The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET. Scott Mariani
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was going. Traffic was thin on the country roads and he drove fast for six miles, keeping the revs high and the gears low, constantly checking the mirrors. He saw nothing.
He pulled up in a lay-by and turned off the engine. Leigh was sitting quietly beside him, ashen-faced. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. He twisted round and grabbed his haversack from behind the seat. There was still some whisky in his flask. ‘I know you don’t like this stuff very much,’ he said, trying to smile. ‘But it’ll take the edge off.’
Leigh took a sip of the whisky and winced at the burn on her lips. She coughed. ‘Thanks.’ She screwed the cap of the flask back on and handed it back to him.
He finished what was left. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked as she took out her phone.
‘Calling the police.’
He grabbed the phone from her before she could finish dialling 999. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Until last night nobody knew where we were. Then you told the police where to find us, and the next thing we have company.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying I don’t like coincidences,’ he replied. ‘And there’s also the slight problem of three dead men lying in your house, Leigh. I killed them, and you’re an accomplice. I’m not sticking around to be arrested.’ He took the file out of the bag and showed her. ‘This is what they were looking for,’ he said. The spots of blood on the label were turning russety-brown.
‘The Mozart letter? Oliver’s work? But…’ She looked at him helplessly. ‘Why would anyone want—’
‘I think it’s time we had a look at this stuff,’ he said. He pushed the haversack to his feet with a dull metallic clunk from the guns inside, and rested the box-file on his lap against the steering wheel. He popped the catch and opened the lid of the file.
‘What happened?’ Leigh gasped. ‘They’re all burnt.’
The small padded envelope fell out and landed in the foot-well. Ben ignored it and sifted carefully through the rest of the file’s contents, trying not to damage the brittle papers any further.
Some of the documents had been handwritten, some computer-printed. Many were barely legible any longer, just singed fragments showing names, dates, and scraps of what looked like historical information. Here and there he could make out the name Mozart.
Leigh reached across and lifted out a badly singed sheet. It crumbled into pieces as she lifted it up. ‘This was Oliver’s writing,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘One of the notes he sent me during his travels.’
‘They’re ruined,’ Ben muttered. He laid the fragments back inside the file and closed the lid. He turned to her. ‘So what’s this about, Leigh? What did they want with Oliver’s stuff?’
‘How should I know?’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘You told me last night you’d had the notes for months. Now all of a sudden someone’s very interested in them. Why? What was in here? And how would they know you even had them?’
She looked blank.
‘Who else knows about this book project?’
There was sudden realization in her eyes. ‘Oh shit’
‘What?’
She turned to look at him. ‘About two million people know about it.’
‘What the hell are you on about?’
‘The TV interview. I was on a BBC music programme talking about next year’s European tour. I told them about my plan to carry on with the book. How Oliver had been sending me his research material, right up until the day he died, and that I’d always been too upset to look at any of it.’
‘And when was this programme on?’
She made a face. ‘Two days before they tried to snatch me in London.’
Ben felt something resting against his foot and remembered the fallen package. He leaned down and picked it up.
‘God. I recognize this,’ Leigh whispered, taking it from him. ‘It’s the package I told you about. The last one he ever sent me.’ She turned it over in her hands. ‘It was there waiting for me after the funeral. I had Pam put it in the box with the rest of the stuff.’
‘It’s got to be opened now,’ he told her.
‘I know.’
Ben tore open the singed envelope. Inside the thin layer of bubble-wrap, undamaged by the heat of the fire, was a CD case. He took it out. ‘It’s music,’ he said, showing her the cover. ‘Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. Why did he send you this?’
She sighed. ‘It’s mine. He’d borrowed it from me. He must have been returning it.’
‘So that’s all it was.’
She slumped in her seat. ‘What’s happening, Ben?’
He opened the CD case. The yellow and silver Deutsche Grammophon disc had come loose from its fastening. It dropped in his lap. Behind it was another disc. Printed on its surface was the legend
CD-Recordable.
Underneath it, in marker pen, was an urgent scrawl:
LEIGH —Do NOT RUN THIS DISC UNDER ANY
CIRCUMSTANCES .
KEEP IT HIDDEN. I’M COMING HOME.
OLLY.
‘What the…’ Leigh reached out and pressed a button on the dashboard. The car’s CD player lit up. ‘Let’s play it.’
‘It’s not an audio disc,’ Ben said. ‘We’ll need a computer.’
An hour later they were checked into a small nearby hotel as Mr and Mrs Connors. On the way there, Ben had made a quick shopping detour. He ripped the protective wrapping off the new laptop and laid it down on the hotel-room table. In a few minutes he had the machine set up and ready to play the disc. He took the CD-ROM out of the Magic Flute case and inserted it into the computer’s disk drive. The machine whirred into action, and after a few seconds a window opened on the flat screen.
As he waited for the disc to load, Ben went to the minibar and found two miniatures of Bell’s Scotch. He cracked them open and poured them both into a single glass.
Leigh sat at the desk and peered at the screen. ‘These all seem to be photo files taken in different parts of Europe,’ she said. ‘It’s like a photo diary of Olly’s research trip.’
Ben frowned. ‘Why would he put a CD of travel snapshots into your Mozart box?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ She clicked, and the face of an old man appeared on the screen. He was in his late seventies. His face was grey and deeply scoured with wrinkles, but there was an inquisitive twinkle to the eyes. Behind him was a tall open-fronted bookcase, and Ben could make out titles of volumes bearing the names of famous composers-Chopin, Beethoven, Elgar.
‘Who’s that?’ Ben asked.
‘I don’t know him,’ she said. She clicked again. The old man disappeared and a new picture filled the screen. It was of a white stone building that looked to Ben like a small temple or some kind of monument. It had a domed top and a classical frontage. ‘This I recognize,’ she said. ‘Ravenna, Italy. That’s Dante’s tomb. I’ve been there.’
‘Why would Oliver go to Italy if his research was in Vienna?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did