Читать книгу The Doomsday Prophecy - Scott Mariani, Scott Mariani - Страница 25

Ben checked out of the hospital still feeling drained and numb. He shambled out of the glass doors and into the hot morning sun, hardly feeling the warmth on his face. His mind was blank as he stood there on the pavement, not knowing what to do next.

Approaching footsteps made him turn: two men. One had a camera, the other a notebook. Reporters. They were looking right at him.

‘You are the man who saved the little boy,’ the one with the notebook said. ‘Can we ask you some questions?’

‘Not now,’ Ben replied quietly.

‘Later? Here is my card.’ The reporter pressed it in Ben’s hand. Ben just nodded. He felt too weary to say more. The photographer raised his camera and fired off a few snaps. Ben didn’t try to stop him.

As the reporters were turning to go, a Corfu Police four-wheel drive pulled up with a screech of tyres at the edge of the pavement. The doors opened and two men climbed out, one in uniform and one in plain clothes. The plain-clothes officer was short and dumpy, bald-headed with a trim beard.

They walked up to him. ‘Mr Hope?’ the plain-clothes officer said in English. He reached into his jacket and took out an ID card. ‘I am Captain Stephanides, Corfu police. I would like you to come with me, please.’

Ben said nothing. He let them usher him into the back of the four-wheel drive. Stephanides climbed in after him, said something in Greek to the driver and the car sped off. Then he turned to Ben.

‘You are leaving hospital early? I was expecting to find you still in bed.’

‘I’m fine,’ Ben said.

‘Last time I saw you, you were lying on a stretcher covered in blood.’

‘Just a couple of cuts. Others got it a lot worse.’

Stephanides nodded gravely.

In less than ten minutes they had passed through a police security point and were pulling up at the back of a large headquarters building. Stephanides bundled out of the car and asked Ben to follow him. They walked inside the air-conditioned building, into a comfortable office.

‘Please take a seat,’ Stephanides said.

‘What is it I can help you with, Captain?’

‘Just a few questions.’ Stephanides rested his weight on the edge of the desk, one chubby leg swinging. He smiled. ‘People are calling you a hero.’

‘It was nothing,’ Ben said.

‘Before you acted to save young Aris Thanatos, you were with one of the victims on the terrace of the establishment.’

Ben nodded.

‘I must ask you whether you noticed anything strange or suspicious?’

‘Nothing at all,’ Ben said.

Stephanides nodded, picked up a notepad from the desk beside him. ‘The victim in question. Charles Palmer. Was this man a friend of yours?’

‘We were in the army together,’ Ben said. ‘I’m retired now.’

‘And what was the nature and purpose of your visit to Corfu?’

Ben had known men like Stephanides for a long time. He was smiling and working hard to come across as kindly and unthreatening, but he was deadly serious. The questioning was dangerous, and Ben had to focus hard to avoid saying the wrong thing. ‘I was here for Charlie. He needed my advice about something. But I never got to find out what it was. The bomb happened first.’

Stephanides nodded again and made a note in his pad. ‘And this advice, you have no idea why it could not have been given by phone or email?’

‘I prefer to talk face to face,’ Ben said.

The cop grunted. ‘So you came all this way just to have a conversation, not even knowing what it was going to be about?’

‘That’s right.’

‘That strikes me as being rather extravagant.’

‘I enjoy travelling,’ Ben said.

‘What is your line of business, Mr Hope?’

‘I’m a student. Of theology. Christ Church, Oxford. You can check that.’

Stephanides raised his eyebrows and made another note on his pad. ‘I suppose that would explain why you were carrying a Bible with you.’ He glanced up. ‘There are things about your friend that concern me. He was here asking questions about an Englishwoman.’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Ben said.

Stephanides raised his eyebrows. The look that flashed through his eyes said gotcha. ‘This is not what his wife, Mrs Palmer, told me last night. She told me Mr Palmer was working for you to find this Miss Bradbury.’

Ben closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He’d walked right into that one.

‘I have seven bodies in the morgue,’ Stephanides said. ‘And another eleven people who have suffered injury. One will never see again. Another will never walk again. Someone planted a bomb in the middle of my town, and I will find out who and why.’