Read The Forgotten Holocaust (Ben Hope, Book 10) Online
Authors: Scott Mariani
Ben sat back on the floor and inspected the pouch with a growing frown on his face, trying to think how it had got there. So much had happened since, but now he remembered how Kristen’s bag had been hanging over the back of the wooden chair to dry out. When, a little tipsy from the Laphroaig, she’d upset the chair and the bag had dropped to the floor, the pouch must have spilled out along with the other items. He could only guess that when she’d stumbled and reached out for his arm to stop herself from falling, it’d been accidentally kicked out of sight under the armchair. He’d picked up the fallen chair, her fleece and her bag. She’d stooped down to snatch up her personal items. Neither of them had noticed the pouch still lying there.
He wondered whether she’d missed it on her way back towards the guesthouse. Had that been why she’d been running towards the cottage as the men chased her?
The pouch was about four inches by five, soft black lambskin with a larger main compartment and a smaller zippered pocket on its front. He already knew what she kept inside. He hesitated a moment, thinking that perhaps he ought to turn this stuff over to the police as possible evidence.
The idea didn’t linger long in his mind. Opening up the main compartment, he found her notebook. He flicked quickly through it and saw pages of notes, names of places she’d visited on her travels about Ireland during her stay. Laying the notebook aside for the moment, he unzipped the front pocket. There were her two phones, a well-worn BlackBerry and a much less expensive Samsung pay-as-you-go type of device that still had the protective plastic over the screen and the glossy look of a recent purchase.
Ben thought hard, casting his mind back to when he’d first met Kristen and had been walking along the beach. She’d taken the leather pouch from her bag, removed one of the two phones and checked it for messages, and then seemed frustrated when there hadn’t been any. She’d said she’d been hoping to hear back from someone, and that it was something to do with her research. He remembered how she’d seemed a touch anxious, not wanting to say too much about it.
At the time, it had meant nothing. Now, just maybe, it meant a great deal.
Which phone had she been using? He gazed at the two side by side, and his memory told him it had been the cheap Samsung. He turned it on. The first thing to check was her list of contacts, as an important caller might be among them. But the contact list was empty: either all entries had been deleted, or there had been none to begin with. He pressed the ‘back’ key and then, following a hunch, went into the SMS messages menu.
He wasn’t surprised to find nothing other than a ‘welcome, new user’ message from the service provider, dated three days earlier. As he’d suspected, this was a brand-new phone, barely used and so fresh from the box that Kristen might even have bought it here in Ireland, in the middle of her research trip.
Why had she felt the need for a second phone? he wondered. Could it have anything to do with the discovery she’d claimed to have made ‘a few days ago’? Ben pondered the possibility and its implications.
Leaving the messages menu, he checked her call history. As expected, she hadn’t used the phone a great deal. In fact she’d made exactly three calls with it, all on the same day as the received text from the service provider, which was to say the day she’d bought it. The first call had been to an overseas landline number, with the international prefix for the USA. Kristen had called it at 3.04 p.m., local time, speaking for just a few seconds. The second call had been made less than ten minutes later, at 3.12. It was to another landline, this time in London, and had lasted seven minutes.
Some time later, at 5.22 p.m., she’d made her third and final call, this time to a mobile number, again in the USA. It was the longest in duration, at thirteen minutes. There was a growing American connection here – but what did it signify? If indeed it meant anything at all, he thought.
Checking the received calls, Ben found just one. It had come in at 5.18 p.m. the same day as the others, and it was from the same London number she’d dialled a little over two hours earlier. Whoever had called her obviously hadn’t had much to say, keeping her on the line for less than two minutes. Almost immediately afterwards, she’d called that US mobile number. No traffic either way since.
Ben returned to the landline call Kristen had made to America, pressed ‘options’ and called the number again while glancing at his watch. It was after three here, morning there. A woman’s voice came on the line. ‘Tulsa City Hall. Mayor’s office. May I help you?’ She spoke with a nice southern twang.
Mayor’s office?
Surprised, Ben had to think fast. Morning, this is Ronnie Galloway in London. I’m following up the call to your office from my colleague, Kristen Hall, three days ago.’
‘Uh-huh. What’s it regarding?’ the woman asked curtly.
‘I’d need to speak to the mayor about that,’ Ben said.
‘And you work for …?’
‘Marshall Kite Enterprises,’ Ben replied. Marshall Kite was Brooke’s investment banker brother-in-law. Ben had no compunction about using his name. Sensing the woman’s reticence, he pressed on in a brisk tone. ‘Listen, we have an issue here that I need to get cleared up as a matter of priority. Can I confirm that my colleague Ms Hall contacted your office three days ago?’
His bluff threw her a little. ‘Uh, hold on, let me check.’ Pause. ‘Uh, yes, I’m showing a call from a Kristen Hall for the mayor on that date. But—’
‘Did she speak to the mayor personally?’ Ben asked, interrupting.
‘No, he wasn’t available. Can I ask—’
‘She didn’t say what she wanted to talk to him about, did she?’ Ben said, cutting her short again. This conversation was getting crazier by the second, but he had nothing to lose by pushing.
‘Who is this?’ the receptionist snapped.
And with that, Ben knew he’d got all he could out of her. ‘Thanks. Have a nice day,’ he said, and ended the call.
What the hell was Kristen doing calling the mayor of Tulsa? Ben racked his brains pointlessly for a few moments, then moved quickly on to the next number on his list, the call she’d made to London. There was no reply, and no answering service, so he immediately followed up by trying the American mobile she’d called.
Another dead end. Whoever it belonged to had it switched off.
Ben turned to Kristen’s other phone. As he’d suspected from its appearance, the BlackBerry had had a lot more use and was crammed with numbers, many of them personal calls to her parents and the other friends and family members in her busy address book. He couldn’t find anything of interest connected to her work, and after a few minutes was beginning to feel bad for snooping into the dead woman’s personal business.
He slipped both phones into his pocket.
With his options running low, Ben examined the notebook. On closer inspection, it was a composite of a notebook and a diary, with enough space for a few notes on any given daily entry. Kristen had been one of those researchers who liked to keep records of where she’d been and who she’d met along the way. But while her mind was tidy, her handwriting was anything but. Flipping through to August, Ben quickly found the section of pages devoted to her most recent Irish research trip, and spent a while deciphering them. She’d done a few miles in the last couple of weeks, and her scribbled notes mentioned locations she’d visited all around rural Ireland. Among them were the ruins of the old Stamford mansion, and several villages in its vicinity that had once belonged to the sprawling Glenfell Estate. One of her notes read:
Spoke to Father Flanagan, St Malachy’s church
Looked at records NOT ONLINE
PADRAIG BORN 1809
→
107!!!! HOW POSSIBLE?????
The names, dates and numbers meant nothing to Ben, but now it seemed to him as if he needed to get out and cover a few miles himself, retracing her steps.
Only then might he begin to find out what the hell was going on.
He closed the notebook, sprang to his feet and went to grab the BMW keys. It felt good to get moving.
Before nine a.m., and already the sun was burning the concrete outside. Even in the relative coolness of the lock-up garage, the air was stifling.
Erin carefully shut the trunk of the old car, locked it and pulled the tarpaulin back down over the smooth, waxed bodywork.
Always have a backup
, her daddy’s voice echoed once more in her head.
She stepped away from the covered car, moving quietly in the shadows as if her every move was being watched and listened to by unseen eyes and ears. After two days of hiding, she was jumpy as hell. But now, at least, she’d made a decision. It was the right thing to do. The only thing.
A strip of sunlight shone from the gap beneath the garage’s steel rolldown shutter door. Erin dropped to her knees and slid out under it, blinking in the strong light. She peered left and right with her hand shielding her eyes, to make sure nobody was following her. The weed-strewn, graffiti-walled yard between the rows of lock-ups was deserted.
So far, so good. Her spirits brightened at the thought that the killers might not even have the slightest idea that there was a witness to their actions on Friday night. If that was the case, then they were about to find out. The hard way.
She hurried away from the lock-ups and towards the street, where the taxicab was waiting for her with the meter running. ‘Where to now, missy?’ the driver wanted to know.
‘Downtown,’ she said. ‘Police Department Headquarters.’
‘It’s a done thing,’ the driver said, and took off as she shut herself in the back. Erin leaned against the seat and closed her eyes, thinking about what she was going to say, about the DVD and phone in her backpack. And about Angela’s husband.
At the downtown police building, she walked up to the main desk and cleared her throat to get the attention of the grizzled duty sergeant. He looked up at her, unsmiling. He was in a dark blue shirt with short sleeves and the shield that bore the cityscape logo with the legend ‘TULSA POLICE’.
‘My name is Erin Hayes,’ she said. ‘I want to speak to a detective. The most senior one you’ve got. And right away.’
Whether it was the look in her eye or the tone of her voice, something appeared to make the cops take her seriously. Within five minutes she was met in the reception lobby by a tired-eyed though pleasant-looking plainclothes officer about the same age as her, who introduced himself as Detective Topher Morrell and led her to a small office away from the hubbub. He waved her to a chair, where she sat clutching her backpack on her lap, and perched himself on the corner of a desk with one leg dangling casually, as if he didn’t expect this interruption to last more than a minute or two before he could return to the many more pressing matters littering his desk. ‘Now, uh, Miss—’
‘Hayes. Erin Hayes.’
‘Right. You told the duty officer this was serious.’
‘I doubt you’ll get anything more serious come in this week,’ she said.
‘Then talk to me.’
‘I’ll need to start from the beginning, okay?’ she said, and Morrell frowned as if stabbed by an internal pain. ‘I work for the Desert Rose Trust,’ she went on determinedly. ‘We’re a charitable organisation that provides resources to help the underprivileged young Catholics of Oklahoma to get an education.’
‘Yeah, I know what the Desert Rose Trust is,’ Morrell said, bored already, and flicked a downward glance at his watch.
‘Then you’ll know who its director is,’ Erin said.
‘Uh-huh. Sure. Everyone in Tulsa knows that.’
‘I’m her personal assistant. I answer directly to her. It’s a rewarding job, but I have a lot of responsibility and it gets stressful sometimes.’
Get in line
, Morrell’s expression was saying.
‘My boss and her husband own a cabin out on the east shore of Oologah Lake,’ Erin went on. ‘Three days ago …’
He listened as she went on with her story. It wasn’t long before his look of boredom vanished completely. He wasn’t looking at his watch any more. The leg stopped swinging. He shifted into a more alert posture, watching her intently and the crease in his brow deepening. He looked as if he was having trouble keeping his jaw from gaping open. By the time she’d told the whole story, he was off the desk and pacing the room in agitation. ‘You’re sure?’ he kept asking her.
‘If you don’t believe me, watch the video,’ she said, placing a hand on the backpack. ‘It’s all here. Everything I just told you.’
Morrell stared at her for several intense seconds, then held up a hand. ‘Wait here and don’t move. I’ll be right back.’ He strode hurriedly out of the room, shutting the door hard behind him.
Erin waited in the empty room for a couple of minutes before the door burst open again. She looked up to see a large, square-shouldered man enter the room, with Morrell in his wake. He was several inches taller than the detective, and twenty years older, with thinning silver hair and a severe, granite face. His cheeks were flushed red with broken veins and his nose looked as if it had been broken at least twice in his life. He wore no jacket. A large black revolver hung heavily from the tan leather shoulder holster strapped over his shirt. Old-time cop, old-time six-gun. His sleeves were rolled up to expose the thick, gnarled forearms of a lumberjack. He planted himself in front of Erin and scrutinised her coldly.
‘I’m Chief O’Rourke,’ he said in a gravelly voice. ‘I want you to repeat to me what you just told Detective Morrell here.’
Feeling small in her chair, Erin peered up at his intimidating bulk. ‘You want me to start over from the beginning?’
‘Just from where your employer said you could use the cabin on Oologah Lake. Why was that?’
‘Why did she let me use it?’ Erin shrugged. ‘Because she’s a nice person and we get along, I guess.’
‘Heart-warming. Keep going.’
‘I’d been complaining about feeling tired, and she said I could use it to get away for a weekend, unwind. She said the place would be empty, her husband was away in Boston on business, their son Sean was canoeing in Canada with friends and their daughter Amy was in Paris studying at this fancy cookery school. When I said my car was having problems, she offered for the family driver, Joe, to take me there in the Cadillac. So off I went, all happy with myself, looking forward to doing some running. I already told all this to Detective Morrell.’
‘Running?’ O’Rourke asked, as if this gave him grounds for deep suspicion.
‘Came fourth in the Tulsa city marathon last year, and I’m meaning to better that this November, to help raise funds for the Desert Rose Trust. But that’s not what you want to hear, is it?’
‘No, I want to hear what happened next, every detail.’
‘What happened next was I hung around there all evening, didn’t do a lot, went to bed. I woke up hearing voices. I snuck out of bed, thinking it was intruders. I had my handgun with me and—’
‘You have a carry permit for that?’ Chief O’Rourke interrupted.
Erin frowned. ‘Is this about them or about me?’ she wanted to snap at him. She kept her voice level and asked instead, ‘You want to see it?’
‘Later. Go on.’
‘But it wasn’t intruders. They’d let themselves in the door with a key, and a few moments later I realised why. Angela’s husband wasn’t in Boston, he was there using the place to entertain a bunch of business associates. Or so I thought. One of them was a man with a beard. Caucasian, dark hair, forties.’
‘The victim,’ Morrell explained.
‘You didn’t get a name?’ O’Rourke asked Erin without glancing back at his colleague.
‘I never heard it mentioned. There wasn’t exactly a lot of conversation going on from the point I joined the party, you know? Then soon afterwards, an argument broke out. They grabbed hold of this bearded man and threw him on the floor and—’
‘Hold on,’ O’Rourke cut in. ‘
They?
’
‘The two goons. I don’t know what you’d call them. Heavies. Henchmen. They started beating the crap out of the guy with batons, like the ones that cops and security guards use. Then he ordered them to take him outside.’
‘
He?
’ O’Rourke cut in again.
Erin nodded. ‘Yes,
he
. Angela’s husband. He said, “Not here”, like he didn’t want blood on the rug or something. So these two thugs, they got hold of the bearded man and kind of dragged him out the door to the veranda. That’s where they shot him.’
‘How many shots were fired?’ O’Rourke asked.
‘I can’t say for sure. Three, four. They didn’t kill him at first. It was like they were playing with him. Torturing him, just for the fun of it.
He
was watching the whole time. Then he took out a gun. It was a big old revolver, like that one.’ Erin pointed at the weapon in O’Rourke’s shoulder holster. ‘Maybe a forty-four. Except it was bright, not blued. Stainless steel or nickel, I can’t say for sure.’
‘Know your hardware, Miss Hayes,’ O’Rourke said, looking at her penetratingly, and so intently that his pale grey eyes never seemed to blink.
‘My daddy taught me to shoot,’ she replied.
‘You like your weaponry, huh?’
Erin looked at him. What was O’Rourke doing, trying to paint her up as a gun nut? ‘I’m a woman in the modern world,’ she said. ‘One who’d rather not wind up a victim.’
‘All right, all right,’ O’Rourke said, waving his hand impatiently. ‘Save it. What happened next?’
‘Next? He aimed it at the guy and fired.’
O’Rourke gravely pursed his lips. ‘You’re saying he personally shot the guy. Pulled the trigger himself. Deliberately.’
‘It couldn’t have been more deliberate,’ Erin said. ‘He shot the guy right in the back of the head from just a couple of feet away. Then he ordered the other two guys to take the body away, cut it up and get rid of it.’
‘Cut it up? He said that?’
She thought for a moment. ‘You know what, he might have said “chop his ass up”. If you want an exact quote.’
O’Rourke caught the pointed tone of her words and gave a snort. ‘Okay. And how did he sound when he was instructing them to do that?’
‘He sounded just like himself.’
‘Sober?’
‘Stone cold.’
‘Calm and rational?’
‘Like he did it every day,’ Erin said. ‘The way you’d ask the help to carry out the trash.’
‘So you’re saying he was in charge of this whole deal.’
Erin understood that O’Rourke was being extremely careful to confirm every detail of her story. Under the circumstances, she’d have done the same. But did he believe her? She tried to read his expression and could see only a severe glower. She nodded vehemently. ‘Absolutely. The whole time. Everything that happened, happened because he ordered it. No question.’
‘And you’d testify to that?’
‘So would the video,’ she replied. ‘It’ll prove everything I just told you.’
O’Rourke exhaled noisily through his nose. Stepped away from Erin and exchanged a quick glance with Morrell. ‘And you haven’t told anyone else about this?’ he asked her after a moment’s heavy silence.
‘Nobody, not even my boss. I just spent the last two days hiding in a goddamn motel room wondering whether to call her. I decided against it. Now I’m here.’
‘You understand the seriousness of this allegation, Miss Hayes?’ O’Rourke said.
‘Look, I’m not an idiot,’ Erin replied, fighting to contain her frustration. ‘I know what it means. I know how bad it sounds and what the implications are for this whole city. But I also know what I saw. The man I witnessed ordering the beating and shooting of this other man, and then blowing the guy’s brains out himself, personally, of his own volition and free will or whatever the hell the law calls it, is the husband of my boss, Angela McCrory.’
The cops were silent, staring.
Erin said, ‘He’s Finn McCrory, the mayor of Tulsa.’