The Rebel’s Revenge
The Rebel’s Revenge
Scott Mariani
The Top Ten Sunday Times bestseller returns with a gripping new Ben Hope thriller.‘If you’ve got a pulse, you’ll love Scott Mariani; if you haven’t, then maybe you crossed Ben Hope.’ SIMON TOYNEEven when ex-SAS major Ben Hope is taking a holiday, trouble seems to find him. What started as a relaxing trip to the Deep South spirals into a nightmare when he’s wrongly accused of a vicious murder and forced to go on the run.Target of a state-wide manhunt, the only way Ben can prove his innocence is to unearth a long-forgotten secret and track down the killers who slaughtered an innocent woman in a vendetta dating back generations. His quest takes him into the wild heart of Louisiana’s swampland, where all hell’s about to break loose. The bad guys will soon discover they made a big mistake…An explosive new thriller from the master bestseller.
SCOTT MARIANI
The Rebel’s Revenge
Copyright (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Scott Mariani 2018
Cover photograph, Louisiana Background © Denis Tangney Jr / Getty Images
Cover photograph, Figure © Henry Steadman
Cover design by Henry Steadman 2018
Scott Mariani asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008235925
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008235932
Version 2018-09-20
Join the army of fans who LOVE Scott Mariani’s Ben Hope series … (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
‘Deadly conspiracies, bone-crunching action and a tormented hero with a heart … Scott Mariani packs a real punch’
Andy McDermott,bestselling author of The Revelation Code
‘Slick, serpentine, sharp, and very very entertaining. If you’ve got a pulse, you’ll love Scott Mariani; if you haven’t, then maybe you crossed Ben Hope’
Simon Toyne, bestselling author of the Sanctus series
‘Scott Mariani’s latest page-turning rollercoaster of a thriller takes the sort of conspiracy theory that made Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code an international hit, and gives it an injection of steroids … [Mariani] is a master of edge-of-the-seat suspense. A genuinely gripping thriller that holds the attention of its readers from the first page to the last’
Shots Magazine
‘You know you are rooting for the guy when he does something so cool you do a mental fist punch in the air and have to bite the inside of your mouth not to shout out “YES!” in case you get arrested on the train. Awesome thrilling stuff’
My Favourite Books
‘If you like Dan Brown you will like all of Scott Mariani’s work – but you will like it better. This guy knows exactly how to bait his hook, cast his line and reel you in, nice and slow. The heart-stopping pace and clever, cunning, joyfully serpentine tale will have you frantic to reach the end, but reluctant to finish such a blindingly good read’
The Bookbag
‘[The Cassandra Sanction] is a wonderful action-loaded thriller with a witty and lovely lead in Ben Hope … I am well and truly hooked!’
Northern Crime Reviews
‘Mariani is tipped for the top’
The Bookseller
‘Authentic settings, non-stop action, backstabbing villains and rough justice – this book delivers. It’s a romp of a read, each page like a tasty treat. Enjoy!’
Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author
‘I love the adrenalin rush that you get when reading a Ben Hope story … The Martyr’s Curse is an action-packed read, relentless in its pace. Scott Mariani goes from strength to strength!’
Book Addict Shaun
‘Scott Mariani seems to be like a fine red wine that gets better with maturity!’
Bestselling Crime Thrillers.com
‘Mariani’s novels have consistently delivered on fast-paced action and The Armada Legacy is no different. Short chapters and never-ending twists mean that you can’t put the book down, and the high stakes of the plot make it as brilliant to read as all the previous novels in the series’
Female First
‘Scott Mariani is an awesome writer’
Chris Kuzneski, bestselling author of The Hunters
Table of Contents
Cover (#u66c3c9cc-064d-5c02-8bc3-7dca3398b391)
Title Page (#u796751d4-584c-528c-a75d-161f053f3674)
Copyright (#u4074d24d-69a6-5342-8cd1-cdc89dbec090)
Praise (#u6368c465-10fc-530c-bb9f-28da330476f0)
Prologue (#u956f8594-b1e4-5ac5-b80e-9faf6a5d7c55)
Chapter 1 (#ucdbd1203-a412-5dd8-b611-dce752cd38ba)
Chapter 2 (#ud5842819-dac4-58e4-b859-a23bf266f0ab)
Chapter 3 (#u4ca3891c-51c9-569b-b411-cd4ef5265faf)
Chapter 4 (#ubaf43852-0c4c-56ba-bddc-48fe5a8e3ddc)
Chapter 5 (#u5ba22c1b-4291-51b3-8151-b5b1dcee34af)
Chapter 6 (#u40c4847f-a462-5b9a-b48b-0f091862e781)
Chapter 7 (#ua5228f0a-1bc9-598c-ad70-9389bc7d9736)
Chapter 8 (#ue0412747-dac7-5817-9c15-e7673793d2b3)
Chapter 9 (#u89c07290-59fd-5169-a532-2b13a5cb7315)
Chapter 10 (#u93520059-7be3-5610-8fe8-008c201291fa)
Chapter 11 (#u82049406-3492-51eb-83d0-c4b09d736693)
Chapter 12 (#uc222aac7-0872-5733-b4fb-389b27b4cd1e)
Chapter 13 (#ua0810ccf-a196-51ed-890a-012953181880)
Chapter 14 (#u949286b0-6a92-5e9c-878a-5f8230daec3b)
Chapter 15 (#ufe63d63d-618e-554e-846f-0a3aca1a4bbb)
Chapter 16 (#u8b506854-ad16-5e3b-b01a-ea7a307f19c6)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 58 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 59 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 60 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 61 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 62 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 63 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 64 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 65 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 66 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 67 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 68 (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
Louisiana, May 1864
Built in the Greek Revival style, encircled by twenty-four noble Doric columns and standing proud amid a vast acreage of plantation estate, the mansion was one of the grandest and most aristocratic homes in all of the South. Its dozens of reception rooms, not to mention the splendid ballroom, had hosted some of Clovis Parish’s most celebrated social events of the forty years since its construction, positioning Athenian Oaks, as the property was named, at the very centre of the region’s high society.
On this day, however, the stately house was silent and virtually empty. Deep within its labyrinthine corridors, a very secret and important meeting was taking place. A meeting that its attendees knew very well could help to swing in their favour the outcome of the civil war that had been tearing the states of both North and South apart for three long, bloody years.
Of the four men seated around the table in the richly appointed dining room, only one was not wearing military uniform: for the good reason that he wasn’t an officer of the Confederate States Army but, rather, the civilian owner of Athenian Oaks.
His name was Leonidas Wilbanks Garrett. A Texan by birth, he had risen to become one of the wealthiest landowners in Louisiana by the time he was forty. Now, fifteen years on, the size of his fortune and spread of his cotton plantation were second to none. As was the workforce of slaves he owned, who occupied an entire village of filthy and squalid huts far out of sight of the mansion’s windows.
But it was by virtue of L.W. Garrett’s renown as a physician and scientist, rather than his acumen for commerce, that the three high-ranking Confederate officers had made the journey to Clovis Parish to consult him. For this special occasion they were majestically decked out in full dress uniform, gleaming with gold braid. The most senior man present wore the insignia of a general of the C.S.A. He had lost an eye at the Second Battle of Bull Run and wore a patch over his scarred socket. He had also lost all three of his sons during the course of the conflict, and feared that he would have lost them for nothing if the Yankees prevailed.
A bitter outcome which, at this point in time, it seemed nothing could prevent. Since the crushing defeat at Chattanooga late the previous year and the subsequent appointment of Ulysses S. Grant as General-in-Chief of the Union forces, the turning point seemed to have come. Rout after rout; the tattered and depleted army of the South was in danger of being completely overrun.
‘Gentlemen, we stand to lose this damn war,’ the general said in between puffs of his cigar. ‘And lose it we will, unless saved by a miracle.’
‘Desperate times call for desperate measures,’ said the second officer, who was knocking back the wine as fast as it could be served. He was a younger man, a senior colonel known for his fiery temperament both on and off the battlefield. The last cavalry charge he had personally led had resulted in him having his right arm blown off by a cannonball. It had been found two hundred yards away, his dead hand still clutching his sabre. He now wore the empty sleeve of his grey tunic pinned across his chest, after the fashion of Lord Nelson.
‘Indeed they do,’ the general agreed. ‘And if that yellowbelly Jeff Davis and his lapdog Lee don’t have the guts to do what’s necessary to win this war, then by God someone else must step in and do it for them.’
This provoked a certain ripple of consternation around the table, as it was somewhat shocking to refer to the President of the Confederate States of America, not to mention the revered General Robert E. Lee, hero of the South, in such harsh language. But nobody protested. The facts of the matter were plain. The dreadful prospect of a Union victory was looming large on the horizon. Leonidas Garrett, whose business empire stood to be devastated if a victorious Abraham Lincoln acted on his promise to liberate all slaves in North America, dreaded it as much as anyone.
After another toke on his cigar and a quaff of wine, the general leaned towards Garrett and fixed him with his one steely eye. ‘Mr Garrett, how certain are you that this bold scheme of yours can work?’
‘If it can be pulled off, which I believe it can, then my certainty is absolute,’ Garrett replied coolly.
The third senior officer was the only conspirator present at the top-secret gathering who was yet to be fully convinced of Garrett’s plan. ‘Gentlemen, I must confess to having great misgivings about the enormity of what we are contemplating. Satan himself could scarcely have devised such wickedness.’
The general shot him a ferocious glare. ‘At a time like this, if it took Beelzebub himself to lead the South to victory, I would gladly give him the job.’
The objector made no reply. The general stared at him a while longer, then asked, ‘Are you with us or not?’
‘You know I am.’ No sir, no display of deference to a man of far superior rank. Because rank was not an issue at a meeting so clandestine, so illicit, that any and all of them could have been court-martialled and executed by their own side for taking part. What they were envisaging was in flagrant contravention of the rules of war and gentlemanly conduct.
Silence around the table for a few moments. The dissenter said, ‘Still, a damned ugly piece of work.’
‘I’m more interested in knowing if we can make it work,’ said the one-armed colonel.
‘It isn’t a new idea, by any measure,’ Garrett said. ‘Such tactics, though brutal, have been used in warfare throughout history. Trust me, gentlemen. We have the means to make it work, and if successful its effect on the enemy will be catastrophic. It will bring the North to its knees, cripple their infrastructure and force those Yankee scumbellies to surrender within a month. But I must reiterate,’ he added, casting a solemn warning look around the table, ‘that not a single word of this discussion can ever be repeated to anyone outside of this room. Not anyone, is that perfectly clear?’
Throughout the meeting, a young female negro servant dressed in a maid’s outfit had been silently hovering in the background, watching the levels in their wine glasses and meekly stepping up to the table now and then to top them up from a Venetian crystal decanter. Nobody acknowledged her presence in the room, least of all her legal owner, Garrett. As far as he was concerned she might simply have been a well-trained dog, rather than a human being. A dog, moreover, that could be whipped, chained up to starve, or used as target practice without compunction or accountability at any time, just for the hell of it.
Like Garrett, none of the three Southern-born officers gave an instant’s thought to the possibility that this young slave girl could be absorbing every single word of their discussion. And that she could remember it perfectly, so perfectly that it could later be repeated verbatim. Nor did any man present have any notion as to who the negro servant woman really was. Her role in the downfall of their plan was a part yet to be played. Just how devastating a part, none of them could yet know either.
‘So, gentlemen, we’re agreed,’ the general said after they’d spent some more time discussing the particulars of Garrett’s radical scheme. ‘Let’s set this thing in motion and reclaim the South’s fortunes in this war.’ He raised his glass. ‘To victory!’
‘To victory!’ The toast echoed around the table. They clinked glasses and drank.
Her duty done, the slave humbly asked for permission to excuse herself and was dismissed with a cursory wave, whereupon she slipped from the room to attend to the rest of her daily chores. Though if any of them had paid her the least bit of heed, they might have wondered at the enigmatic little smile that curled her lips as she walked away.
Chapter 1 (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
Ben Hope had often had the feeling that trouble had a knack of following him around. No matter what, where or how, it dogged his steps and stuck to him like a shadow. If trouble were a person, he’d have felt justified in thinking that individual was stalking him. If he’d been of a superstitious bent he could have thought he was haunted by it, as by a ghost. Whatever the case, it seemed as if at every juncture of his life, wherever he went and however he tried to steer out of its path, there it was waiting for him.
And it was here, pushing midnight on one sultry and thus-far uneventful September evening in the unlikely setting of a tiny backstreet liquor store in Clovis Parish, Louisiana, that he was about to make trouble’s acquaintance yet one more time.
If the most recent round of airport security regulations hadn’t made it more bother than it was worth to carry his old faithful hip flask across the Atlantic among his hand luggage, and if the bar and grill where he’d spent most of that evening had stocked the right kind of whisky to satisfy one of those late-night hankerings for a dram or three of the good stuff that occasionally come over a man, then two things wouldn’t have happened that night. First, there would have been nobody else around to prevent an innocent man from getting badly hurt, most probably shot to death.
Which was a good thing. And second, Ben wouldn’t have been plunged into a whole new kind of mess, even for him.
Which was less of a good thing. But that’s what happens when you have a talent for trouble. He should have been used to it by now.
It was nine minutes to midnight when Ben walked into the liquor store. It was as warm and humid inside as it was outside, with a lazy ceiling fan doing little more than stir the thick air around. An unseen radio was blaring country music, a stomping up-tempo bluegrass instrumental that was alive with fiddles and banjos and loud enough to hear from half a block away.
The sign on the door said they were open till 2 a.m. Ben soon saw he was the only customer in the place, which didn’t surprise him given the lateness of the hour and the emptiness of the street. Maybe they got a rush of business just before closing time.
The entire store could have fitted inside Ben’s farmhouse kitchen back home in Normandy, but was crammed from floor to ceiling across four aisles with enough booze to float a battleship. A glance up and down the heaving displays revealed a bewildering proliferation of beer and bourbon varieties, lots of rum, a smattering of local Muscadine wines and possibly not much else. He was resigned to not finding what he was looking for, but it had to be worth a shot.
Alone behind the counter sat an old guy in a frayed check shirt and a John Deere cap, with crêpey skin and lank grey hair, who was so absorbed in the pages of the fishing magazine he was reading that he didn’t seem to have noticed Ben come in.
‘How’re they biting?’ Ben said with a smile over the blare of the music, pointing at the magazine. The friendly traveller making conversation with the locals.
The old timer suddenly registered his customer’s presence and gazed up with watery, pale eyes. ‘Say what, sonny?’ He didn’t appear to possess a single tooth in his mouth.
It had to be thirty years since the last time anyone had called Ben ‘sonny’. Abandoning the fishing talk, which wasn’t his best conversation topic anyway, he asked the old timer what kinds of proper scotch he had for sale. Whisky with a ‘y’ and not an ‘ey’. Ben had never quite managed to develop a taste for bourbon, though in truth he’d drink pretty much anything if pushed. He had to repeat himself twice, as it was now becoming clear that the storekeeper was stone deaf as well as toothless, which probably accounted for the volume of the music.
Finally the old timer got it and directed him to a section of an aisle on the far end of the store. ‘Third aisle right there, walk on down to the bottom. Hope you find what you’re lookin’ for.’ The Cajun accent was more noticeable on him, sounding less Americanised than the younger locals. A sign of the times, no doubt, as the traditional ways and cultures eroded as gradually and surely as Louisiana’s coastal wetlands.
Ben said thanks. The old man frowned and peered at him with the utmost curiosity, as though this blond-haired foreigner were the strangest creature who’d ever stepped inside his store. ‘Say, where you from, podnuh? Ain’t from aroun’ here, that’s for damn sure.’ Ben couldn’t remember the last time he’d been called ‘partner’, either.
‘Long way from home,’ Ben replied.
The old timer cupped a hand behind his ear and craned his wrinkly neck. ‘Whassat?’ They could still be having this conversation come closing time. Hearing aids obviously hadn’t found their way this far south yet. Or maybe the oldster was afraid they’d cramp his style with the girls. Ben just smiled and walked off in search of the section he wanted. The storekeeper gazed after him for a moment and then shrugged and fell back into squinting at his magazine.
Following the directions, Ben soon found the range of scotches at the bottom of the last aisle, tucked away in what seemed a forgotten, seldom-frequented corner of the store judging by the layers of dust on the shelf. He began browsing along the rows of bottles, recognising with pleasure the names of some old friends among them. Knockando, Johnny Walker, Cutty Sark, Glenmorangie and a dozen others – it wasn’t a bad selection, all things considered. Then he spotted the solitary bottle of Laphroaig Quarter Cask single malt, one of his personal favourites for its dark, peaty, smokey flavour.
It had been sitting there so long that the bottle label was flecked with mildew. He took it down from the shelf, wiped off the dust and weighed his discovery appreciatively in his hand, savouring the prospect of taking it back to his hotel room for a couple of hours’ enjoyment before bed. The precious liquid had come a long way from its birthplace on rugged, windswept Islay in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides, for him to stumble across here in Southern Louisiana of all places. Maybe this was something more profound and meaningful than mere serendipity. Enough to make a man of lapsed religious faith start believing again, or almost.
Ben was carrying the bottle back up the aisle as though it were holy water when, over the blare of the music, he heard raised voices coming from the direction of the counter. As he reached the top of the aisle he saw a pair of guys who had just walked in.
One was big and ox-like in a studded motorcycle jacket with a patch on the back showing a gothic-helmeted grinning skull and the legend IRON SPARTANS MC, LOUISIANA. He was slow-moving and wore a calm smile. The other was a foot shorter, wiry and wasted in a denim vest cut-off that bared long, skinny arms with faded blue ink. He was agitated and angry, eyes darting as if he’d snorted a tugrope-sized line of cocaine.
The pair might have been regular customers, but Ben guessed not. Because he was fairly sure that, even in the Deep South, regular customers didn’t generally come storming into a place toting sawn-off pump shotguns and magnum revolvers.
Great.
The armed robbers were too intent on threatening the storekeeper to have noticed that the three of them weren’t alone. Ben retreated quickly out of sight behind the corner of the aisle and peeked through a gap between stacks of Dixie beer cans.
The hefty ox-like guy had the old timer by the throat with one large hand and the muzzle of the sawn-off jammed against his chest in the other. The storekeeper was pale and terrified and looked about to drop dead from heart failure. Meanwhile the small ratty guy tucked his loaded and cocked .357 Smith & Wesson down the front of his jeans, perhaps not the wisest gunhandling move Ben had ever seen, and vaulted over the counter to start rifling through the cash register. He was yelling furiously, ‘Is this all ya got, y’old fuckin’ coot? Where’s the rest of it?’
The old man’s eyes boggled and he seemed unable to speak. The disconcertingly calm guy with the shotgun looked as if he couldn’t wait to blow his victim’s internal organs all over the shop wall. It was hard to tell who was more dangerous, the little angry psycho or the big laid-back one.
Ben puffed his cheeks, thought fuck it, counted to three.
Then he sprang into action.
Six minutes to midnight, but the evening was only just getting started.
Chapter 2 (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
Fourteen hours earlier
It had been Ben’s first visit to Chicago. Now he was sitting in the departure lounge at O’Hare International, counting down the minutes to his flight while gazing through the window at the planes coming and going, and sipping coffee from a paper cup. As machine coffee went, not too terrible. It almost quelled his urge to light up a cigarette from the pack of Gauloises in his leather jacket pocket.
It was a rare thing for Ben to leave his base in rural northern France for anything other than work-related travel, whether to do with running the Le Val Tactical Training Centre that he co-owned with his business partner Jeff Dekker or for the other, more risky kinds of business that sometimes called him away. But when the chance had come to snatch a few free days out of Le Val’s hectic schedule and with no other pressing matters or life-threatening emergencies to attend to, Ben had seized the opportunity to jump on a plane and cross the Atlantic. His mission: to pay a visit to his son, plus one more objective he was yet to meet.
They hadn’t seen each other in a few months, since Jude’s somewhat rootless and meandering life path had led him to relocate from England to the US to be with his new girlfriend, Rae Lee. Ben knew all about rootless and meandering from past personal experience, and while he accepted that it was fairly normal for a young guy in his early twenties to take a few years before finding his feet in life, he worried that Jude had too much of his father’s restless ways about him.
It was Ben’s greatest wish that Jude could instead have taken more after the saintly, patient and selflessly loving man who raised him as his own son all those years when the kid’s real dad was off merrily raising hell in some or other war-ravaged corner of the globe.
Every time Ben reflected on that complicated history, he felt the same pangs of heartache. Years after the event, the deaths of Jude’s mother and stepfather, Michaela and Simeon Arundel, were a wound that would always remain raw. The subject was never discussed between them, but Ben knew the young man felt the pain just as keenly as he did.
Rae was a couple of years older than Jude, the only daughter of a wealthy Taiwanese-American family, and occupied a nice apartment in Chicago’s Far North Side overlooking Sheridan Park, where Ben had stayed with them for only one day before feeling it was time to move on. The brevity of his visit might have seemed unusual to more family-orientated folks, but Ben’s and Jude’s was not a normal father–son relationship and Ben was anxious not to overstay his welcome.
Ben got on cordially with Rae and liked her well enough, but wasn’t completely sure that she was right for Jude. Jeff Dekker, never one to mince words, regarded her as a busybody and a do-gooder – and there was some truth in that. She was a freelance investigative journalist with multiple axes to grind over anything she considered worth protesting about, and seemed to be pulling Jude deeper into her world of political activism despite the fact that he’d never hitherto expressed the slightest interest in politics or causes of any kind. They’d met during one of her trips to Africa to expose the human rights abuses of the coltan mining industry. A trip that had achieved nothing except very nearly lead her to a gruesome end, and Jude with her.
Having had to come to the rescue on that memorable occasion, Ben worried that the next idealistic crusade might turn out to be one from which nobody, not even a crew of ex-Special Forces and regular army veterans ready to do whatever it took, could save them.
Still, if Jude was happy, which he seemed to be, Ben could wish for no more; and even if Jude weren’t happy it was none of Ben’s business to interfere in his grown-up son’s personal affairs. He had said his goodbyes and left with mixed emotions, sorry that he wouldn’t see Jude again for a while, yet quietly relieved to get away. Now here he sat, waiting for another plane – but he wasn’t planning on heading home to France just yet.
At last, Ben’s flight was called, and a couple of hours later they were touching down at Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans. Which struck Ben as tying in very well with his other reason for being in the States.
As a dedicated jazz enthusiast, albeit one who was incapable of producing a single note on any instrument yet invented, Ben had for many years been a fan of the venerable tenor saxophonist Woody McCoy. Now pushing eighty-seven, McCoy was one of the last of the greats. He’d never achieved the stardom he deserved in his own right, but had played with some of the most iconic names in the business: Bird, Monk, ’Trane, Miles, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, to list but a few.
Now at long last, after a career spanning six decades, the man, the legend, was hanging up his spurs. But doing it in fine style, taking his Woody McCoy Quintet on a farewell tour all up and down the country. A few weeks earlier, Ben had seen the announcement that Woody was due to perform his last-ever gig in his home town of Villeneuve, deep in the rural heart of South Louisiana, in mid-September.
When the opportunity had arisen to free up the date in his work schedule, and with Jeff’s insistent ‘Go on, mate, you know you want to’ in his ear, Ben had decided that this last-ever chance to hear Woody McCoy play live was not to be missed. He almost never allowed himself such indulgences. But he’d allow himself this one, as a special treat.
Now that he’d cut his stay in Chicago a little shorter than planned, it meant he had a couple of days to explore Woody McCoy’s birthplace, sample the local culture, relax and take it easy.
Ben stepped off the plane in New Orleans and found himself in a different world. Welcome to Planet Louisiana. Though over the years he’d visited more places than he could easily count, his past travels around the US had been limited. He’d been to New York City, toured the coastline of Martha’s Vineyard, spent some time in the rugged hills of Montana, and had a brief sojourn in the wide open spaces of Oklahoma. But he’d never ventured this far south, and had only a vague idea of what to expect.
The first thing that hit him was the humidity. It was so thick and cloying that for a moment he thought he must have fallen down a wormhole in the space-time continuum and found himself back in the tropical furnace of Brunei redoing his SAS jungle training.
He cleared security, strolled through the hellish heat over to the nearest car rental place with his new green canvas haversack on his shoulder and was happy to find that the near-blanket blacklist that bugged him in many other countries didn’t seem to apply here. For some reason, the likes of Europcar, Hertz and Avis objected to his custom on the grounds that their vehicles never came back in one piece, occasionally in several, and other times not at all. But the pleasant young lady at Enterprise breezed through the paperwork and handed him the keys to a gleaming new Chevy Tahoe SUV with a smile like warm honey and a ‘Y’all have a good day, now’ that was Ben’s first introduction to a real-life Southern accent.
The airport lay eleven miles west of downtown New Orleans, amid one of the flattest and most panoramic landscapes Ben had seen outside of the Sahara. He opened all the windows, lit a long-awaited Gauloise with his trusty Zippo lighter, which the airport security guys had scrutinised as though it were an M67 fragmentation grenade, and headed north-west for the South Central Plains with the wind blasting around him and a four-hour drive ahead. He intended to enjoy every minute of his freedom.
Ben Hope was an unusually skilled and capable man who claimed little credit for his many gifts. One he lacked, however, in common with most people, was the gift of prophecy. If by some strange intuition he’d been able to foretell what lay in store for him at the end of the long, hot road, he would have pulled a U-turn right across the highway and jumped straight onto the next plane bound for France.
Instead, he just kept on going.
But that’s what happens when you have a talent for trouble.
Chapter 3 (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
For the next few hours, Ben drove beneath a sky burned pale by the sun. Trying to dial up a jazz station on the radio, he found only country music of the croony, schmaltzy variety with pedal steel guitars that sounded like cats yowling. It was either that, or the radio evangelists fulminating against the state of the modern world, or silence.
He chose silence, and eased back in his seat, steering the big comfortable Tahoe with two fingers as he worked his way through a pack of Gauloises and drank in his surroundings. The highway carved relentlessly onwards through the flat landscape, passing cane fields and sugar processing plants and oil refineries. It didn’t take much travelling through Louisiana to tell what the big industries were around here.
Deeper into country, the terrain was crisscrossed with bayous, waterways so sluggish and rimed with green slime that they appeared stagnant. He passed various settlements, a lot of them nothing but rag-tag clusters of dilapidated shacks along the edges of the bayous, where river folks dwelled and scraped their living off the water and raggedy little kids helped their fathers man flat-bottomed boats heavy with nets and lobster traps.
Third World poverty in the richest country on the planet. Maybe Rae Lee should come down here and check it out.
To a visitor from overcrowded Europe, the most vivid impression this landscape conveyed was of the sheer scale of its hugeness. Not even Montana and Oklahoma had seemed so spread-out and vast. The city of Shreveport lay a hundred miles to the north of his destination. Highway 84 connected Villeneuve to faraway Natchez, Mississippi to the east and Lufkin, Texas to the west. A whole different America to the one he’d experienced before. Especially as nobody was trying to kill him this time around.
Ben had done a little reading ahead of his journey to try and get a sense of Woody McCoy’s birthplace, its geography, its history and culture. Where most other North American states had counties, Louisiana divided itself instead into sixty-seven parishes, of which Clovis Parish was one of the smallest with a population of just over nine thousand spread over six hundred square miles of land that comprised mostly lake and bayou, swamp and forest. Woody’s home town of Villeneuve was the parish seat, historically best known for having been burned to the ground by Union troops during the 1864 Red River campaign of the American Civil War.
Long before the fledgling nation had decided to start ripping itself apart, this area had passed through the hands of various European colonists. First the French had come, back in the 1500s, and laid claim to the territory of Louisiane as part of what they dubbed ‘New France’, a vast tract of land that stretched from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains and encompassed bits of Canada and fifteen modern-day US states. After a couple of centuries of imposing their language, repressing the ‘heathen savages’ from whom they had wrested the land and shipping in countless thousands of African slaves to work on their plantations in the South, the French rulers had suffered a drubbing in the bloody and brutal French and Indian War and, in 1763, King Louis XV had been forced to cede his prize to the Spanish and British, who promptly set about forcing their own ways on their newly acquired colonial subjects. Napoleon Bonaparte had snatched back Spain’s land possessions in 1800 with a beady eye on re-establishing a lucrative French North American Empire, only to sell it all off again to the recently established United States in 1803, who had just a few years earlier kicked their British masters back into the sea and had their own ideas about developing their young nation.
The so-called ‘Louisiana Purchase’, a deal worth an eye-popping $15 million at the time, had formally ended France’s colonial presence and, at a stroke, radically expanded US territory by almost a million square miles to make it the third largest country in the world. Whereupon, less than sixty years later, the brave and bright new nation descended into a tragic civil war that turned neighbour against neighbour, brother against brother, ravaged the land from coast to coast and top to bottom, left as many as 750,000 of its citizens lying dead on its scorched battlefields and among the ruins of its levelled cities, and scarred the identity of the United States more profoundly than any other conflict before or since.
Such was, and always would be, the nature of human civilisation.
As for modern-day Louisiana, the result of so many centuries of ever-changing colonial ownership was a colourful blend of French, Spanish, African, Creole and Indian influences. Acadian settlers who had landed here from France by way of Canada added to the mixture, their descendants later to become known as ‘Cajuns’, forming a core part of this rich, multi-faceted culture rooted in so much dramatic history. Predictably enough, a glance at the map showed French names popping up everywhere. Villeneuve being just one of them, within a parish named after an ancient Frankish king. Many older Cajun folks still spoke their own form of French as a first language, although that tradition was slowly dying out.
The more Ben had read up on the background, the more he could see that he was going to have to abandon whatever preconceptions he might have previously had about this part of the Deep South. Here was a fascinating and unique place, and he was looking forward to learning more about it – almost as much as the bittersweet prospect of attending the Woody McCoy Quintet’s farewell performance two days from now.
The highway thinned out to an arrow-straight blacktop that carried him between fields and tracts of swampland and forest, past rambling farmsteads and abandoned gas stations and along the banks of a bayou with a waterside shanty restaurant signposted Mickey’s Crawfish Cabin – come inside! Ben hadn’t eaten a bite since his early breakfast with Jude and Rae in Chicago. However hungry he might be feeling, the delights of Mickey’s Crawfish Cabin were something he could live without. The roadside banner advertising FRESH COON MEAT, ½ MILE didn’t do much for him, either.
At last, a sign flashed by: ENTER CLOVIS PARISH, as though it were a command. A few miles later, the Villeneuve town limits appeared ahead, and Ben had reached his destination.
The afternoon had turned even sultrier, a threat of rain from the darker clouds drifting on the hot breeze. Ben had a room booked at the only Villeneuve hotel he’d been able to find online, called the Bayou Inn, which happened to be just a short stroll from the Civic Center where the Woody McCoy Quintet would walk on stage the night after next.
The directions he’d been given took him on a tour of the town. Villeneuve’s more affluent neighbourhoods were gathered on the south side, with ancient oak trees laden with Spanish moss, and old white wood colonial homes with all-around verandas. A mile north was the town square, featuring a pretty little parish courthouse with Georgian columns and a clock tower. The street was lined with a hardware store, a grocery market, a gun shop called Stonewall’s that had a Confederate flag displayed in the window, a pharmacy, a gas station and a bar and grill with a sign that said CAJUN STEAKHOUSE and seemed a lot more appetising than fresh coon meat or Mickey’s crawfish.
Off the square were narrower residential streets shaded by elm trees and lined with small clapboard shotgun houses, some well tended, others rundown with beaten-up old cars and rust-streaked propane tanks in their front yards, along with the obligatory chicken netting and tethered dogs prostrated by the heat. Every house had a mesh screen door to ward off insects, and sat up off the ground on brick pillars to protect against flood waters, with several steps up to the front entrance.
Ben found the Bayou Inn after a bit of searching, and checked in. The small hotel was owned and run by an older couple called Jerry and Mary-Lou Mouton. They greeted him with welcoming smiles and a ‘How y’all doin’? Travellin’ kinda light, aintcha?’
Which was true enough, out of long-established habit. His green canvas army haversack was a recent acquisition, to replace its predecessor which had been blown up inside a car in Russia. Another had been lost in a tsunami in Indonesia. He went through bags a lot. This one contained his usual light travelling kit – black jeans, a spare denim shirt and underwear, and a few assorted odds like his mini-Maglite and compass. When he got to his first-floor room he flung the bag carelessly on the bed.
The room was small and simple and basic, which was how he liked things to be. A tall window opened out onto a tiny balcony, where he pensively smoked a cigarette while gazing down at the quiet street below.
After a shower, Ben dug out his expensive smartphone with the intention of sending a couple of text messages to people back home, only to find that the damn thing had died on him. Terminal. Kaput. He’d had it a week. The joys of technology. He trotted downstairs and asked Mary-Lou where he might be able to buy another one, and she told him about a little store down the street that she thought might be able to help.
As it turned out, the only phones the store had were of the cheap, prepaid ‘burner’ variety. No names, no contracts, no frills. That suited Ben fine, and the untraceable anonymity of such a device appealed to the rebellious streak in him that objected to government surveillance agencies prying into the personal affairs of innocent citizens. The burner even had decent web access. He shelled out two ten-dollar bills for the phone itself, two more for credits, and was back in business.
By now it was early evening and Ben’s hunger was sharpened to the point where he couldn’t ignore it any longer. Remembering the Cajun Steakhouse he’d passed earlier, he set off at a leisurely pace in the direction of Villeneuve town square. The Moutons had given him a front door key to let himself in with, so he was free to take all the time he wanted and return as late as he pleased.
It felt strange to be so relaxed and at a loose end. He could get used to it, maybe, with a little practice.
The Cajun Steakhouse offered a baffling range of local fare like filé gumbo, eggs with shrimp and grits, Creole jambalaya and something called Louisiana-style crawfish boil. Ben decided to play it safe and ordered a T-bone with fries and a Dixie beer.
‘You jes’ sit tight, handsome, and I’ll bring you the best steak you ever tasted in your life,’ promised his teased-blond hostess called Destiny, who kept flashing eyes at him. But she probably treated every tall, fair-haired stranger who walked into the bar and grill just the same way.
Destiny’s promise was no empty claim. The T-bone was the biggest and most delicious he’d ever had, thick and succulent. After two more Dixie beers, Ben was definitely feeling at home. So much so, that he suddenly had a hankering for a glass of good malt scotch, the kind he’d occasionally – or more than occasionally – enjoy during quiet evenings at Le Val, sometimes over a game of chess with Jeff, or in front of the fire with his German shepherd dog, Storm, curled at his feet. At the bar, he asked Destiny what she had, and with an alluring smile she produced a bottle.
‘What is it?’ he asked. It was the colour of stewed tea.
‘This here is Louisiana Whiskey, hon. Or else, we got Riz.’
‘Riz?’
‘Uh-huh. Made from rice.’
Ben shook his head. ‘Not exactly what I had in mind.’
‘How about rum?’ Destiny suggested. ‘Folks round here drink a lot of rum. But you ain’t from around here, are you, sugah?’
‘Is it really that obvious?’
Ben settled for a tot of local rum, which was probably made at one of the cane distilleries he’d passed on the drive up from New Orleans. It wasn’t single malt scotch, but he was in a forgiving mood, and the Cajun Steakhouse was definitely growing on him. He spent the whole evening there, watching the place fill up with local colour and listening to the diet of rock and country music that streamed constantly from the jukebox. He might even get used to that, too.
Two more tots of rum, and he sat thinking about Jude, about life, about a lot of stuff. Such as his hesitant, awkward relationship with a woman called Sandrine Lacombe, who was a doctor at the hospital in Cherbourg a few kilometres from Le Val. Ben was drawn to her, and she to him, but it was as though neither of them could bring themselves to take the plunge. Like one of the stalemates that so many of his chess matches with Jeff ended in.
The truth was that, however much they liked each other, Ben was never going to be the love of Sandrine’s life, nor she of his. No, he’d already had that, and lost it, and there was seldom a day when he didn’t reflect on it with regret and guilt.
It was late when Ben finally left the bar and grill. He went walking through the warmth of the night, a little cooler and less sultry and far more pleasant. The stars were twinkling in an ink-black sky and the scent of magnolia trees was in the air. The streets of Villeneuve were quiet and peaceful. He didn’t feel like returning to the hotel just yet.
And that, as he strolled around exploring the small town, was when Ben spotted the lit-up store front with the sign above the door that said ELMO’S LIQUOR LOCKER, and decided to take a look inside. Just in case. You never knew what you might find.
Nine minutes to midnight.
Chapter 4 (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
Of all the late-night liquor stores in all the sleepy little towns of rural Louisiana, he’d had to walk into the one where a couple of morons were intent on sticking the place up. And on all the nights the pair of armed robbers could have chosen to do the deed, they had to pick the very moment when someone like Ben Hope was lurking just around the corner, fifteen feet away out of sight in the far aisle behind a stack of Dixie beer.
It had to be fate.
On the count of three, Ben stepped out where they could see him, and said, ‘Hello, boys.’
Ben was still clutching the bottle of Laphroaig Quarter Cask that he’d been about to carry over to the counter to buy. But at this moment, in his mind it ceased to be a vessel for seventy-five centilitres of one of the most venerable liquids ever crafted by human artistry, and became a usefully hefty club-shaped weapon weighing in at just under three pounds, perfectly balanced to inflict all kinds of damage to the human body. Ben’s mind often worked that way, especially at times like these. In the instant it took for the two robbers to lock eyes on the unexpected newcomer, before they could even begin to react, his brain was already calculating factors of distance, velocity, spin and drop.
Most important of all, though, was picking the right target to aim for. The big guy might have been just a trigger pull of a sawn-off shotgun away from blowing the storekeeper’s heart and lungs out his back, but Ben made him for the slower mover. If the big guy was a bear, then his partner in crime was a fox, nervier, whippier and more twitchy, hence more potentially volatile. Though he stood a couple of steps further away on the other side of the counter where he’d been rifling through the cash register, and thus presented a more distant target, Ben knew the foxy guy posed the greater immediate threat and needed taking down as a matter of priority.
True to Ben’s prediction, the foxy guy moved first. His lean right hand, marked by a faded blue star tattoo on the web between forefinger and thumb, let go of the bunch of mixed-denomination dollar bills he’d yanked from the cash register. The money fell like confetti as his hand dived down to close on the butt of the cocked revolver protruding from the front of his jeans.
By then, the whisky bottle was already in the air. It completed a full 360-degree spin from leaving Ben’s hand to flying past the storekeeper’s nose, over the counter and impacting the foxy guy smack in the middle of the forehead with its heavy glass bottom.
Being no kind of a physicist, Ben was dimly aware that the force of a thrown object was based on some complex formula involving vectors of mass and velocity, acceleration and momentum. Newton’s Second Law, if he remembered rightly. But however it measured up in scientific terms, it was plenty forceful enough to have a significant effect on its target.
And yet, it wasn’t so much the high-speed collision between a full bottle of whisky and his cranial frontal bone that would forever change the foxy guy’s life. It was the reflex nerve contraction that ran through his whole body at the moment of impact and caused his index finger to jerk against the trigger of his .357 Magnum while still tucked pointing vertically downwards inside the front of his jeans.
With the hammer cocked, the average Smith & Wesson revolver carries a very light trigger pull. A mere three or four pounds, requiring just a flick of a finger to release the hammer and drop the firing pin against the primer of a waiting cartridge. Which was exactly what happened within the confines of the foxy guy’s trousers at the exact moment the bottle whacked him in the forehead and knocked him sprawling backwards off his feet.
The blast of the gunshot, even somewhat dampened by a layer of denim, was grenade-loud inside the store. Almost as ear-piercing was the shriek of agony that followed as the foxy guy realised that he’d inflicted some terrible damage to himself down there.
To the sound of his buddy’s ululating wail, the big guy finally moved. He shoved the old storekeeper away hard and swivelled the shotgun one-handed towards Ben. The calm smile on his big moon face had creased up into a bared-teeth sneer of fury and hate. The twin muzzles of the shotgun pointed Ben’s way.
But just as suddenly, they were pointing straight up towards the ceiling as Ben closed in on him and diverted the weapon with a flying high kick to the big guy’s right forearm that dislocated his wrist tendon and sent the gun tumbling out of his grip. It fell to the linoleum floor with a thud, unfired. By the time it had landed, Ben had got the big guy’s dislocated wrist trapped in a merciless Aikido joint lock. One that was so painful and debilitating, it didn’t matter how big or strong you were; you were going down.
The big guy was on his knees in moments, helpless, head bowed, gasping. Keeping hold of the arm and wrist, Ben kicked him in the throat. Hard enough to knock the rest of the wind out of him without doing any permanent damage. The big guy toppled to the floor with a crash that made the cans and bottles on the store shelves wobble and clink.
The other moron was lying on his back a few feet away behind the counter, squealing like a pig and clutching his injured groin, far too preoccupied to think about reaching for the revolver that had spilled out of the waistband of his blood-soaked trousers. The barrel and cylinder of the gun were spattered bright red, and there was a lot more of it pooling on the floor. There was a perfectly circular weal the size of a bottle base imprinted on his forehead.
Ben let go of the big fellow and stepped around the counter to slide the fallen revolver away with his foot. Looking down at all the mess and blood, he saw the shattered remains of the Laphroaig Quarter Cask and shook his head in sorrow. What a waste. Why couldn’t he have lobbed a six-pack of Dixie beer at the guy instead?
But there was no use crying over it. It was the idiot on the floor who had much more to cry about. Ben eyed the gory spectacle of his crotch and said, ‘Looks like you emasculated yourself, pal. You’ll be singing mezzo soprano in the parish choir from now on. Maybe that’ll teach you. Then again, I doubt it.’
He turned to look at the storekeeper. The old guy was cowering against the counter, boggling from under a protectively raised arm as though he thought Ben was going to hit him next. So much for gratitude.
There was a phone with a curly plastic cord attached to the wall behind the counter. Ben pointed at it. ‘I’m guessing the Sheriff’s Office is only open nine till five, but there must be a number for the local dispatch centre. Call it. You’d best get them to send a couple of ambulances, too.’
The old man relaxed a little as he realised he wasn’t about to become Ben’s next victim after all. He lowered his arm and gaped down at the prostrated form of the big guy on the floor, then peered over the counter at the other one still yowling and thrashing in a slick of his own blood.
‘Holy shit, mister. I never seen nuthin’ like it. You went through those two boys like a goddamn hurricane.’ Motioning at the big guy, he added, ‘That there’s Billy Bob Lafleur. He’s one evil sumbitch, not right in the head if you get what I’m sayin’. Knowed his mother, way back. She was crazy too. This other fella, he must be from outta town. Jumpin’ Jesus, look what he done. Plain shot off his own balls.’
You could hardly hear yourself think in the place for all the racket. Ben stepped back over to the castrated would-be robber and knocked him out with a quick kick to the temple. Silence at last. He pointed again at the phone. ‘Make the call and let’s get it over and done with. Then I’d like a replacement bottle of whisky to take back to my hotel.’
‘I ain’t got no more of those, sonny. You just broke the last one.’
‘Then I suppose I’ll have to settle for a Glenmorangie instead,’ Ben replied.
‘It’s on the house,’ the old man said. ‘Least I can do for a feller who just saved my life.’ He stuck out a wizened hand. ‘Name’s Elmo. Elmo Gillis. Owned this store since ’seventy-two and never had no trouble until these two dipshits showed up.’
Ben took his hand with a smile. ‘I’m Ben. I appreciate the kindness, Elmo. But I’m happy to pay for it, and the broken one too.’
Elmo made the phone call. Ben rested against the counter and lit up a Gauloise, savouring the peace while it lasted, and not much relishing the prospect of having to deal with the cops. For some reason, he and law enforcement officials seldom seemed to gel.
It wasn’t very long before they heard the whoop of sirens, and the street outside became painted with whirling blue light as a pair of identical Crown Victoria police patrol cruisers with CLOVIS PARISH SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT emblazoned on their doors came screeching up at the kerbside.
‘That’s Sheriff Roque,’ Elmo said, pointing through the store window at the car in front. ‘Meaner’n a wet panther, that one.’
‘Bad cop?’ Ben asked him.
‘Hell, no. Ol’ Waylon is the best sheriff we ever had.’
From the lead car emerged a large, raw-boned officer in a tan uniform and a broad campaign hat jammed at an angle onto his greying head. His face looked about as soft and good-humoured as a mountain crag in winter. Joined by a pair of deputies from the cruiser behind, he pushed inside the liquor store and halted near the doorway, surveying the scene with gnarled fists balled on his hips.
And now Ben’s evening was about to get started in earnest.
Chapter 5 (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
The sheriff glanced around him. His eyes were pale and hooded, and threw out a flat cop stare that landed first on the prone shape of Billy Bob Lafleur, then on his unconscious partner in crime, and finally on Ben, scrutinising him carefully.
Ben noticed that in place of his regular service gunbelt and sidearm, Roque wore a fancy buscadero cowboy rig with an old-style Colt revolver nestling snugly in its holster. The floral pattern tooled leather went well with his boots, which were definitely non-issue as well. Deviations from the standard uniform evidently didn’t matter too much down here.
Without taking the stare off Ben the sheriff asked, ‘What the hell happened here, Elmo?’ He spoke loud and slow, as if measuring every word. Which might have been partly to make himself heard by Elmo, knowing the old guy was hard of hearing. Ben guessed that in a small community like this one, everyone knew everyone else, their secrets, their problems, their history.
Elmo answered, ‘These boys tried to hold up the store. And this fella here, he stopped it. Took ’em down in one second flat. You shoulda seen it, Waylon. Ol’ Billy Bob had a gun right in his face. I never saw anyone move so fast.’
‘They dead?’
‘They’re alive,’ Ben said. ‘Just sleeping. But they’re going to need those ambulances PDQ. That one has a badly dislocated wrist. The other’s got probable concussion, and he’s losing a lot of blood from a gunshot wound.’
‘Meatwagons are on their way,’ the sheriff replied. Still in the same loud, slow drawl, strong and authoritative. He aimed a thick, gnarly finger towards Ben. ‘Who shot’m, you?’
Elmo answered for Ben. ‘He shot himself, Waylon. Damn fool blew off his own pecker.’
Apparently quite unmoved, the sheriff gestured to his deputies. One drew a pistol and kept it trained on the two robbers, as though they were in any state to resist arrest, while the other slapped on cuffs. A few late-night passersby had gathered in the street, drawn by the police sirens and rubbernecking through the store window at what was going on.
Keeping his back to the window the sheriff said, ‘Elijah, would you move those folks on?’ The deputy called Elijah hastened outside to carry out the command. The sheriff said to the other, ‘Mason, get on the radio and find out where those meatwagons are at, before this asshole goes and bleeds to death right here in front of us.’
Mason was the deputy with the drawn pistol. He was hatless, with brown hair spiky on top and shaved up the sides like a Marine. His face was fleshy and pasty and burned by the sun and his eyes were somewhat dull. He glanced nervously at Roque. ‘What about these boys?’
The sheriff replied calmly, ‘They’re unconscious, Mason. I think I can handle it. Now scoot and get on that darn radio.’
Mason holstered his weapon and ran out to the car. The sheriff watched him go, and shook his head with a sigh. ‘’Bout as sharp as a bowlin’ ball, that one.’ Then he turned his flinty eyes back on Ben. ‘I’m Waylon Roque, Sheriff of Clovis Parish. I don’t believe I know you, Mister—?’
‘Hope. Ben Hope.’
‘You ain’t from around heah.’
‘So everyone keeps telling me,’ Ben said. ‘I’m just a tourist, that’s all. Arrived here in Villeneuve this afternoon and I’m staying at the Bayou Inn. I’m only in town for the Woody McCoy gig the night after next, then I’ll be heading back home.’ He slipped his passport from his pocket and held it out.
The sheriff took the passport and gave it a quick once-over, then seemed satisfied and tossed it back. ‘A Brit.’
‘Half Irish, for what it’s worth. But I live in France.’
Roque pulled a face, as if he thought even less of the Irish than the Brits. ‘Jazz fan too, huh? I’m more of a Jimmie Davis man, myself.’
Ben smiled. ‘You are my sunshine.’
But Roque wasn’t one for chitchat. ‘What’s your occupation, Mister Hope from France?’
‘I work in education,’ Ben replied. Technically correct although economical with the truth. He didn’t think it necessary to reveal to Roque what kind of education the training facility at Le Val offered, or to whom. Information like that tended to invite too many questions.
‘Teacher, huh?’ If Ben had said he was a smack dealer, Roque wouldn’t have looked any less impressed.
‘Near enough,’ Ben said.
Roque reflected for a moment, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Well, Teach, seems to me you must either be the luckiest sumbitch alive, or you’re some kinda trained ninja assassin in your spare time.’ He jerked his chin in the direction of Billy Bob Lafleur. ‘Sleepin’ beauty here is a local white-trash scumbag well known to Clovis Parish PD for his violent and intemperate ways. Put many a man in the hospital, and keeps all manner of unsavoury company out there on Garrett Island. His buddy looks kinda rough, too. I’m just wonderin’ how in hell an ordinary tourist, a schoolteacher, could manage to take these bad boys both down in one second flat like Elmo said, bust ’em up real good and walk away without taking so much as a scratch hisself.’
‘I never said I was a schoolteacher,’ Ben replied. ‘And actually it was more like two seconds. Maybe even longer. I must be getting slow in my old age. And they’re not as good as they think they are.’
The sheriff eyed him for the longest moment. ‘Just who exactly are you, boah?’
Ben didn’t like being called ‘boy’. In fact there was little he was liking much about Sheriff Waylon Roque in general. Which came as no great surprise to him. ‘Would you care to rephrase that question, Officer?’
A knowing kind of look crinkled the sheriff’s pale eyes. He nodded to himself, as though savouring an idea. ‘I have a pretty good notion who you are. Tell me. What’s your unit?’
Ben said nothing.
The corners of Roque’s lips stretched into a humourless smile. ‘I knew right off you weren’t no teacher. You got the soldier look, for sure. Maybe you think you can hide it, but I can see it as sure as if you was still wearin’ the uniform. I can see it in your eyes, and from the way you’re standin’ there lookin’ back at me. I saw it before I even walked in here.’
Roque paused. Enjoying the moment. ‘Am I right, Mister Hope? You a military man?’
‘I’m not a soldier,’ Ben said. Which was another technically truthful answer, as he had quit that life a long time ago. ‘But even if I were, Sheriff, I can’t see how it would be any business of yours.’
The deputy called Mason had got off the radio and now returned from the car to say the ambulances were en route and would be with them ‘momentarily’. Ben always wondered at the way Americans used that particular word. In the Queen’s English it meant the ambulances would appear one instant, and then vanish again the next like a disappearing mirage.
In the event, when they did turn up a couple of minutes later and parked behind the police cars, the paramedic units hung around long enough to strap the wounded robbers onto a pair of gurneys and prepare to ship them to hospital, from where they’d be going straight to jail.
Billy Bob Lafleur had woken up by then and had to be sedated to prevent him from trying to escape. He had his Miranda rights read to him before he fell back unconscious. The sheriff directed the police deputy called Elijah to ride with him in the back of the ambulance. Meanwhile, Billy Bob’s friend was still passed out and looking very pale. The medics wheeled him hurriedly aboard and took off with the lights and siren going full pelt.
‘Now what?’ Ben said to Sheriff Roque.
‘Say you’re gonna be in town until the night after tomorrow?’
Ben shrugged. ‘Or the morning after that. I’m not in a rush.’
‘Good. I’ll need you to come down to the station to make a formal statement and fill in a few blanks for me.’
‘What kind of blanks?’ Ben asked.
‘Call it satisfyin’ my curiosity. I like to keep tabs on what’s happenin’ in my parish, just like I like to know who comes and goes. See you around, Mister Hope. Don’t you leave without payin’ me a visit, now, you heah?’
‘Something for me to look forward to,’ Ben said.
The sheriff pulled another half-smile. He tipped his hat to Elmo. ‘Y’all have a peaceful rest of the night.’
After the police were gone, the liquor store and the street fell back into tranquil silence. Only the mess and the blood remained to bear witness to what had happened there that night. Ben felt bad about leaving the old man to clear it all up himself, and spent an hour helping him. When Elmo asked ‘Say, you really a soldier?’ Ben replied, ‘Your sheriff has a heck of an imagination.’
Finally, well after 1.30 a.m., Ben returned to the Bayou Inn with an intact bottle of twelve-year-old Glenmorangie tucked under his arm. He encountered no more armed robbers on the way back. The night was fresh and fragrant, and all seemed well with the world.
And that was the end of all the trouble.
Or, it should have been.
Because trouble would waste little time in finding him again. Sooner than he might have thought.
Chapter 6 (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
By the time Ben got back to his room at the Bayou Inn, the urge to spend a couple of the wee small hours enjoying the Glenmorangie had left him and all he wanted to do was go to bed. He rose early the next morning, as the dawn was breaking over the town and painting the white houses vermilion and gold.
Feeling that last night’s meal had been a little overindulgent, he spent longer than usual on his morning exercise routine, clicking off set after set of press-ups and sit-ups on the floor. He showered and dressed, then used his new burner phone to fire off that text message to Jeff asking how things were going at Le Val, and one to Sandrine to say nothing much in particular except that he’d arrived safe and sound in Louisiana.
Nobody needed to know about last night’s spot of bother. It was already a fading memory, soon to be forgotten altogether.
Standing on his balcony afterwards he smoked a Gauloise and watched the sun climb and the streets come to life, as much as they seemed to do in Villeneuve. Most people around here appeared to drive pickup trucks. A skinny African-American kid on a bicycle with a bulging mailbag swinging from his shoulder worked his way down the street lobbing rolled-up morning newspapers into front yards. Clovis Parish was obviously the last place on Earth where folks hadn’t yet gone all digital. Ben liked that.
Ben was a coffee addict and could pick up its scent from any distance the way a German shepherd smells raw steak. His nose began to twitch just after seven, by which time he was dying for his first caffeine fix of the day, and he followed the enticing aroma downstairs to the kitchen where Mary-Lou Mouton was preparing breakfast.
The morning meal at Le Val tended to be a rushed, hectic, on-the-hoof affair that involved slurping down four or five coffees in between cigarettes while organising trainees, feeding guard dogs and prepping a variety of weaponry for the day’s busy class schedule. That wasn’t how things were done here at the Bayou Inn. Mary-Lou directed him to a white pine table covered with an embroidered cloth and set for one, since he was the only guest, and he sat quietly sipping a cup of excellent black coffee as she bustled about the kitchen.
Mary-Lou was a devout believer in the old saying that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. The plate she shoved under Ben’s nose was piled high with eggs, bacon and sausage patties, home fries, grits and toast, and she stood over him like a prison guard to make sure he finished every bite. He’d have to triple his exercise regime to work it off. Maybe go for a twenty-mile run, too.
Mary-Lou finally left him alone to wash down his breakfast with a second cup of coffee. The copy of the Clovis Parish Times that the bicycle kid had delivered lay unread on the kitchen table. Out of curiosity he picked it up and unfolded it in front of him. Then nearly sprayed a mouthful of coffee all down his shirt as he saw the front-page headline.
BRITISH ARMY VETERAN FOILS LIQUOR STORE HOLDUP
‘What the—?’
He had to blink several times before he could bring himself to believe it. Reading on, he almost choked all over again at the reference to the ‘intrepid stranger’, believed to be an English military veteran, who had ‘heroically intervened’ during an armed robbery at Elmo’s Liquor Locker on West Rue Evangeline Street late Thursday night.
Clovis Parish Sheriff’s Dept. sources had released the names of the two men taken into custody: Billy Bob Lafleur, 34, and Kyle Fillios, 32. Lafleur and Fillios had entered the store ‘brandishing’ (that favourite word of the media) lethal firearms (was there any other kind, Ben wondered) and demanded its proprietor, Mr E. Gillis, hand over the contents of the cash register, threatening his life. Whereupon the two thugs had been tackled and disarmed and the police called to the scene.
Fillios had been rushed to the nearby Clovis Parish Medical Center requiring surgery for ‘a self-inflicted injury’ while Lafleur was now locked up in the Clovis Parish jail awaiting a trial date. A quote from Mr Gillis proclaimed, ‘I thought I was dead, for sure’ and praised the unnamed hero for his actions. The Sheriff’s Department was unavailable for further comment.
Ben re-scanned the article three times, more perplexed with every reading. The Times had moved pretty damn fast to get the story out for the next morning’s edition. Some intrepid reporter must have dragged poor old Elmo Gillis out of bed before daybreak to get the quote.
Ben couldn’t blame the local press for being eager to jump on such a sensational story, considering how news-starved their sleepy little town likely was the rest of the time. He also had to be thankful that his name wasn’t mentioned. But the ‘British army veteran’ reference bothered him a lot. He doubted the reporter had got that from Elmo, as the old guy had no reason for spreading such rumours. No. Ben was certain that information had leaked from the mouth of Sheriff Waylon Roque himself. Ben had the impression that once Roque got an idea into his head, he’d let go of it as easily as a starving dog gives up a meaty bone.
Not to mention the fact that Roque’s instinct about Ben was perfectly accurate. An ordinary tourist, a teacher no less, wouldn’t have stood a chance against two desperate trigger-happy imbeciles like Lafleur and Fillios.
If Sheriff Roque had divulged that much to the Times reporter, what else had he told them? That the hero of the liquor store holdup was in town for the Woody McCoy gig tomorrow night? Or that he was staying at the Bayou Inn?
Ben valued privacy above most things, and he disliked being talked about or, worse, written about. It was his nature to be that way, a character trait that had fitted very well with his covert, secretive life in Special Forces. Anonymity was an obsession with SF operatives. While his own SAS background and Jeff Dekker’s history with its sister outfit the Special Boat Service were part of the attraction that drew hundreds of delegates from all over the world to train at Le Val, outside of his work Ben never voluntarily shared that side of his past with anyone. Sandrine knew virtually nothing of it. Even Brooke Marcel, to whom Ben had been engaged for a while before it all went south, had been kept in the dark about a lot of things.
And now he’d allowed himself to become the subject of gossip in a small town where nothing ever happened. Bad move. The word would spread faster than pneumonic plague. He was irritated with himself; and yet what else could he have done but intervene in the robbery? What was he supposed to do, stand by and let an innocent old man get killed just to satisfy his sense of discretion? How could he have predicted that some hick sheriff would turn out to be so wily and perceptive?
As these worrisome thoughts swirled around in Ben’s mind, Mary-Lou reappeared, looking somewhat bemused, to say there were two men at the door looking for a Mr Bob Hope. ‘I think it’s you they want. Said they were reporters for the Villeneuve Courier.’
Bob Hope.
Ben heaved a weary sigh. Someone had been gabbing, all right. Now the press had found him, he couldn’t hide behind the sofa and wait for them to go away. He followed Mary-Lou along the sweet-smelling passage to the door, where a reedy individual wearing a cheap suit hovered on the front step accompanied by an acne-spangled photographer in ripped jeans and an LSU Tigers T-shirt, who aimed his long lens at Ben like a gun.
‘Mister Hope? It’s you, right?’
‘That depends. Who the hell are you and what do you want?’
‘Dickie Thibodeaux, from the Courier. I wondered if I could have a minute of your time?’
As politely as possible, Ben explained to them that he wasn’t interested in giving interviews and had nothing to say. ‘I’m on vacation. Now please leave me alone.’
‘Come on, man, you gotta give us somethin’. This is a hot story. You’re the star of the liquor store holdup! Some kinda superhero, like the British Jack Bauer.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Who told you that?’
Dickie Thibodeaux smirked. ‘Sorry, I never reveal my sources.’
‘Tell your sources to get stuffed.’ Ben turned to glare at the photographer, who was clicking away. ‘And you, get that camera out of my face before I ram it down your bloody throat.’ Amazing how fast politeness could melt away. Reporters had that effect on people, and especially on Ben.
The pair stalked to their car, shooting resentful glances back at him. Dickie Thibodeaux was already getting on the phone, probably drumming up reinforcements.
Ben watched them go. He’d successfully repelled the first wave. But there would be more, and the scrutiny on him would intensify fast as the story gained traction. By lunchtime there might be TV crews for CNN, WNBC and Good Morning America blocking the street and swarming all over the Moutons’ front lawn. Ben was about to become the world’s most reluctant celebrity. And that could mean only one thing.
He muttered aloud, ‘I need to get out of here, right this minute.’
Chapter 7 (#ulink_c110bc4c-5a80-5838-a462-a2665b62ba37)
In fact it was a whole twenty before Ben had packed his things, checked out of the Bayou Inn and was speeding out of Villeneuve, cursing whichever wagging tongue had put him in this predicament. His plan was now to find a discreet new place to stay in a quiet location not too far away, where he was less likely to be recognised.
He had only to lie low for another thirty-six hours or less before sneaking back undetected into Villeneuve in time for the Woody McCoy gig. How hard could that be?
Then, the moment the Great Man’s final performance was over, Ben would hustle back to New Orleans. Before Sheriff Roque or the local press were any the wiser, he’d be flying home to the sanctuary of rural Normandy.
On his map the nearby small town of Chitimacha, forty-five minutes’ drive to the west, looked like a promising place to hole up. He spurred the Tahoe along a meandering two-lane that cut through the cane and sweet potato fields and flat marshlands striped with industrial waterways and oil pipelines. As he got closer to Chitimacha he started looking around for a motel, but passed only a tattered billboard for Dixie beer. Was that the only kind of beer anyone drank around here? Minutes later, he entered the town itself.
If Chitimacha could be called a town, then Villeneuve was a city by comparison. The small settlement had grown up piecemeal along the east bank of a broad, glass-smooth waterway called Bayou Sainte-Marie. Access from the western side meant crossing a wooden bridge that straddled the bayou’s narrowest point and looked as though it had been there since Civil War days.
It was only mid-morning and already the air was as hot and thick as caramel sauce. Clouds of insects drifted over the water like smoke. It made Ben think of the Amazon. The smell of the bayou hung heavy, fishy and stagnant like an aquarium left standing uncleaned. Beneath the bridge, the bank’s edge was a buzzing hive of industry, crowded with small jetties where stacks of lobster traps stood piled man-high, and moored flat-bottomed river boats bobbed gently on the almost imperceptible swell of the mud-brown water. Back from the jetties were store huts and bait and tackle shops advertising live worms and boat hire.
Traffic entering and leaving Chitimacha was thin and sporadic. Like everywhere else in the region, two out of every three vehicles were pickup trucks. Once over the wooden bridge Ben passed a couple of roadside fish shacks selling wares such as gaspergou and gar balls, and other arcane specialities of Planet Louisiana at whose nature he could only guess. He slowed the Tahoe to gaze from his window at a huge fish that hung tail-up from a hook outside one of the shacks.
Once, in the Cayman Islands, Ben had seen a man torn apart by tiger sharks. This thing was even more fearsome. Part giant pike, part alligator, its massive jaws bristling with fangs. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to eat it, but it was easy to imagine the creature taking a bite out of any unlucky fisherman who fell in the bayou.
Ben drove on into the centre of Chitimacha, which made the Villeneuve town square look like New Orleans in the middle of Mardi Gras. If Ben had wanted quiet, he’d certainly found it here. Seemingly, if you wanted action in Chitimacha you needed to be on the bayou itself. Here in town the sidewalks were almost completely deserted. A solitary pickup truck rumbled past, heading the way Ben had come. A few parked vehicles, many of them older than he was, sat gathering dust in the sun. There was a hardware store displaying racks of everything from chainsaw oil to crawfish boilers, and a grocery store with sun-faded ad placards in the windows saying ‘Drink Coca-Cola in bottles’ and ‘If it ain’t Jerry Lee’s, it ain’t boudin’. Next door was an empty barber’s shop, and next door to that an equally empty café with chairs and tables spilling out into the deserted street for nobody to sit at.
Possibly the liveliest spot in town was an ancient relic of a filling station that consisted of a weedy patch of blacktop, two pre-war gas pumps and an old man in oily dungarees outside on a dilapidated bench with a corncob pipe in his mouth, sunning himself in the burning heat like a reptile on a rock.
Ben pulled up by the pumps and got the old man to fill up the Tahoe, which he set about doing without uttering a word, the pipe still stuck between his teeth. It was lit, but if the old man didn’t worry about going up in flames, Ben wasn’t going to worry about it either.
‘I’ll bet this place really comes alive in the high season, doesn’t it?’ Ben said by way of initiating a conversation. The old man just looked at him and muttered a response in what sounded like a weird version of French. Ben realised he was speaking the Cajun dialect handed down from the Acadian settlers way back. The historic language had been heavily altered by isolation and the passing of the centuries, but (or so Ben had read) was still basically intelligible to a modern French speaker. Which Ben was, and so he switched from English in the hope that they could communicate.
‘Don’t suppose you have anything resembling a hotel here in Chitimacha?’
The old man plucked the pipe from his mouth with a moist sucking sound, and waved the wet end of its stem to point down the street while jabbering more of his dialect. Maybe it wasn’t that intelligible after all, at least not to anyone but a Cajun. Ben was stumped for a second or two, then understood he was being directed to a local pension, which was French for a guesthouse. Ben got the rest of the directions, paid up for the gas, said, ‘Merci, monsieur’ and drove on.
The directions led him to a street quarter of a mile away on the edge of Chitimacha, which could have been lifted straight out of Villeneuve’s most down-at-heel neighbourhoods. Signs of neglect and poverty were all too obvious in most directions he looked.
Except for one. The guesthouse stood out from the adjoining properties, spick and span and resplendent from a fresh coat of white paint that was almost blinding in the bright sunshine. The tiny green GMC hatchback outside the front gate looked new and clean and well maintained, unlike most of the beaters parked up and down the street. A flowery hand-crafted bilingual sign on the gate said, ‘Bienvenue à la pension de Lottie’ and underneath ‘Welcome to Lottie’s Guesthouse’.
Ben parked up behind the miniature GMC, which could probably have fitted in the Tahoe’s rear cargo space. He climbed out into the hot sun and opened the gate and walked up a neat little path to the door to ring the bell. A minute later he heard movement inside.
The inner door opened, then the screen door, and a large African-American lady with a smile that made the house’s dazzling pearl-white paintwork seem dull and faded greeted him with a vivacious ‘Well, hello there, sugah. I’m Lottie Landreneau, and how are you today?’
Chapter 8 (#ulink_65608f35-e60a-54af-8336-50d0a5ab54a5)
Ben knew from the start that he’d struck lucky with Lottie. The warmth of her hospitality was as endearing as her smile and from the moment he walked into her house he felt right at home. The place was filled with flowers, light and Southern charm, like her personality. ‘Where y’all from, sugah? You sound English without soundin’ English, if you know what I mean.’
‘I’ve moved around.’
‘Oh, I know all about that,’ she said mysteriously, and seemed to enjoy keeping him in suspense for now. ‘Come, let me show you your room.’
He followed her from the richly carpeted entrance hall and up a switchback staircase with a thick gleaming mahogany banister rail that she clutched as she hauled her weight up the stairs. ‘That’s me,’ she said, motioning towards a glossy white door at the end of the galleried first-floor landing.
Spaced out along the passage were two more doors, each adorned with a little brass number plaque. ‘Y’all are the only guest I got right now, so you get your pick of the rooms.’ She pointed at the door nearest to hers. ‘How ’bout this one?’
‘What’s up there?’ he asked, nodding towards a drop-down wooden staircase that led from the opposite end of the landing to an open hatch in the ceiling.
‘Rooms three and four. It’s an attic conversion. Ceilings are kinda low.’
‘I love attics.’
‘Okay, well then let me show you.’
The attic conversion was a work of genius, executed with style and taste. The drop-down wooden staircase was a fine piece of carpentry that could be retracted from above by means of a rope pulley to create a cosy, isolated sanctuary at the top of the house. As for the bedrooms themselves, room three was nice, but room four was perfect. The inverted V of the sloped ceiling was all decked out in gleaming white tongue-and-groove panelling, and the floor was sanded and varnished bare boards with a furry rug. The single bed ran along the middle, where the ceiling was at its highest point. It had a simple iron frame and a patchwork quilt, and a small table with a reading lamp. The single dormer window looked out beyond the slope of the nearest neighbour’s roof to offer a view of Chitimacha as far as the winding brown snake of the bayou in the distance. The room reminded Ben a lot of his quarters in the old farmhouse back home in France.
‘This is the one I’d like.’
‘No problem at all. It’s yours, sugah.’
Lottie led the way back down to a little salon on the ground floor, where she made a fuss of serving home-made iced tea with lemon in tall, slender glasses. Not too sweet, not too lemony, perfect and refreshing after the wilting heat. Then, wedging her not inconsiderable bulk into an armchair, she began to talk. Which was something she loved to do, as Ben now discovered. But she did it so beautifully, mesmerising him with her accent and laughter, that he could have sat listening all day.
He got the whole life story. Born and bred right here in Chitimacha, she’d moved to Villeneuve in her teens and ended up living there for twenty-plus years until a bad marriage had grown worse and she’d eventually escaped with the intention of doing something with her life. A goal that Lottie had taken extremely seriously, celebrating her fortieth birthday with the vow to waste not another single minute of whatever time God had provided for her. The last three years had been spent travelling and studying in Europe, from where she’d returned to Louisiana only a few months ago.
‘Studying how to run a guesthouse?’ Ben asked, to which she giggled and replied, ‘No, dearie, studying cookery. The guesthouse thing, that’s only temporary. What I’m gonna do, my real plan, is to set up my own restaurant, the best eatin’ house for a hundred miles around. It’s gonna put this little ol’ town back on the map and bring folks from all over.’
Lottie’s travels had taken her to London, Paris and Rome, where she’d scrubbed pots and waitressed in all the top restaurants, while using her divorce settlement money to take classes in some of the most famous cookery schools in Europe. Now armed with the requisite skills and a clutch of diplomas, she had proudly returned to her roots in order to realise her grand ambition of bringing together the finer points of classical cuisine with the best of traditional Cajun cooking. ‘Because there ain’t nothin’ like it in the world,’ she assured him.
‘Everywhere I go around here, it’s all about food, food and more food,’ Ben observed with a smile. ‘Everything from Mickey’s crawfish to fresh coon meat to Creole jambalaya to boudin to gumbo to gar balls. I’ve done nothing but eat since I got here. Does anyone in Louisiana ever think about anything else?’
She laughed. ‘We do worship our bellies, that’s a fact. Fattest state in America, and we’s only just gettin’ started.’
‘Whatever the heck gar balls are.’
‘Those are a kind of patty, made from alligator gar. That’s this ugly big ol’ fish the river folks catch. Might look like a livin’ nightmare, but sure tastes like heaven.’
Ben remembered the fanged monster he’d seen displayed outside the fish shack on the way into town. He still didn’t fancy eating it. ‘And what on earth is gumbo? Where do you get these names?’
Lottie’s big brown eyes opened wide. ‘Heavens, honey child, you mean to tell me you ain’t never eaten no Louisiana gumbo before?’
‘I can’t say I’ve had that pleasure yet.’
‘Then you sure came to the right place, sweetie. And I know just what to put on the menu for dinner tonight.’ Lowering her voice and turning on the accent even more strongly, she said, ‘Mm-hmm, you is in fo’ a treat!’
But before the treat could happen, some preparations needed to be made, and so did a confession. Because she was still getting on her feet with her new guesthouse business, and because Ben was her only customer and had turned up out of the blue the way he had, Lottie had to admit the shocking truth that her larder was all but empty. Which to her was a major embarrassment, but to Ben was completely unimportant. All he wanted was a room for the night.
‘Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to feed me. I saw a café in town. I can eat there.’
‘You don’ want to eat there, trust me.’
‘How bad can it be?’ He could have offered plenty of examples to illustrate how used he was to roughing it, but there were already enough citizens of Clovis Parish with more insights into his past than they really needed to have.
Despite his protests Lottie was resolute, her eyes already beginning to glaze as she visualised the feast she was going to cook up to mark the occasion of her first-ever customer.
Hence, a serious shopping expedition was called for – and hence, as Ben had nothing else to do for the next few hours, nor for the rest of that day for that matter, he happily allowed himself to get roped in as a general aide and grocery carrier. And, as it turned out, he soon became the chauffeur for the occasion too, after pointing out that Lottie’s matchbox-sized bright green GMC, as cute as it was, couldn’t hold more than a couple of bags of shopping whereas his Tahoe could haul enough goods to stock a restaurant kitchen for a month.
He gallantly escorted Lottie to the passenger side and opened her door for her. An elderly man painting his fence across the street paused to wave, and she smiled and waved back with a cheery ‘Afternoon, Mr Clapp’. Then Ben tossed a pile of empty shopping bags in the back, and they were off.
Lottie eschewed the local grocery store and instead directed Ben a few miles further west of Chitimacha, to a tiny rural town called Pointe Blanche where, she explained to him with a conspiratorial wink, there existed a sensational food market that was destined to be the secret weapon in her quest to establish the best restaurant in Clovis Parish. ‘They got all the good stuff, real Cajun specialties you won’t find anywhere else.’
Ben was happy to take her word for it, though privately he was thinking back to the weird and wonderful local dishes he’d seen on offer at the Cajun steakhouse and beginning to wonder what he was letting himself in for.
Pointe Blanche was maybe half the size of Chitimacha, but a good deal busier. ‘Why not set up your restaurant here?’ he asked her as they searched for a parking space. ‘Closer to your suppliers, bigger clientele.’
She shook her head. ‘I grew up in Chitimacha. That’s where I’ll die.’ Stubborn.
Ben finally managed to park the Tahoe just three minutes’ walk from the food market, so they wouldn’t have too far to haul their goodies. They locked up the car and strolled down the street, her talking, him listening and enjoying the moment as he took in the local sights.
On the same street as the food market was an auto repair yard called DUMPY’S RODS, with nobody in sight and a variety of custom cars in various stages of dismantlement behind a locked chain-link gate. Next door to Dumpy’s was the compulsory town gun shop, and finally the food market itself, a kind of Aladdin’s cave of esoteric gastronomy purveying such delights as bayou gator burger, blackened catfish and roast beef with ‘debris’. What kind of debris, Ben didn’t even want to know.
Lottie invaded the place like a nine-year-old let loose in a toy store, and instantly began spending far more cash than Ben was paying her for a night’s board.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ he protested. ‘Not on my account.’ To which she replied, ‘Shush, now,’ and silenced him with one of her retina-searing smiles.
Lugging multiple bags of Cajun delicacies back to the Tahoe half an hour later, they passed by the auto repair yard again. This time the chain-link gate was open and a cluster of young guys were gathered in the forecourt, five of them all drooling over a flame-painted lowrider with suspension so close to the ground that it wouldn’t have made it halfway up the track to Le Val without bottoming out. To Ben the car looked like a big chrome polishing headache, but the young guys all seemed entranced by it.
One of them, a lean hairy individual with close-set eyes full of nastiness and a roll-up dangling from his mouth, managed to peel his gaze away from the absurd car long enough to cast a lurid glance Lottie’s way and crack a grin that showed off his rotten teeth. He yelled, ‘Yo, Mama!’ Then nudged the guy standing next to him and added loudly, shaking his head in mirth, ‘Damn, that’s the porkiest nigger bitch I seen all week.’
The other one laughed and cupped his hands to his mouth to call to Ben, ‘Hey buddy! Don’t feed the gorilla!’
Which was more than enough to make Ben want to set down his shopping bags, walk into the yard and lay the five out flat, in such a way that they wouldn’t be getting up again too quickly. But only after he’d made them watch him reduce the lowrider to a smoking pile of scrap metal.
Lottie just stiffened a little and hastened her step past the open chain-link gateway, motioning for him to do the same. ‘Another reason for not livin’ in Pointe Blanche. Lot of trash round these parts.’
‘Maybe someone should clean it up,’ Ben said.
‘Forget it. That there’s Dwayne Skinner.’ She seemed too afraid to point out which one she meant, but Ben guessed it was the lean hairy one.
‘You know him?’
‘We was in middle school together. This is a small community. Ever’body knows ever’body around here.’
‘So what?’
‘So, you don’ go gettin’ into fights with Dwayne Skinner.’
‘I don’t like his language.’
She looked at him. ‘Ben, if you’re fixin’ to go pickin’ quarrels with every redneck who says the N-word, y’all gonna have your hands full, believe me.’
Ben thought, fuck it. He went ahead and set down the bags. Stood staring at the group and felt that familiar coldness coming over him as his body went into fight mode. Now all five were staring back and beginning to bristle like the real tough guys they were.
The lean hairy one who might be Dwayne Skinner yelled, ‘You got a problem, asshole?’
Ben didn’t have a problem, beyond the fact that he was mildly irritated by their behaviour. But they did, if he walked into that yard. Five against one. They probably thought they were in with a pretty good chance. Which constituted a serious error of judgement. Because in reality, the fight would be over before it even started.
Lottie halted and turned, giving him an imploring look. ‘Come on, sugah. Let’s go.’
‘This won’t take long,’ Ben said.
Now the five were moving away from the car and slowly walking towards him. They were putting on the whole display of menace. Fists thumping into cupped palms. Brows furrowing, jawlines tightening, eyes narrowing. Radiating total self-confidence, as though they’d done this a hundred times before. And maybe they had, too. Experience had taught them they had nothing to fear. But that just meant they’d been lucky, until today.
Ben smiled to himself.
‘You ain’t gonna be smilin’ when they’re scrapin’ your ass off of the sidewalk,’ Dwayne Skinner said.
Ben said to him, ‘Ever used a wheelchair? It’s harder than it looks. But you’ll get plenty of practice in the weeks and months to come.’
Lottie said, ‘Ben.’ Her voice sounded tight with apprehension.
Ben fished the Tahoe key from his pocket and tossed it to her. ‘You walk on. I’ll meet you back at the car in one minute.’
Ben had decided he’d go for Dwayne first. Then his buddy beside him, the one who’d made the gorilla remark, in that order. They were the two doing all the talking, which meant they were psychologically the leaders of this little peer group, the lean hairy one being number one and the other his second-in-command. Like in a dog pack, where the animals naturally arrange themselves into a hierarchy with the alpha and beta dogs at the top and everyone else in order of ranking below.
In war, Ben had learned long ago, you always take the officers down first if you can. With the alpha and beta broken and helpless and pissing their pants on the concrete, the rest would probably try to bolt. Try being the operative word. None would get further than a few steps before they received a dose of the same medicine as their pals.
Lottie said, ‘Ben, please.’
Chapter 9 (#ulink_d05fa74f-1c9d-5d65-9ba9-389cb30b8802)
Ben was half a heartbeat away from walking into the yard. All he had to do was let events play out exactly as he could already see them happening on the mental screen inside his head. After last night’s heavy dinner and the excessive breakfast he’d eaten back in Villeneuve that morning, a little bit of exercise was the exact thing he needed.
But then he hesitated. Actions had consequences, and while he wasn’t the least bit concerned how those consequences would affect the five guys in front of him, it occurred to him that certain repercussions were best avoided in his own interest. It was a busy street. Not Piccadilly at rush hour, but a lot busier than the sidewalks outside Elmo’s Liquor Locker at midnight. If Ben stepped through the gate into the forecourt of Dumpy’s Rods and things followed their inevitable course, someone was bound to call the cops. The aftermath of the fight was as predictable as its outcome. If Ben remained with the five unconscious bodies until the police turned up, he’d face all kinds of questioning. Even if he left before they arrived, there would be enough witness descriptions for the cops to identify him. Either way, it pointed to the likely reappearance of Sheriff Waylon Roque into Ben’s life soon afterwards.
All of that, combined with the fact that he’d have compromised his anonymity once again, when the whole damn point of leaving Villeneuve was to lie low.
Stupid.
Lottie said, ‘Do what you like, I ain’t waitin’.’ She started walking off, shaking her head.
The gang were just a few steps away. Ben watched them approach, still undecided. Then the decision was made for him when one of the five who hadn’t yet spoken a word pointed at Ben and said, ‘Hey, I seen this guy before. He’s on the news.’
Dwayne Skinner shot his buddy a sneer. ‘Yeah, right. How’s this asshole on the news?’
‘Straight up, man. It’s him for sure. He’s the dude who busted up Billy Bob Lafleur.’
Dwayne and the others were now eyeing Ben more hesitantly. ‘Is that a fact?’ Dwayne said, with as much bravado as he could sum up. ‘Don’t mean shit if he did. Lafleur’s a fuckin’ pussy faggot. Hell, my grandmother could whip his ass.’
But now their curiosity was stronger than their fighting spirit. ‘You the guy, mister?’
‘Forget it,’ Ben said. He picked up his bags, turned and kept walking. Dwayne Skinner and his pals instantly started up a chorus of chicken sounds, strutting and flapping bent arms like wings. They would never, ever know how lucky they were.
‘Changed your mind, huh?’ Lottie said as he caught up with her, handing him back the Tahoe key with a look of immense relief.
He shrugged and replied, ‘Five against one. It wouldn’t have been a fair fight.’
They walked in silence back to the vehicle. Ben’s arms and legs were tingling and trembly from the pent-up adrenalin that would now slowly start to reabsorb into his system. It was a familiar feeling. All combat soldiers were used to it. Nine times out of ten, whenever his old SAS unit had been all kitted out and psyched up for battle, they’d been stood down and had to return to their quarters to shake off all the tension. But what wasn’t such a familiar feeling, and one he disliked intensely, was being recognised everywhere he went. Damn and blast Dickie Thibodeaux from the Courier, or whatever his rag was called. Ben should have smashed the photographer’s camera when he’d had the chance.
They reached the parked Tahoe, and Ben blipped the central locking and opened the rear hatch and loaded in the mass of groceries, which filled only a fraction of the cargo space. Only when they climbed aboard and Ben started the engine did Lottie reach across to touch his arm and break into a dazzling smile. ‘Wow. There was me thinkin’ there were no gentlemen left in this world. Thank you.’
‘For what? Nothing happened.’
‘You kiddin’ me? A lot happened. You stood up for a lady. Even though you hardly know me and we only just met. And that’s somethin’.’
Ben replied, ‘We’re shopping for groceries together and you’re going to cook me dinner. In some countries that’s the same as being married.’
She laughed. ‘Maybe. But trash like Dwayne Skinner ain’t worth gettin’ beat up over, not for my sake.’
‘Who said anything about getting beaten up?’
By the time they reached Chitimacha, Ben had relaxed and mostly forgotten about it. He helped Lottie unload the groceries and bring everything inside. With her larder replenished and all her ingredients for the cooking session laid out systematically on her gleaming kitchen surfaces, Lottie said, ‘Oh joy.’ She rolled up her sleeves, donned a well-used and appropriately-stained apron that said LEITHS SCHOOL OF FOOD AND WINE, and got to work with a fiercely concentrated gusto that was awesome to behold.
It soon became obvious that Ben’s presence in the kitchen was getting in her way, and so he left her to it and wandered out to the garden for a cigarette. As he smoked, out of a kind of morbid curiosity he googled up ‘Clovis Parish Louisiana local news’ on his burner phone and found the Courier’s website. Sure enough, there next to D. Thibodeaux’s trashy and sensationalistic article on the attempted liquor store holdup was the photo of Ben taken outside the Bayou Inn.
Which, needless to say, was how Dwayne Skinner’s buddy had recognised him.
Damn it, once again.
The rest of the afternoon passed languorously. It still felt odd to Ben to have so little to do except mooch about the guesthouse and wait for evening to come. When it finally did, he was in for an eye-opener. Whatever reservations he might have been holding on to about Cajun cooking were soon to be blown away as Lottie seated him at her immaculately set, candlelit table and began lifting lids off steaming dishes of the most beguiling food he’d ever encountered.
‘So this is gumbo,’ he said, gazing at the vast helping she’d put on his plate.
‘No, this is Lottie’s gumbo,’ she corrected him with a gleeful laugh. ‘I’m spoilin’ you for anyone else. Now, please. Don’t talk. Eat.’
Ben willingly obeyed the command. The gumbo was a rich, sumptuous meat stew made from chicken and andouille sausage cooked with celery and bell peppers and onion, all melted together on a glutinous and indecently flavoursome bed of what Lottie called dirty rice. If this was dirt, he was happy to gobble it down, three or four heaped forkfuls to Lottie’s every one.
‘What’s that seasoning?’ he tried to ask, but his mouth was too crammed full to speak. He chewed, swallowed and repeated the question more coherently, and Lottie explained that it was something called filé, which was a classic Cajun spice that came from dried leaves of the sassafras tree and was used for flavour and thickening. She said, ‘My opinion, some Louisiana cooks, like those Creole folks along the Cane River, lay on the filé till you can’t taste nothin’ else. I like to mix it up with okra for a more subtle effect.’
The delicious concoction was accompanied by a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc so chilled that it numbed the tongue. Ben was generally more of a red wine person, but the pairing was perfect. He ate and drank, but especially ate. Lottie seemed delighted with his enthusiasm for her cooking. After two platefuls he wanted to stop, though somehow the fork just wouldn’t leave his hand. Or stop shovelling food up to his mouth.
It was just as well he didn’t live here. Too much of this stuff, and his daily runs would start to become a waddling stagger.
‘So, you like it, huh?’ Lottie said. Fishing for compliments, naturally.
Ben managed to pause between mouthfuls and looked her in the eye across the table. ‘When I get home, you know the first thing I’m going to do? I’m going to call up whoever compiles the Oxford English Dictionary.’
‘Oh really, and why’s that?’ she said, showing every one of her white teeth in a beaming smile, knowing a compliment was coming and loving the anticipation.
‘Because if they’re not specifically mentioning your cooking, they’re seriously misdefining the word “tasty”.’
For dessert Lottie had whipped up a Southern-style chocolate gravy sauce, which she poured over beignets so rich in eggs and butter that Ben was amazed he didn’t drop dead right there of heart failure. What a way to die, though, if he had. When the last crumb was gone he leaned back in his chair, clutched his belly and said, ‘That’s it. That’s all I can take.’
Chapter 10 (#ulink_5a9fe7bc-bf39-5b93-a649-a9b8099f6573)
Lottie said, ‘How ’bout we retreat to the salon for a lil’ drink?’
She put on an Aretha Franklin CD and they sat in her soft, comfortable armchairs either side of a coffee table. When she proposed an after-dinner tot of rum, Ben had a better idea. He’d eaten so much that he wasn’t sure he could haul himself out of the armchair, but with a manful effort managed to lurch to his feet and run up to the top floor to unbuckle his bag and fetch out the bottle of twelve-year-old Glenmorangie he’d bought from Elmo Gillis. It was still unopened. Tonight seemed like the ideal occasion. He carried the bottle back downstairs. Lottie grabbed a pair of crystal tumblers from a sideboard and they happily attacked the Scottish nectar as Aretha sang about r-e-s-p-e-c-t.
In between refills of whisky, of which there were many, Lottie filled in the gaps in her life story. Her first ten years had been spent growing up as an only child on a tiny chicken farm just outside Chitimacha. It was right on the site of a Civil War battlefield, where a bloody little skirmish had taken place between rebel holdouts and a superior force of invading Union troops in the final days before Lee’s surrender. She remembered how the chickens were always scratching old musket bullets up out of the ground.
‘Poppy could’ve made more money from sellin’ the lead for fishin’ weights than he ever done from raisin’ poultry,’ she reflected.
Her father’s lack of talent as a farmer had eventually led them to sell up and move into town, where he ended up wandering miserably from one menial job to another. Life hadn’t been easy for the family, which she speculated might have been why the seventeen-year-old Charlotte Landreneau had run away to the ‘big city’ to rashly marry Neville Dupré. Neville was sixteen years older and well-to-do, and had the distinction of being the first and only African-American dentist ever to set up a practice in Villeneuve. He was also, it later turned out, a violent control freak who somehow contrived to keep no fewer than four mistresses scattered about Clovis Parish, who between them had borne him six children. For Lottie, never having been able to have any of her own, it had been the cruellest kind of betrayal.
‘I guess we all have our secrets,’ she said. ‘Just took me a long time to find out what that sumbitch was up to all them years.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She looked at him. ‘Do you keep secrets, Ben?’
‘Not that kind,’ he said, struck by the directness of her question.
‘I have a secret,’ she said. ‘One that goes back a long, long time. Momma told me when I was a lil’ girl. She said never to pass it on to another livin’ soul, ’cause folks would hate us for it.’
‘Why would they hate you?’
‘History,’ she said with a shrug. ‘History matters a lot here in the South. Like the song, you know? I wish I was in the land of cotton; old times there are not forgotten.’
‘Dixie,’ Ben said. ‘So are you going to tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Your secret. I’m intrigued.’
She smiled. ‘You’re a livin’ soul, ain’t you?’
‘Managed to stay that way until now.’
‘Then I can’t. Don’t take it personal.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said.
‘Let’s change the subject,’ she said. ‘You never told me much about yo’self, Ben. What do you do for a livin’?’
‘I’m a restaurant inspector for the US Health Department.’
‘Oh, come on now.’
‘I’m a teacher.’
‘Maths? English? Geography?’
‘No, I teach people to do some of the things I used to do. Like how to protect folks who need protection, or help people who’re in danger. Stuff like that.’
‘Now I’m the one who’s intrigued,’ she said. She watched him curiously for a moment, then added, ‘You don’t like to talk about yo’self much, do you, sugah?’
‘It’s kind of a habit with me,’ he admitted.
‘So I ain’t the only one who keeps secrets. Well, I guess that makes me feel better. You married?’
‘Once upon a time.’
‘Kids?’
‘Just the one. He’s grown up now.’
‘Family?’
‘My parents died a long time ago. I have a sister. Haven’t talked to her in a while.’
‘You should. Even though my folks are both passed now, there ain’t a day I don’t think about them and pray to my Lord to keep a special eye out for the both of them. God and family, that’s all there is. That’s my strength.’
‘I haven’t talked to Him in a while either,’ Ben said.
‘He ain’t forgotten you,’ Lottie said. ‘He watches over all of us, ever’ moment of ever’ day.’
‘I used to think that way, too.’
‘So what changed?’
Now it was Ben’s turn to want to change the subject. That was a part of his life he definitely didn’t wish to discuss and he regretted having raised it.
‘Let’s have another drink.’ He held up the bottle. There was surprisingly little left. He was a fairly hardened whisky drinker and it took a lot to make his head spin. He’d have been lying if he’d said it wasn’t spinning now. Lottie seemed more or less unaffected, apart from maybe a very slight thickening of her tongue and the very fact that she’d brought up the subject of her mysterious secret. He suspected that she was itching to tell, but wasn’t yet drunk enough. Maybe he should have bought two bottles from Elmo instead of just the one.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve never known a woman who could knock back the scotch the way you can,’ he said as he emptied the last of the Glenmorangie into their glasses.
‘Fulla surprises, ain’t I?’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
When at last the whisky was finished, Ben was ready for bed. He thanked her for a wonderful dinner and a pleasant evening. She said, ‘Why don’t you stay a week or two longer?’ and they both laughed.
He gave her a hug and then trudged up to his room. He thought about retracting the pull-down staircase behind him, then decided against it. The combination of the white wine and the scotch was kicking in harder now, everything whirling a little. There seemed to be two beds in the room, both of them gently swirling around in circles in front of his eyes, and for a moment it was hard to decide which one to crash into fully clothed, jeans, boots and all.
‘I’m getting too old for this kind of nonsense,’ he muttered to himself. Then his head hit the pillow and he closed his eyes and was instantly asleep.
He dreamed fitfully, the kind of ethereal reverie that seems vivid at the time but is burst like a bubble in the morning, forever lost to memory. It was through his dreaming that he heard the strange sounds that some more focused part of his mind told him weren’t imaginary. His eyes snapped open and he sat upright.
He definitely hadn’t dreamed it. A thump that had seemed to resonate through the floor beneath him. Followed by the crash and tinkle of breaking glass. Some kind of commotion. And it had come not from outside, but from somewhere in the house. From downstairs.
And then he heard another sound that blew away the last fog of sleep and whisky, and had him jackknifing out of bed in alarm.
The sound of a woman’s scream of terror.
Followed a moment later by another cry. A much worse sound, of a very different nature, the kind of wailing shriek that can only be caused by the most unspeakable kind of agony.
Ben ran for the bedroom door.
Chapter 11 (#ulink_eee46a47-8c46-57b1-89d6-bece384a17c0)
He crossed the pitch blackness of the attic bedroom in two long strides and tore open the door. The little landing outside his room was every bit as dark. The world of the blind. And the deaf, too, because now all he could hear from below was dead silence.
He called out, ‘Lottie?’ Heard the tension in his own voice. Trying to understand where the screams had come from. It was a big house. They could have come from anywhere on the two floors below him.
No reply.
He hurried down the drop-down stairs to the first-floor landing, which was dimly illuminated by a narrow chink of light escaping from Lottie’s part-open bedroom door. He hesitated, then ran along the landing to the door and peered inside. The room was large and cosy, and empty. The light was coming from a little wall lamp above the double bed. The covers were rumpled aside, as though she must have got out of bed in a rush. Ben’s pulse was quickening as he ran back along the landing. The luminous green skeleton hands of his watch told him it was 4.13 a.m. He stopped again at the head of the stairs, listening hard.
Still total silence from below. Too quiet, even for the middle of the night. The kind of silence that hangs heavy, like a dumbstruck witness in the immediate aftermath of something bad, really bad. Another light was on in the downstairs hallway, its glow reaching around the twist in the winding staircase.
He was trying to compute what could have happened. Had she gone downstairs for some reason, maybe to get a drink of water or visit the ground floor bathroom, and fallen and hurt herself? Was the tinkle of breaking glass the smashing of something like a glass or a lamp? He was about to call her name again, but instinct made him stay quiet. There were other ways to interpret the sounds he’d heard. Ways that were beginning to paint a worse picture in his mind.
He rushed down the first few steps as far as the twist in the staircase, to meet the glow of light that shone up from the hallway below.
The hallway wasn’t empty. A shape lay on the floor. The shape of a large body. A woman’s body.
Lottie’s body.
She was wearing a fluffy pink towel bathrobe hastily pulled on over a long satin nightdress and tied around her middle with a cord belt. She was lying on her back with her arms outflung to her sides and her face turned away from him. She wasn’t moving. Blood showed shocking red on the pink of her bathrobe and the creamy material of her nightdress. A lot of blood. It glistened on the brown skin of her legs where the nightdress had ridden up to her knees as she fell. It was soaking into the carpet under her, steadily spreading outwards in a dark stain.
But Ben wasn’t looking at the blood. He was staring in bewildered horror at the curved, glinting length of steel blade that was protruding from her sternum, right below the ribs, sticking straight up in the air like a flag that had been planted on her.
Not a knife blade. A sword, long and wicked and stuck deep through her body to pin her to the floorboards.
Ben leaped down the last few steps to the hall, calling her name again, hearing his voice in his ears as though it were someone else’s, knowing that nothing could save her from this terrible injury, his mind whirling to comprehend what he was seeing, and why.
At the end of the hall the front door was hanging ajar a few inches, and beyond that the screen door was wide open and letting in the night air and insects. The inner door had a window consisting of four little dappled opaque square panels. Lottie hadn’t dropped a glass, or knocked over a lamp, or anything else. The window panel nearest the lock was smashed and lying in fragments on the entrance mat, as if someone had punched it through to pass their arm inside and unfasten the lock and security chain from inside and let themselves into the hall.
Which, Ben realised, was exactly what had happened. Lottie, a floor closer to the hall than Ben up in the attic, must have heard the sound of breaking glass. She must have got out of bed to investigate, wrapping the gown around herself as she trod downstairs, clicking on the hall light from the switch at the foot of the staircase. That must have been when she came upon the intruder, or intruders. Hence, the first scream Ben had heard.
And that must also have been when the intruder, or intruders, had attacked her with the sword, knocked her to the floor, stood over her and stabbed her brutally through the body. Hence, the terrible wail of agony that had followed soon after the first scream.
Everything had happened in the space of a few moments. And it had ended only moments ago. Which had to mean that whoever had done this couldn’t be far away.
Even as he stood there thinking it, Ben heard a revving car engine from outside in the street. Someone in a hurry. Someone in the process of fleeing from the scene.
Choices. He needed to stay with Lottie and do whatever he could to help her. At the same time, if he didn’t act instantly to go after her assailant, right now, that chance would be gone.
In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have to choose. Back when he was heading up his SAS troop, he’d have been able to deploy one guy to stay with her and more to go after the enemy. But he was on his own now, and this wasn’t a perfect world. It was a world in which armed attackers burst into the homes of innocent and defenceless people and hurt them. And you had to do something about that.
Ben made his choice. He jumped over Lottie’s body and raced for the half-open front door. Burst outside, leaped down the steps and onto the path.
Chapter 12 (#ulink_d041ef43-f358-5bbf-8cd8-263a10a64875)
There were no lights on in any of the neighbouring homes, but the street was full of the hard white glare that blazed from the headlamps of a black car in the middle of the road, double-parked beside his Tahoe with the driver’s door facing Lottie’s entrance gate. It was too dark to see what kind of car it was. Some kind of long, wide, old-style American saloon. Its engine note was the deep, rumbling clatter of a V8. A big, powerful, thirsty engine, harking back to the distant days when gasoline was as cheap as water. The tang of exhaust fumes cut through the sweetness of the night air. The unseen driver was impatiently gunning the throttle, as though urgently waiting before he could take off.
As Ben ran down the path towards the gate, he realised why. The running figure of the person the driver was waiting for had just cleared Lottie’s entrance gate and was sprinting towards the waiting car. The driver’s accomplice. Lottie’s attacker. A classic two-man team, perp and getaway driver. Ben heard the clap of the guy’s running footsteps on the sidewalk, echoed by his own as he gave chase. He saw the dark figure flit across the white glare of the headlights, crossing the front of the car to make it to the passenger side.
Ben ran faster. He reached the gate and vaulted over it and raced towards the car. The escaping figure wrenched open the passenger door, and for a brief moment the car’s interior was lit by the flare of its courtesy light, and as he ran Ben caught a glimpse of its two occupants. Both male, both white, both around the same age, older than their twenties and younger than their forties. The driver had long reddish hair tied back, the passenger had short reddish hair and wore a dark jacket over a white T-shirt.
That was all Ben was able to take in before the door closed and the car’s interior went dark again. By then, the driver was already slamming the transmission into drive and booting the gas. The V8 roared and smoke poured from the rear wheels as the tyres spun and screeched on the road.
Ben reached the edge of the sidewalk and ran out in front of the car, dazzled by its headlights which were suddenly veering right towards him and forcing him to dance back out of its path. The car roared by him, almost running over his toes. Because he’d gone to bed wearing his jeans, the Tahoe key was still in his pocket.
More choices. And it still wasn’t a perfect world. By the time he’d run to the Tahoe, got it fired up and into drive and away, the attackers would be gone. Chasing after the escaping car on foot seemed crazy, but he couldn’t afford a moment’s hesitation.
He sprinted after the car for all he was worth. It was still accelerating, the driver’s foot right down on the floor. Giving it so much gas that the power delivery of the big V8, designed for pure brute muscle back in the days long before US automotive engineers conceived of anything as sanitised and wimpy as traction control, was losing its grip on the road and fishtailing all over the place and spinning the tyres so hard that Ben could taste the molecules of burning rubber mixed up with its exhaust smoke. In seconds, it would get away from him. But for a few precious instants he could still catch it.
What he thought he could do once he caught it, he had no idea. He just knew he had to try.
He ran faster than he’d ever run before. Legs pumping, heart pounding. If he ran any harder he risked tripping over his own feet. But it was working. He was catching up, thanks to the driver’s own haste. Ben was within just a few strides of the back of the car’s swaying, screeching, gyrating rear end when he saw it had some kind of raised wing perched a few inches above its tail-lights, like a racing car. Something to hang on to, if he could make it. He didn’t hesitate. He hurled himself at the rear wing.
Pain lanced through him as his body slammed against the back of the car, but it would have been a lot worse if they hadn’t both been travelling in the same direction. His fingers latched on to the horizontal blade of the wing and held on with an iron grip. He was being dragged now, the toes of his boots scraping the road, clinging on for all he was worth with his chest pressed hard against the rear panel of its boot lid. Chrome lettering wide-spaced across the rear bodywork that spelled out the word M-U-S-T-A-N-G digging into his flesh through his shirt. Burning red tail-lights either side of him. Hot exhaust from its twin pipes searing his legs like dragon’s breath.
He held on. The car gained more speed. They were already a long way down the street. On the outside it felt like eighty miles an hour. In reality the car was probably just hitting forty. But soon it would be fifty, then sixty.
If he could somehow drag himself up onto the big, wide boot lid, maybe he could kick through the back window and scramble inside. It wasn’t much of a plan, but he was angry and upset and didn’t have time to think. All he knew right now was that he couldn’t let these two men get away.
But Ben also knew that all tactical plans had a way of going to hell the moment bullets start to fly. That was what was about to happen to his, as Lottie’s attacker suddenly leaned out from the passenger window. They must have spotted Ben in the rear-view mirror, or sensed from the car’s handling that someone was clinging wildly to the back. The guy hung out as far as possible, clutching tightly on to the roof sill with one hand while pointing something back at Ben with the other. Something small and black that glinted in the peripheral glare of the headlights. The guy’s aim wavered, swaying this way and that with the gyrating motion of the car. Not great conditions for target shooting. But Ben was just a few feet away. A sitting duck. He tried to shrink away behind the bodywork but there wasn’t anywhere to take cover.
Two gunshots snapped out, muted by the roar of the engine and the rush of wind in Ben’s ears. But no less deadly for it. One round punched through the metal of the rear wing a couple of inches from his hand. The other passed over his right shoulder with just a hair’s breadth to spare.
Yet more choices. He had only two, and little time to decide between them.
Hold on, get shot.
Let go, take your chances with the road.
He let go.
Chapter 13 (#ulink_2559e00d-3883-5fe3-8ea7-3d5d1f23112c)
The car was gaining more speed every instant, its wheels no longer spinning and the back end under control. It was accelerating down the street under full power.
Parachute training couldn’t teach you how to land on a fast-moving road surface. Jumping from a moving vehicle was more like parachuting onto a whirling belt sander. Ben knew that it was going to hurt. And it did.
The impact knocked the air from his lungs. All at once he was slithering and sliding down the road on his back. Like coming off a motorcycle, without the benefit of helmet, leathers or gloves. He tried to keep his head and hands raised off the ground and his arms and legs spread-eagled to minimise the chance of rolling. That would do the worst damage, his own momentum breaking bones and flailing him to pieces against the road surface.
He slid for maybe twenty feet, but it felt like a mile before he came to a stop, dazed and bleeding in the middle of the road. The taillights of the car were a long way off now, shrinking to angry red pinpoints in the darkness. He craned his neck to watch as it rounded a corner at the top of the street; then it was out of sight and the roar of its engine was dying away to nothing.
Ben sprang to his feet. His elbows were torn up pretty badly and his back would be a mess of abrasions. It was still better than getting shot. Either way he had no time to take inventory of his injuries. The pain could wait. He shelved it to the rear of his mind and started sprinting back towards the guesthouse. Some lights were coming on in neighbouring upstairs windows as residents, alerted by the commotion and the sound of gunshots, rushed from their cosy beds to see what was going on. Ben ignored them and ran on. The car had dragged him halfway up the street and it was half a minute before he reached the guesthouse. It was definitely too late to give chase in the Tahoe. That chance had been and gone.
Now all that mattered was Lottie.
She hadn’t moved. The dark stain around her had spread almost wall to wall. Ben knelt beside her. The pressure of his knees on the carpet squeezed blood up out of its saturated pile like wringing out a sponge. It was everywhere. He felt its warm wetness soaking through the denim of his torn, abraded jeans.
Ben felt for her pulse and detected only a weak flutter. At his touch she lolled her head to try to focus on him. Her eyes were glassing over. Her mouth opened and she tried to speak, but all that came out was a low rasping moan and a bubble of blood that swelled and then burst, flecking her lips. Now he could see the terrible slash that the sword had cut across her face and neck before her attacker had knocked her over and thrust the long curved blade right through her body to pin her to the floorboards.
Ben stared at the weapon. If he’d been interested in semantics right now he’d have called it a sabre and not a sword. The kind of implement issued to cavalry troops right up until the early decades of the twentieth century, when military minds finally began to realise that mounted charges were little match for heavy machine gunnery. This sabre was older still. The length of blade that wasn’t buried deep inside Lottie’s body was speckled with over a century’s worth of black rust. Its handle was wrapped with sharkskin and bound with gold wire, and encased within a fancy brass basket hilt designed to protect the hand during combat. The brass was tarnished and dulled with age, and bore all the nicks and scars of a weapon that had seen use in anger, a very long time ago. Basically, an antique. Probably worth money.
The question was, what kind of murderer would break into a house to attack someone with a valuable antique sword, when common implements like kitchen knives and hammers could be obtained easily and cheaply and were just as lethal? It made even less sense for the killer to leave the weapon behind.
Lottie began to cough and retch blood. More of it welled from the gaping wound where the blade was stuck through her. Her robe and nightdress were black with it. Out of desperation Ben reached up and grasped the hilt, then on second thoughts took his hand away. Pulling out the blade, whether a knife’s or anything else’s, could kill a stab victim just as fast as pushing it in. Blood vessels that were constricted or blocked off by the pressure of the blade could suddenly start gushing so fast that their life would ebb away in moments. But he had to do something. He looked around him and spotted the little stand across the hallway where the landline phone rested on its base unit.
‘I’m going to get help, Lottie. Hold on.’
He started to get to his feet to reach for the phone. Before he could stand up, Lottie raised a bloody hand off the floor and, with what must have cost her last reserves of energy, gripped his sleeve.
At first he thought she was attempting to struggle upright. But she was too far gone for that. These were her last moments, and she knew it as well as he did. He realised she was trying to pull him down closer, so that she could whisper something in his ear before she died.
Ben put his hand on hers and leaned down and said, ‘What is it, Lottie?’
‘I … I always …’ It took a monumental effort for her to speak. She coughed, and the act of coughing made her abdominal muscles clench around the sabre blade, and she let out a terrible shuddering gasp of pain and closed her eyes. For an instant she seemed to fade away and he thought she was gone. Then her eyes reopened, bloodshot and full of agony and focused on his own with all the urgency of a person frantically holding on to consciousness, slipping away and fighting it every inch and losing.
She whispered, ‘I knowed it was comin’, Ben. I knowed it.’
Ben understood that she was talking about the secret she’d alluded to earlier that evening. Whatever it was, she’d held on to it for most of her life out of fear. Now that death was so close, she seemed to want to let it out like making a confession.
‘What did you know? Lottie, talk to me. What did you know?’
She was sinking fast. Her breath was coming in fluttering gasps. Her eyes were glazed. The grasp of her bloody fingers on his shirt sleeve tightened in a last moment of panic before the darkness swallowed her, then became slack. Barely audibly, she murmured, ‘They was … they was bound to get me in the end. Like they done … to … Peggy Iron Bar.’
Ben laid his hand on hers and squeezed it. ‘Who did it, Lottie? If you know who hurt you, you have to tell me. I’ll find them. I swear. Who did it?’
But Lottie had given all she had to give. A last sigh hissed from her lips and her eyes closed, her body relaxed and Ben held her as he felt the life leave her.
He remained kneeling on the blood-soaked carpet next to her for some time, still clasping her hand in his, his head bowed with sadness for this woman he’d only just met and knew so little about. Wishing he could remove the sabre pinning her to the floor and let her lie there with a little dignity, if it wouldn’t have been messing with a murder scene.
And wondering, who in God’s name was Peggy Iron Bar?
Chapter 14 (#ulink_8c4c4c79-0705-5271-bd8f-19d2989aea16)
Ben was so lost in that moment that he barely registered the sound of the approaching siren until the police cruiser screeched to a halt outside the guesthouse and the open doorway behind him was lit up with flashing blue. It was no big surprise that one of the local residents must have called the cops. If they hadn’t, he’d have had to call them himself.
He laid Lottie’s limp hand down to rest on her chest and stood up. He glanced down at himself and saw that he was a mess. The parts of his clothing that weren’t torn and tattered from sliding down the road were covered in bloodstains. Anyone who saw him would think he’d been attacked by something wild. It was how he felt, too. The abrasions on his back were hurting. But he had more important things to deal with.
He turned towards the doorway to see the solitary cop from the cruiser running up the path towards the guesthouse’s front entrance. The cop was hatless, in a tan deputy’s uniform shirt and black trousers, a drawn pistol in his hand. It struck Ben as a little odd to send just one officer to attend to the scene of a violent crime, but he supposed that the fact that they’d managed to send anyone at all so quickly was fairly impressive, given that this was the rural Deep South. The UK was no better, at the best of times. There were enough accounts of residents in the middle of London waiting twelve hours for a response to a 999 call.
As the cop approached the house Ben recognised his face. Fleshy, pasty features burned red by the sun. Brown hair, spiky on top and shaved up the sides like a Marine. It was the deputy called Mason, one of the pair who’d accompanied Sheriff Waylon Roque to the scene of the liquor store holdup in Villeneuve. The one Roque had said was as sharp as a bowling ball. Better than nothing, Ben thought, and ran through in his mind what he needed to tell the guy.
But Ben never got the chance to say much at all. As Mason hurried up the steps and entered the hallway, he saw Ben standing there and raised his drawn weapon to aim at him. The cop’s finger was on the trigger, which definitely wasn’t correct protocol for dealing with a nonthreatening civilian. Ben noticed that the gun wasn’t Mason’s issue sidearm, either. His Glock was still tucked and clipped into his duty holster, next to his cuff pouch, baton holder, Taser and CS canister. What he was aiming in Ben’s face, with a little more aggression than Ben felt was warranted, was a big black revolver. Probably a forty-four, going by the size of the bore and the chamber holes in the cylinder.
Ben put his hands up at shoulder height, palms facing the cop to show they were empty. ‘Easy, Officer. I’m a witness to a murder. If you wanted to shoot someone, you should’ve been here when the bad guys were still around.’
The deputy made no move to lower the weapon. He came closer. Ben retreated a couple of paces, carefully stepping back around Lottie’s body, slow and easy, no sudden moves, keeping his hands raised and in plain view. Mason came on another step, still keeping the big revolver pointed squarely at Ben’s face.
He was standing on the bloodstained area of the floor. His weight was pressing blood up from the carpet pile, so that it welled and bubbled up around the soles of his large, black police issue shoes. Lottie’s body was between him and Ben, right there in the middle of the hall, a large mound of dead flesh with an antique sabre sticking up grotesquely from its highest point, like a banner raised on some conquered hilltop. It wasn’t a sight that was easily missed. And yet Mason hadn’t given Lottie’s body even a single glance from the moment he’d entered the house. His focus was fixed totally and intently on Ben.
Hands still raised, Ben wagged a finger towards the floor and said, ‘Watch you don’t trip, Officer. There’s a body on the floor.’ Sharp as a bowling ball. Maybe it was true.
The deputy gave a grunt and shook his head, still holding the gun steady. ‘Boy, y’all sure know where to go lookin’ for trouble. Reckon you found more’n you bargained for, this time.’
Which struck Ben as a curious thing to say, under the circumstances. Very calmly he replied, ‘Maybe you should lower the weapon so we can have a conversation about what happened here.’
Mason didn’t lower the weapon. Ben could see his fingertip whitening against the blade of the trigger. Properly speaking a .44-calibre handgun was really a .43, firing a bullet of .429 of an inch diameter. But it was still plenty big enough to blow a fist-sized hole right through the middle of a man’s chest. Hunters used them for killing grizzly bears. And the way Mason was pointing it at Ben, he seemed pretty serious about killing him with it too.
Ben considered his appearance, and it flashed through his mind that someone all covered in blood the way he was might, in a cop’s way of seeing things, look exactly like the kind of person who’d just smashed their way into an innocent woman’s house wielding a sabre and turned her entrance hall into a slaughterhouse. From that point of view it was fairly understandable that Mason was wary of him.
But none of that explained what happened next.
Mason fired. The BOOM of the big revolver in the confines of the hallway was stunningly loud and its muzzle flash was a tongue of white flame that spouted a foot from its muzzle.
If Ben hadn’t seen it coming, there would have been two corpses on the hallway floor and a lot more blood. Even as Mason’s finger tightened all the way on the trigger and the hammer was released and the firing pin began its short arc of travel, Ben was in motion. Superfast, he crossed the space between himself and the gun and deflected the barrel sideways and upwards from its point of aim, hard and brutal, so that the gunshot discharged into the ceiling.
The blast and shockwave from the revolver were tremendous. He would have tinnitus for days, but a little ringing in the ears is preferable to fifteen grams of hardcast lead alloy entering your skull at over a thousand miles an hour.
Ben’s training, and the way he taught his students, was to first take control of the weapon and then neutralise the assailant. In the same single continuous fluid movement that had been rehearsed a zillion times and saved his life for a percentage of that number, he twisted the revolver out of Mason’s hand and kept hold of his wrist as he sidestepped in towards him and used his own body as a fulcrum to yank Mason off his feet and dump him hard on the floor.
Ben could have finished his disarming move with a stamp to the neck or an arm-breaking twist, or beaten the guy’s brains out with his own ASP expandable baton. Instead, not wanting to hurt him any more than was strictly necessary, he just reached down to where Mason lay half-stunned on the floor and snatched his badge wallet, then removed his duty belt and tossed it away across the room.
In retrospect, Ben could come to see that as his first mistake.
Relieved of Glock, cuffs, tear gas and baton, Mason wriggled away across the floor like a beaten dog. His uniform was all bloodied from the mess on the carpet, his face mottled with anger. Ben quickly examined the revolver, then shoved it into his own belt behind the right hip. Pointing at Lottie’s body he said to Mason, ‘That there is a murder victim. I’m a witness to said murder. You’re a cop. Remember how this goes? Are you going to behave now?’
‘You’re in deep shit, Hope,’ Mason rasped. ‘You just assaulted a police officer.’
Ben flipped open the badge wallet. It had the deputy’s six-pointed Clovis Parish gold star on one side and a police ID card on the other, giving his full name as Mason F. Redbone. Ben tossed the wallet away and shook his head.
‘Wrong, Deputy Redbone. You’re guilty of discharging a firearm without provocation at an innocent member of the public. All I did was protect myself in such a way that avoided using undue force. There isn’t a mark on you. Which any police misconduct investigation panel in the country would agree puts me right in the clear. They might have a few questions for you, though. Such as what you’re doing in possession of a non-issue weapon that’s had its serial number filed off. And why you attempted to kill me with it just now. I’d kind of like answers to all those questions myself, so you’d better start talking.’
Mason muttered something that Ben didn’t catch. He leaned closer. ‘Speak up, Mason. Thanks to you I’ve got ringing in my ears.’
Leaning closer was Ben’s second mistake.
Mason was lying on the bloodstained carpet, his head and shoulders propped against the skirting board, his feet drawn up under him, knees bent, his body quite still except for the deep rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. His eyes were full of fear and hatred. Then his right hand suddenly darted down the length of his right leg, whipped something hidden from inside his right boot and flashed towards Ben.
Ben twisted away to avoid the knife, but he’d been leaning too close and he reacted half a second too late. He felt the razor-sharp steel puncture his flesh, below the ribs on his right side. The pain shot through him.
Mason lunged up at Ben, to stab him again. Ben was ready for him this time. He palmed the incoming knife aside and rammed a savage upward blow with the heel of his hand into Mason’s philtrum.
The space between the nose and upper lip is one of the most vital points of the human body. Done hard enough, the strike would drive a man’s nose bone backwards into his brain and kill him instantly. Ben knew that, because he’d inflicted the same technique on plenty of enemies, with lethal results. He didn’t want Mason dead. Just totally incapacitated.
Mason dropped without a sound, unconscious before he hit the floor. He lay on his back side by side with Lottie, arms and legs splayed out like a starfish.
Ben reeled backwards a couple of steps. He pressed both hands to his belly and saw the blood leaking out between his fingers.
And that was when two more police cruisers screeched up outside and a bunch more cops came running into the guesthouse.
Chapter 15 (#ulink_46b009c3-7e19-5cc3-83d8-58048b60cdb1)
There were four of them, clad in blue uniforms with gold piping and dimpled campaign hats with gold badges and silver cords and acorns. The insignia on their arms said LOUISIANA STATE POLICE. A sergeant and three troopers, two with pump shotguns and two with Glocks. The sight that greeted them as they swarmed inside the hallway was what they took to be a dead fellow officer lying prone beside the body of a female murder victim, along with one man still on his feet who had a gun in his belt, blood all over his clothes, and could more or less be assumed to be the perpetrator of both assaults.
If Ben had been inclined to think about it, he couldn’t have blamed them for jumping to conclusions. They had much better reason than Mason had for supposing that he was the threat here.
The hallway filled with the sound of hoarse urgent yelling as the troopers fixed him in their sights and all began screaming and bellowing at him at once. DROP THE WEAPON DROP THE WEAPON DROP THE WEAPON!
As he stood there reeling from the stab wound his options flew through his mind at lightning speed. If he didn’t respond one way or another in the next two seconds, the chances were they would all open fire at once and take him down. He could try to calmly explain the situation to them, which he wasn’t too sure he could do with blood pouring out of him. Or he could whip the revolver from his belt and start shooting before they did. Five rounds, four targets. Maybe just shoot them in the legs, to avoid causing unnecessary harm.
Alternatively, he could throw down his gun and surrender. But he didn’t fancy his chances of receiving fair treatment. Not after he’d already taken down one of their own. By the time the ambulance arrived the five state troopers would have beaten Ben to a pulp.
So Ben took the only realistic option open to him. He ran. Ignoring the agony in his belly and the tremors of shock jangling every nerve in his body.
Shots rang out and bullets cracked into the wall and splintered the banister rail as he charged up the stairs three at a time. He made it halfway up the staircase to the switchback, then flew up the second half heading towards the first floor landing. Three troopers thundered after him while the fourth stayed below, yelling into a radio that they had an officer down and needed assistance.
Ben raced past the open door of Lottie’s bedroom and reached the drop-down staircase just as the police sergeant appeared on the landing behind him. The sergeant racked his shotgun and repeated his command to stop and throw down the weapon.
Ben pounded up the drop-down staircase, up through the hatch to the attic floor, turned and crouched at the edge of the hatch and grabbed the rope loop that worked the pulley mechanism and tugged it hard. The staircase folded in half, and the whole assembly slid upwards on smooth runners to retract through the hatch. Ben hauled up the length of rope that dangled down to enable it to be opened from below, then closed off the hatch with the stair panel that acted like a trapdoor. Definitely a fine piece of carpentry, and just the job when you were being pursued through the house by multiple armed opponents.
He’d bought himself a little time, but it wouldn’t be long before they figured out a way to reach him. Nor would it be long before the whole street and surrounding area was swarming with every state trooper they could muster, along with SWAT teams and K9 units. He could hear the sound of frantic voices and crackling radios from beneath his feet as he ran into his bedroom. His legs were feeling like jelly. He had to grit his teeth and close his mind resolutely to the knowledge that he was badly hurt. He had to keep going.
He snatched up his bag from where it lay at the foot of the bed, crammed in the few items that he’d unpacked earlier, then pulled on his leather jacket and looped the bag over his shoulder. He went over to the dormer window and yanked it open. With an effort that felt like a halberd tearing out his guts he gripped the window frame and hauled himself up and through, scrambling out onto the slope of the roof.
The night sky was ink-black and starry. The air was warm, but felt like ice on his skin as the sweat poured from his brow. He felt woozy for an instant and almost lost his footing and went tumbling into space, then managed to regain his balance.
Got to keep going.
Careful not to slip and fall, he made his way over the sloping tiles. He peered over the gable end of the guesthouse and could see Mason’s Sheriff’s Department Crown Victoria and the two white state police cruisers in the street below, their engines still running and the big light bars on their roofs bathing the whole area in swirling blue. More windows of neighbouring homes were lit up now, as residents awoke to the drama and peeped out to see what was happening. Old Mr Clapp across the street had ventured into his front yard to spectate.
Ben kept low and stayed in the shadows as he padded along the slope of the roof to the point where the gap between Lottie’s house and that of her neighbour was at its narrowest. He could see no lights in the next-door windows. Either the neighbours were sleeping through all the excitement, or the house was empty. He eased himself down as close as possible to the edge and readied himself to jump, visualising it in his mind’s eye before he committed himself, and knowing it was going to hurt like hell. It was a long way to fall if he fluffed it. He took a couple of deep breaths, counted to three and then launched himself into space.
He cleared the gap easily, but his landing on the neighbour’s roof almost made him cry out in pain. He knew he must be leaving a fine trail of blood spots as he moved on, keeping low so that the roof’s ridge hid him from the street side. He ran with light fast steps along its length towards where he could see a big old hickory tree standing in the garden close to the far end wall.
This was going to hurt even more. And it did. Ben reached the edge and leaped into space. He dropped ten feet and then the foliage was ripping and clawing and scraping at his face and body as he went crashing downward through the branches. His fingers locked on to a thicker limb and he managed to arrest his fall. He scrambled down the tree as far as the lower branches, until his legs dangled free. It was maybe an eight-foot drop to the patchy grass of the back garden. He steeled himself and let go. The agony as he hit the ground went through him like a spear, but he didn’t make a sound.
The neighbour’s garden was all in shadow. Ben remained in a still crouch at the foot of the tree for a few moments, catching his breath and listening hard until he was sure his escape from the guesthouse hadn’t been observed. Then he picked himself up and ran for the back fence and scrambled over it into the next garden, hoping he wouldn’t drop down the other side into the waiting jaws of someone’s pit bull. He landed in the bushes and kept running.
A tumult of sirens was growing steadily louder. It sounded as if every cop in Louisiana was racing to the scene. Probably a couple of ambulances, too, one for Lottie and one for Sheriff’s Deputy Mason F. Redbone, who would soon be enjoying a little holiday in hospital. It was less than he deserved.
Ben crossed that garden, and the next, and then pushed through a hedge over a low wall and found himself in an adjacent street, maybe a couple of hundred yards from the guesthouse as the crow flew. The homes at this end of the neighbourhood were all in darkness, as if the residents here didn’t care what kinds of major emergency situations took place up the road. That suited Ben just fine.
He kept going. A blind man could follow the trail of glistening spots and spatters that marked his route, but there was nothing he could do about that. The best he could achieve was to get away from here before he passed out from pain and shock and blood loss and collapsed in the street for the cops to find.
Quarter of a mile away, in a quiet little avenue on the edge of Chitimacha far away from the hubbub and excitement, he came across an old Ford pickup truck parked under the shadow of a spreading oak tree.
The SAS had taught him how to steal cars to make him an efficient operator behind enemy lines, when you sometimes had to improvise modes of transportation. He’d had a lot of practice at it since those days. Old vehicles were the best to steal. The older the better, as long as they were driveable. No alarms, no immobilisers, no on-board GPS trackers. Thirty-nine seconds later he was inside the Ford’s cab, bleeding all over the cheap vinyl seats as he got to work hotwiring the ignition. Another half minute after that, he was gone and disappearing into the night.
Chapter 16 (#ulink_db24e652-44a1-5c9d-aef2-a4c8018df004)
Ben drove fast away from Chitimacha, knowing that he couldn’t stay on the road long. The state troopers would already be cordoning off the whole area, roadblocking every exit and stopping and searching any car within a perimeter that would rapidly expand state-wide as the manhunt intensified. Every hotel, motel and hospital would be flushed looking for him.
By dawn the horror story of the sabre murder would be airing on local TV, in all its gruesome detail for citizens to relish over breakfast. By midday the whole parish would be so jumpy about the desperate killer on the loose that they’d be loading up their guns and watching out of their windows for any sign of a suspicious-looking stranger lurking about the vicinity. By mid-afternoon he wouldn’t be able to walk down the street without getting his head blown off by some trigger-happy Louisianan doing their civic duty.
That was, if he could walk at all. He could feel himself getting weaker with every passing mile. The blood was pooling under him on the car seat and leaking down to the floor, flooding the rubber matting and making his boot soles slippery on the gas and brake pedals. The pain was keeping him alert. He focused closely on it to keep from flaking out at the wheel.
He found a forestry track leading off-road and headed up it. He was grateful for the fact that when it came to stealing cars in rural Louisiana, virtually every vehicle you were likely to get hold of was a go-anywhere four-wheel-drive with rugged tyres and suspension. He bounced and lurched along for miles, bogging down here and there in deep ruts left by the last rains. Eventually he left the track to carve his way for another quarter of a mile into thick forest.
Unable to go any further, he stopped the truck, killed the lights and engine, clambered down from the blood-smeared seat and stood listening for a whole ten minutes, leaning against the side of the truck for support. Only the sounds of nature could be heard, along with the tick of cooling metal.
Wincing and clutching his wound through his bloody shirt, he hauled himself up onto the pickup flatbed and started rooting around in the dirty old crates loaded aboard. The truck belonged to someone with a handy set of skills and the tools to match. An outdoorsman or a hunter; at any rate the kind of guy who carried around a saw, a small sharp hatchet, a couple of green canvas tarpaulins, and a coil of light but strong rope. Among the assorted trash in the glove box Ben found an autographed photo of Dolly Parton, a roll of gaffer tape and an unlabelled quarter-sized liquor bottle whose clear liquid contents smelled like some kind of illicit home-brewed moonshine. He had no use for Dolly but took the tape and the moonshine.
Ben badly needed to rest but he had work to do first. The truck had been resprayed more than once in its life. In its current paint job it was bright orange, and couldn’t be left as it was without standing out like a beacon to any police helicopter overflying the woods. He couldn’t burn it, for the same reason.
He unfolded the larger of the two tarps and dragged it across the roof of the truck to cover it, then lashed the cover down at the corners with lengths of the rope. Next he spent thirty painful minutes sawing branches from trees and laying them over the tarp, until the shape of the truck was so well camouflaged that a passing deer would be unlikely to notice it, let alone a police chopper. Then he put the hatchet and saw in his bag with the remainder of the rope, strapped the rolled-up smaller tarp on top of it like a soldier’s bedding roll, and set off on foot.
It was a weary march. Nothing he hadn’t done before, but a knife hole in his side didn’t make it any easier. A mile deeper into the woods, ready to drop, he stopped at a great fallen oak tree whose uprooted base had left a large hollow in the ground, an earthy cave deep enough for a man to crawl into and remain hidden. He could lie up and rest here for a while.
Using the small tarp as a groundsheet he wedged himself among the roots, as far from the mouth of his little cave as he could fit. The hollow was damp and smelled of leaf mould and the small animals that had burrowed into it before him. He’d spent time in much worse places.
Risking a little torchlight, he peeled off his jacket and unbuttoned his bloody shirt to inspect his injury. It was still bleeding profusely. Not as deep as he’d first feared, but still pretty damn deep, an ugly gash stretching seven inches diagonally from ribcage to navel.
Open wounds were always an infection risk, especially roughing it outdoors, but Ben had an excellent immune system. With a fastidious doctor for a lady friend he couldn’t avoid being all up to date with his tetanus immunisations, too. Right now, though, what concerned him most was the continuous bleeding. If it had been his arm or leg, he might have been able to stem the flow with a tourniquet. Injuries to the torso were harder to deal with. He’d seen men bleed to death from abdominal traumas, and knew enough about the physiology of such injuries to worry him. Half a litre’s worth of blood loss causes mild faintness, increasing in severity after a litre or so, when the heart rate begins to increase and breathing quickens. That was where Ben was at now. Another half litre drained out of his body, and he would be in danger of losing consciousness. Anything over 2.2 litres or four pints gone, death wasn’t far off.
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Scott Mariani
The Top Ten Sunday Times bestseller returns with a gripping new Ben Hope thriller.‘If you’ve got a pulse, you’ll love Scott Mariani; if you haven’t, then maybe you crossed Ben Hope.’ SIMON TOYNEEven when ex-SAS major Ben Hope is taking a holiday, trouble seems to find him. What started as a relaxing trip to the Deep South spirals into a nightmare when he’s wrongly accused of a vicious murder and forced to go on the run.Target of a state-wide manhunt, the only way Ben can prove his innocence is to unearth a long-forgotten secret and track down the killers who slaughtered an innocent woman in a vendetta dating back generations. His quest takes him into the wild heart of Louisiana’s swampland, where all hell’s about to break loose. The bad guys will soon discover they made a big mistake…An explosive new thriller from the master bestseller.
SCOTT MARIANI
The Rebel’s Revenge
Copyright (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Scott Mariani 2018
Cover photograph, Louisiana Background © Denis Tangney Jr / Getty Images
Cover photograph, Figure © Henry Steadman
Cover design by Henry Steadman 2018
Scott Mariani asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008235925
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008235932
Version 2018-09-20
Join the army of fans who LOVE Scott Mariani’s Ben Hope series … (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
‘Deadly conspiracies, bone-crunching action and a tormented hero with a heart … Scott Mariani packs a real punch’
Andy McDermott,bestselling author of The Revelation Code
‘Slick, serpentine, sharp, and very very entertaining. If you’ve got a pulse, you’ll love Scott Mariani; if you haven’t, then maybe you crossed Ben Hope’
Simon Toyne, bestselling author of the Sanctus series
‘Scott Mariani’s latest page-turning rollercoaster of a thriller takes the sort of conspiracy theory that made Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code an international hit, and gives it an injection of steroids … [Mariani] is a master of edge-of-the-seat suspense. A genuinely gripping thriller that holds the attention of its readers from the first page to the last’
Shots Magazine
‘You know you are rooting for the guy when he does something so cool you do a mental fist punch in the air and have to bite the inside of your mouth not to shout out “YES!” in case you get arrested on the train. Awesome thrilling stuff’
My Favourite Books
‘If you like Dan Brown you will like all of Scott Mariani’s work – but you will like it better. This guy knows exactly how to bait his hook, cast his line and reel you in, nice and slow. The heart-stopping pace and clever, cunning, joyfully serpentine tale will have you frantic to reach the end, but reluctant to finish such a blindingly good read’
The Bookbag
‘[The Cassandra Sanction] is a wonderful action-loaded thriller with a witty and lovely lead in Ben Hope … I am well and truly hooked!’
Northern Crime Reviews
‘Mariani is tipped for the top’
The Bookseller
‘Authentic settings, non-stop action, backstabbing villains and rough justice – this book delivers. It’s a romp of a read, each page like a tasty treat. Enjoy!’
Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author
‘I love the adrenalin rush that you get when reading a Ben Hope story … The Martyr’s Curse is an action-packed read, relentless in its pace. Scott Mariani goes from strength to strength!’
Book Addict Shaun
‘Scott Mariani seems to be like a fine red wine that gets better with maturity!’
Bestselling Crime Thrillers.com
‘Mariani’s novels have consistently delivered on fast-paced action and The Armada Legacy is no different. Short chapters and never-ending twists mean that you can’t put the book down, and the high stakes of the plot make it as brilliant to read as all the previous novels in the series’
Female First
‘Scott Mariani is an awesome writer’
Chris Kuzneski, bestselling author of The Hunters
Table of Contents
Cover (#u66c3c9cc-064d-5c02-8bc3-7dca3398b391)
Title Page (#u796751d4-584c-528c-a75d-161f053f3674)
Copyright (#u4074d24d-69a6-5342-8cd1-cdc89dbec090)
Praise (#u6368c465-10fc-530c-bb9f-28da330476f0)
Prologue (#u956f8594-b1e4-5ac5-b80e-9faf6a5d7c55)
Chapter 1 (#ucdbd1203-a412-5dd8-b611-dce752cd38ba)
Chapter 2 (#ud5842819-dac4-58e4-b859-a23bf266f0ab)
Chapter 3 (#u4ca3891c-51c9-569b-b411-cd4ef5265faf)
Chapter 4 (#ubaf43852-0c4c-56ba-bddc-48fe5a8e3ddc)
Chapter 5 (#u5ba22c1b-4291-51b3-8151-b5b1dcee34af)
Chapter 6 (#u40c4847f-a462-5b9a-b48b-0f091862e781)
Chapter 7 (#ua5228f0a-1bc9-598c-ad70-9389bc7d9736)
Chapter 8 (#ue0412747-dac7-5817-9c15-e7673793d2b3)
Chapter 9 (#u89c07290-59fd-5169-a532-2b13a5cb7315)
Chapter 10 (#u93520059-7be3-5610-8fe8-008c201291fa)
Chapter 11 (#u82049406-3492-51eb-83d0-c4b09d736693)
Chapter 12 (#uc222aac7-0872-5733-b4fb-389b27b4cd1e)
Chapter 13 (#ua0810ccf-a196-51ed-890a-012953181880)
Chapter 14 (#u949286b0-6a92-5e9c-878a-5f8230daec3b)
Chapter 15 (#ufe63d63d-618e-554e-846f-0a3aca1a4bbb)
Chapter 16 (#u8b506854-ad16-5e3b-b01a-ea7a307f19c6)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 58 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 59 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 60 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 61 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 62 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 63 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 64 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 65 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 66 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 67 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 68 (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
Louisiana, May 1864
Built in the Greek Revival style, encircled by twenty-four noble Doric columns and standing proud amid a vast acreage of plantation estate, the mansion was one of the grandest and most aristocratic homes in all of the South. Its dozens of reception rooms, not to mention the splendid ballroom, had hosted some of Clovis Parish’s most celebrated social events of the forty years since its construction, positioning Athenian Oaks, as the property was named, at the very centre of the region’s high society.
On this day, however, the stately house was silent and virtually empty. Deep within its labyrinthine corridors, a very secret and important meeting was taking place. A meeting that its attendees knew very well could help to swing in their favour the outcome of the civil war that had been tearing the states of both North and South apart for three long, bloody years.
Of the four men seated around the table in the richly appointed dining room, only one was not wearing military uniform: for the good reason that he wasn’t an officer of the Confederate States Army but, rather, the civilian owner of Athenian Oaks.
His name was Leonidas Wilbanks Garrett. A Texan by birth, he had risen to become one of the wealthiest landowners in Louisiana by the time he was forty. Now, fifteen years on, the size of his fortune and spread of his cotton plantation were second to none. As was the workforce of slaves he owned, who occupied an entire village of filthy and squalid huts far out of sight of the mansion’s windows.
But it was by virtue of L.W. Garrett’s renown as a physician and scientist, rather than his acumen for commerce, that the three high-ranking Confederate officers had made the journey to Clovis Parish to consult him. For this special occasion they were majestically decked out in full dress uniform, gleaming with gold braid. The most senior man present wore the insignia of a general of the C.S.A. He had lost an eye at the Second Battle of Bull Run and wore a patch over his scarred socket. He had also lost all three of his sons during the course of the conflict, and feared that he would have lost them for nothing if the Yankees prevailed.
A bitter outcome which, at this point in time, it seemed nothing could prevent. Since the crushing defeat at Chattanooga late the previous year and the subsequent appointment of Ulysses S. Grant as General-in-Chief of the Union forces, the turning point seemed to have come. Rout after rout; the tattered and depleted army of the South was in danger of being completely overrun.
‘Gentlemen, we stand to lose this damn war,’ the general said in between puffs of his cigar. ‘And lose it we will, unless saved by a miracle.’
‘Desperate times call for desperate measures,’ said the second officer, who was knocking back the wine as fast as it could be served. He was a younger man, a senior colonel known for his fiery temperament both on and off the battlefield. The last cavalry charge he had personally led had resulted in him having his right arm blown off by a cannonball. It had been found two hundred yards away, his dead hand still clutching his sabre. He now wore the empty sleeve of his grey tunic pinned across his chest, after the fashion of Lord Nelson.
‘Indeed they do,’ the general agreed. ‘And if that yellowbelly Jeff Davis and his lapdog Lee don’t have the guts to do what’s necessary to win this war, then by God someone else must step in and do it for them.’
This provoked a certain ripple of consternation around the table, as it was somewhat shocking to refer to the President of the Confederate States of America, not to mention the revered General Robert E. Lee, hero of the South, in such harsh language. But nobody protested. The facts of the matter were plain. The dreadful prospect of a Union victory was looming large on the horizon. Leonidas Garrett, whose business empire stood to be devastated if a victorious Abraham Lincoln acted on his promise to liberate all slaves in North America, dreaded it as much as anyone.
After another toke on his cigar and a quaff of wine, the general leaned towards Garrett and fixed him with his one steely eye. ‘Mr Garrett, how certain are you that this bold scheme of yours can work?’
‘If it can be pulled off, which I believe it can, then my certainty is absolute,’ Garrett replied coolly.
The third senior officer was the only conspirator present at the top-secret gathering who was yet to be fully convinced of Garrett’s plan. ‘Gentlemen, I must confess to having great misgivings about the enormity of what we are contemplating. Satan himself could scarcely have devised such wickedness.’
The general shot him a ferocious glare. ‘At a time like this, if it took Beelzebub himself to lead the South to victory, I would gladly give him the job.’
The objector made no reply. The general stared at him a while longer, then asked, ‘Are you with us or not?’
‘You know I am.’ No sir, no display of deference to a man of far superior rank. Because rank was not an issue at a meeting so clandestine, so illicit, that any and all of them could have been court-martialled and executed by their own side for taking part. What they were envisaging was in flagrant contravention of the rules of war and gentlemanly conduct.
Silence around the table for a few moments. The dissenter said, ‘Still, a damned ugly piece of work.’
‘I’m more interested in knowing if we can make it work,’ said the one-armed colonel.
‘It isn’t a new idea, by any measure,’ Garrett said. ‘Such tactics, though brutal, have been used in warfare throughout history. Trust me, gentlemen. We have the means to make it work, and if successful its effect on the enemy will be catastrophic. It will bring the North to its knees, cripple their infrastructure and force those Yankee scumbellies to surrender within a month. But I must reiterate,’ he added, casting a solemn warning look around the table, ‘that not a single word of this discussion can ever be repeated to anyone outside of this room. Not anyone, is that perfectly clear?’
Throughout the meeting, a young female negro servant dressed in a maid’s outfit had been silently hovering in the background, watching the levels in their wine glasses and meekly stepping up to the table now and then to top them up from a Venetian crystal decanter. Nobody acknowledged her presence in the room, least of all her legal owner, Garrett. As far as he was concerned she might simply have been a well-trained dog, rather than a human being. A dog, moreover, that could be whipped, chained up to starve, or used as target practice without compunction or accountability at any time, just for the hell of it.
Like Garrett, none of the three Southern-born officers gave an instant’s thought to the possibility that this young slave girl could be absorbing every single word of their discussion. And that she could remember it perfectly, so perfectly that it could later be repeated verbatim. Nor did any man present have any notion as to who the negro servant woman really was. Her role in the downfall of their plan was a part yet to be played. Just how devastating a part, none of them could yet know either.
‘So, gentlemen, we’re agreed,’ the general said after they’d spent some more time discussing the particulars of Garrett’s radical scheme. ‘Let’s set this thing in motion and reclaim the South’s fortunes in this war.’ He raised his glass. ‘To victory!’
‘To victory!’ The toast echoed around the table. They clinked glasses and drank.
Her duty done, the slave humbly asked for permission to excuse herself and was dismissed with a cursory wave, whereupon she slipped from the room to attend to the rest of her daily chores. Though if any of them had paid her the least bit of heed, they might have wondered at the enigmatic little smile that curled her lips as she walked away.
Chapter 1 (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
Ben Hope had often had the feeling that trouble had a knack of following him around. No matter what, where or how, it dogged his steps and stuck to him like a shadow. If trouble were a person, he’d have felt justified in thinking that individual was stalking him. If he’d been of a superstitious bent he could have thought he was haunted by it, as by a ghost. Whatever the case, it seemed as if at every juncture of his life, wherever he went and however he tried to steer out of its path, there it was waiting for him.
And it was here, pushing midnight on one sultry and thus-far uneventful September evening in the unlikely setting of a tiny backstreet liquor store in Clovis Parish, Louisiana, that he was about to make trouble’s acquaintance yet one more time.
If the most recent round of airport security regulations hadn’t made it more bother than it was worth to carry his old faithful hip flask across the Atlantic among his hand luggage, and if the bar and grill where he’d spent most of that evening had stocked the right kind of whisky to satisfy one of those late-night hankerings for a dram or three of the good stuff that occasionally come over a man, then two things wouldn’t have happened that night. First, there would have been nobody else around to prevent an innocent man from getting badly hurt, most probably shot to death.
Which was a good thing. And second, Ben wouldn’t have been plunged into a whole new kind of mess, even for him.
Which was less of a good thing. But that’s what happens when you have a talent for trouble. He should have been used to it by now.
It was nine minutes to midnight when Ben walked into the liquor store. It was as warm and humid inside as it was outside, with a lazy ceiling fan doing little more than stir the thick air around. An unseen radio was blaring country music, a stomping up-tempo bluegrass instrumental that was alive with fiddles and banjos and loud enough to hear from half a block away.
The sign on the door said they were open till 2 a.m. Ben soon saw he was the only customer in the place, which didn’t surprise him given the lateness of the hour and the emptiness of the street. Maybe they got a rush of business just before closing time.
The entire store could have fitted inside Ben’s farmhouse kitchen back home in Normandy, but was crammed from floor to ceiling across four aisles with enough booze to float a battleship. A glance up and down the heaving displays revealed a bewildering proliferation of beer and bourbon varieties, lots of rum, a smattering of local Muscadine wines and possibly not much else. He was resigned to not finding what he was looking for, but it had to be worth a shot.
Alone behind the counter sat an old guy in a frayed check shirt and a John Deere cap, with crêpey skin and lank grey hair, who was so absorbed in the pages of the fishing magazine he was reading that he didn’t seem to have noticed Ben come in.
‘How’re they biting?’ Ben said with a smile over the blare of the music, pointing at the magazine. The friendly traveller making conversation with the locals.
The old timer suddenly registered his customer’s presence and gazed up with watery, pale eyes. ‘Say what, sonny?’ He didn’t appear to possess a single tooth in his mouth.
It had to be thirty years since the last time anyone had called Ben ‘sonny’. Abandoning the fishing talk, which wasn’t his best conversation topic anyway, he asked the old timer what kinds of proper scotch he had for sale. Whisky with a ‘y’ and not an ‘ey’. Ben had never quite managed to develop a taste for bourbon, though in truth he’d drink pretty much anything if pushed. He had to repeat himself twice, as it was now becoming clear that the storekeeper was stone deaf as well as toothless, which probably accounted for the volume of the music.
Finally the old timer got it and directed him to a section of an aisle on the far end of the store. ‘Third aisle right there, walk on down to the bottom. Hope you find what you’re lookin’ for.’ The Cajun accent was more noticeable on him, sounding less Americanised than the younger locals. A sign of the times, no doubt, as the traditional ways and cultures eroded as gradually and surely as Louisiana’s coastal wetlands.
Ben said thanks. The old man frowned and peered at him with the utmost curiosity, as though this blond-haired foreigner were the strangest creature who’d ever stepped inside his store. ‘Say, where you from, podnuh? Ain’t from aroun’ here, that’s for damn sure.’ Ben couldn’t remember the last time he’d been called ‘partner’, either.
‘Long way from home,’ Ben replied.
The old timer cupped a hand behind his ear and craned his wrinkly neck. ‘Whassat?’ They could still be having this conversation come closing time. Hearing aids obviously hadn’t found their way this far south yet. Or maybe the oldster was afraid they’d cramp his style with the girls. Ben just smiled and walked off in search of the section he wanted. The storekeeper gazed after him for a moment and then shrugged and fell back into squinting at his magazine.
Following the directions, Ben soon found the range of scotches at the bottom of the last aisle, tucked away in what seemed a forgotten, seldom-frequented corner of the store judging by the layers of dust on the shelf. He began browsing along the rows of bottles, recognising with pleasure the names of some old friends among them. Knockando, Johnny Walker, Cutty Sark, Glenmorangie and a dozen others – it wasn’t a bad selection, all things considered. Then he spotted the solitary bottle of Laphroaig Quarter Cask single malt, one of his personal favourites for its dark, peaty, smokey flavour.
It had been sitting there so long that the bottle label was flecked with mildew. He took it down from the shelf, wiped off the dust and weighed his discovery appreciatively in his hand, savouring the prospect of taking it back to his hotel room for a couple of hours’ enjoyment before bed. The precious liquid had come a long way from its birthplace on rugged, windswept Islay in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides, for him to stumble across here in Southern Louisiana of all places. Maybe this was something more profound and meaningful than mere serendipity. Enough to make a man of lapsed religious faith start believing again, or almost.
Ben was carrying the bottle back up the aisle as though it were holy water when, over the blare of the music, he heard raised voices coming from the direction of the counter. As he reached the top of the aisle he saw a pair of guys who had just walked in.
One was big and ox-like in a studded motorcycle jacket with a patch on the back showing a gothic-helmeted grinning skull and the legend IRON SPARTANS MC, LOUISIANA. He was slow-moving and wore a calm smile. The other was a foot shorter, wiry and wasted in a denim vest cut-off that bared long, skinny arms with faded blue ink. He was agitated and angry, eyes darting as if he’d snorted a tugrope-sized line of cocaine.
The pair might have been regular customers, but Ben guessed not. Because he was fairly sure that, even in the Deep South, regular customers didn’t generally come storming into a place toting sawn-off pump shotguns and magnum revolvers.
Great.
The armed robbers were too intent on threatening the storekeeper to have noticed that the three of them weren’t alone. Ben retreated quickly out of sight behind the corner of the aisle and peeked through a gap between stacks of Dixie beer cans.
The hefty ox-like guy had the old timer by the throat with one large hand and the muzzle of the sawn-off jammed against his chest in the other. The storekeeper was pale and terrified and looked about to drop dead from heart failure. Meanwhile the small ratty guy tucked his loaded and cocked .357 Smith & Wesson down the front of his jeans, perhaps not the wisest gunhandling move Ben had ever seen, and vaulted over the counter to start rifling through the cash register. He was yelling furiously, ‘Is this all ya got, y’old fuckin’ coot? Where’s the rest of it?’
The old man’s eyes boggled and he seemed unable to speak. The disconcertingly calm guy with the shotgun looked as if he couldn’t wait to blow his victim’s internal organs all over the shop wall. It was hard to tell who was more dangerous, the little angry psycho or the big laid-back one.
Ben puffed his cheeks, thought fuck it, counted to three.
Then he sprang into action.
Six minutes to midnight, but the evening was only just getting started.
Chapter 2 (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
Fourteen hours earlier
It had been Ben’s first visit to Chicago. Now he was sitting in the departure lounge at O’Hare International, counting down the minutes to his flight while gazing through the window at the planes coming and going, and sipping coffee from a paper cup. As machine coffee went, not too terrible. It almost quelled his urge to light up a cigarette from the pack of Gauloises in his leather jacket pocket.
It was a rare thing for Ben to leave his base in rural northern France for anything other than work-related travel, whether to do with running the Le Val Tactical Training Centre that he co-owned with his business partner Jeff Dekker or for the other, more risky kinds of business that sometimes called him away. But when the chance had come to snatch a few free days out of Le Val’s hectic schedule and with no other pressing matters or life-threatening emergencies to attend to, Ben had seized the opportunity to jump on a plane and cross the Atlantic. His mission: to pay a visit to his son, plus one more objective he was yet to meet.
They hadn’t seen each other in a few months, since Jude’s somewhat rootless and meandering life path had led him to relocate from England to the US to be with his new girlfriend, Rae Lee. Ben knew all about rootless and meandering from past personal experience, and while he accepted that it was fairly normal for a young guy in his early twenties to take a few years before finding his feet in life, he worried that Jude had too much of his father’s restless ways about him.
It was Ben’s greatest wish that Jude could instead have taken more after the saintly, patient and selflessly loving man who raised him as his own son all those years when the kid’s real dad was off merrily raising hell in some or other war-ravaged corner of the globe.
Every time Ben reflected on that complicated history, he felt the same pangs of heartache. Years after the event, the deaths of Jude’s mother and stepfather, Michaela and Simeon Arundel, were a wound that would always remain raw. The subject was never discussed between them, but Ben knew the young man felt the pain just as keenly as he did.
Rae was a couple of years older than Jude, the only daughter of a wealthy Taiwanese-American family, and occupied a nice apartment in Chicago’s Far North Side overlooking Sheridan Park, where Ben had stayed with them for only one day before feeling it was time to move on. The brevity of his visit might have seemed unusual to more family-orientated folks, but Ben’s and Jude’s was not a normal father–son relationship and Ben was anxious not to overstay his welcome.
Ben got on cordially with Rae and liked her well enough, but wasn’t completely sure that she was right for Jude. Jeff Dekker, never one to mince words, regarded her as a busybody and a do-gooder – and there was some truth in that. She was a freelance investigative journalist with multiple axes to grind over anything she considered worth protesting about, and seemed to be pulling Jude deeper into her world of political activism despite the fact that he’d never hitherto expressed the slightest interest in politics or causes of any kind. They’d met during one of her trips to Africa to expose the human rights abuses of the coltan mining industry. A trip that had achieved nothing except very nearly lead her to a gruesome end, and Jude with her.
Having had to come to the rescue on that memorable occasion, Ben worried that the next idealistic crusade might turn out to be one from which nobody, not even a crew of ex-Special Forces and regular army veterans ready to do whatever it took, could save them.
Still, if Jude was happy, which he seemed to be, Ben could wish for no more; and even if Jude weren’t happy it was none of Ben’s business to interfere in his grown-up son’s personal affairs. He had said his goodbyes and left with mixed emotions, sorry that he wouldn’t see Jude again for a while, yet quietly relieved to get away. Now here he sat, waiting for another plane – but he wasn’t planning on heading home to France just yet.
At last, Ben’s flight was called, and a couple of hours later they were touching down at Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans. Which struck Ben as tying in very well with his other reason for being in the States.
As a dedicated jazz enthusiast, albeit one who was incapable of producing a single note on any instrument yet invented, Ben had for many years been a fan of the venerable tenor saxophonist Woody McCoy. Now pushing eighty-seven, McCoy was one of the last of the greats. He’d never achieved the stardom he deserved in his own right, but had played with some of the most iconic names in the business: Bird, Monk, ’Trane, Miles, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, to list but a few.
Now at long last, after a career spanning six decades, the man, the legend, was hanging up his spurs. But doing it in fine style, taking his Woody McCoy Quintet on a farewell tour all up and down the country. A few weeks earlier, Ben had seen the announcement that Woody was due to perform his last-ever gig in his home town of Villeneuve, deep in the rural heart of South Louisiana, in mid-September.
When the opportunity had arisen to free up the date in his work schedule, and with Jeff’s insistent ‘Go on, mate, you know you want to’ in his ear, Ben had decided that this last-ever chance to hear Woody McCoy play live was not to be missed. He almost never allowed himself such indulgences. But he’d allow himself this one, as a special treat.
Now that he’d cut his stay in Chicago a little shorter than planned, it meant he had a couple of days to explore Woody McCoy’s birthplace, sample the local culture, relax and take it easy.
Ben stepped off the plane in New Orleans and found himself in a different world. Welcome to Planet Louisiana. Though over the years he’d visited more places than he could easily count, his past travels around the US had been limited. He’d been to New York City, toured the coastline of Martha’s Vineyard, spent some time in the rugged hills of Montana, and had a brief sojourn in the wide open spaces of Oklahoma. But he’d never ventured this far south, and had only a vague idea of what to expect.
The first thing that hit him was the humidity. It was so thick and cloying that for a moment he thought he must have fallen down a wormhole in the space-time continuum and found himself back in the tropical furnace of Brunei redoing his SAS jungle training.
He cleared security, strolled through the hellish heat over to the nearest car rental place with his new green canvas haversack on his shoulder and was happy to find that the near-blanket blacklist that bugged him in many other countries didn’t seem to apply here. For some reason, the likes of Europcar, Hertz and Avis objected to his custom on the grounds that their vehicles never came back in one piece, occasionally in several, and other times not at all. But the pleasant young lady at Enterprise breezed through the paperwork and handed him the keys to a gleaming new Chevy Tahoe SUV with a smile like warm honey and a ‘Y’all have a good day, now’ that was Ben’s first introduction to a real-life Southern accent.
The airport lay eleven miles west of downtown New Orleans, amid one of the flattest and most panoramic landscapes Ben had seen outside of the Sahara. He opened all the windows, lit a long-awaited Gauloise with his trusty Zippo lighter, which the airport security guys had scrutinised as though it were an M67 fragmentation grenade, and headed north-west for the South Central Plains with the wind blasting around him and a four-hour drive ahead. He intended to enjoy every minute of his freedom.
Ben Hope was an unusually skilled and capable man who claimed little credit for his many gifts. One he lacked, however, in common with most people, was the gift of prophecy. If by some strange intuition he’d been able to foretell what lay in store for him at the end of the long, hot road, he would have pulled a U-turn right across the highway and jumped straight onto the next plane bound for France.
Instead, he just kept on going.
But that’s what happens when you have a talent for trouble.
Chapter 3 (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
For the next few hours, Ben drove beneath a sky burned pale by the sun. Trying to dial up a jazz station on the radio, he found only country music of the croony, schmaltzy variety with pedal steel guitars that sounded like cats yowling. It was either that, or the radio evangelists fulminating against the state of the modern world, or silence.
He chose silence, and eased back in his seat, steering the big comfortable Tahoe with two fingers as he worked his way through a pack of Gauloises and drank in his surroundings. The highway carved relentlessly onwards through the flat landscape, passing cane fields and sugar processing plants and oil refineries. It didn’t take much travelling through Louisiana to tell what the big industries were around here.
Deeper into country, the terrain was crisscrossed with bayous, waterways so sluggish and rimed with green slime that they appeared stagnant. He passed various settlements, a lot of them nothing but rag-tag clusters of dilapidated shacks along the edges of the bayous, where river folks dwelled and scraped their living off the water and raggedy little kids helped their fathers man flat-bottomed boats heavy with nets and lobster traps.
Third World poverty in the richest country on the planet. Maybe Rae Lee should come down here and check it out.
To a visitor from overcrowded Europe, the most vivid impression this landscape conveyed was of the sheer scale of its hugeness. Not even Montana and Oklahoma had seemed so spread-out and vast. The city of Shreveport lay a hundred miles to the north of his destination. Highway 84 connected Villeneuve to faraway Natchez, Mississippi to the east and Lufkin, Texas to the west. A whole different America to the one he’d experienced before. Especially as nobody was trying to kill him this time around.
Ben had done a little reading ahead of his journey to try and get a sense of Woody McCoy’s birthplace, its geography, its history and culture. Where most other North American states had counties, Louisiana divided itself instead into sixty-seven parishes, of which Clovis Parish was one of the smallest with a population of just over nine thousand spread over six hundred square miles of land that comprised mostly lake and bayou, swamp and forest. Woody’s home town of Villeneuve was the parish seat, historically best known for having been burned to the ground by Union troops during the 1864 Red River campaign of the American Civil War.
Long before the fledgling nation had decided to start ripping itself apart, this area had passed through the hands of various European colonists. First the French had come, back in the 1500s, and laid claim to the territory of Louisiane as part of what they dubbed ‘New France’, a vast tract of land that stretched from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains and encompassed bits of Canada and fifteen modern-day US states. After a couple of centuries of imposing their language, repressing the ‘heathen savages’ from whom they had wrested the land and shipping in countless thousands of African slaves to work on their plantations in the South, the French rulers had suffered a drubbing in the bloody and brutal French and Indian War and, in 1763, King Louis XV had been forced to cede his prize to the Spanish and British, who promptly set about forcing their own ways on their newly acquired colonial subjects. Napoleon Bonaparte had snatched back Spain’s land possessions in 1800 with a beady eye on re-establishing a lucrative French North American Empire, only to sell it all off again to the recently established United States in 1803, who had just a few years earlier kicked their British masters back into the sea and had their own ideas about developing their young nation.
The so-called ‘Louisiana Purchase’, a deal worth an eye-popping $15 million at the time, had formally ended France’s colonial presence and, at a stroke, radically expanded US territory by almost a million square miles to make it the third largest country in the world. Whereupon, less than sixty years later, the brave and bright new nation descended into a tragic civil war that turned neighbour against neighbour, brother against brother, ravaged the land from coast to coast and top to bottom, left as many as 750,000 of its citizens lying dead on its scorched battlefields and among the ruins of its levelled cities, and scarred the identity of the United States more profoundly than any other conflict before or since.
Such was, and always would be, the nature of human civilisation.
As for modern-day Louisiana, the result of so many centuries of ever-changing colonial ownership was a colourful blend of French, Spanish, African, Creole and Indian influences. Acadian settlers who had landed here from France by way of Canada added to the mixture, their descendants later to become known as ‘Cajuns’, forming a core part of this rich, multi-faceted culture rooted in so much dramatic history. Predictably enough, a glance at the map showed French names popping up everywhere. Villeneuve being just one of them, within a parish named after an ancient Frankish king. Many older Cajun folks still spoke their own form of French as a first language, although that tradition was slowly dying out.
The more Ben had read up on the background, the more he could see that he was going to have to abandon whatever preconceptions he might have previously had about this part of the Deep South. Here was a fascinating and unique place, and he was looking forward to learning more about it – almost as much as the bittersweet prospect of attending the Woody McCoy Quintet’s farewell performance two days from now.
The highway thinned out to an arrow-straight blacktop that carried him between fields and tracts of swampland and forest, past rambling farmsteads and abandoned gas stations and along the banks of a bayou with a waterside shanty restaurant signposted Mickey’s Crawfish Cabin – come inside! Ben hadn’t eaten a bite since his early breakfast with Jude and Rae in Chicago. However hungry he might be feeling, the delights of Mickey’s Crawfish Cabin were something he could live without. The roadside banner advertising FRESH COON MEAT, ½ MILE didn’t do much for him, either.
At last, a sign flashed by: ENTER CLOVIS PARISH, as though it were a command. A few miles later, the Villeneuve town limits appeared ahead, and Ben had reached his destination.
The afternoon had turned even sultrier, a threat of rain from the darker clouds drifting on the hot breeze. Ben had a room booked at the only Villeneuve hotel he’d been able to find online, called the Bayou Inn, which happened to be just a short stroll from the Civic Center where the Woody McCoy Quintet would walk on stage the night after next.
The directions he’d been given took him on a tour of the town. Villeneuve’s more affluent neighbourhoods were gathered on the south side, with ancient oak trees laden with Spanish moss, and old white wood colonial homes with all-around verandas. A mile north was the town square, featuring a pretty little parish courthouse with Georgian columns and a clock tower. The street was lined with a hardware store, a grocery market, a gun shop called Stonewall’s that had a Confederate flag displayed in the window, a pharmacy, a gas station and a bar and grill with a sign that said CAJUN STEAKHOUSE and seemed a lot more appetising than fresh coon meat or Mickey’s crawfish.
Off the square were narrower residential streets shaded by elm trees and lined with small clapboard shotgun houses, some well tended, others rundown with beaten-up old cars and rust-streaked propane tanks in their front yards, along with the obligatory chicken netting and tethered dogs prostrated by the heat. Every house had a mesh screen door to ward off insects, and sat up off the ground on brick pillars to protect against flood waters, with several steps up to the front entrance.
Ben found the Bayou Inn after a bit of searching, and checked in. The small hotel was owned and run by an older couple called Jerry and Mary-Lou Mouton. They greeted him with welcoming smiles and a ‘How y’all doin’? Travellin’ kinda light, aintcha?’
Which was true enough, out of long-established habit. His green canvas army haversack was a recent acquisition, to replace its predecessor which had been blown up inside a car in Russia. Another had been lost in a tsunami in Indonesia. He went through bags a lot. This one contained his usual light travelling kit – black jeans, a spare denim shirt and underwear, and a few assorted odds like his mini-Maglite and compass. When he got to his first-floor room he flung the bag carelessly on the bed.
The room was small and simple and basic, which was how he liked things to be. A tall window opened out onto a tiny balcony, where he pensively smoked a cigarette while gazing down at the quiet street below.
After a shower, Ben dug out his expensive smartphone with the intention of sending a couple of text messages to people back home, only to find that the damn thing had died on him. Terminal. Kaput. He’d had it a week. The joys of technology. He trotted downstairs and asked Mary-Lou where he might be able to buy another one, and she told him about a little store down the street that she thought might be able to help.
As it turned out, the only phones the store had were of the cheap, prepaid ‘burner’ variety. No names, no contracts, no frills. That suited Ben fine, and the untraceable anonymity of such a device appealed to the rebellious streak in him that objected to government surveillance agencies prying into the personal affairs of innocent citizens. The burner even had decent web access. He shelled out two ten-dollar bills for the phone itself, two more for credits, and was back in business.
By now it was early evening and Ben’s hunger was sharpened to the point where he couldn’t ignore it any longer. Remembering the Cajun Steakhouse he’d passed earlier, he set off at a leisurely pace in the direction of Villeneuve town square. The Moutons had given him a front door key to let himself in with, so he was free to take all the time he wanted and return as late as he pleased.
It felt strange to be so relaxed and at a loose end. He could get used to it, maybe, with a little practice.
The Cajun Steakhouse offered a baffling range of local fare like filé gumbo, eggs with shrimp and grits, Creole jambalaya and something called Louisiana-style crawfish boil. Ben decided to play it safe and ordered a T-bone with fries and a Dixie beer.
‘You jes’ sit tight, handsome, and I’ll bring you the best steak you ever tasted in your life,’ promised his teased-blond hostess called Destiny, who kept flashing eyes at him. But she probably treated every tall, fair-haired stranger who walked into the bar and grill just the same way.
Destiny’s promise was no empty claim. The T-bone was the biggest and most delicious he’d ever had, thick and succulent. After two more Dixie beers, Ben was definitely feeling at home. So much so, that he suddenly had a hankering for a glass of good malt scotch, the kind he’d occasionally – or more than occasionally – enjoy during quiet evenings at Le Val, sometimes over a game of chess with Jeff, or in front of the fire with his German shepherd dog, Storm, curled at his feet. At the bar, he asked Destiny what she had, and with an alluring smile she produced a bottle.
‘What is it?’ he asked. It was the colour of stewed tea.
‘This here is Louisiana Whiskey, hon. Or else, we got Riz.’
‘Riz?’
‘Uh-huh. Made from rice.’
Ben shook his head. ‘Not exactly what I had in mind.’
‘How about rum?’ Destiny suggested. ‘Folks round here drink a lot of rum. But you ain’t from around here, are you, sugah?’
‘Is it really that obvious?’
Ben settled for a tot of local rum, which was probably made at one of the cane distilleries he’d passed on the drive up from New Orleans. It wasn’t single malt scotch, but he was in a forgiving mood, and the Cajun Steakhouse was definitely growing on him. He spent the whole evening there, watching the place fill up with local colour and listening to the diet of rock and country music that streamed constantly from the jukebox. He might even get used to that, too.
Two more tots of rum, and he sat thinking about Jude, about life, about a lot of stuff. Such as his hesitant, awkward relationship with a woman called Sandrine Lacombe, who was a doctor at the hospital in Cherbourg a few kilometres from Le Val. Ben was drawn to her, and she to him, but it was as though neither of them could bring themselves to take the plunge. Like one of the stalemates that so many of his chess matches with Jeff ended in.
The truth was that, however much they liked each other, Ben was never going to be the love of Sandrine’s life, nor she of his. No, he’d already had that, and lost it, and there was seldom a day when he didn’t reflect on it with regret and guilt.
It was late when Ben finally left the bar and grill. He went walking through the warmth of the night, a little cooler and less sultry and far more pleasant. The stars were twinkling in an ink-black sky and the scent of magnolia trees was in the air. The streets of Villeneuve were quiet and peaceful. He didn’t feel like returning to the hotel just yet.
And that, as he strolled around exploring the small town, was when Ben spotted the lit-up store front with the sign above the door that said ELMO’S LIQUOR LOCKER, and decided to take a look inside. Just in case. You never knew what you might find.
Nine minutes to midnight.
Chapter 4 (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
Of all the late-night liquor stores in all the sleepy little towns of rural Louisiana, he’d had to walk into the one where a couple of morons were intent on sticking the place up. And on all the nights the pair of armed robbers could have chosen to do the deed, they had to pick the very moment when someone like Ben Hope was lurking just around the corner, fifteen feet away out of sight in the far aisle behind a stack of Dixie beer.
It had to be fate.
On the count of three, Ben stepped out where they could see him, and said, ‘Hello, boys.’
Ben was still clutching the bottle of Laphroaig Quarter Cask that he’d been about to carry over to the counter to buy. But at this moment, in his mind it ceased to be a vessel for seventy-five centilitres of one of the most venerable liquids ever crafted by human artistry, and became a usefully hefty club-shaped weapon weighing in at just under three pounds, perfectly balanced to inflict all kinds of damage to the human body. Ben’s mind often worked that way, especially at times like these. In the instant it took for the two robbers to lock eyes on the unexpected newcomer, before they could even begin to react, his brain was already calculating factors of distance, velocity, spin and drop.
Most important of all, though, was picking the right target to aim for. The big guy might have been just a trigger pull of a sawn-off shotgun away from blowing the storekeeper’s heart and lungs out his back, but Ben made him for the slower mover. If the big guy was a bear, then his partner in crime was a fox, nervier, whippier and more twitchy, hence more potentially volatile. Though he stood a couple of steps further away on the other side of the counter where he’d been rifling through the cash register, and thus presented a more distant target, Ben knew the foxy guy posed the greater immediate threat and needed taking down as a matter of priority.
True to Ben’s prediction, the foxy guy moved first. His lean right hand, marked by a faded blue star tattoo on the web between forefinger and thumb, let go of the bunch of mixed-denomination dollar bills he’d yanked from the cash register. The money fell like confetti as his hand dived down to close on the butt of the cocked revolver protruding from the front of his jeans.
By then, the whisky bottle was already in the air. It completed a full 360-degree spin from leaving Ben’s hand to flying past the storekeeper’s nose, over the counter and impacting the foxy guy smack in the middle of the forehead with its heavy glass bottom.
Being no kind of a physicist, Ben was dimly aware that the force of a thrown object was based on some complex formula involving vectors of mass and velocity, acceleration and momentum. Newton’s Second Law, if he remembered rightly. But however it measured up in scientific terms, it was plenty forceful enough to have a significant effect on its target.
And yet, it wasn’t so much the high-speed collision between a full bottle of whisky and his cranial frontal bone that would forever change the foxy guy’s life. It was the reflex nerve contraction that ran through his whole body at the moment of impact and caused his index finger to jerk against the trigger of his .357 Magnum while still tucked pointing vertically downwards inside the front of his jeans.
With the hammer cocked, the average Smith & Wesson revolver carries a very light trigger pull. A mere three or four pounds, requiring just a flick of a finger to release the hammer and drop the firing pin against the primer of a waiting cartridge. Which was exactly what happened within the confines of the foxy guy’s trousers at the exact moment the bottle whacked him in the forehead and knocked him sprawling backwards off his feet.
The blast of the gunshot, even somewhat dampened by a layer of denim, was grenade-loud inside the store. Almost as ear-piercing was the shriek of agony that followed as the foxy guy realised that he’d inflicted some terrible damage to himself down there.
To the sound of his buddy’s ululating wail, the big guy finally moved. He shoved the old storekeeper away hard and swivelled the shotgun one-handed towards Ben. The calm smile on his big moon face had creased up into a bared-teeth sneer of fury and hate. The twin muzzles of the shotgun pointed Ben’s way.
But just as suddenly, they were pointing straight up towards the ceiling as Ben closed in on him and diverted the weapon with a flying high kick to the big guy’s right forearm that dislocated his wrist tendon and sent the gun tumbling out of his grip. It fell to the linoleum floor with a thud, unfired. By the time it had landed, Ben had got the big guy’s dislocated wrist trapped in a merciless Aikido joint lock. One that was so painful and debilitating, it didn’t matter how big or strong you were; you were going down.
The big guy was on his knees in moments, helpless, head bowed, gasping. Keeping hold of the arm and wrist, Ben kicked him in the throat. Hard enough to knock the rest of the wind out of him without doing any permanent damage. The big guy toppled to the floor with a crash that made the cans and bottles on the store shelves wobble and clink.
The other moron was lying on his back a few feet away behind the counter, squealing like a pig and clutching his injured groin, far too preoccupied to think about reaching for the revolver that had spilled out of the waistband of his blood-soaked trousers. The barrel and cylinder of the gun were spattered bright red, and there was a lot more of it pooling on the floor. There was a perfectly circular weal the size of a bottle base imprinted on his forehead.
Ben let go of the big fellow and stepped around the counter to slide the fallen revolver away with his foot. Looking down at all the mess and blood, he saw the shattered remains of the Laphroaig Quarter Cask and shook his head in sorrow. What a waste. Why couldn’t he have lobbed a six-pack of Dixie beer at the guy instead?
But there was no use crying over it. It was the idiot on the floor who had much more to cry about. Ben eyed the gory spectacle of his crotch and said, ‘Looks like you emasculated yourself, pal. You’ll be singing mezzo soprano in the parish choir from now on. Maybe that’ll teach you. Then again, I doubt it.’
He turned to look at the storekeeper. The old guy was cowering against the counter, boggling from under a protectively raised arm as though he thought Ben was going to hit him next. So much for gratitude.
There was a phone with a curly plastic cord attached to the wall behind the counter. Ben pointed at it. ‘I’m guessing the Sheriff’s Office is only open nine till five, but there must be a number for the local dispatch centre. Call it. You’d best get them to send a couple of ambulances, too.’
The old man relaxed a little as he realised he wasn’t about to become Ben’s next victim after all. He lowered his arm and gaped down at the prostrated form of the big guy on the floor, then peered over the counter at the other one still yowling and thrashing in a slick of his own blood.
‘Holy shit, mister. I never seen nuthin’ like it. You went through those two boys like a goddamn hurricane.’ Motioning at the big guy, he added, ‘That there’s Billy Bob Lafleur. He’s one evil sumbitch, not right in the head if you get what I’m sayin’. Knowed his mother, way back. She was crazy too. This other fella, he must be from outta town. Jumpin’ Jesus, look what he done. Plain shot off his own balls.’
You could hardly hear yourself think in the place for all the racket. Ben stepped back over to the castrated would-be robber and knocked him out with a quick kick to the temple. Silence at last. He pointed again at the phone. ‘Make the call and let’s get it over and done with. Then I’d like a replacement bottle of whisky to take back to my hotel.’
‘I ain’t got no more of those, sonny. You just broke the last one.’
‘Then I suppose I’ll have to settle for a Glenmorangie instead,’ Ben replied.
‘It’s on the house,’ the old man said. ‘Least I can do for a feller who just saved my life.’ He stuck out a wizened hand. ‘Name’s Elmo. Elmo Gillis. Owned this store since ’seventy-two and never had no trouble until these two dipshits showed up.’
Ben took his hand with a smile. ‘I’m Ben. I appreciate the kindness, Elmo. But I’m happy to pay for it, and the broken one too.’
Elmo made the phone call. Ben rested against the counter and lit up a Gauloise, savouring the peace while it lasted, and not much relishing the prospect of having to deal with the cops. For some reason, he and law enforcement officials seldom seemed to gel.
It wasn’t very long before they heard the whoop of sirens, and the street outside became painted with whirling blue light as a pair of identical Crown Victoria police patrol cruisers with CLOVIS PARISH SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT emblazoned on their doors came screeching up at the kerbside.
‘That’s Sheriff Roque,’ Elmo said, pointing through the store window at the car in front. ‘Meaner’n a wet panther, that one.’
‘Bad cop?’ Ben asked him.
‘Hell, no. Ol’ Waylon is the best sheriff we ever had.’
From the lead car emerged a large, raw-boned officer in a tan uniform and a broad campaign hat jammed at an angle onto his greying head. His face looked about as soft and good-humoured as a mountain crag in winter. Joined by a pair of deputies from the cruiser behind, he pushed inside the liquor store and halted near the doorway, surveying the scene with gnarled fists balled on his hips.
And now Ben’s evening was about to get started in earnest.
Chapter 5 (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
The sheriff glanced around him. His eyes were pale and hooded, and threw out a flat cop stare that landed first on the prone shape of Billy Bob Lafleur, then on his unconscious partner in crime, and finally on Ben, scrutinising him carefully.
Ben noticed that in place of his regular service gunbelt and sidearm, Roque wore a fancy buscadero cowboy rig with an old-style Colt revolver nestling snugly in its holster. The floral pattern tooled leather went well with his boots, which were definitely non-issue as well. Deviations from the standard uniform evidently didn’t matter too much down here.
Without taking the stare off Ben the sheriff asked, ‘What the hell happened here, Elmo?’ He spoke loud and slow, as if measuring every word. Which might have been partly to make himself heard by Elmo, knowing the old guy was hard of hearing. Ben guessed that in a small community like this one, everyone knew everyone else, their secrets, their problems, their history.
Elmo answered, ‘These boys tried to hold up the store. And this fella here, he stopped it. Took ’em down in one second flat. You shoulda seen it, Waylon. Ol’ Billy Bob had a gun right in his face. I never saw anyone move so fast.’
‘They dead?’
‘They’re alive,’ Ben said. ‘Just sleeping. But they’re going to need those ambulances PDQ. That one has a badly dislocated wrist. The other’s got probable concussion, and he’s losing a lot of blood from a gunshot wound.’
‘Meatwagons are on their way,’ the sheriff replied. Still in the same loud, slow drawl, strong and authoritative. He aimed a thick, gnarly finger towards Ben. ‘Who shot’m, you?’
Elmo answered for Ben. ‘He shot himself, Waylon. Damn fool blew off his own pecker.’
Apparently quite unmoved, the sheriff gestured to his deputies. One drew a pistol and kept it trained on the two robbers, as though they were in any state to resist arrest, while the other slapped on cuffs. A few late-night passersby had gathered in the street, drawn by the police sirens and rubbernecking through the store window at what was going on.
Keeping his back to the window the sheriff said, ‘Elijah, would you move those folks on?’ The deputy called Elijah hastened outside to carry out the command. The sheriff said to the other, ‘Mason, get on the radio and find out where those meatwagons are at, before this asshole goes and bleeds to death right here in front of us.’
Mason was the deputy with the drawn pistol. He was hatless, with brown hair spiky on top and shaved up the sides like a Marine. His face was fleshy and pasty and burned by the sun and his eyes were somewhat dull. He glanced nervously at Roque. ‘What about these boys?’
The sheriff replied calmly, ‘They’re unconscious, Mason. I think I can handle it. Now scoot and get on that darn radio.’
Mason holstered his weapon and ran out to the car. The sheriff watched him go, and shook his head with a sigh. ‘’Bout as sharp as a bowlin’ ball, that one.’ Then he turned his flinty eyes back on Ben. ‘I’m Waylon Roque, Sheriff of Clovis Parish. I don’t believe I know you, Mister—?’
‘Hope. Ben Hope.’
‘You ain’t from around heah.’
‘So everyone keeps telling me,’ Ben said. ‘I’m just a tourist, that’s all. Arrived here in Villeneuve this afternoon and I’m staying at the Bayou Inn. I’m only in town for the Woody McCoy gig the night after next, then I’ll be heading back home.’ He slipped his passport from his pocket and held it out.
The sheriff took the passport and gave it a quick once-over, then seemed satisfied and tossed it back. ‘A Brit.’
‘Half Irish, for what it’s worth. But I live in France.’
Roque pulled a face, as if he thought even less of the Irish than the Brits. ‘Jazz fan too, huh? I’m more of a Jimmie Davis man, myself.’
Ben smiled. ‘You are my sunshine.’
But Roque wasn’t one for chitchat. ‘What’s your occupation, Mister Hope from France?’
‘I work in education,’ Ben replied. Technically correct although economical with the truth. He didn’t think it necessary to reveal to Roque what kind of education the training facility at Le Val offered, or to whom. Information like that tended to invite too many questions.
‘Teacher, huh?’ If Ben had said he was a smack dealer, Roque wouldn’t have looked any less impressed.
‘Near enough,’ Ben said.
Roque reflected for a moment, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Well, Teach, seems to me you must either be the luckiest sumbitch alive, or you’re some kinda trained ninja assassin in your spare time.’ He jerked his chin in the direction of Billy Bob Lafleur. ‘Sleepin’ beauty here is a local white-trash scumbag well known to Clovis Parish PD for his violent and intemperate ways. Put many a man in the hospital, and keeps all manner of unsavoury company out there on Garrett Island. His buddy looks kinda rough, too. I’m just wonderin’ how in hell an ordinary tourist, a schoolteacher, could manage to take these bad boys both down in one second flat like Elmo said, bust ’em up real good and walk away without taking so much as a scratch hisself.’
‘I never said I was a schoolteacher,’ Ben replied. ‘And actually it was more like two seconds. Maybe even longer. I must be getting slow in my old age. And they’re not as good as they think they are.’
The sheriff eyed him for the longest moment. ‘Just who exactly are you, boah?’
Ben didn’t like being called ‘boy’. In fact there was little he was liking much about Sheriff Waylon Roque in general. Which came as no great surprise to him. ‘Would you care to rephrase that question, Officer?’
A knowing kind of look crinkled the sheriff’s pale eyes. He nodded to himself, as though savouring an idea. ‘I have a pretty good notion who you are. Tell me. What’s your unit?’
Ben said nothing.
The corners of Roque’s lips stretched into a humourless smile. ‘I knew right off you weren’t no teacher. You got the soldier look, for sure. Maybe you think you can hide it, but I can see it as sure as if you was still wearin’ the uniform. I can see it in your eyes, and from the way you’re standin’ there lookin’ back at me. I saw it before I even walked in here.’
Roque paused. Enjoying the moment. ‘Am I right, Mister Hope? You a military man?’
‘I’m not a soldier,’ Ben said. Which was another technically truthful answer, as he had quit that life a long time ago. ‘But even if I were, Sheriff, I can’t see how it would be any business of yours.’
The deputy called Mason had got off the radio and now returned from the car to say the ambulances were en route and would be with them ‘momentarily’. Ben always wondered at the way Americans used that particular word. In the Queen’s English it meant the ambulances would appear one instant, and then vanish again the next like a disappearing mirage.
In the event, when they did turn up a couple of minutes later and parked behind the police cars, the paramedic units hung around long enough to strap the wounded robbers onto a pair of gurneys and prepare to ship them to hospital, from where they’d be going straight to jail.
Billy Bob Lafleur had woken up by then and had to be sedated to prevent him from trying to escape. He had his Miranda rights read to him before he fell back unconscious. The sheriff directed the police deputy called Elijah to ride with him in the back of the ambulance. Meanwhile, Billy Bob’s friend was still passed out and looking very pale. The medics wheeled him hurriedly aboard and took off with the lights and siren going full pelt.
‘Now what?’ Ben said to Sheriff Roque.
‘Say you’re gonna be in town until the night after tomorrow?’
Ben shrugged. ‘Or the morning after that. I’m not in a rush.’
‘Good. I’ll need you to come down to the station to make a formal statement and fill in a few blanks for me.’
‘What kind of blanks?’ Ben asked.
‘Call it satisfyin’ my curiosity. I like to keep tabs on what’s happenin’ in my parish, just like I like to know who comes and goes. See you around, Mister Hope. Don’t you leave without payin’ me a visit, now, you heah?’
‘Something for me to look forward to,’ Ben said.
The sheriff pulled another half-smile. He tipped his hat to Elmo. ‘Y’all have a peaceful rest of the night.’
After the police were gone, the liquor store and the street fell back into tranquil silence. Only the mess and the blood remained to bear witness to what had happened there that night. Ben felt bad about leaving the old man to clear it all up himself, and spent an hour helping him. When Elmo asked ‘Say, you really a soldier?’ Ben replied, ‘Your sheriff has a heck of an imagination.’
Finally, well after 1.30 a.m., Ben returned to the Bayou Inn with an intact bottle of twelve-year-old Glenmorangie tucked under his arm. He encountered no more armed robbers on the way back. The night was fresh and fragrant, and all seemed well with the world.
And that was the end of all the trouble.
Or, it should have been.
Because trouble would waste little time in finding him again. Sooner than he might have thought.
Chapter 6 (#u0996fefc-3da0-5fb5-8429-1e493b385096)
By the time Ben got back to his room at the Bayou Inn, the urge to spend a couple of the wee small hours enjoying the Glenmorangie had left him and all he wanted to do was go to bed. He rose early the next morning, as the dawn was breaking over the town and painting the white houses vermilion and gold.
Feeling that last night’s meal had been a little overindulgent, he spent longer than usual on his morning exercise routine, clicking off set after set of press-ups and sit-ups on the floor. He showered and dressed, then used his new burner phone to fire off that text message to Jeff asking how things were going at Le Val, and one to Sandrine to say nothing much in particular except that he’d arrived safe and sound in Louisiana.
Nobody needed to know about last night’s spot of bother. It was already a fading memory, soon to be forgotten altogether.
Standing on his balcony afterwards he smoked a Gauloise and watched the sun climb and the streets come to life, as much as they seemed to do in Villeneuve. Most people around here appeared to drive pickup trucks. A skinny African-American kid on a bicycle with a bulging mailbag swinging from his shoulder worked his way down the street lobbing rolled-up morning newspapers into front yards. Clovis Parish was obviously the last place on Earth where folks hadn’t yet gone all digital. Ben liked that.
Ben was a coffee addict and could pick up its scent from any distance the way a German shepherd smells raw steak. His nose began to twitch just after seven, by which time he was dying for his first caffeine fix of the day, and he followed the enticing aroma downstairs to the kitchen where Mary-Lou Mouton was preparing breakfast.
The morning meal at Le Val tended to be a rushed, hectic, on-the-hoof affair that involved slurping down four or five coffees in between cigarettes while organising trainees, feeding guard dogs and prepping a variety of weaponry for the day’s busy class schedule. That wasn’t how things were done here at the Bayou Inn. Mary-Lou directed him to a white pine table covered with an embroidered cloth and set for one, since he was the only guest, and he sat quietly sipping a cup of excellent black coffee as she bustled about the kitchen.
Mary-Lou was a devout believer in the old saying that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. The plate she shoved under Ben’s nose was piled high with eggs, bacon and sausage patties, home fries, grits and toast, and she stood over him like a prison guard to make sure he finished every bite. He’d have to triple his exercise regime to work it off. Maybe go for a twenty-mile run, too.
Mary-Lou finally left him alone to wash down his breakfast with a second cup of coffee. The copy of the Clovis Parish Times that the bicycle kid had delivered lay unread on the kitchen table. Out of curiosity he picked it up and unfolded it in front of him. Then nearly sprayed a mouthful of coffee all down his shirt as he saw the front-page headline.
BRITISH ARMY VETERAN FOILS LIQUOR STORE HOLDUP
‘What the—?’
He had to blink several times before he could bring himself to believe it. Reading on, he almost choked all over again at the reference to the ‘intrepid stranger’, believed to be an English military veteran, who had ‘heroically intervened’ during an armed robbery at Elmo’s Liquor Locker on West Rue Evangeline Street late Thursday night.
Clovis Parish Sheriff’s Dept. sources had released the names of the two men taken into custody: Billy Bob Lafleur, 34, and Kyle Fillios, 32. Lafleur and Fillios had entered the store ‘brandishing’ (that favourite word of the media) lethal firearms (was there any other kind, Ben wondered) and demanded its proprietor, Mr E. Gillis, hand over the contents of the cash register, threatening his life. Whereupon the two thugs had been tackled and disarmed and the police called to the scene.
Fillios had been rushed to the nearby Clovis Parish Medical Center requiring surgery for ‘a self-inflicted injury’ while Lafleur was now locked up in the Clovis Parish jail awaiting a trial date. A quote from Mr Gillis proclaimed, ‘I thought I was dead, for sure’ and praised the unnamed hero for his actions. The Sheriff’s Department was unavailable for further comment.
Ben re-scanned the article three times, more perplexed with every reading. The Times had moved pretty damn fast to get the story out for the next morning’s edition. Some intrepid reporter must have dragged poor old Elmo Gillis out of bed before daybreak to get the quote.
Ben couldn’t blame the local press for being eager to jump on such a sensational story, considering how news-starved their sleepy little town likely was the rest of the time. He also had to be thankful that his name wasn’t mentioned. But the ‘British army veteran’ reference bothered him a lot. He doubted the reporter had got that from Elmo, as the old guy had no reason for spreading such rumours. No. Ben was certain that information had leaked from the mouth of Sheriff Waylon Roque himself. Ben had the impression that once Roque got an idea into his head, he’d let go of it as easily as a starving dog gives up a meaty bone.
Not to mention the fact that Roque’s instinct about Ben was perfectly accurate. An ordinary tourist, a teacher no less, wouldn’t have stood a chance against two desperate trigger-happy imbeciles like Lafleur and Fillios.
If Sheriff Roque had divulged that much to the Times reporter, what else had he told them? That the hero of the liquor store holdup was in town for the Woody McCoy gig tomorrow night? Or that he was staying at the Bayou Inn?
Ben valued privacy above most things, and he disliked being talked about or, worse, written about. It was his nature to be that way, a character trait that had fitted very well with his covert, secretive life in Special Forces. Anonymity was an obsession with SF operatives. While his own SAS background and Jeff Dekker’s history with its sister outfit the Special Boat Service were part of the attraction that drew hundreds of delegates from all over the world to train at Le Val, outside of his work Ben never voluntarily shared that side of his past with anyone. Sandrine knew virtually nothing of it. Even Brooke Marcel, to whom Ben had been engaged for a while before it all went south, had been kept in the dark about a lot of things.
And now he’d allowed himself to become the subject of gossip in a small town where nothing ever happened. Bad move. The word would spread faster than pneumonic plague. He was irritated with himself; and yet what else could he have done but intervene in the robbery? What was he supposed to do, stand by and let an innocent old man get killed just to satisfy his sense of discretion? How could he have predicted that some hick sheriff would turn out to be so wily and perceptive?
As these worrisome thoughts swirled around in Ben’s mind, Mary-Lou reappeared, looking somewhat bemused, to say there were two men at the door looking for a Mr Bob Hope. ‘I think it’s you they want. Said they were reporters for the Villeneuve Courier.’
Bob Hope.
Ben heaved a weary sigh. Someone had been gabbing, all right. Now the press had found him, he couldn’t hide behind the sofa and wait for them to go away. He followed Mary-Lou along the sweet-smelling passage to the door, where a reedy individual wearing a cheap suit hovered on the front step accompanied by an acne-spangled photographer in ripped jeans and an LSU Tigers T-shirt, who aimed his long lens at Ben like a gun.
‘Mister Hope? It’s you, right?’
‘That depends. Who the hell are you and what do you want?’
‘Dickie Thibodeaux, from the Courier. I wondered if I could have a minute of your time?’
As politely as possible, Ben explained to them that he wasn’t interested in giving interviews and had nothing to say. ‘I’m on vacation. Now please leave me alone.’
‘Come on, man, you gotta give us somethin’. This is a hot story. You’re the star of the liquor store holdup! Some kinda superhero, like the British Jack Bauer.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Who told you that?’
Dickie Thibodeaux smirked. ‘Sorry, I never reveal my sources.’
‘Tell your sources to get stuffed.’ Ben turned to glare at the photographer, who was clicking away. ‘And you, get that camera out of my face before I ram it down your bloody throat.’ Amazing how fast politeness could melt away. Reporters had that effect on people, and especially on Ben.
The pair stalked to their car, shooting resentful glances back at him. Dickie Thibodeaux was already getting on the phone, probably drumming up reinforcements.
Ben watched them go. He’d successfully repelled the first wave. But there would be more, and the scrutiny on him would intensify fast as the story gained traction. By lunchtime there might be TV crews for CNN, WNBC and Good Morning America blocking the street and swarming all over the Moutons’ front lawn. Ben was about to become the world’s most reluctant celebrity. And that could mean only one thing.
He muttered aloud, ‘I need to get out of here, right this minute.’
Chapter 7 (#ulink_c110bc4c-5a80-5838-a462-a2665b62ba37)
In fact it was a whole twenty before Ben had packed his things, checked out of the Bayou Inn and was speeding out of Villeneuve, cursing whichever wagging tongue had put him in this predicament. His plan was now to find a discreet new place to stay in a quiet location not too far away, where he was less likely to be recognised.
He had only to lie low for another thirty-six hours or less before sneaking back undetected into Villeneuve in time for the Woody McCoy gig. How hard could that be?
Then, the moment the Great Man’s final performance was over, Ben would hustle back to New Orleans. Before Sheriff Roque or the local press were any the wiser, he’d be flying home to the sanctuary of rural Normandy.
On his map the nearby small town of Chitimacha, forty-five minutes’ drive to the west, looked like a promising place to hole up. He spurred the Tahoe along a meandering two-lane that cut through the cane and sweet potato fields and flat marshlands striped with industrial waterways and oil pipelines. As he got closer to Chitimacha he started looking around for a motel, but passed only a tattered billboard for Dixie beer. Was that the only kind of beer anyone drank around here? Minutes later, he entered the town itself.
If Chitimacha could be called a town, then Villeneuve was a city by comparison. The small settlement had grown up piecemeal along the east bank of a broad, glass-smooth waterway called Bayou Sainte-Marie. Access from the western side meant crossing a wooden bridge that straddled the bayou’s narrowest point and looked as though it had been there since Civil War days.
It was only mid-morning and already the air was as hot and thick as caramel sauce. Clouds of insects drifted over the water like smoke. It made Ben think of the Amazon. The smell of the bayou hung heavy, fishy and stagnant like an aquarium left standing uncleaned. Beneath the bridge, the bank’s edge was a buzzing hive of industry, crowded with small jetties where stacks of lobster traps stood piled man-high, and moored flat-bottomed river boats bobbed gently on the almost imperceptible swell of the mud-brown water. Back from the jetties were store huts and bait and tackle shops advertising live worms and boat hire.
Traffic entering and leaving Chitimacha was thin and sporadic. Like everywhere else in the region, two out of every three vehicles were pickup trucks. Once over the wooden bridge Ben passed a couple of roadside fish shacks selling wares such as gaspergou and gar balls, and other arcane specialities of Planet Louisiana at whose nature he could only guess. He slowed the Tahoe to gaze from his window at a huge fish that hung tail-up from a hook outside one of the shacks.
Once, in the Cayman Islands, Ben had seen a man torn apart by tiger sharks. This thing was even more fearsome. Part giant pike, part alligator, its massive jaws bristling with fangs. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to eat it, but it was easy to imagine the creature taking a bite out of any unlucky fisherman who fell in the bayou.
Ben drove on into the centre of Chitimacha, which made the Villeneuve town square look like New Orleans in the middle of Mardi Gras. If Ben had wanted quiet, he’d certainly found it here. Seemingly, if you wanted action in Chitimacha you needed to be on the bayou itself. Here in town the sidewalks were almost completely deserted. A solitary pickup truck rumbled past, heading the way Ben had come. A few parked vehicles, many of them older than he was, sat gathering dust in the sun. There was a hardware store displaying racks of everything from chainsaw oil to crawfish boilers, and a grocery store with sun-faded ad placards in the windows saying ‘Drink Coca-Cola in bottles’ and ‘If it ain’t Jerry Lee’s, it ain’t boudin’. Next door was an empty barber’s shop, and next door to that an equally empty café with chairs and tables spilling out into the deserted street for nobody to sit at.
Possibly the liveliest spot in town was an ancient relic of a filling station that consisted of a weedy patch of blacktop, two pre-war gas pumps and an old man in oily dungarees outside on a dilapidated bench with a corncob pipe in his mouth, sunning himself in the burning heat like a reptile on a rock.
Ben pulled up by the pumps and got the old man to fill up the Tahoe, which he set about doing without uttering a word, the pipe still stuck between his teeth. It was lit, but if the old man didn’t worry about going up in flames, Ben wasn’t going to worry about it either.
‘I’ll bet this place really comes alive in the high season, doesn’t it?’ Ben said by way of initiating a conversation. The old man just looked at him and muttered a response in what sounded like a weird version of French. Ben realised he was speaking the Cajun dialect handed down from the Acadian settlers way back. The historic language had been heavily altered by isolation and the passing of the centuries, but (or so Ben had read) was still basically intelligible to a modern French speaker. Which Ben was, and so he switched from English in the hope that they could communicate.
‘Don’t suppose you have anything resembling a hotel here in Chitimacha?’
The old man plucked the pipe from his mouth with a moist sucking sound, and waved the wet end of its stem to point down the street while jabbering more of his dialect. Maybe it wasn’t that intelligible after all, at least not to anyone but a Cajun. Ben was stumped for a second or two, then understood he was being directed to a local pension, which was French for a guesthouse. Ben got the rest of the directions, paid up for the gas, said, ‘Merci, monsieur’ and drove on.
The directions led him to a street quarter of a mile away on the edge of Chitimacha, which could have been lifted straight out of Villeneuve’s most down-at-heel neighbourhoods. Signs of neglect and poverty were all too obvious in most directions he looked.
Except for one. The guesthouse stood out from the adjoining properties, spick and span and resplendent from a fresh coat of white paint that was almost blinding in the bright sunshine. The tiny green GMC hatchback outside the front gate looked new and clean and well maintained, unlike most of the beaters parked up and down the street. A flowery hand-crafted bilingual sign on the gate said, ‘Bienvenue à la pension de Lottie’ and underneath ‘Welcome to Lottie’s Guesthouse’.
Ben parked up behind the miniature GMC, which could probably have fitted in the Tahoe’s rear cargo space. He climbed out into the hot sun and opened the gate and walked up a neat little path to the door to ring the bell. A minute later he heard movement inside.
The inner door opened, then the screen door, and a large African-American lady with a smile that made the house’s dazzling pearl-white paintwork seem dull and faded greeted him with a vivacious ‘Well, hello there, sugah. I’m Lottie Landreneau, and how are you today?’
Chapter 8 (#ulink_65608f35-e60a-54af-8336-50d0a5ab54a5)
Ben knew from the start that he’d struck lucky with Lottie. The warmth of her hospitality was as endearing as her smile and from the moment he walked into her house he felt right at home. The place was filled with flowers, light and Southern charm, like her personality. ‘Where y’all from, sugah? You sound English without soundin’ English, if you know what I mean.’
‘I’ve moved around.’
‘Oh, I know all about that,’ she said mysteriously, and seemed to enjoy keeping him in suspense for now. ‘Come, let me show you your room.’
He followed her from the richly carpeted entrance hall and up a switchback staircase with a thick gleaming mahogany banister rail that she clutched as she hauled her weight up the stairs. ‘That’s me,’ she said, motioning towards a glossy white door at the end of the galleried first-floor landing.
Spaced out along the passage were two more doors, each adorned with a little brass number plaque. ‘Y’all are the only guest I got right now, so you get your pick of the rooms.’ She pointed at the door nearest to hers. ‘How ’bout this one?’
‘What’s up there?’ he asked, nodding towards a drop-down wooden staircase that led from the opposite end of the landing to an open hatch in the ceiling.
‘Rooms three and four. It’s an attic conversion. Ceilings are kinda low.’
‘I love attics.’
‘Okay, well then let me show you.’
The attic conversion was a work of genius, executed with style and taste. The drop-down wooden staircase was a fine piece of carpentry that could be retracted from above by means of a rope pulley to create a cosy, isolated sanctuary at the top of the house. As for the bedrooms themselves, room three was nice, but room four was perfect. The inverted V of the sloped ceiling was all decked out in gleaming white tongue-and-groove panelling, and the floor was sanded and varnished bare boards with a furry rug. The single bed ran along the middle, where the ceiling was at its highest point. It had a simple iron frame and a patchwork quilt, and a small table with a reading lamp. The single dormer window looked out beyond the slope of the nearest neighbour’s roof to offer a view of Chitimacha as far as the winding brown snake of the bayou in the distance. The room reminded Ben a lot of his quarters in the old farmhouse back home in France.
‘This is the one I’d like.’
‘No problem at all. It’s yours, sugah.’
Lottie led the way back down to a little salon on the ground floor, where she made a fuss of serving home-made iced tea with lemon in tall, slender glasses. Not too sweet, not too lemony, perfect and refreshing after the wilting heat. Then, wedging her not inconsiderable bulk into an armchair, she began to talk. Which was something she loved to do, as Ben now discovered. But she did it so beautifully, mesmerising him with her accent and laughter, that he could have sat listening all day.
He got the whole life story. Born and bred right here in Chitimacha, she’d moved to Villeneuve in her teens and ended up living there for twenty-plus years until a bad marriage had grown worse and she’d eventually escaped with the intention of doing something with her life. A goal that Lottie had taken extremely seriously, celebrating her fortieth birthday with the vow to waste not another single minute of whatever time God had provided for her. The last three years had been spent travelling and studying in Europe, from where she’d returned to Louisiana only a few months ago.
‘Studying how to run a guesthouse?’ Ben asked, to which she giggled and replied, ‘No, dearie, studying cookery. The guesthouse thing, that’s only temporary. What I’m gonna do, my real plan, is to set up my own restaurant, the best eatin’ house for a hundred miles around. It’s gonna put this little ol’ town back on the map and bring folks from all over.’
Lottie’s travels had taken her to London, Paris and Rome, where she’d scrubbed pots and waitressed in all the top restaurants, while using her divorce settlement money to take classes in some of the most famous cookery schools in Europe. Now armed with the requisite skills and a clutch of diplomas, she had proudly returned to her roots in order to realise her grand ambition of bringing together the finer points of classical cuisine with the best of traditional Cajun cooking. ‘Because there ain’t nothin’ like it in the world,’ she assured him.
‘Everywhere I go around here, it’s all about food, food and more food,’ Ben observed with a smile. ‘Everything from Mickey’s crawfish to fresh coon meat to Creole jambalaya to boudin to gumbo to gar balls. I’ve done nothing but eat since I got here. Does anyone in Louisiana ever think about anything else?’
She laughed. ‘We do worship our bellies, that’s a fact. Fattest state in America, and we’s only just gettin’ started.’
‘Whatever the heck gar balls are.’
‘Those are a kind of patty, made from alligator gar. That’s this ugly big ol’ fish the river folks catch. Might look like a livin’ nightmare, but sure tastes like heaven.’
Ben remembered the fanged monster he’d seen displayed outside the fish shack on the way into town. He still didn’t fancy eating it. ‘And what on earth is gumbo? Where do you get these names?’
Lottie’s big brown eyes opened wide. ‘Heavens, honey child, you mean to tell me you ain’t never eaten no Louisiana gumbo before?’
‘I can’t say I’ve had that pleasure yet.’
‘Then you sure came to the right place, sweetie. And I know just what to put on the menu for dinner tonight.’ Lowering her voice and turning on the accent even more strongly, she said, ‘Mm-hmm, you is in fo’ a treat!’
But before the treat could happen, some preparations needed to be made, and so did a confession. Because she was still getting on her feet with her new guesthouse business, and because Ben was her only customer and had turned up out of the blue the way he had, Lottie had to admit the shocking truth that her larder was all but empty. Which to her was a major embarrassment, but to Ben was completely unimportant. All he wanted was a room for the night.
‘Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to feed me. I saw a café in town. I can eat there.’
‘You don’ want to eat there, trust me.’
‘How bad can it be?’ He could have offered plenty of examples to illustrate how used he was to roughing it, but there were already enough citizens of Clovis Parish with more insights into his past than they really needed to have.
Despite his protests Lottie was resolute, her eyes already beginning to glaze as she visualised the feast she was going to cook up to mark the occasion of her first-ever customer.
Hence, a serious shopping expedition was called for – and hence, as Ben had nothing else to do for the next few hours, nor for the rest of that day for that matter, he happily allowed himself to get roped in as a general aide and grocery carrier. And, as it turned out, he soon became the chauffeur for the occasion too, after pointing out that Lottie’s matchbox-sized bright green GMC, as cute as it was, couldn’t hold more than a couple of bags of shopping whereas his Tahoe could haul enough goods to stock a restaurant kitchen for a month.
He gallantly escorted Lottie to the passenger side and opened her door for her. An elderly man painting his fence across the street paused to wave, and she smiled and waved back with a cheery ‘Afternoon, Mr Clapp’. Then Ben tossed a pile of empty shopping bags in the back, and they were off.
Lottie eschewed the local grocery store and instead directed Ben a few miles further west of Chitimacha, to a tiny rural town called Pointe Blanche where, she explained to him with a conspiratorial wink, there existed a sensational food market that was destined to be the secret weapon in her quest to establish the best restaurant in Clovis Parish. ‘They got all the good stuff, real Cajun specialties you won’t find anywhere else.’
Ben was happy to take her word for it, though privately he was thinking back to the weird and wonderful local dishes he’d seen on offer at the Cajun steakhouse and beginning to wonder what he was letting himself in for.
Pointe Blanche was maybe half the size of Chitimacha, but a good deal busier. ‘Why not set up your restaurant here?’ he asked her as they searched for a parking space. ‘Closer to your suppliers, bigger clientele.’
She shook her head. ‘I grew up in Chitimacha. That’s where I’ll die.’ Stubborn.
Ben finally managed to park the Tahoe just three minutes’ walk from the food market, so they wouldn’t have too far to haul their goodies. They locked up the car and strolled down the street, her talking, him listening and enjoying the moment as he took in the local sights.
On the same street as the food market was an auto repair yard called DUMPY’S RODS, with nobody in sight and a variety of custom cars in various stages of dismantlement behind a locked chain-link gate. Next door to Dumpy’s was the compulsory town gun shop, and finally the food market itself, a kind of Aladdin’s cave of esoteric gastronomy purveying such delights as bayou gator burger, blackened catfish and roast beef with ‘debris’. What kind of debris, Ben didn’t even want to know.
Lottie invaded the place like a nine-year-old let loose in a toy store, and instantly began spending far more cash than Ben was paying her for a night’s board.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ he protested. ‘Not on my account.’ To which she replied, ‘Shush, now,’ and silenced him with one of her retina-searing smiles.
Lugging multiple bags of Cajun delicacies back to the Tahoe half an hour later, they passed by the auto repair yard again. This time the chain-link gate was open and a cluster of young guys were gathered in the forecourt, five of them all drooling over a flame-painted lowrider with suspension so close to the ground that it wouldn’t have made it halfway up the track to Le Val without bottoming out. To Ben the car looked like a big chrome polishing headache, but the young guys all seemed entranced by it.
One of them, a lean hairy individual with close-set eyes full of nastiness and a roll-up dangling from his mouth, managed to peel his gaze away from the absurd car long enough to cast a lurid glance Lottie’s way and crack a grin that showed off his rotten teeth. He yelled, ‘Yo, Mama!’ Then nudged the guy standing next to him and added loudly, shaking his head in mirth, ‘Damn, that’s the porkiest nigger bitch I seen all week.’
The other one laughed and cupped his hands to his mouth to call to Ben, ‘Hey buddy! Don’t feed the gorilla!’
Which was more than enough to make Ben want to set down his shopping bags, walk into the yard and lay the five out flat, in such a way that they wouldn’t be getting up again too quickly. But only after he’d made them watch him reduce the lowrider to a smoking pile of scrap metal.
Lottie just stiffened a little and hastened her step past the open chain-link gateway, motioning for him to do the same. ‘Another reason for not livin’ in Pointe Blanche. Lot of trash round these parts.’
‘Maybe someone should clean it up,’ Ben said.
‘Forget it. That there’s Dwayne Skinner.’ She seemed too afraid to point out which one she meant, but Ben guessed it was the lean hairy one.
‘You know him?’
‘We was in middle school together. This is a small community. Ever’body knows ever’body around here.’
‘So what?’
‘So, you don’ go gettin’ into fights with Dwayne Skinner.’
‘I don’t like his language.’
She looked at him. ‘Ben, if you’re fixin’ to go pickin’ quarrels with every redneck who says the N-word, y’all gonna have your hands full, believe me.’
Ben thought, fuck it. He went ahead and set down the bags. Stood staring at the group and felt that familiar coldness coming over him as his body went into fight mode. Now all five were staring back and beginning to bristle like the real tough guys they were.
The lean hairy one who might be Dwayne Skinner yelled, ‘You got a problem, asshole?’
Ben didn’t have a problem, beyond the fact that he was mildly irritated by their behaviour. But they did, if he walked into that yard. Five against one. They probably thought they were in with a pretty good chance. Which constituted a serious error of judgement. Because in reality, the fight would be over before it even started.
Lottie halted and turned, giving him an imploring look. ‘Come on, sugah. Let’s go.’
‘This won’t take long,’ Ben said.
Now the five were moving away from the car and slowly walking towards him. They were putting on the whole display of menace. Fists thumping into cupped palms. Brows furrowing, jawlines tightening, eyes narrowing. Radiating total self-confidence, as though they’d done this a hundred times before. And maybe they had, too. Experience had taught them they had nothing to fear. But that just meant they’d been lucky, until today.
Ben smiled to himself.
‘You ain’t gonna be smilin’ when they’re scrapin’ your ass off of the sidewalk,’ Dwayne Skinner said.
Ben said to him, ‘Ever used a wheelchair? It’s harder than it looks. But you’ll get plenty of practice in the weeks and months to come.’
Lottie said, ‘Ben.’ Her voice sounded tight with apprehension.
Ben fished the Tahoe key from his pocket and tossed it to her. ‘You walk on. I’ll meet you back at the car in one minute.’
Ben had decided he’d go for Dwayne first. Then his buddy beside him, the one who’d made the gorilla remark, in that order. They were the two doing all the talking, which meant they were psychologically the leaders of this little peer group, the lean hairy one being number one and the other his second-in-command. Like in a dog pack, where the animals naturally arrange themselves into a hierarchy with the alpha and beta dogs at the top and everyone else in order of ranking below.
In war, Ben had learned long ago, you always take the officers down first if you can. With the alpha and beta broken and helpless and pissing their pants on the concrete, the rest would probably try to bolt. Try being the operative word. None would get further than a few steps before they received a dose of the same medicine as their pals.
Lottie said, ‘Ben, please.’
Chapter 9 (#ulink_d05fa74f-1c9d-5d65-9ba9-389cb30b8802)
Ben was half a heartbeat away from walking into the yard. All he had to do was let events play out exactly as he could already see them happening on the mental screen inside his head. After last night’s heavy dinner and the excessive breakfast he’d eaten back in Villeneuve that morning, a little bit of exercise was the exact thing he needed.
But then he hesitated. Actions had consequences, and while he wasn’t the least bit concerned how those consequences would affect the five guys in front of him, it occurred to him that certain repercussions were best avoided in his own interest. It was a busy street. Not Piccadilly at rush hour, but a lot busier than the sidewalks outside Elmo’s Liquor Locker at midnight. If Ben stepped through the gate into the forecourt of Dumpy’s Rods and things followed their inevitable course, someone was bound to call the cops. The aftermath of the fight was as predictable as its outcome. If Ben remained with the five unconscious bodies until the police turned up, he’d face all kinds of questioning. Even if he left before they arrived, there would be enough witness descriptions for the cops to identify him. Either way, it pointed to the likely reappearance of Sheriff Waylon Roque into Ben’s life soon afterwards.
All of that, combined with the fact that he’d have compromised his anonymity once again, when the whole damn point of leaving Villeneuve was to lie low.
Stupid.
Lottie said, ‘Do what you like, I ain’t waitin’.’ She started walking off, shaking her head.
The gang were just a few steps away. Ben watched them approach, still undecided. Then the decision was made for him when one of the five who hadn’t yet spoken a word pointed at Ben and said, ‘Hey, I seen this guy before. He’s on the news.’
Dwayne Skinner shot his buddy a sneer. ‘Yeah, right. How’s this asshole on the news?’
‘Straight up, man. It’s him for sure. He’s the dude who busted up Billy Bob Lafleur.’
Dwayne and the others were now eyeing Ben more hesitantly. ‘Is that a fact?’ Dwayne said, with as much bravado as he could sum up. ‘Don’t mean shit if he did. Lafleur’s a fuckin’ pussy faggot. Hell, my grandmother could whip his ass.’
But now their curiosity was stronger than their fighting spirit. ‘You the guy, mister?’
‘Forget it,’ Ben said. He picked up his bags, turned and kept walking. Dwayne Skinner and his pals instantly started up a chorus of chicken sounds, strutting and flapping bent arms like wings. They would never, ever know how lucky they were.
‘Changed your mind, huh?’ Lottie said as he caught up with her, handing him back the Tahoe key with a look of immense relief.
He shrugged and replied, ‘Five against one. It wouldn’t have been a fair fight.’
They walked in silence back to the vehicle. Ben’s arms and legs were tingling and trembly from the pent-up adrenalin that would now slowly start to reabsorb into his system. It was a familiar feeling. All combat soldiers were used to it. Nine times out of ten, whenever his old SAS unit had been all kitted out and psyched up for battle, they’d been stood down and had to return to their quarters to shake off all the tension. But what wasn’t such a familiar feeling, and one he disliked intensely, was being recognised everywhere he went. Damn and blast Dickie Thibodeaux from the Courier, or whatever his rag was called. Ben should have smashed the photographer’s camera when he’d had the chance.
They reached the parked Tahoe, and Ben blipped the central locking and opened the rear hatch and loaded in the mass of groceries, which filled only a fraction of the cargo space. Only when they climbed aboard and Ben started the engine did Lottie reach across to touch his arm and break into a dazzling smile. ‘Wow. There was me thinkin’ there were no gentlemen left in this world. Thank you.’
‘For what? Nothing happened.’
‘You kiddin’ me? A lot happened. You stood up for a lady. Even though you hardly know me and we only just met. And that’s somethin’.’
Ben replied, ‘We’re shopping for groceries together and you’re going to cook me dinner. In some countries that’s the same as being married.’
She laughed. ‘Maybe. But trash like Dwayne Skinner ain’t worth gettin’ beat up over, not for my sake.’
‘Who said anything about getting beaten up?’
By the time they reached Chitimacha, Ben had relaxed and mostly forgotten about it. He helped Lottie unload the groceries and bring everything inside. With her larder replenished and all her ingredients for the cooking session laid out systematically on her gleaming kitchen surfaces, Lottie said, ‘Oh joy.’ She rolled up her sleeves, donned a well-used and appropriately-stained apron that said LEITHS SCHOOL OF FOOD AND WINE, and got to work with a fiercely concentrated gusto that was awesome to behold.
It soon became obvious that Ben’s presence in the kitchen was getting in her way, and so he left her to it and wandered out to the garden for a cigarette. As he smoked, out of a kind of morbid curiosity he googled up ‘Clovis Parish Louisiana local news’ on his burner phone and found the Courier’s website. Sure enough, there next to D. Thibodeaux’s trashy and sensationalistic article on the attempted liquor store holdup was the photo of Ben taken outside the Bayou Inn.
Which, needless to say, was how Dwayne Skinner’s buddy had recognised him.
Damn it, once again.
The rest of the afternoon passed languorously. It still felt odd to Ben to have so little to do except mooch about the guesthouse and wait for evening to come. When it finally did, he was in for an eye-opener. Whatever reservations he might have been holding on to about Cajun cooking were soon to be blown away as Lottie seated him at her immaculately set, candlelit table and began lifting lids off steaming dishes of the most beguiling food he’d ever encountered.
‘So this is gumbo,’ he said, gazing at the vast helping she’d put on his plate.
‘No, this is Lottie’s gumbo,’ she corrected him with a gleeful laugh. ‘I’m spoilin’ you for anyone else. Now, please. Don’t talk. Eat.’
Ben willingly obeyed the command. The gumbo was a rich, sumptuous meat stew made from chicken and andouille sausage cooked with celery and bell peppers and onion, all melted together on a glutinous and indecently flavoursome bed of what Lottie called dirty rice. If this was dirt, he was happy to gobble it down, three or four heaped forkfuls to Lottie’s every one.
‘What’s that seasoning?’ he tried to ask, but his mouth was too crammed full to speak. He chewed, swallowed and repeated the question more coherently, and Lottie explained that it was something called filé, which was a classic Cajun spice that came from dried leaves of the sassafras tree and was used for flavour and thickening. She said, ‘My opinion, some Louisiana cooks, like those Creole folks along the Cane River, lay on the filé till you can’t taste nothin’ else. I like to mix it up with okra for a more subtle effect.’
The delicious concoction was accompanied by a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc so chilled that it numbed the tongue. Ben was generally more of a red wine person, but the pairing was perfect. He ate and drank, but especially ate. Lottie seemed delighted with his enthusiasm for her cooking. After two platefuls he wanted to stop, though somehow the fork just wouldn’t leave his hand. Or stop shovelling food up to his mouth.
It was just as well he didn’t live here. Too much of this stuff, and his daily runs would start to become a waddling stagger.
‘So, you like it, huh?’ Lottie said. Fishing for compliments, naturally.
Ben managed to pause between mouthfuls and looked her in the eye across the table. ‘When I get home, you know the first thing I’m going to do? I’m going to call up whoever compiles the Oxford English Dictionary.’
‘Oh really, and why’s that?’ she said, showing every one of her white teeth in a beaming smile, knowing a compliment was coming and loving the anticipation.
‘Because if they’re not specifically mentioning your cooking, they’re seriously misdefining the word “tasty”.’
For dessert Lottie had whipped up a Southern-style chocolate gravy sauce, which she poured over beignets so rich in eggs and butter that Ben was amazed he didn’t drop dead right there of heart failure. What a way to die, though, if he had. When the last crumb was gone he leaned back in his chair, clutched his belly and said, ‘That’s it. That’s all I can take.’
Chapter 10 (#ulink_5a9fe7bc-bf39-5b93-a649-a9b8099f6573)
Lottie said, ‘How ’bout we retreat to the salon for a lil’ drink?’
She put on an Aretha Franklin CD and they sat in her soft, comfortable armchairs either side of a coffee table. When she proposed an after-dinner tot of rum, Ben had a better idea. He’d eaten so much that he wasn’t sure he could haul himself out of the armchair, but with a manful effort managed to lurch to his feet and run up to the top floor to unbuckle his bag and fetch out the bottle of twelve-year-old Glenmorangie he’d bought from Elmo Gillis. It was still unopened. Tonight seemed like the ideal occasion. He carried the bottle back downstairs. Lottie grabbed a pair of crystal tumblers from a sideboard and they happily attacked the Scottish nectar as Aretha sang about r-e-s-p-e-c-t.
In between refills of whisky, of which there were many, Lottie filled in the gaps in her life story. Her first ten years had been spent growing up as an only child on a tiny chicken farm just outside Chitimacha. It was right on the site of a Civil War battlefield, where a bloody little skirmish had taken place between rebel holdouts and a superior force of invading Union troops in the final days before Lee’s surrender. She remembered how the chickens were always scratching old musket bullets up out of the ground.
‘Poppy could’ve made more money from sellin’ the lead for fishin’ weights than he ever done from raisin’ poultry,’ she reflected.
Her father’s lack of talent as a farmer had eventually led them to sell up and move into town, where he ended up wandering miserably from one menial job to another. Life hadn’t been easy for the family, which she speculated might have been why the seventeen-year-old Charlotte Landreneau had run away to the ‘big city’ to rashly marry Neville Dupré. Neville was sixteen years older and well-to-do, and had the distinction of being the first and only African-American dentist ever to set up a practice in Villeneuve. He was also, it later turned out, a violent control freak who somehow contrived to keep no fewer than four mistresses scattered about Clovis Parish, who between them had borne him six children. For Lottie, never having been able to have any of her own, it had been the cruellest kind of betrayal.
‘I guess we all have our secrets,’ she said. ‘Just took me a long time to find out what that sumbitch was up to all them years.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She looked at him. ‘Do you keep secrets, Ben?’
‘Not that kind,’ he said, struck by the directness of her question.
‘I have a secret,’ she said. ‘One that goes back a long, long time. Momma told me when I was a lil’ girl. She said never to pass it on to another livin’ soul, ’cause folks would hate us for it.’
‘Why would they hate you?’
‘History,’ she said with a shrug. ‘History matters a lot here in the South. Like the song, you know? I wish I was in the land of cotton; old times there are not forgotten.’
‘Dixie,’ Ben said. ‘So are you going to tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Your secret. I’m intrigued.’
She smiled. ‘You’re a livin’ soul, ain’t you?’
‘Managed to stay that way until now.’
‘Then I can’t. Don’t take it personal.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said.
‘Let’s change the subject,’ she said. ‘You never told me much about yo’self, Ben. What do you do for a livin’?’
‘I’m a restaurant inspector for the US Health Department.’
‘Oh, come on now.’
‘I’m a teacher.’
‘Maths? English? Geography?’
‘No, I teach people to do some of the things I used to do. Like how to protect folks who need protection, or help people who’re in danger. Stuff like that.’
‘Now I’m the one who’s intrigued,’ she said. She watched him curiously for a moment, then added, ‘You don’t like to talk about yo’self much, do you, sugah?’
‘It’s kind of a habit with me,’ he admitted.
‘So I ain’t the only one who keeps secrets. Well, I guess that makes me feel better. You married?’
‘Once upon a time.’
‘Kids?’
‘Just the one. He’s grown up now.’
‘Family?’
‘My parents died a long time ago. I have a sister. Haven’t talked to her in a while.’
‘You should. Even though my folks are both passed now, there ain’t a day I don’t think about them and pray to my Lord to keep a special eye out for the both of them. God and family, that’s all there is. That’s my strength.’
‘I haven’t talked to Him in a while either,’ Ben said.
‘He ain’t forgotten you,’ Lottie said. ‘He watches over all of us, ever’ moment of ever’ day.’
‘I used to think that way, too.’
‘So what changed?’
Now it was Ben’s turn to want to change the subject. That was a part of his life he definitely didn’t wish to discuss and he regretted having raised it.
‘Let’s have another drink.’ He held up the bottle. There was surprisingly little left. He was a fairly hardened whisky drinker and it took a lot to make his head spin. He’d have been lying if he’d said it wasn’t spinning now. Lottie seemed more or less unaffected, apart from maybe a very slight thickening of her tongue and the very fact that she’d brought up the subject of her mysterious secret. He suspected that she was itching to tell, but wasn’t yet drunk enough. Maybe he should have bought two bottles from Elmo instead of just the one.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve never known a woman who could knock back the scotch the way you can,’ he said as he emptied the last of the Glenmorangie into their glasses.
‘Fulla surprises, ain’t I?’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
When at last the whisky was finished, Ben was ready for bed. He thanked her for a wonderful dinner and a pleasant evening. She said, ‘Why don’t you stay a week or two longer?’ and they both laughed.
He gave her a hug and then trudged up to his room. He thought about retracting the pull-down staircase behind him, then decided against it. The combination of the white wine and the scotch was kicking in harder now, everything whirling a little. There seemed to be two beds in the room, both of them gently swirling around in circles in front of his eyes, and for a moment it was hard to decide which one to crash into fully clothed, jeans, boots and all.
‘I’m getting too old for this kind of nonsense,’ he muttered to himself. Then his head hit the pillow and he closed his eyes and was instantly asleep.
He dreamed fitfully, the kind of ethereal reverie that seems vivid at the time but is burst like a bubble in the morning, forever lost to memory. It was through his dreaming that he heard the strange sounds that some more focused part of his mind told him weren’t imaginary. His eyes snapped open and he sat upright.
He definitely hadn’t dreamed it. A thump that had seemed to resonate through the floor beneath him. Followed by the crash and tinkle of breaking glass. Some kind of commotion. And it had come not from outside, but from somewhere in the house. From downstairs.
And then he heard another sound that blew away the last fog of sleep and whisky, and had him jackknifing out of bed in alarm.
The sound of a woman’s scream of terror.
Followed a moment later by another cry. A much worse sound, of a very different nature, the kind of wailing shriek that can only be caused by the most unspeakable kind of agony.
Ben ran for the bedroom door.
Chapter 11 (#ulink_eee46a47-8c46-57b1-89d6-bece384a17c0)
He crossed the pitch blackness of the attic bedroom in two long strides and tore open the door. The little landing outside his room was every bit as dark. The world of the blind. And the deaf, too, because now all he could hear from below was dead silence.
He called out, ‘Lottie?’ Heard the tension in his own voice. Trying to understand where the screams had come from. It was a big house. They could have come from anywhere on the two floors below him.
No reply.
He hurried down the drop-down stairs to the first-floor landing, which was dimly illuminated by a narrow chink of light escaping from Lottie’s part-open bedroom door. He hesitated, then ran along the landing to the door and peered inside. The room was large and cosy, and empty. The light was coming from a little wall lamp above the double bed. The covers were rumpled aside, as though she must have got out of bed in a rush. Ben’s pulse was quickening as he ran back along the landing. The luminous green skeleton hands of his watch told him it was 4.13 a.m. He stopped again at the head of the stairs, listening hard.
Still total silence from below. Too quiet, even for the middle of the night. The kind of silence that hangs heavy, like a dumbstruck witness in the immediate aftermath of something bad, really bad. Another light was on in the downstairs hallway, its glow reaching around the twist in the winding staircase.
He was trying to compute what could have happened. Had she gone downstairs for some reason, maybe to get a drink of water or visit the ground floor bathroom, and fallen and hurt herself? Was the tinkle of breaking glass the smashing of something like a glass or a lamp? He was about to call her name again, but instinct made him stay quiet. There were other ways to interpret the sounds he’d heard. Ways that were beginning to paint a worse picture in his mind.
He rushed down the first few steps as far as the twist in the staircase, to meet the glow of light that shone up from the hallway below.
The hallway wasn’t empty. A shape lay on the floor. The shape of a large body. A woman’s body.
Lottie’s body.
She was wearing a fluffy pink towel bathrobe hastily pulled on over a long satin nightdress and tied around her middle with a cord belt. She was lying on her back with her arms outflung to her sides and her face turned away from him. She wasn’t moving. Blood showed shocking red on the pink of her bathrobe and the creamy material of her nightdress. A lot of blood. It glistened on the brown skin of her legs where the nightdress had ridden up to her knees as she fell. It was soaking into the carpet under her, steadily spreading outwards in a dark stain.
But Ben wasn’t looking at the blood. He was staring in bewildered horror at the curved, glinting length of steel blade that was protruding from her sternum, right below the ribs, sticking straight up in the air like a flag that had been planted on her.
Not a knife blade. A sword, long and wicked and stuck deep through her body to pin her to the floorboards.
Ben leaped down the last few steps to the hall, calling her name again, hearing his voice in his ears as though it were someone else’s, knowing that nothing could save her from this terrible injury, his mind whirling to comprehend what he was seeing, and why.
At the end of the hall the front door was hanging ajar a few inches, and beyond that the screen door was wide open and letting in the night air and insects. The inner door had a window consisting of four little dappled opaque square panels. Lottie hadn’t dropped a glass, or knocked over a lamp, or anything else. The window panel nearest the lock was smashed and lying in fragments on the entrance mat, as if someone had punched it through to pass their arm inside and unfasten the lock and security chain from inside and let themselves into the hall.
Which, Ben realised, was exactly what had happened. Lottie, a floor closer to the hall than Ben up in the attic, must have heard the sound of breaking glass. She must have got out of bed to investigate, wrapping the gown around herself as she trod downstairs, clicking on the hall light from the switch at the foot of the staircase. That must have been when she came upon the intruder, or intruders. Hence, the first scream Ben had heard.
And that must also have been when the intruder, or intruders, had attacked her with the sword, knocked her to the floor, stood over her and stabbed her brutally through the body. Hence, the terrible wail of agony that had followed soon after the first scream.
Everything had happened in the space of a few moments. And it had ended only moments ago. Which had to mean that whoever had done this couldn’t be far away.
Even as he stood there thinking it, Ben heard a revving car engine from outside in the street. Someone in a hurry. Someone in the process of fleeing from the scene.
Choices. He needed to stay with Lottie and do whatever he could to help her. At the same time, if he didn’t act instantly to go after her assailant, right now, that chance would be gone.
In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have to choose. Back when he was heading up his SAS troop, he’d have been able to deploy one guy to stay with her and more to go after the enemy. But he was on his own now, and this wasn’t a perfect world. It was a world in which armed attackers burst into the homes of innocent and defenceless people and hurt them. And you had to do something about that.
Ben made his choice. He jumped over Lottie’s body and raced for the half-open front door. Burst outside, leaped down the steps and onto the path.
Chapter 12 (#ulink_d041ef43-f358-5bbf-8cd8-263a10a64875)
There were no lights on in any of the neighbouring homes, but the street was full of the hard white glare that blazed from the headlamps of a black car in the middle of the road, double-parked beside his Tahoe with the driver’s door facing Lottie’s entrance gate. It was too dark to see what kind of car it was. Some kind of long, wide, old-style American saloon. Its engine note was the deep, rumbling clatter of a V8. A big, powerful, thirsty engine, harking back to the distant days when gasoline was as cheap as water. The tang of exhaust fumes cut through the sweetness of the night air. The unseen driver was impatiently gunning the throttle, as though urgently waiting before he could take off.
As Ben ran down the path towards the gate, he realised why. The running figure of the person the driver was waiting for had just cleared Lottie’s entrance gate and was sprinting towards the waiting car. The driver’s accomplice. Lottie’s attacker. A classic two-man team, perp and getaway driver. Ben heard the clap of the guy’s running footsteps on the sidewalk, echoed by his own as he gave chase. He saw the dark figure flit across the white glare of the headlights, crossing the front of the car to make it to the passenger side.
Ben ran faster. He reached the gate and vaulted over it and raced towards the car. The escaping figure wrenched open the passenger door, and for a brief moment the car’s interior was lit by the flare of its courtesy light, and as he ran Ben caught a glimpse of its two occupants. Both male, both white, both around the same age, older than their twenties and younger than their forties. The driver had long reddish hair tied back, the passenger had short reddish hair and wore a dark jacket over a white T-shirt.
That was all Ben was able to take in before the door closed and the car’s interior went dark again. By then, the driver was already slamming the transmission into drive and booting the gas. The V8 roared and smoke poured from the rear wheels as the tyres spun and screeched on the road.
Ben reached the edge of the sidewalk and ran out in front of the car, dazzled by its headlights which were suddenly veering right towards him and forcing him to dance back out of its path. The car roared by him, almost running over his toes. Because he’d gone to bed wearing his jeans, the Tahoe key was still in his pocket.
More choices. And it still wasn’t a perfect world. By the time he’d run to the Tahoe, got it fired up and into drive and away, the attackers would be gone. Chasing after the escaping car on foot seemed crazy, but he couldn’t afford a moment’s hesitation.
He sprinted after the car for all he was worth. It was still accelerating, the driver’s foot right down on the floor. Giving it so much gas that the power delivery of the big V8, designed for pure brute muscle back in the days long before US automotive engineers conceived of anything as sanitised and wimpy as traction control, was losing its grip on the road and fishtailing all over the place and spinning the tyres so hard that Ben could taste the molecules of burning rubber mixed up with its exhaust smoke. In seconds, it would get away from him. But for a few precious instants he could still catch it.
What he thought he could do once he caught it, he had no idea. He just knew he had to try.
He ran faster than he’d ever run before. Legs pumping, heart pounding. If he ran any harder he risked tripping over his own feet. But it was working. He was catching up, thanks to the driver’s own haste. Ben was within just a few strides of the back of the car’s swaying, screeching, gyrating rear end when he saw it had some kind of raised wing perched a few inches above its tail-lights, like a racing car. Something to hang on to, if he could make it. He didn’t hesitate. He hurled himself at the rear wing.
Pain lanced through him as his body slammed against the back of the car, but it would have been a lot worse if they hadn’t both been travelling in the same direction. His fingers latched on to the horizontal blade of the wing and held on with an iron grip. He was being dragged now, the toes of his boots scraping the road, clinging on for all he was worth with his chest pressed hard against the rear panel of its boot lid. Chrome lettering wide-spaced across the rear bodywork that spelled out the word M-U-S-T-A-N-G digging into his flesh through his shirt. Burning red tail-lights either side of him. Hot exhaust from its twin pipes searing his legs like dragon’s breath.
He held on. The car gained more speed. They were already a long way down the street. On the outside it felt like eighty miles an hour. In reality the car was probably just hitting forty. But soon it would be fifty, then sixty.
If he could somehow drag himself up onto the big, wide boot lid, maybe he could kick through the back window and scramble inside. It wasn’t much of a plan, but he was angry and upset and didn’t have time to think. All he knew right now was that he couldn’t let these two men get away.
But Ben also knew that all tactical plans had a way of going to hell the moment bullets start to fly. That was what was about to happen to his, as Lottie’s attacker suddenly leaned out from the passenger window. They must have spotted Ben in the rear-view mirror, or sensed from the car’s handling that someone was clinging wildly to the back. The guy hung out as far as possible, clutching tightly on to the roof sill with one hand while pointing something back at Ben with the other. Something small and black that glinted in the peripheral glare of the headlights. The guy’s aim wavered, swaying this way and that with the gyrating motion of the car. Not great conditions for target shooting. But Ben was just a few feet away. A sitting duck. He tried to shrink away behind the bodywork but there wasn’t anywhere to take cover.
Two gunshots snapped out, muted by the roar of the engine and the rush of wind in Ben’s ears. But no less deadly for it. One round punched through the metal of the rear wing a couple of inches from his hand. The other passed over his right shoulder with just a hair’s breadth to spare.
Yet more choices. He had only two, and little time to decide between them.
Hold on, get shot.
Let go, take your chances with the road.
He let go.
Chapter 13 (#ulink_2559e00d-3883-5fe3-8ea7-3d5d1f23112c)
The car was gaining more speed every instant, its wheels no longer spinning and the back end under control. It was accelerating down the street under full power.
Parachute training couldn’t teach you how to land on a fast-moving road surface. Jumping from a moving vehicle was more like parachuting onto a whirling belt sander. Ben knew that it was going to hurt. And it did.
The impact knocked the air from his lungs. All at once he was slithering and sliding down the road on his back. Like coming off a motorcycle, without the benefit of helmet, leathers or gloves. He tried to keep his head and hands raised off the ground and his arms and legs spread-eagled to minimise the chance of rolling. That would do the worst damage, his own momentum breaking bones and flailing him to pieces against the road surface.
He slid for maybe twenty feet, but it felt like a mile before he came to a stop, dazed and bleeding in the middle of the road. The taillights of the car were a long way off now, shrinking to angry red pinpoints in the darkness. He craned his neck to watch as it rounded a corner at the top of the street; then it was out of sight and the roar of its engine was dying away to nothing.
Ben sprang to his feet. His elbows were torn up pretty badly and his back would be a mess of abrasions. It was still better than getting shot. Either way he had no time to take inventory of his injuries. The pain could wait. He shelved it to the rear of his mind and started sprinting back towards the guesthouse. Some lights were coming on in neighbouring upstairs windows as residents, alerted by the commotion and the sound of gunshots, rushed from their cosy beds to see what was going on. Ben ignored them and ran on. The car had dragged him halfway up the street and it was half a minute before he reached the guesthouse. It was definitely too late to give chase in the Tahoe. That chance had been and gone.
Now all that mattered was Lottie.
She hadn’t moved. The dark stain around her had spread almost wall to wall. Ben knelt beside her. The pressure of his knees on the carpet squeezed blood up out of its saturated pile like wringing out a sponge. It was everywhere. He felt its warm wetness soaking through the denim of his torn, abraded jeans.
Ben felt for her pulse and detected only a weak flutter. At his touch she lolled her head to try to focus on him. Her eyes were glassing over. Her mouth opened and she tried to speak, but all that came out was a low rasping moan and a bubble of blood that swelled and then burst, flecking her lips. Now he could see the terrible slash that the sword had cut across her face and neck before her attacker had knocked her over and thrust the long curved blade right through her body to pin her to the floorboards.
Ben stared at the weapon. If he’d been interested in semantics right now he’d have called it a sabre and not a sword. The kind of implement issued to cavalry troops right up until the early decades of the twentieth century, when military minds finally began to realise that mounted charges were little match for heavy machine gunnery. This sabre was older still. The length of blade that wasn’t buried deep inside Lottie’s body was speckled with over a century’s worth of black rust. Its handle was wrapped with sharkskin and bound with gold wire, and encased within a fancy brass basket hilt designed to protect the hand during combat. The brass was tarnished and dulled with age, and bore all the nicks and scars of a weapon that had seen use in anger, a very long time ago. Basically, an antique. Probably worth money.
The question was, what kind of murderer would break into a house to attack someone with a valuable antique sword, when common implements like kitchen knives and hammers could be obtained easily and cheaply and were just as lethal? It made even less sense for the killer to leave the weapon behind.
Lottie began to cough and retch blood. More of it welled from the gaping wound where the blade was stuck through her. Her robe and nightdress were black with it. Out of desperation Ben reached up and grasped the hilt, then on second thoughts took his hand away. Pulling out the blade, whether a knife’s or anything else’s, could kill a stab victim just as fast as pushing it in. Blood vessels that were constricted or blocked off by the pressure of the blade could suddenly start gushing so fast that their life would ebb away in moments. But he had to do something. He looked around him and spotted the little stand across the hallway where the landline phone rested on its base unit.
‘I’m going to get help, Lottie. Hold on.’
He started to get to his feet to reach for the phone. Before he could stand up, Lottie raised a bloody hand off the floor and, with what must have cost her last reserves of energy, gripped his sleeve.
At first he thought she was attempting to struggle upright. But she was too far gone for that. These were her last moments, and she knew it as well as he did. He realised she was trying to pull him down closer, so that she could whisper something in his ear before she died.
Ben put his hand on hers and leaned down and said, ‘What is it, Lottie?’
‘I … I always …’ It took a monumental effort for her to speak. She coughed, and the act of coughing made her abdominal muscles clench around the sabre blade, and she let out a terrible shuddering gasp of pain and closed her eyes. For an instant she seemed to fade away and he thought she was gone. Then her eyes reopened, bloodshot and full of agony and focused on his own with all the urgency of a person frantically holding on to consciousness, slipping away and fighting it every inch and losing.
She whispered, ‘I knowed it was comin’, Ben. I knowed it.’
Ben understood that she was talking about the secret she’d alluded to earlier that evening. Whatever it was, she’d held on to it for most of her life out of fear. Now that death was so close, she seemed to want to let it out like making a confession.
‘What did you know? Lottie, talk to me. What did you know?’
She was sinking fast. Her breath was coming in fluttering gasps. Her eyes were glazed. The grasp of her bloody fingers on his shirt sleeve tightened in a last moment of panic before the darkness swallowed her, then became slack. Barely audibly, she murmured, ‘They was … they was bound to get me in the end. Like they done … to … Peggy Iron Bar.’
Ben laid his hand on hers and squeezed it. ‘Who did it, Lottie? If you know who hurt you, you have to tell me. I’ll find them. I swear. Who did it?’
But Lottie had given all she had to give. A last sigh hissed from her lips and her eyes closed, her body relaxed and Ben held her as he felt the life leave her.
He remained kneeling on the blood-soaked carpet next to her for some time, still clasping her hand in his, his head bowed with sadness for this woman he’d only just met and knew so little about. Wishing he could remove the sabre pinning her to the floor and let her lie there with a little dignity, if it wouldn’t have been messing with a murder scene.
And wondering, who in God’s name was Peggy Iron Bar?
Chapter 14 (#ulink_8c4c4c79-0705-5271-bd8f-19d2989aea16)
Ben was so lost in that moment that he barely registered the sound of the approaching siren until the police cruiser screeched to a halt outside the guesthouse and the open doorway behind him was lit up with flashing blue. It was no big surprise that one of the local residents must have called the cops. If they hadn’t, he’d have had to call them himself.
He laid Lottie’s limp hand down to rest on her chest and stood up. He glanced down at himself and saw that he was a mess. The parts of his clothing that weren’t torn and tattered from sliding down the road were covered in bloodstains. Anyone who saw him would think he’d been attacked by something wild. It was how he felt, too. The abrasions on his back were hurting. But he had more important things to deal with.
He turned towards the doorway to see the solitary cop from the cruiser running up the path towards the guesthouse’s front entrance. The cop was hatless, in a tan deputy’s uniform shirt and black trousers, a drawn pistol in his hand. It struck Ben as a little odd to send just one officer to attend to the scene of a violent crime, but he supposed that the fact that they’d managed to send anyone at all so quickly was fairly impressive, given that this was the rural Deep South. The UK was no better, at the best of times. There were enough accounts of residents in the middle of London waiting twelve hours for a response to a 999 call.
As the cop approached the house Ben recognised his face. Fleshy, pasty features burned red by the sun. Brown hair, spiky on top and shaved up the sides like a Marine. It was the deputy called Mason, one of the pair who’d accompanied Sheriff Waylon Roque to the scene of the liquor store holdup in Villeneuve. The one Roque had said was as sharp as a bowling ball. Better than nothing, Ben thought, and ran through in his mind what he needed to tell the guy.
But Ben never got the chance to say much at all. As Mason hurried up the steps and entered the hallway, he saw Ben standing there and raised his drawn weapon to aim at him. The cop’s finger was on the trigger, which definitely wasn’t correct protocol for dealing with a nonthreatening civilian. Ben noticed that the gun wasn’t Mason’s issue sidearm, either. His Glock was still tucked and clipped into his duty holster, next to his cuff pouch, baton holder, Taser and CS canister. What he was aiming in Ben’s face, with a little more aggression than Ben felt was warranted, was a big black revolver. Probably a forty-four, going by the size of the bore and the chamber holes in the cylinder.
Ben put his hands up at shoulder height, palms facing the cop to show they were empty. ‘Easy, Officer. I’m a witness to a murder. If you wanted to shoot someone, you should’ve been here when the bad guys were still around.’
The deputy made no move to lower the weapon. He came closer. Ben retreated a couple of paces, carefully stepping back around Lottie’s body, slow and easy, no sudden moves, keeping his hands raised and in plain view. Mason came on another step, still keeping the big revolver pointed squarely at Ben’s face.
He was standing on the bloodstained area of the floor. His weight was pressing blood up from the carpet pile, so that it welled and bubbled up around the soles of his large, black police issue shoes. Lottie’s body was between him and Ben, right there in the middle of the hall, a large mound of dead flesh with an antique sabre sticking up grotesquely from its highest point, like a banner raised on some conquered hilltop. It wasn’t a sight that was easily missed. And yet Mason hadn’t given Lottie’s body even a single glance from the moment he’d entered the house. His focus was fixed totally and intently on Ben.
Hands still raised, Ben wagged a finger towards the floor and said, ‘Watch you don’t trip, Officer. There’s a body on the floor.’ Sharp as a bowling ball. Maybe it was true.
The deputy gave a grunt and shook his head, still holding the gun steady. ‘Boy, y’all sure know where to go lookin’ for trouble. Reckon you found more’n you bargained for, this time.’
Which struck Ben as a curious thing to say, under the circumstances. Very calmly he replied, ‘Maybe you should lower the weapon so we can have a conversation about what happened here.’
Mason didn’t lower the weapon. Ben could see his fingertip whitening against the blade of the trigger. Properly speaking a .44-calibre handgun was really a .43, firing a bullet of .429 of an inch diameter. But it was still plenty big enough to blow a fist-sized hole right through the middle of a man’s chest. Hunters used them for killing grizzly bears. And the way Mason was pointing it at Ben, he seemed pretty serious about killing him with it too.
Ben considered his appearance, and it flashed through his mind that someone all covered in blood the way he was might, in a cop’s way of seeing things, look exactly like the kind of person who’d just smashed their way into an innocent woman’s house wielding a sabre and turned her entrance hall into a slaughterhouse. From that point of view it was fairly understandable that Mason was wary of him.
But none of that explained what happened next.
Mason fired. The BOOM of the big revolver in the confines of the hallway was stunningly loud and its muzzle flash was a tongue of white flame that spouted a foot from its muzzle.
If Ben hadn’t seen it coming, there would have been two corpses on the hallway floor and a lot more blood. Even as Mason’s finger tightened all the way on the trigger and the hammer was released and the firing pin began its short arc of travel, Ben was in motion. Superfast, he crossed the space between himself and the gun and deflected the barrel sideways and upwards from its point of aim, hard and brutal, so that the gunshot discharged into the ceiling.
The blast and shockwave from the revolver were tremendous. He would have tinnitus for days, but a little ringing in the ears is preferable to fifteen grams of hardcast lead alloy entering your skull at over a thousand miles an hour.
Ben’s training, and the way he taught his students, was to first take control of the weapon and then neutralise the assailant. In the same single continuous fluid movement that had been rehearsed a zillion times and saved his life for a percentage of that number, he twisted the revolver out of Mason’s hand and kept hold of his wrist as he sidestepped in towards him and used his own body as a fulcrum to yank Mason off his feet and dump him hard on the floor.
Ben could have finished his disarming move with a stamp to the neck or an arm-breaking twist, or beaten the guy’s brains out with his own ASP expandable baton. Instead, not wanting to hurt him any more than was strictly necessary, he just reached down to where Mason lay half-stunned on the floor and snatched his badge wallet, then removed his duty belt and tossed it away across the room.
In retrospect, Ben could come to see that as his first mistake.
Relieved of Glock, cuffs, tear gas and baton, Mason wriggled away across the floor like a beaten dog. His uniform was all bloodied from the mess on the carpet, his face mottled with anger. Ben quickly examined the revolver, then shoved it into his own belt behind the right hip. Pointing at Lottie’s body he said to Mason, ‘That there is a murder victim. I’m a witness to said murder. You’re a cop. Remember how this goes? Are you going to behave now?’
‘You’re in deep shit, Hope,’ Mason rasped. ‘You just assaulted a police officer.’
Ben flipped open the badge wallet. It had the deputy’s six-pointed Clovis Parish gold star on one side and a police ID card on the other, giving his full name as Mason F. Redbone. Ben tossed the wallet away and shook his head.
‘Wrong, Deputy Redbone. You’re guilty of discharging a firearm without provocation at an innocent member of the public. All I did was protect myself in such a way that avoided using undue force. There isn’t a mark on you. Which any police misconduct investigation panel in the country would agree puts me right in the clear. They might have a few questions for you, though. Such as what you’re doing in possession of a non-issue weapon that’s had its serial number filed off. And why you attempted to kill me with it just now. I’d kind of like answers to all those questions myself, so you’d better start talking.’
Mason muttered something that Ben didn’t catch. He leaned closer. ‘Speak up, Mason. Thanks to you I’ve got ringing in my ears.’
Leaning closer was Ben’s second mistake.
Mason was lying on the bloodstained carpet, his head and shoulders propped against the skirting board, his feet drawn up under him, knees bent, his body quite still except for the deep rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. His eyes were full of fear and hatred. Then his right hand suddenly darted down the length of his right leg, whipped something hidden from inside his right boot and flashed towards Ben.
Ben twisted away to avoid the knife, but he’d been leaning too close and he reacted half a second too late. He felt the razor-sharp steel puncture his flesh, below the ribs on his right side. The pain shot through him.
Mason lunged up at Ben, to stab him again. Ben was ready for him this time. He palmed the incoming knife aside and rammed a savage upward blow with the heel of his hand into Mason’s philtrum.
The space between the nose and upper lip is one of the most vital points of the human body. Done hard enough, the strike would drive a man’s nose bone backwards into his brain and kill him instantly. Ben knew that, because he’d inflicted the same technique on plenty of enemies, with lethal results. He didn’t want Mason dead. Just totally incapacitated.
Mason dropped without a sound, unconscious before he hit the floor. He lay on his back side by side with Lottie, arms and legs splayed out like a starfish.
Ben reeled backwards a couple of steps. He pressed both hands to his belly and saw the blood leaking out between his fingers.
And that was when two more police cruisers screeched up outside and a bunch more cops came running into the guesthouse.
Chapter 15 (#ulink_46b009c3-7e19-5cc3-83d8-58048b60cdb1)
There were four of them, clad in blue uniforms with gold piping and dimpled campaign hats with gold badges and silver cords and acorns. The insignia on their arms said LOUISIANA STATE POLICE. A sergeant and three troopers, two with pump shotguns and two with Glocks. The sight that greeted them as they swarmed inside the hallway was what they took to be a dead fellow officer lying prone beside the body of a female murder victim, along with one man still on his feet who had a gun in his belt, blood all over his clothes, and could more or less be assumed to be the perpetrator of both assaults.
If Ben had been inclined to think about it, he couldn’t have blamed them for jumping to conclusions. They had much better reason than Mason had for supposing that he was the threat here.
The hallway filled with the sound of hoarse urgent yelling as the troopers fixed him in their sights and all began screaming and bellowing at him at once. DROP THE WEAPON DROP THE WEAPON DROP THE WEAPON!
As he stood there reeling from the stab wound his options flew through his mind at lightning speed. If he didn’t respond one way or another in the next two seconds, the chances were they would all open fire at once and take him down. He could try to calmly explain the situation to them, which he wasn’t too sure he could do with blood pouring out of him. Or he could whip the revolver from his belt and start shooting before they did. Five rounds, four targets. Maybe just shoot them in the legs, to avoid causing unnecessary harm.
Alternatively, he could throw down his gun and surrender. But he didn’t fancy his chances of receiving fair treatment. Not after he’d already taken down one of their own. By the time the ambulance arrived the five state troopers would have beaten Ben to a pulp.
So Ben took the only realistic option open to him. He ran. Ignoring the agony in his belly and the tremors of shock jangling every nerve in his body.
Shots rang out and bullets cracked into the wall and splintered the banister rail as he charged up the stairs three at a time. He made it halfway up the staircase to the switchback, then flew up the second half heading towards the first floor landing. Three troopers thundered after him while the fourth stayed below, yelling into a radio that they had an officer down and needed assistance.
Ben raced past the open door of Lottie’s bedroom and reached the drop-down staircase just as the police sergeant appeared on the landing behind him. The sergeant racked his shotgun and repeated his command to stop and throw down the weapon.
Ben pounded up the drop-down staircase, up through the hatch to the attic floor, turned and crouched at the edge of the hatch and grabbed the rope loop that worked the pulley mechanism and tugged it hard. The staircase folded in half, and the whole assembly slid upwards on smooth runners to retract through the hatch. Ben hauled up the length of rope that dangled down to enable it to be opened from below, then closed off the hatch with the stair panel that acted like a trapdoor. Definitely a fine piece of carpentry, and just the job when you were being pursued through the house by multiple armed opponents.
He’d bought himself a little time, but it wouldn’t be long before they figured out a way to reach him. Nor would it be long before the whole street and surrounding area was swarming with every state trooper they could muster, along with SWAT teams and K9 units. He could hear the sound of frantic voices and crackling radios from beneath his feet as he ran into his bedroom. His legs were feeling like jelly. He had to grit his teeth and close his mind resolutely to the knowledge that he was badly hurt. He had to keep going.
He snatched up his bag from where it lay at the foot of the bed, crammed in the few items that he’d unpacked earlier, then pulled on his leather jacket and looped the bag over his shoulder. He went over to the dormer window and yanked it open. With an effort that felt like a halberd tearing out his guts he gripped the window frame and hauled himself up and through, scrambling out onto the slope of the roof.
The night sky was ink-black and starry. The air was warm, but felt like ice on his skin as the sweat poured from his brow. He felt woozy for an instant and almost lost his footing and went tumbling into space, then managed to regain his balance.
Got to keep going.
Careful not to slip and fall, he made his way over the sloping tiles. He peered over the gable end of the guesthouse and could see Mason’s Sheriff’s Department Crown Victoria and the two white state police cruisers in the street below, their engines still running and the big light bars on their roofs bathing the whole area in swirling blue. More windows of neighbouring homes were lit up now, as residents awoke to the drama and peeped out to see what was happening. Old Mr Clapp across the street had ventured into his front yard to spectate.
Ben kept low and stayed in the shadows as he padded along the slope of the roof to the point where the gap between Lottie’s house and that of her neighbour was at its narrowest. He could see no lights in the next-door windows. Either the neighbours were sleeping through all the excitement, or the house was empty. He eased himself down as close as possible to the edge and readied himself to jump, visualising it in his mind’s eye before he committed himself, and knowing it was going to hurt like hell. It was a long way to fall if he fluffed it. He took a couple of deep breaths, counted to three and then launched himself into space.
He cleared the gap easily, but his landing on the neighbour’s roof almost made him cry out in pain. He knew he must be leaving a fine trail of blood spots as he moved on, keeping low so that the roof’s ridge hid him from the street side. He ran with light fast steps along its length towards where he could see a big old hickory tree standing in the garden close to the far end wall.
This was going to hurt even more. And it did. Ben reached the edge and leaped into space. He dropped ten feet and then the foliage was ripping and clawing and scraping at his face and body as he went crashing downward through the branches. His fingers locked on to a thicker limb and he managed to arrest his fall. He scrambled down the tree as far as the lower branches, until his legs dangled free. It was maybe an eight-foot drop to the patchy grass of the back garden. He steeled himself and let go. The agony as he hit the ground went through him like a spear, but he didn’t make a sound.
The neighbour’s garden was all in shadow. Ben remained in a still crouch at the foot of the tree for a few moments, catching his breath and listening hard until he was sure his escape from the guesthouse hadn’t been observed. Then he picked himself up and ran for the back fence and scrambled over it into the next garden, hoping he wouldn’t drop down the other side into the waiting jaws of someone’s pit bull. He landed in the bushes and kept running.
A tumult of sirens was growing steadily louder. It sounded as if every cop in Louisiana was racing to the scene. Probably a couple of ambulances, too, one for Lottie and one for Sheriff’s Deputy Mason F. Redbone, who would soon be enjoying a little holiday in hospital. It was less than he deserved.
Ben crossed that garden, and the next, and then pushed through a hedge over a low wall and found himself in an adjacent street, maybe a couple of hundred yards from the guesthouse as the crow flew. The homes at this end of the neighbourhood were all in darkness, as if the residents here didn’t care what kinds of major emergency situations took place up the road. That suited Ben just fine.
He kept going. A blind man could follow the trail of glistening spots and spatters that marked his route, but there was nothing he could do about that. The best he could achieve was to get away from here before he passed out from pain and shock and blood loss and collapsed in the street for the cops to find.
Quarter of a mile away, in a quiet little avenue on the edge of Chitimacha far away from the hubbub and excitement, he came across an old Ford pickup truck parked under the shadow of a spreading oak tree.
The SAS had taught him how to steal cars to make him an efficient operator behind enemy lines, when you sometimes had to improvise modes of transportation. He’d had a lot of practice at it since those days. Old vehicles were the best to steal. The older the better, as long as they were driveable. No alarms, no immobilisers, no on-board GPS trackers. Thirty-nine seconds later he was inside the Ford’s cab, bleeding all over the cheap vinyl seats as he got to work hotwiring the ignition. Another half minute after that, he was gone and disappearing into the night.
Chapter 16 (#ulink_db24e652-44a1-5c9d-aef2-a4c8018df004)
Ben drove fast away from Chitimacha, knowing that he couldn’t stay on the road long. The state troopers would already be cordoning off the whole area, roadblocking every exit and stopping and searching any car within a perimeter that would rapidly expand state-wide as the manhunt intensified. Every hotel, motel and hospital would be flushed looking for him.
By dawn the horror story of the sabre murder would be airing on local TV, in all its gruesome detail for citizens to relish over breakfast. By midday the whole parish would be so jumpy about the desperate killer on the loose that they’d be loading up their guns and watching out of their windows for any sign of a suspicious-looking stranger lurking about the vicinity. By mid-afternoon he wouldn’t be able to walk down the street without getting his head blown off by some trigger-happy Louisianan doing their civic duty.
That was, if he could walk at all. He could feel himself getting weaker with every passing mile. The blood was pooling under him on the car seat and leaking down to the floor, flooding the rubber matting and making his boot soles slippery on the gas and brake pedals. The pain was keeping him alert. He focused closely on it to keep from flaking out at the wheel.
He found a forestry track leading off-road and headed up it. He was grateful for the fact that when it came to stealing cars in rural Louisiana, virtually every vehicle you were likely to get hold of was a go-anywhere four-wheel-drive with rugged tyres and suspension. He bounced and lurched along for miles, bogging down here and there in deep ruts left by the last rains. Eventually he left the track to carve his way for another quarter of a mile into thick forest.
Unable to go any further, he stopped the truck, killed the lights and engine, clambered down from the blood-smeared seat and stood listening for a whole ten minutes, leaning against the side of the truck for support. Only the sounds of nature could be heard, along with the tick of cooling metal.
Wincing and clutching his wound through his bloody shirt, he hauled himself up onto the pickup flatbed and started rooting around in the dirty old crates loaded aboard. The truck belonged to someone with a handy set of skills and the tools to match. An outdoorsman or a hunter; at any rate the kind of guy who carried around a saw, a small sharp hatchet, a couple of green canvas tarpaulins, and a coil of light but strong rope. Among the assorted trash in the glove box Ben found an autographed photo of Dolly Parton, a roll of gaffer tape and an unlabelled quarter-sized liquor bottle whose clear liquid contents smelled like some kind of illicit home-brewed moonshine. He had no use for Dolly but took the tape and the moonshine.
Ben badly needed to rest but he had work to do first. The truck had been resprayed more than once in its life. In its current paint job it was bright orange, and couldn’t be left as it was without standing out like a beacon to any police helicopter overflying the woods. He couldn’t burn it, for the same reason.
He unfolded the larger of the two tarps and dragged it across the roof of the truck to cover it, then lashed the cover down at the corners with lengths of the rope. Next he spent thirty painful minutes sawing branches from trees and laying them over the tarp, until the shape of the truck was so well camouflaged that a passing deer would be unlikely to notice it, let alone a police chopper. Then he put the hatchet and saw in his bag with the remainder of the rope, strapped the rolled-up smaller tarp on top of it like a soldier’s bedding roll, and set off on foot.
It was a weary march. Nothing he hadn’t done before, but a knife hole in his side didn’t make it any easier. A mile deeper into the woods, ready to drop, he stopped at a great fallen oak tree whose uprooted base had left a large hollow in the ground, an earthy cave deep enough for a man to crawl into and remain hidden. He could lie up and rest here for a while.
Using the small tarp as a groundsheet he wedged himself among the roots, as far from the mouth of his little cave as he could fit. The hollow was damp and smelled of leaf mould and the small animals that had burrowed into it before him. He’d spent time in much worse places.
Risking a little torchlight, he peeled off his jacket and unbuttoned his bloody shirt to inspect his injury. It was still bleeding profusely. Not as deep as he’d first feared, but still pretty damn deep, an ugly gash stretching seven inches diagonally from ribcage to navel.
Open wounds were always an infection risk, especially roughing it outdoors, but Ben had an excellent immune system. With a fastidious doctor for a lady friend he couldn’t avoid being all up to date with his tetanus immunisations, too. Right now, though, what concerned him most was the continuous bleeding. If it had been his arm or leg, he might have been able to stem the flow with a tourniquet. Injuries to the torso were harder to deal with. He’d seen men bleed to death from abdominal traumas, and knew enough about the physiology of such injuries to worry him. Half a litre’s worth of blood loss causes mild faintness, increasing in severity after a litre or so, when the heart rate begins to increase and breathing quickens. That was where Ben was at now. Another half litre drained out of his body, and he would be in danger of losing consciousness. Anything over 2.2 litres or four pints gone, death wasn’t far off.
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Scott Mariani
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Шпионские детективы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 17.04.2024
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О книге: The Top Ten Sunday Times bestseller returns with a gripping new Ben Hope thriller.‘If you’ve got a pulse, you’ll love Scott Mariani; if you haven’t, then maybe you crossed Ben Hope.’ SIMON TOYNEEven when ex-SAS major Ben Hope is taking a holiday, trouble seems to find him. What started as a relaxing trip to the Deep South spirals into a nightmare when he’s wrongly accused of a vicious murder and forced to go on the run.Target of a state-wide manhunt, the only way Ben can prove his innocence is to unearth a long-forgotten secret and track down the killers who slaughtered an innocent woman in a vendetta dating back generations. His quest takes him into the wild heart of Louisiana’s swampland, where all hell’s about to break loose. The bad guys will soon discover they made a big mistake…An explosive new thriller from the master bestseller.