Ben Hope

Ben tucked the gun into his waistband, in that old familiar place behind his right hip where he was convinced he had a Browning-shaped hollow from all the years of carrying one concealed. He untucked his shirt and let it hang loose to hide the pistol’s butt. He said to Brooke, ‘Finish the story.’

‘There’s not much more to tell. They all jumped aboard the van and slammed the doors and took off down the street, leaving me standing there alone. The couple of witnesses were long gone. I wanted to call for help, but my phone was in pieces. I ran down to the bottom of the lane and told the staff at the restaurant what had just happened. Or tried to. I was in such a state of shock that I probably wasn’t making much sense. One of the waiters called the police for me. When they finally turned up, I led them back here and described things pretty much the way I just did to you.’

‘What about the van’s registration number?’

‘Got it, memorised it, told it to the police. It was a local plate, with a DL for Delhi. Took four days for them to come back to me and tell me it was a stolen vehicle. I’d already guessed as much.’

‘Okay,’ Ben said. ‘Anything else?’

‘That’s all of it,’ she replied with a deep sigh. ‘Every last detail I can remember. Which basically adds up to zero. We have nothing.’

Ben shook his head. ‘We don’t have nothing.’

Chapter 13 (#ulink_c404d218-1b8b-5cc9-b587-93acdf9964e2)

The street kids had done their duty and the Jaguar was still in one piece. Brooke paid them off with more rupees, then turned to Ben. ‘You want to get something to eat? We’re in the right place for it. Or we could have lunch at the house.’

‘Later,’ he said, getting into the car. ‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Me neither.’

‘And we’re not going back to the house. Not just yet.’

‘Fine with me,’ she said. ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘This Mr Prajapati of yours. The best private investigator in Delhi.’

‘He’s not mine,’ Brooke replied, a touch irritably as she got in the passenger seat. ‘I told you, Amal hired him to look for Kabir, then I hired him to look for Amal.’

‘With sensational results on both counts. When was the last report you got from the guy?’

‘Days ago. Don’t ask me how many. I’ve more or less given up waiting for him to call.’

‘Then I think it’s time we had an update,’ Ben said.

‘Want me to call him?’

‘I was thinking we could drop by his office and say hello. You know where it is?’

‘I’ve only been there, like, eight times. I think I can remember the way.’

‘Then let’s pay Mr Prajapati a visit.’

The offices of the P. P. Detective Agency were on the second floor of a dirty building on a busy pedestrianised precinct in Janakpuri District Center, between a shop advertising LAPTOP AND DESKTOP REPAIRING and a boutique selling cheap knockoffs of designer-name jeans.

‘Classy location,’ Ben said. ‘If this guy’s the top private eye in the city, imagine the worst.’

‘He did come highly recommended,’ Brooke said. ‘He spent thirty years with the Delhi police.’

‘What better recommendation is there?’

She led the way inside the building. ‘I always take the stairs. The lift makes creaking sounds like it’s going to stick. And it smells as if someone’s been keeping chickens in there.’

‘Good idea.’ Ben thought the whole building and the street outside smelled pretty bad too, but maybe he just hadn’t been in the city long enough to get used to the ambient aroma that hit the olfactory sense like a mixture of pollution, sewage, sweat, cooking fumes, decaying vegetation, tropical flowers and incense that had been mulched up together in a giant cauldron and stewed for a couple of thousand years.

One thing he was getting used to, and fast, was Brooke’s company. The tension between them had melted away and being with her felt more natural and comfortable with every passing minute they spent together. He had to keep reminding himself not to touch her as they walked.

On the second floor a placard outside the offices read proudly, The Prateek Prajapati Detective Agency specialises in cases relating to anonymous letters and suspicious telephone calls, pre-matrimonial investigations, divorce and adultery, kidnapping and missing persons, extortion, financial crimes and cheatings. Fully licensed and qualified.

‘A man of many and varied talents,’ Ben commented. Brooke knocked, walked in, and he followed her through the door. The small reception area was full of artificial plants, with a desk in one corner behind which sat a small, middle-aged Indian woman in a bright blue sari. Opposite the desk was a cramped waiting area with a couple of plastic chairs. A pair of internal doors led off from the reception area, one marked BATHROOM and the other plain. The receptionist frowned at them over the top of a Dell monitor as they approached the desk. The plastic monster plant next to her needed dusting. If there was any air conditioning in the building it didn’t seem to be working.

Brooke rested her hands on the desk and gave the woman a polite smile. ‘Brooke Ray, to see Mr Prajapati? It’s concerning the case of my husband, Amal.’

The receptionist checked her screen, spent a moment tapping and scrolling, frowned a bit more and said, ‘You do not appear to have an appointment. Mr Prajapati is very busy. If you do not have an appointment he cannot see you right now.’

Ben said, ‘Oh, I think he’ll see us.’ Before the woman could react or hit the intercom button on the phone in front of her, he stepped towards the unmarked door and pushed straight through without knocking.

Delhi’s top private detective was lounging on a sofa with his feet up and a sports magazine in his hands. He was a large, jowly man in his late fifties, with jet-black thinning hair and a bushy moustache that were obviously dyed. Dark rings around his eyes gave him a panda-like appearance and his mound of a belly strained at his shirt buttons. At Ben’s sudden entrance he launched the magazine up into the air and almost fell off the sofa in alarm.

Brooke stepped into the office behind Ben and stood with her hands on her hips. ‘It’s good to see you so hard at work finding my husband, Mr Prajapati.’

Jumping to his feet, Prajapati straightened his rumpled shirt and crooked tie and smoothed his hair and began to bluster indignantly about the need to make an appointment, and how he was just taking a short break in a hectic day. Ben eyed the remains of a large takeout lunch on the desk. Pretty obvious how the busy super-sleuth had spent the last hour or so.

Brooke said, ‘I’ve been hoping you might call to keep me updated on how your enquiries are progressing. Perhaps you lost my number? Anyhow, I just happened to be in the neighbourhood, so I thought I’d stop by.’

Prajapati shot a deeply suspicious glare at Ben, pointed a thick finger his way and said, ‘Who is this person?’

‘I’m your new assistant,’ Ben said. ‘Come to work with you on the Ray kidnap case. It’s a real honour for me.’

‘I have no need for an assistant.’

‘Then I’ll just have to manage on my own,’ Ben said. ‘Shame.’

Brooke said, ‘This is Mr Hope. He’s travelled to India to assist me, doing what it seems nobody else here is willing or able to do. That is, to find my husband and bring him home safely.’

More collected now, Prajapati walked over to the desk and perched on its corner with one leg dangling, like a link of sausage. He laced his fingers together over his belly and looked at Ben with flat cop eyes. ‘You are wasting your time, my friend.’ To Brooke he said, ‘Mrs Ray, please let me remind you that locating your husband is, under the circumstances, a very difficult business.’

‘I’m aware of that. That’s why I hired you, on the understanding that you were the best person for the job. Are you saying you’ve made no progress at all? And have you heard anything from the police inspector in charge of the investigation? Because I haven’t. All this waiting for the phone to ring starts giving you the strangest idea that nothing’s actually happening.’

‘In fact I was intending to call you today,’ Prajapati replied gravely. ‘Mrs Ray, you need to prepare yourself for bad news. Please, take a seat.’ He motioned at the pair of fabric director’s chairs the other side of the desk.

Brooke didn’t sit down. Her face turned pale and her jaw tightened. ‘You’ve heard something. You’re going to tell me that Amal’s been found dead. Is that what you’re going to tell me?’

Prajapati shook his head, and his jowls wobbled. ‘No, Mrs Ray. It isn’t. Your husband has not been found. But in such a case as this, where no ransom demand has been made and the motivation for the crime is obviously something other than financial, a revenge attack perhaps, the chances of a happy outcome are very slight. Very slight indeed. That is why I say you should prepare yourself. The call I had been intending to give you, which now you are here in person is no longer necessary, was to inform you that after much consideration I am resigning from this case. Because in my professional opinion it is almost one hundred per cent certain that your husband is no longer alive, and at this stage we are looking for a corpse.’

Chapter 14 (#ulink_6fdd816d-1239-56c9-886e-58cb023dce05)

But Prajapati was wrong. Because Amal Ray was still very much alive. For the moment, at any rate – though for how much longer, he was too petrified to contemplate.