‘You wouldn’t be the only one,’ Ben said. ‘Relax, Lester, I’m not a detective. I might have been, and then you’d be in pretty hot water with Mrs Kimble. Luckily for you, I’m here for another reason.’
‘So you’re not a robber, and you’re not a detective – then who are you?’
‘Just someone in need of some answers.’
‘How am I supposed to help?’ Lester asked. The terrified stammer was gone, but his voice was still hoarse with panic.
‘One of your fellow members has got himself mixed up in a lot of trouble. I have reason to believe the Atreus Club is involved in some way. I need your help to find out exactly what the connection is.’
A faint ray of hope lit up Lester’s eyes, as he realised he was at least part way off the hook. ‘I don’t know anyone else there. Not by name, that is. I mean, people come and go, but we don’t say much, except the odd hello, or talk about the weather and things.’
‘But you’d remember a face. Like this one.’ Taking out his phone, Ben pulled up the image of Adrian Graves that he’d lifted from the archives of the Oxford University Faculty of Music website and let Lester see it. ‘Know him?’
‘I’ve seen him there a few times,’ Lester said, recognising Graves immediately. ‘He’s a regular.’
‘He’s been seeing a girl there called Angelique. Do you know her?’
Lester shook his head. ‘No. They have a number of girls. Are you trying to hire her or something? Get a number for her? I can’t help you with that.’
‘I already have her number. But I need a description of what she looks like. A photo would be best.’
‘Oh, I get it,’ Lester said slyly. ‘You want to check her out first. I don’t think the Atreus Club let their girls do any moonlighting, though. I mean, if they did, I’d be the first in line to—’
Ben put the gun to his head.
‘Don’t disappoint me, Lester.’
Lester swallowed. He nodded. ‘All right, all right. Please point that thing somewhere else, and I’ll help you. Then will you go away? Promise?’
‘As if I was never here,’ Ben said, lowering the pistol. ‘Scout’s honour.’
‘We’d have to go into the other room. The computer’s there.’
Keeping hold of his arm in case he tried to bolt, Ben accompanied Lester through the house to a downstairs room that had been converted into a home office. Above a desk hung framed certificates proudly proclaiming Lester J. Kimble’s law degree and subsequent professional achievements, including his letter of appointment from the Queen. Lester was a QC.
The man himself looked much more humble as he seated himself at the computer and went online. Ben stood at his shoulder. The gun was back in his pocket by now. He didn’t think Lester was going to pull a concealed weapon on him.
‘Each member has his own special passcode to access the club’s website,’ Lester explained as he keyed in a password on a blank screen. He hit ENTER, and the website home page flashed up in all its colourful glory with a picture of Wychstone Manor that made the place look like a respectable country hotel or conference centre. The introductory spiel began, ‘Set in the elegant surroundings of the Oxfordshire countryside, the Atreus Club has been offering highly discreet personal services to our elite membership since 1993 …’
‘Looks like quite a business they’re running there. How many members?’
‘Oh, hundreds,’ Lester replied, then added with a note of something like pride, ‘But they won’t let just any old Tom, Dick or Harry join. It’s very exclusive.’
‘Only the cream of society need apply. I get that. And how many prostitutes do they have working there?’
‘They’re not prostitutes,’ Lester said, bristling momentarily.
‘Call it what you like. I don’t judge them, only the sad little losers whose money they take. Now give me the guided tour.’
The way Lester navigated the website, it was obvious he’d been a very frequent visitor. He clicked on a tab that said SERVICES and a new page opened up with a header that promised ‘A selection of feminine beauty to suit all tastes and preferences, guaranteed to meet your every need.’ Below was a row of separate tabs each with a name on it. Ben ran his eye across them. The club offered the services of ten different girls: VENUS; ARIA; INDIA; KYMBERLEE; JYNX; BRANDY; KIRA; CINDY; TARRA; ANGELIQUE.
‘That’s my Cindy,’ Lester said, melting at the sight of her name. He moved the mouse as though he was about to click her tab open.
‘Never mind Cindy,’ Ben said. ‘Show me Angelique.’
Lester reluctantly shifted his cursor to click on her tab. The screen flashed up a high-resolution glamour pic. ‘Angelique’ had pouting lips and blond hair that seductively covered part of her face. The sharply-drawn features and high cheekbones suggested to Ben that she might be of Eastern European origin. A short bio below the image, carefully worded to be as vague as possible, gave her age as 23, but it could have been anything five years either side. At the bottom of the page, a pink button flashed alluringly, saying CLICK HERE TO SPEND SOME TIME WITH ME.
‘You want me to click?’ Lester asked, peering tentatively up at Ben.
‘You want me to call Elizabeth?’ Ben replied.
Lester shrank away as though he’d been punched in the head. ‘No.’
‘Do yourself a favour, Lester. Get some help. And I don’t mean paying some poor girl wearing a thong to tickle your feet with a feather boa, or whatever it is that’s been floating your boat. You need therapy.’
‘You mean, like a counsellor?’
‘There’s always electric shock treatment.’ Ben stepped towards the door.
‘You’re leaving? Just like that?’
‘I was never here. Not a word to anyone, Lester. Remember that, won’t you? Or I might have to pay you another visit.’
Ben needed to say no more. In a world full of strangeness and uncertainty, one thing he could depend on was that Lester Kimble QC would be as good as gold about keeping his mouth shut.
Ben drove straight back to Wychstone that afternoon and took up position in his original OP across the road from the entrance to the manor, where the screen of trees camouflaged the car from the cameras and he could watch the house through his binoculars.
This time, he had to wait longer before he got the result he was hoping for. Several more cars came and went, each time a middle-aged driver on his own. The clients didn’t interest him any more. Just after five a blond-haired woman, young, slender, wearing jeans and a leather jacket, appeared from a side entrance of the manor house. She paused momentarily to fish a pack of cigarettes from her handbag and light up, and Ben was able to focus the binocs on her face.
If she wasn’t Angelique, she was her twin sister.
Ben tracked her until she disappeared around the corner of the building. He kept watching, scanning from side to side so he wouldn’t miss her if she reappeared. Which she did four minutes later, this time behind the wheel of a pale blue Nissan Micra that must have been parked somewhere around the rear. It looked as if she’d finished work for the day and was leaving for home.
By the time the little Nissan reached the gates, Ben had started up the BMW and pulled out of the cover of the trees back to the road. Like Lester Kimble’s Range Rover earlier, the Nissan turned left towards Wychstone – and just like earlier, Ben followed. Once she was clear of the village, she accelerated to a steady forty miles an hour and he matched her speed, maintaining a fifty-yard gap between them. The road was a minor one, and quiet this time of day. He couldn’t assume she wouldn’t notice the lone BMW following her.
But this time, he wasn’t planning on following his target all the way home, where for all he knew some big burly husband or boyfriend was expecting her. That would only upset Ben’s plans. What he was about to do required a greater degree of privacy.
As the Nissan reached a long straight with trees either side and no other traffic in sight, Ben punched the accelerator and the Alpina responded like a sp
urred horse. He shot past the Nissan, then swerved abruptly into her path, hitting the brakes and forcing her to a squealing, hissing stop. He got out of the car and walked quickly towards the front of the Nissan with his arms spread wide.
Angelique did what he’d have expected her to do in that situation. She revved the little car hard and sawed at the wheel to try to get past him. But he sidestepped her one way and then the other, blocking her off. He didn’t believe she’d have the guts to run him down, and she didn’t. In her panic she slammed the horn button as though that might scare him off. Faster than she could react to prevent him, Ben strode up to the car, wrenched open her driver’s door, reached inside and turned off her ignition and pulled out the key.
At moments of acute stress, expatriates often revert back to their native tongue. Angelique let out a stream of what Ben immediately recognised as Serbian. With his natural talent for languages he’d picked up some of it back in the day, hunting war criminals with the SAS in the wake of the Bosnian conflict. But even if he hadn’t, he’d have been able to get the gist of what she was yelling at him. ‘What the fuck? What are you doing, you fucking asshole? Give me back my keys!’
‘A woman driving on her own should always lock her doors,’ Ben replied in Serbian.
That stopped her dead. She fell silent and stared at him like a cornered wild animal, breathing hard, slim hands gripping the wheel. She had long, perfect nails that were varnished blue to match her eyes, which were smouldering with hostility. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ she demanded after a long pause, switching to English. ‘You asshole, did you just follow me from work?’
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ Ben said, showing her his palms to look less threatening. ‘That’s a promise. I just want to talk, okay?’
‘Fuck you. Give me back my keys!’
He dangled the ignition keys in front of her. She made a lunge for them, but he jerked them back out of her reach. ‘You can have them back,’ he said. ‘But only after.’
‘After what? You want to screw me, you have to pay like everyone else, up front. You want to do it in your car? This will cost you a thousand pounds. You can transfer the money online with your phone.’ All business. Ben got the feeling this wouldn’t have been the first time she’d done these kinds of transactions.
‘I told you, I only want to talk. But I am happy to pay for your time. Five minutes, a hundred in cash.’ He showed her his wallet with the money inside.
‘Talk about what?’ she asked slowly, still eyeing him with extreme suspicion.
‘About someone you know.’
Her face hardened even more. ‘Who?’
‘Professor Adrian Graves.’
The words jolted her like a million volts of electricity. Before Ben could stop her, she scrambled across the middle console of the Nissan and out of the passenger door. Her car was at an angle at the side of the road with its left-side wheels up on the grassy verge where she’d skidded to a halt. As fast as a cat, she leapt across the verge and plunged into the trees beyond.
‘Shit,’ Ben muttered. He couldn’t let her get away.
Only one thing for it. He chased after her.
Chapter 25
Ben had expected a reaction from her. Perhaps angry denial that she’d ever heard of this Graves person. Or perhaps a cool upping of the price for information about him. But the suddenness and speed of her flight at the very mention of Graves’ name took him by surprise. Now she was crashing through the dense thicket of the roadside woods like a deer running from a huntsman.
Ben sprinted after her, twigs whipping in his face, brambles tearing at his trouser legs. She was fast, but the pursuit of predator and prey over difficult terrain was something he was much more accustomed to than she was, and the little flat shoes she was wearing weren’t designed for rough work. He was three strides behind her when her toe snagged on a hidden tree root and she fell hard, sprawling in the damp moss and leaf litter.
Ben knelt astride her body and pinned her down with his hands and knees. She fought him as if he was a rapist, trying to rake him with those blue claws, snapping her teeth, spitting, wriggling like a wild thing. He kept repeating, ‘Hey! Hey! Stop that, I’m not going to hurt you!’
Nothing he said could calm her down. In her position, Ben wouldn’t have believed him, either.
The gun in her face shut her up quite quickly. She froze and lay still on her back, her blond hair tangled and fanned out over the dirt, looking up at him with cool defiance in her eyes. But there was also a certain acceptance in her look, which Ben found interesting. When you point a gun at an innocent person, they’ll freak out even more and want to know why this awful thing is happening to them. She hadn’t even asked him who he was. Stick a pistol in the face of a guilty person, they’ll either fight you to the death or lie back and wait for what they know is coming to them. Live by the gun, die by the gun. Ben wondered what that said about Angelique.
‘Adrian Graves. Let’s have it. Everything you know.’
The repetition of the name got her going again. She spat and hissed, ‘Govno jedno, da bog dobio gljivice na jajima!’ Roughly translated, ‘You piece of shit, I hope you get fungus on your balls.’
‘That’s lovely,’ Ben said. ‘Tell you what, why don’t I make this easier for both of us, and tell you what I already know? First off, Graves is dead.’
The look in her eyes told him that she hadn’t known. Her gaze flicked to the pistol muzzle that was pointing inches from her face. ‘You killed him?’
‘Now why would I go and do a thing like that?’ Ben said. ‘Fact is, I didn’t have to. He did it to himself. How does that grab you?’
She humphed. ‘What the fuck do I care if the bastard is dead?’
True love. Nothing like it in the world.
‘Here’s my guess,’ Ben said. ‘You’re such a charming young lady, I can see why a man like Graves couldn’t stay away from you. Like a fly around a honey jar, even if it meant the ruination of his safe, cosseted little life. I think he spent all the money he had on you, and more. In fact, he got himself into so much hock, just to enjoy your delightful company, that he ended up doing something very, very stupid to pay his way out of the mess he was in. A friend of mine died because of it. How am I doing so far?’
‘You don’t know shit!’
‘That’s okay by me, because now I have you to fill in the blanks, Angelique. What’s your real name, anyway?’
‘Fuck you!’ She shouted it so loud that the sound of her cry echoed over the trees.
‘You’re going to talk to me.’
She spat up at him. ‘You would have to kill me first, pig!’
‘Have it your way,’ Ben said, and fired the gun.
The report made her scream, but the flat boom was so much louder that no sound appeared to come from her open mouth. He’d turned the pistol away just a few inches from her face before pressing the trigger. The bullet slammed into the ground by her right ear. The force of the impact and the jet of hot gases from the gun’s muzzle kicked up an explosion of dirt that plastered the side of her face. Bits of moss and dead leaves stuck in her hair. She would have tinnitus in that ear for a few days. That was as much harm as Ben was prepared to do to her. But she didn’t know that.
‘That was your warning,’ he told her. ‘You only get one. Now talk.’
The look of defiance was gone now, and real fear clouded her eyes. ‘My name is Lena,’ she blurted. ‘Lena Vuković. I know what happened to your friend, the musician man. But I swear, I did not have anything to do with it. I was not there!’
Ben had to pause a moment to take in what he was hearing. He’d approached this Angelique – now Lena – thinking that, at best, she might help to shine light on the secret life of Adrian Graves. Now she was telling him that she knew about Nick Hawthorne. He couldn’t understand the connection.
‘Who killed him?’
Lena’s face tightened and tears filled her eyes. She hesitated, then glanced at the gun and quavered
, ‘I don’t know who. Dragan is head of the gang. Danilo and Miroslav were there too. I think maybe it was Dragan’s idea to kill him. They did it together.’
‘Who’s Dragan?’
‘He cannot know that I told you his name. He would kill me, too.’
Ben pressed the pistol under her chin. He repeated, ‘Who’s Dragan?’
‘Dragan Vuković. My brother.’
‘You’re telling me that your brother and his pals beat Nick Hawthorne half to death and then threw him out of a window.’
‘Yes! You do not understand. Dragan is violent. He is not a normal person. There is something wrong in here, inside his head. He is like this ever since the war in my country. That is why he could kill his own sister if he knew.’
‘Sounds like a close family,’ Ben said.
‘Dragan is all the family I have left.’
‘Is this the kind of thing he does for a living?’
‘He does what he can to get ahead. It is the same for me, no? For you, for everyone. But with Dragan, it is more than this. He likes to hurt people.’
‘How many in his gang?’
‘Danilo and Miroslav are the ones I know. There are others. Maybe five or six.’ Wide-eyed and streaming tears of fear, she reached up and grasped the folds of Ben’s jacket with both hands. ‘Promise me that you do not tell them I have told you this. I would do anything. You can screw me as many times as you like. Here, your place, my place. Now, anytime. You would not have to pay me. It is all I have to trade.’
He knocked her hands away with the butt of the pistol. ‘Get that out of your head, Lena. Why did they kill Nick?’
‘Why do you think?’
‘Graves paid them?’
‘Not to kill him. To steal. Your friend was some rich guy, no? He had something the professor man said was worth much money. He offer Dragan ten grands to get it from his place. Dragan said afterwards, they find a lot of grass there, and so they take that too. I don’t know why they killed him. Maybe he try to stop them. This was a stupid thing to do. He should not have got in Dragan’s way.’
The Bach Manuscript Page 15