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‘What’s that?’
‘You make me a cup of real coffee.’
‘Done. You ready? Let’s go and grab a bus. I live up in north Oxford, going towards Summertown.’
‘No car?’
‘I bought one last year, an Aston Martin,’ Nick said with a casual wave. ‘Total white elephant. I never even use the damn thing.’
‘Business must be good if you can afford a car like that,’ Ben said. He was still hurting from the cost of his new BMW.
‘I get by,’ Nick replied with a grin. ‘You must tell me all about yours.’
Ben had so far avoided divulging much about what he was doing these days, except that he co-ran a business in Normandy. He shrugged. ‘It’s nothing that exciting.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true at all,’ Nick replied.
They strolled up the hill to Carfax, which was the bustling hub of the city centre and more choked than ever with buses and milling shoppers. At Carfax Tower they jumped on a double-decker going north up Banbury Road, and climbed to the empty top deck to sit at the front. To Ben, it felt like being a student again. Except back in his day, you were allowed to smoke upstairs. Do it now, and they would probably cart you away to serve ten years in a max-security prison.
They took their seats, Nick by the window, Ben by the centre aisle. Small tremors rocked the bus as more passengers boarded downstairs. Nick was about to resume their conversation when heavy footsteps came up the double-decker’s stairwell. The footsteps paused at the top of the stairs, then approached. Nick glanced back, Ben felt him go as tense as a spheksophobe near a wasp’s nest.
‘Oh Christ, it’s one of them,’ Nick muttered sotto voce.
‘One of who?’ Ben asked him.
‘Crusties. Beggars. Whatever you call them. They cause a lot of trouble on the buses. Don’t make eye contact with him. Maybe he’ll leave us alone.’
The guy was on his own, walking up to the front of the top deck with a shoulder-rolling swagger to his step and a cocky grin on his face. He was large, over six feet tall and thick-chested, somewhere north of thirty. Which meant he probably hadn’t taken a shower since his twenties. It was hard to tell which were dirtier, his jeans, hoodie or his straggly hair and beard. From under heavy brows he eyed Ben, then Nick. He raised a grubby finger as if it was a gun and pointed it at them.
‘You’re in my seat.’ The guy’s voice was harsh and crackly. Ben got a whiff of body odour and unwashed clothes coming off him like rotten cabbages, mixed with the sour smell of stale booze.
‘We’ll move,’ Nick said quickly, starting to get up. Ben touched his arm to still him.
The guy’s eyes flickered back to Nick and lingered there. ‘I know you.’
Nick seemed to hesitate and looked uncomfortable for a moment. He replied anxiously, ‘I … I don’t have any money for you today.’
‘You’re in my seat,’ the guy repeated. Heaping on the menace. Trying to.
Ben turned to gaze up at the guy from where he sat. He motioned at the empty deck and said, ‘Plenty of seats free for you back there. How about you make yourself comfortable a few rows behind us, where I can’t smell you?’
‘Ben, no,’ Nick warned in a low whisper.
‘You mean, don’t provoke him?’ Ben said. ‘This moron was born provoked. But that’s okay. He doesn’t worry me.’
The big guy fixed Ben with a glare. His pupils shrank down to the size of pinheads. Eyes rimmed red. ‘I don’t think you heard me, arsehole. This is my seat.’
‘I heard you fine,’ Ben said. ‘Except I don’t see any reservation signs. And I like the view from up front here. I think we’ll stay.’
The hand pointing the finger disappeared into one of the pockets of the guy’s hoodie. It came out again clutching a small paring knife.
‘Oh, God,’ Nick quavered in Ben’s ear. ‘I told you—’ Like it was Ben’s fault that one of the passengers was waving a blade at them.
‘You got a mouth on you,’ the guy said. ‘Maybe I need to teach you a lesson.’
Ben looked at the paring knife. ‘Thanks, but I already know how to peel potatoes.’
‘Give me your fuckin’ wallet, prick. Now.’
The bus was starting to move. The driver obviously hadn’t bothered to check the fish-eye mirror above him that gave a view of the upstairs. Or maybe these things happened so often on board that he’d given up caring. Welcome to the city of the dreaming spires. Ben had almost forgotten how colourful the streets of Oxford could get at times.
The big guy reached out with his free hand to steady himself against the sudden lurch of the transmission as the bus lumbered forwards. Then the driver braked sharply as a couple of kids darted across the road in his path. The big guy rocked on his feet. The knife stayed pointed at Ben.
Ben used the momentum of the braking bus to come forwards out of his seat, faster than the big guy could register. In the next instant, the knife was out of his hand and in Ben’s. Boggle-eyed with surprise, the guy swung a clumsy roundhouse punch Ben’s way. Ben could have run down to the nearest coffee shop to order a takeaway espresso in the time it took coming. He trapped the arm, twisted it up and under the guy’s ribs and behind his back, and used the leverage to dump the guy into a seat a row back on the opposite side of the aisle. Up close, the guy smelled even more strongly of stale sweat and booze. He tried to struggle and kick. Ben jammed him up against the window and pinched off the carotid artery at the base of his neck to shut down the blood flow to what little brain he had.
It normally took between five to eight seconds before the subject lost consciousness. This guy’s system had been running on bad fuel for so long that his bloodstream was already starved of oxygen, and he held out for much less time. Ben kept the stranglehold clamped down tight until he felt him go limp.
The bus rumbled on up the street.
Nick was staring.
Ben checked the big guy’s hoodie pockets. He found nearly fifty pounds in rumpled and grimy notes, along with a small bottle of ecstasy pills and a paper bag containing some dried-out magic mushrooms. ‘That’s your lesson for the day,’ he said to the unconscious hulk as he counted the money and shoved all the stuff in his own jacket pocket. ‘Cost of doing business with the wrong people.’
‘What did you do to him?’ Nick gasped.
‘He’s just grabbing forty winks,’ Ben said. They were approaching another stop, crowded with people waiting to board. ‘Smells in here. I vote we change buses.’
Chapter 6 (#ulink_18c81b49-bd4d-5a44-a810-842738ee3cac)
‘I can’t believe what you just did,’ Nick said for at least the dozenth time as they hopped on another bus going the same way. ‘Oh, my God!’ He was as high and starry-eyed as a young boy after his first ever pint of beer. ‘I mean, how did you do that?’
‘It’s just a simple gimmick. A granny could do it. I’ll show you sometime.’
‘It’s incredible.’
‘It’s nothing.’
This time they took a seat downstairs, in the back. Not a knife-wielding mugger in sight. ‘What did you call them?’ Ben asked.
‘Crusties. Didn’t used to be a problem, but now there seem to be more of them all the time. When they’re not selling dope or drinking in the streets, they’re intimidating people for cash.’
‘Well, there’s one who might think twice next time,’ Ben said.
‘I’ll bet. I suppose you’ve done a public service.’
‘He said he knew you. What’s that about?’
Nick paused a second before replying. ‘I’ve given him money now and then.’
‘Voluntarily? Or on demand?’
‘They can be pretty forceful. It’s hard to refuse. I’m not like you, Ben.’
‘It doesn’t take much just to say no. Extortion and bullying don’t deserve a reward.’
‘Giving in is just exacerbating the situation, I know. But I suppose part of me feels sorry for them.’
‘You’d be feeling sorrier all sliced and diced with a knife hanging out of your guts,’ Ben said.
Nick couldn’t argue with that. ‘What are you doing to do with the, erm, items you took from him?’
‘You want them?’
‘I don’t think so. Not my style.’
‘I’ll dump them in the first toilet I pass. Except the money. I’ll find a better use for that.’
‘Spoils of war?’
‘I wouldn’t call it that.’
Nick sat smiling and shaking his head in amazement for a few moments. Then he said, ‘Actually, I don’t know why I’m surprised by what you did back there. I shouldn’t be at all. Considering.’
Ben looked at him. ‘Considering what?’
‘I don’t just mean, you know, the wild things you got up to when you were a student. It seems you had a pretty amazing military career. Which would suggest to me that that idiot back there got off pretty damn lucky.’
‘And how would you know that?’
Nick shrugged. ‘Well, I have a confession to make. I looked you up.’
‘You did?’
‘A few months ago. Now that we have all this wonderful technology at our disposal, I was getting all mid-life-crisis-ish one evening and googled the names of a few of our old friends. I was horrified to learn of the deaths of Simeon and Michaela. I was doing a concert tour in Japan when they had their car accident, and I’d no idea. Came as a complete shock. I still can’t get over it.’ Nick shook his head mournfully. ‘That makes you and me the last of the old gang, doesn’t it?’
Ben said nothing. For two reasons. First, because he knew full well that the fatal crash had been no accident: he’d been there and witnessed it. And gone on to avenge the lives of his dead friends. Second, because of the private history that existed between him, Simeon and Michaela. Things that Nick didn’t know, some of which not even Ben himself had known for many years, and which would remain a secret forever. Ben stayed silent, waited for Nick to go on.
‘Anyway, there aren’t a lot of Benedict Hopes in the world. I found your business website, with your photo on it, which was how I knew it was you. I forget the name of it now. Le something.’
Ben had never liked his picture being on the website. Jeff’s idea. ‘Le Val,’ he said.
‘That’s it. Your bio doesn’t offer a great deal of information. Which I presume is intentional, because you can’t reveal much about your history. But I can guess.’
‘Can you?’
Nick shrugged. ‘Tactical training centre. What is that?’
‘What it sounds like,’ Ben said. ‘We train people.’
‘People? Anyone? People like me?’
‘I don’t think it would be your thing, Nick. Military and specialised police units, mainly. Some private outfits, too.’
‘What a strange world you live in. I had no idea such things existed.’
‘It’s just a job,’ Ben said.
‘Sounds like a little more than that.’
‘Keeps me out of trouble,’ Ben lied. More truthfully he added, ‘It’s been going a few years now. We might be expanding before long. Maybe southern France, or maybe further afield in Europe. Don’t know yet.’
‘I don’t suppose there’s much call for that kind of thing in Britain.’
‘Too many legal restrictions,’ Ben said. ‘Unless you’re the Ministry of Defence. That lot can do whatever the hell they please.’
Nick pursed his lips and nodded. ‘What did you do before that? It seemed from your bio as though there was a few years’ gap after you quit the army.’
‘Oh, this and that,’ Ben said.
‘So secretive?’
Ben shrugged. More than ever, he wished he wasn’t so easy to look up online. Damn that Jeff Dekker.
‘Let me guess,’ Nick said, smiling. ‘You were a professional assassin. Taking out corrupt dictators, or polishing off enemies for the mob.’
‘You’ve been watching too many movies.’
‘A secret agent, then.’
‘I helped people,’ Ben said, just to steer the conversation away. The bus was rumbling slowly northwards through Oxford. He was thinking about flouting the regulations and lighting up a Gauloise.
Nick raised his eyebrows. ‘Helped people?’
Ben shrugged again. Why couldn’t they just have discussed the weather, like everyone else? He said, ‘Sometimes people need help.’
‘The kind of help that they can’t otherwise get?’
‘That kind of thing,’ Ben said.
Nick was a shrewd guy, and he was looking at him with thoughtful eyes. Ben decided to say no more about himself. ‘So who’s coming to lunch?’ he asked.
‘Just a few pals. Music people, mostly. They’re an all right bunch. You’ll like them. One of them is my old professor, Adrian Graves, whom I haven’t seen for – crumbs, must be a couple of years. Where does the time go?’
Ben was wondering the same thing, as well as when he’d last heard anyone say ‘crumbs’.
Nick went on, ‘He’s an interesting character. Probably the most knowledgeable authority on baroque and classical that I know.’
‘I’m looking forward to meeting everyone,’ Ben said. It wasn’t strictly true. He would have preferred to spend the time alone with Nick, the two of them catching up in private as reunited friends should. But you couldn’t have everything.
