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Chapter 4
The message wasn’t the begging letter he’d expected. Rather, it was a month-old invitation to all former members of the ‘House’, that being the rather grand name by which his old college Christ Church colloquially referred to itself, studiously avoiding the word ‘college’ as a way to elevate itself above its smaller, less prestigious siblings. None of which could boast having a city cathedral as their college chapel, for instance, or thirteen British prime ministers and at least one English monarch among their illustrious alumni.
Somewhere close to the bottom of that list, way down there beneath the King Edward the Seconds and the William Gladstones and the Anthony Edens and the Lewis Carrolls – lower still than the likes of the infamous archbishop-turned-pirate Lancelot Blackburne and the German cokehead aristocrat Gottfried Von Bismarck – was the very little-known name of a certain Benedict Hope, Major, British Armed Forces, Ret. Though apparently not so little known as to be excluded from the invitation that had now unexpectedly, and slightly belatedly, landed in Ben’s lap. The hard copy of the letter that the college had presumably sent out ahead of the email must have ended up in the Le Val shredder weeks ago, unopened, along with a ton of junk.
With mixed feelings, he read on.
Seraphina Lewis, as it turned out, was the new college administrator tasked with tracking down and reaching out to old House members. Christ Church was a bit like the SAS: once you were in, you were in for life. Even if you left there under the darkest of clouds. Even if you had almost set fire to the place on at least one occasion, and in a separate incident hurled down three flights of stairs a fridge containing a roast pheasant and a bottle of expensive champagne belonging to the son of the Italian president, almost causing an international flap in the process. Such trifling matters seemingly were omitted from House records, in a spirit of forgive and forget.
The invitation read:
Dear Old Member,
This is to remind you that you are cordially invited to attend a special Easter reunion for all Christ Church Alumni, to be held on Wednesday, 12 April. The event will include refreshments in the Deanery Garden and a celebration dinner in the Great Hall (gowns to be worn). In addition, this year we are delighted to invite you to a private recital in the college chapel by Old Member and former Christ Church Organ Scholar Nicholas Hawthorne, who since leaving the House has gone on to become an internationally acclaimed classical recording artist. Nicholas will be performing works by William Byrd, Olivier Messiaen and Johann Sebastian Bach on the cathedral’s magnificent Rieger organ. I hope you will be able to attend, and warmly look forward to welcoming you back in person to Christ Church for this very special event. Accommodation will be available within college at no extra cost for Old Members and spouses.
Warmly, Seraphina Lewis, Christ Church (1993)
Development and Alumni Office
R.S.V.P. to seraphina.lewis@chch.ox.ac.uk
Ben stubbed out his cigarette, lit a fresh one, and leaned back from the desk to think. The date of the event was only three days from now, the email having sat ignored in the spam folder all these weeks. His automatic inclination was to dismiss the matter without a second thought and not even bother replying. He hadn’t been back to Oxford since the brief time he and his then-fiancée Brooke Marcel had rented a house in Jericho, in the west of the city. Much had happened since then. Too much.
But then Ben thought about it some more, and felt himself slowly softening to the idea of attending the reunion. Not all his memories were bad ones. He remembered a moonlit summer’s night many years ago, sitting under the ancient cloister arches near Old Library with Michaela, the two of them listening to the strains of one of Nick Hawthorne’s late-night organ practice sessions emanating from where the cathedral nave adjoined the far corner of the cloister.
Though Nick had been the eldest by some margin, he’d been a key member of the ‘gang of four’: him, Ben, Michaela and Simeon. They’d all met during Ben’s second year at Christ Church, which would turn out to be his last, and become good friends. When you could drag Nick away from his music, he was fun company, knew the wickedest jokes and could drink real ale like it was going out of style.
Simeon Arundel had been a very different personality. Like Ben, he’d studied theology. Unlike Ben, he’d been heavily committed long-term to the subject and would go on to see it through to the end by being ordained as a vicar. Michaela Ward had been a first-year student of PPE, Oxford’s abbreviation for Philosophy, Politics and Economics. And she’d been Ben’s first serious girlfriend, though the relationship hadn’t lasted long. Following their break-up, Ben’s life had reached an unhappy point where he terminated his studies and left university. Then, in the wake of Ben’s dramatic departure, the friendship that had always existed between Michaela and Simeon suddenly deepened and they’d got together, married and settled in a village not too far from Oxford. As it turned out, those two had been meant for each other.
Ben would never forget either of them. Or the way they’d died, many years later.
With Simeon and Michaela gone, the original gang of four had been halved. Which might have impelled the survivors to keep in touch – but Ben and Nick never had. Ben was aware that it was his fault, since keeping in touch had never been his forte. Now after all these years, the thought of seeing Nick again filled him with a bittersweet feeling. Maybe it was time to rebuild the contact between them. The date of the reunion fitted right in with his planned trip to Surrey. Bisley was only an hour’s drive away from Oxford, and it would save him having to find a hotel in nearby Guildford.
It was a spur of the moment thing. A snap decision. Ben thought fuck it, leaned forward, hit reply and started typing his response to Seraphina Lewis.
Two days later, he was slinging his old green bag on the front seat of his shiny silver BMW D3 Alpina Bi-Turbo, a replacement for the blue one he’d ditched at the bottom of the River Arno in Florence before Christmas, speeding off up Le Val’s bumpy track, past the gatehouse and away.
If he’d known how things were about to turn out, Ben would have stayed at home. Or maybe not. Because trouble seemed to draw him like a magnet. And trouble was coming, just as it always seemed to. Especially when your name was Ben Hope.
Chapter 5
‘I still can’t believe it’s you,’ Nick Hawthorne said. ‘Feels like such a blast from the past.’
‘Feels strange for me too,’ Ben replied. ‘Being back here after all these years. Time seems to have stood still.’
They’d finished breakfast and were walking down the stone staircase from the Great Hall. Sunlight shone from the archway that led to the south-east corner of Tom Quad.
‘Speaking of time,’ Nick said, ‘do you have any plans for the rest of the morning, or lunch?’
‘None in particular.’
‘Only, I’m having a few people over at my place for drinks and a bit of a buffet this lunchtime. Nothing formal, you know. It’s a way for me to loosen up with a few laughs and a couple of glasses of wine before tonight’s performance. Why don’t you come?’
‘I’d like that very much,’ Ben said.
Nick looked pleased. He glanced up at the clock that adorned the massive Tom Tower, which straddled the college’s entrance and loomed over St Aldate’s. ‘There are still a couple of hours before the first guests will start to turn up,’ Nick said. ‘If you like, we could head over there now. Give us a chance to catch up a bit on old times. And if you don’t mind, you can help me set up the buffet while we’re chatting.’
‘On one condition,’ Ben said.
‘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
‘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.
They got off the bus on Banbury Road and walked the rest of the way. Nick lived in a quiet leafy street where imposing old three- and four-storey Victorian townhouses stood behind fancy black and gilt wrought-iron terrace railings. The Aston Martin, covered in pigeon droppings, was parked on the street outside a house with a black door with a lion’s head brass knocker. The buzzer panel discreetly mounted to the side with three name labels on it aside from Nick’s. ‘I’m on the top floor,’ he explained to Ben as he opened the door and led the way inside the hall.
In fact, as Ben soon understood as they reached the top of the house, Nick’s apartment comprised the entire upper floor. From the tall window outside his door there was a view of the University Parks woodland, cricket pavilion and the River Cherwell beyond.
‘I bid you welcome to my humble abode,’ Nick said, showing Ben into the apartment. The inside was modern compared to the exterior, airy and surprisingly large. The walls of the main living space were adorned with expensive-looking artwork and even more expensive-looking oriental rugs covered sections of the gleaming hardwood floors. But what instantly drew the eye more than anything else was the sunlit bay near the window, dominated by a shining ebony-black grand piano and a contrastingly ancient-looking, highly decorated keyboard instrument that Ben guessed was either a harpsichord or a clavichord. He was a little hazy on the difference. Whatever it was, it and the grand piano nestled together facing in opposite directions, the new and the old like two halves of a yin-yang symbol. They were the focal point of the room.
‘You have a very nice place,’ Ben said.
Nick grinned. ‘How about a coffee for the hero of the buses?’
‘Please, don’t start that again.’
‘Okay. I’m sorry. Then how about a coffee for a very old friend that I’m extremely happy to have met up with again?’
‘Sounds better,’ Ben said. ‘Me too.’
‘A deal’s a deal,’ Nick said. ‘And I don’t think my coffee will disappoint.’
Nick disappeared down a hallway that led to the kitchen, whistling some bright little tune as he got busy. Ben heard cupboard doors banging, cups and saucers clinking. In his host’s absence, Ben walked over to admire the piano. The gothic-script lettering above the keyboard and on its side said BOSENDÖRFER. It was quite a beast.
Ben liked music a lot, some kinds more than others, and often wished he’d taken up an instrument in his life. If he had, it would most likely have been the tenor sax, inspired by his favourite jazz players. Like Bird, of course, and Coltrane, and Sonny Rollins and Dexter Gordon and a host of others. He enjoyed listening to a good pianist, too, even though he wasn’t as much of a fan.
Nick’s piano was a beautiful object, no doubt about it. Neither it nor its antique counterpart showed a speck of dust and they both screamed loving maintenance in sharp contrast to the neglected state of the car in the street outside. It was pretty clear where Nick’s priorities lay.
Moving away from the instruments, Ben gazed at a couple of the portraits on the walls, both very obviously dating back to bygone centuries. One was of a man with a lean, gently thoughtful face, silky frills at his neck and cuff, a powdered wig like a judge’s on his head. The name plaque on the gilt frame said JOSEPH HAYDN. The other picture showed a heavier, more austere-looking jowly fellow with thick lips, a wedge of double chin, a frock coat and a slightly different kind of white wig, proffering in his one visible hand a small sheet of musical notation as if to say, ‘Here’s a little ditty I just wrote, especially for you. And you’d better like it.’
Ben peered closer and saw that this was the famous Johann Sebastian Bach, whose organ music he would be hearing Nick play that evening.
He found a different likeness of J.S. Bach elsewhere in the room, in the shape of a small alabaster bust resting on the glass shelf of a corner display cabinet. This Bach didn’t look very pleased at all, wearing an intense, challenging scowl that followed you wherever you went. He was just one of a number of collectables on display in the cabinet, mostly music related: other composer busts of all the usual suspects, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and some that Ben knew less well such as Berlioz and Messiaen; then there was a metronome inlaid with mother of pearl, a violin bow, an ivory piano key, a framed lock of hair purporting to have belonged to Frederick Chopin.
On the middle shelf, propped up on a little stand, was an old handwritten music manuscript that resembled the one in the Bach wall portrait, though it was proportionally a shade larger and consisted of several sheets bound together with wax, instead of just one.
Ben moved close to the cabinet to peer at the manuscript. The paper was splotched, faded and yellowed with age but the handwritten musical notation was almost entirely legible, apart from a curiously shaped, russety-coloured stain that covered part of the right bottom corner and obscured some of the last stave and a few notes. Written music notation was double-Dutch to Ben at the best of times, and this looked like a scrawl. The only part of it he could make out was the composer’s signature at the top of the front page, which made his eyebrows rise.
J.S. Bach
‘Like a moth to the flame,’ Nick’s voice said behind him. Ben turned. Nick was returning with the coffee. The rich scent of some serious dark roast was already filling the room.
‘Everyone goes straight to that manuscript,’ Nick said, carrying the tray to a coffee table. ‘And they all ask me the same thing. What must it be worth, and aren’t I taking a massive risk not keeping such an obviously priceless relic locked up in a vault?’
‘So what’s it worth?’ Ben asked.
Nick chuckled. After a dramatic pause he replied, ‘It’s worth precisely zero. Zilch. Don’t be taken in. It’s a fake.’
