he’d been staring at her. He quickly introduced Sabrina, and Brooke said hello and led them both inside.
Stepping into Brooke’s home felt a little strange to Ben, foreign yet oddly familiar, like a deja-vu experience. Everything about the place – from the big comfy armchairs, to the cushions strewn everywhere, to the pine cones in the fireplace and the vases of fresh flowers and enormous pot plants that sat about on the polished wood floor – somehow spoke of her,
‘It’s so kind of you to put me up,’ Sabrina said.
‘It’ll be nice to have some company,’ Brooke replied warmly. ‘Now, I suppose you guys must want some breakfast.’
‘Just some coffee,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not staying.’
‘Would you mind if I freshened up first?’ Sabrina asked.
‘Sure. The bathroom’s through there. Help yourself. There are towels in the airing cupboard.’
Sabrina left, and Ben stood about in the kitchen as Brooke made coffee. She served it in mugs and handed him one. His had a picture of the Pink Panther on it, and hers had Paddington Bear. She dribbled in a spoonful of honey, held the mug in both hands the way he liked, and sipped.
‘Nice place,’ he said, looking around him. The coffee was hot and strong. He took a big gulp and felt better. ‘A bit more sophisto than Le Val.’
‘I love Le Val,’ she said. ‘I’d swap it for this place any day.’
‘I love it too,’ he said quietly. Felt a twinge as he remembered the troubles there waiting for him.
‘Won’t you sit down? You look tired.’
‘I’m fine.’
She looked at him with concern. ‘What’s happening, Ben? Last time I saw you, you were running off to Bruges. Where now?’
‘Germany,’ he said.
‘Ruth?’
He nodded. ‘It’s her, Brooke. I saw a picture. No doubts.’
‘I really hope you find her. Just remember what I said, about asking for help if you need it.’
‘I haven’t forgotten.’
‘There’s danger, isn’t there?’ she said, anxiously.
‘A bit,’ he admitted. He finished the last of the coffee, put down the empty Pink Panther mug and turned to go. ‘You be careful, won’t you?’
‘Don’t worry about me.’
‘That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me, Ben Hope. Of course I worry about you. You drive me completely nuts with worry sometimes.’ Her cheeks had flushed red, and Ben was taken aback by the depth of emotion in her voice. She stepped quickly over towards him, put her arms around him and pressed her ear to his chest. Then looked up at him, and there was a tear rolling out of her eye and across the curve of her cheek. He reached up and gently dabbed it away with his fingers. Kissed her gently on the forehead. Then moved his mouth down and kissed her cheek, tasted the salty taste of the tear. Her skin felt soft against his lips.
She tensed and pulled away from him. ‘Don’t play with me,’ she said quietly.
He frowned. ‘I’m not.’
‘I know you don’t like me,’ she said.
‘What are you talking about? Of course I like you. I like you a lot.’
‘But not the way I like you, Ben. Get it now?’ The words seemed to come out against her will, as if they’d been kept submerged for a long time and she hadn’t meant for them to come bubbling up.
He said nothing. Just looked at her, and could see the anguish in her face. It was a look he’d never seen before. It quickly turned to an angry blush, and she stepped away from him and went back to her coffee.
‘Shit. I shouldn’t have said that. Forget it, OK?’
Ben couldn’t find the words for what he wanted to say. Before he had a chance to speak, Sabrina walked into the room, bringing a wafting scent of soap with her.
‘I’d better be going,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
Ben dropped the travel-stained Audi off at the rental place at Heathrow, boarded a flight for Brussels, and less than an hour later he was firing up his Mini for the drive to the Black Forest.
By late afternoon he was arriving in the town of Offenburg near the French–German border, a postcard- perfect little place surrounded by vineyards and filled with quaint old timber-frame houses and churches, outdoor markets and flower gardens. He checked into a small hotel, showered and then went down to the lobby to scour a regional business directory for local firms selling anything related with ceramics. There were a few arts and crafts shops around Offenburg, a gallery and a local pottery somewhere just outside the town that looked promising. By the time he’d worked up his list, the hotel bar was opening. He was first in. Downed a glass of Schnapps and then hit the road, deciding to start with the closest place and work his way outwards.
As detective work went, this was doing it the old-fashioned way, the hard way. In each of the ceramics and crafts shops he went to, showing the people there the picture taken by Lenny Salt that he’d transferred onto his phone, he got either a suspicious look followed by an offhand ‘never seen her’ or a completely blank stare. Then he tried the art gallery, but a guy in a suit who might have been a funeral director informed him that they dealt only with paintings.
The warmth of the day was cooling as the sun began its downward dip in the sky, and the wind was picking up. Ben’s list was running a little short by now, but there was still the pottery shop on the edge of town. He found it easily enough, a kilometre or so into the peaceful countryside.
He’d been expecting something in keeping with the neat, prim little town nearby. This wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind. The place was thirty yards back off the road at the end of a rutted driveway. As he stepped out of the car, some rangy chickens pecking in the dirt scattered and ran. A rusted sign for the pottery creaked to and fro in the breeze, and the stone buildings were just a year or two from dereliction, with the roof sagging dramatically in the middle. He walked around the building. The only sign of life about the place was the singing of the birds in the trees overhead. Weeds tufted up thickly through the cracked paving, and when he peered through the grimy window panes he saw nothing but uninhabited rooms littered with junk.
A little further up the road, Ben came across a farmhouse and knocked on the door. There was a furious barking of dogs inside, and then the sound of locks and bolts being opened before the door swung ajar and a little old man with a white beard squinted up at him and asked what he wanted. A Jack Russell terrier snarled at Ben from behind his legs.
‘It closed down six, seven months ago,’ the old man said when Ben asked him about the pottery place. ‘Empty now.’
Ben showed him the picture. ‘I wondered if you might have seen this woman there?’
The old man screwed up his face and peered at it, his nose almost touching the screen. ‘She might have been one of them. Might not. Hard to say, I don’t remember too good. There was a bunch of them in the place. Young people. They ran it together. Like hippies.’
‘You mean like a co-operative?’
‘Something like that,’ the old man said with a shrug.
Ben asked if he knew who owned the building. The old man shrugged again, then shut the door and Ben heard the rattle of the locks and bolts.
He looked at his watch. It was getting too late in the day to make the kind of calls he needed to make to track the owners down. He dragged his heels back to the car and drove off.
So far, things weren’t looking too promising. Maybe a forty per cent chance that this was even the right place. And a ninety per cent chance that its former occupants could be just about anywhere in Europe now.
Missing scientists. An SS general with a strange secret. A snatch attempt against a wealthy industrialist. And now some kind of bohemian commune that sold ceramics out of a semi-derelict farm shop in the Black Forest
