The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET. Scott Mariani

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Madeira, St Lucia, Grenada. Remember that little pad we used to rent on Mustique, Leigh?’

      ‘Wasn’t that the place you got bitten on the arse by the monkey, and ended up in hospital?’ Leigh said flatly as she followed them down inside.

      Chris cleared his throat and Ben suppressed a smile.

      ‘It’ll be strange for you, sleeping in the guest quarters instead of the master cabin,’ Chris said to Leigh.

      ‘I’ll survive,’ she said.

      Chris showed Ben into the smallest of the Isolde’s three cabins. ‘You can put your things over there.’ In the light of the cabin he ran his eye up and down Ben’s scuffed old brown leather jacket and tatty-looking green canvas haversack. It looked heavy. Ben wedged it up on top of a storage unit above the bunk. His jacket sleeve rode up as he raised his arms, and Chris noticed the expensive diver’s watch on his wrist.

      Within twenty minutes Mick was ready to cast off. The Isolde’s sails billowed in the breeze as they left the shore behind and headed into open waters.

      Leigh felt obliged to spend time with Chris, so helped him to prepare dinner. Ben could feel her ex-husband’s eye on him and he took the opportunity to retreat to his tiny cabin. He took down his bag, sat back on his bunk and opened up the Mozart file.

      Oliver’s notes were hard to read. Ben gazed for a while at the reference to ‘the Order of R—’. It meant nothing to him, and he tossed the sheet down in frustration.

      On another sheet, Oliver had been writing what looked like some kind of checklist of various historical facts and figures. In red ink he’d scrawled the word ‘ARNO’ and circled it three times. Beside it was a date in late December, just two weeks before Oliver’s death. The writing underneath was burned away and Ben was unable to read it.

      Then there were all the eagles. Oliver was a doodler. The margins that were still intact were filled with little drawings of eagles. Underneath one of them Oliver had scribbled in capitals:

       THE EAGLE?????

      He’d gone over and over the words with his pen until they had worn almost through the paper. It was as though he was trying to make sense out of it, make the words speak to him. Had he understood it in the end?

      By the time Leigh joined him later on, Ben had given up trying to make any sense out of the notes. She handed him a cup of coffee and sat next to him on the narrow bunk.

      ‘How’s it going?’ she said in a low voice. The partitions were thin, and she didn’t want Chris to overhear them.

      ‘Not so good,’ he replied quietly with a shake of the head. He picked up the fallen sheet and showed it to her. ‘I still can’t make out what this Order of R— is about. Then he’s scribbled all this stuff about eagles, and rivers.’

      ‘Rivers?’ She took the paper from him and he pointed out the circled word ‘ARNO’ in red. She peered at it curiously.

      ‘The river Arno is in Florence,’ he said. ‘Was Oliver there? There’s a date next to it.’

      ‘He never said anything about it to me.’

      ‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘It’s important. You’re the only person who knew where Oliver was going and what he was doing.’

      She cupped her chin in her hands. ‘I’ve no idea.’

      ‘Think,’ he urged her.

      ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

      ‘Did the Mozart letter mention the river Arno? Was there anything in it that could have led Oliver to visit Florence?’

      ‘I don’t remember,’ she replied with a note of impatience. ‘It was years ago, for Christ’s sake.’

      ‘Try to remember,’ he said patiently. ‘If we can’t make sense of it we’ve got nothing to go on at all.’

      ‘Unless…’ she said. Her face lit up.

      ‘Unless what?’

      ‘We’re getting it wrong. Arno isn’t the river. Arno is a name.’

      ‘Whose name?’

      ‘The Italian collector,’ she said, remembering clearly now. ‘The one who bought the letter from Dad. He was Professor Arno.’

      Ben remembered the series of digital snaps on the CD-ROM. The old man with the music books behind him in the background. ‘So Oliver went to see him?’

      ‘Must have,’ she said. ‘Which means Arno can’t be dead after all.’

      ‘But where?’

      ‘Ravenna,’ she said. ‘Remember Dante’s tomb? Oliver was there. And Arno taught at a music institute there, if I remember rightly.’

      Ben thought for a moment. ‘Oliver must have wanted to see him about the letter. I think we should pay him a visit too.’

      ‘You think he might still have it?’ she asked.

      ‘He paid a lot of money for it when nobody else would touch it. It seems to me he’d hold on to it.’

      ‘What do you think might be in it?’

      ‘That’s what we’ll have to find out.’

       Chapter Nineteen

      They ate dinner in the yacht’s long saloon. Chris poured out chilled wine and served fish chowder with a green salad.

      ‘Leigh tells me you write film music,’ Ben said.

      Chris nodded. ‘Mostly. You a movie fan, Ben?’

      Ben shrugged. ‘I see the odd thing.’ He tried to remember the name of the last film he’d seen. It had been in Lisbon, on a job, six months ago. The potential informer he’d been tailing had wandered into a cinema. Ben had sat a couple of rows behind. After an hour the man had looked at his watch and left. Ben had followed, and five minutes later the man was lying in a heap down a backstreet. He couldn’t recall a thing about the movie. ‘What ones have you composed for?’ he asked.

      ‘My latest was Outcast, with Hampton Burnley. Know it?’

      Ben shook his head.

      ‘Maybe you’re more of an opera guy,’ Chris said, glancing at Leigh.

      ‘Ben doesn’t get a lot of time for that kind of thing,’ she said.

      ‘So what do you do for a living, Ben?’

      ‘I’m retired.’

      Chris looked surprised. ‘Retired? From what?’

      Ben СКАЧАТЬ