The Cortés Trilogy: Enigma Revenge Revelation Read online

  Danny waved in the direction of the doorway, and Valeria hurried into the lobby. She looked at Ben briefly as he handed her the key; despite the obvious similarities between the man and the face from the recent newspapers, even a brief glimpse was enough to notice the differences. The man was younger, unquestionably, and more raw.

  A young man.

  And a modern man.

  “I sure hope it comes with a shower.”

  Danny smiled. “Yes, sir. All of our rooms have en suite.”

  Ben adjusted his wet hair a second time and followed Valeria up the stairs. His footsteps thudded to a predictable pattern on the uncarpeted surface, the sound becoming ever louder as he reached the landing. They continued up the second set and then along a narrow corridor illuminated by a series of small yellow lights and lined by doorways and cream-coloured walls.

  Standing behind the desk, Danny listened as the footsteps changed direction, taking the corridor and approaching the door.

  Then the noise faded.

  *

  Valeria unlocked the door to room seventeen and stepped aside for Ben to enter. As the light came on, he turned to see Valeria standing in the doorway, her hand still touching the switch. In the light her white blouse was semi-transparent, revealing a strong black bra that covered a well-developed chest.

  “Is everything to your satisfaction, sir?” she asked, with a slight trace of her native accent on her near perfect English.

  He looked at her, her eyes, her breasts, her legs. Finally he smiled. “Perfect, thank you.”

  “Should you have any problems, the night manager will be behind the desk.”

  “Thanks.”

  She smiled and left the room, closing the door behind her.

  Now alone and soaked through, Ben placed his bag and suitcase down on the floor and removed his jacket, hanging it up on the radiator. His T-shirt was soaked, despite the jacket, and his jeans weighed him down like lead. Water dripped on to the floor, leaving stains on the rough red carpet.

  It was obvious from the room’s appearance it hadn’t been redecorated in recent times.

  Removing his wet clothes, he entered the shower.

  *

  Chris was reading in his room when Ben knocked on his door. He put down his book, a guidebook of the islands, and opened the door to find Ben wearing clean jeans, a black T-shirt, and with hair that looked surprisingly well presented.

  “Let me guess? You’ve met the waitress?”

  Ben pushed past him, carrying a black rucksack. He placed it down on a desk in the corner of the room and unzipped one of the pockets, removing a fifteen-inch MacBook laptop, which he plugged into a wall socket and switched on.

  “Dr Phillips sent me everything she had,” he said of the local academic he had arranged to meet in two days’ time. A folder on the laptop’s desktop opened immediately; he had been feeling so tired on the flight he had forgotten to shut it down properly. There were several photographs in the folder, accompanied by a pdf document, all of which were recent.

  “Apparently this one’s the newest.”

  Chris looked at the photographs over Ben’s shoulder. The most recent was of a shipwreck, presently being salvaged.

  “Where’s the Dunster now?” Ben asked.

  “No idea,” Chris replied. “According to the local paper, it was salvaged by some local fisherman.”

  “Name?”

  “No idea.”

  Ben yawned and clicked again on the mouse, bringing up the next selection. Each photo was similar: an ageing boat covered in silt. The wood was deeply rotted, leaving the structure severely unstable. Judging by the pictures, everything had been badly damaged.

  Ben turned and looked thoughtfully at Chris. “How was it?”

  “Strange. There was no skin left, but the skeleton was intact, almost perfect.”

  His description matched what Ben had already heard. “Any progress on . . . you know?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” Chris picked up a small object from the nearby table. “Musket ball, discovered somewhere in the lower skull. Even in his day and age, not particularly modern.”

  Ben took it, feeling it with his fingers and palm. The hard rounded surface felt like a large pellet in his hand.

  Chris looked to one side, noticing the rucksack. “Did you bring them?”

  “Yep.” Ben unzipped the next pocket and removed the four books he had taken from his grandmother’s attic. He had passed the time studying them on the flight.

  Chris moved to the bedside table and picked up a fifth, leather cased and similar in appearance to the others.

  Ben was awestruck. “Oh my.”

  “He carried it in a pocket bag.”

  Ben took it, sliding his finger and thumb gently across the hundred-year-old cover. The book was ink-written as opposed to being printed, clearly a diary.

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Haven’t got past the opening few pages. Seems Nana was right after all. The old boy came here originally to look for graves of relatives – guys by the name of Wilcox. Then he came back a year later looking for Aztec gold.”

  Ben smiled, a smile that developed into a broad grin. He had heard the stories since he was a kid, but till now he was still to find physical evidence of his ancestor’s final voyage.

  Now, at last, he had proof that the family legend was possibly true after all.

  *

  Standing behind the reception desk, Valeria examined the form the newcomer had just completed. Based on the information in front of her, he was thirty-two, four years older than his cousin, and lived in a small town somewhere in New Hampshire.

  She knew enough about America to know it explained their accents.

  Again she recognised the name. It was the same surname, Maloney. Different Christian name.

  Ben.

  Alone in the quietness of the inn’s 16th century lobby, the Spanish waitress finished her business with the newcomer’s entry and opened a black padded journal, located next to a half-finished cup of coffee. She had begun keeping a diary the day she had arrived, back when she was still treasure hunting. Seven years later, she was still writing.

  She opened it to the newest page and immediately began to write.

  Valladolid, Spain, 9 p.m.

  The archives were deserted apart from them. Even though it was officially closed, their attendance was not questioned.

  It had been sanctioned by the highest possible authority.

  Assisted by the dim glow of the nearest lamp, the three men continued with their efforts to uncover the manuscript in question. They had searched high and low, there and other places, Spain and abroad.

  They had searched relentlessly.

  By 10 p.m., they had finally found it, located in the place where the expert said it would be. The manuscript was old, and written on vellum parchment. It had been created at a time when materials were scarce.

  But it had been made to survive.

  The leader of the three examined the cover and began reading the content; as expected it was written in his native tongue and included several diagrams.

  He moved to the light, concentrating on what he saw. The answer was staring him in the face.

  The decisive clue would be found inside the grave.

  The First Day

  4

  6:30 a.m.

  Ben was awake before the sun was up. The alarm clock on his bedside table, a small digital radio with a red display, was flashing and buzzing simultaneously, an annoying whining sound that he already hated.

  He was used to being an early riser, but today he had even less of a desire to stay in bed. His mind was troubled, just as it had been when he heard the news. Still it failed to sink in. Ever since he was a small child, Dr Thomas Francis Maloney, the man his family knew as TF, had been the closest thing in his life to a role model. The news of the discovery had hit him hard, like a gun being fired at his head.

  He had never before considered the possibili
ty his ancestor had been murdered.

  By 1 a.m. he had finally gone to bed, but despite the jet lag, sleep had refused to come easily. He had passed the flight reading the books his grandmother had lent him, each one of potential relevance to TF’s life and career.

  The first was a diary, an account of his past voyages and explorations, ranging from a trip to Zambia with David Livingstone to hiking in the glens of Scotland.

  Ben guessed it wouldn’t be directly relevant to his present enquiries.

  The second was a history book concentrating on Aztec mythology. Like himself, that had supposedly been TF’s forte; he had spent his academic career at Cambridge, writing and lecturing on European history, including the Spanish colonisation of the New World.

  Rumour had it he uncovered a few things along the way.

  The third was a 17th century biography of the English seafarer, Sir Walter Raleigh. He looked the book up on Amazon and found no trace of it.

  Judging by the binding, it was rare.

  The final one was a notepad; Ben deduced from the content that TF had been translating passages of a medieval Latin chronicle. He recognised the chronicler’s name, John Leland, but it wasn’t until he looked him up online that he fully understood who the man was. According to the Internet, he had travelled extensively around England in the 1500s, including the Isles of Scilly, cataloguing events and places.

  Ben presumed there was something there TF had found of interest.

  He still couldn’t get over the fifth book. His grandmother had spoken of it, but never owned it. It was the man’s final diary, the lost diary.

  The book that would, hopefully, shed light on his final days.

  Lying on the bed, his eyes at last fully open, Ben looked up at the ceiling and then at the horizon through the open curtains. Even without the LED display on the clock, he could tell it was still early. In the distance, the sun was slowly starting to rise. Vague hints of red, distorted by white cloud, shone brightly in all directions. The sea was calm, the gentle tide lapping under the gravity of the dying moon. Further away still, he could see the island of Tresco, the second largest of the Isles of Scilly.

  One of over a hundred.

  Somewhere among them his ancestor had met his end.

  Removing the duvet from on top of his legs, Ben lowered his feet down on to the carpet and for the first time took in the surroundings. Like most in the building he had seen so far, the walls were white with the usual furnishings, the decoration primarily nautical. A number of A5-sized prints hung from the walls, some depicting the history of the island as far back as the 1600s. Others were of the building itself, again from the same era. It had always been an inn – even before the English Civil War. Supposedly it had once been a favourite haunt of soldiers of the Crown.

  Including his ancestor.

  He looked again at the clock, noticing three minutes had passed. In no mood to relax, he got to his feet and began to get changed.

  *

  Adrian Nicholl had been thirty-seven when he purchased the Gibbous Moon. Once upon a time he had owned three establishments on the island, but in the last ten years that had fallen to two. Further back in time, he had made his name as a hotelier on the mainland, his empire stretching from Land’s End to Tintagel. He had made a mint selling up in time for the recession, and even more starting again when it finished. Rather than staying in Cornwall, he had crossed the sea to the Isles of Scilly.

  Emigrated, some had said.

  Now aged sixty-seven, he was semi-retired, prone to gout, and preferred fishing and whisky to work. Officially, he was still the manager.

  At least it was his name that still appeared above the door.

  Nicholl was in his office at just after 7:30 a.m. He looked up as he heard a light tap on the door, and espied a well-built man dressed in white trousers, a navy blue polo shirt, and with long, dark hair that was neatly combed back and kept in place by some kind of gel or paste.

  “Mr Nicholl?” the man asked, his accent clearly American. “May I bother you for a second?”

  Nicholl put his pen down and raised his hand to his face. Like the man in front of him, he was bearded, though his was white and bushy as opposed to short stubble, and effectively hid a small scar on his right cheek. The stranger had an air of a celebrity about him, though without the obvious glamour. More likely he was the kind of far-fetched, New Age university lecturer who valued being cool over intelligence, he mused. His polo shirt, despite its comfortable fit, flattered the tone of his biceps yet without resorting to tasteless vulgarity.

  “My name is Ben Maloney. I checked in late last night. Guessing you were probably in bed at the time.”

  Nicholl smiled at the newcomer. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr Maloney.” He offered his hand. “Didn’t I also have the pleasure of meeting your relative recently, too?”

  “Probably,” Ben replied. “He’s never really been much of an early riser.”

  “I’ve been reading up about your great-great-grandfather ever since the news broke.” He pointed to a photograph of TF’s remains in the local paper. Alongside it was a portrait of the academic at Cambridge in his heyday. “Now I’ve seen you in real life, I can honestly say I don’t see even the slightest resemblance.”

  Ben grinned as Nicholl tossed the paper across the desk.

  “I must say how sorry I am about everything that has happened this past week. It’s not every day you come across the remains of an ancestor.”

  “Fortunately, after a hundred years, we’d given up hope of finding him alive!” Ben smiled, eyeing the interior. Like his room on the second floor, the island’s seafaring tradition was the flavour, with countless keepsakes, prints, and original artwork decorating the brown wooden walls.

  He guessed not much had changed recently.

  “I hope your flight over was okay – the weather we’ve been having here of late has been truly shocking,” Nicholl said, gesturing again to the local newspaper, where reports of recent winds and floods featured prominently on the front cover. “Of course, had the weather been different, the boat would probably never have come loose. Incredible, isn’t it, how something so big can remain hidden for so long?”

  “I really can’t wait to inspect the site myself.”

  Nicholl smiled. “So what can I do for you, Mr Maloney?”

  “Well, in all honesty, I was hoping you might be able to fill in a few gaps. I had thought that I would probably get to be the one to tell you this, but it seems you already know, my great-great-grandfather stayed in this very inn before he disappeared.”

  “Well, what can I say? You know, a hundred years ago travel between the Scillies and the mainland was a lot less common than it is today. Back then, it could take up to twenty-four hours just to cross to Penzance. Before the development of the trawlers, the Gibbous Moon had been one of only two inns on the island.”

  “Matter of fact, he stayed here twice.”

  “Is that a fact? Well, even in those days we always did like to please the customer.”

  A wry smile. “Speaking of which, I was hoping I might be able to do a little research. Between you and me, I have my suspicions my great-great-grandfather’s death was not exactly accidental . . . are there any records, local stories about when my ancestor was here that you know of?”

  “In truth, I only wish I knew. I understand Dr Maloney’s visit was really quite significant – even today, it’s not every day an event of this magnitude occurs in this part of the world. We’re a peaceful little community on St Mary’s. Most of the fishermen are experienced, but our past record for shipwrecks is sadly among the worst in the world. I understand the boat was found near St Lide’s.”

  “If that’s its name. I’m really most grateful to your staff. Just now your night manager showed me the record of when he checked in. I recognised the signature from personal keepsakes my nana showed me. I was wondering if you still possess any of the personal letters of your past owners. I understand my great-great-grandf
ather corresponded with people on the island regularly.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Mr Maloney,” the owner said, his accent distinctly Cornish, “but I’ve only been here thirty years. To tell you the truth, even back when I was running the place things were easily lost. These days, tasks like that I leave to the manager.” Nicholl looked at Ben, paying particular attention to his face. Despite being familiar with the story, he knew nothing of the man himself.

  Nor the rest of his guests he had tended to during his career.

  “Fortunately, for one reason or another, my family have long been famed hoarders; to my mind, I reckon among the best in New England.” Ben smiled. “I last spoke to my grandmother just before I left. She tells me her grandfather kept records of his seafaring activities.”

  “So, he was a sailor?”

  “As a matter of fact, he was both a scientist and an explorer. Word has it, he even assisted Livingstone on one of his trips to Zambia.”

  “Wow. You confident you can be sure of that?”

  Ben grinned. “You try arguing with my nana. But I’m sure you’ll appreciate knowing he apparently spoke very kindly of the way he was treated here. From what your staff have been telling me, the room in which he stayed still exists. Your night manager assures me I’ll even be able to stay there.”

  “Room seven.” He nodded. “As I say, Mr Maloney, recent weather has been very bad. It’s really played havoc with our guttering.”

  “I’m sure it has.” Ben moved slightly, sufficiently closer to smell the weird scent coming from Nicholl’s neck. “I would really appreciate any information you might have. Anything that might help me understand what happened during his final days. Any letters. Any stories, folklore, press reports . . .”

  “Tell me, are you the kind of fella who likes folklore?”

  Ben didn’t know what to say. “Well, that depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “Well, normally I like to see things and judge for myself.”