Sacred Sword (Ben Hope 7) (21 page)

‘Shit,’ he said. There wasn’t much point in putting the thing back in his bag. He tossed its remains into the Mazda, then climbed in behind the wheel, fired up the engine and slammed it into gear. The car lurched forward.

‘Hey!’ Jude shouted as Ben drove the car straight into the middle of the bog, where the Range Rover had now completely sunk. As the mud began to pull greedily at the Mazda’s wheels, Ben clambered out, jumped up on the roof and ran down the length of the car to make the leap back onto solid ground.

It didn’t take long for the bog to engulf the car, along with Simeon’s laptop.

‘Mum loved that car,’ Jude said reprovingly, as if Ben had wrecked and sunk it out of sheer badness.

‘This place will be crawling with police come morning,’ Ben told him, folding the shotgun stock and stuffing it into his bag. ‘I don’t think you want them finding her car in the middle of it, do you?’ He slung the bag over his shoulder and started walking away across the moor. The dog followed at his heels. Jude hung back for a few moments, then muttered, ‘Oh, bollocks,’ and reluctantly followed too.

There weren’t too many roads cutting across the wilderness of Bodmin Moor, and it was a long trudge through the cold and dark before Ben and Jude came across another and began walking along it. There wasn’t a car or a light in sight. Ben led the way, with Scruffy trotting along happily at his side. Jude lagged behind, silent and brooding.

Ben didn’t blame him.

It was after 1 a.m. by the time they came to the isolated cottage. The place was all in darkness, but somebody was obviously home, judging by the two vehicles parked outside, a year-old Nissan Outlaw off-roader sitting next to a badly rusted-out Vauxhall Astra. The red light of an alarm system flashed in the window of the Nissan. The Vauxhall had none. Ben tried the door, and found it open.

‘Don’t tell me you’re going to steal it,’ Jude whispered at his shoulder.

‘I’m not stealing it,’ Ben answered. ‘I’m buying it.’ He reached for his wallet, took out five twenties and tucked them under one of the Nissan’s windscreen wipers. A hundred pounds was probably more than the Astra was worth.

‘That makes it right?’ Jude said, frowning.

Ben climbed into the car, felt behind the plastic fascia under the steering wheel and started tugging at wires. In moments, the engine spluttered into life. It didn’t sound completely terminal. ‘That’ll do,’ he said.

Lights came on in the cottage. An upstairs window flew open and a man’s voice let out a yell.

‘Shit!’ Jude clambered quickly into the passenger seat. ‘Scruffy, come on!’ The dog finished urinating on the tyre of the Nissan Outlaw and bounced up into Jude’s lap. Ben hit the gas and they sped away down the road in a cloud of blue smoke.

When Jude was assured that the owner of the Nissan wasn’t in hot pursuit, he turned to Ben. ‘So now we’re off to France in this stolen rustbucket? I suppose I don’t have much choice except to come with you, do I?’

‘No, you don’t,’ Ben said, driving fast through the darkness. He was already figuring out his next move. ‘But we need to make a stop-off first.’

‘You owe me an explanation. A very long explanation.’

‘I know.’

‘What’s this all about? What was my dad involved in? I mean, was he some kind of crook or something? It sounds crazy, just saying it.’

‘Your father was a good man,’ Ben said. ‘The best. None of this was his fault. But there was something he was working on that got him into a lot of trouble. Not just him, but the people who were working on it with him.’

‘I don’t understand. How could someone like him get into this situation?’

‘Did he ever mention anything to you about a sword?’

Jude looked baffled. ‘No? What sword?’

‘This was a particular one. A sacred sword.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Right now,’ Ben said, ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

Jude shook his head. ‘I’d definitely have remembered if he’d mentioned something like that. He never said anything to me. Did Mum know about it too?’

‘She knew very little,’ Ben said. ‘Only what she told me, that he was writing a book about it. There were at least three people involved in the research project. Did you know about his trips to America and Israel?’

‘I knew he went there. That’s about it.’

‘So he never talked about his reasons for going? People he travelled with, or people he might have met up with there?’

‘We never talk … I mean we never talked about anything to do with his work, or religion, or any of that stuff,’ Jude said. ‘We always ended up arguing about it, and Mum would get upset …’ His voice trailed off. He wasn’t far from tears.

Ben gave him a moment, then asked, ‘How about somebody called Lalique? Fabrice Lalique? Did your dad ever mention that name?’

Jude sniffed. ‘No. Who is he?’

‘He
was
a Catholic priest in Millau in the south of France,’ Ben said. ‘He and your dad went to Israel together in connection with this sacred sword business.’

‘Well, if we’re going to France, why don’t we ask this Lalique guy what’s going on?’

‘Because he’s dead, Jude. He fell off a bridge. Or was pushed.’

Jude swallowed hard. ‘So these other people who were involved in this thing with Dad. Are they … are they all dead?’

‘They weren’t yesterday, when one of them phoned the house. An American called Wes.’

‘You talked to him? What did he say?’

‘He wasn’t very forthcoming,’ Ben said. ‘He sounded scared. I think they’re after him too.’

‘And now they’re after us,’ Jude said. ‘But I don’t know anything about this! I’ve never even heard of this sacred sword thing before.’

Ben looked at him. ‘First, they don’t know that. Second, you’re a witness now. Believe me, Jude. I know these kinds of people. If they find you, they’ll torture you until they’re satisfied that you know nothing, and then they’ll kill you.’

Jude swallowed again, harder. ‘But why? What the hell is so important about some crummy old sword?’

‘That’s what I’m going to try my best to find out, starting with a visit to Saint-Christophe, the village near Millau where this Lalique lived.’

‘While I sit tight at your place in Normandy, is that it?’

Ben shook his head. ‘I’ve changed my mind about that. These people must know who I am by now. It’d be easy for them to find you at Le Val. All they’d have to do is look up my business website.’

‘So where are you taking me?’

‘Paris,’ Ben said.

‘You have a place in Paris as well?’

‘Just an apartment where you can hole up for a while.’

‘What are you, a millionaire or something?’

‘Hardly that,’ Ben said. But Victor Jeunet, the place’s former owner, had been one many times over. Some years earlier, his wealth had made him the target of kidnappers who’d snatched his child for ransom. When the money had been duly paid, a small finger had arrived in the post with a demand for five times more. Soon afterwards, Ben had become involved in his capacity as a ‘crisis response consultant’. The child had come home with nine fingers, but safe. The kidnappers hadn’t fared so well. The overjoyed Jeunet had given Ben the apartment as a gift, and for a time it had become his safehouse in Paris while taking on kidnap and ransom jobs across Europe and beyond. It had never been registered in his name. Nobody would be able to find Jude there.

‘Paris sounds good,’ Jude said, nodding. ‘Great. Cool.’

Ben heard the phoney tone in Jude’s voice and knew he had a problem. It wasn’t the security of the safehouse. It was a question of whether he could trust this young hothead to stay put for five minutes while he tried to get to the bottom of this. Somehow, he didn’t think so.

‘How can they have
disappeared?
’ Penrose Lucas shouted, thumping on the desk. He was still bleary from being woken up in the middle of the night with this appalling news. He slumped in his desk chair, hair awry, his satin dressing gown hanging open to reveal the butt of the .357 Magnum protruding from the waistband of his boxer shorts. He’d now taken to sleeping with the gun at night, clutching it as he dreamed.

‘That’s all I can tell you.’ Cutter replied. ‘Napier called me to say they’d followed Hope to Cornwall. That’s where they planned to take him out. There’s been nothing since. None of them are answering their phones.’ His voice was showing the strain of worry. ‘If Vince Napier hasn’t got back to me, something’s wrong.’

‘You sent six men after one and you tell me something’s wrong?! You told me Napier was one of your top people!’ Penrose screeched.

‘He is,’ Cutter said, resting his balled fists on the desktop and looking Penrose in the eye. The dressing on Cutter’s brow had been removed, showing the nasty gash that Ben Hope had administered with the shotgun barrel. The split lip hadn’t fully healed yet, and it hurt when he talked. He was still fully dressed, too edgy to sleep.

‘Or
was
!’ Penrose yelled. The migraine punched through his head like a spear blade. He screwed his eyes shut and dug the balls of his thumbs into his temples, thinking of all the money and treats he’d expended on these men, only for them to be snuffed out just like that, thanks to this Ben Hope. It was becoming a nightmare.

‘And I suppose you have no idea where Hope is now?’ Penrose grated. He glanced across at O’Neill, who just shook his head. Like Cutter, O’Neill hadn’t been to bed that night.

‘We’ll find him,’ Cutter insisted.

‘That’s what you said about Holland, too,’ Penrose snapped. ‘And even if you do find him, what then?’

‘I’m calling in more men,’ Cutter said. He’d already made the call to his old associate Linus Gant. They’d worked together in Somalia. ‘But it’s going to cost more. They don’t come cheap.’

Penrose stared at him. ‘Cheap? You call what I’ve been paying you cheap?’

‘How much more?’ O’Neill asked.

‘A grand a day. That’s the new price for all of us.’

‘Fine, fine,’ Penrose said, waving his arms. ‘Whatever it takes.’

But O’Neill was stony-faced. ‘I feel we’re drifting off target here,’ he ventured after a moment’s silence. ‘In my opinion it’s time to re-evaluate the whole plan. This is not in line with our objective. Which I thought had been made clear to you.’

Penrose’s face paled white. He bared his teeth. There was a fleck of foam at the corner of his mouth as he tore himself away from the desk, paced across the room towards O’Neill and stabbed the air with a trembling finger. ‘Are you questioning my orders?’

As well as your rational judgement
, O’Neill wanted to reply. But he could see the fire burning in Penrose’s bulging eyes and was watching the hand that might at any second dart inside the folds of the satin gown and come out shooting. He thought of his wife back home in London, and said nothing.

Penrose glared at him in disgust, then whipped back around to face Cutter. ‘You tell your contacts I’ll pay twelve hundred a day, damn it. And I’m offering a million bounty to whoever brings me Ben Hope’s head on a plate.’

Three and a half hours later, with the fuel gauge deep into the red and Jude slumped fast asleep in the passenger seat, Ben pulled up at a frosty truck stop off the M4 motorway before London to grab some rest. He’d slept in a lot more uncomfortable places than the dank interior of a half-decrepit Vauxhall on a freezing December morning, but his mind was too agitated to let him drift off. Dawn was still some way away when he finally gave up on the idea of sleep, and drove to the nearby Murco filling station.

While Ben attended to the fuel pump, Jude let Scruffy out of the car and wandered around the forecourt, stretching his legs and flapping his arms to stay warm, and then went inside the filling station shop to stand in the blast of the fan heater.

Ben had just finishing fuelling up and was about to go to pay when he heard the commotion from inside the shop. He hurried over to find Jude in an argument with the fat guy manning the counter, under the eye of the CCTV cameras. A newspaper stand had been knocked over and there were crumpled tabloids scattered on the floor. The fat guy yelled as Jude kicked over another one. ‘Fucking lies!’ Jude was shouting. There were tears in his eyes.

‘What is it?’ Ben said, bewildered, and Jude thrust one of the crumpled newspapers into his hands. ‘Look at this shit.’ It was that morning’s paper, dated December 20th.

‘Is he with you?’ the shopkeeper raged at Ben. ‘You’re going to pay for this damage, mate.’

‘Step back, pork chop, or I’ll do some more,’ Jude growled. The guy flushed purple and made a grab for him. Ben gently nudged the shopkeeper back a step and gave him a look that quietened him for a moment. ‘Now what’s this about?’ he said to Jude. Then he looked at the headline Jude was showing him, and his heart skipped two beats.

JOYRIDING VICAR IN LOTUS DEATH PLUNGE.

The colour photo underneath the huge bold print showed the crumpled car being winched out of the river. The partially demolished bridge was clearly visible in the background.

‘What the—?’ The pages crumpled in Ben’s fists as he scanned the text below. Jude had snatched another copy off the floor and began to read out loud, barely able to speak for fury. ‘Reverend Arundel was well known locally for being a playboy and a reckless driver. According to a witness at the scene of the crash, “Thank God there was nobody else on the road, the speed he was going at. They wouldn’t have stood a chance.”’ Jude’s face contorted in anger. He screwed the newspaper into a tight ball, hurled it down and started stamping on it.

‘That’s it. I’m calling the police,’ the fat guy said, hovering warily a few yards away.

‘Listen, Ben told him. ‘The article’s about somebody close. He’s just upset.’ Shelling out a fifty and a twenty from his wallet, he handed them over. ‘The twenty’s for the fuel. The rest is for you. Take it easy, my friend.’

The fat guy’s mouth twisted. He wasn’t convinced.

‘Come on,’ Ben said. ‘It’s Christmas.’

The fat guy was breathing heavily and clutching his money as Ben picked up the fallen stands and tidied up the mess. Jude had stormed outside. Ben found him pacing furiously near the car. ‘Let’s go.’