The Sacred Sword
The Sacred Sword
Scott Mariani
IAN ANCIENT SWORD. A LONG BURIED SECRET.ONE MAN WILL UNCOVER THE MYSTERY.It’s Christmas, and on a trip back to the UK to try to sort out his stormy personal life, ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope runs into two old friends. Simeon and Michaela were once his fellow students at Oxford – now they are the Reverend and Mrs Arundel.Ben senses that Simeon is deeply troubled and frightened, but before the truth can emerge about his secretive research project concerning a mysterious, ancient ‘sacred sword’, both he and Michael are wiped out in a devastating road crash. Convinced that his friends’ deaths were no accident, Ben is propelled on a global quest to unlock the enigma of the sacred sword. At every step, he is pursued by ruthless agents of the sinister organisation that will stop at nothing to acquire it.In the course of his investigations, Ben will discover an incredible secret, not just about the history of Christianity but about his own past.BEN HOPE is one of the most celebrated action adventure heroes in British fiction and Scott Mariani is the author of numerous bestsellers. Join the ever-growing legion of readers who get breathless with anticipation when the countdown to the new Ben Hope thriller begins …
SCOTT MARIANI
The Sacred Sword
Copyright
Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
This ebook edition published by HarperCollins Publishers 2016
First published in paperback by HarperCollinsPublishers, 2012
Copyright © Scott Mariani 2012
Cover design © Henry Steadman 2016
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.
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Ebook Edition © May 2016 ISBN: 9780007342815
Version: 2018-07-18
Dedication
To B.D., without whose inspiration
this story would never have been written
Contents
Cover (#u1593669c-0d72-5ce8-85bb-e3010498cc7a)
Title page (#ub7218581-f5b4-59e0-a1c3-fed6eec1c9d1)
Copyright (#u5b4accc4-dad3-5e3a-aa89-59170f8b8a7f)
Dedication (#u187cce82-0fdd-532b-baa7-47aac24de2f2)
Prologue (#u979a6b12-c450-5b07-8f67-8fd6d8e32dab)
Chapter One (#udf76e379-a825-5565-a749-ce047f5db2df)
Chapter Two (#u57f25f01-30e2-52a6-85d1-649a631956ac)
Chapter Three (#ufea45b9c-1c4f-5fe7-a6b1-4943ed8bc136)
Chapter Four (#u14b89c25-c4f2-5614-a963-410798eff731)
Chapter Five (#u40199041-db53-5e48-979d-bb7c3168769a)
Chapter Six (#u66df2649-8aef-594a-a620-de3fdcd27e5c)
Chapter Seven (#u6ea5bbca-c332-592e-8b2f-b46d3d6d3f73)
Chapter Eight (#ue97ec759-aadd-5776-abe7-a1939c6098e5)
Chapter Nine (#u322da609-c487-56c3-a694-26bbc74e730f)
Chapter Ten (#ubd6c8bbf-7470-5e18-947d-b34a30e51194)
Chapter Eleven (#ue7d60453-fdab-530c-9d8c-d511533c7e0b)
Chapter Twelve (#u434453c0-5b2c-5088-b596-118bfb392bfd)
Chapter Thirteen (#ucf496d5a-a156-5f8f-8800-f66ab58eacde)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By the same author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
The Fortress of Masada
Roman Province of Judea, The Holy Land73 a.d.
‘They will soon be upon us,’ said the young man called John, turning around from the battlements with fear in his eyes.
His commander, Eleazar ben Yair, made no reply. Leaning out over the craggy, sandy fortress wall he shielded his eyes from the blazing sun and scanned the scene below. Far beneath them, swarming like a gigantic colony of ants around the foot of the mountain as they laboured in the dust and the choking desert heat, the teeming masses of the Roman Tenth Legion were close to finishing the construction of the enormous stone siege ramp.
Eleazar knew in his heart that John was right. The siege would soon be over. Within a matter of hours, there’d be nothing to do except watch helplessly as column after column of soldiers marched up the ramp and stormed the battlements, the sun glinting off their armour and massed spear heads. Nothing to do but wait for the slaughter to begin.
Had they really thought that a rag-tag handful of defenders, many of them women and young children, could hold out indefinitely against the crushing might of Rome? Had they really believed that the fortress of Masada would prove impregnable?
Eleazar himself had seen what his sworn enemies were capable of. Three years earlier, he’d been one of the few Jewish rebels who’d managed to escape from the carnage that the Roman army had inflicted on his home city of Jerusalem, razing it to the ground and claiming a million innocent lives in retaliation against the Jews who dared to defy Caesar’s rule. The army now encamped around the mountaintop fortress of Masada, commanded by Lucius Flavius Silva, the Governor of Judea himself, had been sent to destroy the final pocket of resistance. Silva’s forces had built an impassable siege wall that stretched for seven miles around the base of the mountain, ensuring that no rebel could escape and nobody could come to their aid. Along the wall’s perimeter stood the Romans’ siege towers and giant catapults. They were terrifying, but nothing struck fear into the rebels’ hearts like the assault ramp and the promise of what was to come.
‘Nobody can resist such an army,’ John quavered. ‘The Romans will rape our women, slaughter our children in front of us and make slaves of us all.’
Eleazar closed his eyes in sadness. He already knew what had to be done. Over nine hundred people. As their leader, he had no choice but to make the fateful decision himself. He turned away from the battlements to face the young man. ‘I would rather die a free man than submit to that,’ he said softly.
‘Then what shall we do?’
‘We shall deliver our souls to God,’ Eleazar replied. ‘All of us. The Romans will find none alive.’
But before addressing the grim task that lay before him, he had to ensure that one special duty was taken care of.
He reached down to his belt and drew out the glittering sword that he’d carried with him from Jerusalem. Reverently clutching the bronze hilt with both hands, he raised the blade to his mouth and kissed the cool steel.
‘The sword must be hidden,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, it cannot fall into the hands of the Romans.’
They prayed.
And then the final plans were begun.
Chapter One
Near Millau, Midi-Pyrénées, Southern France
December 2nd
The present day
It was as Father Fabrice Lalique was driving home through the dark, misty night that he saw the car behind him again.
Up until then, the fifty-three-year-old priest had been reflecting on the hours he’d just spent with his parishioners Pierre and Madeleine Robichon in the nearby village of Briande, trying to quell the latest bitter dispute between the couple. It was his duty to minister to the social and family problems of his diocese; and God knew that the turbulent Robichons had more than their fair share of those. He’d eventually left them settled and in peace, hands clasped across the kitchen table, but the reconciliation had had to be painfully, exhaustingly coaxed out of them and he’d been at it far longer than intended.
The Volkswagen Passat’s dashboard clock read almost eleven. A heavy blanket of fog hung over the whole Tarn valley, and as Father Lalique headed back along the deserted country roads away from Millau he had to blink and strain to see where he was going. He couldn’t wait to get back to the warm, cosy little rural retreat on the edge of the village of Saint-Christophe where he’d lived alone these many years, pour himself a much-needed glass of Armagnac and go to bed. A nip of brandy might help him forget his own problems, and the worry that had been haunting him for the last several days.
Fabrice sighed. It was probably just a figment of his imagination. Maybe the responsibility of his job was getting to him at last. Perhaps Doctor Bachelard’s advice about early retirement was worth taking after all – when an overtired brain began cooking up ideas that you were being followed and watched, it could be a sign that it was time to take things a bit easier.
‘That’s all it is,’ he thought to himself, taking a hand off the wheel to rub his chin. ‘Foolish to imagine otherw—’
The sudden dazzle of headlights behind him seemed to fill the interior of the Volkswagen. The priest’s heart skipped a beat and then began to thump wildly as all the anxiety came instantly flooding back. He narrowed his eyes at the rear-view mirror, trying to make out the shape of the lights.
Was it the Mercedes again? The same Mercedes he’d been sure was tailing him yesterday on his way home from the church in Saint-Affrique? And the day before, and last Tuesday as well …? He stared so long into the mirror that he almost missed the bend ahead and had to swerve to avoid the verge.
‘Damn this fog,’ he muttered. But he’d been driving these roads for over a third of a century and knew every inch of them. He’d soon see if he was being followed. Any second now … wait for it … yes, there it was. He swung the car hard right as the junction came up and accelerated as hard as he dared down the narrow lane that would take him the long way round towards Saint-Christophe. He glanced back at the rear-view mirror. Nothing. He felt the heart palpitations begin to subside. There. See? You’re an idiot.
Then the lights reappeared in his mirror and his mouth went dry. He hung another sharp right, then a left, taking him deeper into the web of country lanes. The lights stayed right there in his mirror.
Terrified to go any faster, Fabrice clenched the steering wheel tightly and willed the night to clear. The trees loomed out of the mist. Man and boy he’d roamed in these woods, but now they seemed filled with a sinister life of their own, as if closing in on him, reaching out to grab him in their claws.
He fumbled for his phone and dialled a familiar number. No reply. At the prompt to leave a message, he spoke urgently and breathlessly, his English faltering in his panic: ‘Simeon – it’s me, Fabrice. The thing I told you about; I am sure it is happening again. Just now, tonight. I think someone is after me. Please call me as soon as you can.’
The lights were still there, closer now, white and dazzling through the fog. Now what? Fabrice thought of calling Bernard, the local chief of police – he had his home number on his phone. But Bernard would be deep into a bottle by this time of night, if not passed out in front of the TV.
Then Fabrice thought of his old friend Jacques Rabier, whose farm was just a kilometre away beyond the woods. Groaning in panic, he hit the gas. A heart-stopping series of blind crests and hairpin bends later, he slewed the car through Jacques’ familiar rickety gate and went bumping wildly up the long track towards the farmhouse.
The place was in darkness, shutters closed. Fabrice killed the engine and stumbled across the yard to thump on the front door. ‘Jacques?’ he called out.
No reply. A dog barked in the distance. And then Fabrice heard something else. The soft rumble of tyres coming up the track, and the sound of an engine that wasn’t the clatter of Jacques Rabier’s old Peugeot 504 pickup truck. As the lights appeared through the trees, Fabrice tore himself away from the farmhouse and lumbered awkwardly across the yard towards the big wooden barn where, once upon a time, he and Jacques had played as kids. He pushed open the tall door and ducked inside just in time to avoid being seen in the car headlights that swept across the yard. Their blinding glare shone through the slats, partly illuminating the inside of the barn, the farm machinery covered in tarpaulins, the stack of straw bales against the far wall.
Fabrice didn’t have to search hard for a place to hide. As boys, he and Jacques had used the storage space under the barn floor as their secret den, gang headquarters, pirate ship cabin; in their teens they’d once or twice brought Michelle and Valérie from the village there, to smoke illicit cigarettes and innocently fool around.
As Fabrice stumbled towards the trapdoor, his guts tightened momentarily with the fear that Jacques might have boarded it up or left a piece of machinery across the top of it – but no, here it was, just as he remembered it, lightly buried under dust and straw. His trembling fingers found the edge of the trapdoor lid and lifted it with a creak.
It was a tighter squeeze than it had been in his youth. As he was forcing his bulky shoulders through the hole, he felt a sharp painful tug as something cut into the back of his neck. The little silver crucifix he wore around his neck had got snagged on a piece of rough wood and the slim chain had snapped. But there was no time to start hunting around for it. Fabrice hastily lowered the trapdoor above his head and clambered clumsily down the ladder into the hidden pitch-dark space below. He could barely breathe for terror.
This was crazy. He was a respected church official, not some criminal on the run. He had nothing to hide. His conscience was as immaculate as his professional record and he had no reason whatsoever to flee from anyone – yet some overwhelming primal instinct, so strong he could almost taste it between his gritted teeth, told him he was in appalling danger.
The barn door opened. Footsteps sounded overhead. Three men, it sounded like: they spread out and paced the length of the barn, the darting beams of their torches visible through the cracks in the floorboards as they searched the place briskly and methodically.
Who were these men? What did they want? Fabrice swallowed back his panic, terrified to breathe, convinced that they must be able to hear the hammer-beat of his heart. He inched his way deeper into the shadows, away from the torchlight.
Something moved against his arm and he almost cried out in shock. A rat: he brushed the filthy thing away and it slithered up a beam and through a gap in the floorboards overhead, claws scratching on the wood as it scuttled away. The torchlight suddenly swung towards the sound. Fabrice’s heart stopped as the light lingered over the trapdoor, catching the drifting dust particles in the air.
The footsteps came closer. ‘Just a rat,’ said a voice, and he realised the men were speaking English. ‘He’s not here. Let’s go.’
Fabrice let out a silent, trembling sigh of relief as the footsteps headed back towards the entrance to the barn. They were leaving. Once their car was gone, he’d wait a few minutes before climbing out of here. Should he go back to the car? Get away on foot and alert the police? Wait for Jacques to come home?
The sudden ringing of his phone shattered his thoughts and tore through the silence. He plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled it out with horror, the damn thing screeching like a siren as his trembling fingers groped for the button to turn it off. The phone’s screen showed the name of the caller: Simeon Arundel.
The shrill ringtone shut off, but it was too late. The footsteps were pounding the floorboards overhead as the men came running back inside the barn. Torchlight shining directly down through the cracks; the trapdoor lid lifting; a dazzling beam right in his face.
Father Fabrice Lalique wasn’t a fighting man. Never in his adult life had he had to defend himself physically, and his resistance against three strong and determined attackers was as feeble as his cries of ‘Who are you? What do you want with me?’ as they dragged him through the barn and outside to the waiting Mercedes. His phone was taken from him. Powerful hands bundled him inside the car’s open boot and slammed the lid shut.
Seconds later, Fabrice was being jolted around in his confined space as the Mercedes took off down the bumpy farm track. He beat against the bare metal lid, screamed until his throat was raw – then, completely spent, he gave in to the numbness of despair and curled up in the darkness, barely conscious of the movement of the car or the passage of time.
It was only when the boot lid opened and he looked up to see the faces of the men gazing down impassively at him that he realised the journey was over. The men hauled him out of the boot. He felt the night air clammy on his brow, solid concrete under his feet. The Mercedes was pulled over at the side of a broad, empty motorway. Through the fog that drifted like smoke across the road, Fabrice saw that his own Volkswagen was parked a few yards behind it.
Fabrice searched the faces of his captors for any trace of expression, of humanity, and saw none. ‘Who are you?’ he croaked, fighting for breath. ‘What’s happening to me?’
Fabrice quickly saw which of the men was in charge. His face was lean, the eyes quick and cold. His receding hair was cropped to the same length as the dark stubble on his jaw. As two of the others held Fabrice tightly by the arms, the leader slipped his hand inside his plain black jacket and produced a pistol. Without saying a word, he waved the gun towards the side of the road. The thugs holding Fabrice’s arms began to frog-march him in that direction. He blinked and shook his head in bewilderment as the edge of the road came nearer step by step; beyond it nothing but swirling mist.
Then he saw the steel barrier and he knew where he was.
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘No no no …’
The Millau Viaduct. The highest bridge in the world, carrying a long stretch of the A75 autoroute three hundred metres above the Tarn Valley.
And he was headed right for the edge.
Fabrice struggled desperately, but there was no resisting the force driving him towards the plunging abyss.
‘Why?’ he asked, but all that came out was an animal moan of terror.
A sudden gust of wind parted the mist and he caught a momentary glimpse of the drop into the darkness below, the supporting columns of the bridge like colossal towers, higher than cathedral spires. Fabrice’s breath was coming in gasps. He couldn’t speak. Managing to tear an arm free, he gripped the cold metal of the barrier and clung on. The leader of the men said nothing, reached across and unpeeled Fabrice’s clawed fingers with such brutal force that he broke two of them.
Fabrice didn’t even feel the pain. He was way past pain.
The men shoved him over the edge. Father Fabrice Lalique went tumbling down and down, cartwheeling in empty space, his scream fading into the night. The mist had swallowed him up long before he hit the distant ground below.
As the men turned away and started walking back to the Mercedes, the one in charge took out his phone. ‘It’s done,’ was all he needed to say. He climbed into the driver’s seat. His colleague who’d followed in Lalique’s car left it where it was with the door open and the key in the ignition, and got in the back of the Mercedes.
At the same moment, their associates inside the priest’s house were already downloading the material, several hundred megabytes’ worth of extremely illicit photographic images, onto his personal computer. Their anonymous source would never be found, and neither would any trace of the intruders’ presence in his home.
And soon after the Mercedes’ taillights had vanished into the mist, leaving the Volkswagen Passat standing alone on the empty viaduct, the last words of Father Fabrice Lalique had been composed and emailed to every contact in his address book:
My Dear Friends
By the time you read this message, I will be dead. I ask you not to mourn for me, as I am unworthy of your grief.
The shame of my sins is a burden I can no longer bear. May God have mercy on me for the terrible things I have done.
Chapter Two
Two weeks later
Storm clouds scudded darkly overhead as another great rolling wave crashed against the bow of the SeaFrance cross-channel ferry Rodin, sending a plume of white foam and spray lashing across her deck. Most of the nine hundred or so passengers braving the gale warnings to cross over to England that freezing December afternoon were huddled in the luxury of the superferry’s bars and lounge areas.
Just one man stood on the outer deck. He leaned against the railing, the collar of his scuffed leather jacket turned up, the wind in his thick blond hair, his body moving easily to the heave and sway of the ship. His eyes were narrowed to blue slits against the salt spray as he gazed northwards, just able to make out the shape of the Cliffs of Dover through the murk. He took a draw on his cigarette, and the wisp of smoke was snatched away by a violent gust.
His name was Ben Hope. Half English, half Irish, just turned forty years of age but still as fit as he’d ever been. In his time he’d been a soldier, before leaving the British Special Forces to plunge deep into the shady world of the international kidnap and ransom business.
Working freelance as what he called a ‘crisis response consultant’, using methods and skills that conventional law enforcement operatives either weren’t allowed or weren’t trained to employ, Ben had delivered more than a few innocent victims safely back into the arms of their loved ones. More than a few kidnappers had been efficiently dispatched in order for that to happen.
These days, home was a tranquil corner of rural Normandy, a place called Le Val. It had been a working farm for most of its history – now it was a specialised tactical training centre where military and police agencies, hostage rescue specialists, kidnap and ransom negotiators and insurance execs from all across the world flocked to learn from Ben and his team. The world was still a troubled enough place to ensure they were seldom short of clients.
It sometimes happened that Ben had to take a business trip to Britain, but this wasn’t one of those times. With Le Val closed for Christmas, he had more personal matters to attend to – both of which, in their different ways, were the reason for his deeply pensive state as he stood there on the deck.
Tomorrow evening he was due to attend the inaugural opening of the new concert venue at Langton Hall, the Oxfordshire music academy created by Leigh Llewellyn. She’d been one of the world’s most celebrated and talented opera stars. She’d also been Ben’s first love – and much later, and for far too short a time, his wife.
Her death was a wound that he knew would never really heal. How it had happened was something he refused to think about, though the nightmare still haunted him some nights. The man who’d taken Leigh from him had been called Jack Glass. He had outlived her by only a few minutes.
As a trustee of the Leigh Llewellyn Foundation, Ben had been invited to cut the inaugural ribbon to open the grand new concert hall, make a speech and present a prize to the most promising young opera singer training at the school. He wasn’t exactly an accomplished public speaker. In his time with the SAS he’d conducted a thousand low-key operational briefings with small teams of men; as a tactical training instructor he was used to giving lectures in the familiar environment of Le Val’s little classroom – but the thought of standing up on a stage and addressing a large audience made him nervous. He was as prepared for it as he could be. It was the least he could do for Leigh’s memory.
The second reason he was travelling to England made him even more nervous. He’d agonised a long time before deciding to make the stop-off in London on his way to Oxfordshire. London was where Brooke lived: Dr Brooke Marcel, formerly visiting lecturer in hostage psychology at Le Val, as well as something a lot more. The way things had gone between them since the terrible argument in September, Ben didn’t know how Brooke would react to his surprise visit. All he knew was how badly he’d missed her these last few months.
When the ferry docked at Dover, Ben headed down to the car deck. While the other passengers climbed into their shiny new Vauxhalls and Nissans and Daewoos, he creaked open the door of the battered and ancient ex-military Series II Land Rover that the guys he worked with referred to as ‘Le Crock’, slung his bag on the worn-out passenger seat and drove out into the late afternoon drizzle.
Le Crock wasn’t the kind of vehicle you could spur along in too much of a hurry – and as he headed for London, Ben wondered if that might have been his unconscious motive for taking the old Landy: he wasn’t in any particular hurry to reach his destination. Twice he was seriously tempted to give it a miss, bypass London altogether and head northwest straight for Oxfordshire. The second time that thought occurred to him he very nearly gave in to the temptation – but by then he was already entering the outskirts of the city and Brooke’s place in Richmond was just a few more miles away.
‘Fuck it,’ he said to himself, ‘I’m here now. Let’s see it through.’
Chapter Three
The rain was threatening to turn to sleet by the time Ben pulled up across the street from the large red-brick Victorian house where Brooke lived. He killed the engine, and for a few seconds his thoughts turned to the whisky flask in his bag that he’d topped up with fifteen-year-old Islay malt before setting out from France. Instead he reached for his crumpled pack of Gauloises and his Zippo lighter. Anything to delay the moment where he’d have to walk up to the door of Brooke’s flat on the ground floor.
As he sat and smoked and watched the rainwater streaming down the window, he wondered again whether turning up like this unannounced was the right thing to do. And he thought back again to the events of three months ago that had left his personal life in such a mess.
Life had never turned out as quiet as he’d have liked it, but the previous September had been an eventful time even for him. It wasn’t every month that you got wrongly accused of murder, dragged into an intrigue involving Russian mobsters and harried across most of Europe by an army of police commanded by a particularly determined, ambitious female SOCA agent named Darcey Kane.
But narrowly avoiding being tortured to death, crushed in a car wreck, getting incarcerated in an Italian prison or pulverised by a Russian attack helicopter hadn’t been the worst things that had happened to Ben that month. None of them had remotely compared to the shock of seeing Brooke in the arms of another man.
Injured and on the run, Ben had been heading for Brooke’s secluded holiday place in the Portuguese countryside, thinking it would be empty and he could lie low there for a while and recuperate. He’d been wrong. Approaching the cottage in darkness, he’d been surprised to see a light in the downstairs window, and peeked through the shutters. The sight he’d witnessed had made him recoil. Brooke and the unknown man had been sitting by candlelight, drinking wine, both obviously fresh from the shower. There was only one possible conclusion to draw.
Ben had slipped away unseen. From Portugal he’d beaten a hazardous path to Italy, from there to Monaco, then Georgia and back to Rome. Along the way, he and Darcey Kane had joined forces to defeat the gangsters who were trying to kill them, and unmask a conspiracy at the heart of British Intelligence. One of the toughest parts of the job had been escaping the amorous clutches of the – he had to admit it – extremely attractive and alluring raven-haired Darcey. When it was all over and they’d ended up at a loose end together in Rome, she’d made it very clear to him that her idea of a weekend in the eternal city wasn’t about visiting the Sistine Chapel and the Colosseum. ‘I won’t give up, you know’ had been Darcey’s disappointed parting words to him as he headed back home to France. ‘I always get my man in the end.’
The first thing Ben had done on his return to Le Val had been to check the diary for Brooke’s next lecture. He’d made sure he wasn’t around when she arrived, and as a pretext to stay away for the two days of her visit he’d made up a story about needing to drive to Nantes to check out a new security system for the armoury room, and from there to Paris to see a prospective client. In reality, he was lying low in a hotel just a few miles away in Valognes. He was all too aware of how weak and pathetic he was acting, but he couldn’t help it. He’d sooner have faced a charging bull than get into a confrontation with Brooke.
Jeff Dekker, the former SBS commando who was Ben’s right-hand man at Le Val, had finally cracked under the strain of having to cover for him all the time, and called him on his mobile. ‘Jesus, Ben. What the hell is going on with you two? She’s upset and confused. First she comes back from holiday to find out that her boyfriend’s been arrested and chased all around Europe by the cops, now you’re avoiding her like she’s got leprosy. You can’t go on like this, mate.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
Brooke’s flight home from nearby Cherbourg back to London had been booked for 7.15 on the evening of her second day. Just after eight, feeling quite miserable and shamefaced, Ben had come skulking back to Le Val and headed for the farmhouse kitchen to pour himself a glass of wine. He’d been so preoccupied that he’d failed to sense anyone else’s presence in the room.
‘Were you just going to sneak around behind my back?’ Her voice sounded taut with emotion.
Ben almost dropped his glass. He whirled around.
Brooke got up from the chair in the corner where she’d been waiting for him. Her face was flushed almost as red as the auburn of her hair, and there was a glint of fury in her green eyes. ‘Aren’t you even going to tell me who she is, then?’
‘Who?’ Ben managed, totally confused.
Brooke snorted. ‘Who? Do you think I’m stupid? I’ve talked to her, Ben. She called here. You were off sneaking around trying to avoid me, so I happened to pick up the phone.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Really? “Lovely time together in Rome? Must do it again sometime?” Not ringing any bells?’
Ben stared blankly for a moment, then it hit him. ‘You mean Darcey Kane?’ The instant it came out, he knew how feeble it sounded.
Brooke’s eyes had misted over and a tear rolled down her cheek. ‘Of all the guys in the world, Ben Hope, I never would have thought you would do this to me. And you didn’t even have the guts to tell me to my face.’
‘Stop right there. This is insane.’
‘What were you doing in Rome?’
‘You know what I was doing in Rome. Trying to stay out of jail. You saw the news, didn’t you?’
‘I know you had a terrible time, and I’m sorry,’ Brooke snapped. ‘I mean, what were you doing with her?’
‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’
‘Then what’s she talking about?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘I can’t believe you’re accusing me of this,’ Ben said, and then added, ‘You, of all people.’
Now he was in trouble. He regretted it instantly.
Brooke glared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He was committed. Point of no return. ‘You know perfectly well. I saw you and your fancy-man in Portugal.’
‘My what?’ Brooke exploded.
‘You heard me.’
‘You went to my place?’
‘I needed somewhere to go. I didn’t think you’d be there. I saw you through the window. The two of you looked very cosy together. Don’t insult me by denying it.’
‘Ben! That was Marshall – my brother-in-law!’
Ben reeled. ‘You’re having an affair with your brother-in-law? The banker?’
‘Bloody hell, what do you take me for? Of course not!’
‘Then what were the two of you doing there together?’
‘All right. He followed me to Portugal,’ Brooke sighed. ‘He thinks …’ – she corrected herself – ‘thought he was in love with me. He’d been stalking me for weeks. I went to the cottage to get away from him. He turned up and I told him once and for all that he’d better clean up his act.’
Ben was speechless for a few moments as he digested her words. He’d replayed the scene so many times inside his head; now he struggled to revisualise it in a whole new way. ‘But he was wearing a bathrobe,’ he protested.
‘There’d been a storm,’ she countered angrily. ‘He was soaking wet so I got him to take a shower. I’d just had one myself when he turned up.’
‘The candles … the wine …’
‘You know it doesn’t take much of a storm to take out the power there. And the wine was for our nerves. He was in a real state. So was I. What you saw was me trying to reason with him gently. I’m a psychologist. It’s what I do.’
Ben stared at her. He had to admit what she was saying was possible. But suddenly a new thought was dawning on him. ‘So this prick Marshall was stalking you all that time and you didn’t even think to tell me?’
‘Oh, that would have been just great. Then you’d have gone and kicked the shit out of him, and then what? A right mess we’d all have been in. And my sister would’ve found out. Phoebe’s emotionally fragile. It would have destroyed her. I had to deal with it myself.’
‘Is that how you see me? Some kind of violent bastard who can only deal with problems by kicking the shit out of people?’
‘No, sometimes you shoot them too.’
‘How could you not have trusted me?’ he yelled.
Brooke gave a scornful laugh. ‘Like you trusted me? How could you think I was cheating on you? All the times I told you I loved you – did you think I was lying?’
The argument had raged on for a long time, both of them equally carried away by their sense of outrage, neither of them willing to relent. By the time Ben had sensed it was going too far, tried to back down and apologise, a lot of hurtful things had been said and the damage had been done.
In the end, Brooke had stormed off in a white-hot rage. The last he’d seen of her was the taxicab disappearing up the track from the farmhouse.
Two days later a letter had arrived in the post, coldly and formally addressed to Major Benedict Hope, Managing Director, Le Val Tactical Training Centre. Just three terse lines to say she was resigning from her post with immediate effect and wouldn’t be back.
When Ben had tried contacting her to persuade her to change her mind, he’d found her phone numbers changed and his emails bouncing back. His letters were returned unopened.
And so now, three months later, here he was outside her ground-floor flat, seriously questioning the wisdom of being here. Unbuckling the straps of his bag, he took out the present he’d bought for her, carefully wrapped in Christmas gift paper with little Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeers all over it. It had taken him three attempts to get it right. But at least he was pretty sure she’d like the present inside. Brooke was half French on her father’s side, and a big movie fan, so he’d bought her a collection of Eric Rohmer films. He couldn’t recall having ever seen one himself.
Feeling like a man stepping up to the gallows, he got out of the Land Rover, crossed the street, went in the little gate that led through Brooke’s flower garden and rang her doorbell.
No response. He tried again. Still nothing. The package was too big to shove through the letterbox. He didn’t think that a mangled DVD box set would please her much. He’d have to post it to her.
With a strange mixture of bitter disappointment and extreme relief, Ben turned away. As he was about to start heading back towards the Land Rover, a tall, good-looking Asian man came strolling down the street and walked through the gate. He was wearing a heavy parka, carrying a shopping bag. Seeing Ben on the steps, he stopped and smiled. ‘Hi,’ he said warmly. ‘You must be Ben, right?’
Ben eyed the stranger uncertainly.
‘I’ve seen your photo,’ said the man. ‘Brooke had it on her desk.’
Ben noticed his use of the past tense.
‘I’m Amal,’ the man said, and as if he’d read Ben’s thoughts he added quickly, ‘Brooke’s neighbour. I have the flat above.’
‘You’re the writer,’ Ben said, remembering. Brooke had sometimes mentioned the aspiring playwright upstairs who somehow managed to pay the extortionate rent despite having no apparent form of income.
‘Trying to be a writer,’ Amal grinned.
‘Do you know where Brooke is?’ Ben asked him.
Amal’s grin turned into a grimace. ‘She’s not here, I’m afraid. Gone to Vienna with her friend Sam.’
Sam, Ben thought. Right.
He paused a few beats. ‘I had a present for her,’ he said, looking down at the package in his hand.
‘I can take that, if you want. I’ll make sure she gets it.’
‘I’d appreciate that.’
Amal glanced up at the sky. The sleet was coming down more heavily, haloed in the amber streetlight. ‘You want to come inside for a coffee? It’s bloody freezing out here.’
Ben shook his head. ‘I’d better get going.’ As he was walking out of the gate, Amal called back, ‘Ben?’
Ben turned.
‘Sam is short for Samantha,’ Amal said with a significant look. ‘Just in case you didn’t … still, you know what I mean.’
Ben nodded. ‘Thanks for letting me know. Happy Christmas, Amal.’
‘You too. Take care, all right?’
Chapter Four
Ben was awake long before sunrise the next day, got out of bed and pumped out five quick sets of twenty press-ups on the carpet of his little room in the farmhouse bed and breakfast. He showered and watched the dawn crack over the rural Oxfordshire skyline with a mug of strong black coffee in his hand. He hadn’t slept well, his mind constantly turning over, switching back and forth from one thing to another and keeping him in a state of tension that only his long-established self-discipline prevented him from soothing with a gulp from his whisky flask.
Some time later, he shrugged on his leather jacket and went downstairs to be met by the smell of bacon, sausages and fried eggs cooked up by the proprietor, Mrs Bold, who looked as though she’d gobbled down a few too many of her own full English breakfasts. Ben politely declined her insistent offer of a coronary on a plate and stepped out into the crisp, cold morning air. Yesterday’s dark clouds and sleet had given way to a clear sky. Pale sunshine filtered through the bare branches of the oaks and beeches and glittered on the frosty lawn.
He swung himself into the cab of the Land Rover. The engine spluttered on starting, and for a moment or two he thought, ‘Oh-oh’; then it fired up with an anaemic-sounding rasp and he went crunching over the gravel of the long drive.
The cemetery was just a few fields away from Langton Hall, in the grounds of a sixteenth-century church ringed by a mossy dry-stone wall. Ben knelt by the grave and delicately brushed away a few dead leaves. The inscription on the granite headstone was simple and plain, as she’d have wanted it to be. Just her name; the year of her birth; that of her death.
She was just thirty-two.
Ben was alone in the graveyard. He said a few words, felt his throat tighten up and then sat silently for a long time with his head bowed. He laid a single white rose on the grave. Then he stood up and walked slowly back to the car.
*
In the end, the speech went better than he’d expected. Ben hadn’t worn a tuxedo since his trip to Egypt some years earlier, and the collar felt stiff around his neck, but he’d felt composed and his initial nerves at seeing the large crowd filling every seat of Langton Hall’s new auditorium had settled the moment he’d stepped up to the podium and launched into his opening line. The things he said about Leigh were from the heart; judging by the length of the applause he received at the end, they must have touched those of many of the audience too.
Relieved that his moment in the limelight was over, Ben had shaken a few hands, knocked back a glass of champagne and then taken his seat for the opening act of the opera. He was glad the trustees had voted for The Barber of Seville over something too tragedy-laden and depressing. Too many opera composers seemed to him to revel in making their characters come to sticky ends, but the Rossini was lightweight and rousing, with jolly arias guaranteed to leave the audience humming their tunes afterwards. Ben felt Leigh would have approved of the choice, as well as of the polished performances of the singers.
He’d never been much of an opera fan himself, though, and it wasn’t too long before he started getting lost in the twists and turns of the romantic intrigue between Count Almaviva and the beautiful Rosina. The last scene of Act One, with the appearance of the drunken soldier, perplexed him: who was this guy, and what did he want? Was he actually the Count in disguise, and how could this Dr Bartolo fellow be taken in by this obvious ploy to seduce his daughter? Or was she his daughter? Oh, what the hell. Ben was restless and frustrated by the end of the act, and when the applause began he made a bee-line for the bar.
He was getting started on a measure of scotch when he felt a touch on his shoulder and turned round to see a man and a woman standing there, both dressed for the opera, both smiling broadly at him. For a moment he didn’t recognise them – then he realised he was looking at two faces he hadn’t seen for twenty years.
‘Simeon? Michaela?’
‘Fine speech, Benedict.’ Simeon Arundel was around Ben’s height, sporty and trim at just a shade under six feet. His dark hair was as thick and glossy as it had been back in student days, and he’d aged remarkably well except for the tired, rather drawn look to his face.
Michaela wore her fair hair a little shorter now, and might have gained a few pounds, but the brilliance of her smile took Ben straight back to his youth; a faraway time that often seemed to him like another life, when they’d all been students together at Christ Church, Oxford. Like Ben, Simeon had been a Theologian, only a couple of years older and just beginning his postgraduate studies. Michaela Ward had been in the year below Ben, reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics, or PPE as it was termed at Oxford.
‘What a wonderful surprise to meet like this,’ Simeon said. ‘We had no idea you’d be here. Then suddenly there you are on the stage. I said to Michaela, “Lord, that’s Benedict Hope!”’
‘It’s just Ben these days,’ Ben said with a smile.
‘It’s fantastic to see you again, Ben,’ said Michaela. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’
‘I hope I’ve changed in some ways,’ Ben said. He could see something that definitely had: the identical gold wedding rings that Simeon and Michaela were wearing. ‘I should have known you two would have ended up getting married,’ he said.
‘Just a little while after you … after you left the college,’ Michaela said. She seemed about to say more, then held it back. The circumstances of Ben’s leaving college weren’t a topic for small talk.
‘I suppose I should offer my belated congratulations, then,’ Ben said.
They laughed, and then Simeon’s expression suddenly grew serious. ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your wife. I had no idea.’
Ben nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he muttered.
‘Are you enjoying the opera?’ Michaela asked him, changing the subject.
‘Honestly? I’d sooner be at a jazz gig.’
‘Please don’t tell me you live around here,’ she said. ‘It would be awful to think we’d been near neighbours all this time without ever realising it.’
‘No, I live in Normandy these days. I run a business there. What about you two?’ he added, always quick to deflect the inevitable questions about the kind of work that went on at Le Val.
‘We have the vicarage at Little Denton,’ Simeon said. ‘It’s just a few miles from here.’
‘Simeon has the vicarage,’ Michaela said. ‘I’m merely the vicar’s wife.’
‘So you went the whole hog,’ Ben said to Simeon. ‘I always thought you would.’
‘I’ve never been able to think of anything else I could do with myself except serve God in whatever small way I could offer,’ Simeon said.
‘He’s being modest,’ Michaela whispered behind her hand. ‘He’s quite the superstar.’
‘But tell us, Ben,’ Simeon said, blushing a little, ‘Where are you staying?’ When Ben told him the name of the bed and breakfast, he shook his head vehemently. ‘Not that Mrs Bold? She’s a terrible old battleaxe, God forgive me for saying it. And she overcharges.’
‘You must come and stay with us, Ben,’ Michaela said.
‘It’s a very kind offer, but—’
‘We absolutely insist,’ said Simeon. ‘It’ll be tremendous fun to chew the fat about old times. And you’ll meet Jude.’
‘Jude?’
‘Our son,’ Michaela said. ‘Only …’ She rolled her eyes up at Simeon. ‘Darling, I think Jude has other plans for the holidays.’
Simeon frowned slightly. ‘Never mind. So what do you say, Ben? We’d love to have you. Stay a day or two – stay for the whole of Christmas, why don’t you? If you’re still as fond of good wine and scotch as you used to be, I have some real treats in store.’
Ben hesitated, considering. It wasn’t as if he had anything else to do for the next few days. Nothing was scheduled at Le Val until January, and apart from the security guys and the guard dogs, the place would be deserted until Jeff and the team returned from their vacation. He’d have liked to spend time with his sister Ruth in Switzerland, but now that she’d become a high-flying company director she was attending conferences and summits all over the world – currently on a mission to greenify the Far East.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘You persuaded me. I’ll pick up my gear from Mrs Bold’s and come over sometime tomorrow.’
‘Nonsense, man,’ Simeon said. ‘You must come over tonight. We’re always up late anyway, so there’ll be plenty of time after the show.’
‘Speaking of which …’ Michaela said, glancing at her watch. The bell had sounded while they were talking, announcing the start of Act Two.
It was pushing midnight by the time Ben turned up at the village of Little Denton. Following the directions Simeon had given him, he turned off by the village pub, wound his way along a twisty lane running parallel to the Thames, and finally found the vicarage nestled behind a high stone wall and surrounded by trees. An owl hooted unseen as he stepped down from the Land Rover in the gravel driveway. The moon was out and shining down on the ivied facade of the old house. A dog barked from inside; Simeon’s voice called out ‘Quiet, Scruffy!’
The front door opened and the Reverend Arundel appeared in the entrance, looking less formal in jeans and a loose cardigan. He gripped Ben’s arm warmly. ‘Delighted you’re here. Really I am.’ He peered past Ben’s shoulder at the Land Rover and his eyebrows shot up. ‘Heavens, that’s seen some action, hasn’t it? Series IIa? Must be a ’73 vintage at least.’
‘Sixty-nine,’ Ben said. ‘Actually, it’s playing up a bit. Think a valve needs seeing to.’
‘Good grief, it’s the same age as I am. Even more ancient than the old Lotus.’
‘You still have that!’ Ben had fond memories of the many times the two of them had gone speeding round the Oxfordshire country pubs in Simeon’s 1972 Lotus Elan, in their quest to sample every real ale known to mankind. Back in those days, even at Oxford, it had seemed extremely exotic for a student to own a car, especially a bright red 2+2 sports that had been the envy of even the wealthier young gentlemen and given Simeon quite a dashing reputation among the girls.
‘I’d never sell her,’ Simeon said. ‘It’s till death us do part, I’m afraid.’
Michaela appeared in the open doorway, gripping onto the collar of a shaggy black-and-white mongrel that was scrabbling to get out and greet the visitor. Ben looked at the mutt and could see how he’d got his name.
‘Any chance you boys could tear yourselves away from your old bangers?’ Michaela said. ‘You’re letting the cold in.’
‘She drives a Mazda,’ Simeon whispered to Ben with a conspiratorial wink.
‘Is that all the luggage you have, Ben?’ Michaela said. ‘You certainly travel light.’
The inside of the vicarage was comfortable and warm, with the lived-in, ever-so-slightly frayed patina of a period house that had seen very little modernising. A log fire was crackling in the hearth, and a colourfully decorated Christmas tree stood in one corner opposite a baby grand piano covered in framed photos. Ben stopped to look at one that showed a tousle-haired and somewhat wild-looking young man of about twenty, posing on a beach somewhere hot and palmy. He was wearing a wetsuit and grinning from ear to ear as if completely in his element, clutching a surfboard under his arm.
‘This must be Jude?’ Ben said.
‘That’s our boy,’ Simeon replied. ‘The good looks come from his mother’s side.’
‘He seems to like the water.’
‘You can say that again. He’s studying marine biology at Portsmouth University. You can’t keep him out of the sea. In fact, he’s just spent two weeks cage diving with great white sharks in New Zealand. Completely mad, but he won’t be stopped once he’s set on something.’ Simeon sighed. ‘At least he still has all his arms and legs, as far as I know. That’s the main thing. Let me get you a drink, Ben. Single malt, no ice?’
‘You remembered,’ Ben said.
As Simeon busied himself fetching glasses and a bottle from a cabinet at the far end of the room, Michaela emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray of mince pies. Setting the tray down on a table, she smiled at Ben and shot a sideways glance at her husband. ‘I’m so pleased you’re here,’ she whispered. ‘It’ll cheer him up no end. He’s been very down and upset the last few days.’
Simeon was too busy pottering about pouring drinks and putting on a CD of Gregorian chants to hear what she was saying. Lowering her voice further, Michaela added, ‘We recently had the most awful news about one of his colleagues … well, more of a close acquaintance, in the south of France.’
Ben winced sympathetically. ‘Illness?’
‘Suicide.’ Michaela only mouthed the unmentionable word, drawing a straight finger like a knife across her throat for emphasis.
Now Ben understood why Simeon looked so uncharacteristically gaunt. Before he could muster a reply, the vicar was returning from the drinks cabinet holding two generously filled whisky glasses. He pressed one into Ben’s hand and clinked his own against it.
‘Here’s to old friends,’ said Simeon Arundel. ‘Welcome to our home, Ben.’
Chapter Five
The snow was spiralling down out of the night sky and lying thickly on the private road that led to Wesley Holland’s sprawling country residence, the Whitworth Mansion, two miles from the shores of Lake Ontario. Anyone who followed the sixty-seven-year-old billionaire philanthropist’s exploits in the media might have been surprised to see him driving alone in a seven-year-old Chrysler, but the fact was that despite his almost uncountable wealth, Wesley Holland was a man of relatively modest tastes. Even in his youth, when he’d inherited his gigantic fortune from his father, he’d had relatively little truck with the conventional trappings of wealth; just as he had little to do with the modern world, of which he disapproved more with each passing year.
Yet every man has his weaknesses, and Wesley Holland’s weakness for over five decades, despite his pacifist tendencies and abhorrence of cruelty, had been his all-consuming passion for antique instruments of war, weaponry and armour. If it hadn’t been for the vast, unique collection his riches had allowed him to accumulate, he’d have had no need whatsoever for such an enormous house. He sometimes thought he’d be perfectly content living in a one-bedroom apartment. It was just him, after all, apart from the live-in staff and Moses, his old tortoiseshell cat.
Wesley parked the car in front of the mansion and stepped out to be greeted by two of his staff. His longtime personal assistant, Coleman Nash, sheltered him from the falling snow with an umbrella while the other, Hubert Clemm, who had served as Wesley’s butler for over twenty-five years, began unloading the luggage from the back of the Chrysler. Moses had had the good sense to stay indoors.
‘Careful with that one, Hubert,’ Wesley said, watching closely as Clemm unloaded the custom-made black fibreglass case from the car. Theoretically, it was indestructible, but he worried nonetheless. Anyone would, considering what was inside. The oblong box, just under four feet long and secured with steel locks, looked for all the world like the kind of case a serious classical guitarist would use to protect a cherished instrument in transit.
Except that Wesley Holland had never picked up a guitar in his life.
‘Did you have a good trip, Mr Holland?’ Coleman asked, leading his employer towards the house.
‘Thank you, Coleman. Actually, it could have gone better.’ Wesley was still feeling quite downcast from this latest encounter with yet another bunch of so-called experts unable to get their cynical, closed little minds around the incredible truth that was right there in front of them. This time it had been the history eggheads at the University of Buffalo. Wesley sometimes feared he was beginning to run out of options – though nothing could completely extinguish the excitement of knowing what he’d found. It was the genuine article and he shouldn’t give a damn what the academics thought. They’d wake up one day. He really believed that.
‘How have things been here?’ he asked Coleman. The billionaire trusted his assistant completely. Coleman watched over the mansion and grounds like a pit bull and even kept a monstrous .700 Nitro Express double-barrelled rifle in his room, ‘just in case’. Wesley had often chided him about ‘that damned elephant gun’.
‘Uneventful,’ Coleman told him as they walked into the hallway. Suits of medieval armour flanked the stairs. Originals, not reproductions – the same went for the displays of ancient weaponry that glittered against the panelling. ‘I’ve left the mail on your desk as usual,’ Coleman went on. ‘The curator of the Wallace Collection in London called three times while you were away.’
‘Was it about the Cromwell pieces?’
‘He didn’t say. I told him you’d contact him when you got back.’
‘I’ll do that. Oh, Hubert, you can take all the bags upstairs except the black case. Leave that one in the salon. I’ll put it away myself.’
‘Yes, Mr Holland.’
‘By the way,’ Coleman said, ‘Abigail prepared your favourite veal escalopes for dinner tonight.’
‘With cream?’ Wesley felt his mouth water. He’d been through innumerable cooks before he’d found Abigail. The woman was a gem. Nothing would cheer him up like a fine meal. He needed it. Quite aside from the disappointment in Buffalo, the revelations about Fabrice Lalique were still hanging over him like a pall. Wesley had been as shocked as anyone to learn of the priest’s paedophilia.
He left the black case with its precious cargo on the rug in the salon where Hubert had laid it carefully down, and trotted upstairs to his study, nimble and light on his feet for a man of his vintage. The study walls were lined with rich green velvet and displayed just a fractional part of his gleaming collection of ancient weaponry. He pointed a remote control at the sound system and the room filled with his favourite Soler sonata for harpsichord. The desk on which Coleman had neatly piled the mail had once belonged to General Robert E. Lee. There was no trace of a computer in the study, or, for that matter, anywhere in the house. The telephone was the only concession Wesley Holland allowed to be made to modern telecommunications technology under his roof, despite Coleman’s constant bitching about the disadvantages of having no internet connection or email access. As far as Wesley was concerned, if you wanted to write to someone, it ought to be the proper way: by hand, on paper, mailed in an envelope. He sealed his own handwritten letters with red wax. Okay, so he was a dinosaur. The dinosaurs had ruled the earth far longer than mankind ever would.
He spent a few minutes browsing through his mail – nothing especially interesting or pressing there – then looked at his watch. London would still be fast asleep at this time. Brian Cameron at the Wallace Collection had almost certainly been calling about the English Civil War-period armour pieces that the museum had been begging for months to have on loan. Holland wasn’t sure he could bring himself to part with them. His collections were his passion. He might phone the Englishman back in the morning, or he might let him stew a while before he made his decision.
One thing that wouldn’t wait was veal escalopes in cream sauce.
Wesley shut the study and made his way back downstairs. His stomach rumbled in anticipation of his late dinner as he crossed the marble-floored hallway towards the kitchen. He liked to eat his meals at the simple table there, rather than have Hubert go to the trouble of preparing the vaulted dining hall. As Wesley polished off the delicious meal, feeding tiny titbits to Moses under the table, Abigail would be pottering about the kitchen making his dessert. He enjoyed her company: more than he could have said for any of his four wives, each one more grasping and mercenary than her predecessor. Wesley had been fifty-seven when he’d divorced the last of them and sworn that was an end to it.
The kitchen door seemed to be jammed by some obstruction. ‘Abi?’ No reply. Wesley pushed harder and it opened a few inches. He could smell burning from inside. ‘Abi?’ he repeated.
At Wesley’s last medical check-up, his doctor had told him he had the heart of a forty-five-year-old. But it gave a terrifying leap and almost stopped beating permanently at the sight in the kitchen. He cried out in horror.
Moses the cat was lapping nonchalantly at a thick blood trail that gleamed under the lights. It led from near the cooking range to the door, where Abigail had managed to drag herself before she died. She’d been shot twice in the chest with a large-calibre weapon. She was still clutching the spatula that she’d been using to stir the cream sauce, now simmered to a black mess on the stove, the extractor fans sucking away the smoke.
‘Coleman!’ Wesley shouted in panic. ‘Coleman!’ He darted back across the hallway and into the main salon.
Hubert Clemm’s body lay twisted in the middle of the vast Persian rug with his arms outflung and his face turned towards the door. There was a large bullet hole in his forehead, a spray of blood up the upholstery of the couch behind him.
‘Coleman!’ Wesley screamed.
He heard a sound behind him and whipped round. Before he could react, he was being propelled backwards into the salon and the muzzles of two silenced pistols were looming large in his face. He fell heavily into an armchair and stared helplessly up at the pair of gunmen standing over him. One of them was tall, well over six feet. The long brown coat he wore was made of heavy, full-grained tan leather, like horsehide. The other was wearing a quilted jacket. Both had on black ski masks that hid their faces.
Robbers. Wesley’s heart pounded horribly. He could see Hubert’s corpse out of the corner of his eye, and it was more than he could bear. ‘I keep over a million dollars in cash in a safe upstairs,’ he gasped. ‘And jewels. I’ll open it for you myself. Take what you want and go. Please, just go.’
The masked men exchanged glances. The prospect of making off with a million-plus in cash was appealing, but their orders had been strict and precise. ‘The sword,’ the big one in the leather coat said tersely. ‘Let’s have it.’ He talked with an English accent. A Londoner, maybe.
Wesley balked. His brain churned faster than it had ever churned before. ‘I don’t know what sword you mean!’ he protested. But he did know, very well. If he and his associates were right about it – and almost three years of tireless efforts had persuaded him beyond a doubt that they were – it was a treasure of incalculable value. What he couldn’t understand was how these men could possibly be aware of its very existence. Virtually nobody was, outside of the group. Who could have given away the sworn secret? Hillel Zada? Surely not him. He didn’t know enough.
The worst thing for Wesley was that the sword was so nearby. He tried desperately hard not to let his eyes flick across to the black fibreglass container, just a few yards away across the room. ‘That’s it there,’ he said, instead pointing through the open door at the giant two-handed Landsknecht weapon that dominated the display in the hallway. From tip to pommel it stood taller than a tall man, and it was almost four centuries old.
Much too big. Much too new. Totally wrong. A wild bluff, based on the fact that these thugs could hardly be expert enough to know one sword from another. ‘Take it,’ he said. ‘It’s worth a fortune.’ That part was quite true.
The gunmen gave the monster blade a cursory over-the-shoulder glance. The one in the brown leather coat shook his head. ‘Don’t fuck with us.’ The one in the quilted jacket pressed his gun muzzle hard into Wesley’s cheekbone. ‘You’d better start talking, old man.’ Another Brit. Who were these men?
‘Drop your weapons and turn around slowly,’ said a calm, steady voice from the doorway, and Wesley’s heart soared.
Coleman Nash had the massive twin bores of the elephant gun trained steadily on the robbers.
The two men froze. The pressure of the pistol muzzle against Wesley’s cheekbone slackened. Coleman had them cold.
Except for one problem. Coleman had never pointed a gun at a living being before, still less pulled the trigger. These men did it for a living. Amateurs hesitated. Professionals never did.
It all happened too fast for Wesley to follow. The report of the first pistol was a muffled ‘dooophh’, followed almost instantly by another, simultaneously with the brain-numbing explosion of the elephant gun as it blasted a moon crater out of the far wall.
Coleman’s legs wobbled and then buckled and he went down on his knees. Blood on his lips.
Wesley yelled. Another pistol shot. Then another.
Wesley saw the bullets strike and knew there was nothing he could do to help poor Coleman. He jumped up from the armchair, grabbed the black fibreglass case and bolted like a rabbit for the side exit. The big man in the leather coat turned to stop him, but dived for cover behind the couch as the stricken Coleman let loose with the second barrel. The .700 Nitro Express blew a great ragged hole through the backrest of a hundred-thousand-dollar antique couch.
In the next moment, Coleman was cut down by a volley of bullets. He died before the rifle had dropped from his hands.
By then, Wesley had made it out of the exit and was sprinting in a grief-stricken panic down the passage, carrying his precious case. He heard the door burst open behind him and the footsteps pounding as the gunmen gave chase. The terror pressed him on faster. He hammered up a flight of steps, down another passage, and reached the door.
The panic room had been built several years earlier, in case of just such a contingency. Wesley had let Coleman take care of the arrangements, then signed the cheque and promptly forgotten all about it. Which made it all the more miraculous that the password for the voice-recognition vault door should come back to him now.
‘Barbarossa!’
The six forged steel deadlocks opened with a clunk. Wesley rushed inside and the armoured door shut behind him, locking itself automatically.
Safe. More importantly, the sword was too. Wesley leaned against the wall and breathed hard, able to hear the muffled voices of his pursuers cursing on the other side. For the first time in his life, he thanked God for modern technology. If he’d had to fumble for a key, they’d have got him. Would they have killed him outright, or tortured him until they’d found the sword in its case?
Wesley staggered numbly over to the control console and peered at the bank of monitors showing digital hi-definition images of every part of the house. He could see the two bodies on the main living room floor: Coleman’s near the entrance, Hubert’s on the rug. Abigail’s in the kitchen. The blood looked garishly bright.
Wesley tasted bile in his mouth at the sight and turned away, following the gunmen’s progress from screen to screen as they dashed furiously from one room to the next. They must have known that the clock was ticking now, but clearly believed they still had a chance of locating their quarry somewhere within the Whitworth Mansion.
They wouldn’t hang around too long, if they had any sense. Wesley picked up the phone and dialled 911. He spoke urgently but clearly to the police operator, and was assured that officers were on their way. Then, swallowing back his grief, he moved on to the even more important call he had to make.
*
Halfway across the world, Simeon Arundel picked up on the second ring that dragged him up out of a deep sleep.
‘Simeon?’ said the familiar voice.
‘Wesley, it’s three o’clock in the morning here,’ Simeon muttered, rubbing his face. It had been a late night, and his head was a little fuzzy from all the whisky they’d drunk. Their visitor’s capacity for alcohol seemed to be undiminished with the years. Michaela was fast asleep, the curve under the blanket rising and falling gently in the bed next to him.
‘Listen to me,’ the American’s voice hissed in his ear. ‘Something’s happened.’
Struggling to clear his head and afraid of waking Michaela, Simeon sat up and swung his legs out of the bed. ‘Hold on, Wesley.’ In the darkness of the bedroom he padded over to the ensuite bathroom, closed himself quietly inside and turned on the light. ‘All right. What’s happened?’
‘They’re after the sword.’
‘What? Who?’
‘The armed men who broke into my house tonight. Or whoever paid them to come here to steal it.’
Simeon sat down heavily on the edge of the bath, his mind swimming with horror. ‘Oh, Lord. Are you all right?’
‘I’m safe. The cops are on their way as we speak.’ Wesley’s voice quavered with emotion. ‘They shot Coleman, Simeon.’ A sorrowful pause. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Dead!?’
‘So are Hubert and Abigail.’
Simeon’s heart began to beat even faster. He could feel it thudding violently at the base of his throat. He suddenly felt as if he might need to lurch the two steps across to the toilet and throw up.
Then the suspicions Fabrice had expressed to him just before his death had been true. Someone really was taking an unhealthy interest in the research they’d all tried so hard to keep secret. Someone really was after them.
Someone who was prepared to murder to get what they wanted.
Simeon swallowed back the urge to gag. ‘Is it safe?’
‘It’s right here next to me,’ Wesley said, patting the case.
‘Didn’t I tell you, Wesley? Didn’t I tell you something strange was happening – that I was sure I’d been followed – about the man I saw in the church a couple of weeks ago?’ Simeon visualised the scene clearly in his mind as he spoke. The stranger had materialised as if out of the blue while he’d been helping put up the Christmas decorations at one of his churches in a rural part of Oxfordshire. When Simeon had gone to welcome him, the man had slipped away as suddenly as he’d appeared. ‘And didn’t I tell you that Fabrice would never have killed himself like that? Or done those appalling things?’
They’d been through this over and over, ever since receiving the news of their colleague’s death and his shocking circular email. ‘I don’t know whether Fabrice did those things or not,’ Wesley said impatiently. ‘Or why he’d have confessed to them if he hadn’t. And I don’t know if he threw himself off that damn bridge or not. Neither do you. All we can be sure of is that you and I are both in danger and it has to do with this sword. That’s the reality we’re facing right now.’
‘Who are these people? How do they know about us?’
‘Did you talk to anybody? Anybody at all? They even seem to know what it looks like.’
‘Nobody,’ Simeon blurted. ‘I swear.’
‘You’re absolutely positive about that?’
‘Wesley, I would never …’
‘Good. Keep it that way. Listen, I can’t stay on this line. The cops will be here any minute. When I’ve dealt with them I’m going to call my lawyer and arrange some private security for you and your family over there, okay?’
‘There’s no need for that. I’ll be making my own arrangements.’
‘Can you get armed bodyguards in England?’
‘I don’t think so, not unless you’re the Prime Minister or something. But I have an old friend with a lot of experience of that kind of thing.’
‘He’d better know his business,’ Wesley said. ‘This is serious.’
‘What about you?’
‘Me? I’m going to Martha’s. Got to get the sword somewhere safe. It’s more important than any of us. You said that yourself, remember?’
Simeon nodded. He was still reeling. ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’
‘I’ll call you from the road. You watch your back, hear me?’
Chapter Six
Sometime before sunrise, Ben flipped himself out of the comfortable bed in the Arundels’ guest annexe, stretched and warmed his muscles and dropped down to the floor to knock out fifty press-ups without a break. He followed those up with fifty sit-ups, and was about to go straight into another set of press-ups when he heard the unmistakable throaty engine note of the Lotus from outside. He rubbed condensation off the window pane and peered out to see Simeon’s taillights exiting the vicarage gates. It seemed the vicar was off to an early start this morning.
The thoughts that had been swirling around Ben’s mind before he’d finally drifted off to sleep the night before were still lingering. The life that Simeon and Michaela had created for themselves here in this serene heart of rural England had made a strong impression on him, and he couldn’t stop thinking about how a life like that might have been possible for him, once, too. There’d been a time, many years ago, when he couldn’t have imagined his future any other way.
As he’d done so often in the past, Ben tried to imagine himself in the role of a clergyman. The ivy-clad vicarage, the dog collar, the whole works. Ben Hope, pastor and shepherd of the weak, beacon of virtue and temperance.
The fantasy had always been there, but it was a self-image he’d never found it easy to believe in with all his heart. If he was a Christian himself, he was an extremely lapsed one – and it had been that way for much too long. Compared to the blazing supernova of Simeon’s faith, Ben’s was a guttering candle. He seldom prayed with anything approaching conviction, even more seldom picked up a Bible. The old leather-bound King James Version he’d hung onto for years had ended up being tossed out of the window of a moving car on a road in rural Montana; it had been a long time before Ben had come round to regretting his rash action.
And yet faith, of some kind, was something that had never quite left Ben – although whenever he tried to ponder on its nature, as he did now, he was left with only the vaguest, cloudiest impression of the strange yearning he felt somewhere deep inside, at the core of his being. Some indefinable sense that one day, maybe, he could find peace within himself. That one day, a guiding hand would appear out of the darkness to steer him on the right path.
Ben closed his eyes, and for a brief moment he had a vision of himself, a different Ben Hope altogether, living this serene, idyllic life, with Brooke by his side.
The vision made him flinch and open his eyes again. He cursed himself for allowing such a hopelessly absurd and romantic notion to enter his head. Brooke as a vicar’s wife – it was nuts. She was as different from Michaela as Ben was from Simeon. She’d have laughed in his face at the very idea of it.
Brooke would probably never want to see him again anyway.
‘You’re a fool, Ben Hope,’ he said out loud. He chased away the darkness in his mind with more rapid-fire press-ups, eighty of them without a rest, so that his muscles screamed and his T-shirt clung damply to his skin.
After a cool shower, he dressed and stepped outside into the frosty dawn and crossed the yard to where the Land Rover was parked. ‘Let’s see if we can’t figure you out,’ he muttered, raising the battered matt-green bonnet lid and preparing to get his hands dirty.
He’d been there quite some time before he heard the footsteps on the gravel and looked up to see Michaela approaching, a mug of something hot and steaming in her hand.
‘Brought you coffee,’ she said, setting the mug down on the Landy’s wing. ‘You’re covered in grime.’ She reached over to Ben’s face, touched his cheek, looked at her blackened fingertips and grimaced. ‘Yuck. Any joy?’
‘Jeff was right,’ Ben said. ‘I shouldn’t have come in Le Crock.’
Michaela had the decency not to rub salt into Ben’s wounds by mentioning old bangers again. ‘Can you fix it?’ she asked, peering over his shoulder into the rusty engine compartment.
‘Not without a spare part or two,’ Ben said.
‘Worry about it later. Come inside and I’ll make you the best scrambled eggs you’ve ever had in your life.’
‘Coffee’s fine for me,’ he protested.
‘I insist. You’re officially on holiday, after all. And it’s all beautiful fresh local produce. The eggs are just a day old, courtesy of our neighbours, the Dorans. You can’t possibly refuse.’
Ben relented. Scrubbed clean and tucking into a plate of what were indeed the most delicious scrambled eggs he’d ever tasted – just a smidgen of organic butter, just a pinch of sea salt, a little fresh-ground pepper – he said, ‘Simeon was off early this morning.’
‘He had to drive into Oxford for a radio interview,’ Michaela said, sipping her tea. The eggs were all for Ben. Trying to diet, she’d said.
‘You weren’t kidding about him being a celebrity.’
‘Man on a mission. Fighting a one-man war against the decline of the Church.’
‘Is it declining that much?’ Ben asked.
‘You’re a little out of the loop, aren’t you?’
‘Just a little,’ Ben admitted. But he’d seen the signs, in France as well as in England. The chains and padlocks on the church gates. The silent bell towers. Buildings falling into decay, with grids over the windows to stop the vandals smashing the stained glass, whose beauty few people seemed to appreciate any more.
‘Simeon’s determined to bring youth and vigour back to the Christian faith. That’s how he puts it. Heaven knows, it needs someone with his dynamism to give it a shot in the arm, or else it’s just going to crumble away to nothing before too long, the whole institution and its churches to boot. When Simeon’s father passed away three years ago he left him almost four hundred thousand pounds. Simeon donated every penny of it towards church restoration projects. But as he says, churches are worth nothing without the people inside them. So he fights, and he fights, and he never stops. Twelve hours is a relaxing day for him. When he isn’t in church, it’s one radio interview after another, as well as the odd television appearance. His blog. His podcasts. Anything he can do to raise the profile of Christianity for a modern audience, he throws himself into it with a passion you wouldn’t believe.’
‘He’s a hard-working guy,’ Ben said through a mouthful of egg.
‘You have no idea, Ben. Gone are the days when a vicar only had his own cosy little corner to tend to. The C of E is so strapped for cash, old vicars being pensioned off all over the place and a shortage of new recruits, that Simeon now has three churches to look after, and he’s constantly zapping about from one to the other. Some of his colleagues have even more, but none of them has managed to boost attendance the way he has. He’s amazing. How he still finds the time to research his book is beyond me.’
‘What’s he writing about?’ Ben asked as he helped to clear up the breakfast dishes.
‘I only know the title,’ Michaela said, piling plates in the cupboard. ‘And then only because Simeon accidentally left the draft title page lying on his desk one day. He’s calling it The Sacred Sword.’
‘Interesting,’ Ben said.
‘And more than a little mysterious,’ Michaela added wryly. ‘He never stopped prattling on about his first two books while he was working on them. I could almost have written them myself, he told me so much. But this one … let’s just say he’s being extremely secretive. He’s taken to locking his study door when he’s not around. Even bought a safe to keep his notes in. And that time he accidentally left the printout lying around, he burned it afterwards. I don’t think he’s printed off a page of it since.’
‘Maybe he thinks he’s onto a hot bestseller,’ Ben said.
‘It’s not just the book. He spends hours on the phone to people all over the world, then refuses to tell me what it was about. Even when he went to America to meet some “expert” he wouldn’t tell me why, or who the man was, not even his name. I think it was him who phoned last night, in the wee small hours. I didn’t bother asking Simeon about it this morning, although he seemed very preoccupied and I can only assume it was to do with the phone call. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he’ll tell me one day, when he’s ready to.’
Michaela went quiet and looked pensive for a while as they finished clearing up. She glanced out of the window and forced a smile. ‘Shame to be stuck indoors when it’s a lovely day outside. Would you like to go for a walk?’
Ben said he would love to. They stepped out into the crisp sunny winter’s morning and walked down the long, sloping garden with Scruffy running rings around them, a stick in his mouth. Ben was wearing a pair of Simeon’s wellingtons that crunched on the frosty grass.
‘Isn’t the air wonderful?’ Michaela said. ‘Maybe we’re in for a nice, cold, dry spell, after all the rain we’ve had. I’m praying for a white Christmas.’
‘That would be nice,’ Ben said, a little insincerely. Snow mainly just meant a big clearing headache for him.
A gate at the bottom of the garden led to a little patch of woods. Crows cawed in the cold air. The sunlight sparkled on the fast-flowing river through the gaps in the trees.
Ben pointed at the dog, who was running on ahead of them with a world of rabbits to flush out and chase. ‘I like him.’
Michaela seemed pleased. ‘He’s a real character, isn’t he? Turned up here out of the blue, about a year ago. No telling where he came from or who his former owners were. We took him in. I think he’s about three or four. I love him to bits.’
Michaela threw the stick for the dog a few times, and Ben watched her, noticing the way that her look of contentment had faded to a frown as they walked on.
‘You know, I’m really worried about Simeon,’ she said suddenly. ‘He’s got so much on his mind, and sometimes I’m afraid he’s going to burn himself out or make himself ill. He works far too hard, and what with all the quarrelling between him and Jude, not to mention this awful business with Fabrice Lalique …’
‘The man who committed suicide?’
She nodded. ‘He was a Catholic priest. Simeon met him a couple of years ago in France while visiting a church restoration project, and they became friends.’ She shook her head. ‘I still can’t believe it. What a shock. And the worst of it are the revelations that came afterwards.’
‘Revelations?’
‘A day or two after his death, his home was raided by police, acting on a tip-off. They seized his computer and found … how can I put it?’ Michaela paused uncomfortably. ‘Certain material. Very unpleasant and explicit material. Pictures of children. You can guess what kind of pictures I’m talking about.’
‘I can guess,’ Ben said, with a stab of revulsion.
‘It was the reason he killed himself,’ Michaela said. ‘Out of guilt, or shame, or perhaps just because he knew what would happen if he was caught. Before he did it, he sent an email to everyone he knew, confessing his sins and asking for forgiveness. Then he threw himself off the highest bridge in France.’
‘That’ll certainly do it,’ Ben said, without the least trace of pity in his voice.
Michaela turned towards him, shading her eyes from the low sun with her hand. ‘Do you think it’s possible to forgive someone for something so horrible, even if they’ve repented? I struggle with that, I have to admit.’
Ben paused. He thought of paedophiles he’d blown away at point-blank range with a shotgun. Come to think of it, he’d never stopped to ask them if they’d repented. With a sawn-off pointed at them, they probably would have dropped to their knees and started chanting the Lord’s Prayer if they’d thought it could help. It probably wouldn’t have.
‘Did you know this Lalique well?’ he asked her.
‘Never met him. Simeon was in touch with him a lot over the last year or so, something to do with the book, I think. I don’t really know.’ She tried to smile. ‘Let’s not talk about this any more. It’s so good to see you again, Ben. Isn’t it strange, the two of us walking along together, after all these years?’
‘It’s certainly been a long time,’ he said.
‘We were so young then, weren’t we?’
‘Nineteen.’
She chuckled. ‘You were wild then.’
Memories of college days flashed through Ben’s mind. Most of them were unwanted: hazy and unpleasant recollections of drinking and recklessness. Picking, then winning fights with town toughs in pubs. Throwing a TV from a window. Skipping classes, generally acting crazy. A lot of things he’d done that he’d rather forget.
‘That was a difficult time,’ he said.
‘You never talked about your troubles.’
He still didn’t talk about them now. ‘I’m sorry if I hurt you,’ he said.
‘I really loved you,’ she answered after a beat, glancing at him. ‘But I knew you didn’t feel the same way about me. How long did we last together? Seven weeks? Six? If that?’
‘You ended up with a much better man.’
Michaela made no reply. They walked on a while through the trees, dead leaves crunching underfoot, the dog racing on ahead of them. ‘I remember the first time I took you to meet my parents,’ Michaela said after a few moments’ silence.
‘The one and only time,’ Ben said, casting his mind far back to a hot summer’s afternoon in Surrey. ‘The posh garden party.’
Michaela chuckled. ‘They still talk about it. You completely scandalised everyone. You must have drunk a gallon of whisky that day. And that was even before you’d started arguing politics with my father.’
Ben rolled his eyes, wishing she’d stop it. ‘Please.’
‘As for my cousin Eddie, I think you traumatised him for life.’
Ben hadn’t forgotten that one either. The instant dislike he’d taken to Eddie had been shared by Michaela’s Pekingese, Hamlet. Nobody but Ben had seen Eddie slip Hamlet a sly kick to the head when he thought no-one was watching. Moments later, Eddie had been taking an unplanned nose-dive, fully clothed, into the deep end of the swimming pool in front of eighty guests. The real fun began when it transpired that Eddie couldn’t swim. Four more guests had suffered a dunking before Eddie could be rescued. At that point, the party had been more or less ruined.
‘You dumped me soon afterwards,’ Ben said.
‘I was awful to you.’
‘No, you were right. I was bad medicine. I’m sure your family approved of Simeon slightly more than they did me.’
‘Mum and Dad positively idolise him. But we don’t see so much of them now that they’ve moved to Antigua. Couldn’t stand the British weather any more.’ She started laughing.
‘What’s funny?’
‘I just remembered another time. That night in Oxford when you took on that gang of bikers up Cowley Road? Lord, there must have been eight of them. I can still recall how they scattered in all directions.’
Ben remembered. It had been more like ten. He and Michaela had been walking past when one of them had made a lewd comment about her. ‘Are you done tormenting me?’ he said.
They walked up a grassy slope to higher ground, where the winding country road to Little Denton was visible through the line of naked beech trees that skirted the meadow.
‘So after Oxford you just upped and joined the army?’ Michaela asked.
‘Pretty much,’ Ben said. ‘Thirteen years’ service.’
‘Has there been anyone … since Leigh?’
‘Yes,’ he ventured. ‘There is someone. Or was. I don’t have much talent in that department. Perhaps it’s fate or something.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. Touched his arm. ‘You’re a better man than you realise, Ben Hope. You always were.’
‘Sometimes I’ve thought that I went off in completely the wrong direction,’ Ben confessed. ‘When I look at Simeon, and the life the two of you have here …’
‘You’d have been great in the church. Once you’d settled down a bit.’
‘There’s the rub,’ he laughed.
‘It’s never too late.’
‘I already tried once, a while back. To go back and finish my studies.’
‘Really?’
‘It didn’t work out,’ he said. He didn’t want to say any more, and decided to change the subject radically. ‘It’s a shame I won’t get to meet your son Jude.’
Michaela shrugged. ‘Some other time, I’m sure you will.’
‘Was it a very serious quarrel? Between him and Simeon?’
‘I suppose it’s just typical family stuff,’ she said. ‘Jude would rebel against his own shadow. Always full of his own ideas about what he wants to do with his life. It’ll all come right in the end, I’m sure. Oh, I think I hear the car.’
Ben had heard it too, and spotted the sleek crimson shape of the Lotus darting along beyond the trees in the distance, returning home.
‘Let’s walk up to the house and meet him,’ Michaela said.
Back at the vicarage, Ben thought that Simeon looked even more grim and strained than the night before, although he was obviously struggling hard not to show it as he sipped his coffee and gave Ben the rundown on that morning’s radio interview on the topic ‘Is there still room for Jesus in the Facebook Age?’
‘My secret admirer popped up again during the phone-in at the end,’ Simeon said to Michaela. ‘As charming as ever. Called me a filthy cockroach and said I’d rot with all the others.’
‘I can’t understand why they allow that kind of thing on air,’ Michaela sniffed. ‘“Filthy cockroach”. That’s disgusting.’
‘Do you get a lot of that?’ Ben asked.
‘Oh, I have many enemies,’ Simeon told him. He was smiling, but Ben thought he could see something behind the smile, an edge of seriousness.
Michaela was obviously keen to change the subject. ‘Ben’s car still isn’t working properly,’ she said, topping up their coffees. ‘Darling, do you think Bertie would have a look at it?’ She turned to Ben and explained, ‘He’s the local mechanic, in Greater Denton, just a few minutes’ drive away.’
‘Marvellous idea,’ Simeon said. ‘Bertie will have the old girl right as rain in no time. Sorted out the carbs on the Lotus. And he’s cheap as chips.’
‘Why don’t you call him now?’ Michaela said. ‘If he’s fixed it by this evening, we can pick it up on the way.’
‘On the way where?’ Simeon asked.
‘I thought we could have dinner at the Old Windmill tonight, as we have a special guest.’
‘There’s no need …’ Ben began.
‘Sounds like a fine plan to me,’ Simeon said. ‘I’ll phone Bertie now.’
Chapter Seven
Simeon led the way in the Lotus and Ben followed in the ailing, badly misfiring Land Rover. Simeon had to keep slowing down to let him catch up as they wound their way along the twisty country lanes towards Greater Denton.
Bertie the mechanic, whose garage was a converted stable block on the edge of the village, was one of those work-hardened little guys who looked as if they’d been twisted and hammered together out of wire and leather. Ben got the impression that the grizzled old mechanic would have done anything for Simeon. No sooner had Ben described Le Crock’s symptoms, than Bertie grabbed a toolbox and plunged his head and shoulders under the scarred green bonnet lid, apparently set on not re-emerging until he’d cured the problem, if it took him all day and night.
Simeon seemed edgy as he drove fast back towards Little Denton. Rocketing up the long, straight hill a mile before the village, the car almost took off over the crest and went plummeting down the straight and hard into the set of S-bends at the bottom before roaring over the little stone humpbacked bridge, barely wide enough for one and a half cars, that arched across the swollen, fast-moving river.
Ben could tell his old friend was building up to saying something but having difficulty framing his words. Simeon wet his lips and spoke hesitantly over the engine noise. ‘Ben, there’s something I wanted to … Oh, never mind.’
‘What?’
Simeon let out a long breath. ‘The fact is, it wasn’t completely coincidental. Our turning up at the concert, I mean. In fact, opera’s not my favourite thing at all.’ He paused. ‘The point is, Ben, I knew you’d be there. I saw your name in the paper and I deliberately came to see you, for a reason that I haven’t discussed with Michaela. She doesn’t know anything about this, and I’d like to keep it that way.’
‘I understand,’ Ben said, and waited for more.
‘I’ve often wondered what you were up to all this time,’ Simeon said. ‘It seemed like you’d vanished without a trace. Now and again Michaela and I tried to look you up, to no avail. Then a few months ago, I found you on the internet and saw what it is you do now. You help people.’
‘What I do is very specific,’ Ben said. ‘Le Val is a tactical training facility.’
‘For bodyguards? That sort of thing?’
‘That sort of thing,’ Ben said. ‘Not exactly.’
‘So, when people have a problem – when they’re under threat, or when they feel they might be in danger, there are ways they can protect themselves. Aren’t there? And that’s the kind of line you’re in? Providing advice, or services of a sort … you can tell I don’t know a lot about this stuff.’
‘Get to the point, Simeon. What are you trying to say?’
They were coming into Little Denton. Simeon sighed. ‘I need help, Ben. At least, I think I do. I’m not sure what’s happening, but I’m frightened. Not so much for myself, but for Michaela and Jude. If anything happened to them—’
‘Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?’ Ben said.
‘I hardly know where to begin,’ Simeon replied. ‘I’ve been working on something, an important project. Well, actually, it’s more than just important. It’s huge. It’s terrifyingly huge.’ Simeon shook his head, as if bewildered by just how huge it was.
‘To do with your book?’ Ben asked.
Simeon glanced at him in surprise.
‘Michaela told me you were working on a new one,’ Ben said. ‘And that you’ve been keeping a lot to yourself. She’s worried about you.’
Simeon hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes, it’s very much the subject of the book. I’ve been working on this day and night for … or should I say, we’ve been working on it. It’s not just me that’s involved.’
The vicarage gates were coming up on the right. Simeon turned in and rasped the Lotus over the gravel. He pulled up, killed the engine and turned to Ben. ‘Something awful happened recently,’ he said anxiously. ‘Something absolutely dreadful, and completely baffling. I mean, when you know someone so well, or at least think you know them, and then you hear they’ve done something that’s just so totally, so horrifyingly out of character that you just can’t …’
Ben understood that Simeon was talking about the priest who’d killed himself. ‘Go on.’
Simeon’s jaw tightened. ‘Two weeks ago …’ he started. But Michaela’s voice from the house interrupted him, and they both turned to see her trotting down the front steps and across the gravel with the landline phone in her hand. ‘Yes, in fact he’s just got back this moment. I’ll pass him to you, archdeacon.’
‘Hell and buggery,’ Simeon groaned under his breath, and climbed out of the car to take the phone. To Ben he said, ‘We’ll talk later.’ Then, pressing the phone to his ear, ‘Dr Grant! What a pleasure to hear from you.’
Michaela took Ben’s arm. ‘Come on. He’ll be on the phone for ever with that one. Come inside. I have something for you.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a surprise.’
Inside the warmth of the living room, she signalled to him to wait, then trotted upstairs and returned a moment later holding a small gift-wrapped package tied up with a ribbon. ‘Merry Christmas, Ben.’
‘You shouldn’t have,’ he said, taking the package, embarrassed that he hadn’t anything to offer the Arundels in return. ‘Am I allowed to open it?’
‘No!’ Michaela said quickly, reaching out abruptly to stop him tearing open the wrapping – then relaxed and smiled. ‘Not now. You have to promise me that you won’t peek until you’re back in France. Then you can open it and think of us.’
‘I promise,’ Ben said, wondering what it was. Through the Christmas paper it felt like a small hardback book, not much bigger than a diary.
‘Solemnly? You won’t be tempted?’
‘Get me a Bible,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll swear on it. Or maybe it is a Bible?’
‘No,’ Michaela said softly. ‘It isn’t a Bible.’ Her expression was a strange blend of relief and apprehension. She was quiet for a few moments, then said something about needing to check something upstairs, and disappeared.
Simeon was still on the phone to the archdeacon. Left to his own devices Ben went to the annexe to put Michaela’s present away safely in his bag, then wandered outside to the woodshed to gather some logs for the living room fire, which he’d noticed was getting low. The firewood was neatly stacked along the shed wall near the door, a heavy log-splitting axe and a small hatchet resting against the chopping block. He hefted a piece of well-seasoned oak onto the block, grabbed the axe, and with a downward swing cracked the log neatly in two. He set the split pieces aside and grabbed another log. His breath billowed in clouds as he worked.
He felt something nudge his leg, and turned to see what it was. ‘Hey there, Scruffy,’ he said as the dog nuzzled against him, and stroked the coarse fur of his head. The dog wasn’t the prettiest of creatures – the bull neck and alligator snout of a Staffordshire mixed up with the wiry, untameable coat of a Border Terrier – but there was a look of calm intelligence in those wide-set eyes. Criminal or saint: Ben wasn’t too sure which he was.
‘You like being a vicar’s dog?’ Ben said.
Scruffy cocked his head and looked at him curiously, then went off to settle on the floor a few yards away and gnaw contentedly at a piece of wood. If only life could be that simple for humans, Ben thought.
Going on chopping, Ben heard Simeon’s voice from inside the vicarage, calling up the stairs to Michaela that he had to rush out to attend to a church matter. Moments later, the Lotus was roaring off into the distance.
Ben added two more split logs to his growing pile and wondered how it could be that Simeon Arundel – this vicar whom everyone seemed to admire and respect, living this cosy life out here in the tranquillity of the English countryside, writing books on religion and running his churches – was talking about being in danger. It seemed so incongruous and bizarre. The way Ben saw it, Simeon was the last person on earth anyone would want to harm.
He suddenly had the feeling he was being watched. He glanced up from the chopping block and through the open door of the barn, just in time to spot Michaela backing away from an upstairs window of the vicarage. In the split second their eyes met, Ben could see the odd look on her face.
Why had she been watching him? He kept seeing her strange expression in his mind as he tossed the split logs into a sack and headed outside. With the dog trotting behind him he lugged the logs inside the house to stack beside the living room fireplace.
As the fire revived, Ben sat with the dog and watched the flames, wondering what secrets were being harboured behind the idyllic face of Arundel family life. Something was going on, and he had the feeling it somehow involved him.
‘It’s all a bit of a puzzle, isn’t it, Scruff?’ he said softly, turning to the dog.
Scruffy licked Ben’s hand. Whatever he knew about it, he was keeping to himself.
Chapter Eight
The road was long and dark as Wesley Holland threaded his way slowly eastwards across New York State to the beat of his windscreen wipers and the steady flurry of snowflakes in his headlights. The snow had thickened so badly shortly after Oneida in Madison County that he’d thought his route might become impassable – but the snow patrols were fighting to keep the roads open in what was turning out to be one of the toughest winters in years.
He kept driving doggedly on, stopping for gas about an hour beyond Schenectady, at the snowy feet of the Appalachian Mountains. He was still suffering from shock, grief-stricken and freezing and exhausted. It was over five hundred miles to his destination; in this weather it seemed like five thousand. No way for a billionaire to be travelling.
Yet there was no way Wesley Holland was stepping on a plane, either. Even if the conditions had been more clement, the fact that all three of his private jets and all eight of his helicopters were registered to him made it far too easy for whoever was after the sword to track his movements. And after a near crash coming into Taipei in 1996, he’d vowed never to set foot on a commercial airliner again. No, by road was the only way. Nobody could track him or find him out here. Nobody in the world except for Simeon Arundel knew about Martha’s. The sword would be safe there.
In the meantime, there it was, locked in its case behind him on the back seat of the car. One of the most important artefacts in history. Perhaps the most important.
Wesley Holland wasn’t a religious animal. Try as he might, he found it impossible to share the fervent spiritual passion that drove men like Simeon Arundel. There were times when it irked him, but more often he found himself actually envying it, feeling excluded and annoyed at himself for being incapable of fully experiencing something that seemed to be able to offer such fulfilment to people who opened themselves to it. He still remembered the light in Simeon’s eyes, and those of Fabrice Lalique, that day in France when he’d first told them about his amazing historical find. But even an agnostic like Wesley couldn’t escape the skin-tingling excitement of such a monumental discovery.
The three had met during the repair of a badly deteriorating medieval church near Millau, which Wesley had been funding entirely out of his own pocket. The contractors he’d hired for the job were an up-and-coming Parisian firm reputed to be the best in the business; Wesley had been there to check out their work. So had a young English minister named Simeon Arundel, recently come into some funds of his own and intent on learning all he could about church restoration. Also keeping a watchful eye on the long-needed project had been the local priest in Millau, Fabrice Lalique.
An American, an Englishman and a Frenchman. It could have been the opening of a joke, but instead it became the start of a friendship. One night over dinner and a very expensive bottle of wine provided by Wesley, he’d decided he trusted the pair of clergymen enough to tell them the secret he’d been yearning to share with someone who could truly understand it, appreciate it, and most of all, keep quiet about it. Their initial reaction on hearing of his discovery had been one of stunned disbelief, just as his had been at first. But when he’d shown them the evidence, their scepticism had turned to fascination, then to wonderment and awe.
Simeon had been speechless at the way his life had just changed.
‘But we ought to tell people about this,’ Fabrice had argued.
‘Be patient,’ Wesley had urged him. ‘The time will come.’
Wesley still believed it would, even after nearly three years of maddening dealings with experts who wouldn’t pull their heads out of their asses and realise what they were being shown. For the first time, though, his excitement was now tempered with doubts. People were dying. Was it all worth it?
Yes, it was, he decided as he drove. If Fabrice had died protecting the secret, and if Coleman and the others had died because of it, then Wesley was damn well going to make sure these thugs, whoever they were, didn’t get their hands on it. Once he arrived at his destination, he was going to hire an army of the toughest bodyguards money could buy.
Let the sons of bitches come find him then. Let them try.
The red of dawn was burning through the snowclouds by the time Wesley realised he couldn’t go on any more without a rest. If he didn’t stop awhile, he was going to drift off at the wheel and crash the car. His tense shoulders sagged with relief when he saw the motel sign a few miles on that said ‘VACANCY’S’. ‘Thank God,’ he mumbled.
Wesley pulled into the car park between the shabby, snow-covered wooden buildings. The only other car in sight was an ancient Ford Explorer with jacked-up suspension. He climbed stiffly out of the Chrysler, grabbed the case from the back seat and dragged his heels through the snow over to the dirty glass doors that led into the gloomy reception area.
At the far end of the lobby was a corner desk, and behind that was an unshaven guy in a John Deere baseball cap who stared at Wesley’s American Express Platinum card as if it was the only one he’d ever see, then shrugged and shoved it in the card machine. ‘Room twelve,’ he said, sliding a key across the counter.
Wesley staggered to Room 12 with his only item of luggage. As he might have expected, the place was a shithole, but at that moment he’d gladly have lain down to rest inside a sewer pipe. He locked his door, laid the case down, made straight for the bed and collapsed on it without even taking off his coat or shoes. Within seconds of his face touching the stained pillow, his utter exhaustion carried him off to sleep.
When Wesley awoke he was shivering with cold and feeling clammy from sleeping in his clothes. His back ached from the worn-out mattress and the car key in his pocket felt like it had dug a hole in his leg. Panic gripped him. The case! He twisted round to see.
Still there. He could breathe again.
His fifty thousand-dollar gold watch told him he’d been asleep for a little over four hours. That was all the sleep he needed nowadays, at his age. He’d drink a cup or two of hot coffee to revive and warm him, then hit the road again. With any luck he’d make it all the way to Martha’s with just one more stop for gas.
The price of the motel room didn’t appear to include any coffee-making facilities. Wesley trudged outside into the cold, taking the case with him and locking his door behind him. More snow had fallen overnight, a two-inch blanket of it lying over the roof and bonnet of his car. The Ford Explorer was gone; in its place a little Honda. There were no other cars in the place. Popular joint, he thought to himself as he headed along the covered walkway towards the reception lobby to find out if they had such things as coffee in these parts.
The unshaven guy had clocked off his shift and been replaced by a crab-faced young woman who was sitting hunched over a magazine at the desk, gazing at fashion pictures of girls eighty pounds lighter than her and listening to scratchy rock music on a tiny electronic device manufactured by one of Wesley’s companies. At her fat elbow was a Honda ignition key attached to a pink plastic fob that said ‘Kat’. When Wesley enquired about getting a coffee, she gaped at him for a moment as if he’d asked for champagne and oysters, then motioned laconically through a doorway on the far side of the reception lobby and informed him that there was a coffee machine down the hall.
Wesley had trouble first finding the coffee machine, then more trouble getting it to work. After several attempts and a few thumps he persuaded it to accept the loose change he fed into it, and finally the machine sputtered something dark and steaming into the Styrofoam cup he offered to it. He managed to overfill his cup, and had to carry it carefully to avoid spilling any over his thousand-dollar handmade shoes.
On his way back through the reception lobby, coffee scalding one hand, the case weighing down the other, he threw a glance at Kat behind the desk a few yards away. She hadn’t moved a millimetre and looked as if she’d been ladled into her chair, a big round flaccid lump of flesh. ‘Hey, thanks,’ he called across to her, with a touch of sarcasm. She didn’t look up from her magazine.
‘Great service in this place,’ he said. Still no response. He shook his head and awkwardly tugged open the glass door with the hand holding the coffee, wincing as more of it sploshed out onto his fingers. Billionaires shouldn’t have such problems.
As he approached his room, Wesley suddenly stopped. The door was lying six inches open.
Hold on. Didn’t I just lock that?
Maybe someone had come in to clean the room, he thought. It sure needed it. Wesley peered in through the gap in the door and saw a movement inside. It was a man, and he didn’t look like a cleaner. He was a big man wearing a coat of heavy tan leather.
Wesley froze.
The man in the leather coat had his back to the door. Wesley heard him say something indistinct to another man in the room with him. Then he turned a few inches to his left, and Wesley could see the unemotional expression on his face, and the boxy black automatic pistol in his hand with a long cylindrical silencer.
Wesley drew back from the door, stifling a gasp. With what felt like a heart attack coming on he retreated back along the covered walkway towards the reception lobby. The men only had to glance through the open door of his room and they’d spot him.
By some miracle, they didn’t. Wesley vowed to start believing in God. He burst through the glass doors into the reception lobby.
Kat was still sitting at the desk, slumped over her magazine. ‘Call the police,’ he rasped at her. ‘There are—’ The words died in his mouth. He recoiled in horror.
Kat remained immobile. The only movement from her was the steady drip-drip from the bright pool of blood that had now spread across the desk, soaking the magazine in front of her and splashing to the floor.
The coffee cup slipped out of Wesley’s hand and exploded across his shoes. ‘Oh, my God.’ He had to get out of here. Grasping the handle of the case in a death grip, he dug his car key out of his pocket, scurried back to the doors and peered through the grimy glass into the yard. The snow-covered Chrysler sat halfway between the reception and the door of his room. He could see no other vehicle apart from Kat’s Honda. The killers must have left theirs somewhere around the back.
Would he make it to his car and get it started up before the men spotted him? They’d hear the sound of the engine, but maybe he’d manage to drive away before they could stop him.
They had guns. Their bullets could punch through steel and glass as he drove off.
But he had to get away. He pressed his free hand to the door. Here goes.
He was just about to push it open when the man in the tan leather coat suddenly emerged from Room 12 and started striding quickly and purposefully across the snowy car park towards the reception lobby. He had the gun at his side.
Wesley backed away from the doors. He didn’t think the man could see him through the dirty glass, but he’d be here any moment.
Wesley ran back towards the reception desk, just managing to avoid the pool of blood. The other side of the desk was a door marked PRIVATE. Kat’s arm was draped across the folding hatch. Wanting to throw up at the touch of her dead flesh, he nudged her arm aside and then pressed through the hatch and burst through the door, closing it behind him with jittery haste before the man in the brown coat stepped into the lobby.
He found himself in a poky office. Its cobwebbed sash window overlooked a backyard littered with snow-covered garbage bags and pieces of broken furniture. Beyond a ramshackle fence he could see the highway snaking away into the distance. He threw open the window, clambered up on a chair and shoved the case through the gap before scrambling through after it. He landed painfully on the snowy concrete the other side, snatched the case up and kept moving as fast as he could. His heart was in his mouth as he staggered through the backyard to the fence, fully expecting the muffled clap of a silenced pistol behind him and a bullet burning a hole in his flesh.
But no bullet came. Wesley managed to drag himself and the case over the fence and belted across the snow towards the highway. Twice he slipped and fell as he scrambled over the piles of dirty slush at the side of the road, glancing in terror over his shoulder. His breath was coming in wheezing gasps now as he stumbled on. For the first time since the invention of the mobile telephone, he wished he had one so that he could call for help.
He couldn’t run much further. Any second now, the killers would cotton on to his escape. They’d get in their vehicle and come after him. Bundle him in at gunpoint, and it would all be over.
The deep bellow of air horns blasted his terror away. He whirled around at the edge of the road and saw the massive grille of an eighteen-wheeler truck looming over him as it slowed down with a sharp hiss from its airbrakes. Wesley threw down the case, waved his arms frantically and stuck out his thumb. ‘Help me,’ he wheezed. ‘Help.’
The driver beamed a gap-toothed grin down at him from the cab.
‘You lookin’ for a ride, old timer? Then climb aboard.’
Chapter Nine
By the time Simeon was back from his church business, darkness had fallen and it was nearly time to set off for the evening meal at the Old Windmill. The three of them were in the vicarage’s hallway, on the verge of heading outside to the Lotus, when the phone rang.
‘It had better not be the bloody archdeacon again,’ Simeon said, picking up. ‘Oh, it’s you, Bertie … really? Gosh, that didn’t take you long … Yes, he’ll be delighted. We can come and pick it up right away.’
They definitely didn’t make them like Bertie any more. Ben couldn’t believe the difference in the Land Rover as he followed the Lotus’s taillights along the three miles of winding roads from the garage to the restaurant. The old mechanic had retuned Le Crock’s radio to a local station. Ben half-listened as he drove; then the entrance of the Old Windmill appeared through the trees and Ben parked beside the Lotus in the floodlit car park.
The place was aptly named. The ancient stone windmill itself stood silhouetted against the starry sky, while the restaurant was a modern building with large windows overlooking the surrounding woodland. Ben’s hosts led him inside, into the bar area where a smiling waitress greeted them with ‘Hello, Vicar; hello, Mrs Arundel,’ and led them through a doorless archway into the busy restaurant area. The place was decked out in colourful Christmas lights and glittery decorations, with an enormous tree in one corner. The dozen or so tables were cosily laid with rustic chequered tablecloths. Bing Crosby’s version of Hark, the Herald Angels Sing was playing over the speakers on the walls.
‘Good thing I booked in advance,’ Michaela said over the buzz of chatter. ‘Think we must have got the last table.’
‘Damn,’ Simeon muttered suddenly, patting his pockets. ‘I think I left my mobile in my other trousers.’
‘Well, I don’t think you’ll be needing it tonight, darling,’ Michaela said, with a discreet roll of the eyes to Ben, as if to say, ‘See what I mean?’
As the three of them crossed the restaurant, there was a chorus of ‘Hello, Vicar’ from a group of middle-aged women clustered around a heavily drinks-laden table in the corner near the archway. Simeon waved back at them. ‘The ladies’ badminton club,’ he whispered to Ben.
‘My husband is a big hit with them,’ Michaela said. ‘Especially with Petra Norrington.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘It’s true. She adores and venerates you. Thinks you’re gorgeous. Look at her eyeing you from behind her wineglass. Like a peroxide spider.’
‘Nonsense,’ Simeon said.
They took their seats at the table. Ben had his back to the archway and the bar area beyond it. To his right, a broad expanse of window overlooked the car park and the woods in the background.
The waitress took their orders for drinks. Michaela wanted white wine, Ben asked for a medium glass of house red. ‘No wine for me,’ Simeon said. ‘I’m afraid I might have a migraine coming on if I touch alcohol tonight.’
‘Again?’ Michaela frowned.
They ordered dinner – roast duck for Ben, on Simeon’s recommendation. Michaela went for poached salmon steak. Service was efficient, and the food was excellent. As they ate, occasional peals of laughter erupted from the ladies’ badminton club table behind Ben. Simeon sipped his mineral water and looked pensive while Michaela reaffirmed her complete conviction that they were in for a white Christmas.
Ben wondered what it was Simeon had wanted to tell him earlier. He was sure he’d get to hear it later, back at the vicarage that evening over a glass of whisky or two.
They’d finished their main courses and were into their desserts (plum duff for Simeon, sticky toffee pudding for Michaela, while Ben opted for some cheese and crackers to go with the last of his wine) when out of the corner of his eye Ben noticed a dark BMW come rolling in across the car park, its headlights sweeping the windows. The BMW parked across from the Lotus and Le Crock. The driver’s door opened. A tall figure of a man climbed out and made his way towards the building and into the bar area. By then, Ben had already forgotten about him, and went on listening to Simeon talking about the planned new satellite TV series that he’d been offered the job of hosting.
‘He’s being too modest again,’ Michaela said. ‘It’s quite a big thing. The television company are investing millions in it and it’s such an honour that they picked Simeon to present it.’ She reached across the table and clasped his hand.
‘As long as it helps to spread the word, that’s all I care about,’ Simeon said. ‘I’m not interested in the money. Every penny of it’ll go the same way as the money my father left me, helping to restore old churches. So many of them are being left to rot these days.’
‘Until they get turned into McDonalds drive-throughs,’ Michaela snorted. ‘Sign of the times. You know I had to scour the whole of Oxford just to find a set of Nativity Christmas stamps? All I could find anywhere were jolly snowmen and reindeer and cards saying “Happy Holidays”. It’s the rise of the militant atheists, I’m telling you. They want to secularise the whole world.’
‘Well, maybe we can help to turn the tide,’ Simeon said. ‘The television series will be a big step forward, that’s for sure.’
‘When do you start filming?’ Ben asked.
‘Middle of February. The producers are still wrangling over a name for it.’
‘I think Christianity Today sounds pat,’ Michaela said. ‘What do you think?’ she asked Ben.
Before Ben could offer any suggestion, he was distracted by a camera flash that lit up the room. One of the badminton club ladies, the skinny-looking woman with the leathery fake tan and pearls who’d been ogling Simeon earlier, had stood up to take snaps of the party group. ‘Smile!’ she called out over the din.
‘Oh, no,’ Michaela muttered as the woman swayed up to them, camera in hand. ‘Here she comes. Hi, Petra.’
Petra Norrington’s eyes sparkled as she approached the table and sidled up to Simeon. Ben saw Michaela’s face darken.
‘That’s a beautiful dress, Michaela,’ Petra said, her glance still lingering more on Simeon, before shooting discreetly across at Ben. Ben looked away and smiled to himself.
‘Thank you,’ Michaela said, just a little coolly. She introduced Ben as an old friend. Petra’s eyes sparkled some more.
‘And where’s that handsome young devil of a son of yours? Coming home for Christmas?’
‘He’s in Cornwall, with his friend Robbie,’ Michaela said.
‘Oh,’ Petra said, with a look of disdain. ‘That place.’
Simeon looked at Michaela and cocked an eyebrow. ‘I thought he was coming straight home from New Zealand.’
‘I told you he had other plans, darling,’ Michaela reminded him patiently.
‘Cornwall? Back to that derelict old farm? What’s he want to go there for?’
‘Don’t exaggerate,’ Michaela said. ‘It’s just a bit run down, and he enjoys being there with his friends.’
Simeon gave a disapproving grunt.
‘Can I take a pic of you all?’ Petra broke in, brandishing her camera like a gun. ‘It’s for the club’s Christmas album.’
‘If you absolutely must,’ Michaela said coolly.
Ben wasn’t too fond of having his picture taken.
‘Say cheese!’ Petra’s camera flashed. She looked at her watch, pulled a face and excused herself, explaining that she had to get home for some reason to do with someone called Billy. There was a brief round of goodbyes and ‘nice to meet you’ and ‘have a wonderful Christmas if we don’t see each other before’, and then Petra blew kisses at the badminton ladies and breezed out of the restaurant towards her top-of-the-range Volvo estate.
‘I suppose we should be thinking about getting home ourselves,’ Simeon said, and called for the bill.
‘It’s on me,’ Ben said, taking out his wallet.
‘Absolutely not.’
‘It’s the least I can do to repay your hospitality.’
They were still arguing about it when they heard a loud crunching impact from outside.
‘Whoops,’ Michaela said, peering out of the window. ‘I think Petra has just pranged her car. Serves the silly bitch right.’
‘Michaela,’ Simeon hissed at her.
Ben looked. The rear of the Volvo estate was hard up against the front end of the dark blue BMW. Bits of broken glass littered on the ground shone under the floodlights.
As Ben watched, Petra clambered out of her Volvo, clapped a hand over her mouth at the sight of the damage, and disappeared back inside. He heard her voice coming from the bar area: ‘Excuse me, is that your BMW outside? I’m so sorry. I think I’ve just reversed into it.’
A man’s voice muttered, ‘It’s OK. It’s nothing.’
‘I’ve broken your left headlight,’ Petra’s voice said, high-pitched with stress. ‘My fault. So stupid of me. I was in a hurry and I just didn’t … but if we could exchange details, I’ll write to my insurers first thing tom—’
‘Forget it,’ the man interrupted. His voice sounded hard and flat.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You heard me. Forget it.’ He sounded angrier this time.
‘I still need to inform them—’ Petra protested.
‘Are you deaf, woman? I said forget it.’
Meanwhile, the waitress had brought the bill over and Ben was laying cash down on the little saucer in her hand and telling her to keep the change. A shocked hush had fallen over the badminton ladies’ table at the argument between the unseen man in the bar and Petra Norrington, who was now skulking back to her Volvo.
‘Wonder what that was all about,’ Michaela said. ‘He sounded like a right nasty piece of work.’
Simeon wished the badminton ladies good night as they left. By the time the three of them were walking back to their cars, the Volvo had gone.
So had the damaged BMW.
Chapter Ten
‘See you back at the vicarage,’ Simeon called as he climbed behind the wheel of the Lotus. Shutting the door he gave Ben a meaningful look, as if to say, ‘We’ll be able to talk more then’.
Ben fired up Le Crock and shivered in the blast of air from its ineffective heater. Snowclouds had drawn a veil across the stars, and frost twinkled on the grass verges in the beams of their headlights as Ben followed Simeon out of the car park. If the temperature dropped another half a degree, the roads would start to get slick with ice.
However sweetly the Land Rover might be running now that Bertie had worked his wonders on it, it was never going to be a racing car. Ben didn’t have much chance of keeping up with the Lotus, especially with the spirited way Simeon drove it, the low-slung taillights dipping out of sight around every bend and continually forcing Ben to accelerate to close the distance between them. Powering up the long incline on the approach to Little Denton, the Land Rover lost momentum and its revs began to get bogged down. Ben changed down a gear, then another, and gently cursed Simeon for his impetuous behaviour.
Up ahead, the Lotus sped exuberantly over the top of the rise and vanished from view. Ben smiled to himself at his friend’s antics. Even despite whatever it was that was so clearly and deeply troubling Simeon, he was able to enjoy life. Ben envied that quality in his old friend.
Ben was nearing the top of the hill when a halo of white light appeared on the horizon ahead of him and then burst into a dazzling flash that made him blink and avert his eyes. In the same instant, the shape of a big saloon car came speeding over the crest of the hill in the opposite direction, its engine note high and strained as if the driver had his foot pinned aggressively to the floor. The car was just barely under control, all four wheels leaving the road as it sped over the top of the rise and went plummeting down the slope Ben had just driven up.
Ben was blinded for a second. He blinked away the sunspots, peering hard through the Land Rover’s windscreen to regain his bearings on the road. In the quarter-second before he’d had to look away from the dazzling headlights, he’d registered something unusual about the speeding car: one of the twin lamps on the saloon car’s left side wasn’t working – three blinding lights where there should have been four. But in the next moment the car was already roaring off, its taillights receding fast in his rear-view mirror.
‘Idiot,’ Ben murmured. He cleared the top of the rise and the Land Rover began to pick up speed on the downward incline. He hadn’t expected to see any sign of the Lotus up ahead, and wasn’t surprised by the sight of the empty road. Simeon had obviously cleared the S-bends at the bottom of the hill and was probably almost into the outskirts of the village by now.
Not wanting to throw an ageing Land Rover into the bends with quite so much aplomb, Ben took the corners gently and slowed for the little stone bridge over the river.
Then he saw the black skidmarks that criss-crossed the road like rubber snakes.
And the gaping hole where the side of the little stone bridge should have been.
Ben slammed on the brakes and the Land Rover slewed to a halt at the entrance to the bridge. His heart was hammering, his instincts telling him the worst as he leaped down out of the car and sprinted towards the jagged gap in the stonework.
A strangled cry burst out of him as he looked down at the fast-moving water below.
The frosty riverbank was littered with broken stone and wreckage. The tail end of the Lotus was sticking up out of the river, the rapid current washing over the roof. The car’s headlights were still on, casting a glow under the surface of the water. Ben could see nothing of its two occupants.
The silence was stark and terrible, like a shroud that muted the whole atmosphere around him. Ben had known it many times before. It was the stillness that accompanied the presence of death.
He tore off his leather jacket, kicked off his shoes and dived without hesitation off the side of the wrecked bridge. The shock of the icy-cold water was stunning, heart-stopping, and the powerful current threatened to carry him away downstream. Pressure roared in his ears as he kicked out and swam for all he was worth towards the submerged vehicle. The Lotus’ wedge-shaped nose was buried in rocks and dirt, completely destroyed by the impact. Where the crumpled bonnet joined the bodywork of the car, the windscreen was an opaque mass of fissures. Ben could only just make out the shapes of Simeon and Michaela, behind the glass, still strapped into their seats. He could see no sign of movement from inside. Bubbles streamed from his mouth as he called their names.
Then the Lotus’ lights dimmed and went dark as the water fused the battery terminals. The depths of the river were plunged into darkness. Ben fought a surge of panic that gripped him and made his heart race. He groped his way blindly around the side of the car and yanked at the driver’s side door handle. It wouldn’t budge. Either it was locked, or the pressure inside the car still hadn’t equalised. Which meant there was still a pocket of air in the cabin. Ben knew that it could take up to a couple of minutes for a submerged car to fill up completely. There might still be hope for them inside, but seconds were like minutes. Ben could feel the pressure in his lungs mounting fast and his heartbeat escalating with every passing moment as oxygen starvation crept up on him.
Clambering astride the crumpled bonnet he punched at the cracked windscreen. Punched again. He felt no pain, only dimly registered the injury. The weakened glass sagged inwards and gave way in an explosion of air bubbles. Ben shoved both hands through the broken screen and, bracing himself against the bonnet and roof and yanking with all his strength, ripped the whole thing away. His vision was getting accustomed to the murk now, and he could make out the forms of Simeon and Michaela inside the car.
How long had they been under now? Ninety seconds? Two minutes?
His movements clumsy against the strong current, he threw the shattered windscreen away and plunged inside the Lotus.
Ben had seen enough death in his life to recognise it instantly in Michaela. With only the Lotus’ old-fashioned seatbelts for restraint and no airbag to cushion her body, she’d been thrown forward under impact and collided hard against the dashboard. A murky brown cloud swirled around her head where the skull was crushed in.
Simeon was struggling weakly. His eyes flickered open and seemed to catch sight of Ben. The steering wheel had prevented him from flying forwards. It had almost certainly staved in his ribs, but he was still alive. Ben searched furiously for the seatbelt catch. His chest was bursting. His movements were becoming frantic. Don’t panic. Panic means none of you leaves this river alive.
Ben’s fumbling hands found the seatbelt catch and suddenly it was free. He tore it aside and grabbed Simeon by both arms. Bubbles burst out of Ben’s mouth with the effort of hauling his friend over the dashboard and out through the glassless window. With Simeon’s arm around his neck he pushed hard with both legs against the bonnet of the Lotus, trying to propel himself and the dead weight of his semi-conscious friend upwards towards the surface. He saw lights on the water a few feet from his head. The surface was just there, so close, so out of reach. His strength was failing.
Two and a half minutes under. Maybe three. He was going to drown.
Don’t panic.
Where the strength came from for that final desperate lunge for the surface, Ben would never know. A wheezing gasp erupted from his lungs as his head broke the surface. He dimly heard a yell from across the water. Lights and movement on the bridge. People on the bank. He couldn’t understand what they were saying. He paddled hard, keeping a tight hold on Simeon and his head above the surface.
Then, suddenly, there was soft mud under his feet. Reeds prickled his hands and face. With a roar of effort he heaved Simeon’s limp body up onto the bank, where two of the passersby who’d scrambled down from the bridge were waiting with shouts of encouragement. They seized Simeon’s arms and hauled him clear of the water. Ben scrambled up the muddy bank and crouched over his friend, turning him over and letting the river water drain from his lungs. He yelled his name. The two passersby stood back in grim silence.
Simeon’s eyes were shut. His face was white in the lights from the bridge, his wet hair plastered across his brow. Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth and down his cheeks into the mud. More lights were appearing in the distance, a flashing and swirling of blue on the horizon, accompanied by a building chorus of sirens.
Simeon’s pulse was fading. It was barely there at all. Ben knelt helplessly over him, feeling the terrible concavity of his chest where the ribs were crushed inwards and knowing that the emergency chest compressions of cardiopulmonary resuscitation would probably kill him.
Simeon’s eyes opened. For a brief moment, they stared right into Ben’s. His lips pursed and opened, as if he were trying to say something. His hand twitched, then moved upwards to weakly grasp Ben’s arm.
‘Jude …’ Simeon’s voice was a dying whisper. His eyes seemed to be imploring Ben.
Then they closed again.
‘Simeon!’ Ben felt for the pulse once more. This time he could feel nothing at all. He wanted to shake him, slap him, beat him back to life. ‘Simeon!’
The first ambulance had screeched to a halt at the bridge, bathing the scene in a blue swirl, its siren drowning out the shocked murmur of conversation among the growing crowd of bystanders. Paramedics burst out of the ambulance doors and came sprinting down the frosty slope to the river bank with their emergency equipment. Ben moved aside as they clapped the defibrillator to Simeon’s crushed chest and applied the first electric shock in a desperate attempt to revive him. Simeon’s spine arched upwards in an involuntary spasm, as if he was trying to get up. But Ben knew the time for that had come and gone.
‘No pulse,’ one of the paramedics said.
They tried another shock. Simeon’s body arched on the ground, then fell limp again. His face looked like a piece of mud-streaked porcelain, eyes staring upwards.
‘No pulse.’
‘He’s gone, I’m afraid,’ said another. ‘Nothing more we can do.’
A gentle snowfall had begun to spiral down from the dark sky, turning blue in the flashing lights. Ben stared as snowflakes settled on the body of his friend. He turned and gazed at the sunken car, thinking of Michaela inside. He said a silent goodbye to them both.
Another ambulance had arrived at the mouth of the bridge, together with a police emergency response vehicle. The officers were herding the bystanders away to clear the area. The place was alive with voices and crackling radios. A woman was led away, crying, someone’s arm around her shoulders.
Events followed as if in a dream. Emergency crews surrounded the crashed Lotus, struggling to extricate Michaela’s body. By now it was clear to everyone involved that the ambulances would be taking away two corpses that night. There was no longer any need for hurry.
Several minutes passed before Ben even became conscious of the crippling cold and the pain in his torn hands. The paramedics checked him for signs of hypothermia: slurred speech, disorientation, unsteadiness. His wet hair dripping onto the thermal blanket they’d wrapped around him, he sat in the open back of the third ambulance and watched the scene unfold as if from a million miles away. He numbly answered the questions the cops came to ask him before he could be carted off to hospital. Name, address, occupation, relationship to the deceased. He told them what he’d seen. Described the car that had passed him from the direction of the bridge, told them how one of its headlights had appeared to be damaged.
The cops asked him if he’d seen any collision take place between the two vehicles. Ben told them he hadn’t.
But as he spoke, he was visualising the scenario in his mind: the two cars meeting on the narrow road before the bridge. The saloon swerving to avoid the speeding Lotus and catching its headlight on the stone wall at the side of the road. The Lotus swerving the other way and spinning out of control. The driver of the saloon panicking and hitting the gas to escape from the scene. Or maybe not even noticing what happened next.
Or maybe it had all happened differently. Ben thought about the positioning of the skidmarks on the road before the bridge. He thought about how a car could have lain there in wait as the distinctive shape of the Lotus came down the hill. How the driver could have waited until just the right moment before lurching out deliberately into Simeon’s path and forcing him to swerve and crash.
Ben thought back to the restaurant car park. The BMW. The broken headlight. The behaviour of the car’s owner. Like he hadn’t wanted to know. Like he hadn’t wanted attention drawn to him.
But Ben mentioned none of that to the cops.
Through the mist of his thoughts, he heard one of the officers asking about next of kin. Ben remembered what Michaela had said about her parents moving to Antigua. He knew nothing about Simeon’s. ‘They have a son,’ he said. He couldn’t bring himself to use the past tense. ‘Jude Arundel. He’s in Cornwall with friends.’
‘We’ll need to contact him,’ the officer said.
‘I don’t think he’ll be that easy to contact,’ Ben said. He told them he’d be responsible for informing Jude.
After the police had left him alone, Ben watched the paramedic teams wrapping up their kit. He’d no intention of seeing the inside of a hospital that night. He’d seen enough of them already. As the ambulances carrying Simeon and Michaela left in tandem, he slipped away unnoticed and walked to where the police had moved his Land Rover. The snow was falling more steadily now, dusting everything powdery white.
He climbed into the vehicle and headed back alone towards the vicarage. He had nowhere else to go.
Chapter Eleven
The warm, welcoming glow from the vicarage’s windows shone out into the night as Ben climbed out of the Land Rover and trudged towards the house in his wet clothes. He paused to peer in through the window at the empty living room. The lit-up Christmas tree that he could imagine Simeon and Michaela decorating together, which someone else would be taking down. The comfortable furniture they’d never see or use again.
He felt sick as the reality sank in a little deeper.
The dog barked from inside. Ben dug in his pocket and took out the annexe key. Attached to it on a ring was the tarnished brass Yale key for the front door of the vicarage. Feeling strangely like an intruder, he opened the door. The dog was sitting in the hallway, looking at him.
‘Hey, Scruffy,’ Ben said softly. The dog cocked his head, appearing perplexed that his master and mistress weren’t with him. Ben went over to him and scratched his ears. ‘They’re not coming back, pal. I’m sorry.’
The dog lolled his pink tongue and began to pant.
‘All right, you come with me,’ Ben said. Squelching in his wet shoes he made his way down the passage to the connecting door that led through into the annexe. Everything seemed so still and empty.
Shuddering with cold, he stripped off his wet things in the annexe’s bathroom and stepped under a hot shower. He stayed there a long time, hoping that the scalding jet of water would blast away the nightmare and that when he came out everything would be back to normal.
It didn’t happen. He mechanically towelled himself dry and changed into a pair of grey jogging pants and a worn old rugby top from his bag. Finding his whisky flask nestling among the spare clothing, he unscrewed the cap and gulped down a stinging mouthful, then another. That didn’t make any difference either. He padded barefoot into the annexe’s little living room, flipped off all the lights and lay on the sofa with his eyes shut, trying to let his mind go blank. But there was no escape from the images that kept flashing up inside his mind as he lay there. He couldn’t stop seeing Simeon’s face in those last moments. The pallor of his skin, the desperation in his eyes. And Michaela, sitting there lifeless inside the sunken car. The horrific crush wounds on her face and brow.
One minute he’d been having dinner with his friends. The next, they were gone, just like that, like blowing out a candle. Tomorrow would see the start of the whole terrible aftermath. Tonight, there was nothing but that sickening emptiness, as if the world had been scraped hollow with a blunt knife.
Ben groped for the flask in the darkness and swallowed down the rest of the whisky. One gulp after another. The visions began to recede. He drifted into a world of vague and restless dreams that seemed to go on forever and were filled with the cries of people in pain. He couldn’t help them, no matter how desperately he tried … there was nothing he could do …
Ben’s body tensed and he jerked upright on the sofa, momentarily confused by the unfamiliar sound that had torn through the membrane of his sleep. The luminous green hands of his diver’s watch told him it was quarter to one in the morning. He sat up, listening hard.
A few feet away across the darkened room, the dog let out another long, low snarl, and Ben realised what had woken him. He was about to lie down again when he heard something else.
A dull thud, coming from the other side of the wall. The sounds of movement inside the vicarage.
Ben jumped up from the sofa, suddenly wide awake and alert. His first thought was that Jude Arundel must have returned from Cornwall. He went to turn on the light, already preparing mentally for the task of breaking the news to the kid that both his parents were dead.
But Ben’s hand stopped short of the light switch when he heard more sounds from inside the vicarage: a muted splintering crash that was unmistakably the sound of a door being forced, followed a moment later by the grinding thump of something hitting a wall.
Scruffy let out another rumbling growl from deep in his throat.
Ben reached out to him in the darkness and laid a hand on his head. ‘Quiet, boy. Let me listen.’ Creeping across the room towards the connecting door, Ben pressed his ear to it and thought he heard a man’s voice.
‘Wait,’ he whispered back to the dog. There was no time to put on his shoes. Without a sound, he opened the door and stepped through into the passage beyond.
Another thump, louder this time now that he was closer. It was coming from somewhere on the ground floor.
Silently, stealthily, Ben moved towards the sound.
Chapter Twelve
Few men were schooled in the secret of silence. To be able to move unheard, unnoticed yet quickly through any terrain, blending in with the surroundings at all times, was an art that had to be learned and honed through dedicated training and practice – and Ben Hope had been a master of it for many years. Not many of his peers in the SAS had been able to match him.
The art began with knowing where to place your feet. The vicarage’s old oak floorboards were broad and thick, but age and use had warped the wood so that it was almost impossible to walk over them without a creak. Ben kept to the edges, feeling with his bare toes as he went for any seam or joint that might shift with his weight. His breathing was slow and shallow, his heartbeat controlled and his mind as still as that of a predatory animal. When stalking a determined and trained enemy, even the scent of your fear could give you away.
Creeping through the darkness, he glanced around him for anything he could use as defence against the intruders. Improvised weapons weren’t too abundant in the home of a country vicar. His gaze landed on a foot-high wooden statuette on a side table. He picked it up without a sound. It felt solid in his hand, like a short club.
Another dull thud from up ahead. A grinding of steel against steel, followed by a clanging crash.
As Ben had been expecting to happen any second, the dog let loose with a furious tirade of barking from inside the annexe, muffled behind the thick wall. Ben decided it wasn’t such a bad thing: the intruders would be aware that the nearest neighbour was far enough away not to be alerted by the noise. And the knowledge that the dog was contained in another part of the house would make them feel safe. Exactly how Ben wanted them to feel.
Up ahead, the shadowy corridor terminated in a T-junction. To the left, all was darkness. Around the corner to the right, a glow of light shone from an unseen doorway.
Ben stepped closer to the corner. From the source of the dim light he heard a man’s voice mutter something he didn’t catch. He stopped, blotting out the muted sound of Scruffy’s barking and listening hard. Was it the same voice he’d heard a moment ago? Impossible to tell, or to guess how many intruders there might be.
He advanced as far as the corner, back to the wall, ready with his club. He was within sight of the doorway now. It was a couple of inches ajar, and in the light that streamed out of it, he could see the outline of the splintered frame where the door had been forced open. Careful not to let his shadow play on the opposite wall, he stepped up to the door and peered around its edge into the room behind it.
Simeon’s study. The walls were lined with bookshelves. A simple computer desk stood in the middle of the room, with a flat-screen monitor and wireless keyboard. In the far corner of the study was a steel safe, like a short gun cabinet, bolted to the wall. The metallic crash Ben had just heard was the sound of it being jemmied open.
The man who’d broken into the safe was crouching beside it with his back to the doorway. He was wearing a black combat jacket. A black cotton ski mask was pulled down over his face. There was a pistol in a military-style holster at his right hip. As Ben watched, the man grabbed a brown A4-sized envelope from the safe. He stuffed it into the duffel bag at his feet, then reached back inside the safe and came out with a small black laptop, which he bagged as well.
Just one man. Yet Ben had heard him talking. To himself, maybe, or on the phone. Unless …
Ben suddenly felt something hard prod him between the shoulder blades. He half-turned and found himself staring into a fat black O nearly three quarters of an inch wide. The muzzle of a pump-action twelve-bore.
‘Lose the ornament,’ said the man with the shotgun. His face was hidden in the shadows. The accent was East London. The tone was calm.
Ben’s fingers loosened and the wooden statuette dropped to the floor.
‘Nice one,’ the man with the shotgun said. He advanced into the light. The eyes watching Ben through the slits in the ski mask were the colour of steel, hard and cold. He had the buttstock of the short-barrelled shotgun pulled in tight to his shoulder. That meant several things to Ben. The guy was bracing himself against the recoil, because he had no problem with pulling the trigger if he had to. It meant he was familiar with the weapon and had used it before. It also meant the shotgun’s five-capacity tube magazine was probably filled with hard-kicking solid slug loads that would take Ben’s head clean off his shoulders and paint the wall behind him with his brains.
All of which added up to the fact that these guys were no ordinary house-breakers, no run-of-the-mill opportunist crooks. They were professionals. And if the man with the shotgun was good enough to creep up on Ben like this, it meant he was very good indeed. Someone trained, like him, in the art of silence.
Or maybe Ben was just getting slow.
Ben retreated. The man’s eyes didn’t leave his. The muzzle of the shotgun was rock steady.
The other side of the wall, the dog was going wild.
‘Why are you here?’ Ben asked.
‘That’s it. There’s fuck all else in the safe,’ the man with the duffel bag said to his companion. He stood up and slung the strap over his shoulder, then left the study, brushing past Ben. The man with the shotgun waved the weapon ever so slightly towards the open doorway. ‘You. Get your arse in there,’ he told Ben.
Ben took a step backwards into the room. He saw the gunman’s gloved finger flick half an inch back from the trigger and depress the small round button set into the rear of the trigger guard. Safety off.
Ben got the picture. The guy wasn’t intending to leave any witnesses behind. Not the kind who still had their heads attached.
Nothing to lose, then.
Ben retreated another slow step, raising his arms either side of his head. The guy advanced. Ben watched the muzzle of the gun. A rapid step forward, and Ben’s hands flashed towards the weapon. He gripped the cold steel of the barrel and jerked it simultaneously sideways and towards him. As the gun was torn half out of his grip, the man instinctively squeezed the trigger and the gun went off like a bomb just a few inches from Ben’s right ear.
Now the pump-action was a lot less dangerous until it could be re-cocked. Ben had no intention of letting that happen. Still gripping the barrel he pushed it violently back towards the gunman, driving the butt end into the guy’s face. It caught him on the mouth. With a yell of pain and a spurt of blood he fell back and let go of the gun. Ben clubbed him over the head with the forend.
The whole disarming move had taken less than two seconds. Maybe I’m not getting that slow, Ben thought.
The man with the duffel bag froze for an instant, then took off down the passage. Ben spun the shotgun around in his hands and worked the pump as he leaped over the slumped body and out of the study doorway.
The escaping intruder was just rounding the corner. Ben could have shot him, but the blast would have blown the guy in half and Ben wanted him alive. Slinging the gun around his shoulder, he sprinted after him. The man crashed past the side table off which Ben had lifted the statuette earlier, and sent it spinning into Ben’s path. Ben vaulted over it, saw that he was catching up, and launched himself at the man with a flying rugby-tackle. Pinned by the ankles, the man sprawled heavily to the floor and let out a grunt of pain. Ben clambered after him. His left hand closed on the strap of the duffel bag as his right fist shot out to land a crippling hammer-punch to the man’s testicles.
The punch didn’t make contact. Ben didn’t see the heavy boot coming for his face until it was too late. The kick slammed into his cheekbone with a huge amount of force behind it, and sent him crashing back against the wall, still tightly clutching the duffel bag by its strap.
The intruder went for his pistol.
Ben went for the shotgun.
The guy thought better of it. He abandoned the bag and ran for the front door. Wrenched it open and burst out into the night.
Scruffy was barking dementedly from the other side of the wall. Ben struggled to his feet, dazed from the kick. He ran out of the open front door and saw the intruder heading around the side of the vicarage, making for the path that led through the back garden and down to the meadow.
Seconds into the chase, Ben knew he was at a major disadvantage. The intruder wasn’t necessarily the faster runner, but he didn’t have to sprint barefoot over the hard, cold ground carrying a cumbersome duffel bag and a shotgun. Ben had only just made it to the edge of the meadow when he realised that his quarry had disappeared into the darkness. Moments later, he heard the roar of an engine from beyond the trees, and a car took off at high speed down the road.
Chapter Thirteen
Ben hobbled back to the vicarage on his cut and bruised bare soles. No lights had come on in the neighbouring houses dimly visible through the trees. The blast of a shotgun, muffled within thick stone walls, wasn’t much more than a dull ‘pop’ from a few hundred yards away, not enough to raise the alarm even in a sleepy little village like Little Denton.
It was rather more than that from a few inches away, though. Ben knew he’d have to wait a day or two for the high-pitched whine in his right ear to subside and his full hearing to return. Back inside the vicarage, he strode back to the study. Now to revive his masked friend and get some truth out of him.
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Scott Mariani
IAN ANCIENT SWORD. A LONG BURIED SECRET.ONE MAN WILL UNCOVER THE MYSTERY.It’s Christmas, and on a trip back to the UK to try to sort out his stormy personal life, ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope runs into two old friends. Simeon and Michaela were once his fellow students at Oxford – now they are the Reverend and Mrs Arundel.Ben senses that Simeon is deeply troubled and frightened, but before the truth can emerge about his secretive research project concerning a mysterious, ancient ‘sacred sword’, both he and Michael are wiped out in a devastating road crash. Convinced that his friends’ deaths were no accident, Ben is propelled on a global quest to unlock the enigma of the sacred sword. At every step, he is pursued by ruthless agents of the sinister organisation that will stop at nothing to acquire it.In the course of his investigations, Ben will discover an incredible secret, not just about the history of Christianity but about his own past.BEN HOPE is one of the most celebrated action adventure heroes in British fiction and Scott Mariani is the author of numerous bestsellers. Join the ever-growing legion of readers who get breathless with anticipation when the countdown to the new Ben Hope thriller begins …
SCOTT MARIANI
The Sacred Sword
Copyright
Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
This ebook edition published by HarperCollins Publishers 2016
First published in paperback by HarperCollinsPublishers, 2012
Copyright © Scott Mariani 2012
Cover design © Henry Steadman 2016
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.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Ebook Edition © May 2016 ISBN: 9780007342815
Version: 2018-07-18
Dedication
To B.D., without whose inspiration
this story would never have been written
Contents
Cover (#u1593669c-0d72-5ce8-85bb-e3010498cc7a)
Title page (#ub7218581-f5b4-59e0-a1c3-fed6eec1c9d1)
Copyright (#u5b4accc4-dad3-5e3a-aa89-59170f8b8a7f)
Dedication (#u187cce82-0fdd-532b-baa7-47aac24de2f2)
Prologue (#u979a6b12-c450-5b07-8f67-8fd6d8e32dab)
Chapter One (#udf76e379-a825-5565-a749-ce047f5db2df)
Chapter Two (#u57f25f01-30e2-52a6-85d1-649a631956ac)
Chapter Three (#ufea45b9c-1c4f-5fe7-a6b1-4943ed8bc136)
Chapter Four (#u14b89c25-c4f2-5614-a963-410798eff731)
Chapter Five (#u40199041-db53-5e48-979d-bb7c3168769a)
Chapter Six (#u66df2649-8aef-594a-a620-de3fdcd27e5c)
Chapter Seven (#u6ea5bbca-c332-592e-8b2f-b46d3d6d3f73)
Chapter Eight (#ue97ec759-aadd-5776-abe7-a1939c6098e5)
Chapter Nine (#u322da609-c487-56c3-a694-26bbc74e730f)
Chapter Ten (#ubd6c8bbf-7470-5e18-947d-b34a30e51194)
Chapter Eleven (#ue7d60453-fdab-530c-9d8c-d511533c7e0b)
Chapter Twelve (#u434453c0-5b2c-5088-b596-118bfb392bfd)
Chapter Thirteen (#ucf496d5a-a156-5f8f-8800-f66ab58eacde)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By the same author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
The Fortress of Masada
Roman Province of Judea, The Holy Land73 a.d.
‘They will soon be upon us,’ said the young man called John, turning around from the battlements with fear in his eyes.
His commander, Eleazar ben Yair, made no reply. Leaning out over the craggy, sandy fortress wall he shielded his eyes from the blazing sun and scanned the scene below. Far beneath them, swarming like a gigantic colony of ants around the foot of the mountain as they laboured in the dust and the choking desert heat, the teeming masses of the Roman Tenth Legion were close to finishing the construction of the enormous stone siege ramp.
Eleazar knew in his heart that John was right. The siege would soon be over. Within a matter of hours, there’d be nothing to do except watch helplessly as column after column of soldiers marched up the ramp and stormed the battlements, the sun glinting off their armour and massed spear heads. Nothing to do but wait for the slaughter to begin.
Had they really thought that a rag-tag handful of defenders, many of them women and young children, could hold out indefinitely against the crushing might of Rome? Had they really believed that the fortress of Masada would prove impregnable?
Eleazar himself had seen what his sworn enemies were capable of. Three years earlier, he’d been one of the few Jewish rebels who’d managed to escape from the carnage that the Roman army had inflicted on his home city of Jerusalem, razing it to the ground and claiming a million innocent lives in retaliation against the Jews who dared to defy Caesar’s rule. The army now encamped around the mountaintop fortress of Masada, commanded by Lucius Flavius Silva, the Governor of Judea himself, had been sent to destroy the final pocket of resistance. Silva’s forces had built an impassable siege wall that stretched for seven miles around the base of the mountain, ensuring that no rebel could escape and nobody could come to their aid. Along the wall’s perimeter stood the Romans’ siege towers and giant catapults. They were terrifying, but nothing struck fear into the rebels’ hearts like the assault ramp and the promise of what was to come.
‘Nobody can resist such an army,’ John quavered. ‘The Romans will rape our women, slaughter our children in front of us and make slaves of us all.’
Eleazar closed his eyes in sadness. He already knew what had to be done. Over nine hundred people. As their leader, he had no choice but to make the fateful decision himself. He turned away from the battlements to face the young man. ‘I would rather die a free man than submit to that,’ he said softly.
‘Then what shall we do?’
‘We shall deliver our souls to God,’ Eleazar replied. ‘All of us. The Romans will find none alive.’
But before addressing the grim task that lay before him, he had to ensure that one special duty was taken care of.
He reached down to his belt and drew out the glittering sword that he’d carried with him from Jerusalem. Reverently clutching the bronze hilt with both hands, he raised the blade to his mouth and kissed the cool steel.
‘The sword must be hidden,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, it cannot fall into the hands of the Romans.’
They prayed.
And then the final plans were begun.
Chapter One
Near Millau, Midi-Pyrénées, Southern France
December 2nd
The present day
It was as Father Fabrice Lalique was driving home through the dark, misty night that he saw the car behind him again.
Up until then, the fifty-three-year-old priest had been reflecting on the hours he’d just spent with his parishioners Pierre and Madeleine Robichon in the nearby village of Briande, trying to quell the latest bitter dispute between the couple. It was his duty to minister to the social and family problems of his diocese; and God knew that the turbulent Robichons had more than their fair share of those. He’d eventually left them settled and in peace, hands clasped across the kitchen table, but the reconciliation had had to be painfully, exhaustingly coaxed out of them and he’d been at it far longer than intended.
The Volkswagen Passat’s dashboard clock read almost eleven. A heavy blanket of fog hung over the whole Tarn valley, and as Father Lalique headed back along the deserted country roads away from Millau he had to blink and strain to see where he was going. He couldn’t wait to get back to the warm, cosy little rural retreat on the edge of the village of Saint-Christophe where he’d lived alone these many years, pour himself a much-needed glass of Armagnac and go to bed. A nip of brandy might help him forget his own problems, and the worry that had been haunting him for the last several days.
Fabrice sighed. It was probably just a figment of his imagination. Maybe the responsibility of his job was getting to him at last. Perhaps Doctor Bachelard’s advice about early retirement was worth taking after all – when an overtired brain began cooking up ideas that you were being followed and watched, it could be a sign that it was time to take things a bit easier.
‘That’s all it is,’ he thought to himself, taking a hand off the wheel to rub his chin. ‘Foolish to imagine otherw—’
The sudden dazzle of headlights behind him seemed to fill the interior of the Volkswagen. The priest’s heart skipped a beat and then began to thump wildly as all the anxiety came instantly flooding back. He narrowed his eyes at the rear-view mirror, trying to make out the shape of the lights.
Was it the Mercedes again? The same Mercedes he’d been sure was tailing him yesterday on his way home from the church in Saint-Affrique? And the day before, and last Tuesday as well …? He stared so long into the mirror that he almost missed the bend ahead and had to swerve to avoid the verge.
‘Damn this fog,’ he muttered. But he’d been driving these roads for over a third of a century and knew every inch of them. He’d soon see if he was being followed. Any second now … wait for it … yes, there it was. He swung the car hard right as the junction came up and accelerated as hard as he dared down the narrow lane that would take him the long way round towards Saint-Christophe. He glanced back at the rear-view mirror. Nothing. He felt the heart palpitations begin to subside. There. See? You’re an idiot.
Then the lights reappeared in his mirror and his mouth went dry. He hung another sharp right, then a left, taking him deeper into the web of country lanes. The lights stayed right there in his mirror.
Terrified to go any faster, Fabrice clenched the steering wheel tightly and willed the night to clear. The trees loomed out of the mist. Man and boy he’d roamed in these woods, but now they seemed filled with a sinister life of their own, as if closing in on him, reaching out to grab him in their claws.
He fumbled for his phone and dialled a familiar number. No reply. At the prompt to leave a message, he spoke urgently and breathlessly, his English faltering in his panic: ‘Simeon – it’s me, Fabrice. The thing I told you about; I am sure it is happening again. Just now, tonight. I think someone is after me. Please call me as soon as you can.’
The lights were still there, closer now, white and dazzling through the fog. Now what? Fabrice thought of calling Bernard, the local chief of police – he had his home number on his phone. But Bernard would be deep into a bottle by this time of night, if not passed out in front of the TV.
Then Fabrice thought of his old friend Jacques Rabier, whose farm was just a kilometre away beyond the woods. Groaning in panic, he hit the gas. A heart-stopping series of blind crests and hairpin bends later, he slewed the car through Jacques’ familiar rickety gate and went bumping wildly up the long track towards the farmhouse.
The place was in darkness, shutters closed. Fabrice killed the engine and stumbled across the yard to thump on the front door. ‘Jacques?’ he called out.
No reply. A dog barked in the distance. And then Fabrice heard something else. The soft rumble of tyres coming up the track, and the sound of an engine that wasn’t the clatter of Jacques Rabier’s old Peugeot 504 pickup truck. As the lights appeared through the trees, Fabrice tore himself away from the farmhouse and lumbered awkwardly across the yard towards the big wooden barn where, once upon a time, he and Jacques had played as kids. He pushed open the tall door and ducked inside just in time to avoid being seen in the car headlights that swept across the yard. Their blinding glare shone through the slats, partly illuminating the inside of the barn, the farm machinery covered in tarpaulins, the stack of straw bales against the far wall.
Fabrice didn’t have to search hard for a place to hide. As boys, he and Jacques had used the storage space under the barn floor as their secret den, gang headquarters, pirate ship cabin; in their teens they’d once or twice brought Michelle and Valérie from the village there, to smoke illicit cigarettes and innocently fool around.
As Fabrice stumbled towards the trapdoor, his guts tightened momentarily with the fear that Jacques might have boarded it up or left a piece of machinery across the top of it – but no, here it was, just as he remembered it, lightly buried under dust and straw. His trembling fingers found the edge of the trapdoor lid and lifted it with a creak.
It was a tighter squeeze than it had been in his youth. As he was forcing his bulky shoulders through the hole, he felt a sharp painful tug as something cut into the back of his neck. The little silver crucifix he wore around his neck had got snagged on a piece of rough wood and the slim chain had snapped. But there was no time to start hunting around for it. Fabrice hastily lowered the trapdoor above his head and clambered clumsily down the ladder into the hidden pitch-dark space below. He could barely breathe for terror.
This was crazy. He was a respected church official, not some criminal on the run. He had nothing to hide. His conscience was as immaculate as his professional record and he had no reason whatsoever to flee from anyone – yet some overwhelming primal instinct, so strong he could almost taste it between his gritted teeth, told him he was in appalling danger.
The barn door opened. Footsteps sounded overhead. Three men, it sounded like: they spread out and paced the length of the barn, the darting beams of their torches visible through the cracks in the floorboards as they searched the place briskly and methodically.
Who were these men? What did they want? Fabrice swallowed back his panic, terrified to breathe, convinced that they must be able to hear the hammer-beat of his heart. He inched his way deeper into the shadows, away from the torchlight.
Something moved against his arm and he almost cried out in shock. A rat: he brushed the filthy thing away and it slithered up a beam and through a gap in the floorboards overhead, claws scratching on the wood as it scuttled away. The torchlight suddenly swung towards the sound. Fabrice’s heart stopped as the light lingered over the trapdoor, catching the drifting dust particles in the air.
The footsteps came closer. ‘Just a rat,’ said a voice, and he realised the men were speaking English. ‘He’s not here. Let’s go.’
Fabrice let out a silent, trembling sigh of relief as the footsteps headed back towards the entrance to the barn. They were leaving. Once their car was gone, he’d wait a few minutes before climbing out of here. Should he go back to the car? Get away on foot and alert the police? Wait for Jacques to come home?
The sudden ringing of his phone shattered his thoughts and tore through the silence. He plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled it out with horror, the damn thing screeching like a siren as his trembling fingers groped for the button to turn it off. The phone’s screen showed the name of the caller: Simeon Arundel.
The shrill ringtone shut off, but it was too late. The footsteps were pounding the floorboards overhead as the men came running back inside the barn. Torchlight shining directly down through the cracks; the trapdoor lid lifting; a dazzling beam right in his face.
Father Fabrice Lalique wasn’t a fighting man. Never in his adult life had he had to defend himself physically, and his resistance against three strong and determined attackers was as feeble as his cries of ‘Who are you? What do you want with me?’ as they dragged him through the barn and outside to the waiting Mercedes. His phone was taken from him. Powerful hands bundled him inside the car’s open boot and slammed the lid shut.
Seconds later, Fabrice was being jolted around in his confined space as the Mercedes took off down the bumpy farm track. He beat against the bare metal lid, screamed until his throat was raw – then, completely spent, he gave in to the numbness of despair and curled up in the darkness, barely conscious of the movement of the car or the passage of time.
It was only when the boot lid opened and he looked up to see the faces of the men gazing down impassively at him that he realised the journey was over. The men hauled him out of the boot. He felt the night air clammy on his brow, solid concrete under his feet. The Mercedes was pulled over at the side of a broad, empty motorway. Through the fog that drifted like smoke across the road, Fabrice saw that his own Volkswagen was parked a few yards behind it.
Fabrice searched the faces of his captors for any trace of expression, of humanity, and saw none. ‘Who are you?’ he croaked, fighting for breath. ‘What’s happening to me?’
Fabrice quickly saw which of the men was in charge. His face was lean, the eyes quick and cold. His receding hair was cropped to the same length as the dark stubble on his jaw. As two of the others held Fabrice tightly by the arms, the leader slipped his hand inside his plain black jacket and produced a pistol. Without saying a word, he waved the gun towards the side of the road. The thugs holding Fabrice’s arms began to frog-march him in that direction. He blinked and shook his head in bewilderment as the edge of the road came nearer step by step; beyond it nothing but swirling mist.
Then he saw the steel barrier and he knew where he was.
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘No no no …’
The Millau Viaduct. The highest bridge in the world, carrying a long stretch of the A75 autoroute three hundred metres above the Tarn Valley.
And he was headed right for the edge.
Fabrice struggled desperately, but there was no resisting the force driving him towards the plunging abyss.
‘Why?’ he asked, but all that came out was an animal moan of terror.
A sudden gust of wind parted the mist and he caught a momentary glimpse of the drop into the darkness below, the supporting columns of the bridge like colossal towers, higher than cathedral spires. Fabrice’s breath was coming in gasps. He couldn’t speak. Managing to tear an arm free, he gripped the cold metal of the barrier and clung on. The leader of the men said nothing, reached across and unpeeled Fabrice’s clawed fingers with such brutal force that he broke two of them.
Fabrice didn’t even feel the pain. He was way past pain.
The men shoved him over the edge. Father Fabrice Lalique went tumbling down and down, cartwheeling in empty space, his scream fading into the night. The mist had swallowed him up long before he hit the distant ground below.
As the men turned away and started walking back to the Mercedes, the one in charge took out his phone. ‘It’s done,’ was all he needed to say. He climbed into the driver’s seat. His colleague who’d followed in Lalique’s car left it where it was with the door open and the key in the ignition, and got in the back of the Mercedes.
At the same moment, their associates inside the priest’s house were already downloading the material, several hundred megabytes’ worth of extremely illicit photographic images, onto his personal computer. Their anonymous source would never be found, and neither would any trace of the intruders’ presence in his home.
And soon after the Mercedes’ taillights had vanished into the mist, leaving the Volkswagen Passat standing alone on the empty viaduct, the last words of Father Fabrice Lalique had been composed and emailed to every contact in his address book:
My Dear Friends
By the time you read this message, I will be dead. I ask you not to mourn for me, as I am unworthy of your grief.
The shame of my sins is a burden I can no longer bear. May God have mercy on me for the terrible things I have done.
Chapter Two
Two weeks later
Storm clouds scudded darkly overhead as another great rolling wave crashed against the bow of the SeaFrance cross-channel ferry Rodin, sending a plume of white foam and spray lashing across her deck. Most of the nine hundred or so passengers braving the gale warnings to cross over to England that freezing December afternoon were huddled in the luxury of the superferry’s bars and lounge areas.
Just one man stood on the outer deck. He leaned against the railing, the collar of his scuffed leather jacket turned up, the wind in his thick blond hair, his body moving easily to the heave and sway of the ship. His eyes were narrowed to blue slits against the salt spray as he gazed northwards, just able to make out the shape of the Cliffs of Dover through the murk. He took a draw on his cigarette, and the wisp of smoke was snatched away by a violent gust.
His name was Ben Hope. Half English, half Irish, just turned forty years of age but still as fit as he’d ever been. In his time he’d been a soldier, before leaving the British Special Forces to plunge deep into the shady world of the international kidnap and ransom business.
Working freelance as what he called a ‘crisis response consultant’, using methods and skills that conventional law enforcement operatives either weren’t allowed or weren’t trained to employ, Ben had delivered more than a few innocent victims safely back into the arms of their loved ones. More than a few kidnappers had been efficiently dispatched in order for that to happen.
These days, home was a tranquil corner of rural Normandy, a place called Le Val. It had been a working farm for most of its history – now it was a specialised tactical training centre where military and police agencies, hostage rescue specialists, kidnap and ransom negotiators and insurance execs from all across the world flocked to learn from Ben and his team. The world was still a troubled enough place to ensure they were seldom short of clients.
It sometimes happened that Ben had to take a business trip to Britain, but this wasn’t one of those times. With Le Val closed for Christmas, he had more personal matters to attend to – both of which, in their different ways, were the reason for his deeply pensive state as he stood there on the deck.
Tomorrow evening he was due to attend the inaugural opening of the new concert venue at Langton Hall, the Oxfordshire music academy created by Leigh Llewellyn. She’d been one of the world’s most celebrated and talented opera stars. She’d also been Ben’s first love – and much later, and for far too short a time, his wife.
Her death was a wound that he knew would never really heal. How it had happened was something he refused to think about, though the nightmare still haunted him some nights. The man who’d taken Leigh from him had been called Jack Glass. He had outlived her by only a few minutes.
As a trustee of the Leigh Llewellyn Foundation, Ben had been invited to cut the inaugural ribbon to open the grand new concert hall, make a speech and present a prize to the most promising young opera singer training at the school. He wasn’t exactly an accomplished public speaker. In his time with the SAS he’d conducted a thousand low-key operational briefings with small teams of men; as a tactical training instructor he was used to giving lectures in the familiar environment of Le Val’s little classroom – but the thought of standing up on a stage and addressing a large audience made him nervous. He was as prepared for it as he could be. It was the least he could do for Leigh’s memory.
The second reason he was travelling to England made him even more nervous. He’d agonised a long time before deciding to make the stop-off in London on his way to Oxfordshire. London was where Brooke lived: Dr Brooke Marcel, formerly visiting lecturer in hostage psychology at Le Val, as well as something a lot more. The way things had gone between them since the terrible argument in September, Ben didn’t know how Brooke would react to his surprise visit. All he knew was how badly he’d missed her these last few months.
When the ferry docked at Dover, Ben headed down to the car deck. While the other passengers climbed into their shiny new Vauxhalls and Nissans and Daewoos, he creaked open the door of the battered and ancient ex-military Series II Land Rover that the guys he worked with referred to as ‘Le Crock’, slung his bag on the worn-out passenger seat and drove out into the late afternoon drizzle.
Le Crock wasn’t the kind of vehicle you could spur along in too much of a hurry – and as he headed for London, Ben wondered if that might have been his unconscious motive for taking the old Landy: he wasn’t in any particular hurry to reach his destination. Twice he was seriously tempted to give it a miss, bypass London altogether and head northwest straight for Oxfordshire. The second time that thought occurred to him he very nearly gave in to the temptation – but by then he was already entering the outskirts of the city and Brooke’s place in Richmond was just a few more miles away.
‘Fuck it,’ he said to himself, ‘I’m here now. Let’s see it through.’
Chapter Three
The rain was threatening to turn to sleet by the time Ben pulled up across the street from the large red-brick Victorian house where Brooke lived. He killed the engine, and for a few seconds his thoughts turned to the whisky flask in his bag that he’d topped up with fifteen-year-old Islay malt before setting out from France. Instead he reached for his crumpled pack of Gauloises and his Zippo lighter. Anything to delay the moment where he’d have to walk up to the door of Brooke’s flat on the ground floor.
As he sat and smoked and watched the rainwater streaming down the window, he wondered again whether turning up like this unannounced was the right thing to do. And he thought back again to the events of three months ago that had left his personal life in such a mess.
Life had never turned out as quiet as he’d have liked it, but the previous September had been an eventful time even for him. It wasn’t every month that you got wrongly accused of murder, dragged into an intrigue involving Russian mobsters and harried across most of Europe by an army of police commanded by a particularly determined, ambitious female SOCA agent named Darcey Kane.
But narrowly avoiding being tortured to death, crushed in a car wreck, getting incarcerated in an Italian prison or pulverised by a Russian attack helicopter hadn’t been the worst things that had happened to Ben that month. None of them had remotely compared to the shock of seeing Brooke in the arms of another man.
Injured and on the run, Ben had been heading for Brooke’s secluded holiday place in the Portuguese countryside, thinking it would be empty and he could lie low there for a while and recuperate. He’d been wrong. Approaching the cottage in darkness, he’d been surprised to see a light in the downstairs window, and peeked through the shutters. The sight he’d witnessed had made him recoil. Brooke and the unknown man had been sitting by candlelight, drinking wine, both obviously fresh from the shower. There was only one possible conclusion to draw.
Ben had slipped away unseen. From Portugal he’d beaten a hazardous path to Italy, from there to Monaco, then Georgia and back to Rome. Along the way, he and Darcey Kane had joined forces to defeat the gangsters who were trying to kill them, and unmask a conspiracy at the heart of British Intelligence. One of the toughest parts of the job had been escaping the amorous clutches of the – he had to admit it – extremely attractive and alluring raven-haired Darcey. When it was all over and they’d ended up at a loose end together in Rome, she’d made it very clear to him that her idea of a weekend in the eternal city wasn’t about visiting the Sistine Chapel and the Colosseum. ‘I won’t give up, you know’ had been Darcey’s disappointed parting words to him as he headed back home to France. ‘I always get my man in the end.’
The first thing Ben had done on his return to Le Val had been to check the diary for Brooke’s next lecture. He’d made sure he wasn’t around when she arrived, and as a pretext to stay away for the two days of her visit he’d made up a story about needing to drive to Nantes to check out a new security system for the armoury room, and from there to Paris to see a prospective client. In reality, he was lying low in a hotel just a few miles away in Valognes. He was all too aware of how weak and pathetic he was acting, but he couldn’t help it. He’d sooner have faced a charging bull than get into a confrontation with Brooke.
Jeff Dekker, the former SBS commando who was Ben’s right-hand man at Le Val, had finally cracked under the strain of having to cover for him all the time, and called him on his mobile. ‘Jesus, Ben. What the hell is going on with you two? She’s upset and confused. First she comes back from holiday to find out that her boyfriend’s been arrested and chased all around Europe by the cops, now you’re avoiding her like she’s got leprosy. You can’t go on like this, mate.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
Brooke’s flight home from nearby Cherbourg back to London had been booked for 7.15 on the evening of her second day. Just after eight, feeling quite miserable and shamefaced, Ben had come skulking back to Le Val and headed for the farmhouse kitchen to pour himself a glass of wine. He’d been so preoccupied that he’d failed to sense anyone else’s presence in the room.
‘Were you just going to sneak around behind my back?’ Her voice sounded taut with emotion.
Ben almost dropped his glass. He whirled around.
Brooke got up from the chair in the corner where she’d been waiting for him. Her face was flushed almost as red as the auburn of her hair, and there was a glint of fury in her green eyes. ‘Aren’t you even going to tell me who she is, then?’
‘Who?’ Ben managed, totally confused.
Brooke snorted. ‘Who? Do you think I’m stupid? I’ve talked to her, Ben. She called here. You were off sneaking around trying to avoid me, so I happened to pick up the phone.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Really? “Lovely time together in Rome? Must do it again sometime?” Not ringing any bells?’
Ben stared blankly for a moment, then it hit him. ‘You mean Darcey Kane?’ The instant it came out, he knew how feeble it sounded.
Brooke’s eyes had misted over and a tear rolled down her cheek. ‘Of all the guys in the world, Ben Hope, I never would have thought you would do this to me. And you didn’t even have the guts to tell me to my face.’
‘Stop right there. This is insane.’
‘What were you doing in Rome?’
‘You know what I was doing in Rome. Trying to stay out of jail. You saw the news, didn’t you?’
‘I know you had a terrible time, and I’m sorry,’ Brooke snapped. ‘I mean, what were you doing with her?’
‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’
‘Then what’s she talking about?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘I can’t believe you’re accusing me of this,’ Ben said, and then added, ‘You, of all people.’
Now he was in trouble. He regretted it instantly.
Brooke glared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He was committed. Point of no return. ‘You know perfectly well. I saw you and your fancy-man in Portugal.’
‘My what?’ Brooke exploded.
‘You heard me.’
‘You went to my place?’
‘I needed somewhere to go. I didn’t think you’d be there. I saw you through the window. The two of you looked very cosy together. Don’t insult me by denying it.’
‘Ben! That was Marshall – my brother-in-law!’
Ben reeled. ‘You’re having an affair with your brother-in-law? The banker?’
‘Bloody hell, what do you take me for? Of course not!’
‘Then what were the two of you doing there together?’
‘All right. He followed me to Portugal,’ Brooke sighed. ‘He thinks …’ – she corrected herself – ‘thought he was in love with me. He’d been stalking me for weeks. I went to the cottage to get away from him. He turned up and I told him once and for all that he’d better clean up his act.’
Ben was speechless for a few moments as he digested her words. He’d replayed the scene so many times inside his head; now he struggled to revisualise it in a whole new way. ‘But he was wearing a bathrobe,’ he protested.
‘There’d been a storm,’ she countered angrily. ‘He was soaking wet so I got him to take a shower. I’d just had one myself when he turned up.’
‘The candles … the wine …’
‘You know it doesn’t take much of a storm to take out the power there. And the wine was for our nerves. He was in a real state. So was I. What you saw was me trying to reason with him gently. I’m a psychologist. It’s what I do.’
Ben stared at her. He had to admit what she was saying was possible. But suddenly a new thought was dawning on him. ‘So this prick Marshall was stalking you all that time and you didn’t even think to tell me?’
‘Oh, that would have been just great. Then you’d have gone and kicked the shit out of him, and then what? A right mess we’d all have been in. And my sister would’ve found out. Phoebe’s emotionally fragile. It would have destroyed her. I had to deal with it myself.’
‘Is that how you see me? Some kind of violent bastard who can only deal with problems by kicking the shit out of people?’
‘No, sometimes you shoot them too.’
‘How could you not have trusted me?’ he yelled.
Brooke gave a scornful laugh. ‘Like you trusted me? How could you think I was cheating on you? All the times I told you I loved you – did you think I was lying?’
The argument had raged on for a long time, both of them equally carried away by their sense of outrage, neither of them willing to relent. By the time Ben had sensed it was going too far, tried to back down and apologise, a lot of hurtful things had been said and the damage had been done.
In the end, Brooke had stormed off in a white-hot rage. The last he’d seen of her was the taxicab disappearing up the track from the farmhouse.
Two days later a letter had arrived in the post, coldly and formally addressed to Major Benedict Hope, Managing Director, Le Val Tactical Training Centre. Just three terse lines to say she was resigning from her post with immediate effect and wouldn’t be back.
When Ben had tried contacting her to persuade her to change her mind, he’d found her phone numbers changed and his emails bouncing back. His letters were returned unopened.
And so now, three months later, here he was outside her ground-floor flat, seriously questioning the wisdom of being here. Unbuckling the straps of his bag, he took out the present he’d bought for her, carefully wrapped in Christmas gift paper with little Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeers all over it. It had taken him three attempts to get it right. But at least he was pretty sure she’d like the present inside. Brooke was half French on her father’s side, and a big movie fan, so he’d bought her a collection of Eric Rohmer films. He couldn’t recall having ever seen one himself.
Feeling like a man stepping up to the gallows, he got out of the Land Rover, crossed the street, went in the little gate that led through Brooke’s flower garden and rang her doorbell.
No response. He tried again. Still nothing. The package was too big to shove through the letterbox. He didn’t think that a mangled DVD box set would please her much. He’d have to post it to her.
With a strange mixture of bitter disappointment and extreme relief, Ben turned away. As he was about to start heading back towards the Land Rover, a tall, good-looking Asian man came strolling down the street and walked through the gate. He was wearing a heavy parka, carrying a shopping bag. Seeing Ben on the steps, he stopped and smiled. ‘Hi,’ he said warmly. ‘You must be Ben, right?’
Ben eyed the stranger uncertainly.
‘I’ve seen your photo,’ said the man. ‘Brooke had it on her desk.’
Ben noticed his use of the past tense.
‘I’m Amal,’ the man said, and as if he’d read Ben’s thoughts he added quickly, ‘Brooke’s neighbour. I have the flat above.’
‘You’re the writer,’ Ben said, remembering. Brooke had sometimes mentioned the aspiring playwright upstairs who somehow managed to pay the extortionate rent despite having no apparent form of income.
‘Trying to be a writer,’ Amal grinned.
‘Do you know where Brooke is?’ Ben asked him.
Amal’s grin turned into a grimace. ‘She’s not here, I’m afraid. Gone to Vienna with her friend Sam.’
Sam, Ben thought. Right.
He paused a few beats. ‘I had a present for her,’ he said, looking down at the package in his hand.
‘I can take that, if you want. I’ll make sure she gets it.’
‘I’d appreciate that.’
Amal glanced up at the sky. The sleet was coming down more heavily, haloed in the amber streetlight. ‘You want to come inside for a coffee? It’s bloody freezing out here.’
Ben shook his head. ‘I’d better get going.’ As he was walking out of the gate, Amal called back, ‘Ben?’
Ben turned.
‘Sam is short for Samantha,’ Amal said with a significant look. ‘Just in case you didn’t … still, you know what I mean.’
Ben nodded. ‘Thanks for letting me know. Happy Christmas, Amal.’
‘You too. Take care, all right?’
Chapter Four
Ben was awake long before sunrise the next day, got out of bed and pumped out five quick sets of twenty press-ups on the carpet of his little room in the farmhouse bed and breakfast. He showered and watched the dawn crack over the rural Oxfordshire skyline with a mug of strong black coffee in his hand. He hadn’t slept well, his mind constantly turning over, switching back and forth from one thing to another and keeping him in a state of tension that only his long-established self-discipline prevented him from soothing with a gulp from his whisky flask.
Some time later, he shrugged on his leather jacket and went downstairs to be met by the smell of bacon, sausages and fried eggs cooked up by the proprietor, Mrs Bold, who looked as though she’d gobbled down a few too many of her own full English breakfasts. Ben politely declined her insistent offer of a coronary on a plate and stepped out into the crisp, cold morning air. Yesterday’s dark clouds and sleet had given way to a clear sky. Pale sunshine filtered through the bare branches of the oaks and beeches and glittered on the frosty lawn.
He swung himself into the cab of the Land Rover. The engine spluttered on starting, and for a moment or two he thought, ‘Oh-oh’; then it fired up with an anaemic-sounding rasp and he went crunching over the gravel of the long drive.
The cemetery was just a few fields away from Langton Hall, in the grounds of a sixteenth-century church ringed by a mossy dry-stone wall. Ben knelt by the grave and delicately brushed away a few dead leaves. The inscription on the granite headstone was simple and plain, as she’d have wanted it to be. Just her name; the year of her birth; that of her death.
She was just thirty-two.
Ben was alone in the graveyard. He said a few words, felt his throat tighten up and then sat silently for a long time with his head bowed. He laid a single white rose on the grave. Then he stood up and walked slowly back to the car.
*
In the end, the speech went better than he’d expected. Ben hadn’t worn a tuxedo since his trip to Egypt some years earlier, and the collar felt stiff around his neck, but he’d felt composed and his initial nerves at seeing the large crowd filling every seat of Langton Hall’s new auditorium had settled the moment he’d stepped up to the podium and launched into his opening line. The things he said about Leigh were from the heart; judging by the length of the applause he received at the end, they must have touched those of many of the audience too.
Relieved that his moment in the limelight was over, Ben had shaken a few hands, knocked back a glass of champagne and then taken his seat for the opening act of the opera. He was glad the trustees had voted for The Barber of Seville over something too tragedy-laden and depressing. Too many opera composers seemed to him to revel in making their characters come to sticky ends, but the Rossini was lightweight and rousing, with jolly arias guaranteed to leave the audience humming their tunes afterwards. Ben felt Leigh would have approved of the choice, as well as of the polished performances of the singers.
He’d never been much of an opera fan himself, though, and it wasn’t too long before he started getting lost in the twists and turns of the romantic intrigue between Count Almaviva and the beautiful Rosina. The last scene of Act One, with the appearance of the drunken soldier, perplexed him: who was this guy, and what did he want? Was he actually the Count in disguise, and how could this Dr Bartolo fellow be taken in by this obvious ploy to seduce his daughter? Or was she his daughter? Oh, what the hell. Ben was restless and frustrated by the end of the act, and when the applause began he made a bee-line for the bar.
He was getting started on a measure of scotch when he felt a touch on his shoulder and turned round to see a man and a woman standing there, both dressed for the opera, both smiling broadly at him. For a moment he didn’t recognise them – then he realised he was looking at two faces he hadn’t seen for twenty years.
‘Simeon? Michaela?’
‘Fine speech, Benedict.’ Simeon Arundel was around Ben’s height, sporty and trim at just a shade under six feet. His dark hair was as thick and glossy as it had been back in student days, and he’d aged remarkably well except for the tired, rather drawn look to his face.
Michaela wore her fair hair a little shorter now, and might have gained a few pounds, but the brilliance of her smile took Ben straight back to his youth; a faraway time that often seemed to him like another life, when they’d all been students together at Christ Church, Oxford. Like Ben, Simeon had been a Theologian, only a couple of years older and just beginning his postgraduate studies. Michaela Ward had been in the year below Ben, reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics, or PPE as it was termed at Oxford.
‘What a wonderful surprise to meet like this,’ Simeon said. ‘We had no idea you’d be here. Then suddenly there you are on the stage. I said to Michaela, “Lord, that’s Benedict Hope!”’
‘It’s just Ben these days,’ Ben said with a smile.
‘It’s fantastic to see you again, Ben,’ said Michaela. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’
‘I hope I’ve changed in some ways,’ Ben said. He could see something that definitely had: the identical gold wedding rings that Simeon and Michaela were wearing. ‘I should have known you two would have ended up getting married,’ he said.
‘Just a little while after you … after you left the college,’ Michaela said. She seemed about to say more, then held it back. The circumstances of Ben’s leaving college weren’t a topic for small talk.
‘I suppose I should offer my belated congratulations, then,’ Ben said.
They laughed, and then Simeon’s expression suddenly grew serious. ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your wife. I had no idea.’
Ben nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he muttered.
‘Are you enjoying the opera?’ Michaela asked him, changing the subject.
‘Honestly? I’d sooner be at a jazz gig.’
‘Please don’t tell me you live around here,’ she said. ‘It would be awful to think we’d been near neighbours all this time without ever realising it.’
‘No, I live in Normandy these days. I run a business there. What about you two?’ he added, always quick to deflect the inevitable questions about the kind of work that went on at Le Val.
‘We have the vicarage at Little Denton,’ Simeon said. ‘It’s just a few miles from here.’
‘Simeon has the vicarage,’ Michaela said. ‘I’m merely the vicar’s wife.’
‘So you went the whole hog,’ Ben said to Simeon. ‘I always thought you would.’
‘I’ve never been able to think of anything else I could do with myself except serve God in whatever small way I could offer,’ Simeon said.
‘He’s being modest,’ Michaela whispered behind her hand. ‘He’s quite the superstar.’
‘But tell us, Ben,’ Simeon said, blushing a little, ‘Where are you staying?’ When Ben told him the name of the bed and breakfast, he shook his head vehemently. ‘Not that Mrs Bold? She’s a terrible old battleaxe, God forgive me for saying it. And she overcharges.’
‘You must come and stay with us, Ben,’ Michaela said.
‘It’s a very kind offer, but—’
‘We absolutely insist,’ said Simeon. ‘It’ll be tremendous fun to chew the fat about old times. And you’ll meet Jude.’
‘Jude?’
‘Our son,’ Michaela said. ‘Only …’ She rolled her eyes up at Simeon. ‘Darling, I think Jude has other plans for the holidays.’
Simeon frowned slightly. ‘Never mind. So what do you say, Ben? We’d love to have you. Stay a day or two – stay for the whole of Christmas, why don’t you? If you’re still as fond of good wine and scotch as you used to be, I have some real treats in store.’
Ben hesitated, considering. It wasn’t as if he had anything else to do for the next few days. Nothing was scheduled at Le Val until January, and apart from the security guys and the guard dogs, the place would be deserted until Jeff and the team returned from their vacation. He’d have liked to spend time with his sister Ruth in Switzerland, but now that she’d become a high-flying company director she was attending conferences and summits all over the world – currently on a mission to greenify the Far East.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘You persuaded me. I’ll pick up my gear from Mrs Bold’s and come over sometime tomorrow.’
‘Nonsense, man,’ Simeon said. ‘You must come over tonight. We’re always up late anyway, so there’ll be plenty of time after the show.’
‘Speaking of which …’ Michaela said, glancing at her watch. The bell had sounded while they were talking, announcing the start of Act Two.
It was pushing midnight by the time Ben turned up at the village of Little Denton. Following the directions Simeon had given him, he turned off by the village pub, wound his way along a twisty lane running parallel to the Thames, and finally found the vicarage nestled behind a high stone wall and surrounded by trees. An owl hooted unseen as he stepped down from the Land Rover in the gravel driveway. The moon was out and shining down on the ivied facade of the old house. A dog barked from inside; Simeon’s voice called out ‘Quiet, Scruffy!’
The front door opened and the Reverend Arundel appeared in the entrance, looking less formal in jeans and a loose cardigan. He gripped Ben’s arm warmly. ‘Delighted you’re here. Really I am.’ He peered past Ben’s shoulder at the Land Rover and his eyebrows shot up. ‘Heavens, that’s seen some action, hasn’t it? Series IIa? Must be a ’73 vintage at least.’
‘Sixty-nine,’ Ben said. ‘Actually, it’s playing up a bit. Think a valve needs seeing to.’
‘Good grief, it’s the same age as I am. Even more ancient than the old Lotus.’
‘You still have that!’ Ben had fond memories of the many times the two of them had gone speeding round the Oxfordshire country pubs in Simeon’s 1972 Lotus Elan, in their quest to sample every real ale known to mankind. Back in those days, even at Oxford, it had seemed extremely exotic for a student to own a car, especially a bright red 2+2 sports that had been the envy of even the wealthier young gentlemen and given Simeon quite a dashing reputation among the girls.
‘I’d never sell her,’ Simeon said. ‘It’s till death us do part, I’m afraid.’
Michaela appeared in the open doorway, gripping onto the collar of a shaggy black-and-white mongrel that was scrabbling to get out and greet the visitor. Ben looked at the mutt and could see how he’d got his name.
‘Any chance you boys could tear yourselves away from your old bangers?’ Michaela said. ‘You’re letting the cold in.’
‘She drives a Mazda,’ Simeon whispered to Ben with a conspiratorial wink.
‘Is that all the luggage you have, Ben?’ Michaela said. ‘You certainly travel light.’
The inside of the vicarage was comfortable and warm, with the lived-in, ever-so-slightly frayed patina of a period house that had seen very little modernising. A log fire was crackling in the hearth, and a colourfully decorated Christmas tree stood in one corner opposite a baby grand piano covered in framed photos. Ben stopped to look at one that showed a tousle-haired and somewhat wild-looking young man of about twenty, posing on a beach somewhere hot and palmy. He was wearing a wetsuit and grinning from ear to ear as if completely in his element, clutching a surfboard under his arm.
‘This must be Jude?’ Ben said.
‘That’s our boy,’ Simeon replied. ‘The good looks come from his mother’s side.’
‘He seems to like the water.’
‘You can say that again. He’s studying marine biology at Portsmouth University. You can’t keep him out of the sea. In fact, he’s just spent two weeks cage diving with great white sharks in New Zealand. Completely mad, but he won’t be stopped once he’s set on something.’ Simeon sighed. ‘At least he still has all his arms and legs, as far as I know. That’s the main thing. Let me get you a drink, Ben. Single malt, no ice?’
‘You remembered,’ Ben said.
As Simeon busied himself fetching glasses and a bottle from a cabinet at the far end of the room, Michaela emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray of mince pies. Setting the tray down on a table, she smiled at Ben and shot a sideways glance at her husband. ‘I’m so pleased you’re here,’ she whispered. ‘It’ll cheer him up no end. He’s been very down and upset the last few days.’
Simeon was too busy pottering about pouring drinks and putting on a CD of Gregorian chants to hear what she was saying. Lowering her voice further, Michaela added, ‘We recently had the most awful news about one of his colleagues … well, more of a close acquaintance, in the south of France.’
Ben winced sympathetically. ‘Illness?’
‘Suicide.’ Michaela only mouthed the unmentionable word, drawing a straight finger like a knife across her throat for emphasis.
Now Ben understood why Simeon looked so uncharacteristically gaunt. Before he could muster a reply, the vicar was returning from the drinks cabinet holding two generously filled whisky glasses. He pressed one into Ben’s hand and clinked his own against it.
‘Here’s to old friends,’ said Simeon Arundel. ‘Welcome to our home, Ben.’
Chapter Five
The snow was spiralling down out of the night sky and lying thickly on the private road that led to Wesley Holland’s sprawling country residence, the Whitworth Mansion, two miles from the shores of Lake Ontario. Anyone who followed the sixty-seven-year-old billionaire philanthropist’s exploits in the media might have been surprised to see him driving alone in a seven-year-old Chrysler, but the fact was that despite his almost uncountable wealth, Wesley Holland was a man of relatively modest tastes. Even in his youth, when he’d inherited his gigantic fortune from his father, he’d had relatively little truck with the conventional trappings of wealth; just as he had little to do with the modern world, of which he disapproved more with each passing year.
Yet every man has his weaknesses, and Wesley Holland’s weakness for over five decades, despite his pacifist tendencies and abhorrence of cruelty, had been his all-consuming passion for antique instruments of war, weaponry and armour. If it hadn’t been for the vast, unique collection his riches had allowed him to accumulate, he’d have had no need whatsoever for such an enormous house. He sometimes thought he’d be perfectly content living in a one-bedroom apartment. It was just him, after all, apart from the live-in staff and Moses, his old tortoiseshell cat.
Wesley parked the car in front of the mansion and stepped out to be greeted by two of his staff. His longtime personal assistant, Coleman Nash, sheltered him from the falling snow with an umbrella while the other, Hubert Clemm, who had served as Wesley’s butler for over twenty-five years, began unloading the luggage from the back of the Chrysler. Moses had had the good sense to stay indoors.
‘Careful with that one, Hubert,’ Wesley said, watching closely as Clemm unloaded the custom-made black fibreglass case from the car. Theoretically, it was indestructible, but he worried nonetheless. Anyone would, considering what was inside. The oblong box, just under four feet long and secured with steel locks, looked for all the world like the kind of case a serious classical guitarist would use to protect a cherished instrument in transit.
Except that Wesley Holland had never picked up a guitar in his life.
‘Did you have a good trip, Mr Holland?’ Coleman asked, leading his employer towards the house.
‘Thank you, Coleman. Actually, it could have gone better.’ Wesley was still feeling quite downcast from this latest encounter with yet another bunch of so-called experts unable to get their cynical, closed little minds around the incredible truth that was right there in front of them. This time it had been the history eggheads at the University of Buffalo. Wesley sometimes feared he was beginning to run out of options – though nothing could completely extinguish the excitement of knowing what he’d found. It was the genuine article and he shouldn’t give a damn what the academics thought. They’d wake up one day. He really believed that.
‘How have things been here?’ he asked Coleman. The billionaire trusted his assistant completely. Coleman watched over the mansion and grounds like a pit bull and even kept a monstrous .700 Nitro Express double-barrelled rifle in his room, ‘just in case’. Wesley had often chided him about ‘that damned elephant gun’.
‘Uneventful,’ Coleman told him as they walked into the hallway. Suits of medieval armour flanked the stairs. Originals, not reproductions – the same went for the displays of ancient weaponry that glittered against the panelling. ‘I’ve left the mail on your desk as usual,’ Coleman went on. ‘The curator of the Wallace Collection in London called three times while you were away.’
‘Was it about the Cromwell pieces?’
‘He didn’t say. I told him you’d contact him when you got back.’
‘I’ll do that. Oh, Hubert, you can take all the bags upstairs except the black case. Leave that one in the salon. I’ll put it away myself.’
‘Yes, Mr Holland.’
‘By the way,’ Coleman said, ‘Abigail prepared your favourite veal escalopes for dinner tonight.’
‘With cream?’ Wesley felt his mouth water. He’d been through innumerable cooks before he’d found Abigail. The woman was a gem. Nothing would cheer him up like a fine meal. He needed it. Quite aside from the disappointment in Buffalo, the revelations about Fabrice Lalique were still hanging over him like a pall. Wesley had been as shocked as anyone to learn of the priest’s paedophilia.
He left the black case with its precious cargo on the rug in the salon where Hubert had laid it carefully down, and trotted upstairs to his study, nimble and light on his feet for a man of his vintage. The study walls were lined with rich green velvet and displayed just a fractional part of his gleaming collection of ancient weaponry. He pointed a remote control at the sound system and the room filled with his favourite Soler sonata for harpsichord. The desk on which Coleman had neatly piled the mail had once belonged to General Robert E. Lee. There was no trace of a computer in the study, or, for that matter, anywhere in the house. The telephone was the only concession Wesley Holland allowed to be made to modern telecommunications technology under his roof, despite Coleman’s constant bitching about the disadvantages of having no internet connection or email access. As far as Wesley was concerned, if you wanted to write to someone, it ought to be the proper way: by hand, on paper, mailed in an envelope. He sealed his own handwritten letters with red wax. Okay, so he was a dinosaur. The dinosaurs had ruled the earth far longer than mankind ever would.
He spent a few minutes browsing through his mail – nothing especially interesting or pressing there – then looked at his watch. London would still be fast asleep at this time. Brian Cameron at the Wallace Collection had almost certainly been calling about the English Civil War-period armour pieces that the museum had been begging for months to have on loan. Holland wasn’t sure he could bring himself to part with them. His collections were his passion. He might phone the Englishman back in the morning, or he might let him stew a while before he made his decision.
One thing that wouldn’t wait was veal escalopes in cream sauce.
Wesley shut the study and made his way back downstairs. His stomach rumbled in anticipation of his late dinner as he crossed the marble-floored hallway towards the kitchen. He liked to eat his meals at the simple table there, rather than have Hubert go to the trouble of preparing the vaulted dining hall. As Wesley polished off the delicious meal, feeding tiny titbits to Moses under the table, Abigail would be pottering about the kitchen making his dessert. He enjoyed her company: more than he could have said for any of his four wives, each one more grasping and mercenary than her predecessor. Wesley had been fifty-seven when he’d divorced the last of them and sworn that was an end to it.
The kitchen door seemed to be jammed by some obstruction. ‘Abi?’ No reply. Wesley pushed harder and it opened a few inches. He could smell burning from inside. ‘Abi?’ he repeated.
At Wesley’s last medical check-up, his doctor had told him he had the heart of a forty-five-year-old. But it gave a terrifying leap and almost stopped beating permanently at the sight in the kitchen. He cried out in horror.
Moses the cat was lapping nonchalantly at a thick blood trail that gleamed under the lights. It led from near the cooking range to the door, where Abigail had managed to drag herself before she died. She’d been shot twice in the chest with a large-calibre weapon. She was still clutching the spatula that she’d been using to stir the cream sauce, now simmered to a black mess on the stove, the extractor fans sucking away the smoke.
‘Coleman!’ Wesley shouted in panic. ‘Coleman!’ He darted back across the hallway and into the main salon.
Hubert Clemm’s body lay twisted in the middle of the vast Persian rug with his arms outflung and his face turned towards the door. There was a large bullet hole in his forehead, a spray of blood up the upholstery of the couch behind him.
‘Coleman!’ Wesley screamed.
He heard a sound behind him and whipped round. Before he could react, he was being propelled backwards into the salon and the muzzles of two silenced pistols were looming large in his face. He fell heavily into an armchair and stared helplessly up at the pair of gunmen standing over him. One of them was tall, well over six feet. The long brown coat he wore was made of heavy, full-grained tan leather, like horsehide. The other was wearing a quilted jacket. Both had on black ski masks that hid their faces.
Robbers. Wesley’s heart pounded horribly. He could see Hubert’s corpse out of the corner of his eye, and it was more than he could bear. ‘I keep over a million dollars in cash in a safe upstairs,’ he gasped. ‘And jewels. I’ll open it for you myself. Take what you want and go. Please, just go.’
The masked men exchanged glances. The prospect of making off with a million-plus in cash was appealing, but their orders had been strict and precise. ‘The sword,’ the big one in the leather coat said tersely. ‘Let’s have it.’ He talked with an English accent. A Londoner, maybe.
Wesley balked. His brain churned faster than it had ever churned before. ‘I don’t know what sword you mean!’ he protested. But he did know, very well. If he and his associates were right about it – and almost three years of tireless efforts had persuaded him beyond a doubt that they were – it was a treasure of incalculable value. What he couldn’t understand was how these men could possibly be aware of its very existence. Virtually nobody was, outside of the group. Who could have given away the sworn secret? Hillel Zada? Surely not him. He didn’t know enough.
The worst thing for Wesley was that the sword was so nearby. He tried desperately hard not to let his eyes flick across to the black fibreglass container, just a few yards away across the room. ‘That’s it there,’ he said, instead pointing through the open door at the giant two-handed Landsknecht weapon that dominated the display in the hallway. From tip to pommel it stood taller than a tall man, and it was almost four centuries old.
Much too big. Much too new. Totally wrong. A wild bluff, based on the fact that these thugs could hardly be expert enough to know one sword from another. ‘Take it,’ he said. ‘It’s worth a fortune.’ That part was quite true.
The gunmen gave the monster blade a cursory over-the-shoulder glance. The one in the brown leather coat shook his head. ‘Don’t fuck with us.’ The one in the quilted jacket pressed his gun muzzle hard into Wesley’s cheekbone. ‘You’d better start talking, old man.’ Another Brit. Who were these men?
‘Drop your weapons and turn around slowly,’ said a calm, steady voice from the doorway, and Wesley’s heart soared.
Coleman Nash had the massive twin bores of the elephant gun trained steadily on the robbers.
The two men froze. The pressure of the pistol muzzle against Wesley’s cheekbone slackened. Coleman had them cold.
Except for one problem. Coleman had never pointed a gun at a living being before, still less pulled the trigger. These men did it for a living. Amateurs hesitated. Professionals never did.
It all happened too fast for Wesley to follow. The report of the first pistol was a muffled ‘dooophh’, followed almost instantly by another, simultaneously with the brain-numbing explosion of the elephant gun as it blasted a moon crater out of the far wall.
Coleman’s legs wobbled and then buckled and he went down on his knees. Blood on his lips.
Wesley yelled. Another pistol shot. Then another.
Wesley saw the bullets strike and knew there was nothing he could do to help poor Coleman. He jumped up from the armchair, grabbed the black fibreglass case and bolted like a rabbit for the side exit. The big man in the leather coat turned to stop him, but dived for cover behind the couch as the stricken Coleman let loose with the second barrel. The .700 Nitro Express blew a great ragged hole through the backrest of a hundred-thousand-dollar antique couch.
In the next moment, Coleman was cut down by a volley of bullets. He died before the rifle had dropped from his hands.
By then, Wesley had made it out of the exit and was sprinting in a grief-stricken panic down the passage, carrying his precious case. He heard the door burst open behind him and the footsteps pounding as the gunmen gave chase. The terror pressed him on faster. He hammered up a flight of steps, down another passage, and reached the door.
The panic room had been built several years earlier, in case of just such a contingency. Wesley had let Coleman take care of the arrangements, then signed the cheque and promptly forgotten all about it. Which made it all the more miraculous that the password for the voice-recognition vault door should come back to him now.
‘Barbarossa!’
The six forged steel deadlocks opened with a clunk. Wesley rushed inside and the armoured door shut behind him, locking itself automatically.
Safe. More importantly, the sword was too. Wesley leaned against the wall and breathed hard, able to hear the muffled voices of his pursuers cursing on the other side. For the first time in his life, he thanked God for modern technology. If he’d had to fumble for a key, they’d have got him. Would they have killed him outright, or tortured him until they’d found the sword in its case?
Wesley staggered numbly over to the control console and peered at the bank of monitors showing digital hi-definition images of every part of the house. He could see the two bodies on the main living room floor: Coleman’s near the entrance, Hubert’s on the rug. Abigail’s in the kitchen. The blood looked garishly bright.
Wesley tasted bile in his mouth at the sight and turned away, following the gunmen’s progress from screen to screen as they dashed furiously from one room to the next. They must have known that the clock was ticking now, but clearly believed they still had a chance of locating their quarry somewhere within the Whitworth Mansion.
They wouldn’t hang around too long, if they had any sense. Wesley picked up the phone and dialled 911. He spoke urgently but clearly to the police operator, and was assured that officers were on their way. Then, swallowing back his grief, he moved on to the even more important call he had to make.
*
Halfway across the world, Simeon Arundel picked up on the second ring that dragged him up out of a deep sleep.
‘Simeon?’ said the familiar voice.
‘Wesley, it’s three o’clock in the morning here,’ Simeon muttered, rubbing his face. It had been a late night, and his head was a little fuzzy from all the whisky they’d drunk. Their visitor’s capacity for alcohol seemed to be undiminished with the years. Michaela was fast asleep, the curve under the blanket rising and falling gently in the bed next to him.
‘Listen to me,’ the American’s voice hissed in his ear. ‘Something’s happened.’
Struggling to clear his head and afraid of waking Michaela, Simeon sat up and swung his legs out of the bed. ‘Hold on, Wesley.’ In the darkness of the bedroom he padded over to the ensuite bathroom, closed himself quietly inside and turned on the light. ‘All right. What’s happened?’
‘They’re after the sword.’
‘What? Who?’
‘The armed men who broke into my house tonight. Or whoever paid them to come here to steal it.’
Simeon sat down heavily on the edge of the bath, his mind swimming with horror. ‘Oh, Lord. Are you all right?’
‘I’m safe. The cops are on their way as we speak.’ Wesley’s voice quavered with emotion. ‘They shot Coleman, Simeon.’ A sorrowful pause. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Dead!?’
‘So are Hubert and Abigail.’
Simeon’s heart began to beat even faster. He could feel it thudding violently at the base of his throat. He suddenly felt as if he might need to lurch the two steps across to the toilet and throw up.
Then the suspicions Fabrice had expressed to him just before his death had been true. Someone really was taking an unhealthy interest in the research they’d all tried so hard to keep secret. Someone really was after them.
Someone who was prepared to murder to get what they wanted.
Simeon swallowed back the urge to gag. ‘Is it safe?’
‘It’s right here next to me,’ Wesley said, patting the case.
‘Didn’t I tell you, Wesley? Didn’t I tell you something strange was happening – that I was sure I’d been followed – about the man I saw in the church a couple of weeks ago?’ Simeon visualised the scene clearly in his mind as he spoke. The stranger had materialised as if out of the blue while he’d been helping put up the Christmas decorations at one of his churches in a rural part of Oxfordshire. When Simeon had gone to welcome him, the man had slipped away as suddenly as he’d appeared. ‘And didn’t I tell you that Fabrice would never have killed himself like that? Or done those appalling things?’
They’d been through this over and over, ever since receiving the news of their colleague’s death and his shocking circular email. ‘I don’t know whether Fabrice did those things or not,’ Wesley said impatiently. ‘Or why he’d have confessed to them if he hadn’t. And I don’t know if he threw himself off that damn bridge or not. Neither do you. All we can be sure of is that you and I are both in danger and it has to do with this sword. That’s the reality we’re facing right now.’
‘Who are these people? How do they know about us?’
‘Did you talk to anybody? Anybody at all? They even seem to know what it looks like.’
‘Nobody,’ Simeon blurted. ‘I swear.’
‘You’re absolutely positive about that?’
‘Wesley, I would never …’
‘Good. Keep it that way. Listen, I can’t stay on this line. The cops will be here any minute. When I’ve dealt with them I’m going to call my lawyer and arrange some private security for you and your family over there, okay?’
‘There’s no need for that. I’ll be making my own arrangements.’
‘Can you get armed bodyguards in England?’
‘I don’t think so, not unless you’re the Prime Minister or something. But I have an old friend with a lot of experience of that kind of thing.’
‘He’d better know his business,’ Wesley said. ‘This is serious.’
‘What about you?’
‘Me? I’m going to Martha’s. Got to get the sword somewhere safe. It’s more important than any of us. You said that yourself, remember?’
Simeon nodded. He was still reeling. ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’
‘I’ll call you from the road. You watch your back, hear me?’
Chapter Six
Sometime before sunrise, Ben flipped himself out of the comfortable bed in the Arundels’ guest annexe, stretched and warmed his muscles and dropped down to the floor to knock out fifty press-ups without a break. He followed those up with fifty sit-ups, and was about to go straight into another set of press-ups when he heard the unmistakable throaty engine note of the Lotus from outside. He rubbed condensation off the window pane and peered out to see Simeon’s taillights exiting the vicarage gates. It seemed the vicar was off to an early start this morning.
The thoughts that had been swirling around Ben’s mind before he’d finally drifted off to sleep the night before were still lingering. The life that Simeon and Michaela had created for themselves here in this serene heart of rural England had made a strong impression on him, and he couldn’t stop thinking about how a life like that might have been possible for him, once, too. There’d been a time, many years ago, when he couldn’t have imagined his future any other way.
As he’d done so often in the past, Ben tried to imagine himself in the role of a clergyman. The ivy-clad vicarage, the dog collar, the whole works. Ben Hope, pastor and shepherd of the weak, beacon of virtue and temperance.
The fantasy had always been there, but it was a self-image he’d never found it easy to believe in with all his heart. If he was a Christian himself, he was an extremely lapsed one – and it had been that way for much too long. Compared to the blazing supernova of Simeon’s faith, Ben’s was a guttering candle. He seldom prayed with anything approaching conviction, even more seldom picked up a Bible. The old leather-bound King James Version he’d hung onto for years had ended up being tossed out of the window of a moving car on a road in rural Montana; it had been a long time before Ben had come round to regretting his rash action.
And yet faith, of some kind, was something that had never quite left Ben – although whenever he tried to ponder on its nature, as he did now, he was left with only the vaguest, cloudiest impression of the strange yearning he felt somewhere deep inside, at the core of his being. Some indefinable sense that one day, maybe, he could find peace within himself. That one day, a guiding hand would appear out of the darkness to steer him on the right path.
Ben closed his eyes, and for a brief moment he had a vision of himself, a different Ben Hope altogether, living this serene, idyllic life, with Brooke by his side.
The vision made him flinch and open his eyes again. He cursed himself for allowing such a hopelessly absurd and romantic notion to enter his head. Brooke as a vicar’s wife – it was nuts. She was as different from Michaela as Ben was from Simeon. She’d have laughed in his face at the very idea of it.
Brooke would probably never want to see him again anyway.
‘You’re a fool, Ben Hope,’ he said out loud. He chased away the darkness in his mind with more rapid-fire press-ups, eighty of them without a rest, so that his muscles screamed and his T-shirt clung damply to his skin.
After a cool shower, he dressed and stepped outside into the frosty dawn and crossed the yard to where the Land Rover was parked. ‘Let’s see if we can’t figure you out,’ he muttered, raising the battered matt-green bonnet lid and preparing to get his hands dirty.
He’d been there quite some time before he heard the footsteps on the gravel and looked up to see Michaela approaching, a mug of something hot and steaming in her hand.
‘Brought you coffee,’ she said, setting the mug down on the Landy’s wing. ‘You’re covered in grime.’ She reached over to Ben’s face, touched his cheek, looked at her blackened fingertips and grimaced. ‘Yuck. Any joy?’
‘Jeff was right,’ Ben said. ‘I shouldn’t have come in Le Crock.’
Michaela had the decency not to rub salt into Ben’s wounds by mentioning old bangers again. ‘Can you fix it?’ she asked, peering over his shoulder into the rusty engine compartment.
‘Not without a spare part or two,’ Ben said.
‘Worry about it later. Come inside and I’ll make you the best scrambled eggs you’ve ever had in your life.’
‘Coffee’s fine for me,’ he protested.
‘I insist. You’re officially on holiday, after all. And it’s all beautiful fresh local produce. The eggs are just a day old, courtesy of our neighbours, the Dorans. You can’t possibly refuse.’
Ben relented. Scrubbed clean and tucking into a plate of what were indeed the most delicious scrambled eggs he’d ever tasted – just a smidgen of organic butter, just a pinch of sea salt, a little fresh-ground pepper – he said, ‘Simeon was off early this morning.’
‘He had to drive into Oxford for a radio interview,’ Michaela said, sipping her tea. The eggs were all for Ben. Trying to diet, she’d said.
‘You weren’t kidding about him being a celebrity.’
‘Man on a mission. Fighting a one-man war against the decline of the Church.’
‘Is it declining that much?’ Ben asked.
‘You’re a little out of the loop, aren’t you?’
‘Just a little,’ Ben admitted. But he’d seen the signs, in France as well as in England. The chains and padlocks on the church gates. The silent bell towers. Buildings falling into decay, with grids over the windows to stop the vandals smashing the stained glass, whose beauty few people seemed to appreciate any more.
‘Simeon’s determined to bring youth and vigour back to the Christian faith. That’s how he puts it. Heaven knows, it needs someone with his dynamism to give it a shot in the arm, or else it’s just going to crumble away to nothing before too long, the whole institution and its churches to boot. When Simeon’s father passed away three years ago he left him almost four hundred thousand pounds. Simeon donated every penny of it towards church restoration projects. But as he says, churches are worth nothing without the people inside them. So he fights, and he fights, and he never stops. Twelve hours is a relaxing day for him. When he isn’t in church, it’s one radio interview after another, as well as the odd television appearance. His blog. His podcasts. Anything he can do to raise the profile of Christianity for a modern audience, he throws himself into it with a passion you wouldn’t believe.’
‘He’s a hard-working guy,’ Ben said through a mouthful of egg.
‘You have no idea, Ben. Gone are the days when a vicar only had his own cosy little corner to tend to. The C of E is so strapped for cash, old vicars being pensioned off all over the place and a shortage of new recruits, that Simeon now has three churches to look after, and he’s constantly zapping about from one to the other. Some of his colleagues have even more, but none of them has managed to boost attendance the way he has. He’s amazing. How he still finds the time to research his book is beyond me.’
‘What’s he writing about?’ Ben asked as he helped to clear up the breakfast dishes.
‘I only know the title,’ Michaela said, piling plates in the cupboard. ‘And then only because Simeon accidentally left the draft title page lying on his desk one day. He’s calling it The Sacred Sword.’
‘Interesting,’ Ben said.
‘And more than a little mysterious,’ Michaela added wryly. ‘He never stopped prattling on about his first two books while he was working on them. I could almost have written them myself, he told me so much. But this one … let’s just say he’s being extremely secretive. He’s taken to locking his study door when he’s not around. Even bought a safe to keep his notes in. And that time he accidentally left the printout lying around, he burned it afterwards. I don’t think he’s printed off a page of it since.’
‘Maybe he thinks he’s onto a hot bestseller,’ Ben said.
‘It’s not just the book. He spends hours on the phone to people all over the world, then refuses to tell me what it was about. Even when he went to America to meet some “expert” he wouldn’t tell me why, or who the man was, not even his name. I think it was him who phoned last night, in the wee small hours. I didn’t bother asking Simeon about it this morning, although he seemed very preoccupied and I can only assume it was to do with the phone call. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he’ll tell me one day, when he’s ready to.’
Michaela went quiet and looked pensive for a while as they finished clearing up. She glanced out of the window and forced a smile. ‘Shame to be stuck indoors when it’s a lovely day outside. Would you like to go for a walk?’
Ben said he would love to. They stepped out into the crisp sunny winter’s morning and walked down the long, sloping garden with Scruffy running rings around them, a stick in his mouth. Ben was wearing a pair of Simeon’s wellingtons that crunched on the frosty grass.
‘Isn’t the air wonderful?’ Michaela said. ‘Maybe we’re in for a nice, cold, dry spell, after all the rain we’ve had. I’m praying for a white Christmas.’
‘That would be nice,’ Ben said, a little insincerely. Snow mainly just meant a big clearing headache for him.
A gate at the bottom of the garden led to a little patch of woods. Crows cawed in the cold air. The sunlight sparkled on the fast-flowing river through the gaps in the trees.
Ben pointed at the dog, who was running on ahead of them with a world of rabbits to flush out and chase. ‘I like him.’
Michaela seemed pleased. ‘He’s a real character, isn’t he? Turned up here out of the blue, about a year ago. No telling where he came from or who his former owners were. We took him in. I think he’s about three or four. I love him to bits.’
Michaela threw the stick for the dog a few times, and Ben watched her, noticing the way that her look of contentment had faded to a frown as they walked on.
‘You know, I’m really worried about Simeon,’ she said suddenly. ‘He’s got so much on his mind, and sometimes I’m afraid he’s going to burn himself out or make himself ill. He works far too hard, and what with all the quarrelling between him and Jude, not to mention this awful business with Fabrice Lalique …’
‘The man who committed suicide?’
She nodded. ‘He was a Catholic priest. Simeon met him a couple of years ago in France while visiting a church restoration project, and they became friends.’ She shook her head. ‘I still can’t believe it. What a shock. And the worst of it are the revelations that came afterwards.’
‘Revelations?’
‘A day or two after his death, his home was raided by police, acting on a tip-off. They seized his computer and found … how can I put it?’ Michaela paused uncomfortably. ‘Certain material. Very unpleasant and explicit material. Pictures of children. You can guess what kind of pictures I’m talking about.’
‘I can guess,’ Ben said, with a stab of revulsion.
‘It was the reason he killed himself,’ Michaela said. ‘Out of guilt, or shame, or perhaps just because he knew what would happen if he was caught. Before he did it, he sent an email to everyone he knew, confessing his sins and asking for forgiveness. Then he threw himself off the highest bridge in France.’
‘That’ll certainly do it,’ Ben said, without the least trace of pity in his voice.
Michaela turned towards him, shading her eyes from the low sun with her hand. ‘Do you think it’s possible to forgive someone for something so horrible, even if they’ve repented? I struggle with that, I have to admit.’
Ben paused. He thought of paedophiles he’d blown away at point-blank range with a shotgun. Come to think of it, he’d never stopped to ask them if they’d repented. With a sawn-off pointed at them, they probably would have dropped to their knees and started chanting the Lord’s Prayer if they’d thought it could help. It probably wouldn’t have.
‘Did you know this Lalique well?’ he asked her.
‘Never met him. Simeon was in touch with him a lot over the last year or so, something to do with the book, I think. I don’t really know.’ She tried to smile. ‘Let’s not talk about this any more. It’s so good to see you again, Ben. Isn’t it strange, the two of us walking along together, after all these years?’
‘It’s certainly been a long time,’ he said.
‘We were so young then, weren’t we?’
‘Nineteen.’
She chuckled. ‘You were wild then.’
Memories of college days flashed through Ben’s mind. Most of them were unwanted: hazy and unpleasant recollections of drinking and recklessness. Picking, then winning fights with town toughs in pubs. Throwing a TV from a window. Skipping classes, generally acting crazy. A lot of things he’d done that he’d rather forget.
‘That was a difficult time,’ he said.
‘You never talked about your troubles.’
He still didn’t talk about them now. ‘I’m sorry if I hurt you,’ he said.
‘I really loved you,’ she answered after a beat, glancing at him. ‘But I knew you didn’t feel the same way about me. How long did we last together? Seven weeks? Six? If that?’
‘You ended up with a much better man.’
Michaela made no reply. They walked on a while through the trees, dead leaves crunching underfoot, the dog racing on ahead of them. ‘I remember the first time I took you to meet my parents,’ Michaela said after a few moments’ silence.
‘The one and only time,’ Ben said, casting his mind far back to a hot summer’s afternoon in Surrey. ‘The posh garden party.’
Michaela chuckled. ‘They still talk about it. You completely scandalised everyone. You must have drunk a gallon of whisky that day. And that was even before you’d started arguing politics with my father.’
Ben rolled his eyes, wishing she’d stop it. ‘Please.’
‘As for my cousin Eddie, I think you traumatised him for life.’
Ben hadn’t forgotten that one either. The instant dislike he’d taken to Eddie had been shared by Michaela’s Pekingese, Hamlet. Nobody but Ben had seen Eddie slip Hamlet a sly kick to the head when he thought no-one was watching. Moments later, Eddie had been taking an unplanned nose-dive, fully clothed, into the deep end of the swimming pool in front of eighty guests. The real fun began when it transpired that Eddie couldn’t swim. Four more guests had suffered a dunking before Eddie could be rescued. At that point, the party had been more or less ruined.
‘You dumped me soon afterwards,’ Ben said.
‘I was awful to you.’
‘No, you were right. I was bad medicine. I’m sure your family approved of Simeon slightly more than they did me.’
‘Mum and Dad positively idolise him. But we don’t see so much of them now that they’ve moved to Antigua. Couldn’t stand the British weather any more.’ She started laughing.
‘What’s funny?’
‘I just remembered another time. That night in Oxford when you took on that gang of bikers up Cowley Road? Lord, there must have been eight of them. I can still recall how they scattered in all directions.’
Ben remembered. It had been more like ten. He and Michaela had been walking past when one of them had made a lewd comment about her. ‘Are you done tormenting me?’ he said.
They walked up a grassy slope to higher ground, where the winding country road to Little Denton was visible through the line of naked beech trees that skirted the meadow.
‘So after Oxford you just upped and joined the army?’ Michaela asked.
‘Pretty much,’ Ben said. ‘Thirteen years’ service.’
‘Has there been anyone … since Leigh?’
‘Yes,’ he ventured. ‘There is someone. Or was. I don’t have much talent in that department. Perhaps it’s fate or something.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. Touched his arm. ‘You’re a better man than you realise, Ben Hope. You always were.’
‘Sometimes I’ve thought that I went off in completely the wrong direction,’ Ben confessed. ‘When I look at Simeon, and the life the two of you have here …’
‘You’d have been great in the church. Once you’d settled down a bit.’
‘There’s the rub,’ he laughed.
‘It’s never too late.’
‘I already tried once, a while back. To go back and finish my studies.’
‘Really?’
‘It didn’t work out,’ he said. He didn’t want to say any more, and decided to change the subject radically. ‘It’s a shame I won’t get to meet your son Jude.’
Michaela shrugged. ‘Some other time, I’m sure you will.’
‘Was it a very serious quarrel? Between him and Simeon?’
‘I suppose it’s just typical family stuff,’ she said. ‘Jude would rebel against his own shadow. Always full of his own ideas about what he wants to do with his life. It’ll all come right in the end, I’m sure. Oh, I think I hear the car.’
Ben had heard it too, and spotted the sleek crimson shape of the Lotus darting along beyond the trees in the distance, returning home.
‘Let’s walk up to the house and meet him,’ Michaela said.
Back at the vicarage, Ben thought that Simeon looked even more grim and strained than the night before, although he was obviously struggling hard not to show it as he sipped his coffee and gave Ben the rundown on that morning’s radio interview on the topic ‘Is there still room for Jesus in the Facebook Age?’
‘My secret admirer popped up again during the phone-in at the end,’ Simeon said to Michaela. ‘As charming as ever. Called me a filthy cockroach and said I’d rot with all the others.’
‘I can’t understand why they allow that kind of thing on air,’ Michaela sniffed. ‘“Filthy cockroach”. That’s disgusting.’
‘Do you get a lot of that?’ Ben asked.
‘Oh, I have many enemies,’ Simeon told him. He was smiling, but Ben thought he could see something behind the smile, an edge of seriousness.
Michaela was obviously keen to change the subject. ‘Ben’s car still isn’t working properly,’ she said, topping up their coffees. ‘Darling, do you think Bertie would have a look at it?’ She turned to Ben and explained, ‘He’s the local mechanic, in Greater Denton, just a few minutes’ drive away.’
‘Marvellous idea,’ Simeon said. ‘Bertie will have the old girl right as rain in no time. Sorted out the carbs on the Lotus. And he’s cheap as chips.’
‘Why don’t you call him now?’ Michaela said. ‘If he’s fixed it by this evening, we can pick it up on the way.’
‘On the way where?’ Simeon asked.
‘I thought we could have dinner at the Old Windmill tonight, as we have a special guest.’
‘There’s no need …’ Ben began.
‘Sounds like a fine plan to me,’ Simeon said. ‘I’ll phone Bertie now.’
Chapter Seven
Simeon led the way in the Lotus and Ben followed in the ailing, badly misfiring Land Rover. Simeon had to keep slowing down to let him catch up as they wound their way along the twisty country lanes towards Greater Denton.
Bertie the mechanic, whose garage was a converted stable block on the edge of the village, was one of those work-hardened little guys who looked as if they’d been twisted and hammered together out of wire and leather. Ben got the impression that the grizzled old mechanic would have done anything for Simeon. No sooner had Ben described Le Crock’s symptoms, than Bertie grabbed a toolbox and plunged his head and shoulders under the scarred green bonnet lid, apparently set on not re-emerging until he’d cured the problem, if it took him all day and night.
Simeon seemed edgy as he drove fast back towards Little Denton. Rocketing up the long, straight hill a mile before the village, the car almost took off over the crest and went plummeting down the straight and hard into the set of S-bends at the bottom before roaring over the little stone humpbacked bridge, barely wide enough for one and a half cars, that arched across the swollen, fast-moving river.
Ben could tell his old friend was building up to saying something but having difficulty framing his words. Simeon wet his lips and spoke hesitantly over the engine noise. ‘Ben, there’s something I wanted to … Oh, never mind.’
‘What?’
Simeon let out a long breath. ‘The fact is, it wasn’t completely coincidental. Our turning up at the concert, I mean. In fact, opera’s not my favourite thing at all.’ He paused. ‘The point is, Ben, I knew you’d be there. I saw your name in the paper and I deliberately came to see you, for a reason that I haven’t discussed with Michaela. She doesn’t know anything about this, and I’d like to keep it that way.’
‘I understand,’ Ben said, and waited for more.
‘I’ve often wondered what you were up to all this time,’ Simeon said. ‘It seemed like you’d vanished without a trace. Now and again Michaela and I tried to look you up, to no avail. Then a few months ago, I found you on the internet and saw what it is you do now. You help people.’
‘What I do is very specific,’ Ben said. ‘Le Val is a tactical training facility.’
‘For bodyguards? That sort of thing?’
‘That sort of thing,’ Ben said. ‘Not exactly.’
‘So, when people have a problem – when they’re under threat, or when they feel they might be in danger, there are ways they can protect themselves. Aren’t there? And that’s the kind of line you’re in? Providing advice, or services of a sort … you can tell I don’t know a lot about this stuff.’
‘Get to the point, Simeon. What are you trying to say?’
They were coming into Little Denton. Simeon sighed. ‘I need help, Ben. At least, I think I do. I’m not sure what’s happening, but I’m frightened. Not so much for myself, but for Michaela and Jude. If anything happened to them—’
‘Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?’ Ben said.
‘I hardly know where to begin,’ Simeon replied. ‘I’ve been working on something, an important project. Well, actually, it’s more than just important. It’s huge. It’s terrifyingly huge.’ Simeon shook his head, as if bewildered by just how huge it was.
‘To do with your book?’ Ben asked.
Simeon glanced at him in surprise.
‘Michaela told me you were working on a new one,’ Ben said. ‘And that you’ve been keeping a lot to yourself. She’s worried about you.’
Simeon hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes, it’s very much the subject of the book. I’ve been working on this day and night for … or should I say, we’ve been working on it. It’s not just me that’s involved.’
The vicarage gates were coming up on the right. Simeon turned in and rasped the Lotus over the gravel. He pulled up, killed the engine and turned to Ben. ‘Something awful happened recently,’ he said anxiously. ‘Something absolutely dreadful, and completely baffling. I mean, when you know someone so well, or at least think you know them, and then you hear they’ve done something that’s just so totally, so horrifyingly out of character that you just can’t …’
Ben understood that Simeon was talking about the priest who’d killed himself. ‘Go on.’
Simeon’s jaw tightened. ‘Two weeks ago …’ he started. But Michaela’s voice from the house interrupted him, and they both turned to see her trotting down the front steps and across the gravel with the landline phone in her hand. ‘Yes, in fact he’s just got back this moment. I’ll pass him to you, archdeacon.’
‘Hell and buggery,’ Simeon groaned under his breath, and climbed out of the car to take the phone. To Ben he said, ‘We’ll talk later.’ Then, pressing the phone to his ear, ‘Dr Grant! What a pleasure to hear from you.’
Michaela took Ben’s arm. ‘Come on. He’ll be on the phone for ever with that one. Come inside. I have something for you.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a surprise.’
Inside the warmth of the living room, she signalled to him to wait, then trotted upstairs and returned a moment later holding a small gift-wrapped package tied up with a ribbon. ‘Merry Christmas, Ben.’
‘You shouldn’t have,’ he said, taking the package, embarrassed that he hadn’t anything to offer the Arundels in return. ‘Am I allowed to open it?’
‘No!’ Michaela said quickly, reaching out abruptly to stop him tearing open the wrapping – then relaxed and smiled. ‘Not now. You have to promise me that you won’t peek until you’re back in France. Then you can open it and think of us.’
‘I promise,’ Ben said, wondering what it was. Through the Christmas paper it felt like a small hardback book, not much bigger than a diary.
‘Solemnly? You won’t be tempted?’
‘Get me a Bible,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll swear on it. Or maybe it is a Bible?’
‘No,’ Michaela said softly. ‘It isn’t a Bible.’ Her expression was a strange blend of relief and apprehension. She was quiet for a few moments, then said something about needing to check something upstairs, and disappeared.
Simeon was still on the phone to the archdeacon. Left to his own devices Ben went to the annexe to put Michaela’s present away safely in his bag, then wandered outside to the woodshed to gather some logs for the living room fire, which he’d noticed was getting low. The firewood was neatly stacked along the shed wall near the door, a heavy log-splitting axe and a small hatchet resting against the chopping block. He hefted a piece of well-seasoned oak onto the block, grabbed the axe, and with a downward swing cracked the log neatly in two. He set the split pieces aside and grabbed another log. His breath billowed in clouds as he worked.
He felt something nudge his leg, and turned to see what it was. ‘Hey there, Scruffy,’ he said as the dog nuzzled against him, and stroked the coarse fur of his head. The dog wasn’t the prettiest of creatures – the bull neck and alligator snout of a Staffordshire mixed up with the wiry, untameable coat of a Border Terrier – but there was a look of calm intelligence in those wide-set eyes. Criminal or saint: Ben wasn’t too sure which he was.
‘You like being a vicar’s dog?’ Ben said.
Scruffy cocked his head and looked at him curiously, then went off to settle on the floor a few yards away and gnaw contentedly at a piece of wood. If only life could be that simple for humans, Ben thought.
Going on chopping, Ben heard Simeon’s voice from inside the vicarage, calling up the stairs to Michaela that he had to rush out to attend to a church matter. Moments later, the Lotus was roaring off into the distance.
Ben added two more split logs to his growing pile and wondered how it could be that Simeon Arundel – this vicar whom everyone seemed to admire and respect, living this cosy life out here in the tranquillity of the English countryside, writing books on religion and running his churches – was talking about being in danger. It seemed so incongruous and bizarre. The way Ben saw it, Simeon was the last person on earth anyone would want to harm.
He suddenly had the feeling he was being watched. He glanced up from the chopping block and through the open door of the barn, just in time to spot Michaela backing away from an upstairs window of the vicarage. In the split second their eyes met, Ben could see the odd look on her face.
Why had she been watching him? He kept seeing her strange expression in his mind as he tossed the split logs into a sack and headed outside. With the dog trotting behind him he lugged the logs inside the house to stack beside the living room fireplace.
As the fire revived, Ben sat with the dog and watched the flames, wondering what secrets were being harboured behind the idyllic face of Arundel family life. Something was going on, and he had the feeling it somehow involved him.
‘It’s all a bit of a puzzle, isn’t it, Scruff?’ he said softly, turning to the dog.
Scruffy licked Ben’s hand. Whatever he knew about it, he was keeping to himself.
Chapter Eight
The road was long and dark as Wesley Holland threaded his way slowly eastwards across New York State to the beat of his windscreen wipers and the steady flurry of snowflakes in his headlights. The snow had thickened so badly shortly after Oneida in Madison County that he’d thought his route might become impassable – but the snow patrols were fighting to keep the roads open in what was turning out to be one of the toughest winters in years.
He kept driving doggedly on, stopping for gas about an hour beyond Schenectady, at the snowy feet of the Appalachian Mountains. He was still suffering from shock, grief-stricken and freezing and exhausted. It was over five hundred miles to his destination; in this weather it seemed like five thousand. No way for a billionaire to be travelling.
Yet there was no way Wesley Holland was stepping on a plane, either. Even if the conditions had been more clement, the fact that all three of his private jets and all eight of his helicopters were registered to him made it far too easy for whoever was after the sword to track his movements. And after a near crash coming into Taipei in 1996, he’d vowed never to set foot on a commercial airliner again. No, by road was the only way. Nobody could track him or find him out here. Nobody in the world except for Simeon Arundel knew about Martha’s. The sword would be safe there.
In the meantime, there it was, locked in its case behind him on the back seat of the car. One of the most important artefacts in history. Perhaps the most important.
Wesley Holland wasn’t a religious animal. Try as he might, he found it impossible to share the fervent spiritual passion that drove men like Simeon Arundel. There were times when it irked him, but more often he found himself actually envying it, feeling excluded and annoyed at himself for being incapable of fully experiencing something that seemed to be able to offer such fulfilment to people who opened themselves to it. He still remembered the light in Simeon’s eyes, and those of Fabrice Lalique, that day in France when he’d first told them about his amazing historical find. But even an agnostic like Wesley couldn’t escape the skin-tingling excitement of such a monumental discovery.
The three had met during the repair of a badly deteriorating medieval church near Millau, which Wesley had been funding entirely out of his own pocket. The contractors he’d hired for the job were an up-and-coming Parisian firm reputed to be the best in the business; Wesley had been there to check out their work. So had a young English minister named Simeon Arundel, recently come into some funds of his own and intent on learning all he could about church restoration. Also keeping a watchful eye on the long-needed project had been the local priest in Millau, Fabrice Lalique.
An American, an Englishman and a Frenchman. It could have been the opening of a joke, but instead it became the start of a friendship. One night over dinner and a very expensive bottle of wine provided by Wesley, he’d decided he trusted the pair of clergymen enough to tell them the secret he’d been yearning to share with someone who could truly understand it, appreciate it, and most of all, keep quiet about it. Their initial reaction on hearing of his discovery had been one of stunned disbelief, just as his had been at first. But when he’d shown them the evidence, their scepticism had turned to fascination, then to wonderment and awe.
Simeon had been speechless at the way his life had just changed.
‘But we ought to tell people about this,’ Fabrice had argued.
‘Be patient,’ Wesley had urged him. ‘The time will come.’
Wesley still believed it would, even after nearly three years of maddening dealings with experts who wouldn’t pull their heads out of their asses and realise what they were being shown. For the first time, though, his excitement was now tempered with doubts. People were dying. Was it all worth it?
Yes, it was, he decided as he drove. If Fabrice had died protecting the secret, and if Coleman and the others had died because of it, then Wesley was damn well going to make sure these thugs, whoever they were, didn’t get their hands on it. Once he arrived at his destination, he was going to hire an army of the toughest bodyguards money could buy.
Let the sons of bitches come find him then. Let them try.
The red of dawn was burning through the snowclouds by the time Wesley realised he couldn’t go on any more without a rest. If he didn’t stop awhile, he was going to drift off at the wheel and crash the car. His tense shoulders sagged with relief when he saw the motel sign a few miles on that said ‘VACANCY’S’. ‘Thank God,’ he mumbled.
Wesley pulled into the car park between the shabby, snow-covered wooden buildings. The only other car in sight was an ancient Ford Explorer with jacked-up suspension. He climbed stiffly out of the Chrysler, grabbed the case from the back seat and dragged his heels through the snow over to the dirty glass doors that led into the gloomy reception area.
At the far end of the lobby was a corner desk, and behind that was an unshaven guy in a John Deere baseball cap who stared at Wesley’s American Express Platinum card as if it was the only one he’d ever see, then shrugged and shoved it in the card machine. ‘Room twelve,’ he said, sliding a key across the counter.
Wesley staggered to Room 12 with his only item of luggage. As he might have expected, the place was a shithole, but at that moment he’d gladly have lain down to rest inside a sewer pipe. He locked his door, laid the case down, made straight for the bed and collapsed on it without even taking off his coat or shoes. Within seconds of his face touching the stained pillow, his utter exhaustion carried him off to sleep.
When Wesley awoke he was shivering with cold and feeling clammy from sleeping in his clothes. His back ached from the worn-out mattress and the car key in his pocket felt like it had dug a hole in his leg. Panic gripped him. The case! He twisted round to see.
Still there. He could breathe again.
His fifty thousand-dollar gold watch told him he’d been asleep for a little over four hours. That was all the sleep he needed nowadays, at his age. He’d drink a cup or two of hot coffee to revive and warm him, then hit the road again. With any luck he’d make it all the way to Martha’s with just one more stop for gas.
The price of the motel room didn’t appear to include any coffee-making facilities. Wesley trudged outside into the cold, taking the case with him and locking his door behind him. More snow had fallen overnight, a two-inch blanket of it lying over the roof and bonnet of his car. The Ford Explorer was gone; in its place a little Honda. There were no other cars in the place. Popular joint, he thought to himself as he headed along the covered walkway towards the reception lobby to find out if they had such things as coffee in these parts.
The unshaven guy had clocked off his shift and been replaced by a crab-faced young woman who was sitting hunched over a magazine at the desk, gazing at fashion pictures of girls eighty pounds lighter than her and listening to scratchy rock music on a tiny electronic device manufactured by one of Wesley’s companies. At her fat elbow was a Honda ignition key attached to a pink plastic fob that said ‘Kat’. When Wesley enquired about getting a coffee, she gaped at him for a moment as if he’d asked for champagne and oysters, then motioned laconically through a doorway on the far side of the reception lobby and informed him that there was a coffee machine down the hall.
Wesley had trouble first finding the coffee machine, then more trouble getting it to work. After several attempts and a few thumps he persuaded it to accept the loose change he fed into it, and finally the machine sputtered something dark and steaming into the Styrofoam cup he offered to it. He managed to overfill his cup, and had to carry it carefully to avoid spilling any over his thousand-dollar handmade shoes.
On his way back through the reception lobby, coffee scalding one hand, the case weighing down the other, he threw a glance at Kat behind the desk a few yards away. She hadn’t moved a millimetre and looked as if she’d been ladled into her chair, a big round flaccid lump of flesh. ‘Hey, thanks,’ he called across to her, with a touch of sarcasm. She didn’t look up from her magazine.
‘Great service in this place,’ he said. Still no response. He shook his head and awkwardly tugged open the glass door with the hand holding the coffee, wincing as more of it sploshed out onto his fingers. Billionaires shouldn’t have such problems.
As he approached his room, Wesley suddenly stopped. The door was lying six inches open.
Hold on. Didn’t I just lock that?
Maybe someone had come in to clean the room, he thought. It sure needed it. Wesley peered in through the gap in the door and saw a movement inside. It was a man, and he didn’t look like a cleaner. He was a big man wearing a coat of heavy tan leather.
Wesley froze.
The man in the leather coat had his back to the door. Wesley heard him say something indistinct to another man in the room with him. Then he turned a few inches to his left, and Wesley could see the unemotional expression on his face, and the boxy black automatic pistol in his hand with a long cylindrical silencer.
Wesley drew back from the door, stifling a gasp. With what felt like a heart attack coming on he retreated back along the covered walkway towards the reception lobby. The men only had to glance through the open door of his room and they’d spot him.
By some miracle, they didn’t. Wesley vowed to start believing in God. He burst through the glass doors into the reception lobby.
Kat was still sitting at the desk, slumped over her magazine. ‘Call the police,’ he rasped at her. ‘There are—’ The words died in his mouth. He recoiled in horror.
Kat remained immobile. The only movement from her was the steady drip-drip from the bright pool of blood that had now spread across the desk, soaking the magazine in front of her and splashing to the floor.
The coffee cup slipped out of Wesley’s hand and exploded across his shoes. ‘Oh, my God.’ He had to get out of here. Grasping the handle of the case in a death grip, he dug his car key out of his pocket, scurried back to the doors and peered through the grimy glass into the yard. The snow-covered Chrysler sat halfway between the reception and the door of his room. He could see no other vehicle apart from Kat’s Honda. The killers must have left theirs somewhere around the back.
Would he make it to his car and get it started up before the men spotted him? They’d hear the sound of the engine, but maybe he’d manage to drive away before they could stop him.
They had guns. Their bullets could punch through steel and glass as he drove off.
But he had to get away. He pressed his free hand to the door. Here goes.
He was just about to push it open when the man in the tan leather coat suddenly emerged from Room 12 and started striding quickly and purposefully across the snowy car park towards the reception lobby. He had the gun at his side.
Wesley backed away from the doors. He didn’t think the man could see him through the dirty glass, but he’d be here any moment.
Wesley ran back towards the reception desk, just managing to avoid the pool of blood. The other side of the desk was a door marked PRIVATE. Kat’s arm was draped across the folding hatch. Wanting to throw up at the touch of her dead flesh, he nudged her arm aside and then pressed through the hatch and burst through the door, closing it behind him with jittery haste before the man in the brown coat stepped into the lobby.
He found himself in a poky office. Its cobwebbed sash window overlooked a backyard littered with snow-covered garbage bags and pieces of broken furniture. Beyond a ramshackle fence he could see the highway snaking away into the distance. He threw open the window, clambered up on a chair and shoved the case through the gap before scrambling through after it. He landed painfully on the snowy concrete the other side, snatched the case up and kept moving as fast as he could. His heart was in his mouth as he staggered through the backyard to the fence, fully expecting the muffled clap of a silenced pistol behind him and a bullet burning a hole in his flesh.
But no bullet came. Wesley managed to drag himself and the case over the fence and belted across the snow towards the highway. Twice he slipped and fell as he scrambled over the piles of dirty slush at the side of the road, glancing in terror over his shoulder. His breath was coming in wheezing gasps now as he stumbled on. For the first time since the invention of the mobile telephone, he wished he had one so that he could call for help.
He couldn’t run much further. Any second now, the killers would cotton on to his escape. They’d get in their vehicle and come after him. Bundle him in at gunpoint, and it would all be over.
The deep bellow of air horns blasted his terror away. He whirled around at the edge of the road and saw the massive grille of an eighteen-wheeler truck looming over him as it slowed down with a sharp hiss from its airbrakes. Wesley threw down the case, waved his arms frantically and stuck out his thumb. ‘Help me,’ he wheezed. ‘Help.’
The driver beamed a gap-toothed grin down at him from the cab.
‘You lookin’ for a ride, old timer? Then climb aboard.’
Chapter Nine
By the time Simeon was back from his church business, darkness had fallen and it was nearly time to set off for the evening meal at the Old Windmill. The three of them were in the vicarage’s hallway, on the verge of heading outside to the Lotus, when the phone rang.
‘It had better not be the bloody archdeacon again,’ Simeon said, picking up. ‘Oh, it’s you, Bertie … really? Gosh, that didn’t take you long … Yes, he’ll be delighted. We can come and pick it up right away.’
They definitely didn’t make them like Bertie any more. Ben couldn’t believe the difference in the Land Rover as he followed the Lotus’s taillights along the three miles of winding roads from the garage to the restaurant. The old mechanic had retuned Le Crock’s radio to a local station. Ben half-listened as he drove; then the entrance of the Old Windmill appeared through the trees and Ben parked beside the Lotus in the floodlit car park.
The place was aptly named. The ancient stone windmill itself stood silhouetted against the starry sky, while the restaurant was a modern building with large windows overlooking the surrounding woodland. Ben’s hosts led him inside, into the bar area where a smiling waitress greeted them with ‘Hello, Vicar; hello, Mrs Arundel,’ and led them through a doorless archway into the busy restaurant area. The place was decked out in colourful Christmas lights and glittery decorations, with an enormous tree in one corner. The dozen or so tables were cosily laid with rustic chequered tablecloths. Bing Crosby’s version of Hark, the Herald Angels Sing was playing over the speakers on the walls.
‘Good thing I booked in advance,’ Michaela said over the buzz of chatter. ‘Think we must have got the last table.’
‘Damn,’ Simeon muttered suddenly, patting his pockets. ‘I think I left my mobile in my other trousers.’
‘Well, I don’t think you’ll be needing it tonight, darling,’ Michaela said, with a discreet roll of the eyes to Ben, as if to say, ‘See what I mean?’
As the three of them crossed the restaurant, there was a chorus of ‘Hello, Vicar’ from a group of middle-aged women clustered around a heavily drinks-laden table in the corner near the archway. Simeon waved back at them. ‘The ladies’ badminton club,’ he whispered to Ben.
‘My husband is a big hit with them,’ Michaela said. ‘Especially with Petra Norrington.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘It’s true. She adores and venerates you. Thinks you’re gorgeous. Look at her eyeing you from behind her wineglass. Like a peroxide spider.’
‘Nonsense,’ Simeon said.
They took their seats at the table. Ben had his back to the archway and the bar area beyond it. To his right, a broad expanse of window overlooked the car park and the woods in the background.
The waitress took their orders for drinks. Michaela wanted white wine, Ben asked for a medium glass of house red. ‘No wine for me,’ Simeon said. ‘I’m afraid I might have a migraine coming on if I touch alcohol tonight.’
‘Again?’ Michaela frowned.
They ordered dinner – roast duck for Ben, on Simeon’s recommendation. Michaela went for poached salmon steak. Service was efficient, and the food was excellent. As they ate, occasional peals of laughter erupted from the ladies’ badminton club table behind Ben. Simeon sipped his mineral water and looked pensive while Michaela reaffirmed her complete conviction that they were in for a white Christmas.
Ben wondered what it was Simeon had wanted to tell him earlier. He was sure he’d get to hear it later, back at the vicarage that evening over a glass of whisky or two.
They’d finished their main courses and were into their desserts (plum duff for Simeon, sticky toffee pudding for Michaela, while Ben opted for some cheese and crackers to go with the last of his wine) when out of the corner of his eye Ben noticed a dark BMW come rolling in across the car park, its headlights sweeping the windows. The BMW parked across from the Lotus and Le Crock. The driver’s door opened. A tall figure of a man climbed out and made his way towards the building and into the bar area. By then, Ben had already forgotten about him, and went on listening to Simeon talking about the planned new satellite TV series that he’d been offered the job of hosting.
‘He’s being too modest again,’ Michaela said. ‘It’s quite a big thing. The television company are investing millions in it and it’s such an honour that they picked Simeon to present it.’ She reached across the table and clasped his hand.
‘As long as it helps to spread the word, that’s all I care about,’ Simeon said. ‘I’m not interested in the money. Every penny of it’ll go the same way as the money my father left me, helping to restore old churches. So many of them are being left to rot these days.’
‘Until they get turned into McDonalds drive-throughs,’ Michaela snorted. ‘Sign of the times. You know I had to scour the whole of Oxford just to find a set of Nativity Christmas stamps? All I could find anywhere were jolly snowmen and reindeer and cards saying “Happy Holidays”. It’s the rise of the militant atheists, I’m telling you. They want to secularise the whole world.’
‘Well, maybe we can help to turn the tide,’ Simeon said. ‘The television series will be a big step forward, that’s for sure.’
‘When do you start filming?’ Ben asked.
‘Middle of February. The producers are still wrangling over a name for it.’
‘I think Christianity Today sounds pat,’ Michaela said. ‘What do you think?’ she asked Ben.
Before Ben could offer any suggestion, he was distracted by a camera flash that lit up the room. One of the badminton club ladies, the skinny-looking woman with the leathery fake tan and pearls who’d been ogling Simeon earlier, had stood up to take snaps of the party group. ‘Smile!’ she called out over the din.
‘Oh, no,’ Michaela muttered as the woman swayed up to them, camera in hand. ‘Here she comes. Hi, Petra.’
Petra Norrington’s eyes sparkled as she approached the table and sidled up to Simeon. Ben saw Michaela’s face darken.
‘That’s a beautiful dress, Michaela,’ Petra said, her glance still lingering more on Simeon, before shooting discreetly across at Ben. Ben looked away and smiled to himself.
‘Thank you,’ Michaela said, just a little coolly. She introduced Ben as an old friend. Petra’s eyes sparkled some more.
‘And where’s that handsome young devil of a son of yours? Coming home for Christmas?’
‘He’s in Cornwall, with his friend Robbie,’ Michaela said.
‘Oh,’ Petra said, with a look of disdain. ‘That place.’
Simeon looked at Michaela and cocked an eyebrow. ‘I thought he was coming straight home from New Zealand.’
‘I told you he had other plans, darling,’ Michaela reminded him patiently.
‘Cornwall? Back to that derelict old farm? What’s he want to go there for?’
‘Don’t exaggerate,’ Michaela said. ‘It’s just a bit run down, and he enjoys being there with his friends.’
Simeon gave a disapproving grunt.
‘Can I take a pic of you all?’ Petra broke in, brandishing her camera like a gun. ‘It’s for the club’s Christmas album.’
‘If you absolutely must,’ Michaela said coolly.
Ben wasn’t too fond of having his picture taken.
‘Say cheese!’ Petra’s camera flashed. She looked at her watch, pulled a face and excused herself, explaining that she had to get home for some reason to do with someone called Billy. There was a brief round of goodbyes and ‘nice to meet you’ and ‘have a wonderful Christmas if we don’t see each other before’, and then Petra blew kisses at the badminton ladies and breezed out of the restaurant towards her top-of-the-range Volvo estate.
‘I suppose we should be thinking about getting home ourselves,’ Simeon said, and called for the bill.
‘It’s on me,’ Ben said, taking out his wallet.
‘Absolutely not.’
‘It’s the least I can do to repay your hospitality.’
They were still arguing about it when they heard a loud crunching impact from outside.
‘Whoops,’ Michaela said, peering out of the window. ‘I think Petra has just pranged her car. Serves the silly bitch right.’
‘Michaela,’ Simeon hissed at her.
Ben looked. The rear of the Volvo estate was hard up against the front end of the dark blue BMW. Bits of broken glass littered on the ground shone under the floodlights.
As Ben watched, Petra clambered out of her Volvo, clapped a hand over her mouth at the sight of the damage, and disappeared back inside. He heard her voice coming from the bar area: ‘Excuse me, is that your BMW outside? I’m so sorry. I think I’ve just reversed into it.’
A man’s voice muttered, ‘It’s OK. It’s nothing.’
‘I’ve broken your left headlight,’ Petra’s voice said, high-pitched with stress. ‘My fault. So stupid of me. I was in a hurry and I just didn’t … but if we could exchange details, I’ll write to my insurers first thing tom—’
‘Forget it,’ the man interrupted. His voice sounded hard and flat.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You heard me. Forget it.’ He sounded angrier this time.
‘I still need to inform them—’ Petra protested.
‘Are you deaf, woman? I said forget it.’
Meanwhile, the waitress had brought the bill over and Ben was laying cash down on the little saucer in her hand and telling her to keep the change. A shocked hush had fallen over the badminton ladies’ table at the argument between the unseen man in the bar and Petra Norrington, who was now skulking back to her Volvo.
‘Wonder what that was all about,’ Michaela said. ‘He sounded like a right nasty piece of work.’
Simeon wished the badminton ladies good night as they left. By the time the three of them were walking back to their cars, the Volvo had gone.
So had the damaged BMW.
Chapter Ten
‘See you back at the vicarage,’ Simeon called as he climbed behind the wheel of the Lotus. Shutting the door he gave Ben a meaningful look, as if to say, ‘We’ll be able to talk more then’.
Ben fired up Le Crock and shivered in the blast of air from its ineffective heater. Snowclouds had drawn a veil across the stars, and frost twinkled on the grass verges in the beams of their headlights as Ben followed Simeon out of the car park. If the temperature dropped another half a degree, the roads would start to get slick with ice.
However sweetly the Land Rover might be running now that Bertie had worked his wonders on it, it was never going to be a racing car. Ben didn’t have much chance of keeping up with the Lotus, especially with the spirited way Simeon drove it, the low-slung taillights dipping out of sight around every bend and continually forcing Ben to accelerate to close the distance between them. Powering up the long incline on the approach to Little Denton, the Land Rover lost momentum and its revs began to get bogged down. Ben changed down a gear, then another, and gently cursed Simeon for his impetuous behaviour.
Up ahead, the Lotus sped exuberantly over the top of the rise and vanished from view. Ben smiled to himself at his friend’s antics. Even despite whatever it was that was so clearly and deeply troubling Simeon, he was able to enjoy life. Ben envied that quality in his old friend.
Ben was nearing the top of the hill when a halo of white light appeared on the horizon ahead of him and then burst into a dazzling flash that made him blink and avert his eyes. In the same instant, the shape of a big saloon car came speeding over the crest of the hill in the opposite direction, its engine note high and strained as if the driver had his foot pinned aggressively to the floor. The car was just barely under control, all four wheels leaving the road as it sped over the top of the rise and went plummeting down the slope Ben had just driven up.
Ben was blinded for a second. He blinked away the sunspots, peering hard through the Land Rover’s windscreen to regain his bearings on the road. In the quarter-second before he’d had to look away from the dazzling headlights, he’d registered something unusual about the speeding car: one of the twin lamps on the saloon car’s left side wasn’t working – three blinding lights where there should have been four. But in the next moment the car was already roaring off, its taillights receding fast in his rear-view mirror.
‘Idiot,’ Ben murmured. He cleared the top of the rise and the Land Rover began to pick up speed on the downward incline. He hadn’t expected to see any sign of the Lotus up ahead, and wasn’t surprised by the sight of the empty road. Simeon had obviously cleared the S-bends at the bottom of the hill and was probably almost into the outskirts of the village by now.
Not wanting to throw an ageing Land Rover into the bends with quite so much aplomb, Ben took the corners gently and slowed for the little stone bridge over the river.
Then he saw the black skidmarks that criss-crossed the road like rubber snakes.
And the gaping hole where the side of the little stone bridge should have been.
Ben slammed on the brakes and the Land Rover slewed to a halt at the entrance to the bridge. His heart was hammering, his instincts telling him the worst as he leaped down out of the car and sprinted towards the jagged gap in the stonework.
A strangled cry burst out of him as he looked down at the fast-moving water below.
The frosty riverbank was littered with broken stone and wreckage. The tail end of the Lotus was sticking up out of the river, the rapid current washing over the roof. The car’s headlights were still on, casting a glow under the surface of the water. Ben could see nothing of its two occupants.
The silence was stark and terrible, like a shroud that muted the whole atmosphere around him. Ben had known it many times before. It was the stillness that accompanied the presence of death.
He tore off his leather jacket, kicked off his shoes and dived without hesitation off the side of the wrecked bridge. The shock of the icy-cold water was stunning, heart-stopping, and the powerful current threatened to carry him away downstream. Pressure roared in his ears as he kicked out and swam for all he was worth towards the submerged vehicle. The Lotus’ wedge-shaped nose was buried in rocks and dirt, completely destroyed by the impact. Where the crumpled bonnet joined the bodywork of the car, the windscreen was an opaque mass of fissures. Ben could only just make out the shapes of Simeon and Michaela, behind the glass, still strapped into their seats. He could see no sign of movement from inside. Bubbles streamed from his mouth as he called their names.
Then the Lotus’ lights dimmed and went dark as the water fused the battery terminals. The depths of the river were plunged into darkness. Ben fought a surge of panic that gripped him and made his heart race. He groped his way blindly around the side of the car and yanked at the driver’s side door handle. It wouldn’t budge. Either it was locked, or the pressure inside the car still hadn’t equalised. Which meant there was still a pocket of air in the cabin. Ben knew that it could take up to a couple of minutes for a submerged car to fill up completely. There might still be hope for them inside, but seconds were like minutes. Ben could feel the pressure in his lungs mounting fast and his heartbeat escalating with every passing moment as oxygen starvation crept up on him.
Clambering astride the crumpled bonnet he punched at the cracked windscreen. Punched again. He felt no pain, only dimly registered the injury. The weakened glass sagged inwards and gave way in an explosion of air bubbles. Ben shoved both hands through the broken screen and, bracing himself against the bonnet and roof and yanking with all his strength, ripped the whole thing away. His vision was getting accustomed to the murk now, and he could make out the forms of Simeon and Michaela inside the car.
How long had they been under now? Ninety seconds? Two minutes?
His movements clumsy against the strong current, he threw the shattered windscreen away and plunged inside the Lotus.
Ben had seen enough death in his life to recognise it instantly in Michaela. With only the Lotus’ old-fashioned seatbelts for restraint and no airbag to cushion her body, she’d been thrown forward under impact and collided hard against the dashboard. A murky brown cloud swirled around her head where the skull was crushed in.
Simeon was struggling weakly. His eyes flickered open and seemed to catch sight of Ben. The steering wheel had prevented him from flying forwards. It had almost certainly staved in his ribs, but he was still alive. Ben searched furiously for the seatbelt catch. His chest was bursting. His movements were becoming frantic. Don’t panic. Panic means none of you leaves this river alive.
Ben’s fumbling hands found the seatbelt catch and suddenly it was free. He tore it aside and grabbed Simeon by both arms. Bubbles burst out of Ben’s mouth with the effort of hauling his friend over the dashboard and out through the glassless window. With Simeon’s arm around his neck he pushed hard with both legs against the bonnet of the Lotus, trying to propel himself and the dead weight of his semi-conscious friend upwards towards the surface. He saw lights on the water a few feet from his head. The surface was just there, so close, so out of reach. His strength was failing.
Two and a half minutes under. Maybe three. He was going to drown.
Don’t panic.
Where the strength came from for that final desperate lunge for the surface, Ben would never know. A wheezing gasp erupted from his lungs as his head broke the surface. He dimly heard a yell from across the water. Lights and movement on the bridge. People on the bank. He couldn’t understand what they were saying. He paddled hard, keeping a tight hold on Simeon and his head above the surface.
Then, suddenly, there was soft mud under his feet. Reeds prickled his hands and face. With a roar of effort he heaved Simeon’s limp body up onto the bank, where two of the passersby who’d scrambled down from the bridge were waiting with shouts of encouragement. They seized Simeon’s arms and hauled him clear of the water. Ben scrambled up the muddy bank and crouched over his friend, turning him over and letting the river water drain from his lungs. He yelled his name. The two passersby stood back in grim silence.
Simeon’s eyes were shut. His face was white in the lights from the bridge, his wet hair plastered across his brow. Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth and down his cheeks into the mud. More lights were appearing in the distance, a flashing and swirling of blue on the horizon, accompanied by a building chorus of sirens.
Simeon’s pulse was fading. It was barely there at all. Ben knelt helplessly over him, feeling the terrible concavity of his chest where the ribs were crushed inwards and knowing that the emergency chest compressions of cardiopulmonary resuscitation would probably kill him.
Simeon’s eyes opened. For a brief moment, they stared right into Ben’s. His lips pursed and opened, as if he were trying to say something. His hand twitched, then moved upwards to weakly grasp Ben’s arm.
‘Jude …’ Simeon’s voice was a dying whisper. His eyes seemed to be imploring Ben.
Then they closed again.
‘Simeon!’ Ben felt for the pulse once more. This time he could feel nothing at all. He wanted to shake him, slap him, beat him back to life. ‘Simeon!’
The first ambulance had screeched to a halt at the bridge, bathing the scene in a blue swirl, its siren drowning out the shocked murmur of conversation among the growing crowd of bystanders. Paramedics burst out of the ambulance doors and came sprinting down the frosty slope to the river bank with their emergency equipment. Ben moved aside as they clapped the defibrillator to Simeon’s crushed chest and applied the first electric shock in a desperate attempt to revive him. Simeon’s spine arched upwards in an involuntary spasm, as if he was trying to get up. But Ben knew the time for that had come and gone.
‘No pulse,’ one of the paramedics said.
They tried another shock. Simeon’s body arched on the ground, then fell limp again. His face looked like a piece of mud-streaked porcelain, eyes staring upwards.
‘No pulse.’
‘He’s gone, I’m afraid,’ said another. ‘Nothing more we can do.’
A gentle snowfall had begun to spiral down from the dark sky, turning blue in the flashing lights. Ben stared as snowflakes settled on the body of his friend. He turned and gazed at the sunken car, thinking of Michaela inside. He said a silent goodbye to them both.
Another ambulance had arrived at the mouth of the bridge, together with a police emergency response vehicle. The officers were herding the bystanders away to clear the area. The place was alive with voices and crackling radios. A woman was led away, crying, someone’s arm around her shoulders.
Events followed as if in a dream. Emergency crews surrounded the crashed Lotus, struggling to extricate Michaela’s body. By now it was clear to everyone involved that the ambulances would be taking away two corpses that night. There was no longer any need for hurry.
Several minutes passed before Ben even became conscious of the crippling cold and the pain in his torn hands. The paramedics checked him for signs of hypothermia: slurred speech, disorientation, unsteadiness. His wet hair dripping onto the thermal blanket they’d wrapped around him, he sat in the open back of the third ambulance and watched the scene unfold as if from a million miles away. He numbly answered the questions the cops came to ask him before he could be carted off to hospital. Name, address, occupation, relationship to the deceased. He told them what he’d seen. Described the car that had passed him from the direction of the bridge, told them how one of its headlights had appeared to be damaged.
The cops asked him if he’d seen any collision take place between the two vehicles. Ben told them he hadn’t.
But as he spoke, he was visualising the scenario in his mind: the two cars meeting on the narrow road before the bridge. The saloon swerving to avoid the speeding Lotus and catching its headlight on the stone wall at the side of the road. The Lotus swerving the other way and spinning out of control. The driver of the saloon panicking and hitting the gas to escape from the scene. Or maybe not even noticing what happened next.
Or maybe it had all happened differently. Ben thought about the positioning of the skidmarks on the road before the bridge. He thought about how a car could have lain there in wait as the distinctive shape of the Lotus came down the hill. How the driver could have waited until just the right moment before lurching out deliberately into Simeon’s path and forcing him to swerve and crash.
Ben thought back to the restaurant car park. The BMW. The broken headlight. The behaviour of the car’s owner. Like he hadn’t wanted to know. Like he hadn’t wanted attention drawn to him.
But Ben mentioned none of that to the cops.
Through the mist of his thoughts, he heard one of the officers asking about next of kin. Ben remembered what Michaela had said about her parents moving to Antigua. He knew nothing about Simeon’s. ‘They have a son,’ he said. He couldn’t bring himself to use the past tense. ‘Jude Arundel. He’s in Cornwall with friends.’
‘We’ll need to contact him,’ the officer said.
‘I don’t think he’ll be that easy to contact,’ Ben said. He told them he’d be responsible for informing Jude.
After the police had left him alone, Ben watched the paramedic teams wrapping up their kit. He’d no intention of seeing the inside of a hospital that night. He’d seen enough of them already. As the ambulances carrying Simeon and Michaela left in tandem, he slipped away unnoticed and walked to where the police had moved his Land Rover. The snow was falling more steadily now, dusting everything powdery white.
He climbed into the vehicle and headed back alone towards the vicarage. He had nowhere else to go.
Chapter Eleven
The warm, welcoming glow from the vicarage’s windows shone out into the night as Ben climbed out of the Land Rover and trudged towards the house in his wet clothes. He paused to peer in through the window at the empty living room. The lit-up Christmas tree that he could imagine Simeon and Michaela decorating together, which someone else would be taking down. The comfortable furniture they’d never see or use again.
He felt sick as the reality sank in a little deeper.
The dog barked from inside. Ben dug in his pocket and took out the annexe key. Attached to it on a ring was the tarnished brass Yale key for the front door of the vicarage. Feeling strangely like an intruder, he opened the door. The dog was sitting in the hallway, looking at him.
‘Hey, Scruffy,’ Ben said softly. The dog cocked his head, appearing perplexed that his master and mistress weren’t with him. Ben went over to him and scratched his ears. ‘They’re not coming back, pal. I’m sorry.’
The dog lolled his pink tongue and began to pant.
‘All right, you come with me,’ Ben said. Squelching in his wet shoes he made his way down the passage to the connecting door that led through into the annexe. Everything seemed so still and empty.
Shuddering with cold, he stripped off his wet things in the annexe’s bathroom and stepped under a hot shower. He stayed there a long time, hoping that the scalding jet of water would blast away the nightmare and that when he came out everything would be back to normal.
It didn’t happen. He mechanically towelled himself dry and changed into a pair of grey jogging pants and a worn old rugby top from his bag. Finding his whisky flask nestling among the spare clothing, he unscrewed the cap and gulped down a stinging mouthful, then another. That didn’t make any difference either. He padded barefoot into the annexe’s little living room, flipped off all the lights and lay on the sofa with his eyes shut, trying to let his mind go blank. But there was no escape from the images that kept flashing up inside his mind as he lay there. He couldn’t stop seeing Simeon’s face in those last moments. The pallor of his skin, the desperation in his eyes. And Michaela, sitting there lifeless inside the sunken car. The horrific crush wounds on her face and brow.
One minute he’d been having dinner with his friends. The next, they were gone, just like that, like blowing out a candle. Tomorrow would see the start of the whole terrible aftermath. Tonight, there was nothing but that sickening emptiness, as if the world had been scraped hollow with a blunt knife.
Ben groped for the flask in the darkness and swallowed down the rest of the whisky. One gulp after another. The visions began to recede. He drifted into a world of vague and restless dreams that seemed to go on forever and were filled with the cries of people in pain. He couldn’t help them, no matter how desperately he tried … there was nothing he could do …
Ben’s body tensed and he jerked upright on the sofa, momentarily confused by the unfamiliar sound that had torn through the membrane of his sleep. The luminous green hands of his diver’s watch told him it was quarter to one in the morning. He sat up, listening hard.
A few feet away across the darkened room, the dog let out another long, low snarl, and Ben realised what had woken him. He was about to lie down again when he heard something else.
A dull thud, coming from the other side of the wall. The sounds of movement inside the vicarage.
Ben jumped up from the sofa, suddenly wide awake and alert. His first thought was that Jude Arundel must have returned from Cornwall. He went to turn on the light, already preparing mentally for the task of breaking the news to the kid that both his parents were dead.
But Ben’s hand stopped short of the light switch when he heard more sounds from inside the vicarage: a muted splintering crash that was unmistakably the sound of a door being forced, followed a moment later by the grinding thump of something hitting a wall.
Scruffy let out another rumbling growl from deep in his throat.
Ben reached out to him in the darkness and laid a hand on his head. ‘Quiet, boy. Let me listen.’ Creeping across the room towards the connecting door, Ben pressed his ear to it and thought he heard a man’s voice.
‘Wait,’ he whispered back to the dog. There was no time to put on his shoes. Without a sound, he opened the door and stepped through into the passage beyond.
Another thump, louder this time now that he was closer. It was coming from somewhere on the ground floor.
Silently, stealthily, Ben moved towards the sound.
Chapter Twelve
Few men were schooled in the secret of silence. To be able to move unheard, unnoticed yet quickly through any terrain, blending in with the surroundings at all times, was an art that had to be learned and honed through dedicated training and practice – and Ben Hope had been a master of it for many years. Not many of his peers in the SAS had been able to match him.
The art began with knowing where to place your feet. The vicarage’s old oak floorboards were broad and thick, but age and use had warped the wood so that it was almost impossible to walk over them without a creak. Ben kept to the edges, feeling with his bare toes as he went for any seam or joint that might shift with his weight. His breathing was slow and shallow, his heartbeat controlled and his mind as still as that of a predatory animal. When stalking a determined and trained enemy, even the scent of your fear could give you away.
Creeping through the darkness, he glanced around him for anything he could use as defence against the intruders. Improvised weapons weren’t too abundant in the home of a country vicar. His gaze landed on a foot-high wooden statuette on a side table. He picked it up without a sound. It felt solid in his hand, like a short club.
Another dull thud from up ahead. A grinding of steel against steel, followed by a clanging crash.
As Ben had been expecting to happen any second, the dog let loose with a furious tirade of barking from inside the annexe, muffled behind the thick wall. Ben decided it wasn’t such a bad thing: the intruders would be aware that the nearest neighbour was far enough away not to be alerted by the noise. And the knowledge that the dog was contained in another part of the house would make them feel safe. Exactly how Ben wanted them to feel.
Up ahead, the shadowy corridor terminated in a T-junction. To the left, all was darkness. Around the corner to the right, a glow of light shone from an unseen doorway.
Ben stepped closer to the corner. From the source of the dim light he heard a man’s voice mutter something he didn’t catch. He stopped, blotting out the muted sound of Scruffy’s barking and listening hard. Was it the same voice he’d heard a moment ago? Impossible to tell, or to guess how many intruders there might be.
He advanced as far as the corner, back to the wall, ready with his club. He was within sight of the doorway now. It was a couple of inches ajar, and in the light that streamed out of it, he could see the outline of the splintered frame where the door had been forced open. Careful not to let his shadow play on the opposite wall, he stepped up to the door and peered around its edge into the room behind it.
Simeon’s study. The walls were lined with bookshelves. A simple computer desk stood in the middle of the room, with a flat-screen monitor and wireless keyboard. In the far corner of the study was a steel safe, like a short gun cabinet, bolted to the wall. The metallic crash Ben had just heard was the sound of it being jemmied open.
The man who’d broken into the safe was crouching beside it with his back to the doorway. He was wearing a black combat jacket. A black cotton ski mask was pulled down over his face. There was a pistol in a military-style holster at his right hip. As Ben watched, the man grabbed a brown A4-sized envelope from the safe. He stuffed it into the duffel bag at his feet, then reached back inside the safe and came out with a small black laptop, which he bagged as well.
Just one man. Yet Ben had heard him talking. To himself, maybe, or on the phone. Unless …
Ben suddenly felt something hard prod him between the shoulder blades. He half-turned and found himself staring into a fat black O nearly three quarters of an inch wide. The muzzle of a pump-action twelve-bore.
‘Lose the ornament,’ said the man with the shotgun. His face was hidden in the shadows. The accent was East London. The tone was calm.
Ben’s fingers loosened and the wooden statuette dropped to the floor.
‘Nice one,’ the man with the shotgun said. He advanced into the light. The eyes watching Ben through the slits in the ski mask were the colour of steel, hard and cold. He had the buttstock of the short-barrelled shotgun pulled in tight to his shoulder. That meant several things to Ben. The guy was bracing himself against the recoil, because he had no problem with pulling the trigger if he had to. It meant he was familiar with the weapon and had used it before. It also meant the shotgun’s five-capacity tube magazine was probably filled with hard-kicking solid slug loads that would take Ben’s head clean off his shoulders and paint the wall behind him with his brains.
All of which added up to the fact that these guys were no ordinary house-breakers, no run-of-the-mill opportunist crooks. They were professionals. And if the man with the shotgun was good enough to creep up on Ben like this, it meant he was very good indeed. Someone trained, like him, in the art of silence.
Or maybe Ben was just getting slow.
Ben retreated. The man’s eyes didn’t leave his. The muzzle of the shotgun was rock steady.
The other side of the wall, the dog was going wild.
‘Why are you here?’ Ben asked.
‘That’s it. There’s fuck all else in the safe,’ the man with the duffel bag said to his companion. He stood up and slung the strap over his shoulder, then left the study, brushing past Ben. The man with the shotgun waved the weapon ever so slightly towards the open doorway. ‘You. Get your arse in there,’ he told Ben.
Ben took a step backwards into the room. He saw the gunman’s gloved finger flick half an inch back from the trigger and depress the small round button set into the rear of the trigger guard. Safety off.
Ben got the picture. The guy wasn’t intending to leave any witnesses behind. Not the kind who still had their heads attached.
Nothing to lose, then.
Ben retreated another slow step, raising his arms either side of his head. The guy advanced. Ben watched the muzzle of the gun. A rapid step forward, and Ben’s hands flashed towards the weapon. He gripped the cold steel of the barrel and jerked it simultaneously sideways and towards him. As the gun was torn half out of his grip, the man instinctively squeezed the trigger and the gun went off like a bomb just a few inches from Ben’s right ear.
Now the pump-action was a lot less dangerous until it could be re-cocked. Ben had no intention of letting that happen. Still gripping the barrel he pushed it violently back towards the gunman, driving the butt end into the guy’s face. It caught him on the mouth. With a yell of pain and a spurt of blood he fell back and let go of the gun. Ben clubbed him over the head with the forend.
The whole disarming move had taken less than two seconds. Maybe I’m not getting that slow, Ben thought.
The man with the duffel bag froze for an instant, then took off down the passage. Ben spun the shotgun around in his hands and worked the pump as he leaped over the slumped body and out of the study doorway.
The escaping intruder was just rounding the corner. Ben could have shot him, but the blast would have blown the guy in half and Ben wanted him alive. Slinging the gun around his shoulder, he sprinted after him. The man crashed past the side table off which Ben had lifted the statuette earlier, and sent it spinning into Ben’s path. Ben vaulted over it, saw that he was catching up, and launched himself at the man with a flying rugby-tackle. Pinned by the ankles, the man sprawled heavily to the floor and let out a grunt of pain. Ben clambered after him. His left hand closed on the strap of the duffel bag as his right fist shot out to land a crippling hammer-punch to the man’s testicles.
The punch didn’t make contact. Ben didn’t see the heavy boot coming for his face until it was too late. The kick slammed into his cheekbone with a huge amount of force behind it, and sent him crashing back against the wall, still tightly clutching the duffel bag by its strap.
The intruder went for his pistol.
Ben went for the shotgun.
The guy thought better of it. He abandoned the bag and ran for the front door. Wrenched it open and burst out into the night.
Scruffy was barking dementedly from the other side of the wall. Ben struggled to his feet, dazed from the kick. He ran out of the open front door and saw the intruder heading around the side of the vicarage, making for the path that led through the back garden and down to the meadow.
Seconds into the chase, Ben knew he was at a major disadvantage. The intruder wasn’t necessarily the faster runner, but he didn’t have to sprint barefoot over the hard, cold ground carrying a cumbersome duffel bag and a shotgun. Ben had only just made it to the edge of the meadow when he realised that his quarry had disappeared into the darkness. Moments later, he heard the roar of an engine from beyond the trees, and a car took off at high speed down the road.
Chapter Thirteen
Ben hobbled back to the vicarage on his cut and bruised bare soles. No lights had come on in the neighbouring houses dimly visible through the trees. The blast of a shotgun, muffled within thick stone walls, wasn’t much more than a dull ‘pop’ from a few hundred yards away, not enough to raise the alarm even in a sleepy little village like Little Denton.
It was rather more than that from a few inches away, though. Ben knew he’d have to wait a day or two for the high-pitched whine in his right ear to subside and his full hearing to return. Back inside the vicarage, he strode back to the study. Now to revive his masked friend and get some truth out of him.
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Scott Mariani
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 25.04.2024
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О книге: IAN ANCIENT SWORD. A LONG BURIED SECRET.ONE MAN WILL UNCOVER THE MYSTERY.It’s Christmas, and on a trip back to the UK to try to sort out his stormy personal life, ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope runs into two old friends. Simeon and Michaela were once his fellow students at Oxford – now they are the Reverend and Mrs Arundel.Ben senses that Simeon is deeply troubled and frightened, but before the truth can emerge about his secretive research project concerning a mysterious, ancient ‘sacred sword’, both he and Michael are wiped out in a devastating road crash. Convinced that his friends’ deaths were no accident, Ben is propelled on a global quest to unlock the enigma of the sacred sword. At every step, he is pursued by ruthless agents of the sinister organisation that will stop at nothing to acquire it.In the course of his investigations, Ben will discover an incredible secret, not just about the history of Christianity but about his own past.BEN HOPE is one of the most celebrated action adventure heroes in British fiction and Scott Mariani is the author of numerous bestsellers. Join the ever-growing legion of readers who get breathless with anticipation when the countdown to the new Ben Hope thriller begins …