The Pretender’s Gold. Scott Mariani
find out what happened to Ross. But now Ewan is hurt, too. Archibald thought the same people who killed Ross had tried to kill him.’
‘Are the local police involved in this?’
‘He went to speak to them, but he wasn’t impressed. He decided to go his own way. You know him, how independent-minded he can be. And he doesn’t trust the police, at the best of times.’
Ben certainly did know him, and could also resonate with his reasons for going it alone. But it sounded like Boonzie had got himself into something bad, and that worried Ben. He asked, ‘When did you last speak to him?’
‘Two days ago. He doesn’t use a mobile phone. He called me from his nephew’s house. That was when he told me what happened to Ewan, how badly he was hurt, and how the police weren’t going to be of any help. Then I told him about the email that had come for him.’
‘What email?’
‘From his nephew.’ Mirella repeated to Ben what she’d already told her husband, reading out the short text of Ewan’s message verbatim. She described the image file that Ewan had attached with it. ‘It was a photo of a gold coin. The thing that Ross was supposed to have found. That’s all I know.’
Ben frowned at the mention of the coin. In his experience, gold and murder went together like strawberries and ice cream, and this made the suspicions of foul play seem more plausible. He said, ‘Can you send me the image file?’, and told her the email address to send it to.
Mirella was marginally more savvy with newfangled gadgetry than her technophobe husband. ‘I’m doing it now.’
Moments later, the email pinged into Ben’s inbox. He put the call on speaker while he opened up the file and scrutinised the picture. It was a good photo, focused sharp and up-close. No question that it was a gold coin. An old one, showing the date 1745. Probably valuable, though at this point Ben had no clear idea.
‘What the hell is this about, Mirella?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied helplessly. ‘Archibald didn’t say much when I told him about it. But he sounded as though it was no surprise. Like he already knew something.’
‘Did he say what he was going to do next? Where he was heading after Ewan’s house?’
‘If he had a plan, he didn’t tell me what it was. He just promised me he’d be home soon, and not to worry. But I am, Ben. I’m so desperately worried. He promised to keep in touch. Said he’d call twice a day to tell me where he was and what was happening. But it’s been two whole days and I haven’t heard anything from him at all! I keep imagining all kinds of terrible things. I’m going crazy here on my own. I had to talk to you.’
Ben said nothing for a few moments, thinking about his friend. Boonzie McCulloch was one of the toughest old war dogs Ben had ever known, and he’d known a few. The kind of guy you’d thank God was on your side, and not the enemy’s. Boonzie was also famously reticent when it came to talking about his past exploits. Ben was certain that even Mirella knew only a fraction of what her husband had been through, and survived, in his time.
‘He’s pretty resilient, Mirella. The fact that you haven’t heard from him might not mean he’s in trouble. It’s possible that he’s gone to ground for a while, and can’t call you. Maybe he will, any time now. And then everything will be okay again.’
‘There’s something else,’ she said, in a voice that sounded hollow, drained of energy. ‘Something he’d never have wanted me to tell anyone. He made me swear to keep quiet about it. Like if it was never talked about, it wouldn’t be real any more and it would just go away. But it is real. And it isn’t going away so easily.’
‘I don’t understand. What are you talking about?’
And then she told him about Boonzie’s illness.
Mirella said, ‘I could tell he was having a problem. He seemed tired a lot more often than usual, and sometimes he looked pale. Something was obviously bothering him, but he kept insisting that he was fine and would get irritable if I pestered him about it. Then about six months ago, he finally confessed that he’d been getting increasingly severe chest pains and was becoming worried about them.’
Ben asked, ‘How serious is it?’
‘I persuaded him to see a private specialist in Campobasso. The doctor ran some tests and soon diagnosed heart disease. Said there was a risk of cardiac arrest if the condition was left untreated. Archibald just brushed it off, didn’t want to accept the diagnosis. When we got home, he wouldn’t even talk about it. I was so angry and upset. That man is as stubborn as a mule.’
Tell me about it, Ben thought. He waited anxiously to hear more.
‘Anyway, of course, the pains got worse. Eventually he agreed that something had to be done. Two months ago, he went into hospital to be fitted with a pacemaker.’
This was news, even though Ben and Boonzie kept in touch regularly. ‘I spoke with him just six weeks or so ago. I thought he sounded a little tired, but he never mentioned a single word to me about operations and pacemakers.’
‘And he’d have hated anyone knowing. Even more than he hates having it. He’s not as strong as he used to be, and he has to take all these pills every day. Of course, he works twice as hard to prove himself. But he’s struggling, Ben, I can tell. He’s been getting fainting attacks. I read that some of these defibrillation implants can malfunction sometimes, or that all kinds of complications can happen, even a year after the operation. When he told me he needed to go to Scotland I begged him to stay, but he wouldn’t listen. What if something happened to him there? Why else wouldn’t he have called me again in two whole days?’
‘We don’t know that, Mirella,’ Ben said, lowering his voice to sound more reassuring.
‘I already called the hospital, in case he might have been taken there. It’s in a town called Fort William. The only patient there with the surname McCulloch was his nephew Ewan. But that doesn’t mean nothing has happened. The town is miles from where Ewan lives. It’s a remote place, deep in the hills. Archibald could be out there somewhere, with nobody to help if he got into trouble. He could have fainted again, or had a bad attack, and nobody might even know about it until—’ Mirella’s voice had reached a peak of anxiety and now broke apart into a sob.
Ben was quiet for a long time. Then he said, ‘Tell me the name of the place.’
She read it out for him, struggling with the strange foreign spelling. Ben noted it down and was instantly putting together his plan.
‘Here’s what we’re going to do, Mirella. I’ll get there as quickly as I can. You need to stay by the phone and call me immediately if you hear from him. Okay?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I need as much information from you as possible to help me find him,’ Ben said. ‘For example, did he rent a car at the airport?’ Knowing what kind of vehicle Boonzie was using would be a useful asset. The registration number, even better. There were ways of bluffing that kind of knowledge out of rental companies.
‘He went by train.’
Ben considered the kind of remote local stations the area would have, not a car rental outlet for miles around. ‘Then how’s he travelling?’
‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t worry about it. What about other contacts there? Does he know anyone else in the village, did he mention any names to you? A friend of Ewan’s, perhaps? Or maybe he booked a place to stay, like a hotel or guesthouse?’
‘He never mentioned anything about that to me.’
Ben