Skid looked blank. ‘As in reading your star signs kind of prophecy?’

‘She’s a biblical archaeologist,’ Ben said. ‘So, as in Bible prophecy. She told someone that the money was somehow tied up with it.’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Skid replied. ‘How could a Bible prophecy make her rich? Like I said, she had some angle on Cleaver.’

‘Forget it,’ Ben said. ‘It’s not important.’

The door opened, without warning. Skid jumped and made a grab for the shotgun. The pump action was racked halfway back on its rails when he relaxed and laid it down again. He slumped back in the chair.

Molly locked the door behind her and walked into the room carrying a six-pack of beer. She dumped it on the bed. ‘Time for your pills, honey,’ she told Skid.

The lawyer nodded sadly. ‘And that’s all I have to tell you,’ he said to Ben. ‘If it wasn’t for Molly here, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.’

Molly walked over to his chair and laid a hand softly on his shoulder. With the other hand she wiped away a tear. Skid stroked her arm. There was tension between them, but there was tenderness too.

‘I didn’t want her to go to meet you,’ Skid said. ‘It was her idea. She’s a brave lady.’

‘What are you going to do now?’ Ben asked.

‘What else is there for a broke-down, penniless drunken cripple to do? I’m stuck here.’

‘You can’t stay here for ever.’

‘I’ll stay here till Cleaver forgets about me. Or till I die, whichever happens first. I can’t go home, can’t go anywhere. They find me, they’ll kill me. Might as well drink myself to death right here in this chair.’ Skid glanced up at Molly, who was smiling down at him through her tears. ‘What can I say?’ he said. ‘The day I ran into Zoë Bradbury was the day I just screwed my life up into a little ball and threw it in the fire. I’ve lost everything. And I lost the best woman a man could wish for.’

‘You didn’t lose me,’ she whispered. She leaned down and kissed his clammy forehead.

Skid turned and stared at Ben. ‘What about you? What happens next?’

‘I think I should pay a visit to Miss Augusta Vale,’ Ben said.

‘I have the number,’ Skid said.

‘Good. And then I want to talk to Clayton Cleaver.’ Ben reached for his wallet. ‘But first there’s one more thing you can do for me.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You can sell me that big revolver of yours. I have a feeling I might need it.’

It was late by the time Molly drove Ben back to Hinesville. She squeezed his hand and wished him good luck. He smiled and watched her take off into the rainy night, then climbed into the Chrysler and headed for Savannah. In his canvas bag on the seat behind him was Skid’s Freedom Arms.475 Linebaugh hunting revolver and a box of hollowpoint shells.

Ben drove into Savannah and checked into a hotel. For a long time that night, he sat in his room pondering and staring out of the open window across the Savannah river. He was dead tired but sleep was impossible with a thousand thoughts swirling in his mind.

If things had seemed unclear when he was in Greece, the picture was fuller now. And uglier. Working through the pieces, he could see that the chances of finding Zoë Bradbury alive had just slipped further away.

So now he knew the name of the rich, powerful figure who’d felt threatened enough by her to take some kind of drastic action. A hundred million dollars and aspirations to the Governorship of Georgia – you couldn’t get much richer and more powerful than that, without going all the way to the top.

He also knew now why the name Cleaver had been in her address book. How and why Zoë had been blackmailing him was still a mystery. But one thing was clear: she’d named too high a price. Ten million was easily enough to get him thinking about ways to avoid paying her. From his point of view, he had no way of knowing that he could trust her not to keep coming back again and again. He’d pay her the ten, then a year or two later, if what she had on him was really such a threat to him, she could pop up wanting another ten. And on and on, until she’d bled him dry. Once she’d tasted the money, she might never go away.

There was only one way to eliminate the threat properly and permanently. The logic was chilling, but Ben saw that it was the only answer to Cleaver’s dilemma. Zoë’s life was worth a lot less than ten million dollars.

That left Skid McClusky. From Cleaver’s point of view, the lawyer was just another loose end needing to be tied up. The first attempt had failed, but sooner or later Cleaver would get him, and McClusky knew it. He wasn’t going to stop until he’d silenced anyone who might know anything about this. First Nikos Karapiperis, then Charlie.

Now him. It all suddenly made very clear sense. If Ben didn’t go after Cleaver and put an end to this, Cleaver might very well put an end to him. A hundred million buys a lot of hitmen, and there would be no way to anticipate when and where one might turn up.

As he sat and worked his way through the mini-bar and his cigarettes, his thoughts turned to Tom and Jane Bradbury. How was he going to tell them that their daughter was almost certainly dead?

Then he shoved that thought behind him. He could worry about it later. For now, there was just one objective. Get Clayton Cleaver.

The next day dawned in a blaze of sunshine. Ben waited until just after nine, then called the number Skid McClusky had given him for Augusta Vale. A grave, solemn man’s voice answered with, ‘The Vale residence.’ Ben explained that he was a close friend of the Bradbury family, just happened to be passing through Savannah, and was hoping to pay Miss Vale a visit. In an even graver voice the man told him to hold on.

When Miss Vale came on the phone, Ben liked her immediately. She sounded like a strong, confident old lady. Her tone was formal, but there was a glowing warmth to it. She told him how delighted she was to hear from a friend of the Bradburys. Why didn’t he come over for coffee? She had some affairs to attend to, but she’d be free after eleven.

Ben used the spare time to explore the old town and buy some clothes. He went for smart, casual and simple – crisp black jeans, white shirt, black jacket. Then he went back to the hotel, and drove the Chrysler to the Vale residence in the Squares.

It was more than a house. The towering white colonial-style mansion stood away from the street, surrounded by verdant gardens filled with flowers and trees. He walked up to the front door and was met by the solemn, deep-voiced man he’d spoken to on the phone. The butler ushered him inside the house, into a wide entrance hall with chequered marble floor and gilt-framed paintings on the walls.

‘May I take your bag, sir?’ the butler asked.

‘I’ll hold on to it, if that’s OK,’ Ben said.

A grandfather clock chimed eleven as the butler led the way to the drawing-room. He knocked, pushed open a set of polished walnut doors and announced, ‘Mr Hope to see you, ma’am.’

Miss Augusta Vale stood up and walked across the room towards Ben, smiling. She was tall, upright and very elegant, maybe seventy-five years old but radiantly beautiful. Her skin and teeth were perfect and her hair was more platinum than grey. She was wearing a string of pearls over a silk blouse and a black tailored skirt. She offered her hand, and a diamond glittered in the sunlight that streamed through the bay windows.

‘So pleased to meet you, Mr Hope.’

‘Please call me Ben.’

‘Ben. Is that short for Benjamin?’

‘Benedict,’ he said. ‘But everyone calls me Ben.’

‘But Benedict is such a very fine name,’ she replied firmly, as though deciding that that was what she was going to call him.

She invited him to sit down, and asked the butler to bring coffee and cake. She lowered herself daintily into what looked like a Louis XIV settee. Underneath it, a small Pekingese dog eyed him suspiciously and growled quietly.