THE TUNNEL: A Ben Hope Story Read Free Page A

he could.
    Two weeks later, the case was happily resolved, the kid was safely back in the arms of her parents, and the ex-nanny who, it turned out, had indeed hatched the plan to kidnap her for ransom had been anonymously delivered into the hands of the police (who hadn’t themselves managed to unravel a single lead). The ex-nanny’s boyfriend had been less fortunate. Which had been his own choice, and his own undoing. His first mistake had been to get involved in the first place. His second mistake had been not to cut and run before Ben got to him. The exact details of his demise would never be known. Nor would his remains ever be found, except, perhaps, by the fish that lived in one of England’s biggest and deepest quarry lakes.
    Ben only collected payment for his services from those who could well afford them. With the money in his pocket, no further employment offers to chase up, and the things Jaco Lennox had confessed to him still just an unpleasant question mark in his mind, he’d returned to his rambling home on the windswept west coast of Ireland.
    There he’d done what he always did in his downtime: cracked open a fresh bottle of Laphroaig single malt, let himself be fussed and nannied by Winnie, his housekeeper, gone for long lonely walks on the beach and smoked and gazed out at the cold implacable ocean and waited for the next call to rouse him back to action. Sooner or later, usually sooner, there was always another call.
    When the call had come, it hadn’t been quite what Ben might have expected.
    ‘Did ye hear the news, laddie?’ said the familiar gruff voice. No “Hello Ben, how are you doing?” No “It’s been a while; what are you up to these days?” But then, his old regimental pal Boonzie McCulloch had always been known for getting right to the point.
    ‘What news?’ For all Ben knew, England might have been invaded, or London totally flattened in a nuclear blast. He didn’t watch TV, didn’t buy any newspapers. Life on the Galway coast got a little isolated at times. That was how Ben liked it.
    ‘Lennox is deid.’ Boonzie had long ago retired to live in Italy, but he would take the Glaswegian accent to his grave.
    ‘Jaco Lennox?’ As if it could have been anyone else.
    ‘They found the fucker hangin’ from a tree in Epping Forest. Topped hisself.’
    Ben wasn’t entirely surprised to hear it. But he could tell from Boonzie’s tone, and the pregnant pause that followed, that there was going to be more to the story. He could almost visualise the knowing look on the grizzled old wardog’s whiskery face.
    ‘At least,’ Boonzie added cryptically, ‘that’s what we’re told.’
    ‘Meaning what?’
    ‘Meaning, there’re certain details left oot. Such as the fact that said stiff managed to cuff his ain haunds behind his back and put two boolits in his heid before he stretched his neck. Looks like our Jaco must’ve made some bad acquaintances. Guid riddance, if ye ask me. He had it comin’ a long time.’
    ‘Would it be too much to ask how you came by this information, Boonzie?’
    Another low chuckle. ‘Och, let’s just say someone in CID owed me a wee favour.’ Which was all Ben would ever get out of Boonzie, and he didn’t press the matter. Soon afterwards, they hung up the phone. Boonzie went back to his peaceful retirement, and Ben went for another walk on the beach.
    *
    For three days afterwards, Ben struggled to reconcile the news of Lennox’s sorry end with what the dead man had revealed to him that night in Peckham. There were suicides, and there were ‘suicides’. Some more discreet than others. But always for a reason. And when certain people went to certain lengths to make sure certain secrets were kept that way, in Ben’s experience it tended to suggest that those secrets were, however unbelievable, however unthinkable, most probably true.
    That was why, at dawn on the fourth day, Ben said ‘Fuck it’ and grabbed his bag and was off again. He couldn’t