The Sacred Sword

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Simeon’s eyes were shut. His face was white in the lights from the bridge, his wet hair plastered across his brow. Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth and down his cheeks into the mud. More lights were appearing in the distance, a flashing and swirling of blue on the horizon, accompanied by a building chorus of sirens.

Simeon’s pulse was fading. It was barely there at all. Ben knelt helplessly over him, feeling the terrible concavity of his chest where the ribs were crushed inwards and knowing that the emergency chest compressions of cardiopulmonary resuscitation would probably kill him.

Simeon’s eyes opened. For a brief moment, they stared right into Ben’s. His lips pursed and opened, as if he were trying to say something. His hand twitched, then moved upwards to weakly grasp Ben’s arm.

‘Jude …’ Simeon’s voice was a dying whisper. His eyes seemed to be imploring Ben.

Then they closed again.

‘Simeon!’ Ben felt for the pulse once more. This time he could feel nothing at all. He wanted to shake him, slap him, beat him back to life. ‘Simeon!’

The first ambulance had screeched to a halt at the bridge, bathing the scene in a blue swirl, its siren drowning out the shocked murmur of conversation among the growing crowd of bystanders. Paramedics burst out of the ambulance doors and came sprinting down the frosty slope to the river bank with their emergency equipment. Ben moved aside as they clapped the defibrillator to Simeon’s crushed chest and applied the first electric shock in a desperate attempt to revive him. Simeon’s spine arched upwards in an involuntary spasm, as if he was trying to get up. But Ben knew the time for that had come and gone.

‘No pulse,’ one of the paramedics said.

They tried another shock. Simeon’s body arched on the ground, then fell limp again. His face looked like a piece of mud-streaked porcelain, eyes staring upwards.

‘No pulse.’

‘He’s gone, I’m afraid,’ said another. ‘Nothing more we can do.’

A gentle snowfall had begun to spiral down from the dark sky, turning blue in the flashing lights. Ben stared as snowflakes settled on the body of his friend. He turned and gazed at the sunken car, thinking of Michaela inside. He said a silent goodbye to them both.

Another ambulance had arrived at the mouth of the bridge, together with a police emergency response vehicle. The officers were herding the bystanders away to clear the area. The place was alive with voices and crackling radios. A woman was led away, crying, someone’s arm around her shoulders.

Events followed as if in a dream. Emergency crews surrounded the crashed Lotus, struggling to extricate Michaela’s body. By now it was clear to everyone involved that the ambulances would be taking away two corpses that night. There was no longer any need for hurry.

Several minutes passed before Ben even became conscious of the crippling cold and the pain in his torn hands. The paramedics checked him for signs of hypothermia: slurred speech, disorientation, unsteadiness. His wet hair dripping onto the thermal blanket they’d wrapped around him, he sat in the open back of the third ambulance and watched the scene unfold as if from a million miles away. He numbly answered the questions the cops came to ask him before he could be carted off to hospital. Name, address, occupation, relationship to the deceased. He told them what he’d seen. Described the car that had passed him from the direction of the bridge, told them how one of its headlights had appeared to be damaged.

The cops asked him if he’d seen any collision take place between the two vehicles. Ben told them he hadn’t.

But as he spoke, he was visualising the scenario in his mind: the two cars meeting on the narrow road before the bridge. The saloon swerving to avoid the speeding Lotus and catching its headlight on the stone wall at the side of the road. The Lotus swerving the other way and spinning out of control. The driver of the saloon panicking and hitting the gas to escape from the scene. Or maybe not even noticing what happened next.

Or maybe it had all happened differently. Ben thought about the positioning of the skidmarks on the road before the bridge. He thought about how a car could have lain there in wait as the distinctive shape of the Lotus came down the hill. How the driver could have waited until just the right moment before lurching out deliberately into Simeon’s path and forcing him to swerve and crash.

Ben thought back to the restaurant car park. The BMW. The broken headlight. The behaviour of the car’s owner. Like he hadn’t wanted to know. Like he hadn’t wanted attention drawn to him.

But Ben mentioned none of that to the cops.

Through the mist of his thoughts, he heard one of the officers asking about next of kin. Ben remembered what Michaela had said about her parents moving to Antigua. He knew nothing about Simeon’s. ‘They have a son,’ he said. He couldn’t bring himself to use the past tense. ‘Jude Arundel. He’s in Cornwall with friends.’

‘We’ll need to contact him,’ the officer said.

‘I don’t think he’ll be that easy to contact,’ Ben said. He told them he’d be responsible for informing Jude.

After the police had left him alone, Ben watched the paramedic teams wrapping up their kit. He’d no intention of seeing the inside of a hospital that night. He’d seen enough of them already. As the ambulances carrying Simeon and Michaela left in tandem, he slipped away unnoticed and walked to where the police had moved his Land Rover. The snow was falling more steadily now, dusting everything powdery white.

He climbed into the vehicle and headed back alone towards the vicarage. He had nowhere else to go.

Chapter Eleven

The warm, welcoming glow from the vicarage’s windows shone out into the night as Ben climbed out of the Land Rover and trudged towards the house in his wet clothes. He paused to peer in through the window at the empty living room. The lit-up Christmas tree that he could imagine Simeon and Michaela decorating together, which someone else would be taking down. The comfortable furniture they’d never see or use again.

He felt sick as the reality sank in a little deeper.

The dog barked from inside. Ben dug in his pocket and took out the annexe key. Attached to it on a ring was the tarnished brass Yale key for the front door of the vicarage. Feeling strangely like an intruder, he opened the door. The dog was sitting in the hallway, looking at him.

‘Hey, Scruffy,’ Ben said softly. The dog cocked his head, appearing perplexed that his master and mistress weren’t with him. Ben went over to him and scratched his ears. ‘They’re not coming back, pal. I’m sorry.’

The dog lolled his pink tongue and began to pant.

‘All right, you come with me,’ Ben said. Squelching in his wet shoes he made his way down the passage to the connecting door that led through into the annexe. Everything seemed so still and empty.

Shuddering with cold, he stripped off his wet things in the annexe’s bathroom and stepped under a hot shower. He stayed there a long time, hoping that the scalding jet of water would blast away the nightmare and that when he came out everything would be back to normal.

It didn’t happen. He mechanically towelled himself dry and changed into a pair of grey jogging pants and a worn old rugby top from his bag. Finding his whisky flask nestling among the spare clothing, he unscrewed the cap and gulped down a stinging mouthful, then another. That didn’t make any difference either. He padded barefoot into the annexe’s little living room, flipped off all the lights and lay on the sofa with his eyes shut, trying to let his mind go blank. But there was no escape from the images that kept flashing up inside his mind as he lay there. He couldn’t stop seeing Simeon’s face in those last moments. The pallor of his skin, the desperation in his eyes. And Michaela, sitting there lifeless inside the sunken car. The horrific crush wounds on her face and brow.

One minute he’d been having dinner with his friends. The next, they were gone, just like that, like blowing out a candle. Tomorrow would see the start of the whole terrible aftermath. Tonight, there was nothing but that sickening emptiness, as if the world had been scraped hollow with a blunt knife.

Ben groped for the flask in the darkness and swallowed down the rest of the whisky. One gulp after another. The visions began to recede. He drifted into a world of vague and restless dreams that seemed to go on forever and were filled with the cries of people in pain. He couldn’t help them, no matter how desperately he tried … there was nothing he could do …

Ben’s body tensed and he jerked upright on the sofa, momentarily confused by the unfamiliar sound that had torn through the membrane of his sleep. The luminous green hands of his diver’s watch told him it was quarter to one in the morning. He sat up, listening hard.

A few feet away across the darkened room, the dog let out another long, low snarl, and Ben realised what had woken him. He was about to lie down again when he heard something else.

A dull thud, coming from the other side of the wall. The sounds of movement inside the vicarage.

Ben jumped up from the sofa, suddenly wide awake and alert. His first thought was that Jude Arundel must have returned from Cornwall. He went to turn on the light, already preparing mentally for the task of breaking the news to the kid that both his parents were dead.

But Ben’s hand stopped short of the light switch when he heard more sounds from inside the vicarage: a muted splintering crash that was unmistakably the sound of a door being forced, followed a moment later by the grinding thump of something hitting a wall.

Scruffy let out another rumbling growl from deep in his throat.

Ben reached out to him in the darkness and laid a hand on his head. ‘Quiet, boy. Let me listen.’ Creeping across the room towards the connecting door, Ben pressed his ear to it and thought he heard a man’s voice.

‘Wait,’ he whispered back to the dog. There was no time to put on his shoes. Without a sound, he opened the door and stepped through into the passage beyond.

Another thump, louder this time now that he was closer. It was coming from somewhere on the ground floor.

Silently, stealthily, Ben moved towards the sound.

Chapter Twelve

Few men were schooled in the secret of silence. To be able to move unheard, unnoticed yet quickly through any terrain, blending in with the surroundings at all times, was an art that had to be learned and honed through dedicated training and practice – and Ben Hope had been a master of it for many years. Not many of his peers in the SAS had been able to match him.

The art began with knowing where to place your feet. The vicarage’s old oak floorboards were broad and thick, but age and use had warped the wood so that it was almost impossible to walk over them without a creak. Ben kept to the edges, feeling with his bare toes as he went for any seam or joint that might shift with his weight. His breathing was slow and shallow, his heartbeat controlled and his mind as still as that of a predatory animal. When stalking a determined and trained enemy, even the scent of your fear could give you away.

Creeping through the darkness, he glanced around him for anything he could use as defence against the intruders. Improvised weapons weren’t too abundant in the home of a country vicar. His gaze landed on a foot-high wooden statuette on a side table. He picked it up without a sound. It felt solid in his hand, like a short club.

Another dull thud from up ahead. A grinding of steel against steel, followed by a clanging crash.

As Ben had been expecting to happen any second, the dog let loose with a furious tirade of barking from inside the annexe, muffled behind the thick wall. Ben decided it wasn’t such a bad thing: the intruders would be aware that the nearest neighbour was far enough away not to be alerted by the noise. And the knowledge that the dog was contained in another part of the house would make them feel safe. Exactly how Ben wanted them to feel.

Up ahead, the shadowy corridor terminated in a T-junction. To the left, all was darkness. Around the corner to the right, a glow of light shone from an unseen doorway.

Ben stepped closer to the corner. From the source of the dim light he heard a man’s voice mutter something he didn’t catch. He stopped, blotting out the muted sound of Scruffy’s barking and listening hard. Was it the same voice he’d heard a moment ago? Impossible to tell, or to guess how many intruders there might be.

He advanced as far as the corner, back to the wall, ready with his club. He was within sight of the doorway now. It was a couple of inches ajar, and in the light that streamed out of it, he could see the outline of the splintered frame where the door had been forced open. Careful not to let his shadow play on the opposite wall, he stepped up to the door and peered around its edge into the room behind it.

Simeon’s study. The walls were lined with bookshelves. A simple computer desk stood in the middle of the room, with a flat-screen monitor and wireless keyboard. In the far corner of the study was a steel safe, like a short gun cabinet, bolted to the wall. The metallic crash Ben had just heard was the sound of it being jemmied open.

The man who’d broken into the safe was crouching beside it with his back to the doorway. He was wearing a black combat jacket. A black cotton ski mask was pulled down over his face. There was a pistol in a military-style holster at his right hip. As Ben watched, the man grabbed a brown A4-sized envelope from the safe. He stuffed it into the duffel bag at his feet, then reached back inside the safe and came out with a small black laptop, which he bagged as well.

Just one man. Yet Ben had heard him talking. To himself, maybe, or on the phone. Unless …

Ben suddenly felt something hard prod him between the shoulder blades. He half-turned and found himself staring into a fat black O nearly three quarters of an inch wide. The muzzle of a pump-action twelve-bore.

‘Lose the ornament,’ said the man with the shotgun. His face was hidden in the shadows. The accent was East London. The tone was calm.

Ben’s fingers loosened and the wooden statuette dropped to the floor.

‘Nice one,’ the man with the shotgun said. He advanced into the light. The eyes watching Ben through the slits in the ski mask were the colour of steel, hard and cold. He had the buttstock of the short-barrelled shotgun pulled in tight to his shoulder. That meant several things to Ben. The guy was bracing himself against the recoil, because he had no problem with pulling the trigger if he had to. It meant he was familiar with the weapon and had used it before. It also meant the shotgun’s five-capacity tube magazine was probably filled with hard-kicking solid slug loads that would take Ben’s head clean off his shoulders and paint the wall behind him with his brains.

All of which added up to the fact that these guys were no ordinary house-breakers, no run-of-the-mill opportunist crooks. They were professionals. And if the man with the shotgun was good enough to creep up on Ben like this, it meant he was very good indeed. Someone trained, like him, in the art of silence.

Or maybe Ben was just getting slow.

Ben retreated. The man’s eyes didn’t leave his. The muzzle of the shotgun was rock steady.

The other side of the wall, the dog was going wild.

‘Why are you here?’ Ben asked.

‘That’s it. There’s fuck all else in the safe,’ the man with the duffel bag said to his companion. He stood up and slung the strap over his shoulder, then left the study, brushing past Ben. The man with the shotgun waved the weapon ever so slightly towards the open doorway. ‘You. Get your arse in there,’ he told Ben.

Ben took a step backwards into the room. He saw the gunman’s gloved finger flick half an inch back from the trigger and depress the small round button set into the rear of the trigger guard. Safety off.

Ben got the picture. The guy wasn’t intending to leave any witnesses behind. Not the kind who still had their heads attached.

Nothing to lose, then.

Ben retreated another slow step, raising his arms either side of his head. The guy advanced. Ben watched the muzzle of the gun. A rapid step forward, and Ben’s hands flashed towards the weapon. He gripped the cold steel of the barrel and jerked it simultaneously sideways and towards him. As the gun was torn half out of his grip, the man instinctively squeezed the trigger and the gun went off like a bomb just a few inches from Ben’s right ear.

Now the pump-action was a lot less dangerous until it could be re-cocked. Ben had no intention of letting that happen. Still gripping the barrel he pushed it violently back towards the gunman, driving the butt end into the guy’s face. It caught him on the mouth. With a yell of pain and a spurt of blood he fell back and let go of the gun. Ben clubbed him over the head with the forend.

The whole disarming move had taken less than two seconds. Maybe I’m not getting that slow, Ben thought.

The man with the duffel bag froze for an instant, then took off down the passage. Ben spun the shotgun around in his hands and worked the pump as he leaped over the slumped body and out of the study doorway.

The escaping intruder was just rounding the corner. Ben could have shot him, but the blast would have blown the guy in half and Ben wanted him alive. Slinging the gun around his shoulder, he sprinted after him. The man crashed past the side table off which Ben had lifted the statuette earlier, and sent it spinning into Ben’s path. Ben vaulted over it, saw that he was catching up, and launched himself at the man with a flying rugby-tackle. Pinned by the ankles, the man sprawled heavily to the floor and let out a grunt of pain. Ben clambered after him. His left hand closed on the strap of the duffel bag as his right fist shot out to land a crippling hammer-punch to the man’s testicles.

The punch didn’t make contact. Ben didn’t see the heavy boot coming for his face until it was too late. The kick slammed into his cheekbone with a huge amount of force behind it, and sent him crashing back against the wall, still tightly clutching the duffel bag by its strap.

The intruder went for his pistol.

Ben went for the shotgun.

The guy thought better of it. He abandoned the bag and ran for the front door. Wrenched it open and burst out into the night.

Scruffy was barking dementedly from the other side of the wall. Ben struggled to his feet, dazed from the kick. He ran out of the open front door and saw the intruder heading around the side of the vicarage, making for the path that led through the back garden and down to the meadow.

Seconds into the chase, Ben knew he was at a major disadvantage. The intruder wasn’t necessarily the faster runner, but he didn’t have to sprint barefoot over the hard, cold ground carrying a cumbersome duffel bag and a shotgun. Ben had only just made it to the edge of the meadow when he realised that his quarry had disappeared into the darkness. Moments later, he heard the roar of an engine from beyond the trees, and a car took off at high speed down the road.

Chapter Thirteen

Ben hobbled back to the vicarage on his cut and bruised bare soles. No lights had come on in the neighbouring houses dimly visible through the trees. The blast of a shotgun, muffled within thick stone walls, wasn’t much more than a dull ‘pop’ from a few hundred yards away, not enough to raise the alarm even in a sleepy little village like Little Denton.

It was rather more than that from a few inches away, though. Ben knew he’d have to wait a day or two for the high-pitched whine in his right ear to subside and his full hearing to return. Back inside the vicarage, he strode back to the study. Now to revive his masked friend and get some truth out of him.