Read THE TUNNEL: A Ben Hope Story for Free Online

the plastic trim shrivelled away to a crisp. The fire had been so hot that it had melted the paint down to the bare metal in places. The forest floor around the car was scorched black.
    ‘Seems like working for the Increment must be a stressful occupation,’ Ben said. ‘Judging by the suicide rate among its members. Jaco Lennox wasn’t the first, was he?’
    Again, Ben spun the photo into Falconer’s lap. Again, Falconer just gave the picture a momentary glance before he silently discarded it.
    Ben said, ‘That was the car James Andanson owned at the time he killed himself in May 2000, in woodland near Montpellier, four hundred miles from his home in Nant. Did a pretty thorough job of it, too, just like Jaco Lennox. It took a month for the French police to identify him from dental records. Some people take pills, others slit their veins in the bath, others jump off cliffs or under trains. Seems that our man Andanson drove hundreds of miles into the middle of the sticks, with no ignition keys anywhere on his person or in the car, then doused himself with twenty litres of petrol from jerrycans he’d bought en route. After he’d emptied the lot, he fastened his seatbelt and locked the car doors. Still with no keys. Then he shot himself twice in the head, then torched the car from the outside, with himself locked in it.’ Ben smiled grimly. ‘Now that shows some kind of ability, even for a former Territorial SAS guy. Wouldn’t you say so, Brigadier?’
    ‘There’s no evidence of any of that.’
    ‘Of course not. At least, none that would be admitted to an official investigation. Maybe that’s why the coroner decided to write it up as suicide. Or maybe someone just paid him to. We’ll never know, will we? I tried to find the coroner who signed off on the body, but it turns out the guy died of cancer last year. Shame.’
    Ben took out the third photograph and tossed it down for Falconer to see. ‘But this guy here had some interesting things to say.’ The photo was of a white male, forties, receding dark hair and sunglasses.
    ‘His name is Christophe Pelât,’ Ben said. ‘He’s a fireman who works in Montpellier, and he and his crew were the first to arrive at the scene of Andanson’s burnt-out car. Now he lives in fear. When I tracked him down at his home, he had the strangest notion that I was an assassin come to shoot him. Then when he realised I wasn’t, he became a little more amenable. He confirmed that even though the body was heavily charred, to the point of being virtually unrecognisable, he was certain that the victim had been shot at least once in the head, and probably twice.’
    ‘That’s all just hearsay and speculation,’ Falconer said. He broke into another fit of coughing that doubled him up in agony.
    ‘Maybe so,’ Ben said, taking the fourth and final photo from the plastic wrap. ‘I wonder what this man would have to say about that.’ Once more, he tossed the picture at Falconer. Once more, Falconer barely looked at it.
    ‘Actually, he probably wouldn’t say too much,’ Ben said. ‘Not any more. Because guess what? He’s dead too. His name was Frédéric Dard. He was a French crime novelist who lived in Switzerland. Famous one, too. Wrote more than three hundred books, sold hundreds of millions of the damn things. I tried to read one of them, on the plane back from France. I thought it was trash, but what do I know?’
    ‘Is there a point to any of this?’ Falconer grated. ‘I’m bleeding here.’
    ‘Oh, there is,’ Ben said. ‘As it turns out, Dard wasn’t just interested in writing fiction. He and Andanson were friends, and they’d been talking about co-writing a book about what really happened in that tunnel in Paris seven years ago. They were going to blow the lid off the whole thing. Except it never happened, and it never will. Dard died just five weeks after his would-be co-author. Heart attack.’ Ben smiled. ‘Tell me, Liam. Are the CIA and MI6 boys still