Ben’s heart thumped as he drove on through the gate. This was it. He wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable confrontation.
He parked the Mini inside the Dutch barn, and stepped outside to scan the buildings. What he was about to do didn’t require an audience, not even a close and trusted friend like Jeff Dekker, and Ben was glad that this was happening while he was out of the picture. The whole place seemed deserted, apart from the four German Shepherds, led by Storm, who’d been sleeping in a nest of straw at the back of the barn and now came trotting over to the car to investigate. The dogs quickly picked up the scent of someone in the back.
‘Leave,’ he commanded them in a low voice, and they instantly backed off and retreated to a distance, watching intently with cocked heads and pricked ears as he opened the boot.
Ruth’s eyes glittered in the moonlight, glaring up at him with rage and hate and fear like those of a cornered wildcat. She kicked and writhed as he bent down and lifted her out of the confined space, carried her over to the house and up the stairs to his private apartment. Once upstairs, he used her feet to shove the door shut, then laid her on the sofa and left her there struggling against her bonds while he went to attend to the windows. The whole house had sturdy wooden shutters that could be locked from the inside. Ben had fortified them with heavy-gauge steel wire, and only a really determined intruder with a sledgehammer would have got through them. He didn’t think she could get out too easily, just in case she tried. He secured each window in turn, dropped the keys in his pocket, then fetched a bottle of mineral water from the cupboard and set it down on the low table by the sofa.
Then he kneeled down beside Ruth, gently peeled the tape away from her mouth and ignored the raging stream of abuse she fired at him as he snapped open his clasp knife and carefully sliced the plastic cable-ties around her wrists and ankles. She immediately tried to jump to her feet, and he shoved her back down. She sat glaring at him, rubbing her wrists.
He offered her the mineral water, and she grabbed it from him, took several long swallows and then dashed the bottle in his face. Her eyes blazed as she yelled at him in German. ‘Du
He replied in English, and they were the strangest words he’d ever spoken in his life, a surreal moment that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. ‘It’s me. Ben. Your brother. I’ve brought you home.’
She stared at him for a long moment, her face wild and full of suspicion. ‘You’re not my brother,’ she screamed at him. Just a trace of a German accent. ‘What is this, some kind of twisted fucking joke?’
Ben’s throat felt very tight. ‘You’re Ruth Hope. You couldn’t possibly be anybody else.’
‘You’re a fucking liar,’ she yelled. ‘What have you done with Franz and Rudi?’
‘Relax. Your little Nazi friends are fine. Probably licking their sores and pacing up and down wondering where you are.’
‘Nazis,’ she spat. ‘We’re not Nazis.’
‘I think you’d better start talking to me, right now.’
‘Fuck you.
‘He?’
‘My fucking father. Where is he?’ She looked about her, as if expecting someone to walk into the room and readying herself for the confrontation.
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ he protested. ‘What father?’
‘I’m Luna Steiner,’ she yelled. ‘Do I need to spell it out for you,
It was as though all the air had been sucked out of the room. Ben found it hard to speak.
‘The Steiners don’t have any children,’ he said weakly.
Her face reddened. ‘Who told you that?’ she demanded. ‘That lick-spittle Dorenkamp? Or my bastard pig of a father? Of course they’d say that, wouldn’t they? I’m the dark little secret they want to keep quiet. Easier to pretend I don’t exist.’
Ben reeled with confusion. ‘Listen to me. You are my sister. When you were nine years old—’
But she didn’t let him finish. Her arm flashed out. On the windowsill behind her was the old naval paraffin lamp he still used sometimes when the storms took out the power. She grabbed it and hurled it at him. It was a heavy lump of brass, and it could have put a dent in his skull if he hadn’t ducked out of the way. It smashed into the chest of drawers behind him, splintering the wood.
‘You let me out of here right now!’ she shouted.
‘Not until we talk and straighten this whole thing out. If you’re Steiner’s daughter, then why were you trying to kidnap him?’
‘I need to go to the bathroom.’
‘After. What about Adam O’Connor and his son?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me go.’
‘Why did you want the Kammler papers?’
She stared at him, her rage suddenly giving way to suspicion. ‘What did that bastard tell you about Kammler?’
‘Steiner? I think he told me a pack of lies.’
She snorted. ‘Why am I not surprised?’
‘And you’re going to tell me the truth. I want to know what’s going on.’
‘Why the fuck should I tell you anything? Let me go to the bathroom, unless you want me to piss all over this pretty rug you have here.’
‘All right. You go. But the door stays open.’
‘So you can watch?’
‘I don’t want to watch my sister taking a piss.’
‘I’m not your sister, buddy.’
He grabbed her arm as she strode towards the bathroom, and jerked her round to face him. She tried to get away, but he held her tight.
‘That scar on your arm,’ he said. ‘You want me to tell you how you got it? You were seven years old. We were burning leaves. You, me and our father. Not Maximilian Steiner.
She said nothing. Her whole body was tense.
‘Maybe you remember Polly? She was your horse. A Welsh mountain pony, twelve hands, grey. And then there was your fluffy toy dog. You called him Ringle-the-Wee and you wouldn’t be parted from him. I still have him.’ He pointed. ‘I have a whole box of your things, there under my bed. Things I’ve kept all these years. Do you want to see them? Will that make you believe me?’ He ripped his wallet out of his back pocket, opened it and took out a passport-sized picture. ‘Look at this. It’s you, about a week before you disappeared. I’ve carried it with me everywhere since.’
Ruth glanced at the picture, then stared at him defiantly. ‘Stick it up your ass. Go tell it to your boss.’
Anger seized him then, and he shook her violently. ‘Steiner didn’t send me. He’s not here. We’re not in Switzerland, we’re in France. Normandy, at my place. Steiner doesn’t know you’re here.’
‘Let go of my arm. You’re hurting me.’
He held her tighter. ‘I came looking for you because I wanted to save you, Ruth.’
‘Save me!’
‘From yourself, you stupid little idiot. I don’t know what crazy stuff you’re into. I just know that it’s going to end with you getting arrested or killed, all right? But if you want, if you really want, I only have to call Steiner and he’ll send someone right over to pick you up. I’m sure he’d be very interested to meet the woman who’s been trying to kidnap him. I might even take you there myself.’
Her eyes were full of alarm at his words. She twisted furiously against his grip. ‘Let go of me!’ she screamed at him.
