It might have been his old SAS comrade Boonzie McCulloch who’d once said to him, ‘Better tae have it an’ no need it, than tae need it an’ no have it, laddie.’ In Ben’s experience, need often arose when you were least prepared. He’d lived by that saying for a long time, and its wisdom had saved him on more occasions than he cared to count. He picked up the Tokarev, checked it over, slipped it in the waistband of his jeans, then dumped the fifty rounds of 7.62x25mm ammo in his jacket pocket, next to the business card for the Atreus Club.
Ben as yet had no idea what that was, any more than he understood the significance of the woman called Angelique whose name Graves had written on the back of the card. His intuition was telling him that, somehow, the secrets of the late Adrian Graves were all intertwined together in one ugly little knot. Ben intended to unravel it.
The last item he removed from Graves’ study was the set of keys for the Bentley. Then he left the empty house and its silent occupant. Outside, he glanced about him to check nobody was around, then unlocked the car, got in and turned on the ignition without starting the engine. It was the inbuilt sat nav system he was interested in. After taking a moment to familiarise himself with how it worked, he found the recent destinations folder and scrolled through it, copying addresses, postcodes and GPS coordinates into his notebook. When he’d finished he wiped everything down and closed up the car. He left the key in the ignition. Graves wouldn’t complain.
Minutes later, Ben pulled his BMW into a quiet layby near Hinksey Hill and spent a few minutes going back through the Bentley’s sat nav destinations list, checking each one on his smartphone. Graves was a frequent visitor to music museums like the Bate Collection in Oxford and the Royal College of Music, Royal Academy, the Victoria and Albert, and the British Museum in London. Other destinations were tagged with labels, such as one that said ‘MOTHER’ and led Ben to a private residential care home in the Cotswolds.
But another frequent destination, mysteriously tagged ‘AC’, showed far more promise. The sat nav’s data log indicated that Graves had visited ‘AC’ several times within the last month alone.
When Ben checked the GPS location, he came up with an address for a manor and country estate called Wychstone House, just outside the Oxfordshire village of Wychstone, not far from Kirtlington to the north of the city. Twenty minutes’ drive away, if you were a sedate academic behind the wheel of a stately Bentley. Twelve to fifteen, if you were Ben Hope.
It was a beautiful afternoon. What else was there to do, with the stink of a dead man’s blood still clinging to your clothes like smoke and the vision of your friend impaled on the railings still hovering before your eyes, than to take a scenic drive in the countryside?
Ben waited for a chubby young woman to walk by with her cavalier spaniel tugging like a miniature locomotive at its leash, gave her a friendly smile and a wave which she returned cheerfully, then took out the Tokarev. A tough, rugged weapon, the handgun equivalent of the Red Army’s virtually indestructible AK-47. It weighed thirty ounces in Ben’s hand, with plastic ribbed grips emblazoned with a Soviet star and the Cyrillic letters standing for Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialistichskikh Republics. It was one of the unaltered models with no safety, except for the half-cock notch on the hammer. Safety catches. Who needed them, anyway? Just one more impediment to letting the tool do its job.
Keeping the weapon below the level of the window he locked open the slide, dropped out the magazine, and laid the pistol in his lap while he pressed loose rounds from his pocket into the mag until it was full. He reinserted the mag, popped the slide release to chamber the top round, lowered the hammer to half cock, and the gun was ready to rock and roll.
So was he.
Ben started the car.
Chapter 23
The drive to the village of Wychstone took him just thirteen minutes, plus another three to find the country estate just beyond its outskirts. The first thing Ben noticed about Wychstone Manor was the interesting level of security about the place. The walls were high, the tall iron gates were shut, and cameras kept watch from both gateposts. His instinct was to hang back a while and observe the place before making any moves.
The country road leading out of Wychstone village past the manor house was narrow and quiet, with verges of unkempt grass and wildflowers and a small patch of oak woods a little way offroad on the opposite side to the manor. Ben scouted the terrain on foot and found a spot among the trees that was about eighty yards from the entrance to the estate, out of view of the security cameras and accessible by car. He parked the Alpina in the long grass where he could see the house through the trees and the gates, then killed the engine and made himself comfortable.
He didn’t care how long he might have to wait. A man conditioned to withstand long reconnaissance missions hidden among the rocks of a barren mountainside or the stinking vegetation of the most godawful jungle couldn’t complain about spending a little time in a comfortable car on a pleasant spring afternoon. He wasn’t hungry, wasn’t thirsty. He had everything he needed.
Nor did he feel any undue pressure. Sooner or later someone, most likely Mrs Graves, was going to make the gruesome discovery of the late professor sitting at his desk; Ben was pretty sure that Tom McAllister wouldn’t be slow to pick up the trail and put the two dead men together, Graves and Nick Hawthorne. But McAllister’s evidence bag would be minus Graves’ mobile phone and the connection with the Atreus Club, and that put him a big step behind. Ben liked it that way.
While he waited, he used the pair of binoculars he always kept in the car to scan the front of the manor house. Some expensive vehicles were parked outside, but he could see no movement within.
Just twenty minutes later, a shiny new Jaguar rolled up at the gates. Ben watched through the binoculars as its portly middle-aged driver, the car’s sole occupant, stepped out and spoke briefly into the intercom panel on the gatepost. He got back into the Jag, the gates swung open, and he continued up towards the house, unaware he was being observed all the way. The gates closed behind him.
As Ben kept watching, a conspicuously attractive woman in her thirties came out to greet the visitor at the front door of the manor, took his arm with a dazzling white smile that Ben could have seen from that distance without binoculars and led him inside, very tactile, very attentive. She was wearing a tight short skirt, a top that might have been painted on, and extremely high heels that made her tower over the portly little man by at least four inches. He seemed happy to see her, too. He could barely keep his tongue from lolling out.
Ben said, ‘Hm.’ He was beginning to understand why the Atreus Club’s business card didn’t give away very much detail about the services on offer to its members.
He leaned back in the driver’s seat and smoked a Gauloise as he pondered what to do next. Then restarted the car, pulled it sharply around in a circle and drove up to the gates. As the previous visitor had done, he stepped out to announce himself to the intercom box that was half-hidden among the ivy on the stone gatepost.
‘Professor Adrian Graves.’
And just like before, a moment later the gates swung open to let the visitor through. Ben drove up to the house and parked the Alpina next to the still-ticking Jaguar, on the end of the row of five other luxury cars that presumably belonged to other members. He got out and walked to the entrance, where the same alluring hostess stepped out to greet him, wearing the same megawatt smile.
Ben smiled back. ‘Hi. Nice day, isn’t it?’
Her smile dropped, and it was as if the sun had disappeared behind a cloud. ‘Here, wait a minute. You’re not Professor Graves. Who are you?’
Ben pointed at the plaque above the doorway that said THE ATREUS CLUB. ‘Exclusive membership, discretion assured,’ he said, pushing past her. ‘Sounds good. Where do I sign up?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Really?’
‘Hey! You can’t just walk in here.’
The entrance foyer was like a
five-star luxury hotel, except the collection of erotic paintings on the walls lent the place a particular theme that Ben had never noticed on any of his travels around the world. Maybe if he’d visited Amsterdam, it might have been different. From the reception area a flight of stairs was visible through an arched doorway. Ben caught the tail end of a glimpse of the portly little Jaguar guy climbing the stairs, escorted by someone wearing red stiletto heels. They disappeared out of sight. Here down below, the welcome committee had lost what remained of her charm and was tugging at Ben’s arm to prevent him from going anywhere. ‘Membership’s by invitation only. You can’t barge in like this.’
‘Who’s barging?’ Ben said. ‘Professor Graves introduced me. You can cross him off the members’ list, incidentally. He won’t be doing much kissing in future.’
‘I’m calling security.’ The woman’s heels clattered on the polished floor as she hurried over to a desk to snatch up a phone. Eyeing Ben like a tigress she said into the handset, ‘Terry, Alan, can you please step into reception? This guy’s just forced his way in here and I’d like him removed.’
Terry and Alan appeared seconds later, dressed in dark tuxedos like the pair of club bouncers they, in fact, were. Six hundred pounds of muscle and lard advanced towards Ben across the foyer. He could almost smell the testosterone. These two looked as if they probably injected themselves with it every day.
‘Do you have to get those tuxes tailor made?’ Ben asked them. ‘It’d be a real shame to get them all messed up. I’d stay back, if I were you.’
One of the bouncers, Terry or Alan, Ben would never know and didn’t care, tried to make a grab for him. Ben rolled the big fist aside in a deflect parry that unbalanced the guy’s top-heavy mass, then gave him a shove to the shoulder that sent him toppling sideways. He hit the floor like a sack of concrete. The other one hesitated, frowning uncertainly at Ben as though considering the wisdom of charging into the attack.
‘What are you two arseholes waiting for?’ the hostess snapped at the bouncers, pointing a red claw at Ben. ‘Sort him out!’ She looked as if she wanted blood. From siren to vampire in ninety seconds flat.
‘Relax, guys,’ Ben said. ‘It’s not worth it. I was just leaving anyway.’
The heavy on the floor seemed to be having trouble getting up, clutching his side in pain as though he’d ricked something on his way down. The one still on his feet obviously didn’t feel the need to walk Ben back to his car.
At the bottom of the driveway, the entrance gates were already open for the Alpina, as if to say ‘Now get lost and don’t come back’. He made a big show of revving the engine and driving off in a hurry. He turned right out of the gate and continued for about a hundred yards on the country road away from Wychstone, then pulled into another observation point screened by oak trees. The high stone perimeter wall hid the house itself from view, but that was unimportant as long as he was out of sight of the cameras and could keep an eye on movements in and out of the gates: specifically out of the gates.
He resumed his wait. Now his suspicions about the nature of the Atreus Club were confirmed, he figured that the duration of a typical client’s visit to the place couldn’t be more than an hour or so, possibly a good deal less given the probable age and general physical condition of the average club member. Which suggested to Ben that one of the clients whose cars were parked outside the manor would be due to leave at any moment.
Sure enough, Ben was just five puffs into his next Gauloise before he saw the automatic gates glide open once more and a pearly white Range Rover, which had been on the far end of the row, passed through, turned left and started picking up speed towards the village of Wychstone. Ben could have chosen to wait instead for the portly fellow in the Jag to reappear, but it really didn’t matter to him one way or the other. He fired up the Alpina and followed the Range Rover.
When shadowing dangerous criminals or men with military training, as he often had done in the past, caution dictated holding back a good distance and keeping out of sight with other vehicles between himself and the target. But Ben didn’t think the kind of middle-class saddo who frequented the Atreus Club would be on the lookout for a tail, not even one as relatively conspicuous as a BMW with French plates and the steering wheel on the left. Ben maintained a steady distance behind as the Rover got onto the M40 at Chieveley and wound its unhurried way northwards towards Banbury. Ten miles further north, leaving Oxfordshire for the southern edge and rolling hills of Warwickshire, the Rover led Ben into the parish of Burton Dassett, a quaint little place full of old stone houses and thatched cottages called Knightcote, where it finally pulled up in the driveway of a large, detached home with a conservatory, separate garage and lily pond, on a large plot edged by a low, neatly clipped leylandii hedge.
Welcome to bourgeois heaven. Ben pulled up on the road a little way from the house, grabbed his binocs and watched. A remote mechanism opened the garage door and the Rover slotted itself inside. The other half of the garage was empty. Unless there was another car parked round the back somewhere, nobody else was at home.
A yellow dog appeared from a kennel and ran across the garden to meet its owner as he got out of the car, and Ben saw him for the first time: late fifties, overweight, balding, glasses, perhaps a senior executive or company director. And harbouring some dirty little secrets that probably accounted for the lingering grin on his face as he opened the front door and disappeared inside the house.
Ben left his car, skirted around the property and found a spot where the hedge was less thick and shielded from view of neighbouring homes by a beech tree. He skipped over the hedge and into the garden, where the friendly yellow dog met him and gladly accepted a treat from the pack of Storm’s favourites that Ben carried in the glove box. Now a friend for life, the dog let Ben explore the property unhindered. The German shepherds at Le Val would have eaten him by now. McAllister’s dog Radar too, by the look of him.
Ben moved stealthily around the perimeter of the house until he spotted his guy through the French windows of a large living room. He was still wearing the mile-wide grin after his enjoyable start to the afternoon. Ben watched him open up the doors of a tall faux-antique cabinet that housed a large-screen TV, pick up a remote control and start flicking through channels. A football game was playing on one of them. The man took off his jacket, tossed it over the back of a chair and settled contentedly to watch the match.
Even with the sound muted, the man would never have heard Ben slip into the room. The first he knew of the presence stalking up close behind him was the touch of the cold steel muzzle of the Tokarev against his cheek. He let out a startled cry, which Ben quickly stifled with a hand over his mouth. Ben moved round so the guy could see him, and the gun.
‘Quiet,’ Ben said. He took his hand off the man’s mouth, picked up the remote control from the armrest of the chair and turned up the sound until the roaring of the football crowd and the hyped-up chatter of the commentator filled the room.
‘Wh-wh-who are you?’ the man stammered. But he did it quietly, and didn’t try to move from the chair. His eyes bulged as though he might be about to drop dead of a heart attack.
Ben sat in a chair nearby, keeping the gun pointed at him just for show. ‘What’s your name?’
The man’s eyes darted nervously and Ben could see the wheels spinning in his mind. ‘L-Lester K-Kimble. I-I don’t have any m-money. The only valuables in the house are my wife’s jewels. Take them!’
‘That’s very generous of you. Is Mrs Kimble at home?’
‘She’s at w-work in B-Banbury.’
‘That’s fine, Lester. I’m glad I didn’t have to scare her. And I’m not interested in taking any of her nice things. I just have a few questions. If you cooperate nicely, Mrs Kimble will never know I was here. If you don’t tell me what I want to know, she’s going to come home to find her loyal, devoted hubby dead with a bullet in his skull. And none of us wants that, do we?’
Poor Lester must have believed t
he threat, because he made a gibbering sound of terror that Ben knew from experience was quite genuine. It took him a lot of stammering to blurt out, ‘W-W-What questions?’
‘Ones you’ll be glad you got to answer in private,’ Ben said. ‘Let’s talk about the Atreus Club.’
Chapter 24
Getting people to open up was all about applying pressure, in the right way and the right amount. The old saying that everyone has their breaking point, Ben had largely found to be true. Some of the harder ones you virtually had to torture, though real torture was a dark art that Ben had no taste for, never had, never would. A minor criminal like Paul Midworth the crusty took far less pressure to crack their resistance. But a soft, flabby babe in the woods like Lester Kimble, about as far a cry from the true hardmen of the world as it was possible to imagine, gave way like a rotten twig under a boot heel.
After less than sixty seconds of interrogation, Lester was already weeping with fear and shame. Ben forced him to divulge exactly what he got up to at the Atreus Club, then soon wished he hadn’t. In between great gasping sobs and floods of tears, Lester’s confessions regarding his sessions with his favourite girl there, Cindy, were as candidly detailed as they were predictably sleazy. He’d been a member for almost three years, couldn’t get enough of the place and had dug himself into a credit hole as deep as the Mariana Trench to pay for his secret addiction.
‘Just imagine if Mrs Kimble were to hear about these little extramural activities of yours,’ Ben said. ‘I wonder how she’d take the news?’
Rage flared magenta-coloured on Lester’s chubby, tear-streaked face. ‘Is that what this is? You’re a private investigator, aren’t you? Elizabeth paid you to shadow me, didn’t she? That rotten bitch!’ Then his anger subsided just as fast as it had risen, and he started sobbing again. ‘Please. Whatever my wife’s offering you, I’ll double it. I’ll give you everything I own, just please don’t tell her! It would be the end of me. I’d have to kill myself.’