‘Would you understand me if I told you to stick your offer up your arse, Roth? Or shall I do it for you?’
Roth looked at him. The pale eyes seemed to burn for an instant. ‘That’s a rambling old place you have there in Galway. Your housekeeper, Winifred — perhaps a trifle elderly to be looking after it on her own? You must be aware of the potential risks. Accidents can happen. Fires are terribly common in these older properties. It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’
Ben said nothing.
‘Three days,’ Roth said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Ben wished they’d picked a more companionable pair of goons to chaperone him. The older, less talkative one was rangy and bandy-legged, with a face pitted and bombed by acne and eyes as dead as a fish on a slab. The other had breath that smelled as if he chewed a pound of raw garlic a day. To make matters worse, he insisted on sticking to Ben’s side the entire time and was sitting next to him as the Gulfstream sped from Heathrow to Grand Cayman. Ben was barely allowed to visit the bathroom on his own. When he came out, the guy was standing there, breathing all over the corridor, waiting to escort him back to his seat.
‘What took you so long?’ the goon said.
‘I was looking to see if they had any industrial strength mouthwash for you, Stinker,’ Ben told him. ‘Maybe gargle with some neat bleach? That’ll do the trick.’
Hemmed into the window seat, he dozed for most of the remainder of the flight. After landing at Grand Cayman just after midday, local time, his escorts steered him away from passport control and walked him under the hot sun to a waiting car that blasted northwards up the Seven Mile Beach road to Cayman Islands Charter.
Neither goon seemed to appreciate the irony as the three of them boarded the CIC Trislander. Ben noticed there were only five other passengers — business didn’t seem to be picking up yet, and the gaunt face of the flight attendant, a dark-haired woman he took to be Jo Sundermann, showed that Nick’s former colleagues were still stunned by his loss.
Sitting beside Stinker in the cramped interior of the Trislander was a good deal worse than aboard the spacious Gulfstream. Bandy Legs folded himself into the seat behind. Ben could feel the dead eyes boring into the back of his head. After the short, bumpy takeoff the flight attendant came round serving drinks. Ben had nothing. Stinker bought a can of Coke, cracked it open and took the occasional slurp.
Fifteen minutes into the flight, ignoring Stinker’s astonished stare, Ben casually slipped his last pack of Jordanian cigarettes from his pocket, took one out and lit up with a flourish. He smiled and leaned back in his seat, watching the smoke drift across the aircraft’s narrow interior.
A few feet away, a woman passenger twitched her nose, gave a little splutter and elbowed her husband as if to say ‘do something’. The guy twisted around in his seat and his face turned purple. ‘Hey. Maybe you can’t read, pal? There’s no smoking in here.’
‘It’s for the smell,’ Ben said, pointing at Stinker. ‘I couldn’t stand it any longer.’
A small argument broke out, during which Ben kept on puffing at the cigarette. It wasn’t long before the flight attendant emerged from the front of the plane. ‘Sir, I need you to put that out right now,’ she said sternly. ‘We operate a strict no smoking policy on board.’
‘You’re right. I’m sorry, everyone.’ Ben dropped the half-smoked cigarette with a sizzle into Stinker’s Coke can. ‘And it’s about time I gave up this disgusting habit. Would you mind disposing of these for me, please, Miss?’ He held out the cigarette packet. The flight attendant looked at it hesitantly, glanced back at Ben and then took it from his hand. ‘I’ll do that for you, sir.’
‘I appreciate it. The name’s Ben.’
‘That’s enough chatting up the women,’ Stinker muttered when she’d headed back towards the front of the plane. ‘Don’t pull any more capers like that again.’
‘I won’t,’ Ben said. ‘That’s a promise.’
On arrival at Little Cayman airport, Ben’s chaperones led him to another car. ‘I guess you know the way,’ he said as they bundled him into the back seat. They did, and a few minutes later he was making his second visit to Palm Tree Lodge. The damage to the door had been repaired and the fresh woodwork painted white. The goons opened the place up, marched Ben inside and made him sit on a chair while his right trouser leg was rolled up, his sock rolled down and the electronic tag clasped around his ankle.
‘Don’t even think about messing with it,’ Bandy Legs warned him when the device was locked into place.
‘Repercussions,’ Ben said. ‘I know the routine.’
‘This is your phone,’ Stinker said, laying a mobile on the sideboard. ‘You can’t make calls with it. Incoming only.’
‘So the Little Cayman Sex Hotline is out?’ Ben said. ‘What I am going to do for entertainment?’
Thirty minutes later, he was alone. Wandering about the house with the tag weighing uncomfortably on his ankle, he found the fridge stocked full of provisions: nothing too fancy, mainly cold chicken legs and salads, but enough to keep him reasonably nourished for the next three days. There was a six-pack of mineral water, cartons of fruit juice and — delight of delights — even a few bottles of Red Stripe Jamaican lager.
Whoever had gone shopping for him had also been busy removing the TV, radio and landline phone and installing the base station for the tag device. The steel box that contained it was securely bolted to the living room floor. A red LED flashed more or less quickly depending on how far away Ben stood from it. He guessed it would trigger a remote alarm the instant he moved more than a hundred yards from that spot: just far enough to allow him to dip his toes at high tide and stroll a short distance up and down the beach. After studying the metal casing for a few minutes he decided there probably wasn’t any way to deactivate either it or the tag without alerting his captors.
With nothing else to do, he grabbed a Red Stripe from the fridge and went to sit on the front steps to drink it. The bottle was small, amber glass, twelve fluid ounces in volume and nicely chilled.
As Ben sipped the cold beer and gazed out across the beach to the gentle blue waves, he pondered what he’d said earlier on about giving up smoking.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Mid-afternoon on the third day, Ben was sitting barefoot on the warm sand in front of Palm Tree Lodge when he felt the tingle of the phone’s silent ringer in his pocket and fished it out to answer.
‘Have you made your decision?’ said Roth’s gravelly voice.
‘I have,’ Ben answered.
‘Then what is it to be, Benedict: are you in or out?’
‘You don’t leave me a lot of choice, Roth. I’m coming on board.’
‘Excellent. The Hydra is at anchor a couple of miles offshore. My colleagues are all looking forward to meeting you.’
‘I’m looking forward to it too,’ Ben said.
‘The boat’s on its way. Twenty minutes.’ Roth hung up.
Ben padded across the sand to the house. Walking into the kitchen he tore two sheets of kitchen roll from the dispenser. When he’d finished with them he poured himself a glass of chilled grapefruit juice and drank it slowly. In the hallway he slipped on his shoes and laced them up, then left the house and walked back down the beach as far as the tag would allow, close to the lapping tide-line. The sea breeze ruffled his shirt and his hair. Shielding his eyes from the bright sun, he scanned the horizon.