The Armada Legacy

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Lynch gave a shrug. ‘Because he thinks that in the light of this turn of events, her disappearance looks suspicious. He’s dispatched a patrol car to Sea View Guest House to collect the rest of her belongings for examination. He says we can’t afford to assume she isn’t implicated somehow.’

‘Implicated?’ Amal yelled.

‘Don’t tell me you agree with Hanratty about this,’ Ben said to Lynch.

‘He’s my superior. I don’t have an opinion. Not one that matters, at any rate. And I’ve already told you far more than I should. I’m sticking my neck right out here.’

‘It’s insane!’ Amal shouted. ‘It’s absolute cretinous imbecility of the highest order! What kind of utter moron would—?’

Lynch glanced over her shoulder. ‘I’d keep my voice down, if I were you. Here he comes.’

Hanratty marched down the muddy slope towards them. ‘Well, well. Having a party, are we? Fancy you two just happening to turn up again.’ He glowered at Lynch, then turned to face Amal and stabbed a stubby finger into his chest. ‘You,’ he said, blowing spittle, veins standing out on his forehead, ‘had better not be thinking of going back to your own country, wherever that is. The situation has changed now, and you’re mixed up in it, pal.’

‘I happen to be a British citizen, pal. England is my country,’ Amal shot back in fury. ‘And I suppose you think I’m a suspect too? It’s outrageous. Brooke and I were here for a bloody party, that’s the beginning and end of it. We went through all this yesterday, over and over. Instead of standing here wasting time with these ridiculous allegations, why don’t you go and do your job, you colossal great prick?’

‘Amal,’ Ben said, putting a hand on his arm to quiet him. The cop’s eyes were beginning to burn with a dangerous light, and he was quite capable of having Amal dragged away to a cosy little cell if he carried on like this. ‘My friend’s upset,’ Ben said to Hanratty. ‘We’ll be getting out of your way now.’

‘Delighted to hear it,’ Hanratty snorted. He was about to say more when his phone rang and he wheeled back towards the bothy to take the call.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lynch said, seeing the look in Ben’s eyes. ‘It’s not me.’

‘I know,’ Ben said.

‘The moment I hear anything more, I’ll call you, okay? But you have to promise me to stay out of this and leave the investigating to us.’

‘I promise,’ Ben said. Lynch nodded, then turned to follow Hanratty back up the slope.

‘It’s just unbelievable,’ Amal was raging as they got back into the car. ‘Brooke a suspect? Based on what?’

‘It’s time for you to go home,’ Ben said.

Amal looked at him with hurt and confusion in his eyes. ‘So that’s it? No protest, no nothing? How can you just accept this shit from Hanratty, after all the things you said before? I thought you were going to do something. That’s why I thought you could help, because you had expertise in this kind of thing.’

‘There’s nothing more we can do here,’ Ben told him. ‘It’s over.’

Amal boggled at him. ‘It’s over? Are you serious?’

‘We’ll go back and get your stuff,’ Ben said. ‘Then I’ll take you to the airport.’

Amal stared. His throat gave a quiver. ‘You think she’s dead, don’t you? That’s why you’re giving up.’

Ben didn’t reply. He started the engine and put the car in reverse.

‘Why can’t you just be straight with me and say so? That’s right, just go silent on me again. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand any of it.’ Amal slumped despairingly in his seat as Ben backed the car away from the police vehicles and turned it round in the narrow road.

Arriving back at the guesthouse, they found a Garda patrol car parked outside and two officers loading the rest of Brooke’s things into the back of it, sealed up in plastic evidence bags. Mrs Sheenan was watching from the doorway in her curlers, dressing gown and slippers, extremely displeased to have been roused so early from her bed and even more mortified that her establishment had been ransacked by the Garda like it was a den for common criminals. It would be the talk of the village for evermore. Amal tried in vain to mollify her and explain what was happening, then gave it up to go to his room and start packing to leave.

Ben watched the police car disappear down the street before returning inside to check flight times and book Amal a seat on the first plane to London that morning. Minutes later, they were back in the BMW and setting off.

Amal looked deep in thought all the way to Derry Airport, privately chewing over something with a set expression on his face. As they were about to part, he turned to Ben. ‘Listen, I, ah, I don’t generally go around telling people this, but I do actually have some family connections. Fairly powerful ones, in fact. And I have my own money, a lot of money. I believe that Brooke is alive. I’d do anything – I mean anything – to find her. Whatever it takes. You understand me?’

‘I understand you,’ Ben said. He thanked him. Left him standing clutching his bags and headed back towards the car.

The truth was, he’d only wanted Amal out of the way. He knew what he had to do next, and that it was something he needed to do alone.

Because as he’d been standing there on the dark, rainswept roadside in the middle of the Poisoned Glen listening to Amal ranting at Lynch and Hanratty, Ben had suddenly remembered.

Chapter Fourteen (#ulink_6e2b5076-8113-5141-81f8-c6a92d9df9dc)

With the realisation of what had happened to Forsyte, the situation was suddenly totally altered. Things were about to turn an awful lot uglier than they already were.

Ben also knew now that there was no point in crossing back into the Republic. He was already on the side of the border he needed to be. Sitting behind the wheel of the BMW at Derry Airport, he took out his phone and dialled a number in Italy. After a few rings he heard a familiar, warm voice that would normally have made him smile. ‘Pronto?’ she said.

‘Hello, Mirella.’

‘Ben!’ She was delighted to hear from him. ‘Are you coming to see us again?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘What is wrong?’ she asked, hearing the tone of his voice.

‘I need to talk to Boonzie, Mirella. Is he there?’

‘I will call him,’ she said anxiously. A muffled clattering on the line as Mirella laid down the phone and went off to fetch her husband. Ben could hear her voice in the background shouting ‘Archibald!’. Boonzie would never have tolerated anyone but his beloved wife calling him by his real name. After a few moments, his gruff Scots voice came on the line.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve been following the British news,’ Ben said.

‘What’s going on?’ Ben could see the grizzled, granite-faced Scot standing there, his eyes narrowing in concern.

‘I have a problem, Boonzie.’

Boonzie McCulloch had been a long-serving 22 SAS sergeant, and a mentor and friend of Ben’s for many years, before he’d astounded everyone by quitting the army to settle in the south of Italy and set up a smallholding with a vivacious black-haired Neapolitan beauty he’d fallen head over heels in love with while on a few days’ leave. The flinty, battle-hardened fifty-nine-year-old had found his own private heaven at last, contentedly working his sun-kissed couple of hectares to produce the basil and tomato crop that Mirella turned into gourmet bottled sauces the local restaurant trade couldn’t do without.

But the soft life hadn’t got to Boonzie completely. He still had a few aces up his sleeve, like the small arsenal of military weaponry that had got Ben out of a sticky moment in Rome the year before. And because the SAS had always been so much more deeply embroiled in matters of political secrecy and delicacy than other British army regiments, he still carried around with him a headful of the kind of privileged information that the likes of Detective Inspector Hanratty wouldn’t have had access to in a thousand years.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Boonzie muttered when Ben had finished quickly filling him in. ‘Need help?’ He’d always been the practical type. Ben knew it would take only one word for him to lay down everything and be on the first flight to Ireland.

‘I just need to know I’m on the right track. Forsyte. Roger Forsyte. It was before my time, but it’s ringing bells.’

‘Aye, me too, laddie. Big fuckin’ bells. In some ears they havnae stopped ringing since Belfast, 1979.’

Ben nodded, but it wasn’t much of a relief to have it confirmed that his hunch had been correct. ‘The Liam Doyle incident.’

‘Think it was maybe my second stint in that godforsaken hole,’ Boonzie said, ‘maybe my third, when they found Doyle’s body. This shit was happening all the time, but they’d normally just blow your brains oot, not chop both your arms off that way. Nasty.’

‘About six inches above the wrist?’

‘With a cleaver,’ Boonzie said. ‘While he was still alive.’

‘Just like Forsyte.’

‘Then they put a nine-milly between his eyes and dumped the body out in the sticks in County Antrim. It was never confirmed that Doyle was IRA. Neither were the rest of the rumours, like who’d done it. A lot of folks were certain it wisnae the handiwork of the UVF or any of the other Loyalist bunch, though Lord knows some o’ those fuckers were even worse than the Republican boys. Let’s just say that in certain circles, it wisnae any secret who wiz behind it.’

‘And Forsyte?’

‘Roger Forsyte,’ Boonzie said. ‘Hold on a sec. I’m looking him up on the internet.’ Ben could hear a tapping of keys. ‘Here he is. Oh, aye. Marine Exploration?’ Boonzie gave a dark chuckle. ‘So that’s what former MI5 agents end up doing, digging up sunken treasure? There’s a lot of digging up to be done in Northern Ireland too. A lot of dead bodies were put in the ground in those years, and yer man’d know where to find half of them.’

‘You’re sure? Forsyte was MI5?’

‘You can bet your arse on it, Ben. I’ve seen that face before. These bastards were all over the place. And I heard the name Forsyte mentioned more than a couple of times.’

‘I need facts, Boonzie. Not surmises.’

‘Trust me. He was mixed up deep in this shite.’

Although it had taken place a decade or so before Ben had joined the army and while he was still a boy, he’d heard enough about that unsavoury chapter in Ulster’s history to know of the scandal that had erupted over the Liam Doyle incident. It was later to be overshadowed by the events of Operation Flavius during the Thatcher era, when three unarmed suspected Provisional IRA members had been shot dead in Gibraltar by the SAS amid strong concerns about government cover-ups and misinformation – but at the time the cruel, unusual nature of Liam Doyle’s murder and the mass of rumours surrounding it had sparked off a great deal of heat. Many Catholic Republicans had been convinced that the brutal killing had been sanctioned by British Intelligence.

Ben knew all about the ugly, complex backdrop to the incident, too. In those days, Northern Ireland had been the tense staging ground for a hidden war between Britain and America, both of which were illicitly supplying weapons and intelligence to their respective sides of the conflict. On the one hand, interests sympathetic to the Republican cause within the CIA were allegedly arming the Provos with weaponry and information to help them kill their Loyalist enemies. As part of the deal, the FBI had turned a blind eye when IRA members visited America to liaise with their secret allies there. Meanwhile, the British government and MI5 had been doing exactly the same thing to help the opposite side, by providing guns, explosives and intelligence to members of both the Ulster Defence Force and Ulster Volunteer Force against the IRA, with the tacit compliance of Northern Ireland’s police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Both sides had been guilty of all manner of atrocities, but few had been so shocking as the mutilation done to Liam Doyle.