said, forcing a smile. ‘It’s good to see you again.’
‘And you,’ she said, smiling back.
‘How’s business?’ he asked, for want of anything better to ask.
‘Can’t complain. What brings you back out to Galway? On holiday?’
‘Something like that,’ he said. ‘Is Mr Henry well?’
‘Much better since the hip operation, thank you. He’s out on the golf course today. Won’t be home until later. He’ll be sorry he missed seeing you.’
‘Likewise,’ Ben said, quietly relieved that he wouldn’t have to get dragged into a conversation about the absurd game of golf, which he recalled seemed to be all Bryan Henry could talk about with any enthusiasm, other than his gammy hip. How the man even managed to hit the ball straight with eyes like that was anybody’s guess. The right one looked at you, the left one looked for you.
‘Come inside and have a drink,’ Mrs Henry said brightly. ‘We’ve just had the new bar put in.’
Ben followed her inside. More strange memories struck him everywhere he looked. The dark period woodwork of the entrance hall had been stripped out to create a bright modern reception area. Full of pride, Mrs Henry led him down the passage to what had once been his living and dining rooms, the wall between them knocked down. He inwardly winced at the floral wallpaper and tacky paintings. Through an archway that hadn’t been there before, he could see into the new conservatory, filled with tables neatly set for Sunday dinner. On the other side of the room was the bar, and beyond that a lounge area where a couple of septuagenarian guests were sitting placidly reading in the silence.
A young woman sat in an armchair by the window. Ben glanced at her just long enough to see that she was in her early thirties or thereabouts, with sandy hair cut short, giving her an elfin kind of look. She was wearing light blue jeans and a white T-shirt. There was a mini laptop open on a low table in front of her, next to a half-finished glass of red wine and a small, square jotter from which she seemed to be busily copying handwritten notes into the computer. Someone was obviously having a working vacation.
Ben looked back at Mrs Henry to see she was watching him expectantly. ‘Well?’ she prompted him at last. ‘What do you think?’
‘Love what you’ve done with the place,’ he forced himself to say.
‘Really? I’m so glad.’ Mrs Henry wedged herself in behind the bar and picked up a glass. ‘What can I get you, Mr Hope? On the house, naturally.’
Lies and flattery could get you anywhere. ‘Thanks. I’ll have a Guinness.’
As she was finishing pouring it for him – the proper touch with the shamrock on top – the bell rang in reception and she hurried off to attend to business. Left on his own, Ben perched himself on a bar stool and sipped the cold Guinness. He thought about all the times he’d got drunk in this room and poor old long-suffering Winnie had had to bring him strong black coffee to help sober him up.
He sighed quietly to himself and shook his head. He’d been a screw-up then, and he was one now. What a mess he’d made of his life. The woman he loved despised him. His own son, Jude, would barely speak to him. His sister, Ruth, thought he was a lowlife.
Nice job. Well done.
It was two months since Ben had walked out on his fiancée, Brooke Marcel, virtually on the eve of their wedding. The way he’d seen it, he’d had no choice but to help a friend in need. The way Brooke had seen it, the friend in need was a very attractive old flame who’d mesmerised him into running off with her to get involved in yet another of the crazy, high-risk adventures that littered his past life.
When Ben had returned to England two weeks after they’d been due to get married, he’d been hoping he could pick up the pieces with her, try to make her understand why he’d needed to do what he’d done. Then, fix a new wedding date and get back on with the life they’d planned together. But it hadn’t worked out that way. The house in Oxford was empty. Brooke was no longer there, and had taken all her things with her: everything except the little neck chain he’d once bought as a gift for her. It was lying on the bedside table, snapped in half. Next to it had been a handwritten note. Just four scribbled words.
Don’t look for me.
Brooke knew all about Ben, his past, his skills. She knew about the kidnap victims he’d retrieved from the most cunning hiding places their captors could have kept them in, and brought them home safe.
She knew he could find anyone.
But she didn’t want him to even try to find her. It was the most painful thing she could have said to him.
He couldn’t let go that easily. He had to try. Had to see her. Thinking she might have returned to her former place in Richmond, he’d called only to find that a new tenant had moved in. Next, Ben had tried calling Brooke’s friend and former upstairs neighbour, Amal.
When they’d last spoken, Amal had been warm and friendly. Not any more.
‘She isn’t here.’
‘I know that already. But do you know where she went? I really need to speak to her.’
‘I don’t know where she is,’ Amal said in the same cold tone. ‘But if I did, Ben, you’d be the last person I’d tell.’ Then he hung up before Ben could say more.
After that, Ben had tried calling Jude on his mobile. It had taken two days of trying, and when he’d finally got through, his twenty-year-old son had given him the same frosty reception as Amal. ‘I’m not surprised she’s gone off. She cried for a solid week after you left and you never called once to ask how she was. Basically, you’ve been a real shit to her.’
‘I would never have hurt her on purpose.’
‘You walked out on her! I was there, remember? How did you think that would make her feel?’
‘I need to talk to her. Explain things. If she calls you, tell her—’
‘Forget it, I’m not going to tell her anything,’ Jude interrupted him. ‘And take my advice: don’t go chasing after her. We all know you were in the SAS and can track anyone anywhere on the planet, and all that stuff. But Brooke doesn’t want to see you. Leave her alone. Come to that, leave me alone too, okay?’
‘Jude, listen—’
‘Oh, just fuck off, Dad.’
Lastly, Ruth. ‘What do you expect, Ben? You let her down. You let us all down. And what about my plane? The insurers are going wild.’
These days, Ben’s younger sister was the CEO of the huge corporation she’d inherited from her adoptive father, Swiss billionaire Maximilian Steiner. The plane she was talking about was a Steiner Industries prototype turboprop that Ben had borrowed. Ostensibly, he’d only wanted it for the short trip from Oxfordshire to northern France and back. Ruth was having trouble understanding how her two-million-euro baby had ended up at the bottom of Lake Toba in Indonesia.
‘I’ve told you, I’m really sorry about the plane,’ he’d said. ‘Things got complicated.’
‘Like they always do with you, Ben.’
And once more, he’d found himself on the end of a dead line.
In the end, Ben had realised that if he pushed on with his search for Brooke and caught up with her, as he surely would, he’d only alienate her even more. Giving up the search was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
So here he was, sitting in the barely recognisable surroundings of what had once been his home, feeling lost. He’d no clear idea what had made him drift back here to the Galway coast. Maybe he hadn’t let go of that part of his past as completely as he’d thought he had. Or maybe he just wanted to punish himself by rubbing salt into his own wounds. All he knew was that after two months of drifting aimlessly from place to place, squandering his cash on hotel rooms, drinking far too much and spending most days in a trance-like state of numbness and regret, he’d found himself heading back to Ireland and renting a cottage on the beach less than half a mile from the large house that had once been his home.
Mrs Henry returned, interrupting his thoughts. Noticing that Ben’s glass was almost empty she said, ‘Ready for a top-up?’
‘I’m always ready for a top-up.’
‘See that nice-looking young lady over there?’ Mrs Henry said, lowering her voice and nodding towards the window as she refilled Ben’s glass. ‘She’s a famous writer.’
‘Uh-huh?’ Ben glanced back over his shoulder, feigning interest for the sake of politeness. The sandy-haired woman was still bent intently over her small laptop, tapping keys, very deeply absorbed by whatever she was working on. Finished with whatever was in her notebook, she paused to slip it into a slim leather pouch, then zipped the pouch shut and dropped it into the cloth bag at her feet before going back to her typing.
‘I wonder what she’s writing,’ Mrs Henry whispered, with a glimmer of excitement. ‘Perhaps she’s writing about this place. That’d really put us on the map.’
‘Murder at Pebble Beach?’ Ben said.
‘Oh, you are a one,’ Mrs Henry laughed, nudging him playfully. Then she bustled off again, leaving him alone at the bar.
Chapter Three
Some time later, Ben left the guesthouse and wandered back down the private beach towards the water to sit on the big, flat barnacled rock he’d often sat on in the past. At high tide it overhung the surf and he’d spent many hours gazing at the water, smoking, thinking, alone. With three pints of Mrs Henry’s Guinness inside him, he was feeling a little more mellow than he had earlier. The booze helped to take the edge off his raw emotions, but he was acutely conscious of having been overdoing it lately, as well as of being somewhat out of condition after these weeks of neglecting his fitness. It didn’t take long at all for self-discipline to slip and bad habits to begin to shoot up like weeds.
He hated himself for letting it happen. In all the years since qualifying for 22 SAS, he’d kept up virtually the same disciplined, even punishing, regime and now here he was, by his own strict standards, intolerably slack, lazy and listless.
As he watched the waves, he made himself a promise that tomorrow morning, rain or shine, he’d be up with the sunrise and out running on the beach. He didn’t expect to be able to jump right back into his routine with the usual five miles followed by a hundred or so press-ups and sit-ups. But you had to start somewhere.
Meanwhile, there wasn’t much to do but let the time slip idly by. Reaching into the pocket of his leather jacket he took out his rumpled blue pack of Gauloises and Zippo lighter. He lit up the thirteenth – or was it the fourteenth? – cigarette of the day and gazed at the steel-coloured horizon. Those dark clouds over there in the west, somewhere over the Aran Islands, were gathering and sweeping in fast towards the mainland. A rainstorm was coming.
The crunch of approaching footsteps on the pebbles made him turn to see someone crossing the beach towards his rock. He recognised her at once: the sandy-haired woman who’d been sitting in the guesthouse earlier. She’d put a lightweight fleece on over her T-shirt and had her cloth bag slung over her shoulder.
As she came closer, she smiled at him. ‘Hello,’ she said. She had blue-grey eyes, which she shielded from the sun. The sea breeze gently ruffled her short hair.
Ben smiled back, but his smile was a little forced. He’d have preferred to have been left alone. When this had been his own private stretch of beach he’d been used to having it to himself. It seemed odd to have uninvited company here.
‘Mind if I join you?’
‘Be my guest,’ he replied.
She smoothed her hand along the rock and found a place to sit. ‘Nice here, isn’t it?’
He nodded. ‘Certainly is.’
‘I’m Kristen. Kristen Hall.’ Her accent was English, Home Counties maybe.
‘Ben.’ He held out his hand. Her grip felt soft but firm in his.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Ben Hope.’
He stared at her for a moment.
‘Mrs Henry told me who you were,’ she said, laughing at his surprised look. ‘She said the place used to belong to you.’
‘It’s true.’
‘It’s so lovely. You must miss it.’
This wasn’t a topic he wanted to dwell on. ‘So I hear you’re a writer,’ he said instead.
Kristen grinned. ‘Mrs Henry does like to blabber, doesn’t she?’
‘Certainly does. She’s all excited that you might include the guesthouse in your novel.’
‘She’s going to be disappointed. I’m not a novelist.’
‘Oh,’ Ben said, nodded, and looked back out to sea again.
‘More of a glorified journalist, really,’ she added.
Ben fell silent. He didn’t have much to say, about books or journalism or anything else.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I can tell I’m disturbing you. I’d better go.’
He felt a stab of remorse. ‘Not at all.’
‘It’s okay.’ She smiled. ‘I know what it’s like to want to be left alone.’
‘It’s me who should be sorry. I’m being rude.’ He paused. ‘Look, I was going to take a walk along the beach before the weather closes in. Maybe you’d like to join me?’
She hesitated, looked at her watch. ‘There’s something I have to do later, but I have some time. All right, then. I’d love to. Being as you’re a former resident, you can show me the sights.’
Leaving the rock and setting out with her along the beach, he said, ‘There’s not much to it. What you see is what you get.’ He pointed ahead, to the north. ‘See the big rock over there, where the road turns away inland? That’s where my bit … I mean, the bit of beach belonging to the guesthouse ends. Just out of sight on the other side is where the cottage is that I’m renting. The coastal path takes you all the way around the headland.’
‘Nice to have my own guide.’
‘My pleasure.’
They walked along the beach, leaving the guesthouse behind in the distance. ‘So, are you here with your family, Ben?’
‘I’m on my own.’
‘Business or pleasure?’
‘Neither.’
A broad shadow passed over them as they walked. Kristen looked up. A large gull swooped overhead, banked out to sea and glided high on its wide wings. ‘I’ve never seen such big gulls.’
‘We get all sorts here,’ he said. ‘That one’s a great black-backed gull. If you think he was big, you should see an albatross. They come inshore now and then.’
Kristen paused and breathed in the fresh sea air. ‘It’s so peaceful here. I can see why you came back. What on earth made you leave?’
‘I went to live in France for a while. Place called Le Val. An old farm in Normandy.’ He didn’t add that the facility he’d founded there, under his management, had operated as one of Europe’s key specialised training centres for tactical raid and hostage rescue teams. Certain aspects of his past, most of it in fact, were subjects he generally wouldn’t, couldn’t, discuss with people.
‘You certainly pick nice places to live.’ She pulled a face. ‘I live in Newbury. Hardly the most romantic spot on earth. So where’s home for you now?’
‘Wherever. Nothing permanent.’
‘A rolling stone.’
‘Not by choice,’ he replied. ‘That’s just the way it is.’
‘So where to after this?’
‘No plans. Sooner or later, I’ll move on. Don’t know where.’
They walked a little further. Kristen seemed about to say something, then reached for her bag. ‘Excuse me a moment. I really need to check my messages.’ She dug in the bag, and Ben got a glimpse of the small laptop inside.
‘You carry that thing around with you everywhere?’ he observed with a smile.
‘Never know when the muse might strike.’ She took out the slim leather pouch that she kept her notebook in and unzipped a little pocket on the front. Inside were two mobile phones. She took one out, gave it a quick check and then tutted to herself and shook her head as though disappointed. ‘Damn it,’ she muttered, zipping the phone back inside the pouch and replacing it in her bag.
‘Something important?’ Ben asked.
‘Oh, it’s just about my research,’ Kristen said quickly, and he thought there was a slight evasive tone in her voice, as well as a momentary nervousness in her expression. ‘Someone I was hoping to hear back from.’ She shrugged. ‘Never mind.’
‘Is that what brings you to Galway, research?’
She nodded. ‘I’ve been travelling around a few places, the last ten days. Killarney, Limerick, Athlone, all over really.’
‘Useful trip?’
‘Oh yes. Very much indeed. And in ways I couldn’t have imagined.’
‘I won’t ask.’
She smiled. ‘And I won’t tell. Trade secrets. Don’t take it personally.’
‘Never,’ he said.
The wind from the sea was rising. Ben looked at the sky. Those dark clouds were nearing ominously. ‘We might have to make a run for it. Weather’s coming in faster than I thought.’
‘Hardly feels like August, does it?’
‘Must be the global warming they keep promising us,’ he said.
‘Yeah, right.’
‘So what’s the book about? Or is that part of the trade secret?’
‘No, the book I can talk about. Historical stuff. A biography.’
‘Someone I might have heard of?’
‘Lady Elizabeth Stamford. Nineteenth-century diarist, novelist, poet, educator, considered one of the first feminists. I won’t be surprised if you haven’t heard of her.’
‘I can’t say I have,’ Ben said. ‘But from the name and the fact that you came here for your research, I’m guessing she was married to Lord Stamford, owner of the Glenfell Estate that covered about a million acres near Ballinasloe, just a few miles away.’
‘Ten out of ten. Nothing like local knowledge.’
‘More like local legend. You still hear the old story of the tyrannical English lord who went mad and burned his own house down with himself inside. But that doesn’t make me an expert. So Lady Stamford’s the subject of your book?’
‘Yeah … she is.’ She gave a non-committal kind of shrug.
‘You don’t sound too sure.’
She looked at him. ‘Don’t I? I suppose not. That’s because … well, the fact is that I don’t really know that I’ll be writing it any more. Something else has come along in the last couple of days that makes me think …’ Her voice trailed off and she frowned up at the clouds. They were directly overhead now and more threatening than ever.
‘Here it comes,’ Ben said. Moments later, the first heavy raindrops began to spatter down, quickly gathering force.
Kristen drew her fleece more tightly around her. ‘Christ. We’re going to get soaked.’
He glanced back over his shoulder. They’d walked quite a distance from the flat rock. ‘Listen, we’re closer to my place than we are to the guesthouse. If you want to shelter from the storm …’
‘Lead on,’ she said, nodding.
