The Forgotten Holocaust

Chapter Nineteen

The quickest and earliest flight Ben could find to Madeira was direct to the island’s capital, Funchal, leaving at just after seven the following morning. But the flight departed from Dublin, meaning a two-hour drive eastwards across Ireland, coast to coast.

By nine that evening it was booked and Ben was packing a few spare clothes into his green bag. After grabbing a couple of hours’ sleep, he jumped into the BMW and raced away from the cottage under a pitch-black starry sky.

Hours later, as he sat in the departure lounge at Dublin sipping scalding coffee, he wondered what he was going to find in Madeira. After giving him the address and directions to his countryside villa, Brennan’s last words on the phone had been something strange. ‘Don’t arrive before dark. I can’t meet people during daylight.’

Either the guy was a vampire, or he was more than a little weird. It wouldn’t be the first time that Ben had had dealings with an eccentric recluse, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating that most of the day would have to be wasted before they could meet. Nightfall wouldn’t be until around ten.

By mid-morning, Ben was one and a half thousand miles away from Dublin, exchanging the hard, cool, unpredictable beauty of Ireland for the vibrant lushness of the Portuguese archipelago they called the Garden of the Atlantic. The plane overflew clear blue ocean and pristine beaches. Black volcanic cliffs rose sharply up from the sea, their craggy base rimmed with the foam of breakers visible even from afar. Thousands of boats crammed the island’s main port, dwarfed by giant pearly-white cruise liners that crawled majestically in and out of the sun-spangled harbour waters.

Beyond, Ben gazed from the aircraft window across a landscape of towering mist-shrouded mountains and sweeping forested valleys of a near-tropical verdant green. Crowded by sheer cliffs on one side and the ocean on the other, Madeira’s airport was famed for being one of the most dangerous for even skilled pilots to land at, despite — or maybe partly because of — the extended runway that stretched precariously over the water on massive concrete pillars.

Still alive forty-five minutes later, Ben stepped out into the heat haze from the small single airport terminal and found a Europcar rental place where he picked out a black VW Touareg four-wheel-drive. When they handed him the key, he flicked the rental agreement casually onto the front passenger seat, flung his leather jacket and bag in the back, cranked the air conditioning to beer chiller levels and sped northwards. He skirted Funchal, heading towards the island’s forested and mountainous heartland, according to the directions Brennan had given him.

It was a spectacular landscape, but Ben was too preoccupied to enjoy it as he wound his way deeper into the countryside, increasingly irritated at the delay caused by the man’s strange insistence that they couldn’t meet during daylight hours. Stopping at a village nestling up in the hills, he found a quiet little restaurant with a shaded, flowery garden high over the valley, where he hungrily refuelled himself on grilled limpets followed by a dish of the local speciality espetada, chunks of beef roasted over wood chips. Instead of wine, he drank a jug of iced water. Dessert was four Gauloises end to end, which he lingered over for as long as he could, letting the smoke trickle from his lips as he gazed down across the lush valley below. He’d sworn off drink for as long as he needed to get the job done. In the meantime, he’d just have to smoke twice as much.

Back in the Touareg, he meandered along empty, winding roads thickly overhung by trees and listened to a jazz station that played a lot of Art Blakey and McCoy Tyner until, at last, the day began to cool and evening started to fall. In the purple-blue haze of twilight, Ben was finally able to home in on his target and drive the last of the way to Brennan’s secluded villa.

The place was four kilometres from the nearest village, encircled by a high white stone wall spilling over with foliage. He drove slowly around the perimeter, searching for the way in, until he came to a tall gateway framed by stone pillars.

The gate was closed. As he got out of the car he could see no latch or handle to open it, but there was an intercom box on one of the pillars. He pressed a button and announced his arrival into the metal grid. There was no reply. He was beginning to wonder if the intercom was working when there was a click and the gates whirred open.

Driving into the courtyard in front of the villa, even in the falling light it was plain to see that the place was well beyond the means of the average retired university professor. Evidently, its owner was not only independently wealthy but highly security-conscious, too. As soon as Ben was inside, the gates whirred and clicked shut behind him.

He stepped back out of the VW. The temperature had fallen sharply with the onset of evening. He grabbed his leather jacket from the back seat and slipped it on. Slung his bag over his shoulder and walked towards the house. Within seconds he’d counted four cameras trained on him from their discreet positions among the foliage. The villa was long and low, surrounded by creeping plants and tumbling flowers. To reach it, Ben had to pass a pair of large dog kennels from which two enormous bull mastiffs emerged at his approach, growling and showing their teeth. Ben didn’t make eye contact and walked coolly by them, but he felt acutely defenceless under their hostile gaze and was grateful to reach the front steps of the house without getting mauled.

There was another intercom box by the door, and from it came the same Irish-tinged voice Ben had heard on the phone. ‘The door’s open,’ it said. ‘Come in.’

Ben pushed through the door and found himself in a large hallway with a mosaic stone floor. Long drapes dimmed out the moonlight from the high windows. Off the hallway, a wide corridor, flanked by huge leafy indoor plants and paintings on the walls that could barely be made out in the shadows, led deeper into the house. He followed the dark corridor until he came to a bend and saw a door hanging half-open.

The faint glow of a light shone from inside.

‘In here,’ said the voice he’d heard first on the phone and then just now on the intercom. ‘Close the door behind you, will you?’