by RR Haywood
‘Get the fuck away . . .’ she snarls and steps back with her vision blurred and threatening to close in.
‘Okay,’ Ben says quickly, softly. ‘You’ll be okay. The dizziness passes . . .’
‘Leave me alone,’ she mutters fiercely and waits for her eyes to clear to see the two men staring at her. One of them is huge and bearded. At least six foot four and standing in the door to the bathroom while holding a plastic cup. He looks familiar but she shifts her gaze to take in the one that moved towards her then blinks again as her mouth drops open.
‘You okay?’ Ben asks gently.
She watches him. Taking in the dark blond hair and features. Recognising him instantly. Knowing him instantly.
‘I’m Ben,’ Ben says. Safa glares harder. Her eyes fixed on his face, tracing along his scar, and then down to the grey tracksuit.
‘You’re Safa?’
She glares back at his face until he slowly lifts a hand and points behind her.
She turns and reads her own name stencilled in thick black letters. Safa Patel. She looks back at Ben then past him to Harry, who also looks so familiar. Like she knows him but cannot place him. She edges forward to the threshold of her doorway and peers across the room to the opened door on the other side and the name Ben Ryder stencilled in the same thick black letters. Her heart hammers, thundering in her chest.
‘Do I know you?’ Ben asks, staring intently at her. ‘You look familiar.’
She swallows and forces herself to look past him to the big man. ‘Who are you?’ she asks as Ben points to the door next to hers. She has to step out from the room to see but that means leaving the perceived safety of her room. Ben and Harry both detect the fear and move back at the same time to show they are not a threat. She edges out and peers round to the door next to hers and the name stencilled in thick black letters. Harry Madden. She shoots a hard look at Harry as her heart starts jackhammering again. He looks like Harry Madden. The other one looks like Ben Ryder. Harry Madden and Ben Ryder? They are both dead. She looks at the names then at the faces, trying to process what she is seeing and reading.
‘Mad Harry Madden,’ she mutters to herself and shakes her head. This is a dream. A nightmare or a hallucination brought on by the drugs. Maybe some kind of psychosis designed to unhinge her mind so she will blab about the terrorist attack. ‘Ben Ryder,’ she mutters and stares at Ben, locking eyes in the same way she did five years ago. It is the same man. She saw him. It was Ben then and it is Ben now. The same face she has thought about nearly every day for the last five years. The same man that made her want to be a police officer.
‘You’re dead,’ she whispers.
‘Feels like it,’ Ben says, pulling his head back an inch.
‘Water, miss?’ Harry rumbles from the bathroom doorway, seeing the blood drain from her face and wondering why they have put a woman in a POW camp.
‘Easy.’ Ben shoots forward as she sways on the spot and starts to buckle. ‘Sit down, it’s right here.’
She lets him guide her and giggles drunkenly at the thought of Ben Ryder helping her to a chair. ‘Ben Ryder,’ she slurs and looks at him again. ‘You’re Ben Ryder.’
‘It’s Calshott,’ Ben says.
‘Pah!’ Safa bursts out laughing as she sinks down and points a trembling finger up at him. ‘S’not Calshott, it’s Ryder.’ Her hands grip his face. That he shows instant alarm is lost in the fug of her mind. ‘Ben Ryder,’ she says again, stroking his cheeks and staring into the soft blue eyes. Her own eyes fill with tears that spill down her cheeks. ‘Ben Ryder . . .’
‘Calshott,’ Ben says, seeing the drunken, slack look in her eyes. ‘Miss, just rest. I’ll try and get help.’
She saw him. She was the last one who ever saw him. Ben Ryder. The last decent man to have ever lived. Her mind fills with images of the Prime Minister leering and grabbing her. His filthy whisky-tainted breath in her face and the months she took the abuse while knowing there were decent men in the world who did brave and good things. But it’s too much. The shock of it is too much and the last traces of the drugs in her system pull her back down into sleep.
Six
‘Bloody hell,’ Ben says when she finally lets go of his face and slumps back in the chair. She does look familiar. He knows her from somewhere. He looks at the name on the door again. Safa Patel. That’s a distinctive name. He would remember a name like that and especially a woman like this. She is beautiful.
‘She okay?’ Harry asks.
Ben shrugs and steps back. ‘She’s breathing,’ he says. ‘Is there an alarm or something? Maybe we should get an ambulance . . .’
‘Ambulance?’ Harry asks, going straight back to that suspicious glance again. ‘She knows you.’
‘Er.’ Ben pauses and thinks about what he should say and even if he should be saying anything, but Safa stirs in her chair and groans softly as her eyes open again.
‘Water, miss,’ Harry says. There is something about his manner, the way he moves clutching a tiny plastic mug and obviously trying not to scare her by ducking down and holding his hand out to offer the drink. Never before has Ben seen a man trying to appear less threatening.
Safa takes the cup slowly as her eyes start to focus again. She does the same as the other two and sips first then gulps the water down in one long, thirsty drink.
‘Another one?’ Harry asks politely, reaching out for the cup. She hands it over, staring up in wonder at the attentiveness of such a huge, hairy man mountain and again reads the name on his door. He brings her another drink and backs off to hover nearby as she watches him and Ben over the rim of her cup.
‘Water?’ Harry asks Ben.
‘Er, yeah, yeah thanks.’
‘Ben Ryder,’ Safa murmurs in a voice now firmer and more normal. ‘You look like him and you’ve got the scar too,’ she adds, leaning forward in the chair to look at the faded cut down his right cheek. ‘But you’re not him.’
‘Can we sit down?’ Ben asks when Harry comes back with water and a handful of toilet tissue. Two white tufts of paper already poking from his nose that make Safa and Ben blink at him in the utterly surreal confusion of the moment.
‘Stops the bleeding,’ Harry says, handing them both a section of toilet tissue as Safa realises they both have nosebleeds. Drips of crimson on the fronts of their tracksuit tops. She looks down, seeing the same on her front, and takes the tissue. Two chunks torn and fashioned to be pushed carefully into her nostrils. Ben watches her then looks at Harry. His head still struggling to catch up.
‘Stops the bleeding,’ Harry says again, still holding a chunk of tissue for Ben.
‘I know you’re not Ben Ryder,’ Safa says, as Ben stuffs tissue up his nose. ‘I saw Ben Ryder die. I was there,’ she adds. ‘On the platform . . .’
It hits Ben hard. The sudden recollection of the uniformed police officer running across the platform screaming at the driver. The shape of her eyes. The angle of her head. The poise in her manner. Ben swallows, gripping the cup harder.
‘I need to sit down.’
‘And you?’ she says, turning her attention to Harry. ‘Are you meant to be Harry Madden?’
‘Aye. Harry,’ Harry replies and seems to think for a second before moving to the last chair.
‘Not the Harry Madden,’ she says clearly. ‘Not the Ben Ryder either.’
They fall into a heavy silence. All three with white toilet tissue poking from their noses, staring at each other suspiciously.
‘Heard about this, I did,’ Harry says in a deep, rumbling voice.
‘About what?’ Ben asks.
‘Mind games,’ Harry states, looking at Ben benignly.
‘What about them?’
‘This,’ he says.
‘What?! What mind games? Where are we? Who are you two and what the fuck am I doing here?’
‘You’ll not be cussing in front of a lady now,’ Harry says in a low, warning tone.
‘Fuck that,’ Safa says. Harry blanches and lo
oks away as though embarrassed. ‘I agree, who the fuck are you two and what am I doing here? You are not Ben Ryder and you . . .’ She points at Harry. ‘I don’t know who you are.’
‘I am Ben Ryder,’ Ben says. ‘You were the police officer on the platform at Holborn station.’ Her head snaps to face him. ‘I saw you . . . you were running and waving at the driver to stop . . . I was pulling the ginger man down the tracks.’
‘What was his name then?’
‘Who?’
‘The ginger man.’
‘I don’t know! How would I know?’
‘Exactly, you can’t know because Ben Ryder blew up with the train.’
‘No, no I didn’t. Two men pushed me into a side room and . . .’
‘And what?’ she demands.
‘And . . . I don’t know . . . I can’t remember . . . I blacked out then woke up here.’
‘Yeah, okay then, you been asleep for what . . . five years?’
‘Five years? It was a few hours ago. What’re you on about?’
She shakes her head at him in disgust. ‘Stop it.’
‘Find the works manager . . . or the men on tea break I saw . . . or my office! They’ll tell you I was sent there for the worker that got electrocuted in Aldwych . . . I didn’t know those people . . .’
‘Mind games,’ Harry says, tutting. ‘Dirty.’
‘I’ll tell you what mind games are,’ Safa says. ‘Mind games are being suspected of being a terrorist just because you’ve got darker skin, which is racism. I was doing my job. I hope to hell you’ve got every copper from the house in here because if you’ve singled me out on the basis of my ethnicity I will go bloody Mad Harry on . . .’ She stops, realising what she’s said, and glares through narrowed eyes at Harry, who just blinks and tilts his head.
‘I got him down to the bunker,’ she continues. ‘I got him down there . . . if I was part of it, why didn’t I kill him or hand him over? I didn’t even go in with him . . .’
‘With who? Where?’ Ben asks. ‘What are you talking about? Holborn?’
‘He said he’d do this,’ she mutters darkly. ‘He said it,’ she says louder into the air as though someone else is listening. ‘He said he’d put extremist material in my father’s office if I didn’t . . .’ She stops again, breathing hard through her mouth. ‘I am not a terrorist,’ she shouts.
‘Neither am I,’ Ben shouts at whoever is listening.
‘I am,’ Harry says almost cheerfully. ‘Harry Madden. British Army. I were dropped a few miles out from the harbour. I blew the town to light a path for the bombers so the charges could be set on the U-boats.’ He speaks matter-of-factly without any trace of humour or deceit. ‘So . . .’ He pauses, staring from Safa to Ben. ‘You can pack it in. You don’t need to do the mind games cos I admit who I am.’ He drains his cup and places it gently down at his feet. ‘Oh, and I was in civilian clothing too, so that makes me a spy. I won’t fight or struggle if you execute me now, but if you hold me here, I will consider it my duty to try and escape.’
Silence follows. Safa and Ben unmoving as they watch him settle back in the chair and stretch his legs out. ‘You’ve done well with your cups anyway.’
‘Cups?’ Safa asks.
‘Aye, your plastics,’ he says. ‘Good stuff. You might be the enemy, but credit given where credit’s due.’
‘Oh my fucking God,’ Ben stammers. ‘What the hell is going on?’
‘Good English. Study in England?’ Harry asks.
‘In England?’ Safa asks.
‘Before the war,’ Harry says.
‘What year is it?’ she asks him with a quizzical look.
‘Nineteen forty-three,’ he replies.
‘Of course it is,’ she says witheringly. ‘And you’re the real Harry Madden and he’s the real Ben Ryder.’
‘I am,’ Ben says to her. ‘But he isn’t the real Harry Madden. You think they think you had something to do with the attack on Holborn? I can tell them I saw you trying to stop the train.’ Ben speaks out to the room while pointing at Safa. ‘I saw this police officer running on the platform, she was in uniform and tried stopping the driver by running towards the train . . . I think that’s important.’ He pauses as she glares at him. ‘No, I really do think that’s important. Think about it, why would you run towards the train if you knew it would blow up?’
‘I didn’t know it would blow up,’ she says angrily. ‘And that was five years ago.’
‘You blew Holborn up?’ Harry asks with a pained expression. ‘That’s not military. Civvies would’ve been down there. That’s not on.’
Three conversations going on at cross-purposes. Ben and Safa feel like they’re drunk and out of sync with everything else. A feeling of confusion with a sense of panic starting to rise. It’s too hot, too close and they have tissue stuffed up their noses.
‘You can’t treat people like this,’ Ben says. ‘What about the Human Rights Act?’
‘Oh, nice touch.’ Safa offers a humourless smile.
‘What?’
‘Human Rights Act? The one that was abolished in twenty eighteen? That one? Like I said, nice touch.’
Safa’s hands tremble. Harry looks genuinely confused. Ben keeps swallowing. They all take turns to stare at each other, as each thinks the others must have been drugged to make the side effects look real. This is a test designed to cause stress and confusion so they will spill the beans about Norway, Holborn and Downing Street. Safa and Ben equally worry about how to convince the others. Harry just sits quietly.
‘My name is Ben Ryder and I had nothing to do with what happened at Holborn . . .’
‘Five years ago,’ Safa says.
‘Yesterday.’
‘Five years ago . . .’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Five years ago.’
‘Yesterday . . . my name is Ben Ryder. It was changed to Ben Calshott after what happened when I was seventeen. I am engaged to Stephanie. We are getting married. I work for Hallows Insurance Investigations.’
Safa smiles coldly and shifts position to face him. ‘What happened when you were seventeen then, Ben Ryder?’
Ben hesitates, not wanting to give voice to the thing he buried for so many years.
‘Go on then,’ Safa says, goading in tone. ‘What happened when you were seventeen, Ben Ryder?’ she adds mockingly.
‘I killed five people . . .’ Ben says.
‘Who?’ She cuts across him as Harry looks at Ben with renewed interest. ‘Who did you kill, Ben Ryder?’
‘Please stop.’ Ben looks away as the memories flood back.
‘Oh, you look all hurt,’ she says in a mock soft tone. ‘Come on, you’re Ben Ryder. Who did you kill?’
‘Carl Pocock, Daryl Evans, Umbassa Ubedi, Sean Harris, Matmoud Hussein. We were in Lovell Lane in a village thirty miles from Birmingham . . .’
‘Yeah yeah, you can get that from Wikipedia.’
‘Yes you can,’ Ben says, having Googled his own name before. ‘But it won’t say that our names were changed to Calshott or that we moved to Surrey, or that my father was given a job in NatWest or my mother was the payroll clerk for the local Tesco’s. Or that we had a dog called Bobo . . . does it say that? Does it say I went to Littlehill Comprehensive? Does it say that the last investigation I worked on before I was sent to London yesterday—’
‘Yes.’
‘And does it . . . what?’
‘Yes it does.’
‘What?’
‘Wikipedia says all of that. That at the time of your death you were engaged to Stephanie Myers. Oh, don’t give me the all-shocked look now, everyone knows it, lightning striking twice? Ben Ryder killed five drugged-up gang members and saved a woman and her child . . . then years later saved hundreds on the London Underground. All there. Every word of it.’
Ben’s heart races, booming in his chest, and his mouth goes dry. Breathing faster, he looks at Safa then at Harry. ‘This is fucked up. Who . . . I mean . . . who are you the
n?’ he asks Safa.
‘Safa Patel,’ she states as though speaking to the room again. ‘I am a police officer with the Diplomatic Protection Squad.’
‘And?’ Ben asks weakly as Harry simply watches on with interest.
‘Oh, you want the rest?’ she asks scathingly. ‘My turn is it? Oh, okay then. I’m so happy to comply and do as you want, Ben Ryder.’
‘I don’t—’
‘PC 01899 Patel,’ she cuts him off. ‘I was on duty yesterday. Do you want the names of the other officers on duty?’ she asks lightly. ‘No? Got them already? Well, let me proceed then. I commenced duty and first went upstairs to relieve the officer on day duty. I then remained on the top floor until the Prime Minister came back, at which point I moved downstairs to the static point beside the lift. I then remained at that static point until the Prime Minister had concluded his business and at no time did I see anyone other than the normal Downing Street staff . . . no, hang on . . . there was a private business caller . . .’ The overly sarcastic voice goes as she becomes serious and earnest.
‘He was only there for half an hour and there was something odd about him. Have you checked him? We didn’t have his details, only that he was a private business caller . . . check him.’ She nods at Ben and Harry as though they can arrange for that to happen. ‘Then he . . . the Prime Minister I mean, I took him up to his rooms and, er . . .’ she hesitates. ‘I stayed in the upper corridor until he called me in for a bug sweep . . . I was, er . . . we were in his study when the first explosion came. I got him down the stairwell, I engaged the attackers on the ground floor and know I killed three, possibly four. I got the PM down into the bunker then went back upstairs. I definitely got six more confirmed kills.’ Harry leans closer. ‘Then I heard the firefight in the rear garden and went there until the . . . shit,’ she spits. ‘The two police officers . . . there were two police officers that came in but they weren’t armed! Christ, how did I not notice? They came from the front of the house and asked me my name. They asked me two or three times like they wanted to be sure or something then one of them attacked me. Yes,’ she blurts with an apparent fresh memory recall. ‘He jumped on me and stuck something into my neck and the other one was throwing flash-bangs into the garden . . .’