The Mozart Conspiracy

The seat next to him was empty, as was much of the business-class section of the plane. He turned away from the window, stretched out and closed his eyes.

Three jobs this year. He’d been busy, and he was tired. It had taken two months in Turkey to track down the men who were holding Catherine Petersen. Two long months of dirt and sweat, following false trails, chasing up dud information, overturning every stone. The girl’s parents had despaired many times of ever seeing her alive again. He never made promises to people. He knew there was always a chance of sending the subject home in a body-bag.

That had only happened to him once. Mexico City, one of the big kidnap-and-ransom hotspots of the world. It hadn’t been his fault. The kidnappers had slaughtered the child even before the ransom demands. Ben had been the one who found the body. A young boy, just short of his eleventh birthday, stuffed in a barrel. He had no ears and no fingers. Sometimes the kidnappers weren’t even doing it for the money. He still didn’t like to think of it, but the half-repressed memory drove him on.

He’d persisted in Turkey, just as he always persisted. He’d never given up on anyone, even though there were plenty of times when it seemed hopeless. Like with a lot of these jobs, there had been nothing, no leads, just a lot of people too frightened to talk. Then a chance piece of information unlocked the whole thing and led him right to the house. People had died for it. But now Catherine Petersen was back with her parents and little Maria was being looked after until her family could be traced.

Now all Ben wanted to do was go home, back to the sanctuary of the old house on the remote west coast of Ireland. He thought about his private, lonely stretch of beach, the rocky cove where he liked to spend time alone with the waves, the gulls and his thoughts. His plan after the Turkish job had been to rest there quietly for as long as he could. Until the next call. That was one thing he could be sure of. There’d always be another call.

And it had come sooner than he’d expected. Around midnight the night before, and he’d been sitting in the hotel bar with nothing more to occupy him than a row of drinks, counting the hours before he could get out of Istanbul. He’d checked his phone for the first time in a week. There had been a message waiting for him, and the voice was one he knew well.

It was Leigh Llewellyn. She was about the last person he’d expected to hear from. He’d listened to the message several times. She sounded tense, nervous, a little breathless.

‘Ben, I don’t know where you are or when you mightget this message. But I need to see you. I don’t know whoelse to call. I’m staying in London, at the Dorchester.Come and find me. I’ll wait here as long as I can foryou.’ A pause. Then, in a tight voice: ‘Ben, I’m scared.Please, come quick if you can.’

The message was five days old, dated the fourth of December. On hearing it he’d cancelled the Dublin flight. He’d be at Heathrow in less than an hour.

What could she want from him? They hadn’t spoken for fifteen years.

The last time he’d seen Leigh Llewellyn was at Oliver’s funeral back in January, back on that terrible day, watching his old friend’s coffin go into the ground as the icy Welsh rain lashed over the desolate cemetery. With her long black hair streaming in the wind she’d stood at the edge of the grave. She’d already lost her parents, a long time ago. Now her brother was gone too, tragically drowned in an accident. Someone held an umbrella over her. She didn’t seem to notice. Her beautiful features were pale and drawn. Those jade-green eyes, whose glitter Ben remembered so well from years before, gazed dully into the void. She was oblivious of the photographers, hovering like vultures to get a snap of the opera star who had cut short her European tour to bring her brother’s coffin back from Vienna by private jet to her native Wales.

He’d wanted to talk to her that day, but there was too much pain between them. She hadn’t seen him, and he’d kept away from her. On his way out of the cemetery he’d pressed a business card into her PA’s hand. It was all he could do. Then he’d slipped away unseen.

After the funeral, Leigh had disappeared from public view and retreated to her home in Monte Carlo. He thought about her often, but he couldn’t call her.

Not after what he’d done to her fifteen years ago.

Chapter Four (#uaf34216c-11a4-530a-839b-7894ff193739)

Ballykelly, Northern Ireland

Fifteen years earlier

On a washed-out Tuesday night, Lance-Corporal Benedict Hope turned in off the street and walked down the puddled alley past the bins and the fresh graffiti that said FUCK THE POPE. The sign for the little wine bar creaked in the wind.

He went in through the stone entrance and shook the rain from his clothes, glad to be out of uniform. A rusty iron stairway led up to the double doors of the bar. As he got nearer he could hear the sound of the piano drifting down. He pushed through the doors and walked across the peeling linoleum floor. The place was almost empty.

Ben pulled up a stool at the bar. The barman was polishing a pint glass with a cloth.

‘How’re you doing, Joe?’

Joe smiled through his heavy beard. ‘Doin’ rightly, thanks. Same as usual?’

‘Why not?’ Ben said.

Joe grabbed a spirit glass and filled it from the bottle of Black Bush that hung behind the bar.‘You’ll be through that one soon,’ he said, gazing at the level in the bottle.

The pianist started up again. The battered old upright was missing most of its finish and badly in need of a tuning, but it sounded good under his fingers. He was doing a pretty good rendition of Jerry Lee Lewis boogie-woogie, keeping up a thumping stride rhythm with his left hand as his right churned out lightning blues scales.

‘Not bad, is he?’ said Joe. ‘One of your lot, from the look of him.’

Ben turned round on the bar stool. ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact he is.’

‘Pity. I was thinking of hiring him. Might bring in a bit o’ trade.’

Ben knew his name, too. Private Oliver Llewellyn. He was tall and slender, and his black hair was cropped short in a severe buzz-cut. He was too busy at the keyboard to notice Ben sitting watching him.

A pretty young blonde of about twenty was leaning against the side of the piano, gazing admiringly as Oliver’s fingers shot up and down the keys. He suddenly played a fast downward run that terminated in a series of shimmering jazzy chords as Jerry Lee Lewis gave way to Oscar Peterson.

‘You’re fantastic, so you are,’ the girl breathed. ‘You’re not really a soldier, are you?’

‘Sure I am.’ Oliver smiled up at her, still playing. ‘SAS.’

‘You’re kidding,’ she said.

‘Nope,’ he replied. ‘I never kid. SAS. Sexy-Attractive-Sophisticated. That’s me.’

She giggled and thumped him playfully on the shoulder, and he kept playing with his right hand while he slipped his left arm around her waist and tugged her towards him. ‘There’s plenty of room on this piano stool for two of us,’ he said. ‘Come on, I’ll teach you a duet.’

She sat up close next to him, her thigh pressing against his. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Bernie.’

Ben grinned and turned back to his drink, exchanging a knowing look with Joe. Private Llewellyn didn’t waste time.

The doors swung open and four guys walked in and took a table in the middle of the room. They were in their mid-twenties, surly, overconfident. One of them went to the bar for pints of lager, ignoring Ben’s friendly nod. One of his friends, the big overweight one with the pasty face, twisted heavily in his seat and called over to the girl as Oliver was showing her a simple duet. ‘Bernie! Get over here!’ His narrowed eyes shot a long glance at Oliver’s back.

Bernie broke away from the piano and got nervously to her feet. ‘Got to go,’ she whispered to Oliver. Oliver shrugged sadly and launched into a Chopin Nocturne.

Bernie sat down with the four lads. ‘Fuck were you doing with him?’ the fat one demanded, staring at her hard. ‘Can’t you see what he is?’

‘Just having a giggle,’ she said quietly. ‘Leave him alone, Gary.’

Oliver stopped playing. He grabbed the half-finished pint from the top of the piano and drained it, glanced at his watch and walked out of the bar. Bernie craned her head and gave him a wistful smile as he went by.

The four guys exchanged looks. Gary raised his eyebrows and jerked his chin at the door. ‘You wait here,’ he growled at Bernie. He pushed his chair back from the table. The four of them slurped down the last of their beer and stood up. They headed for the door. Bernie looked worried. ‘Gary…’ she started.

‘You-shut-your-hole.’ Gary pointed a stubby warning finger in her face. ‘This is your fault, you slag. I told you not to hang around with them fuckin’ soldiers.’

The four of them filed out purposefully.

Ben had been watching. He sighed. He set his glass on the bar and slid down from his stool.

Outside in the alleyway, the four guys had already caught up with Oliver. They had him shoved up against the wall. Two of them had lock-knives. Gary aimed a punch at Oliver’s stomach that doubled him up. Oliver straightened suddenly and head-butted him between the eyes. The fat guy let out a scream and reeled backwards, blood pouring from a broken nose. The other three started on Oliver, two holding him with knives to his throat as the third kicked him in the belly. They had his wallet, ripping notes out of it.

Ben had come up silently behind them. Gary was too busy with his broken nose, so he focused on the others. A fistful of hair and a sharp kick to the back of the knee, and one of the knifemen was writhing on his back. Ben could easily have killed him then. Instead he stamped hard on his genitals. The guy let out an animal scream. The other two let go of Oliver and ran.

Gary raised his fists. His face was slicked with blood. Ben knew exactly what to expect from him. He was the typical sloppy brawler, no brains and no discipline. Rage and strength and luck would be the only things going for him. He’d come roaring in like a big dumb bull. His punches would be slow and fly in a curved arc that a trained fighter could take his time blocking. Once you blocked it and got inside the arc you could hit him hard.