The Sacred Sword

Chapter Three

The rain was threatening to turn to sleet by the time Ben pulled up across the street from the large red-brick Victorian house where Brooke lived. He killed the engine, and for a few seconds his thoughts turned to the whisky flask in his bag that he’d topped up with fifteen-year-old Islay malt before setting out from France. Instead he reached for his crumpled pack of Gauloises and his Zippo lighter. Anything to delay the moment where he’d have to walk up to the door of Brooke’s flat on the ground floor.

As he sat and smoked and watched the rainwater streaming down the window, he wondered again whether turning up like this unannounced was the right thing to do. And he thought back again to the events of three months ago that had left his personal life in such a mess.

Life had never turned out as quiet as he’d have liked it, but the previous September had been an eventful time even for him. It wasn’t every month that you got wrongly accused of murder, dragged into an intrigue involving Russian mobsters and harried across most of Europe by an army of police commanded by a particularly determined, ambitious female SOCA agent named Darcey Kane.

But narrowly avoiding being tortured to death, crushed in a car wreck, getting incarcerated in an Italian prison or pulverised by a Russian attack helicopter hadn’t been the worst things that had happened to Ben that month. None of them had remotely compared to the shock of seeing Brooke in the arms of another man.

Injured and on the run, Ben had been heading for Brooke’s secluded holiday place in the Portuguese countryside, thinking it would be empty and he could lie low there for a while and recuperate. He’d been wrong. Approaching the cottage in darkness, he’d been surprised to see a light in the downstairs window, and peeked through the shutters. The sight he’d witnessed had made him recoil. Brooke and the unknown man had been sitting by candlelight, drinking wine, both obviously fresh from the shower. There was only one possible conclusion to draw.

Ben had slipped away unseen. From Portugal he’d beaten a hazardous path to Italy, from there to Monaco, then Georgia and back to Rome. Along the way, he and Darcey Kane had joined forces to defeat the gangsters who were trying to kill them, and unmask a conspiracy at the heart of British Intelligence. One of the toughest parts of the job had been escaping the amorous clutches of the – he had to admit it – extremely attractive and alluring raven-haired Darcey. When it was all over and they’d ended up at a loose end together in Rome, she’d made it very clear to him that her idea of a weekend in the eternal city wasn’t about visiting the Sistine Chapel and the Colosseum. ‘I won’t give up, you know’ had been Darcey’s disappointed parting words to him as he headed back home to France. ‘I always get my man in the end.’

The first thing Ben had done on his return to Le Val had been to check the diary for Brooke’s next lecture. He’d made sure he wasn’t around when she arrived, and as a pretext to stay away for the two days of her visit he’d made up a story about needing to drive to Nantes to check out a new security system for the armoury room, and from there to Paris to see a prospective client. In reality, he was lying low in a hotel just a few miles away in Valognes. He was all too aware of how weak and pathetic he was acting, but he couldn’t help it. He’d sooner have faced a charging bull than get into a confrontation with Brooke.

Jeff Dekker, the former SBS commando who was Ben’s right-hand man at Le Val, had finally cracked under the strain of having to cover for him all the time, and called him on his mobile. ‘Jesus, Ben. What the hell is going on with you two? She’s upset and confused. First she comes back from holiday to find out that her boyfriend’s been arrested and chased all around Europe by the cops, now you’re avoiding her like she’s got leprosy. You can’t go on like this, mate.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

Brooke’s flight home from nearby Cherbourg back to London had been booked for 7.15 on the evening of her second day. Just after eight, feeling quite miserable and shamefaced, Ben had come skulking back to Le Val and headed for the farmhouse kitchen to pour himself a glass of wine. He’d been so preoccupied that he’d failed to sense anyone else’s presence in the room.

‘Were you just going to sneak around behind my back?’ Her voice sounded taut with emotion.

Ben almost dropped his glass. He whirled around.

Brooke got up from the chair in the corner where she’d been waiting for him. Her face was flushed almost as red as the auburn of her hair, and there was a glint of fury in her green eyes. ‘Aren’t you even going to tell me who she is, then?’

‘Who?’ Ben managed, totally confused.

Brooke snorted. ‘Who? Do you think I’m stupid? I’ve talked to her, Ben. She called here. You were off sneaking around trying to avoid me, so I happened to pick up the phone.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Really? “Lovely time together in Rome? Must do it again sometime?” Not ringing any bells?’

Ben stared blankly for a moment, then it hit him. ‘You mean Darcey Kane?’ The instant it came out, he knew how feeble it sounded.

Brooke’s eyes had misted over and a tear rolled down her cheek. ‘Of all the guys in the world, Ben Hope, I never would have thought you would do this to me. And you didn’t even have the guts to tell me to my face.’

‘Stop right there. This is insane.’

‘What were you doing in Rome?’

‘You know what I was doing in Rome. Trying to stay out of jail. You saw the news, didn’t you?’

‘I know you had a terrible time, and I’m sorry,’ Brooke snapped. ‘I mean, what were you doing with her?’

‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’

‘Then what’s she talking about?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘I’ll bet.’

‘I can’t believe you’re accusing me of this,’ Ben said, and then added, ‘You, of all people.’

Now he was in trouble. He regretted it instantly.

Brooke glared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

He was committed. Point of no return. ‘You know perfectly well. I saw you and your fancy-man in Portugal.’

‘My what?’ Brooke exploded.

‘You heard me.’

‘You went to my place?’

‘I needed somewhere to go. I didn’t think you’d be there. I saw you through the window. The two of you looked very cosy together. Don’t insult me by denying it.’

‘Ben! That was Marshall – my brother-in-law!’

Ben reeled. ‘You’re having an affair with your brother-in-law? The banker?’

‘Bloody hell, what do you take me for? Of course not!’

‘Then what were the two of you doing there together?’

‘All right. He followed me to Portugal,’ Brooke sighed. ‘He thinks …’ – she corrected herself – ‘thought he was in love with me. He’d been stalking me for weeks. I went to the cottage to get away from him. He turned up and I told him once and for all that he’d better clean up his act.’

Ben was speechless for a few moments as he digested her words. He’d replayed the scene so many times inside his head; now he struggled to revisualise it in a whole new way. ‘But he was wearing a bathrobe,’ he protested.

‘There’d been a storm,’ she countered angrily. ‘He was soaking wet so I got him to take a shower. I’d just had one myself when he turned up.’

‘The candles … the wine …’

‘You know it doesn’t take much of a storm to take out the power there. And the wine was for our nerves. He was in a real state. So was I. What you saw was me trying to reason with him gently. I’m a psychologist. It’s what I do.’

Ben stared at her. He had to admit what she was saying was possible. But suddenly a new thought was dawning on him. ‘So this prick Marshall was stalking you all that time and you didn’t even think to tell me?’

‘Oh, that would have been just great. Then you’d have gone and kicked the shit out of him, and then what? A right mess we’d all have been in. And my sister would’ve found out. Phoebe’s emotionally fragile. It would have destroyed her. I had to deal with it myself.’

‘Is that how you see me? Some kind of violent bastard who can only deal with problems by kicking the shit out of people?’

‘No, sometimes you shoot them too.’

‘How could you not have trusted me?’ he yelled.

Brooke gave a scornful laugh. ‘Like you trusted me? How could you think I was cheating on you? All the times I told you I loved you – did you think I was lying?’

The argument had raged on for a long time, both of them equally carried away by their sense of outrage, neither of them willing to relent. By the time Ben had sensed it was going too far, tried to back down and apologise, a lot of hurtful things had been said and the damage had been done.

In the end, Brooke had stormed off in a white-hot rage. The last he’d seen of her was the taxicab disappearing up the track from the farmhouse.

Two days later a letter had arrived in the post, coldly and formally addressed to Major Benedict Hope, Managing Director, Le Val Tactical Training Centre. Just three terse lines to say she was resigning from her post with immediate effect and wouldn’t be back.

When Ben had tried contacting her to persuade her to change her mind, he’d found her phone numbers changed and his emails bouncing back. His letters were returned unopened.

And so now, three months later, here he was outside her ground-floor flat, seriously questioning the wisdom of being here. Unbuckling the straps of his bag, he took out the present he’d bought for her, carefully wrapped in Christmas gift paper with little Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeers all over it. It had taken him three attempts to get it right. But at least he was pretty sure she’d like the present inside. Brooke was half French on her father’s side, and a big movie fan, so he’d bought her a collection of Eric Rohmer films. He couldn’t recall having ever seen one himself.

Feeling like a man stepping up to the gallows, he got out of the Land Rover, crossed the street, went in the little gate that led through Brooke’s flower garden and rang her doorbell.

No response. He tried again. Still nothing. The package was too big to shove through the letterbox. He didn’t think that a mangled DVD box set would please her much. He’d have to post it to her.

With a strange mixture of bitter disappointment and extreme relief, Ben turned away. As he was about to start heading back towards the Land Rover, a tall, good-looking Asian man came strolling down the street and walked through the gate. He was wearing a heavy parka, carrying a shopping bag. Seeing Ben on the steps, he stopped and smiled. ‘Hi,’ he said warmly. ‘You must be Ben, right?’

Ben eyed the stranger uncertainly.

‘I’ve seen your photo,’ said the man. ‘Brooke had it on her desk.’

Ben noticed his use of the past tense.

‘I’m Amal,’ the man said, and as if he’d read Ben’s thoughts he added quickly, ‘Brooke’s neighbour. I have the flat above.’

‘You’re the writer,’ Ben said, remembering. Brooke had sometimes mentioned the aspiring playwright upstairs who somehow managed to pay the extortionate rent despite having no apparent form of income.

‘Trying to be a writer,’ Amal grinned.

‘Do you know where Brooke is?’ Ben asked him.

Amal’s grin turned into a grimace. ‘She’s not here, I’m afraid. Gone to Vienna with her friend Sam.’

Sam, Ben thought. Right.

He paused a few beats. ‘I had a present for her,’ he said, looking down at the package in his hand.

‘I can take that, if you want. I’ll make sure she gets it.’

‘I’d appreciate that.’

Amal glanced up at the sky. The sleet was coming down more heavily, haloed in the amber streetlight. ‘You want to come inside for a coffee? It’s bloody freezing out here.’

Ben shook his head. ‘I’d better get going.’ As he was walking out of the gate, Amal called back, ‘Ben?’

Ben turned.

‘Sam is short for Samantha,’ Amal said with a significant look. ‘Just in case you didn’t … still, you know what I mean.’

Ben nodded. ‘Thanks for letting me know. Happy Christmas, Amal.’

‘You too. Take care, all right?’

Chapter Four

Ben was awake long before sunrise the next day, got out of bed and pumped out five quick sets of twenty press-ups on the carpet of his little room in the farmhouse bed and breakfast. He showered and watched the dawn crack over the rural Oxfordshire skyline with a mug of strong black coffee in his hand. He hadn’t slept well, his mind constantly turning over, switching back and forth from one thing to another and keeping him in a state of tension that only his long-established self-discipline prevented him from soothing with a gulp from his whisky flask.

Some time later, he shrugged on his leather jacket and went downstairs to be met by the smell of bacon, sausages and fried eggs cooked up by the proprietor, Mrs Bold, who looked as though she’d gobbled down a few too many of her own full English breakfasts. Ben politely declined her insistent offer of a coronary on a plate and stepped out into the crisp, cold morning air. Yesterday’s dark clouds and sleet had given way to a clear sky. Pale sunshine filtered through the bare branches of the oaks and beeches and glittered on the frosty lawn.

He swung himself into the cab of the Land Rover. The engine spluttered on starting, and for a moment or two he thought, ‘Oh-oh’; then it fired up with an anaemic-sounding rasp and he went crunching over the gravel of the long drive.

The cemetery was just a few fields away from Langton Hall, in the grounds of a sixteenth-century church ringed by a mossy dry-stone wall. Ben knelt by the grave and delicately brushed away a few dead leaves. The inscription on the granite headstone was simple and plain, as she’d have wanted it to be. Just her name; the year of her birth; that of her death.

She was just thirty-two.

Ben was alone in the graveyard. He said a few words, felt his throat tighten up and then sat silently for a long time with his head bowed. He laid a single white rose on the grave. Then he stood up and walked slowly back to the car.

*

In the end, the speech went better than he’d expected. Ben hadn’t worn a tuxedo since his trip to Egypt some years earlier, and the collar felt stiff around his neck, but he’d felt composed and his initial nerves at seeing the large crowd filling every seat of Langton Hall’s new auditorium had settled the moment he’d stepped up to the podium and launched into his opening line. The things he said about Leigh were from the heart; judging by the length of the applause he received at the end, they must have touched those of many of the audience too.

Relieved that his moment in the limelight was over, Ben had shaken a few hands, knocked back a glass of champagne and then taken his seat for the opening act of the opera. He was glad the trustees had voted for The Barber of Seville over something too tragedy-laden and depressing. Too many opera composers seemed to him to revel in making their characters come to sticky ends, but the Rossini was lightweight and rousing, with jolly arias guaranteed to leave the audience humming their tunes afterwards. Ben felt Leigh would have approved of the choice, as well as of the polished performances of the singers.

He’d never been much of an opera fan himself, though, and it wasn’t too long before he started getting lost in the twists and turns of the romantic intrigue between Count Almaviva and the beautiful Rosina. The last scene of Act One, with the appearance of the drunken soldier, perplexed him: who was this guy, and what did he want? Was he actually the Count in disguise, and how could this Dr Bartolo fellow be taken in by this obvious ploy to seduce his daughter? Or was she his daughter? Oh, what the hell. Ben was restless and frustrated by the end of the act, and when the applause began he made a bee-line for the bar.

He was getting started on a measure of scotch when he felt a touch on his shoulder and turned round to see a man and a woman standing there, both dressed for the opera, both smiling broadly at him. For a moment he didn’t recognise them – then he realised he was looking at two faces he hadn’t seen for twenty years.

‘Simeon? Michaela?’

‘Fine speech, Benedict.’ Simeon Arundel was around Ben’s height, sporty and trim at just a shade under six feet. His dark hair was as thick and glossy as it had been back in student days, and he’d aged remarkably well except for the tired, rather drawn look to his face.

Michaela wore her fair hair a little shorter now, and might have gained a few pounds, but the brilliance of her smile took Ben straight back to his youth; a faraway time that often seemed to him like another life, when they’d all been students together at Christ Church, Oxford. Like Ben, Simeon had been a Theologian, only a couple of years older and just beginning his postgraduate studies. Michaela Ward had been in the year below Ben, reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics, or PPE as it was termed at Oxford.

‘What a wonderful surprise to meet like this,’ Simeon said. ‘We had no idea you’d be here. Then suddenly there you are on the stage. I said to Michaela, “Lord, that’s Benedict Hope!”’

‘It’s just Ben these days,’ Ben said with a smile.

‘It’s fantastic to see you again, Ben,’ said Michaela. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

‘I hope I’ve changed in some ways,’ Ben said. He could see something that definitely had: the identical gold wedding rings that Simeon and Michaela were wearing. ‘I should have known you two would have ended up getting married,’ he said.

‘Just a little while after you … after you left the college,’ Michaela said. She seemed about to say more, then held it back. The circumstances of Ben’s leaving college weren’t a topic for small talk.

‘I suppose I should offer my belated congratulations, then,’ Ben said.

They laughed, and then Simeon’s expression suddenly grew serious. ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your wife. I had no idea.’

Ben nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he muttered.

‘Are you enjoying the opera?’ Michaela asked him, changing the subject.

‘Honestly? I’d sooner be at a jazz gig.’

‘Please don’t tell me you live around here,’ she said. ‘It would be awful to think we’d been near neighbours all this time without ever realising it.’

‘No, I live in Normandy these days. I run a business there. What about you two?’ he added, always quick to deflect the inevitable questions about the kind of work that went on at Le Val.

‘We have the vicarage at Little Denton,’ Simeon said. ‘It’s just a few miles from here.’

‘Simeon has the vicarage,’ Michaela said. ‘I’m merely the vicar’s wife.’

‘So you went the whole hog,’ Ben said to Simeon. ‘I always thought you would.’

‘I’ve never been able to think of anything else I could do with myself except serve God in whatever small way I could offer,’ Simeon said.

‘He’s being modest,’ Michaela whispered behind her hand. ‘He’s quite the superstar.’

‘But tell us, Ben,’ Simeon said, blushing a little, ‘Where are you staying?’ When Ben told him the name of the bed and breakfast, he shook his head vehemently. ‘Not that Mrs Bold? She’s a terrible old battleaxe, God forgive me for saying it. And she overcharges.’

‘You must come and stay with us, Ben,’ Michaela said.

‘It’s a very kind offer, but—’

‘We absolutely insist,’ said Simeon. ‘It’ll be tremendous fun to chew the fat about old times. And you’ll meet Jude.’

‘Jude?’

‘Our son,’ Michaela said. ‘Only …’ She rolled her eyes up at Simeon. ‘Darling, I think Jude has other plans for the holidays.’

Simeon frowned slightly. ‘Never mind. So what do you say, Ben? We’d love to have you. Stay a day or two – stay for the whole of Christmas, why don’t you? If you’re still as fond of good wine and scotch as you used to be, I have some real treats in store.’

Ben hesitated, considering. It wasn’t as if he had anything else to do for the next few days. Nothing was scheduled at Le Val until January, and apart from the security guys and the guard dogs, the place would be deserted until Jeff and the team returned from their vacation. He’d have liked to spend time with his sister Ruth in Switzerland, but now that she’d become a high-flying company director she was attending conferences and summits all over the world – currently on a mission to greenify the Far East.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘You persuaded me. I’ll pick up my gear from Mrs Bold’s and come over sometime tomorrow.’

‘Nonsense, man,’ Simeon said. ‘You must come over tonight. We’re always up late anyway, so there’ll be plenty of time after the show.’

‘Speaking of which …’ Michaela said, glancing at her watch. The bell had sounded while they were talking, announcing the start of Act Two.

It was pushing midnight by the time Ben turned up at the village of Little Denton. Following the directions Simeon had given him, he turned off by the village pub, wound his way along a twisty lane running parallel to the Thames, and finally found the vicarage nestled behind a high stone wall and surrounded by trees. An owl hooted unseen as he stepped down from the Land Rover in the gravel driveway. The moon was out and shining down on the ivied facade of the old house. A dog barked from inside; Simeon’s voice called out ‘Quiet, Scruffy!’

The front door opened and the Reverend Arundel appeared in the entrance, looking less formal in jeans and a loose cardigan. He gripped Ben’s arm warmly. ‘Delighted you’re here. Really I am.’ He peered past Ben’s shoulder at the Land Rover and his eyebrows shot up. ‘Heavens, that’s seen some action, hasn’t it? Series IIa? Must be a ’73 vintage at least.’