Fifth Victim

deco tome on the coffee table in front of him, as if he’d developed a sudden fascination in the work of Clarice Cliff.

Even without their surname, Mr and Mrs Benelli were clearly Italian, from their Mediterranean skin tone and stature, to their clothing style and temperament. Mrs Benelli, in particular, could have been listed as the simple dictionary definition of voluble.

‘Tell her!’ she snapped now, and when that didn’t produce instant results, she leant across and cuffed him across the back of the head with her open palm. Serious injury would have resulted if she’d used the back of her hand instead. She wore gold rings on every finger, like some kind of ornamental gemstone knuckledusters.

Benedict flinched away from the blow with more annoyance than pain. His mother was barely five feet tall, even in her stout heels, and probably almost the same in circumference.

‘Tell her that you cut off your own finger, that you disfigured yourself! And for what?’ She appealed to me, talking with her hands as much as her voice. ‘So he wouldn’t have to work hard, that’s what!’ She shook her head, dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. ‘Your father and I, we came here and we started from nothing. Nothing! We worked our hands to the bone, and for what? To give our family the chance of a better life. And this is how you repay us? You bring the police to our door!’

‘Mama, I never meant—’

That was as much of a protest as Benedict managed before his mother was off again, jewellery vibrating like a seismic recorder in an earthquake zone.

‘To what?’ she shrieked. ‘To cheat money out of us? Is that how we brought you up? To lie to your own flesh and blood? To steal from us? Already today we have lied to the police for you. We told them you had an accident with your hand, that it was nothing to do with these kidnappings.’ She slapped her hand down on the arm of the sofa, punctuating her words. ‘No. More. Lies! The girl is missing. She is in danger. You tell her what she wants to know, Benedetto.’

Mr Benelli, meanwhile, sat in glowering silence at the other end of the sofa. His dark eyes flicked occasionally to his son and reminded me of a Rottweiler – capable of intense emotion and also of showing no humanity at all.

I waited a beat to see if Benedict’s mother was going to launch another broadside, or his father was going to bite somebody, before I turned my gaze onto the boy himself.

‘Was it you who originally made contact with Lennon?’ I asked. I’d chosen the question carefully, intending to drip onto him how much I appeared to know, without giving away how little that really was. It didn’t quite get the reaction I’d been hoping for.

‘Who?’ Benedict demanded, with enough genuine confusion and anger to ring true.

‘Answer her!’ Mrs Benelli yelled, fetching him another stinging blow round the back of the head.

‘Mrs Benelli, please,’ I protested, torn between letting her beat some sense into him, and managing to get some sense out of him before brain damage set in.

‘I don’t know any names,’ Benedict muttered, trying to rub his sore scalp and make it look like he was smoothing his hair down instead. ‘Manda knows. She got me into this.’ As he spoke, he flicked his eyes towards his mother. Her lips thinned expressively at the name and she folded her hands under her ample bosom. I found myself mentally wanting to do the same thing.

Manda Dempsey. No surprises there. I might have known that new leaf was just a version of the old one.

‘How long have you known her?’

‘I guess she was around, but I never noticed her ’til after she was kidnapped. She was … different afterward.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know – kinda empowered. We got to be friends.’

Mrs Benelli restricted herself to a powerful harrumph.

‘So, she talked you into it.’ I tried that one on him to see how it fit. He grabbed the metaphorical lifebelt with both hands.

‘Yes! She kept on about how easy it was – to gain independence. Not to have to go crawling to anybody for money.’

‘Like normal people have to,’ I said dryly. ‘Who crawl to their bosses, or their customers, every working day of their lives.’

‘Benedict will be working from now on, and he will be working hard,’ his mother said fiercely. ‘He will start right at the bottom, like his father, in the factory. And he will work his way up. Any money he gets from now on, he will earn!’

I suppressed a sigh as Benedict’s face closed up again. Reminding him of what he’d lost – and what he had to lose – was not going to get him to talk more openly. The Benellis were, I reflected, as protective and obstructive in their own way as Orlando’s father had been.

‘So, did Manda also recruit Dina and Torquil, or was it your turn?’

Colour lit along his cheekbones. ‘I knew Dina wanted to get involved,’ he admitted. ‘That’s why we went to that stupid party – to meet with her and talk about it. And that was our big mistake.’

I wondered briefly how he managed to narrow down one error among so many others. ‘In what way?’

‘That’s where Tor found out what we’d been doing. How were we to know he had that goddamn stateroom wired?’

His mother made another protest, but a more automatic one this time, more at the language than the meaning.

I remembered Orlando’s flustered reaction, the day she and Manda had come to see Dina after Torquil had been snatched, when I’d told her he liked to record what went on aboard the family yacht. I’d thought that, like Nicola Eisenberg before her, Orlando might have been caught in some kind of compromising position of her own. But it was clear Torquil had captured more than just sexual indiscretions.

‘So he knew about the fake kidnaps and he tried to blackmail you, is that it?’

There was a flash in Benedict’s eyes. ‘He wanted in, but of course he wanted his to be bigger and better than all the others,’ he said, bitter. ‘But we knew we couldn’t trust him not to shoot his mouth off. Especially after the fiasco at the riding club. He was gonna blow the whole—’

He broke off suddenly, realising that what he’d been about to say sounded very much like motive for wanting Torquil out of the way. Permanently. Mr Benelli’s eyes flickered in his direction, and I swear I heard an almost subliminal growl start up somewhere deep in the man’s chest, although it might simply have been the air con cycling.

I asked quietly, ‘So, what did you decide to do about that? Kidnap him to keep him quiet, and then shut him up for good?’

‘No!’ The fear in Benedict’s face was stark and uncompromising, but I didn’t necessarily take it as a sign that he was innocent. ‘I had nothing to do with that.’ It seemed to be a company line.

‘So, who arranged the “fiasco” at the riding club? How did you get in touch with the guys who made the attempt?’

He shrugged. ‘I didn’t. Manda and Orlando handled it. They told the guys where and when, gave them the details. I didn’t know any of it.’

Didn’t want to know. Hmm, maybe Benedict wasn’t an entirely lost cause. His mother’s plan for hard labour might either break or make him.

‘And Torquil?’

‘I don’t know!’ His voice was almost a shout, eyes darting towards his mother as if expecting to dodge another blow. She kept her hands clasped in her lap with an obvious effort of will. ‘I swear! I. Don’t. Know.’

I stared at him for a long time, but his gaze remained defiant and unblinking. I wondered, if he’d been alone, how long it would have taken me to get any more out of him. Too bad I wouldn’t find that out.

‘OK, Benedict,’ I said wearily. ‘Just remember, though, that the cops will be back, and they really don’t like being lied to. Try it with the Feds and you’ll find yourself on the first plane to Cuba. And people like the Eisenbergs will not let things like this go unpunished.’ I rose, gave him a last hard stare. ‘There are worse places to spend the next twenty-five years than the factory floor.’

It was just before noon. Dina had been missing almost twenty-six hours. I was willing to bet that, wherever she was right now, it had to be worse than anywhere Benedict’s parents could devise.