Bring Him Back

2

Ben Hope stepped out of the rented Ford Mondeo and looked up at the house. The warm sea breeze ruffled his thick blond hair, which he wore a little longer now that he’d been out of the military for almost a year. In the background, he could hear the waves crashing against the rocks. It was a sound that made him think of home.

The house looked just the way it had on the TV news, big and expensive. Not for the first time since he’d got the call, he wondered what would make a well-known, comfortably-off professional photographer decide to break into his former home, hold up his ex-wife and her new man at gunpoint and kidnap his own twelve-year-old son. Ben was keeping an open mind.

He took out his cigarettes, the blue pack of French Gauloises that he was smoking these days. He lit one from the fat orange flame of his Zippo, shielding it from the wind. Clanged the lighter shut, dropped the warm metal in the pocket of his leather jacket and started walking up the winding path between crisp expanses of manicured lawn towards the house.

The last desultory-looking stragglers left over from the army of media who’d been besieging the place since the news had broken two weeks ago were wrapping up their gear to go home. One of them, a wiry guy in a baseball cap and a Velvet Revolver T-shirt, was trying to ignite a cigarette with a match but getting nowhere in the wind. ‘Got a light, mate?’ he asked, seeing Ben’s Gauloise. Ben paused, fished out the Zippo and helped him out.

‘So, you a relative of the Hunters, then?’ the guy asked eagerly, puffing smoke. ‘Friend of the family, maybe? Care to make any comments?’

Ben just looked at him. He could see from the hungry glow in his eyes that he was desperate to milk a few more drops out of the two-week-old story that had already started fading from the news.

‘Or are you with the cops?’ the guy added hopefully. ‘Come on, give us something.’

Ben shook his head. ‘I’m just here to clean the swimming pool,’ he said. He walked on. From behind him he heard one of them say, ‘But they don’t have a swimming pool, do they?’ By then Ben was already climbing the steps to the front door. He flicked away the part-smoked Gauloise and rang the bell twice.

The woman who answered the door was tall, about five-nine, with long chestnut hair. Ben recognised her as Jessica Hunter. He knew she was only thirty-five, but the strain of the last two weeks had made her look older than her years, haggard with worry.

‘Mr Hope?’ she said, peering anxiously at him.

‘Call me Ben,’ Ben said.

Jessica Hunter’s shoulders sagged with relief. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come. Please, come in.’

Ben followed her into a large, plush entrance hall. It was funny how money had its own smell that always imbued these kinds of places. Jessica walked briskly across to the foot of a broad flight of stairs and called upwards, ‘Mike! Mr Hope is here.’ She turned back to Ben. ‘He’ll join us in a minute. Please, won’t you come into the kitchen? I was just about to make a coffee.’

She led the way into a large L-shaped space that was half kitchen, half breakfast room. Patio windows overlooked a well-tended garden with a tennis court in the distance. At one end of the room, deep wicker sofas covered in cushions faced one another across a low table. At the opposite end, an espresso maker was burbling on a shiny Aga range.

‘So you live in Ireland?’ she said with an effort to smile, just to make conversation and break the ice a little.

He nodded. ‘Galway.’

‘Nice there.’

He replied, ‘I love the sea.’

‘So does Carl,’ she said, and her face tightened at the mention of his name, her brows knitting with emotion as if she might suddenly burst into tears. Collecting herself, she offered Ben a coffee. He declined politely and walked over to the wall where a large framed photo hung. The boy in the picture was eight or nine, sitting on a bike and beaming happily at the camera.

‘His father took that,’ Jessica said, glancing across with a grimace as she poured her coffee. ‘Almost four years ago. It’s the only photo of Drew’s I still have on the wall. I can hardly bear to look at it any more.’ She paused. ‘Do you have any children, Mr Hope?’

‘Ben,’ he said. ‘No. No children. No family. It’s just me.’ That wasn’t something he liked to talk about. He pointed at Carl’s picture. ‘I’ll need a smaller, more recent shot of him. Preferably one with you in it too.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘May I ask why I need to be in it?’

‘Because if I have to take him away from his father, having a family photo in my hand that he recognises means you sent me, and that he can trust me. It would also help to have one of Drew.’

She anxiously sipped her coffee, standing facing Ben and leaning against the kitchen worktop. ‘It’s such an incredible relief to hear you talk about finding him. Needless to say, there’s still no word. Nobody’s seen them. I don’t even know what the police are doing.’ She paused, looking at Ben with frightened eyes. ‘You will find him, won’t you?’

Before Ben could reply, a man walked into the kitchen. He was about Ben’s height, just a shade under six feet, and around the same age. Despite the wire-framed glasses and the bookish look about him, he could almost have been Ben’s more sedate, more urbane brother. His fair hair was neatly combed and parted, but there wasn’t much he could do to hide the dark circles under his eyes from anxiety and lack of sleep.

‘I’m Mike Greerson,’ he said, striding over with his hand extended. ‘We spoke on the phone.’ Ben shook his hand. It was a good, dry grip.

‘You’ve no idea how grateful we are to you for coming at such short notice,’ Mike said. He waved towards the wicker sofas. ‘Please, take a seat. You must be tired after your trip.’

Mike and Jessica sat together on one sofa, each with a coffee. Ben sat opposite. Mike Greerson might not be Mr Hunter, but from the way the two of them were sitting close together, fingers interlaced, and thighs touching, it looked very much as if he’d taken Mr Hunter’s place.

‘Let’s recap,’ Ben said. ‘Your son Carl was forcibly abducted from home fifteen days ago by your ex-husband Drew Hunter, who threatened you with a firearm and imprisoned the two of you in the cellar while he made off with the boy.’

‘That’s correct,’ Jessica said in a tight voice.

‘We were locked in there all night,’ Mike added. ‘Until Sally arrived the following morning and heard us banging on the door.’

‘Sally?’ Ben said.

‘Our housekeeper,’ Jessica said. ‘She lives in St Helier.’

‘Is she here at the moment?’ Ben asked.

Jessica shook her head. ‘Nobody’s been allowed into the house since that day. Except the officers dealing with the case, that is. And now you.’

‘The moment we were let out of the cellar, we were on the phone to the police,’ Mike said. ‘To begin with, it looked as if they were being efficient. They were here within minutes, did everything they had to do and set up the trace on the phone. They even combed the island with sniffer dogs. But it’s been over two weeks and they haven’t turned up a single lead or shred of evidence.’

Ben was already familiar with every step the cops had taken to date. They’d done a lot of the things he’d have done himself, checking ports and airports on the assumption that Drew Hunter would have taken his son straight off the island on the evening of the abduction. The ferries to France had been checked, as well as every small boat charter outfit and every light aircraft shuttle service. Blanks had been drawn every which way. The only key development so far in the inquiry had been the discovery of the large cash withdrawal that Drew Hunter had made from the bank just minutes after opening time on Tuesday May 4^th, three days prior to the kidnapping. He’d emptied his entire account, walking away with almost sixty grand in a bag, which was all that remained of what had once been a much healthier balance. The only conclusion the police could draw was that this hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment crime.

‘It’s as if they’d simply vanished into thin air,’ Jessica said, momentarily close to tears again. Sniffing, she went on, ‘We soon realised that the investigation was simply going nowhere. That’s when Mike suggested we call in someone from the outside. Someone who knows about these things. I understand you’re from a military background?’

‘I’ve been out of that coming up for a year,’ Ben said.

‘It isn’t just any old military background, though, is it?’ Mike asked with a knowing kind of tone.

‘It’s not something I really talk about a lot,’ Ben said. ‘I served with 22 Special Air Service. Which gave me experience in covert work and hostage rescue, among other things.’

‘And since that time, you’ve been involved in a number of missing persons cases,’ Mike said. ‘The Italian kidnapping a few months ago, for instance. The girl was returned safely to her family, wasn’t she?’

‘I was barely involved,’ Ben lied.

‘And four kidnappers were jailed, one killed.’

‘Nobody’s going to get killed this time,’ Ben said.

Jessica Hunter looked at Ben imploringly. ‘Does that mean you’ll help us? Please. I’m begging you. We don’t know where else to turn.’

‘I’m here,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll do what I can.’