The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET

by Scott Mariani

  The Turf was just nearby, a pub he remembered from years ago. They crossed the road and headed towards the sound of music and laughter. The interior was traditional – low ceilings, exposed beams, with a pitted wooden bar that looked at least two centuries old. The place was heaving with people. A contingent of Italian tourists were taking up several tables, making too much noise. Ben bought a double Scotch and a glass of white wine, and he and Lucy took their drinks out to a tranquil corner of the beer garden surrounded by old stone walls and climbing plants. The air was thick with the scent of honeysuckle.

  Ben took out his cigarettes. ‘You mind?’

  ‘I’ll join you,’ she said. He gave her a light, and they clinked glasses. It seemed a little strange to him to be sitting there with her, yet at the same time she was easy to be with.

  ‘Great concert,’ she said. ‘Shame about the audience.’

  ‘I guess Bartók’s an acquired taste.’

  ‘If it had been Chopin’s greatest hits, or some frilly baroque thing, the place would have been packed out.’ She smiled. ‘So, Ben, are you a postgrad or what?’

  ‘Undergrad. Waiting to start my final year at Christ Church.’

  She seemed surprised.

  ‘I know,’ he said, catching her look. ‘I’m old.’

  ‘You’re not old.’

  I feel old, he thought. And tired. ‘I took some time out,’ he explained. ‘Did two years of my theology degree, long ago. Too long ago. Now they’ve let me back in to finish it.’

  ‘Career change?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘What did you do before?’

  He thought for a moment. Even thought about telling her the truth – then decided against it. ‘I was self-employed. Kind of a freelance consultant. Troubleshooter. Specialist stuff. I travelled around a lot.’

  It was meaningless, the vaguest answer he could think of, but she seemed satisfied with it. ‘Career change would suit me too,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t like working at the library?’

  ‘It’s OK. But I want to paint. I’m an artist. The Bodleian job’s only a few hours a week, to help with bills. I’d go full time with the art if I could make a living out of it. But things are tight.’

  ‘Tough business,’ he said. ‘I hope you succeed. What kind of art do you do?’

  She chuckled. ‘Oh, you wouldn’t be interested.’

  ‘No, I am interested.’

  She reached into her bag and brought out a business card. On one side was printed LUCY WILDE, FINE ART PAINTER and a phone number and website address. Ben flipped it over. The back of the card was printed with an abstract design, clean and geometric, a style that reminded him of Kandinsky. ‘This is one of yours?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I like it. You’re pretty good. I hope you do well with this stuff.’ He made to hand her back the card.

  ‘Keep it,’ she said. He smiled and slipped the card into his pocket.

  There was silence between them for a few moments. He twirled the glass on the tabletop, then glanced at his watch. ‘Maybe I should be going.’ He drained the last of his drink.

  ‘Where do you live?’ she asked.

  ‘North Oxford. Woodstock Road. What about you?’

  ‘Up in Jericho.’

  ‘I’d offer you a lift,’ he said. ‘But I’m on foot.’

  ‘Same here. But you’re going my way, as far as St Giles. Walk with me?’

  He nodded. She smiled, and they left together. They didn’t talk much as they walked back along the narrow street. Their footsteps echoed up the pitted old walls of college buildings as they made their way back towards the centre of town. A crowd had spilled out of the New Theatre and the kebab vans were busy, filling the warm night air with the smell of grilled meat. Past St John’s College, up the broad St Giles. The streets were quieter there, and the streetlights cast off a dim amber glow.

  Lucy stopped. ‘I go this way,’ she said, pointing to a sidestreet. ‘So I’ll see you sometime? The library?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ He was about to turn to walk away.

  ‘Ben?’

  ‘What?’

  Her voice was hesitant. ‘I was thinking – would you like to go to see a film with me tomorrow night?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘It’s a movie about Goya,’ she said nervously. ‘The artist.’

  ‘I know who Goya was.’ He hated the abrupt way it came out.

  ‘I don’t know if it’ll be any good. But I thought you might like –’ Her voice trailed off. She shuffled a little, looked down at her feet, fiddled with her bag.

  He hesitated. ‘Sorry, Lucy. I don’t think I can make that. I’m busy.’

  ‘What about some other night? Maybe a drink?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

  She looked flustered. ‘OK, I understand. See you round, then.’ She turned to go, and he watched her walk away. She didn’t look back. He carried on up the street.

  After about a hundred yards he slowed his step. Stopped. Stood under the amber lights and shook his head. What an arsehole, the voice in his head told him. He’d handled that all wrong. Stupid and clumsy and callous. She obviously wasn’t the kind of woman who asked men out on dates every day. It had been an effort for her to come out with it, but he’d stepped on her like an insect. She deserved better than that. He needed to go back and explain the situation. That he liked her, but just couldn’t see much of her. How he could never possibly be attracted to anyone, not for a long time and maybe never again. That it wasn’t personal – it was just him and his problems. That he was sorry.

  He turned and strode back to the cobbled side-street where he’d watched Lucy walk away from him. It was poorly lit and narrow, and the high buildings either side threw long black shadows across the cobbles. Little more than a long alleyway. There was nobody around.

  Just Lucy and the three guys.

  They were thirty yards away. They had her pressed up against the wall. One in front with his hand on her throat. One each side, blocking her escape. She was struggling and kicking. One of them had her bag, and she was holding onto the strap, trying to snatch it back away from him. Then she let go, and Ben heard a laugh over her faint cries.

  He moved stealthily against the dark shadows. They were too preoccupied with Lucy to notice his approach, but not even a professional soldier would have heard him. Two of them were white, and the third one who’d ripped her bag out of her hands was Asian. The one holding her throat looked the most useful. Shaved head, nose ring, confident attitude. Definitely the leader. The other white one was short, chunky, mostly fat. They were little more than kids, aged probably between seventeen and twenty, all in the same kind of designer sports gear.

  Just kids, but dangerous kids. Something glinted in the dull amber light. The leader had reached inside his jacket and drawn out a blade. A kitchen knife, black plastic handle, maybe eight inches of serrated steel. He waved it in Lucy’s face. She let out a stifled scream and he growled at her to stay still and shut the fuck up.

  Ben’s fists tightened at the sight of the knife. He moved closer, completely quiet. They still hadn’t seen him.

  The Asian kid was rifling through her bag, looking for her purse whilst his fat friend grabbed her arm, trying to pull off her watch. Her eyes were locked open in terror.

  Ben stepped out of the shadows. They froze. Stared at him. Lucy gasped his name.

  His mind was full of the ways he could take them out. Three seconds, and they could all be down and broken on the ground. As for the knife, it was big and scary to the average victim, but the leader kid had no idea how to use it. Not against someone trained to take it off him and drive it into his brain pan before he could even draw a breath.

  They were dangerous kids. But still kids.

  ‘Open the purse,’ he said to the Asian one. The kid glanced down at it, then back at Ben. He blinked.

  ‘Go on, open it,’ Ben said, keeping his eyes on the leader. His voi
ce was steady and soft.

  The knife kid was frowning and Ben could see the confusion in his face. He knew what he was thinking. Three against one, but something was horribly wrong with the balance of power. His confidence was ebbing away fast, and the defiance in his eyes was fading into fear as he fought for words. The knife was wavering a little in his fist. He slackened his hold on Lucy, and she wriggled away from him.

  The Asian kid did what he was told. The purse was tan leather, well worn. He unsnapped the catch and opened it.

  ‘How much cash is in there?’ Ben asked.

  The kid dipped his fingers inside the purse and came out with a twenty.

  ‘Not much of a haul, boys,’ Ben said. ‘Less than seven pounds each. Then you’d find that the debit card’s no good because the account is already in the red. And the credit card is maxed out. Let’s face it, she doesn’t have the money. So you go home with seven pounds. Real hard guys. A great night’s work, something you can go and boast about to your friends.’

  The kid with the knife finally found his voice again. ‘Fuck you,’ he said. But he couldn’t hide the quaver in his throat.

  Ben ignored him. ‘OK, let’s make a deal here.’ He reached into the back pocket of his jeans. Took out his wallet and flipped it open. Inside it was a sheaf of fifties, crisp from the cash machine. He counted through them slowly, taking his time, feeling their eyes on him. He picked out six notes and tucked the wallet back in his jeans. ‘Three hundred. A hundred each. Better than seven. And much more than you’re worth.’ He held it out to them. ‘It’s yours.’

  The knife guy stepped forward to take it.

  Ben pulled the money back. ‘This is a trade. That means I want something from you in return. Four things. One, let her go free. Two, give her back her bag. Three, put the knife on the ground. Then I’ll give you the money. Nice and easy. Four, then you leave, and I don’t ever want to see you again.’

  They hesitated.

  ‘If you don’t want to trade, that’s OK too,’ Ben said. ‘The only thing is, you’ll all be dead within the next half-minute because I can’t think of any other options. It’s up to you.’

  The Asian kid was beginning to tremble violently. The knife kid’s eyes were bulging wide. Nervous glances passed between them all.

  ‘I’m offering you a way out here,’ Ben said. ‘I’m buying your lives back from you, so that I don’t have to kill you.’

  The leader stooped and laid down the knife. The blade clinked against the cobbles. The Asian kid handed the bag back to Lucy, and then they all moved quickly away from her. She was shaking, pale. She scurried over to Ben’s side, and he laid a hand on her shoulder.

  He kicked the knife away across the alley. ‘Good choice. A defining moment. You’ve no idea how lucky you were tonight.’ He held the money out. The leader kid’s fingers were trembling as he went to take it. Then all three of them turned tail and ran like hell.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Ben asked Lucy.

  She looked up at him. Her eyes were wet in the darkness. ‘I can’t believe what you just did. How did you do that?’

  ‘Let me walk you home,’ he said.

  Chapter Twelve

  The seventh day

  The Bradburys lived in a large Victorian semi-detached house on the edge of the leafy suburb of Summertown. Ben arrived at twelve thirty with a bottle of wine and some flowers for Jane Bradbury. He hadn’t seen her in a very long time. Physically, she’d changed little, other than some grey streaks in her dark hair – and he thought he could see a certain fragility in her thin frame that hadn’t been there before. He remembered her as a quiet woman, slightly in the shadow of her ebullient husband. But today she was even quieter than he recalled.

  Lunch was served on the patio at the rear of the house. The garden hadn’t changed much in almost two decades. Tom Bradbury’s rose bushes were even bigger and more colourful than Ben remembered, and the high stone walls around the edge of the garden were now covered in ivy.

  After lunch they sat and sipped wine and made small talk for a while while the Bradburys’ Westie, a sturdy little white terrier, all muscle and hair, ran to and fro across the lawn, sniffing through the grass on the trail of something. ‘That dog looks exactly like the one you had last time I was here,’ Ben said. ‘Surely it can’t be the same one?’

  ‘That was Sherry you remember,’ Jane Bradbury said. ‘This is Whisky. Sherry’s son.’

  Hearing his name mentioned, the dog stopped what he was doing and came running. He trotted up to Ben, sat back on his haunches and offered his paw.

  ‘Our daughter Zoë taught him that,’ Bradbury said. ‘He’s really more her dog. But we look after him most of the time, since she’s not here very often.’

  ‘How is Zoë?’ Ben asked.

  It was just a casual question, but it seemed to have a strange effect. Bradbury shifted uncomfortably in his seat and looked down at his hands. His wife paled noticeably. Her face tightened and her movements stiffened. She caught her husband’s eye, her look full of meaning, as if she was urging him to say something.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ Ben asked.

  Bradbury patted his wife’s hand. She sat back in her chair. The professor turned to Ben. He seemed about to speak, then instead reached across the table for the bottle and topped up all three glasses. He set the bottle down, picked up his glass and gulped half of it back.

  ‘I’m getting the impression this isn’t just a social occasion,’ Ben said. ‘You want to talk to me about something.’

  Bradbury dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin. His wife stood up nervously. ‘I’ll fetch more wine.’

  Bradbury reached into the hip pocket of his tweed jacket, brought out the old briar pipe and started packing the bowl with tobacco from a plastic pouch.

  Ben waited patiently for him to speak.

  Bradbury was frowning as he lit the pipe. ‘We’re happy to see you again,’ he said through a cloud of aromatic smoke. ‘Jane and I would have invited you here to have lunch with us, even in normal circumstances.’

  ‘So you’ve asked me here for a particular reason,’ Ben said. ‘Something’s wrong.’

  Jane Bradbury came back out of the house carrying another wine bottle, which she placed on the table. It looked from their faces as though they had a lot to tell Ben, and it was going to be a long afternoon.

  The professor and his wife exchanged glances. ‘I know it’s been a long time since we were in touch,’ Bradbury said. ‘But your father and I were good friends. Close friends. And we think of you as a friend too.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ Ben said.

  ‘So we feel we can trust you,’ Bradbury went on. ‘And confide in you.’

  ‘Of course.’ Ben leaned forward in his chair.

  ‘We need your help.’ Bradbury hesitated, then continued. ‘It’s like this. When you left Oxford, all those years ago, we heard rumours. That you had drifted for a while, and then joined the army. Apparently done very well there. Just rumours, nothing specific. Then, six weeks ago, when we interviewed you as a returning mature student, you told me and my colleagues a little about the career you had pursued in the meantime. I know you didn’t want to go into too much detail. But you said enough to give me a clear impression. I understand you’re a man with a very specific set of skills and a great deal of experience. You look for lost people.’

  ‘I was a crisis response consultant,’ Ben said. ‘I worked freelance to help locate kidnap victims. Especially children. But not any more. As I told you at interview, I’m retired.’

  ‘Especially children,’ Bradbury echoed sadly.

  ‘This has something to do with Zoë,’ Ben said.

  Jane Bradbury got back up from her seat. She walked through the french windows into the house and came back a few moments later holding a framed photo. She set the silver frame down on the table and nudged it towards Ben. ‘Do you remember her? She was just a child, the last time we saw you.’

  Ben cast his min
d back to those days. It all seemed so distant. So much had happened since. He remembered a sparkling little thing running across the lawn with the dog trotting happily after her, sunlight in her hair and a world of joy in her gap-toothed little smile.

  ‘She was about five, six years old then?’

  ‘Almost seven,’ Bradbury said.

  ‘So she’s twenty-five, twenty-six now.’ Ben reached out for the photo. The silver frame was cool to the touch. He turned it towards him. The young woman in the picture was strikingly pretty, long blond hair and a full smile. It was an honest, happy picture of her hugging her little dog.

  Bradbury nodded. ‘She turned twenty-six in March.’

  Ben put the picture down. ‘What’s wrong? Zoë’s in some kind of trouble? Where is she?’

  ‘That’s the problem. She was supposed to be here. And she’s not.’

  ‘I’ve had too much wine already,’ Jane Bradbury said suddenly. ‘I’ll go and make us some coffee.’

  Ben watched her go. There was a lot of stiffness in her movements, like someone under enormous pressure. He frowned. ‘What’s the problem?’

  Bradbury toyed uncomfortably with his pipe. He glanced over his shoulder. Whatever he was about to say, he obviously preferred to say it without his wife there. ‘We’ve always loved her deeply, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure you have,’ Ben said, not sure where this was going.

  ‘This is a little hard for me to talk about. Personal things.’

  ‘We’re friends,’ Ben said, meeting his eyes.

  Bradbury smiled weakly. ‘When Jane and I got married, it took us a long time before we could have a child. It was nobody’s fault.’ He made a face. ‘It was my fault. Embarrassing. The details are –’

  ‘Never mind the details. Go on.’

  ‘After five years of trying, Jane became pregnant. It was a boy.’

  Ben frowned. The Bradburys had no son.

  ‘You can guess what happened,’ Bradbury continued. ‘His name was Tristan. He didn’t see his first birthday. Cot death. One of those things, we were told. It was devastating.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ben said, and meant it. ‘That must have been tough.’