‘So, in fact, you hardly know him at all,’ Forbes said, arching one eyebrow as if Ben had just admitted to a criminal offence. ‘Therefore I repeat, why are you here?’
‘I’m sentimental,’ Ben said. ‘And I don’t like it when people throw innocent folks out of windows. Especially when I was just getting to know them again. That’s why I’m here. What about you?’
Perhaps sensing the rising tension between Ben and his superior, the younger plainclothes guy stepped forward and introduced himself. ‘I’m DI Tom McAllister.’ He spoke with a Northern Irish accent that was only slightly attenuated from however many years he’d been on the Thames Valley force. ‘I was first on the scene, less than five minutes after it happened. By the time I got here it was already too late to do anything for your friend. I’m sorry.’
‘You must live nearby,’ Ben said. ‘It took me less than fifteen to get here from the centre, from when he phoned me.’
McAllister shrugged. He had an open, ruggedly sincere face that Ben liked. Which wasn’t a usual reaction for Ben when dealing with cops.
McAllister replied, ‘I don’t, but I happened to be driving through the area when the radio call came through.’ Ben noticed he was holding a ring of car keys, the old-fashioned one-piece metal kind you could puncture someone’s throat with. The leather key fob medallion featured a fierce-looking fish and bore the emblem BARRACUDA. The American muscle car parked down in the street. Ben thought that maybe if he lived in Oxfordshire and had a big V8 rumbler like that and nothing better to do on a balmy April night, he’d be driving about at four in the morning too.
‘You say he phoned you?’ Forbes asked.
‘Check his phone and you’ll see my number was the last call he made,’ Ben said.
‘And where were you at the time?’
‘At our old college. I’m staying there. You want my room number too?’
‘Just making sure we have our facts straight,’ Forbes said. ‘So you’re in Oxford on business. What kind of business might that be?’
Ben gave one of his standard vague replies. ‘I’m a security consultant.’ It would take ten seconds to look him up and find out about Le Val and his military background. If they poked a little deeper they’d soon hit the brick wall of MoD secrecy concerning the true nature of Ben’s past, and the fun would begin.
‘Security consultant. That covers a lot of ground, doesn’t it?’
Ben looked at Forbes. ‘Am I a suspect?’
‘Not at this time.’
‘Just as well, because that won’t sit well with me. If you want proof of where I was at the time of the incident, the next thing you’ll want to check is the registration number of the silver Alpina down there in the street, and the footage from the speed cameras I just tripped on my way here. All of which gives me a pretty good alibi, so you needn’t think about giving me any crap.’
‘Nobody’s giving you any crap,’ McAllister put in.
‘No?’ Ben said. ‘I’m only trying to help here. So far I haven’t heard anyone saying much about catching the people who killed my friend.’
McAllister nodded and pulled a grim face, as if he could barely wait to get his hands on them, either. Judging by the guy’s rough, scarred knuckles, Ben would have said McAllister had got into a few scrapes in his time.
‘And what exactly did the victim say to you on the phone?’ Forbes asked.
‘What do you think he said? He was scared, same way you would be if you woke up at four in the morning to find a bunch of intruders smashing up your home. He needed my help to deal with it. I got here too late. End of story.’
Now Forbes was staring at Ben with a look of extreme suspicion. ‘Deal with it?’
‘I didn’t say I was going to shoot them,’ Ben said. ‘Though it wouldn’t be a bad idea.’
McAllister was looking at Ben as if to say, take it easy.
The moustache twitched. ‘Then what were you going to do?’
‘Ask them politely to leave,’ Ben said. ‘With the gentlest touch of persuasion.’
‘Dealing with violent attackers is the responsibility of the police, not the public,’ Forbes said in a hectoring tone. Ben noticed the way McAllister gave an exasperated eye roll behind his superior’s back. Ben was thinking that if he had to work with this guy Forbes, Forbes might end up getting thrown out of a window too.
‘Then it looks like we all failed him,’ Ben said.
Forbes asked, ‘Why would he call you and not us?’
‘I think we both know the answer to that one.’ Ben pointed through the open passage towards the doorway of the spare bedroom. ‘It’s obvious he didn’t want the police here. You can almost smell the marijuana from outside. And judging by the infrared lamp, he was probably growing the stuff.’
‘He was virtually farming it,’ Forbes said. ‘Tell me, Mr Hope. How long has your friend been dealing drugs?’ He folded his arms smugly, as if he could already see the headline. Thames Valley police unmasks kingpin drug lord. ‘It’s obvious this was a deal gone bad. Happens all the time.’
‘You’re dead wrong, Forbes. He used the cannabis for arthritis pain. You can verify that with his doctor in about three seconds. He’d already tried every type of conventional medication going. But I can’t blame you for wanting to wrap this up nice and easy. That’s what a hack like you does best, isn’t it?’
Forbes turned a shade of purple. He took a step closer to Ben, which forced him to look up as he scrutinised Ben’s face. ‘Do I know you from somewhere?’
The fact was, while they’d been talking, Ben had remembered where he’d seen Forbes before. Take away the moustache, give him some more hair on top and knock off twenty-odd years, and the memory was as sharp in Ben’s mind as though it had happened yesterday. Ben allowed himself a cold smile as he played it back. He was pretty sure that Forbes’ colleague McAllister would enjoy the story. For the moment, he decided to spare Forbes the humiliation.
‘Something amusing you?’ Forbes said.
‘My friend just died. I’m not in a laughing mood.’
‘Then why are you looking at me like that?’
Ben leaned closer to him and sniffed. ‘Thought I could smell something. Must be my imagination.’
‘I’ve had enough of this nonsense,’ Forbes said. ‘Let me remind you, Mr Hope, that you’re trespassing on a crime scene. So I suggest you bugger off before I do pull you in for questioning.’
Ben melted Forbes with a long, hard glare that lingered so long that McAllister was starting to get edgy. There was nothing more to be said. Ben turned and walked away.
Outside, the police SOCO unit had erected a forensic tent over the railings. The ambulance had gone, and the broken glass on the pavement was all cleaned up. All that was left of Nick was the blood congealing in the gutter.
Ben walked slowly across the street to his car and drove back through the city of dreaming spires. By the time he stepped out of the Alpina in the college car park the first light of dawn was breaking, washing the trees of the meadow and the old limestone buildings of Christ Church with red and gold. The air was fresh and sweet, and Ben filled his lungs with it to try to flush out the sour taste of death and violence that wouldn’t go away. Maybe it never would.
As he made his way towards Old Library he paused in the cathedral cloister. Listening to the silence of the organ that Nick Hawthorne would never play again. It was too late to go to bed, and even if it hadn’t been, Ben knew he couldn’t have slept. He wondered if the killers were sleeping.
First Simeon and Michaela. Now Nick too. All gone. Ben was the last of the gang left.
Someone was going to wish he wasn’t.
Chapter 13
Long ago
The independent cinema off Cowley Road in east Oxford was called the Penultimate Picture Palace, and it was famous for several reasons: for belonging to a guy who was equally notorious for having a life-size replica shark sticking out of the roof of his house, and for screening the kinds of mo
vies the corporate cinema chains didn’t show, like Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris.
Young Ben Hope didn’t care about sharks any more than he did about watching the middle-aged Marlon Brando dressed like a hobo act out sordid rape fantasies with a teenage Maria Schneider. What appealed to Ben about the PPP was that it was famous for being the kind of rough and ready joint where you could smoke and drink to your heart’s content and nobody would hassle you. And if you could survive the late-night walk back to college through the jungle of east Oxford without getting mugged or poisoned by the temptations of the kebab vans, it all made for a fine evening out.
At nineteen, he could already see that the world was changing. One day these places would be sanitised out of existence. Until then, he intended to experience them fully.
It was after pub closing time when Ben and Michaela left the cinema, along with the small crowd who’d just sat through the epic double bill screening of Fellini’s Roma and Satyricon back to back. Michaela’s choice of movies, because she was into all that arthouse stuff. Ben hadn’t objected. He had a pack of Woodbines and a quarter bottle of Teacher’s blended scotch, because his student allowance didn’t extend to the single malt stuff, and that had been plenty enough to keep him contented through the four-hour marathon even if he hadn’t been able to understand a damn thing that was going on. The night was warm and the stars were out, they were young and in love and they set off towards home at a slow walk, hand in hand, talking and laughing about stupid things.
He felt good in her company. It was a perfect moment for him and he wanted it to go on forever.
The bikers had gathered outside a fish and chip place on Cowley Road that was closing up for the night, munching greasy food out of paper wrapping and knocking back cans of lager as they stood around ogling their row of Harleys and Jap cruisers parked on the kerbside. Eight or nine of them, hanging tough. Studded leather and cut-off denims and long hair and tats, the whole works, designed to demonstrate what badass outlaws they were.
As Ben and Michaela ambled closer, she tugged his arm and looked at him with worried eyes that glistened in the streetlights.
‘Maybe we should cross to the other side.’
He chuckled. ‘What are you worried about?’
‘They look nasty.’
‘Don’t be silly. They’re all for show. The tattoos probably aren’t even real.’ He squeezed her hand reassuringly. They walked on. A couple of the bikers stared at Michaela. Ben looked at the motorcycles and wondered what it would be like to ride one.
Then a biker with a bushy beard and an overhanging gut called out raucously, ‘Show us yer tits, love.’ It must have been the best witticism his mates had heard all night, because the rest of them all fell about racked with mirth.
Michaela tugged at Ben’s arm again and she shrank close to him, wanting to quicken her step to get past them. But Ben slowed his. He gazed at the fat biker. ‘Why don’t I show you something else instead?’
What came next was more than Ben had intended to happen. But it couldn’t have worked better if he’d planned it that way. Still holding Michaela’s hand he stepped off the kerb, planted one foot against the side of the nearest motorcycle, and gave it a push. The machine toppled off its sidestand and fell over, bumping into the one next to it. Which fell also, and hit the one next to it in turn.
The bikers watched in dumbfounded horror as the entire row came crashing down in a perfect domino effect. Mirrors crunched. Handlebars twisted. Lovingly polished chrome exhausts scratched and dented. The worst disaster imaginable.
Michaela was boggling at Ben, almost as aghast as the bikers were. Scarcely able to believe what effect one little push could have, he burst out laughing. Which perhaps, in retrospect, was adding a touch too much insult to injury.
The fat biker let out a shrill scream. He dropped his beer can and went waddling over to rescue his Harley as if it were an infant trapped under the rubble of a collapsed house. The rest of his mates joined him, yanking at crumpled handlebars and cissy bars in a desperate attempt to disentangle and right their beloved machines. But everything was so badly locked together that they’d need a crane, and maybe an angle grinder too.
The fat biker turned on Ben with froth bubbling at the corners of his mouth and murder flashing in his eyes. ‘I’ll fucking have you for that.’ He reached inside his jacket. His fist came out clenched around the handle of some kind of small, tatty-looking pistol and he pointed it at Ben, teeth bared in hatred.
Michaela let out a frightened cry. Ben just stared at the gun, because he’d never seen one before and part of him was genuinely curious about it. He had no idea what kind it was, whether it was even real or a blank-firing starter pistol. There was something he’d heard of called a Saturday Night Special, a favourite concealment weapon among gangs and hoodlums. Maybe it was one of those.
Whatever it was, he didn’t want it pointing anywhere near Michaela. He pulled her behind him, so that he was shielding her with his body. Then stepped towards the fat biker, reached out and, before the guy had a chance to react, whipped the gun out of his hand. The move took about a third of a second. Ben didn’t have any way of knowing it then, but before too long, military experts in unarmed combat would tell him he had a natural talent. In the years to follow, he would learn to do it even faster, against far more dangerous opponents.
In the blink of an eye, Ben went from having never seen a real gun to pointing one at a living human being for the first time in his life. He would have expected his heart to be thudding like a steam hammer and his hands to be shaking, but he felt strangely calm and felt no fear as he aimed the pistol at the fat biker’s face.
The rest of the bikers scattered, sprinting off in all directions. The fat one stood his ground, but only because he was paralysed with terror. His eyes were so wide, Ben thought his eyeballs were going to drop out like two hard-boiled eggs.
At that moment, the most awful smell filled the air. The biker had shit his pants. He stood there knock-kneed for a moment, mouth opening and closing; then his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed in a dead faint.
‘Oh, my God!’ Michaela covered her face with both hands.
Ben tossed the gun into the litter bin outside the chip shop. He looked down at the unconscious biker. The smell was bad enough to make your eyes water. The whole spectacle was so insane, Ben started laughing even more loudly than before. ‘Did you see that?’
For some reason, Michaela didn’t find it even faintly amusing. Recovering from the initial shock, she rounded on him angrily. ‘Ben, we have to get out of here, NOW!’
He was about to reply when there was the whoop of a siren and the street was suddenly swirling with blue light. The police car slid to a halt at the kerbside. A male and a female patrol officer got out. She was tall and sandy-haired, he was dark and reedy. The WPC ran over to the body on the ground while the male cop glared at Ben as though they’d stumbled across a murder scene.
‘I never touched him,’ Ben said, pointing. ‘He’s just fainted.’
As if to prove him right, the fat biker’s eyes suddenly snapped open. Like a man awakening from a nightmare only to find it really happening, he let out a yell and started trying to scramble to his feet. He took one look at the cops and broke into a lurching run, the best he could manage with his leather jeans full of warm shit. The WPC went to restrain him, but the biker shoved her out of the way and ran a couple more paces before he stumbled in his desperate haste to escape, and fell on his face. Before he could get up again, the male officer pinned him bodily to the deck and started cuffing his hands behind his back. ‘You’re under arrest!’
Then suddenly the male cop was recoiling off the fallen biker, staggering upright and looking down in alarm and disgust at the front of his nice, neat uniform, which Ben now saw was covered in the biker’s excrement. It was everywhere on him. His hands were dripping with it.
Ben started laughing so hard, he thought he was going to throw up all the whisk
y he’d drunk. Michaela became even angrier with him. ‘For Christ’s sake, Ben!’
She wasn’t the only one. The male cop came storming up to him, his face turning aubergine purple with rage. ‘What the hell are you laughing at, sonny?’
‘Like a pig in shit,’ Ben cackled. It was a whole new meaning to the expression, and he thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever come up with.
‘Right! I’m taking you in too, for insulting a police officer!’
And so began Ben’s first ever arrest, though it wouldn’t be his last, followed by a night in the cells at St Aldate’s police station down the street from Christ Church. An incident that, later, would almost cost Ben his military career before it had even begun.
You never forget your first serious love. Just the same way you never forget your first serious brush with the law, and the face and name of the cop who booked you. In Ben’s case, the arresting officer that night was Constable Forbes, Thames Valley Police.
You live and learn. Ben never did anything quite like that again.
But it would be only a matter of a few weeks before he did something even worse.
Chapter 14
It was ten in the morning when Ben saw the crusty appear from among the crowds and buses on busy Queen Street near Carfax Tower. The guy was doing the circuit, just as Ben expected from what Nick had told him. For an aggressive, intimidatory beggar like this one, the whole central area of Queen Street, Cornmarket, and all the little surrounding lanes and side streets, was a target-rich environment bound to yield decent takings for a dishonest morning’s work. Swaggering cockily about his hunting grounds, the crusty didn’t seem the least bit cowed from his experience just the previous morning.
Some people never learn.
Ben was skilled in the art of one-on-one surveillance, but it didn’t take much skill to follow a target like this one, who lived in his own world and cared about nothing much except where his next free handout was coming from. Nor was there much artistry in the way the crusty went about his business. Ben watched him collar three unsuspecting victims for money, two in Queen Street and a solitary woman he accosted in Shoe Lane. Both of his male targets were smaller than him, which generally applied to most men, and both were younger, underconfident guys who were easy to push around. Ben could have intervened on their behalf, but his strategy was to hold back for now. The time for intervention would come later, once Ben had him in a less public place.
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