‘Not without a spare part or two,’ Ben said.
‘Worry about it later. Come inside and I’ll make you the best scrambled eggs you’ve ever had in your life.’
‘Coffee’s fine for me,’ he protested.
‘I insist. You’re officially on holiday, after all. And it’s all beautiful fresh local produce. The eggs are just a day old, courtesy of our neighbours, the Dorans. You can’t possibly refuse.’
Ben relented. Scrubbed clean and tucking into a plate of what were indeed the most delicious scrambled eggs he’d ever tasted – just a smidgen of organic butter, just a pinch of sea salt, a little fresh-ground pepper – he said, ‘Simeon was off early this morning.’
‘He had to drive into Oxford for a radio interview,’ Michaela said, sipping her tea. The eggs were all for Ben. Trying to diet, she’d said.
‘You weren’t kidding about him being a celebrity.’
‘Man on a mission. Fighting a one-man war against the decline of the Church.’
‘Is it declining that much?’ Ben asked.
‘You’re a little out of the loop, aren’t you?’
‘Just a little,’ Ben admitted. But he’d seen the signs, in France as well as in England. The chains and padlocks on the church gates. The silent bell towers. Buildings falling into decay, with grids over the windows to stop the vandals smashing the stained glass, whose beauty few people seemed to appreciate any more.
‘Simeon’s determined to bring youth and vigour back to the Christian faith. That’s how he puts it. Heaven knows, it needs someone with his dynamism to give it a shot in the arm, or else it’s just going to crumble away to nothing before too long, the whole institution and its churches to boot. When Simeon’s father passed away three years ago he left him almost four hundred thousand pounds. Simeon donated every penny of it towards church restoration projects. But as he says, churches are worth nothing without the people inside them. So he fights, and he fights, and he never stops. Twelve hours is a relaxing day for him. When he isn’t in church, it’s one radio interview after another, as well as the odd television appearance. His blog. His podcasts. Anything he can do to raise the profile of Christianity for a modern audience, he throws himself into it with a passion you wouldn’t believe.’
‘He’s a hard-working guy,’ Ben said through a mouthful of egg.
‘You have no idea, Ben. Gone are the days when a vicar only had his own cosy little corner to tend to. The C of E is so strapped for cash, old vicars being pensioned off all over the place and a shortage of new recruits, that Simeon now has three churches to look after, and he’s constantly zapping about from one to the other. Some of his colleagues have even more, but none of them has managed to boost attendance the way he has. He’s amazing. How he still finds the time to research his book is beyond me.’
‘What’s he writing about?’ Ben asked as he helped to clear up the breakfast dishes.
‘I only know the title,’ Michaela said, piling plates in the cupboard. ‘And then only because Simeon accidentally left the draft title page lying on his desk one day. He’s calling it The Sacred Sword.’
‘Interesting,’ Ben said.
‘And more than a little mysterious,’ Michaela added wryly. ‘He never stopped prattling on about his first two books while he was working on them. I could almost have written them myself, he told me so much. But this one … let’s just say he’s being extremely secretive. He’s taken to locking his study door when he’s not around. Even bought a safe to keep his notes in. And that time he accidentally left the printout lying around, he burned it afterwards. I don’t think he’s printed off a page of it since.’
‘Maybe he thinks he’s onto a hot bestseller,’ Ben said.
‘It’s not just the book. He spends hours on the phone to people all over the world, then refuses to tell me what it was about. Even when he went to America to meet some “expert” he wouldn’t tell me why, or who the man was, not even his name. I think it was him who phoned last night, in the wee small hours. I didn’t bother asking Simeon about it this morning, although he seemed very preoccupied and I can only assume it was to do with the phone call. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he’ll tell me one day, when he’s ready to.’
Michaela went quiet and looked pensive for a while as they finished clearing up. She glanced out of the window and forced a smile. ‘Shame to be stuck indoors when it’s a lovely day outside. Would you like to go for a walk?’
Ben said he would love to. They stepped out into the crisp sunny winter’s morning and walked down the long, sloping garden with Scruffy running rings around them, a stick in his mouth. Ben was wearing a pair of Simeon’s wellingtons that crunched on the frosty grass.
‘Isn’t the air wonderful?’ Michaela said. ‘Maybe we’re in for a nice, cold, dry spell, after all the rain we’ve had. I’m praying for a white Christmas.’
‘That would be nice,’ Ben said, a little insincerely. Snow mainly just meant a big clearing headache for him.
A gate at the bottom of the garden led to a little patch of woods. Crows cawed in the cold air. The sunlight sparkled on the fast-flowing river through the gaps in the trees.
Ben pointed at the dog, who was running on ahead of them with a world of rabbits to flush out and chase. ‘I like him.’
Michaela seemed pleased. ‘He’s a real character, isn’t he? Turned up here out of the blue, about a year ago. No telling where he came from or who his former owners were. We took him in. I think he’s about three or four. I love him to bits.’
Michaela threw the stick for the dog a few times, and Ben watched her, noticing the way that her look of contentment had faded to a frown as they walked on.
‘You know, I’m really worried about Simeon,’ she said suddenly. ‘He’s got so much on his mind, and sometimes I’m afraid he’s going to burn himself out or make himself ill. He works far too hard, and what with all the quarrelling between him and Jude, not to mention this awful business with Fabrice Lalique …’
‘The man who committed suicide?’
She nodded. ‘He was a Catholic priest. Simeon met him a couple of years ago in France while visiting a church restoration project, and they became friends.’ She shook her head. ‘I still can’t believe it. What a shock. And the worst of it are the revelations that came afterwards.’
‘Revelations?’
‘A day or two after his death, his home was raided by police, acting on a tip-off. They seized his computer and found … how can I put it?’ Michaela paused uncomfortably. ‘Certain material. Very unpleasant and explicit material. Pictures of children. You can guess what kind of pictures I’m talking about.’
‘I can guess,’ Ben said, with a stab of revulsion.
‘It was the reason he killed himself,’ Michaela said. ‘Out of guilt, or shame, or perhaps just because he knew what would happen if he was caught. Before he did it, he sent an email to everyone he knew, confessing his sins and asking for forgiveness. Then he threw himself off the highest bridge in France.’
‘That’ll certainly do it,’ Ben said, without the least trace of pity in his voice.
Michaela turned towards him, shading her eyes from the low sun with her hand. ‘Do you think it’s possible to forgive someone for something so horrible, even if they’ve repented? I struggle with that, I have to admit.’
Ben paused. He thought of paedophiles he’d blown away at point-blank range with a shotgun. Come to think of it, he’d never stopped to ask them if they’d repented. With a sawn-off pointed at them, they probably would have dropped to their knees and started chanting the Lord’s Prayer if they’d thought it could help. It probably wouldn’t have.
‘Did you know this Lalique well?’ he asked her.
‘Never met him. Simeon was in touch with him a lot over the last year or so, something to do with the book, I think. I don’t really know.’ She tried to smile. ‘Let’s not talk about this any more. It’s so good to see you again, Ben. Isn’t it strange, the two of us walking along togethe
r, after all these years?’
‘It’s certainly been a long time,’ he said.
‘We were so young then, weren’t we?’
‘Nineteen.’
She chuckled. ‘You were wild then.’
Memories of college days flashed through Ben’s mind. Most of them were unwanted: hazy and unpleasant recollections of drinking and recklessness. Picking, then winning fights with town toughs in pubs. Throwing a TV from a window. Skipping classes, generally acting crazy. A lot of things he’d done that he’d rather forget.
‘That was a difficult time,’ he said.
‘You never talked about your troubles.’
He still didn’t talk about them now. ‘I’m sorry if I hurt you,’ he said.
‘I really loved you,’ she answered after a beat, glancing at him. ‘But I knew you didn’t feel the same way about me. How long did we last together? Seven weeks? Six? If that?’
‘You ended up with a much better man.’
Michaela made no reply. They walked on a while through the trees, dead leaves crunching underfoot, the dog racing on ahead of them. ‘I remember the first time I took you to meet my parents,’ Michaela said after a few moments’ silence.
‘The one and only time,’ Ben said, casting his mind far back to a hot summer’s afternoon in Surrey. ‘The posh garden party.’
Michaela chuckled. ‘They still talk about it. You completely scandalised everyone. You must have drunk a gallon of whisky that day. And that was even before you’d started arguing politics with my father.’
Ben rolled his eyes, wishing she’d stop it. ‘Please.’
‘As for my cousin Eddie, I think you traumatised him for life.’
Ben hadn’t forgotten that one either. The instant dislike he’d taken to Eddie had been shared by Michaela’s Pekingese, Hamlet. Nobody but Ben had seen Eddie slip Hamlet a sly kick to the head when he thought no-one was watching. Moments later, Eddie had been taking an unplanned nose-dive, fully clothed, into the deep end of the swimming pool in front of eighty guests. The real fun began when it transpired that Eddie couldn’t swim. Four more guests had suffered a dunking before Eddie could be rescued. At that point, the party had been more or less ruined.
‘You dumped me soon afterwards,’ Ben said.
‘I was awful to you.’
‘No, you were right. I was bad medicine. I’m sure your family approved of Simeon slightly more than they did me.’
‘Mum and Dad positively idolise him. But we don’t see so much of them now that they’ve moved to Antigua. Couldn’t stand the British weather any more.’ She started laughing.
‘What’s funny?’
‘I just remembered another time. That night in Oxford when you took on that gang of bikers up Cowley Road? Lord, there must have been eight of them. I can still recall how they scattered in all directions.’
Ben remembered. It had been more like ten. He and Michaela had been walking past when one of them had made a lewd comment about her. ‘Are you done tormenting me?’ he said.
They walked up a grassy slope to higher ground, where the winding country road to Little Denton was visible through the line of naked beech trees that skirted the meadow.
‘So after Oxford you just upped and joined the army?’ Michaela asked.
‘Pretty much,’ Ben said. ‘Thirteen years’ service.’
‘Has there been anyone … since Leigh?’
‘Yes,’ he ventured. ‘There is someone. Or was. I don’t have much talent in that department. Perhaps it’s fate or something.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. Touched his arm. ‘You’re a better man than you realise, Ben Hope. You always were.’
‘Sometimes I’ve thought that I went off in completely the wrong direction,’ Ben confessed. ‘When I look at Simeon, and the life the two of you have here …’
‘You’d have been great in the church. Once you’d settled down a bit.’
‘There’s the rub,’ he laughed.
‘It’s never too late.’
‘I already tried once, a while back. To go back and finish my studies.’
‘Really?’
‘It didn’t work out,’ he said. He didn’t want to say any more, and decided to change the subject radically. ‘It’s a shame I won’t get to meet your son Jude.’
Michaela shrugged. ‘Some other time, I’m sure you will.’
‘Was it a very serious quarrel? Between him and Simeon?’
‘I suppose it’s just typical family stuff,’ she said. ‘Jude would rebel against his own shadow. Always full of his own ideas about what he wants to do with his life. It’ll all come right in the end, I’m sure. Oh, I think I hear the car.’
Ben had heard it too, and spotted the sleek crimson shape of the Lotus darting along beyond the trees in the distance, returning home.
‘Let’s walk up to the house and meet him,’ Michaela said.
Back at the vicarage, Ben thought that Simeon looked even more grim and strained than the night before, although he was obviously struggling hard not to show it as he sipped his coffee and gave Ben the rundown on that morning’s radio interview on the topic ‘Is there still room for Jesus in the Facebook Age?’
‘My secret admirer popped up again during the phone-in at the end,’ Simeon said to Michaela. ‘As charming as ever. Called me a filthy cockroach and said I’d rot with all the others.’
‘I can’t understand why they allow that kind of thing on air,’ Michaela sniffed. ‘“Filthy cockroach”. That’s disgusting.’
‘Do you get a lot of that?’ Ben asked.
‘Oh, I have many enemies,’ Simeon told him. He was smiling, but Ben thought he could see something behind the smile, an edge of seriousness.
Michaela was obviously keen to change the subject. ‘Ben’s car still isn’t working properly,’ she said, topping up their coffees. ‘Darling, do you think Bertie would have a look at it?’ She turned to Ben and explained, ‘He’s the local mechanic, in Greater Denton, just a few minutes’ drive away.’
‘Marvellous idea,’ Simeon said. ‘Bertie will have the old girl right as rain in no time. Sorted out the carbs on the Lotus. And he’s cheap as chips.’
‘Why don’t you call him now?’ Michaela said. ‘If he’s fixed it by this evening, we can pick it up on the way.’
‘On the way where?’ Simeon asked.
‘I thought we could have dinner at the Old Windmill tonight, as we have a special guest.’
‘There’s no need …’ Ben began.
‘Sounds like a fine plan to me,’ Simeon said. ‘I’ll phone Bertie now.’
Chapter Seven
Simeon led the way in the Lotus and Ben followed in the ailing, badly misfiring Land Rover. Simeon had to keep slowing down to let him catch up as they wound their way along the twisty country lanes towards Greater Denton.
Bertie the mechanic, whose garage was a converted stable block on the edge of the village, was one of those work-hardened little guys who looked as if they’d been twisted and hammered together out of wire and leather. Ben got the impression that the grizzled old mechanic would have done anything for Simeon. No sooner had Ben described Le Crock’s symptoms, than Bertie grabbed a toolbox and plunged his head and shoulders under the scarred green bonnet lid, apparently set on not re-emerging until he’d cured the problem, if it took him all day and night.
Simeon seemed edgy as he drove fast back towards Little Denton. Rocketing up the long, straight hill a mile before the village, the car almost took off over the crest and went plummeting down the straight and hard into the set of S-bends at the bottom before roaring over the little stone humpbacked bridge, barely wide enough for one and a half cars, that arched across the swollen, fast-moving river.
Ben could tell his old friend was building up to saying something but having difficulty framing his words. Simeon wet his lips and spoke hesitantly over the engine noise. ‘Ben, there’s something I wanted to … Oh, never mind.’
‘What?’
/> Simeon let out a long breath. ‘The fact is, it wasn’t completely coincidental. Our turning up at the concert, I mean. In fact, opera’s not my favourite thing at all.’ He paused. ‘The point is, Ben, I knew you’d be there. I saw your name in the paper and I deliberately came to see you, for a reason that I haven’t discussed with Michaela. She doesn’t know anything about this, and I’d like to keep it that way.’
‘I understand,’ Ben said, and waited for more.
‘I’ve often wondered what you were up to all this time,’ Simeon said. ‘It seemed like you’d vanished without a trace. Now and again Michaela and I tried to look you up, to no avail. Then a few months ago, I found you on the internet and saw what it is you do now. You help people.’
‘What I do is very specific,’ Ben said. ‘Le Val is a tactical training facility.’
‘For bodyguards? That sort of thing?’
‘That sort of thing,’ Ben said. ‘Not exactly.’
‘So, when people have a problem – when they’re under threat, or when they feel they might be in danger, there are ways they can protect themselves. Aren’t there? And that’s the kind of line you’re in? Providing advice, or services of a sort … you can tell I don’t know a lot about this stuff.’
‘Get to the point, Simeon. What are you trying to say?’
They were coming into Little Denton. Simeon sighed. ‘I need help, Ben. At least, I think I do. I’m not sure what’s happening, but I’m frightened. Not so much for myself, but for Michaela and Jude. If anything happened to them—’
‘Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?’ Ben said.
‘I hardly know where to begin,’ Simeon replied. ‘I’ve been working on something, an important project. Well, actually, it’s more than just important. It’s huge. It’s terrifyingly huge.’ Simeon shook his head, as if bewildered by just how huge it was.
‘To do with your book?’ Ben asked.
Simeon glanced at him in surprise.
‘Michaela told me you were working on a new one,’ Ben said. ‘And that you’ve been keeping a lot to yourself. She’s worried about you.’