Squeezy joined him in the cursing, only in English. “Where’s he fucking gone?”
Nikolas didn’t even want to think about possible answers to that question. An event that had caused Ben to completely lose his memory—his mind—had come back to him suddenly. What might it cause him to do this time?
Premorbid tendencies.
They went back into the house, Nikolas phoning the rest of the team to let them know what had happened. He sat at the computer and checked the history. Squeezy was perched on the edge of the desk.
“I shouldn’t have mentioned a fucking funeral. Depressing bloody things at the best of times.”
“He was looking for Atwell.”
“Well, duh. He won’t find him that way. We’ve tried. Katie’s tried, and if she can’t…Fuck, Diesel liked the daughter. I remember now. What was she called? Some posh bloody name. Pippa? Posy? Right looker. Not at a funeral, course.”
“Shut up.”
“Yeah, right you are. Sorry. Only McConaughey was a—”
Nikolas jerked his head up at the name.
§ § §
Squeezy told him the story of the retired Adjutant General and the accident on a quad bike. Nikolas remembered an intense ex-major and a message scrawled on a bedroom wall: ‘I will leave darkness behind me.’
He frowned back at the computer.
Ben had moved on from Atwell to…gay porn?
Squeezy sniggered then saw Nikolas’s expression as he cursed, “That fucking film!”
“What?”
“He’s going to track Atwell using the film company. I forgot! That pretentious fucker was the executive producer on some dumb shit film. Call Kate. Tell her to meet us at the house.”
§ § §
It was only as they were halfway to London that Nikolas realised his huge error.
He told Squeezy to pull over, and he did at the next service station.
He sent the other man for coffee.
He sat in the car, the engine ticking quietly.
Had he read this all wrong?
What was Ben thinking?
There were several possibilities as far as Nikolas could see, and none of them were good.
Ben had regained his memories of that night in the water mill. But more than this, perhaps, Ben probably now knew the other things that made up the ten years he’d lost.
And now he hadn’t had time and space to gradually absorb these terrible things back into his life, cope with them, compartmentalize them as everyone had to with bad memories. Nikolas had enough of these himself to know this was the only way to cope. Ben, however, had come crashing back to awareness of all these things.
The suicide attempt…
The family he’d gained and lost…
Discovering his mother was dead—murdered…
Premorbid indeed. And all those crushing recollections may have rushed in on top of the last, awful one. “I’m just an actor…”
When he’d heard Squeezy’s story of the quad bike accident, Nikolas had immediately assumed Ben had been furious that the legacy of Fergus Atwell’s work was still being felt. His poisonous little army of bitter men, carrying out their personal vendettas under the guise of a righteous anger against a world that had castigated them for being different. Nikolas had imagined Ben was going to find Atwell and end his recruiting campaign for good.
Now he wondered. I am leaving darkness behind me.
Was Ben going to leave his darkness behind him? Was he going to join them?
Did Ben see this as his only way out from such destructive memories?
Because, of course, hadn’t each one of Atwell’s twisted little group taken their own lives after their acts of revenge? Squeezy’s own nephew, Jono, killed the Islamic students, but then turned the gun on himself. Did Atwell somehow seek out people with a premorbid tendency—those who took the world too seriously, who tried to right wrongs that would always exist, who would always find those wrongs overpowering them—and use their own demons against them?
He thought about the Ben he’d been privileged to meet again this week—he was Ben relieved of the shadow that had crept across him over the ten years he couldn’t remember. Despite his confusion and anger at his memory loss, Ben had smiled more this week than Nikolas had seen in months. He’d had a vitality and rawness to him like a wild creature before taming.
And then the worst thought of all came to Nikolas.
It didn’t rush in with a fanfare, because it had been lurking at the back of his mind, its insidious whispering intruding until he could suppress it no longer. Hadn’t the wellspring of Ben’s darkness over these ten years been…him? If Ben hadn’t met him, he would still be in the army doing the job he’d loved. If Ben hadn’t met him, he wouldn’t have tried to kill himself. Even the tragic events with Ben’s family would never have had happened if Ben hadn’t met him.
He was the cause of it all.
He was Ben’s premorbid tendency.
§ § §
Nikolas didn’t attempt to express any of this until they were in London around the familiar table in his kitchen. Squeezy, Tim, Jackson and…Kate. She was there. She was outwardly unflustered. But she didn’t catch his eye.
He’d called them, intending for them to find Ben before Ben did something he’d regret—something else he’d regret. Before he punished Atwell for what he’d caused to happen in the water mill.
Now he didn’t know what to say.
For the first time in many years, Nikolas didn’t know what to say about a situation. Reticent and reserved by nature, except with those he trusted implicitly, he wasn’t about to venture into his private musings about his life with Ben—put words to the thought that he was the darkness Ben was running from—perhaps he was afraid they’d all agree too readily…well, duh, we knew that…
It didn’t help Kate being there. Not only had she shaken his faith in the loyalty of his team—and therefore his judgement in selecting it—she was tangible proof of how absolute his darkness was.
As far as anyone around this table knew for sure, he and Ben had only started sleeping together four years ago, when they’d both left the department and moved into this house in London together. He knew the truth, of course—and so did Ben, come to that. They’d carried on a secret affair that had begun the first weekend after Ben’s interview for the job in the department, meeting at Barton Combe for the occasional weekend or in hotels between ops. And for six months of this time, Ben had also dated Kate—openly. He’d moved into her apartment for a while, the perfect boyfriend, all the time meeting up with Nikolas to fuck him, be fucked…anonymous, private, and totally secret.
Although Nikolas always maintained he’d wanted their relationship with no strings attached, had he not stepped up the frequency of their meetings after the first time Ben had mentioned Kate?
“What are you doing this weekend?”
“Oh, I’m going out with Kate Armstrong in the typing pool on Saturday.”
“Kate. My computer expert?”
“Yeah. Thought we’d go see the new James Bond.”
“You are going to a film together?”
“Yep. Proper date. Curry house after.”
The weekend after that date, he’d taken Ben to Paris, and they’d spent the whole weekend together. He’d taught Ben lots of good swear words in French as they’d fucked.
He’d deliberately allowed Ben more of himself, just as Ben had begun to dig in with Kate. He knew exactly how their relationship was progressing. He ran a black ops department, for fuck’s sake. He’d had Kate followed, monitored her calls. After that first mention of a date, Ben had never spoken of her again. But Nikolas had watched the growing intimacy with great interest.
It had been so easy. How could Kate compete? And it hadn’t even been done with presents and spoiling Ben, which he could do so much easier than Kate ever could. Nikolas was too clever for that. He’d won Ben over by giving Ben the one thing he’d desperately wanted—attention. Ben was
forever seeking something he’d lost at eight years old. Nikolas—wealthy, sophisticated, intelligent, mature—had seen this need as his niche and had ruthlessly exploited Ben’s vulnerabilities. He’d found out about a day spent with Kate at the zoo? That weekend, he’d started teaching Ben how to ride.
Kate hadn’t even been in the race. She’d wanted an equal as a partner, a man in her life—not someone who wanted to be absorbed. Nikolas had seized on the child in Ben, the lost innocent, and wanted that as much as the man.
Nikolas didn’t need to examine his motives too closely to see why the innocent child within Ben had attracted him. Ben wasn’t the only one with loss in his life. Nikolas had seen in Ben an opportunity to find his missing half—his better half. Ben wasn’t his brother Nika, but he was what Nika represented. A chance to do things better this time.
And what had Nikolas done with this second chance? This wild, savage creature he’d taken and broken and tamed to his own desire?
Premorbid tendencies.
That’s what he’d done.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ben made it to Grantham before dark. He had a satnav on his phone and used it to locate the headquarters of the film company: Tremour Productions. It was a nebulous office in a block of other commercial companies. It didn’t feel right. Too corporate. He took off his helmet and left it with his bike, walking into the reception in his leathers and boots. The girls on the desk looked up and…fell. They didn’t stand a chance. He was aware of their reaction to him, something he’d seen all his life from people, men and women alike, but always ignored. Now he used it.
Within five minutes, he had a date for that night, but, more importantly, the address of the studios where the films were shot—an old industrial estate on a farm ten miles east.
He returned to his bike and set the new address.
He had a feeling Nikolas wouldn’t be far behind, and he desperately needed to stay ahead of him.
The film studios were in farm buildings surrounded by temporary structures—mobile homes, camper vans and some tents. Ben reconnoitred for a while at a vantage point some distance away. One feature of the film industry appeared to be messengers on motorcycles. He intercepted one on the lane outside the farm, gave him a hundred pounds and relieved him of his ID, box and clipboard.
Totally anonymous now, he wandered around the set, watching, listening.
It actually didn’t take him long to find what he was seeking—who he was searching for. At the back of one of the big sheds, in a separate room, a meeting was taking place. It was so incongruous compared to what Ben had expected in his mind when seeing this man again that he couldn’t help hearing Nikolas’s voice—surreal, the strong Danish accent mangling the word slightly, as it always did. It was surreal—Doctor Fergus Atwell sitting at a table, animatedly discussing…a script. Ben’s mind was in such a place of darkness, where blood and death stalked him, he actually felt his mouth go dry and a prick of anxiety washed over him. Could he do this? He stepped back from the window, discarded the box and clipboard, paused by the door for one moment, then strode in—six foot four, black leather and very, very angry.
Fergus Atwell glanced up.
Another man pointed out unnecessarily, “We’re in a meeting here, bud.”
Ben just nodded, not dropping Atwell’s gaze. The doctor stood uncertainly.
“It was a terrible mistake. I’m sorry. We didn’t…a scene, just like this…We needed something big, something that would get everyone’s attention. National news.” He held up some papers.
Ben nodded. “I know.”
“What do you want?”
Ben came closer, right up close and personal. “I want to leave darkness behind me.”
§ § §
Nikolas shook himself from his reverie and realised they were talking amongst themselves, making their own plans. With the new information, Kate had also found the film company for which Fergus Atwell had been an executive producer on the movie Dare. It had registered offices in Grantham, Lincolnshire, no more than a couple of hours from them. Squeezy said he’d be glad if Ben did take the fucker—Nikolas assumed he meant the doctor—out. He deserved it.
“I don’t think he’s going there to stop them. I think he’s going there to join them.”
His comment was met with silence.
Then total derision.
He almost wanted to turn around to see if someone else—someone not their boss, not…him—had just entered the room. He held his ground, outlined some of his reasoning. They listened.
Even Radulf looked derisive now.
This was Ben!
He fucking knew that, gritted his teeth on their incomprehension, and tried again. They weren’t having it.
This was Ben.
And then it hit him. They’d not been living with new Ben for a week. They’d not suffered the terrible revelation that new Ben was original Ben—Ben Rider before the darkness of Nikolas Mikkelsen had descended upon him. And they hadn’t got yet that the Ben they knew would have worked this out for himself.
I will leave darkness behind me.
Indeed.
He was wasting his breath. What could he tell them to convince them? He certainly wasn’t going to share his innermost thoughts and feelings with anyone. He wasn’t going to tell them the monster he saw every day in the mirror when he shaved had finally been seen by Benjamin Rider.
They wanted to go to Grantham? He wanted to go to Grantham. Kill the man or help him, it came down to the same plan: find Doctor Fergus Atwell.
§ § §
They had a more private meeting. Ben thought they would. They stood at the back of one of the sets, surrounded by props, and costumes hanging on rails, and the unreality of the whole situation only made it easier. Ben didn’t have to try and justify what he was doing with his real world or try to reconcile memory with reality, he just went with the flow of the now. This was all that mattered.
Atwell was incredibly anxious, all the confidence he’d portrayed as a doctor in the therapy course gone, but it was a bullying kind of nervousness Ben had seen in men before, those thrust into situations they’d sought but then found themselves unwilling or unable to face. Men in combat. Bluster and bluff can only take you so far. True courage has to come into play in the end, and Ben suspected this man was now running on empty. He’d set up that final scene and had been forced to live with the consequences of what had happened—perhaps worse, he didn’t know what had happened.
Ben remembered Squeezy being there, knew what Squeezy and Nikolas would have been able to achieve between them—the complete sanitization of the scene. Ben had done the same many times. It was better that way, more visceral, helped you cope and overcome.
Atwell hadn’t had that. No bodies. No information.
His fear was palpable.
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I think you do.”
“You want…to join us? After everything that happened?”
Ben nodded.
“I don’t have any…targets planned.”
“You don’t have to. I have my own.”
“What? Who?”
Ben smiled. “Don’t you listen to the news?”
§ § §
They arrived at the outskirts of Grantham by evening, Squeezy driving, Nikolas alongside, Tim and Kate in the back.
“Fuck.”
They all turned or twisted around to look at Kate who was working on her laptop. Nikolas diverted Squeezy’s face back to the road but asked, “What?”
“I’ve found him. He’s not a doctor. He was an actor—and not a very good one. Worked for something called Cazzo Film—”
All three men in the car said at the same time, “It’s a gay porn label.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fergus Atwell called himself Freddie Nero.”
“Catchy.”
“And Francis J Nero. No record of any films or activity on the web for three years. Resurfaced running Pay for Gay two ye
ars ago.”
Nikolas didn’t want to ask, so was profoundly relieved when Tim did it for him. “Pay for Gay?”
“That’s the name he registered the British version of the American therapy courses under. Catchy, huh? You pay and…” She shrugged. “Take your own guess at that.”
Nikolas stared ahead for a while as they circled the town, thinking about three thousand pounds per client with twenty men on each course. Francis J Nero had the pay part of his equation correct anyway. “How is he connected to Julian Wood? I assume he is a doctor?”
“He was a patient of Julian Wood’s. Or Freddie Nero was. Three years ago. I was only searching for a connection with the name Fergus Atwell so I missed it.”
Tim murmured, “I’d love to hear those sessions.”
Nikolas nodded, not actually listening. “Track him down, Kate.”
He didn’t know whether he meant Fergus Atwell, aka Freddie Nero, or Ben. He guessed it didn’t matter. Find one, find the other.
§ § §
When Ben had outlined his plan to Fergus, the other man had paled. His first response had been, “It’s impossible. It would never work.”
Ben had expected this. “It doesn’t need to work. The attempt will send the same message. In this case, failure is as good as success. Perhaps better in some ways. I become a martyr then. Martyrs are powerful forces, aren’t they?”
Fergus licked his lips.
Ben didn’t give him the respite of lowering his gaze or looking away. He held the doctor in his penetrating green intensity, and finally Fergus had no recourse except to nod in acceptance. “What do you need?”
Ben then released him by blinking slowly, knowing his eyelashes would fan on his defined cheekbones for one moment. “I need an army. I need your army.”
§ § §
They arrived at the studios late in the evening. They still appeared to be a hive of activity. They found a place to park and climbed out. Tim glanced nervously at Squeezy. “What would you do—if it was you that came here to kill Atwell? You’re the closest thing to Ben we have. Think like him.”
Nikolas was only barely restraining himself. “He’s not going to kill the fucker! He’s going to lead his rainbow army into some dumb shit to make up for what he did. He’s going to fucking sacrifice himself! You don’t know Ben like I do!”
This Other Country Page 24