Chapter Forty-Five
On the way back to Le Val, Ben’s phone rang. It was Brooke.
‘Just wanted to check in and see how things were going.’
‘Things are … interesting,’ he said.
‘Where are you?’
‘On my way home. I should be there by midnight.’
‘Did you find her?’ Brooke asked after a pause.
‘Yes. I did.’
‘And it’s definitely Ruth?’
‘It’s definitely Ruth.’
‘I don’t know what to say, Ben.’
‘You don’t have to say anything,’ he replied.
‘So what’s happening? Where is she now?’
‘Here with me.’
‘She came with you?’
He hesitated. He’d already lied once to Brooke about his sister in the last few days, and he wasn’t about to do it again. ‘She’s in the boot,’ he said simply.
A moment’s shocked silence on the line. ‘What did you just say?’
‘I said she’s in the boot. But she’ll be all right. She’s tough.’
‘Ben, do you realise what you’re telling me? That the sister you lost because someone kidnapped her is now a prisoner in the back of your car because you went and kidnapped her back? This is insane. You can’t go around snatching people.’
‘I didn’t kidnap her. I rescued her. That’s what I do. I got her out of there, and now I’m taking her home and she and I are going to have it out.’
Another long silence on the other end. Then Brooke said firmly, ‘Right, that’s it. I’m coming over. I’ll be there in the morning.’
‘I can deal with it, Brooke. Stay put.’
‘No, Ben. I seriously don’t think you can. I think you need help. Maybe more than she does. Have you lost your mind?’
‘What about Sabrina? You can’t just leave her there on her own.’
‘Sabrina will be fine. She can take care of herself.’
‘I don’t think—’
She cut across him. ‘See you at Le Val.’ Then, before he could protest, she ended the call.
He drove on into the night, thinking about his cargo in the back and how he was going to handle the situation when he got to the house. He had to admit he was flying blind now. No situation he’d ever found himself in before came remotely close to this.
Just before midnight, he arrived at the Le Val security gate and saw the figure of Raymond come out of the gatehouse. He and his colleagues Claude and Jean-Yves were the three-man local security outfit Ben had hired to man the gates and patrol the perimeter. Ben rolled down the window and greeted him, trying to look as natural as possible without hanging around long enough for the guy to spot the bullet-riddled back end of the car or hear its occupant moving about inside. Raymond didn’t notice anything.
Ben’s heart thumped as he drove on through the gate. This was it. He wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable confrontation.
He parked the Mini inside the Dutch barn, and stepped outside to scan the buildings. What he was about to do didn’t require an audience, not even a close and trusted friend like Jeff Dekker, and Ben was glad that this was happening while he was out of the picture. The whole place seemed deserted, apart from the four German Shepherds, led by Storm, who’d been sleeping in a nest of straw at the back of the barn and now came trotting over to the car to investigate. The dogs quickly picked up the scent of someone in the back.
‘Leave,’ he commanded them in a low voice, and they instantly backed off and retreated to a distance, watching intently with cocked heads and pricked ears as he opened the boot.
Ruth’s eyes glittered in the moonlight, glaring up at him with rage and hate and fear like those of a cornered wildcat. She kicked and writhed as he bent down and lifted her out of the confined space, carried her over to the house and up the stairs to his private apartment. Once upstairs, he used her feet to shove the door shut, then laid her on the sofa and left her there struggling against her bonds while he went to attend to the windows. The whole house had sturdy wooden shutters that could be locked from the inside. Ben had fortified them with heavy-gauge steel wire, and only a really determined intruder with a sledgehammer would have got through them. He didn’t think she could get out too easily, just in case she tried. He secured each window in turn, dropped the keys in his pocket, then fetched a bottle of mineral water from the cupboard and set it down on the low table by the sofa.
Then he kneeled down beside Ruth, gently peeled the tape away from her mouth and ignored the raging stream of abuse she fired at him as he snapped open his clasp knife and carefully sliced the plastic cable-ties around her wrists and ankles. She immediately tried to jump to her feet, and he shoved her back down. She sat glaring at him, rubbing her wrists.
He offered her the mineral water, and she grabbed it from him, took several long swallows and then dashed the bottle in his face. Her eyes blazed as she yelled at him in German. ‘Du Scheisse, warum hast du mich hier gebracht?’
Why have you brought me here?
He replied in English, and they were the strangest words he’d ever spoken in his life, a surreal moment that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. ‘It’s me. Ben. Your brother. I’ve brought you home.’
She stared at him for a long moment, her face wild and full of suspicion. ‘You’re not my brother,’ she screamed at him. Just a trace of a German accent. ‘What is this, some kind of twisted fucking joke?’
Ben’s throat felt very tight. ‘You’re Ruth Hope. You couldn’t possibly be anybody else.’
‘You’re a fucking liar,’ she yelled. ‘What have you done with Franz and Rudi?’
‘Relax. Your little Nazi friends are fine. Probably licking their sores and pacing up and down wondering where you are.’
‘Nazis,’ she spat. ‘We’re not Nazis.’
‘I think you’d better start talking to me, right now.’
‘Fuck you. He sent you, didn’t he?’
‘He?’
‘My fucking father. Where is he?’ She looked about her, as if expecting someone to walk into the room and readying herself for the confrontation.
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ he protested. ‘What father?’
‘I’m Luna Steiner,’ she yelled. ‘Do I need to spell it out for you, arschloch? My father is Maximilian Steiner. And last time I saw you, you were his bodyguard.’