The Armada Legacy

An angry yell made him turn to see a short, stout figure in a flapping raincoat marching rapidly towards them from the direction of the Land Rovers.

‘Hoi! You! This is a police crime scene!’ As the man approached, shouting and gesticulating at them, Ben could see in the glare of the overhead floodlights that it was a plain-clothes detective, a stockily-built guy in his mid fifties or thereabouts.

‘That’s him,’ Amal said in a low voice. ‘Hanratty, the one I told you about.’

Chapter Nine (#ulink_92a4a8c6-5855-5148-97fc-0b439679b714)

Detective Inspector Hanratty stormed up to them, scowling. A slick of carrot-red hair was plastered across his puckered brow. He had mud spattered over his shoes and the bottoms of his trouser legs were sodden. But Ben guessed that spending hours out here in the shit weather wasn’t the sole reason for the sour grimace on Hanratty’s face. It looked permanently etched into his ruddy features. Ben’s first impression was of a chronically malcontented guy who, when he’d finished harrying and persecuting his work colleagues for the day, bullied his wife and kicked the dog.

‘This is a police crime scene,’ Hanratty repeated loudly. ‘Get out.’

Following a few yards behind was a female officer. Like her colleague, she was in plain clothes – a detective sergeant, was Ben’s guess. She was petite, elfin in her looks, with dark shoulder-length hair that had gone limp from the drizzle. She was visibly tired, but in contrast to the dogged stupidity in Hanratty’s eyes, hers were quick and sharp.

‘My name’s Hope,’ Ben said. ‘I’m a close friend of one of the victims, Brooke Marcel.’ He reached for his wallet and took out the little photo of her that he carried inside. The picture had been taken in France during summer. She was smiling and the sun was in her hair. He couldn’t bring himself to look at it.

Hanratty gave it only a cursory glance. ‘See that police tape there?’ he blustered. ‘Know what that means? It means keep your nose out of where it doesn’t belong, understand?’ He turned his sour gaze on Amal, and his eyes narrowed with recognition. ‘Ah, Mr … Ray, wasn’t it? What are you doing poking around here with him? We’ve taken your statement already, so now you can—’

Ben looked at him. ‘Listen, I came to help, not to argue with you, okay?’

Hanratty flushed and was about to fire an angry reply, but his colleague got in first. ‘Mr Hope, I’m Detective Sergeant Lynch,’ she said calmly. ‘We do have the situation under control, thank you, so if you’d like to return to your vehicle …’

Ben opened his clenched palm and tossed them the small object he’d found in the grass. Hanratty caught it in his fist, peered down at it and then stared up at Ben in surprise and indignation. Lynch stepped closer to her colleague to see what it was.

‘It was lying over there by the roadside,’ Ben said. ‘Thought it might be useful. It’s a nine-millimetre shell casing.’

Hanratty’s features twisted into a sardonic leer. ‘How helpful of you, sir. It happens we’ve already recovered a number of these.’

‘Then I imagine you’ve learned something from them,’ Ben said.

Lynch took the small steel casing from Hanratty’s hand and examined it. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ Hanratty growled. ‘Get out of here before I—’

‘Learn what?’ Lynch said. ‘We already know shots were fired at the car.’

Ben pointed at the cartridge in her fingers. Her nails were trimmed short and practical. ‘Thin steel, not brass,’ he said. ‘Plus, two small flash holes in the primer socket instead of the more usual single larger hole means the cartridge was designed to take a Berdan type primer. That’s unusual. You don’t normally see them, except with milsurp ordnance. That’s military surplus,’ he added for the benefit of Hanratty, who was glaring at him with widening eyes and turning mottled under the floodlights. ‘Secondly—’

‘Secondly?’ Lynch said. She was listening closely, her head cocked slightly to one side.

‘See where the case mouth is dented from the weapon’s ejector port, where it spins and smashes against the receiver on its way out? That denting is typical of the way the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun mashes its spent shells. Expensive weapon, and this one was brand new.’

‘How the hell can you tell that?’ Hanratty snapped impatiently.

‘Scrape marks on the side of the casing, from loading,’ Ben said. ‘The magazine isn’t fully broken in yet, follower spring’s a little stiff. It’s normal for the first few hundred rounds. So your perpetrators are using milsurp ammo, hard to come by without the right contacts, and they’re very professionally equipped.’

Lynch arched an eyebrow. ‘Is there more?’

‘Just that the placement of the empty casings you’ve already found, and the others that’re probably still scattered in the grass, should allow you to figure out by the distance and the angle of ejection more or less where the gunmen were standing, how they moved,’ Ben said. ‘Might help you to find footprints, determine the exact number of shooters, little things like that. If it were me, I’d have the team searching over here instead of out there in the field.’ He smiled a thin, humourless smile. ‘But then, who am I to tell you your job?’

‘What did you say your name was?’ Hanratty demanded.

‘Forget it,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t have time to waste talking to idiots. Come on, Amal, let’s go.’

‘Hey!’ Hanratty yelled as they headed back towards the car. ‘Don’t you walk away from me. Who’re you calling an idiot?’

Ben kept walking. Amal followed along nervously.

‘Hold on a minute,’ Lynch called out, trotting after them. ‘Mr Hope, wait.’

‘I’ve seen all I need to see here,’ Ben said without turning round. He was nearly at the car when she caught up with him and gently grasped his arm.

He wheeled round to face her. ‘I’ve dealt with a thousand Hanrattys in my time,’ he said. ‘He’s a fool, and he’s totally out of his depth.’

A long-suffering little smile played at the corners of Lynch’s mouth, as if she’d be only too happy to agree with him if she were free to. ‘You’re not dealing with him now,’ she said calmly. ‘You’re dealing with me, DS Kay Lynch. Let’s talk, Mr Hope. Please.’ There was no hostility in her expression, no suspicion, just earnestness and fatigue.

‘No offence, Kay, but I think someone like Tommy Logan at the ERU in Dublin should be handling this.’ The Garda’s Emergency Response Unit was the nearest thing the Irish police had to SCO19. One or two of their units had undergone hostage extraction training with the SAS during Ben’s time, and Commander Tommy Logan had sent a team for instruction under Ben and Jeff Dekker’s tutelage last year.

Lynch frowned. ‘Who are you?’

‘I told you who I am. I’m a friend of Brooke Marcel who was in that car.’

‘No, I mean, who are you really? You’ve got experience at this kind of thing, haven’t you?’

‘More than your friend there, for sure,’ Ben said, with a dismissive gesture at the distant figure of Hanratty, who was marching back over to the Land Rovers and barking orders at the forensic team.

Ben had had enough of this place. He was about to turn back towards the car, but the expression in Lynch’s eyes made him hesitate. He slipped his wallet and a ballpoint from his inside pocket and pulled out one of his business cards, slightly crumpled. It bore the name Le Val Tactical Training Centre in bold letters, with his name below. For the sake of appearances, it showed his former military rank – something Ben had never liked but which Jeff Dekker had persuaded him would impress clients.

Ben scribbled his mobile number on the back of the card and handed it to Lynch. ‘The web address is there too, if you want to check me out,’ he told her. ‘It’ll give you an idea of my background and what I do.’ In fact, the information about him on the website had been trimmed and edited down to the barest possible minimum. Little of what he’d done in his life, both during and since his military days, could be stuck up online for all to see.

But the card alone was enough. Lynch glanced at it and raised an eyebrow. ‘All right, I’m impressed. Do I call you Major Hope?’

‘It’s just Ben now,’ he said.

‘So what did you mean when you said you came here to help, Ben?’

‘I came here to find Brooke. That’s what I’m going to do.’

‘This is a police investigation. We don’t normally invite civilians to come on board.’

‘I didn’t ask to be invited. I’ll do this with you or without you.’

‘I have to caution you to stay out of it. For your own sake as well as hers, and that of the other victims.’

‘Of course. The last thing you need is a crazy guy like me messing the whole thing up.’

Lynch looked at him. ‘I understand that this a very difficult time for you. You’re upset and frightened. The police have a victim support counselling service …’

‘What frightens me the most is that prick Hanratty,’ Ben said.

‘I’m serious,’ she warned. ‘You can’t go meddling in this on your own. I don’t want to have to arrest you.’