The Pretender’s Gold
And that was how, within just a few hours, Ben was getting ready to set off on another unexpected mission. They had a habit of coming his way just when he was settling back into a steady routine and life seemed comparatively normal and peaceful. He never turned down people in need of his help. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to fail to be there for one of his oldest and closest friends in the world.
Back at Le Val, Ben’s work schedule for the next few days was quickly rejuggled. Classes were cancelled, while others had to be reassigned to the stalwart Tuesday Fletcher, who was already covering for the workload Jeff couldn’t handle with one arm in a sling. Needless to say, both men would have happily dropped everything and closed Le Val’s doors to come with him to Scotland, but Ben wouldn’t have it. Even Jeff had to admit he wouldn’t be of much use with a fractured wrist.
‘Anyhow,’ Ben said, ‘it’s hardly a three-man job. The old bugger is probably having the time of his life up there, and just forgot to call home.’
Privately, he wished he could be that confident. A tingling sensation was gnawing inside him. It was a sense of deep foreboding, as though some part of his mind predicted that he was walking into danger. He tried to shake off the feeling, but it hung over him like a cloud.
Cherbourg was the nearest airport to Le Val, and the first available flight to Inverness was leaving late that evening. Ben booked his ticket online, then packed a few items into his battered, much-travelled canvas army bag. It was going to get chilly up north. Thermal gear and winter socks? Check. His warmest pair of waterproof combat boots? Check. Cold weather Norgi Top? Check. Spare packs of cigarettes? Essential. After sharing a light dinner with Jeff and Tuesday in the cosy surroundings of the old farmhouse kitchen, no wine, he shrugged on his old brown leather jacket, said a warm goodbye to Storm and walked out to the Alpina with his bag.
The winter’s night was crisp and frosty, and the forecast had threatened snow. As Ben drove to the airport he kept glancing at his phone in its cradle on the dash, plumbed into the car’s speaker system in readiness for Mirella’s call to say that she’d finally received contact from Boonzie and all was well. He would have loved nothing more than to be able to turn back towards home. But the call didn’t come, and turning back was not an option. He chain-smoked Gauloises cigarettes all the way to Cherbourg to alleviate his worry. That didn’t do much good, either.
Ben’s plane was on time, for what it was worth. The flight was a frustrating twelve-hour marathon that took him a staggered route via Lyon and Amsterdam and soon made him wish that he’d just driven the thousand or so kilometres direct. He checked his phone at each stop-off. Nothing from Mirella. Then, after a delay to clear snow from the runway, he finally boarded the KLM jet for the third leg of his journey.
Every wasted hour only made him fret all the more. When they eventually got into the air, Ben closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but he couldn’t force his mind to relax. Old memories flooded his thoughts. Some good, some less good. Some very nasty indeed.
A number of years had passed since his last journey to the Scottish Highlands. It had been back in 2004, at a time when he’d not long been out of the regiment. His objective on that occasion had been to spring an unannounced visit on a former Special Forces commanding officer, a man named Liam Falconer. That trip had not gone well, at least not for Falconer and several of his entourage. That was the price he’d paid for having involved himself in some secret operations he shouldn’t have, dark and shadowy even by the standards of the black-ops world Ben had just left.
Men had died. Ben had been the one who had killed them. He did not enjoy taking lives. It was something he had been trained to do out of necessity, and he did it proficiently enough to have ensured that he’d been the only person to walk out of that situation.
He hoped nothing bad awaited him in Scotland this time around, but he sensed that he was hoping in vain. The feeling of foreboding had not left him. It was growing deeper and more threatening with every mile he came nearer to his destination. The same familiar adrenalin-tinged dread he’d experienced so many times in the past as a soldier heading into the heart of war.
Boonzie McCulloch, where the hell are you?
Chapter 14
At last, too many long and grinding hours after leaving France, Ben’s plane dropped down out of a cold grey sky and he got his first glimpse of Inverness. The quiet airport lay seven miles from the city and had once been a military airfield. Now it was the Gateway to the Highlands and Islands, standing in lonely isolation against a backdrop of misty hills and the distant North Sea.
Disembarking, Ben was glad he’d brought warm clothes. The piercing wind felt as though it was roaring straight down from Iceland, and the sleet promised to turn to snow if the temperature dropped any lower.
His first action was to call Mirella and find out what he already knew, deep inside: still no contact from Boonzie. It was now the third day since she’d last heard from him. ‘I’ll find him,’ Ben assured her.
But he had to get there first.
He hunted for a car rental place and was relieved to find a small independent firm that obviously hadn’t heard about the near-blanket ban imposed on him by most of their larger competitors. For some peculiar reason the latter seemed to object to having their vehicles returned to them riddled with holes, burnt or blown up. But he resolved to take extra care this time around.
The village of Kinlochardaich, Boonzie’s last known location, lay seventy miles inland to the south-west. Ben required a car that could get him to his destination as quickly as possible and was rugged enough to handle the remoter parts of the western Highlands in winter, since there was no telling what kinds of roads or conditions he might meet out there. The answer to his needs was a big, chunky Mercedes four-wheel-drive. Fast and comfortable, a tad luxurious for his needs, but sturdy as hell.
His route was the A82, one of the most famous highways in Scotland since for miles it closely hugged the shoreline of Loch Ness, home of the fabled creature. Ben was too concerned about reaching his target to take in the views across the rippling, mysterious waters of the loch. With the wipers slapping away the sleet and the Merc’s heater belching full blast he ripped by the ruins of Urquhart Castle and the village of Drumnadrochit, empty of holidaymakers at this time of the year but peppered everywhere with signs for Nessieland and monster theme tours. From Fort Augustus the road followed the Caledonian Canal through Glen Mor and along Loch Lochy. More endless, beautiful scenery that Ben flatly ignored as he pressed the big Mercedes along. Road signs were bilingual, in English and Gaelic.
Rather than rely on GPS he had a map of the area imprinted on his mind. The seventy miles took him just over an hour, by which time his winding path had led him deep into ever-remoter country and his car was alone on the road for long periods. The thickening sleet slapped the windscreen and the outside temperature fell to just above zero, but inside was a bubble of warmth. His first glimpse of his destination was the eastern edge of Loch Ardaich, its restless grey waters surrounded by forest and rocky hills whose tops were shrouded in mist. He followed a lonely signpost directing him towards the village of Kinlochardaich, and not long afterwards he was making his way through the quiet, narrow streets.
The houses were mostly grey stone, settled into themselves with the passing of a century or more. He passed an old church with a graveyard, and a village filling station with a workshop and a couple of pumps, a village shop and post office; and soon after that he found the street whose name Mirella had given him.
Ewan’s address would have been one of Boonzie’s first ports of call when he arrived here, aside from visiting his nephew in the hospital, so it would also be Ben’s. He parked in an empty space directly in front of Ewan’s home, which was in a terraced row right on the street. He got out of the Mercedes, stretched his legs and back after the drive, lit up a Gauloise and then locked the car and walked up to the house. The sleet had died off, but the wind was chilly and Ben thought he could smell snow in the air.
As expected, the house was closed up. Ben peered through the front room window but couldn’t see anything through the net curtains. He came away from the front door and walked a little way up the street to where a gap between the houses led, he guessed, around the back.
His guess was right. Ewan’s back yard was a small area of wasteland, weedy and neglected. Ben stood for a moment, drinking in details. He noticed the patch of ground where a vehicle had stood until recently. A van-sized vehicle, judging by the spaces between the bare-earth wheel impressions in the dirt. A single dark oil stain had bled into the ground, the lack of individual splotches telling him that the vehicle had not been moved for a long time prior to being driven away.
He also noticed the discarded set of diesel glow plugs that someone had pulled out of its engine and tossed into the weeds. They weren’t rusty enough to have been there longer than a couple of days. Nearby lay a crumpled strip of emery cloth, reddened from where someone had been polishing up corroded metal.
Ben wondered whether it might have been Boonzie who took the van. He was good at fixing old vehicles, and having travelled up by train he’d have needed some form of transport to get around in. It made sense.
As he pondered Boonzie’s movements, he spied the broken window at the back of Ewan’s house, and walked over to examine it. Someone had obviously let themselves in through the window. Ben reached his arm carefully through the jagged teeth of glass and tried the window catch from inside, but it had since been locked. He wondered about that, too.
The back door was securely bolted from the inside, which might explain why whoever had broken in opted for the window. Three minutes later, Ben had followed their example, but without breaking anything or leaving any trace. What the SAS had taught him about covert entry had been only the beginning of his education. If life had gone differently, he could have been a pretty successful cat burglar.
Inside, Ben found what he’d been afraid he might find. Every room of the house had been thoroughly trashed by a person, or persons, who had evidently been searching for something. Ben noticed that somebody else had since briefly attempted to clear up the living room. His curiosity about who that someone might have been was answered when he found an empty pill bottle lying on the floor. It hadn’t been left here by the intruders, that was for sure. The label was printed in Italian, and showed that the pills had been prescribed to SIG. A. McCULLOCH. The ‘SIG.’ short for ‘Signore’ and the ‘A.’ for Archibald.
Boonzie had been here, all right.
Ben guessed that he might have been given the house key by the police, being next of kin to Ewan. Then since he hadn’t booked anywhere else to stay, Boonzie might have come here intending to use his nephew’s home as a base. Ben wondered if the shock of finding the place in such a mess had caused Boonzie to need to pop the last pills in the medicine bottle. That was a potentially worrying detail. But whatever the case, Boonzie had evidently changed his mind about staying here, and wasted no time in moving on. To where, was another question.
Ben searched the wreckage of the living room until he found what he was now looking for. Ewan McCulloch’s household documents, including house insurance, bills, receipts and credit card statements, had already been given the once-over by the intruders and were scattered about under the upturned drawers of his desk. Ben was more interested in vehicle papers. He supposed that anything like company car or van paperwork would be kept at Ewan’s business premises, but that anything related to a personal vehicle would have been sent to his home address. Again, his guess was right. Among the scattered documents was a registration document, expired insurance renewal letter, road tax reminders and old MOT certificate for a Ford camper van. The log book identified it as being fifteen years old, which probably explained why it had been sitting off the road for a while and had needed some work to get it going.
Now Ben felt more certain that Boonzie had borrowed the camper. However rough and ready, it would make the perfect mobile base. And now that Ben knew the vehicle’s details, he’d already taken an important step towards finding his missing friend.
He lingered a few minutes longer in the house, wondering why anyone would have wanted to ransack it, and how much of this was related to the mysterious gold coin Mirella had told him about. But he wasn’t going to learn anything more by hanging around here. He left the house the same way he’d come in, and walked back around the rear pathway to the street.
The air temperature had dropped half a degree while he was inside Ewan’s place, and though it wasn’t yet four p.m. the light was already fading fast. Dusk came early around these parts in the wintertime. The darkening sky was choked with clouds and the first wispy flakes of what threatened to become a heavier snowfall were loosely spiralling down. The scent of woodsmoke was in the air as villagers kindled their log-burning stoves in readiness for a cold night. Ben zipped up his jacket, took a black wool beanie hat from one pocket and put it on. In the other pocket was a fresh pack of Gauloises and his Zippo lighter. He drew out a cigarette and lit up as he walked past his parked Mercedes and kept walking through the village.
Smoking helped him think as he explored his unfamiliar new surroundings. His thoughts were not comfortable ones. He shared Mirella’s deep concerns about Boonzie’s state of health, and wished that his friend had stayed at home to take care of himself. But Ben’s worries went deeper. Though Kinlochardaich might appear quiet and peaceful, even quaint and romantic, his innate sixth sense warned him of menace and dark secrets lurking behind the facade, like the watchful eyes of predators hidden in the bushes.
Suspected murder. Vicious beatings. Illegal house entry. The apparent disappearance of a man who’d come to investigate. The list was growing. And now Ben, too, was venturing into the danger zone.
As he strolled along he smiled pleasantly and said good evening to a couple of villagers he met. Anyone seeing him would think he was just another visitor to the area: maybe a business traveller passing through, or an adventure tourist on a winter camping expedition into the hills. But for Ben, his casual amble through the village felt like a reconnaissance mission no different from a covert military advance force making a pathfinder sortie deep behind enemy lines. Scouting the lie of the land. Gathering intelligence. Estimating enemy strength and location. Identifying any and all potential threats. His senses were fully fired up and not a single detail of his surroundings escaped his notice as he wandered the streets.
This was his ground zero. His war zone. It didn’t appear that way, not yet. But if bad men were out there doing bad things, and if those bad men had been foolish enough to bring any harm to Ben’s friend, then it was only a question of time before war erupted here. Ben would rip this place apart until he found whoever was responsible. And they would pay for what they’d done.
The snow was beginning to fall thicker and more steadily as he sighted the warm glow emanating from pub windows further down the street. As he got closer he could see the sign above the door that said KINLOCHARDAICH ARMS. The establishment was set back from the road. A few cars were parked outside, their roofs and bonnets dusted powdery white under the amber light of the streetlamps.
In Ben’s experience, there was no better place in which to begin a recce operation than the local public house. He looked at his watch. Only four-fifteen, but the falling darkness and plummeting temperature made it feel much later.
Time for a drink.
He pushed through the pub door and walked inside.
Chapter 15
Entering the Kinlochardaich Arms was like taking a step back into the past. Both in absolute terms, since the pub’s interior probably hadn’t been altered in any significant way since about 1850, apart from the addition of electric lighting and a jukebox, and also for Ben personally, since the interior with its ancient beams and traditional decor took him straight back to the old drinking dens that had been his haunts back in the years he’d lived on the west coast of Ireland.
The decor, though not the ambience. His favourite Irish pubs had been warm and cheery places filled with lively craic, where the conversation and laughter flowed as joyfully as the Guinness and it wasn’t unusual for fiddles, mandolins, tin whistles and bodhráns to materialise out of nowhere for an impromptu cèilidh jam session. But as Ben walked in he quickly understood from the dour atmosphere that strangers to Kinlochardaich couldn’t expect to be greeted with much in the way of good old Highland hospitality. Even the log fire crackling in the old stone fireplace felt frigid and reserved.
Most of the drinkers in the lounge bar were gathered around a single large round table near the fire. They were a group of men in their thirties to fifties, hunched over pints and talking among themselves in low, mumbly voices as though they were plotting to overthrow the government. An assortment of heavy winter jackets and fleeces were draped messily over the backs of vacant chairs. At the far end of the lounge bar, a woman with long dark hair and a reedy ginger guy were drinking mugs of something hot and steaming at a table for two by the window. The woman had her back to Ben, and the guy was gazing out at the falling snow and saying something Ben couldn’t hear.
The only other woman in the place was the young redheaded barmaid sitting behind the beer pumps, uninterestedly reading a magazine and ignoring the wolfish-looking suitor who was leaning on the bar and doing all he could to impress her with his wit. As Ben crossed the floor the barmaid’s eyes darted up from the magazine and dwelled on him for a moment, and she flashed a coy smile. No trace of any kind of a smile, though, from the group at the big table. Some of the looks that turned his way were just checking-out-the-stranger glances, others lingered into hard and overtly hostile stares. The talking died away and the place fell silent for several seconds before resuming in the same mumbly tone.
Ben thought he could probably just about manage to cope with the level of friendliness. He wasn’t here to make friends. Paying them no notice he walked up to the bar, took off his hat and pulled up one of the plain wooden stools. The barmaid put down her magazine. Up close, she was more a girl than a woman. She was wearing too much makeup, with glitter on her eyelids. With the coy smile still on her lips and her eyes giving him the once-over she sidled across and asked what he’d like.
A no-brainer of a question, since being in Scotland, the sacred homeland of his favourite tipple, it would have been heresy for him to walk in here and order a pint of ale. Ben ran his eye along the row of single malt whiskies behind the bar. It was a decent collection. Some of the names were pretty obscure, though as something of a connoisseur he’d tried them all in his time. In his book there was no such thing as a bad single malt. He made his selection and asked for a double measure. The barmaid served it with another smile. Which the guy who’d been trying to chat her up apparently didn’t like very much, giving Ben sullen eyes as Ben thanked her and paid for his drink. Ben ignored him. She did the same, and after a few moments the guy gave up with a disgusted frown and stalked away to sit with his friends.
She rested her elbows on the bar and leaned forward, tacitly inviting Ben to look down her top which, naturally, he was far too restrained and gentlemanly to do. ‘You’re no from around here,’ she said. Such powers of observation. But that was an invitation Ben did rise to, because it gave him the opportunity to mention the purpose of his visit to Kinlochardaich.
‘No, I’m just passing through,’ he said, and she looked a little disappointed. He added, ‘Came to see a friend.’
‘Oh, aye? I know everyone in Kinlochardaich.’ She winked. ‘Lady friend, is it?’
‘Nothing that exciting,’ he replied.
Just then one of the group from the round table got up and came over to the bar, thumped his empty pint glass down on a beermat and said gruffly, ‘Same again, Holly love.’ He was a heavyset man of around Ben’s age or a couple of years younger, but four inches taller, which put him at about six-three. His hair was black and curly, his nose broken and crooked, and he had the neck and shoulders of a powerlifter. His sleeves were rolled up, showing muscled forearms inked from the wrist to the elbow with flame tattoos. Ben sat and sipped his scotch in silence while Holly refilled the big guy’s glass. The man spilled some cash on the counter, gave Ben the briefest glance which Ben noticed but didn’t acknow-ledge, then stumped back to the table with his beer. The pub floorboards creaked under his weight.
The interruption over, Holly returned to her position leaning against the bar and resumed the flirting. ‘So where’re you from?’ she asked, a lot more interested in Ben than in who his friend might be, and making no attempt to hide it. Nineteen or twenty years old, stuck out here in a lonely rural village with obviously not too many strange and interesting new men passing through her life. She was more the kind of age for Jude, Ben thought. His son was between girlfriends at the moment, still living in the States but talking about returning home to the UK. Maybe Ben should send him up north to hook up with Holly here. She’d certainly make a refreshing change from the last one, a social justice warrior and do-gooder political activist called Rae Lee.
‘I live abroad,’ Ben said.
‘Thought you were English.’ That didn’t seem to put Holly off, though.
He replied, ‘Half Irish. But I don’t live there, either.’
‘How long did you say you were staying?’ Getting bolder with the flirting now.
‘Only until I find my friend. Which I’m hoping to do soon. Maybe a day or so.’
‘Och, that’s a shame. Did you say your friend’s a local?’
‘No, he’s just passing through, same as me. His name’s Boonzie McCulloch. He’s Ewan McCulloch’s uncle. Do you know Ewan?’
She nodded. ‘Aye, I know Ewan. Heard he was in the hospital, though. Is he okay?’
‘Not really. That’s why his uncle travelled to the area. I was hoping to catch up with him here in Kinlochardaich, but no joy. I wondered if maybe he’d been in here for a drink the last couple of days? Older guy. Shorter than me, wiry build. Grey hair, beard. Speaks like he’s from Glasgow.’
Holly looked dubious. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen him. I mean, we get a lot of older customers who look like that, but you’re the first new face who’s been in here lately.’ She added, ‘I should know.’
‘All the same, I have a photo of him, if you wouldn’t mind taking a look. Might ring a bell.’
She shrugged. ‘Sure, but like I say, I’m pretty sure he hasn’t come in here.’
It seemed like a long shot, but Ben took out his phone and went to his stored images. The picture of Boonzie was a few years old, taken when Ben had visited him and Mirella at their place in Italy, but he was confident that Holly would recognise him if she’d seen him. There was only one Boonzie McCulloch in the world and he didn’t change much. Ben angled the phone so Holly could see. She leaned further forward across the bar, squashing her chest on the counter and tickling his hand with the dangling tips of her hair. The images were stored in date order with the most recent first. He’d have to scroll all the way back to near the beginning to get to the one he wanted to show her.