Conspiracy Thriller 4 E-Book Bundle. Scott Mariani

      Chapter Twenty-Three

      Ben headed west on the motorway with the dog perched on the passenger seat beside him. After three hours of fast driving he left the M5 at Exeter to cut across the bleak, rugged landscape of Dartmoor National Park. He still didn’t know exactly where he was going. As he drove, he called Jude four, five, six more times. Still no response. Evidently, not all of the younger generation were surgically attached to their mobile phones.

      The weather was closing in as the afternoon wore on. Dark rolling clouds scudded menacingly over the craggy landscape, and a freezing mist was descending. The roads were getting narrower now, and almost deserted. This was one of England’s last real wildernesses, and the place he was looking for could be just about anywhere. The sense of frustration was slowly rising as he neared Bodmin.

      Suddenly feeling the buzz of the phone in his pocket, he made a grab to answer it. ‘Jude, is that you?’ He’d left him so many messages that he felt he knew the kid.

      ‘This is Sophie Norrington,’ said a clipped-sounding female voice.

      There was hardly any mobile signal up here, and Ben was worried about getting cut off. He thanked her for calling back, explaining again that he was a friend of the Arundel family.

      ‘Mum told me what’s happened. It’s awful. Poor Jude!’

      ‘He doesn’t know yet,’ Ben said. ‘I’m travelling to the farm in Cornwall to tell him.’

      ‘That dump,’ Sophie sniffed. Like mother, like daughter.

      ‘Your mother told me you’d been there,’ Ben said. ‘Can you give me directions?’

      ‘It’s really isolated. I think the nearest village was called War … War-something. Warleg. Warlego.’ Sophie’s voice kept breaking up, and he had to strain to make out her words. He pulled the car over to the side of the road, flipped on the inside light and began scouring the map he’d bought at the last fuel stop. ‘There’s a place here called Warleggan.’

      ‘That’s it.’

      ‘What about the name of the farm itself?’ he asked quickly, anxious that he was going to lose the phone signal at any moment.

      Sophie thought for a moment. ‘It was something suitably grim and lugubrious-sounding like “Bleak Mountain”. No, that’s not it. Black Rock. Black Rock Farm. Ask any of the locals. They’ll tell you how to find it, but you might get some funny looks.’ She paused, then said in a softer tone, ‘Will you tell Jude I asked after him?’

      ‘I’ll do that,’ Ben said. He was about to thank her when he realised the phone signal had died on him.

      As they’d been speaking, Ben had been looking in the rear-view mirror at the lights of the car behind. Near as he could tell, it was a Range Rover Sport, dark blue or black. It had been there with him for a few miles, holding steady at the same pace as the Mazda. Now it was pulled in at the side of the road a hundred or so yards behind, as if waiting for him to drive on so it could follow. In the dimming light Ben could make out nothing of its occupants. The mist swirled like gunsmoke in the beams of its headlights.

      Scruffy growled.

      ‘I was thinking the same,’ Ben said. He watched the Range Rover a moment longer, then put the Mazda back into gear and pulled away sharply with a rasp of tyres.

      Close up ahead was a narrow lane cutting away perpendicular to the road. He waited until the last moment and then threw the Mazda into it, skidding on the loose surface and accelerating away hard.

      The Range Rover didn’t follow. I must be imagining things, Ben thought to himself, and as more miles passed and dusk fell to night, he became convinced of it. The only other light that appeared in his rear-view mirror was that of a solitary motorcyclist who followed him for a while along the winding moor roads and lanes, then shot past in a blast of twin exhausts on the approach to the tiny, remote village of Warleggan. Ben caught a glimpse of the pillion passenger holding on tightly to the grab-rails on the bike’s tail; then it was gone in the mist.

      As Ben drove through the village he saw the lights of a pub and pulled up outside, climbed out of the car and went in. The place was filled with locals, warm and noisy with chatter. He got the usual sideways glances from a few of the locals taking notice of a stranger as he walked up to the bar, perched on a stool and bought a double of malt scotch. As he sipped it, the barman, a thick-chested man who resembled an old-time sailor with his beard and gold earring, asked him cheerfully if he was on holiday.

      ‘Not exactly,’ Ben said. ‘I’m looking for Black Rock Farm.’

      ‘It’s all hippies up there,’ the barman muttered after a pause, his cheerful demeanour instantly evaporated. In just a couple of words, the welcome stranger had morphed into a drug dealer, or worse. ‘Got business there, have you, sir?’ the barman asked, eyeing Ben sternly as he reached out for a glass to polish.

      ‘Of a kind,’ Ben said, meeting his eye but keeping the smile on his face. ‘And I’d be grateful for directions, if you know how to get there.’

      Outside in the misty street, the leather-clad rider sat astride his motorcycle and blipped the throttle. He had his visor up and was leaning across the bike’s fuel tank to speak quietly to the driver of the gleaming black Range Rover Sport that had pulled up beside him and rolled down its window. The driver’s face was long and lean. The hem of his beanie hat covered the scar over his eye.

      There were five other men inside the car, and they were all gazing in the direction of the pub and the Mazda Roadster parked outside it. So was the bike’s pillion passenger, his face hidden behind his helmet’s opaque visor.

      The scruffy-looking mongrel inside the Mazda had jumped up on the passenger seat and had his nose pressed to the window, staring intently back at the watchers. The dog bared his fangs and let out a long, low snarl.

      A few more words passed between the driver and the motorcyclist; then the motorcyclist nodded, lowered his visor, nudged his bike into gear and rode off. The Range Rover purred slowly on past the pub. The driver reached for a mobile phone.

      The car rolled to a halt fifty yards up the street. Its lights went out. Waiting.

      *

      After the interminable journey aboard the cramped, overheated hellhole of the Greyhound coach, Wesley Holland had reached Boston’s South Station intercity bus terminal. Now that he was a seasoned expert in covert travel, he’d paid cash for another bus ride that had taken him and his valuable cargo southwards to the town of Falmouth, Cape Cod. Stepping off the bus in the picturesque village of Woods Hole on the edge of Falmouth, he sucked in a deep lungful of the cold, salty sea air and his heart leaped in jubilation.

      He’d made it. Nearly there now, just a six-mile ferry trip left to go. As he hurried towards the port he could see no sign anywhere of his pursuers and was utterly certain that he’d managed to throw them off. The next ferry wasn’t for a few hours. Wesley made himself comfortable in a cosy hotel lounge nearby and sipped a glass of warming cognac, gazing out of the window at the steely ocean and thinking of the safe haven that awaited him just a few short miles over the horizon.

      He’d be there soon.