The Armada Legacy (6 page)

Ben’s fists clenched around the steering wheel. He was silent for a beat, swallowing back the rising tide of crazed anxiety that made him want to scream and pound the dashboard to pieces.

Then he said quietly, ‘I’ll get her back.’

And the voice inside his head replied:
if she’s still alive.

Chapter Eight

Evening had fallen like a black shroud and their conversation had lapsed into a heavy silence by the time Ben stopped the car. He cut the engine but left the headlights on, spilling a broad pool of white light across the road and carving through the slowly-drifting fog of drizzle.

Amal looked up from his lap as if emerging from a trance, and saw that Ben was checking his phone. ‘You expecting a call?’ he asked.

‘From a guy called Starkey,’ Ben muttered, frowning at the phone.

‘Who’s that?’ Amal asked, but Ben was too preoccupied to answer. There had been no call. He tutted and shoved the phone back in his pocket.

‘What is this place?’ Amal said, peering through the glass.

Ben said nothing. He got out of the car. The night felt damp. He could hear the whisper of the Atlantic in the distance, and smell the salt tang in the air.

‘This is where they were taken, isn’t it?’ Amal said ominously, climbing out of the passenger side and hugging his coat tightly around him.

Ben just nodded grimly. He wanted to break into a run, but forced himself to walk calmly towards the lights and activity he could see up ahead. As he made his way up the road he glanced left and right, up and down, drinking in details.

He hadn’t walked far when he paused in his stride. Faintly discernible on the glistening wet road surface by the glow of the BMW’s headlamps were the traces of heavy skid marks where a car had pulled to an emergency stop. He considered them for a moment and then continued a few steps further, before pausing again and turning to look to his left, where a small section of the roadside verge had been cordoned off with markers and police tape.

A short distance further up the road was a second set of tyre marks. The vehicle that had made them had a wider wheel track than the first, and judging by the curve of the marks it had overtaken at speed and then swerved across the road from right to left, screeching to a stop. What was odd about the second set of tyre marks was the additional smudge of rubber that seemed to indicate that the vehicle had been shunted sideways after coming to a halt. He pictured it in his mind.

Ben knelt down and pressed a fingertip against the cold, wet road. Lifting it back up, he examined the tiny flake of paint stuck to it. It was white on one side, blue on the other.

He flicked it away, stood up and walked on again. Some thirty yards ahead on the right-hand side of the road, a large area of the verge and the ground beyond was barricaded off and illuminated by blazing halogen floodlights perched up on tall masts, haloed by drifting moisture. Rows of cones and a temporary traffic control had been set up to filter what few vehicles might pass by through the narrowed gap. Three Garda Land Rovers were parked off-road, casting their flashing blue glow over the rugged ground.

Tucked in in single file behind the row of cones sat an empty Toyota Avensis patrol car, an ageing unmarked Vauxhall Vectra and a van that Ben guessed belonged to the forensic team he could see combing the large field to the right of the road, their reflective vests shining yellow in the distance. The van’s number plate bore the county identifier D for Dublin: his guess about the forensics guys having to come all the way from the Garda HQ in the capital had been correct. That didn’t make him feel any better.

He wasn’t hugely surprised either to see that, some twenty hours or so after the fact, the cops were only now getting themselves organised to conduct a proper search and remove the crashed Jaguar XF from the scene. A pair of uniformed officers were standing back watching as the vehicle was winched up onto a flatbed lorry. All that would be left behind were the skid marks and the pieces of debris littering the verge at the foot of the large roadside rock that Ben could make out in the glow of the recovery vehicle’s swirling orange light. The Jaguar’s front end was badly crumpled and it was obvious it had hit the rock at some speed after skidding violently to the right.

Even more noticeable were the bullet holes that had chewed up the Jaguar’s rear bodywork and shredded its back tyres.

Ben swallowed. The particular kind of hole made by a nine-millimetre full metal jacket round as it punched through thin sheet steel was a very familiar sight to him. He’d seen enough bullet-riddled vehicles in enough war zones all over the world to tell at a glance that this kind of damage was the work of fully-automatic weapons. Whoever had carried out the attack, they were disturbingly well equipped and not afraid to use it.

Ben sensed a presence next to him and turned to see that Amal was standing at his shoulder.

‘Oh, my God, look at the state it’s in,’ Amal groaned as the recovery crew started securing the Jaguar to the lorry’s flatbed. ‘It looks even worse than it did on TV. How could anyone—?’

Survive that
, Ben knew Amal had been about to say. And under normal circumstances, Amal would have been right. Nothing could walk away from that kind of firepower.

Unless …

‘See where most of the damage is?’ Ben asked him, pointing. ‘The mass of the gunfire was concentrated on the car’s undercarriage, not the bodywork at passenger height.’

‘So what does that mean?’

‘That the gunmen were aiming to disable and stop it, not to kill everyone inside. If they’d wanted to do that, it would have been easy for them.’

Amal nodded, but didn’t seem much reassured.

Ben couldn’t feel entirely reassured either. He didn’t want to think about the amount of lead that had been sprayed into the car with Brooke inside, or the fact that a stray bullet could easily have ripped a path through enough layers of thin steel and plastic and leather to find its mark. But the thought wouldn’t go away. He kept seeing Brooke’s face in his mind, and he wondered with an icy chill whether he’d ever see it again for real. His hands felt shaky and he was breathing fast.

But there was no time for sentimentality here, he reminded himself with an effort. He had to keep his wits about him or he’d be about as much use to her as the police.

‘What are we doing here?’ Amal asked. The cold and damp were getting to him, making him shiver.

‘I wanted to see it for myself.’

‘So you’ve seen it. What happens now?’

‘I need a moment,’ Ben said. He left Amal hovering uncertainly as he walked a few yards closer to the crime scene. Among the sparse grass of the verge near the cordon was a tall flat rock, wet and glistening under the floodlights and the blue swirl from the police vehicles. Ben leaned against the rock and reached into his jacket’s hip pocket for his crumpled pack of Gauloises and his Zippo lighter. He fished out a cigarette and lit it, but after a few seconds the drizzle had made the paper soggy and his heart wasn’t in it anyway. He tossed the fizzling cigarette down into the grass at his feet, and was mechanically crushing it into the dirt with the heel of his boot when he felt something under his sole and looked down.

It wasn’t a pebble. He dropped into a crouch and poked around in the wet grass. When he found the small object, he held it up to the light to examine it closely.

‘What’ve you found?’ Amal asked him, walking across.

Ben didn’t reply. Clasping the object in his palm he stepped over the police tape to look for more.

An angry yell made him turn to see a short, stout figure in a flapping raincoat marching rapidly towards them from the direction of the Land Rovers.

‘Hoi! You! This is a police crime scene!’ As the man approached, shouting and gesticulating at them, Ben could see in the glare of the overhead floodlights that it was a plain-clothes detective, a stockily-built guy in his mid fifties or thereabouts.

‘That’s him,’ Amal said in a low voice. ‘Hanratty, the one I told you about.’

Chapter Nine

Detective Inspector Hanratty stormed up to them, scowling. A slick of carrot-red hair was plastered across his puckered brow. He had mud spattered over his shoes and the bottoms of his trouser legs were sodden. But Ben guessed that spending hours out here in the shit weather wasn’t the sole reason for the sour grimace on Hanratty’s face. It looked permanently etched into his ruddy features. Ben’s first impression was of a chronically malcontented guy who, when he’d finished harrying and persecuting his work colleagues for the day, bullied his wife and kicked the dog.

‘This is a police crime scene,’ Hanratty repeated loudly. ‘Get out.’

Following a few yards behind was a female officer. Like her colleague, she was in plain clothes – a detective sergeant, was Ben’s guess. She was petite, elfin in her looks, with dark shoulder-length hair that had gone limp from the drizzle. She was visibly tired, but in contrast to the dogged stupidity in Hanratty’s eyes, hers were quick and sharp.

‘My name’s Hope,’ Ben said. ‘I’m a close friend of one of the victims, Brooke Marcel.’ He reached for his wallet and took out the little photo of her that he carried inside. The picture had been taken in France during summer. She was smiling and the sun was in her hair. He couldn’t bring himself to look at it.

Hanratty gave it only a cursory glance. ‘See that police tape there?’ he blustered. ‘Know what that means? It means keep your nose out of where it doesn’t belong, understand?’ He turned his sour gaze on Amal, and his eyes narrowed with recognition. ‘Ah, Mr … Ray, wasn’t it? What are you doing poking around here with him? We’ve taken your statement already, so now you can—’

Ben looked at him. ‘Listen, I came to help, not to argue with you, okay?’

Hanratty flushed and was about to fire an angry reply, but his colleague got in first. ‘Mr Hope, I’m Detective Sergeant Lynch,’ she said calmly. ‘We do have the situation under control, thank you, so if you’d like to return to your vehicle …’

Ben opened his clenched palm and tossed them the small object he’d found in the grass. Hanratty caught it in his fist, peered down at it and then stared up at Ben in surprise and indignation. Lynch stepped closer to her colleague to see what it was.

‘It was lying over there by the roadside,’ Ben said. ‘Thought it might be useful. It’s a nine-millimetre shell casing.’

Hanratty’s features twisted into a sardonic leer. ‘How helpful of you, sir. It happens we’ve already recovered a number of these.’

‘Then I imagine you’ve learned something from them,’ Ben said.

Lynch took the small steel casing from Hanratty’s hand and examined it. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ Hanratty growled. ‘Get out of here before I—’

‘Learn what?’ Lynch said. ‘We already know shots were fired at the car.’

Ben pointed at the cartridge in her fingers. Her nails were trimmed short and practical. ‘Thin steel, not brass,’ he said. ‘Plus, two small flash holes in the primer socket instead of the more usual single larger hole means the cartridge was designed to take a Berdan type primer. That’s unusual. You don’t normally see them, except with milsurp ordnance. That’s military surplus,’ he added for the benefit of Hanratty, who was glaring at him with widening eyes and turning mottled under the floodlights. ‘Secondly—’

‘Secondly?’ Lynch said. She was listening closely, her head cocked slightly to one side.

‘See where the case mouth is dented from the weapon’s ejector port, where it spins and smashes against the receiver on its way out? That denting is typical of the way the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun mashes its spent shells. Expensive weapon, and this one was brand new.’

‘How the hell can you tell that?’ Hanratty snapped impatiently.

‘Scrape marks on the side of the casing, from loading,’ Ben said. ‘The magazine isn’t fully broken in yet, follower spring’s a little stiff. It’s normal for the first few hundred rounds. So your perpetrators are using milsurp ammo, hard to come by without the right contacts, and they’re very professionally equipped.’

Lynch arched an eyebrow. ‘Is there more?’

‘Just that the placement of the empty casings you’ve already found, and the others that’re probably still scattered in the grass, should allow you to figure out by the distance and the angle of ejection more or less where the gunmen were standing, how they moved,’ Ben said. ‘Might help you to find footprints, determine the exact number of shooters, little things like that. If it were me, I’d have the team searching over here instead of out there in the field.’ He smiled a thin, humourless smile. ‘But then, who am I to tell you your job?’

‘What did you say your name was?’ Hanratty demanded.

‘Forget it,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t have time to waste talking to idiots. Come on, Amal, let’s go.’

‘Hey!’ Hanratty yelled as they headed back towards the car. ‘Don’t you walk away from me. Who’re you calling an idiot?’

Ben kept walking. Amal followed along nervously.

‘Hold on a minute,’ Lynch called out, trotting after them. ‘Mr Hope, wait.’

‘I’ve seen all I need to see here,’ Ben said without turning round. He was nearly at the car when she caught up with him and gently grasped his arm.

He wheeled round to face her. ‘I’ve dealt with a thousand Hanrattys in my time,’ he said. ‘He’s a fool, and he’s totally out of his depth.’

A long-suffering little smile played at the corners of Lynch’s mouth, as if she’d be only too happy to agree with him if she were free to. ‘You’re not dealing with him now,’ she said calmly. ‘You’re dealing with me, DS Kay Lynch. Let’s talk, Mr Hope. Please.’ There was no hostility in her expression, no suspicion, just earnestness and fatigue.

‘No offence, Kay, but I think someone like Tommy Logan at the ERU in Dublin should be handling this.’ The Garda’s Emergency Response Unit was the nearest thing the Irish police had to SCO19. One or two of their units had undergone hostage extraction training with the SAS during Ben’s time, and Commander Tommy Logan had sent a team for instruction under Ben and Jeff Dekker’s tutelage last year.