CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Nikolas was fortunately spared participating in his discovery, his transfer to hospital or any other details for many days. He passed into another place where he moved from bright light to darkness and from places where he heard distant voices saying things in languages he’d forgotten how to speak.
He finally woke on the fifth day and saw a man sitting in a chair alongside him. The man stared at him for a moment, exclaimed, “Thank the fucking Lord. At fucking last,” and left—in a hurry. The next person to arrive was wearing a white coat and began to ask him questions he couldn’t answer because his mouth was too dry to move his tongue. The doctor didn’t seem to expect any answers. He nodded to himself, poked Nikolas some more and then left as well.
Next, a young man came into the room. He was familiar, and Nikolas frowned, trying to remember who he was. He was tall and very lean with a shaved, scabby skull. He had wide-set green eyes and was startlingly beautiful. For some reason, he was crying. Nikolas frowned some more and croaked, “Ben?” His eyes widened. The man handed him some water—he was the first one to think to do this—and Nikolas repeated more clearly, “Ben?” then added, “What’s wrong? And what the fuck have you done to your hair?” Ben bit his lip; his face crumpled. He just sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to find something to hold. He picked up one of Nikolas’s bandaged hands and held that.
“Radulf?”
Ben began to cry again, but he was obviously trying to hold it back at the same time. He raised his eyes, bit his lip again, let go of Nikolas’s hand to wipe his face and eventually managed to reply, “Just concentrate on getting better, yeah?”
“I’m fine. Why are you crying?”
“I’m not fucking crying, okay?”
“Fucking? Since when do you swear at me?”
Ben closed his eyes and then gently laid his head down upon Nikolas’s chest.
§ § §
The next time Nikolas woke, he was feeling a lot better. He had a suspicion they’d upped his pain medication, because the sunlight looked as if it were dancing, and everything felt very cheerful. He’d experienced this once or twice before with slightly less legal drugs, so he took the opportunity to enjoy it and get up. He pulled a needle out of the back of his hand and eased himself to sitting—so far so good. He pulled the sheet off and examined himself. His first thought was it was very nice not to be naked for once. He started with his feet. They were black and blue, and his ankle was bandaged but apparently not broken because it was only an elastic bandage—so far so good, again. He didn’t need to note every bruise—everything was bruised. He was black all over, legs, arms, torso. The largest bandages were around his ribs, and there was a faint stain of blood and iodine seeping through them. He had wound coverings on his shoulders and wrists, and his hands were both bandaged. Considering he’d thought he was going to die—and wasn’t it remarkable how many unpleasant ways an ex-torturer could conjure death in his mind?—he felt remarkably good. He eased himself to his feet and shuffled toward the bathroom. You had to be grateful for small mercies in life. Being able to hold himself while he pissed was something he’d been looking forward to. He made it into the small cubicle and took a long piss, clenching his jaw at the pain everywhere now that he was on his feet.
As he tried to remove the bandages on his fingers, he looked up into the mirror. He almost fell. He put his hands up to the mask of white. One eye was completely swollen shut. One cheek was twice its normal size, and his nose was entirely swathed in a huge bandage. He couldn’t feel any of this at all. He turned his head slowly one way and saw a row of Frankenstein stitches across the shaved part of his hair, turned it the other way and saw a large swelling. He heard someone come into the room outside, an exclamation, and then Ben was at his side. They didn’t say anything for a while. Nikolas shrugged. “Just as well one of us is still beautiful.”
Ben clenched his jaw. “You’re such a baby. It’s just a scratch.”
Nikolas tried to smile, but it was impossible. He limped back to the bed with Ben’s help. “Give me my clothes.”
“You’re not leaving. Forget it.”
“If you don’t help me, I’ll do it myself, and I might fall and injure myself, and then it’ll be all your fault.”
Ben helped him pull on some jeans and button a shirt. He didn’t feel quite so ready to leave once this task was completed. Ben helped him lie back on top of the bed and propped him up with a stack of pillows. Nikolas didn’t let him go, holding onto his hand. Ben sat down alongside him. “So, tell me.”
Ben stared at him for a while. “Can we leave it until you’re better?”
“I’m fine, Ben.”
“Can we leave it until I’m better then?”
Nikolas pursed his lips a little. “Not so good, hey?”
“No, not so good.”
“Okay. We’ll leave it. Tell me about Radulf though.”
Ben swallowed. “He lost the sight in one eye completely and can’t see much out of the other they think. His lung was punctured by a rib. He’s out of the hospital and home with Ingrid.”
“Okay.” He was silent for a time, his bandaged fingers picking idly at the sheet, processing this news. “At least we’ve maybe now discovered why he couldn’t be rehomed, yes?” He rubbed his own throat thoughtfully. He closed his one good eye, then swung his arm and smashed the water glass off the table. “That fucking cunting fuck of a whore.”
“Nikolas!”
Nikolas shrugged. “It’s only you who I don’t like to hear swear.”
§ § §
Four days later, they removed the bandages from Nikolas’s face. He wasn’t given any pain medication for this procedure, which he tried to remedy—forcibly. When they’d finished, Ben was allowed in again. He helped him to the bathroom. It was almost recognisable as his face now. It was still very swollen and beautiful shades of blue and purple, green and yellow, but it would heal. Everything would heal.
Nikolas turned to Ben and took his face in his hands. Very carefully he kissed him. It was the gentlest kiss they’d ever shared.
Ben then took over, cupping Nikolas’s face like a precious thing, butterfly-kissing his warm lips, kissing over his good eye, even placing the lightest of kisses on the fracture across his nose, and then pressing harder into the places that could take harder kissing, his neck, his throat, some of the bruising on his collarbone. Very carefully, Ben unbuttoned Nikolas’s shirt and kissed his healing shoulder wound, licking it gently, returning to his neck, licking and sucking. Ben’s hand strayed down to Nikolas’s jeans, and he grunted, clearly pleased and relieved at what he found, but when Nikolas pressed the hand on firmer, Ben eased away and shook his head. “Later.”
“Then let’s go.”
“You need to—”
“I need you, Benjamin. Everything else in this world I’ve discovered over the last few days is unnecessary to me. I need life, and I need you. Now, we’re leaving. Make yourself more useful than you usually do and pack my bag.”
§ § §
On the car ride back to the lodge, Nikolas cranked up the heat in the vehicle to almost unbearable levels, and this was to be a feature of their lives over the next few days. He wanted the cabin heated to tropical temperatures that forced Ben outside for frequent relief breaks. Ben went through the woodpile at twice the previous rate, keeping fires high and roaring all day. Ben would’ve let him burn the place down if that was what he needed.
Ben would never forget what he’d found in the snow that day when he and Squeezy followed the sound of the barking. It looked as if someone had been fed through a wood chipper. There was blood everywhere, sprayed out around the three bodies. Seeing Gabby so obviously dead, her throat ripped out and dragged across the snow, he knew all three of them were equally gone. It was not possible anything could have survived that bloodbath, and it didn’t occur to him to think it could be otherwise. It was Squeezy who’d found Nikolas was still alive. Just. It was Squeezy who immediately stripped off his own warm clothes and dressed the naked body as best he could then stripped Ben of his outer layers to use them as well, at the same time calling for an air ambulance and shouting at Ben to make him repeat it all in Danish. He’d made Ben sit with Nikolas, cradling him, protecting him as best as he could from the snow, while he ran into the shed and found the blankets and brought them out, wrapping up the unconscious man and the dog. When he could do no more for the injured, he’d covered the staring face of the dead. He was the one who drove one of the snowmobiles a little way away and set fire to it, sending up a whoosh of black smoke and orange flame into the blank, white landscape. He was the one who’d taken the unconscious dog to the vet while Ben travelled in the ambulance with Nikolas.
On the second day home, Nikolas was well enough to be helped down to the sofa. His skull fracture was still making him nauseous. He was weak and cranky. He complained about the almost constant pain from his cheekbone and broken nose. Ben suspected this last had far more to do with the fact they couldn’t kiss than it really did about pain, so he let him whine; he wanted to whine about the no kissing, too.
He eased onto the sofa as close as Nikolas could tolerate and handed him some coffee. Nikolas smelt it and turned his face away. “Coffee’s lost its appeal, I think.” He slid his hand into the back of Ben’s T-shirt, and down onto the warm skin beneath the waistband of his jeans. “So, it’s time to talk, maybe?”
“Are you sure—?”
“Just tell me. No one will tell me anything.”
“It was Gabby.”
Nikolas frowned, something he constantly did before remembering he had a broken nose. He then winced and seemed to regret that as well. “Gabby? Anna was your friend Gabby from…” He stopped for a while, thinking. “Ben, are you telling me I was taken out by a middle-aged, female librarian?”
Ben bit his lip. It wasn’t fair to laugh at Nikolas under the circumstances, and he hadn’t laughed much in the last few days; it felt strange now. Instead, he poked him very gently. “If you’d described her better, I’d have known who she was immediately.”
“I described her exactly.”
“You ranted that a woman with huge boobs and almost no clothes on told you she was pregnant with my baby. I didn’t think that described Gabby, who usually wore flannel and was old enough to be my mother.” Ben didn’t often deflect his own guilt by accusing Nikolas of failings—that was Nikolas’s trick with him—but the guilt and humiliation he felt at not seeing Gabby for what she was tore at him. He’d spent his adult life relying on his ability to judge people, and the one time he needed this skill to save Nikolas he’d abandoned it in favour of motherly hugs and the need for a grown-up to be there for him if he failed. He was pathetic. Self-hate gnawed at his belly.
“She saw us, you know. She was watching us when—”
“When we fought.”
“I was going to say when I hit you and—Hey, what’s wrong? Ben, don’t…”
Ben raised his eyes to the ceiling to try and regain some control. “I’m sorry, Nik. It was my fault. I can’t believe I said that to you—that I accused you of—If I could take it back—”
“Ben. Stop.” Ben could feel Nikolas’s thumb stroking the base of his spine. Nikolas appeared so pale, so tired, his eyes staring vacantly out over the snowy landscape, that Ben was sure Nikolas didn’t even know he was doing it. Ben was about to tell him again that it was his fault, about to try assuage some of the awful guilt he’d been living with for so many days, when Nikolas avowed quietly, as if he’d been asked a question he was determined to answer, “It was the afternoon before he shot Sergei. He saw us together in bed. Sergei and me.” He then looked straight at Ben. “You must have realised by now, Benjamin, after so many years this was not so repugnant to me. I was seventeen. If I’d wanted it stopped, I’d have stopped it. Tell me you understand this, because it’s very hard for me to admit this to you at last.” You are the only man I have ever willingly given my body to.
Ben put his hand to Nikolas’s bruised neck and cupped it lightly. Nothing else mattered except the thumb stroking on his warm skin and knowing Nikolas was here with him. Nothing.
Nikolas nodded. “So, God forgive me, but when I saw him watching, I tried to make him jealous. It seemed such a small victory for all I’d sacrificed. Well, I succeeded. He was very jealous—and confused by this, naturally.” He seemed lost in his dark thoughts for a moment then added, almost to himself, “Even after all this time I still don’t really know who he was jealous of—me? Sergei?” He shrugged and inevitably winced. “We fought, but it wasn’t much of a contest. His holidays consisted of travel and enjoying himself, mine didn’t. I pinned him down on the bed and then…” He turned and stared out of the window again. “She told me I was a bad man and she was right.”
Ben started to speak, but Nikolas laid his fingers on Ben’s lips. “I am a bad man, Ben, but I came to terms with this while I was in that shed. I’m what I am. It was the bad man in me that enabled me to survive. I can’t be a new man. I can only be myself: good, bad, and anything that lies between those two.” He eased his hand out and ran it up the shaved back of Ben’s skull.
Ben caught his hand and kissed each finger around the bandaging. There’d been a time, very recently, when he doubted he’d ever do this again.
§ § §
Ben had endured a very bad few days, and they didn’t seem to stop coming. The police had insisted on speaking with Nikolas as soon as he was conscious but hadn’t actually been able to make an appointment with him until it suited his convenience. It hadn’t suited him to speak to them at the station, either, so they made the journey through the snow to him. Ben was so nervous he managed to pour coffee down his T-shirt and was actually shaking when he answered the door and ushered them in. He resisted blurting out he was guilty of something and agreed to leave—at their insistence. Nikolas said he preferred him to stay. They objected. Nikolas studied his nails, and as they needed him to answer questions, he won. They sat down. Ben sat down. They eyed Nikolas. He raised his eyebrows at them, politely.
“Mr Beck, can you think of any reason why Gabriel Peterson abducted you?”
“No.”
“No? Did you have a relationship with Ms Peterson?”
“No.”
“No? Can you confirm what your relationship with Mr Rider is?”
“No.”
“No? You don’t know what your relationship with Mr Rider is?”
“Oh, I know what it is. I’m just not going to confirm it to you.”
“You’re not being very helpful, Mr Beck.”
“No.”
“Who’s Nikolas Mikkelsen, Mr Beck?”
“I have no idea.”
“Were you aware Mr Rider was taking money for sex from Nikolas Mikkelsen while he was in London? That Mr Rider is, in fact, a prostitute?”
Nikolas’s eyebrows rose a little higher and everyone in the room probably knew he was resisting the urge to look at Ben. “No. I wasn’t aware of that.”
“What happened between you and Mr Rider over the two nights before your abduction, Mr Beck?”
“Be more specific.”
Ben glanced at Nikolas out of the corner of his eye.
“We have physical evidence from Mr Rider that shows he was subjected to a prolonged and vicious assault. He was tied down, punched, beaten severely, and raped. Was there anyone else here, Mr Beck, besides you and Mr Rider?”
“No.”
“So you’re responsible for his injuries?”
“Yes.”
“Have you given Mr Rider money while you’ve been on Aeroe?”
“Be more specific.”
“Answer the question please. Have you given him money, paid for this lodge and paid for expensive meals in restaurants?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s return to the events of December fourteenth, Mr Beck. What did you do after you assaulted Mr Rider?”
“After? I believe I went to sleep.”
“Where was Mr Rider at this time?”
“Asleep alongside me, I should think.”
There was pause in the questioning. The detectives glanced at each other. One of them scratched his ear. “Mr Rider slept alongside you all night?”
“And all morning. We didn’t get up until lunchtime if I recall. I brought him up some coffee.”
“You brought him coffee?”
They regrouped once more. One of them gave a slight nod to the other. He turned a page in his notebook and began, “Shall I tell you what we believed happened, Mr Beck? We believe you came to Aeroe to meet Mr Rider, a male prostitute you formed a relationship with in London. While here, you discovered Mr Rider also had a relationship with Nikolas Mikkelsen and Gabriel Peterson. Perhaps you also discovered one of his former clients died in unexplained circumstances last year, and Mr Rider has been benefiting financially from that since. Indeed, he bought his vehicle with money he acquired through this incident. Angry, you tied him up, beat him and raped him, and threatened to stop supporting him financially. Mr Rider was the one who came up with the plan to abduct you. You’re a very wealthy man, Mr Beck. With the help of Ms Peterson, he took you from the lodge and held you for four days in her hunting shed. He didn’t call the police for almost half a day after you left the lodge, and we believe in this time he was securing you in the shed. However, guilty about her part in your abduction, Gabby visited you frequently with food and other items of comfort. It was, in fact, Mr Rider who inflicted the injuries upon you over those four days when you refused to give him money. Ms Peterson finally decided to let you go, and when Mr Rider discovered this, he attacked her and killed her. How do you respond to this, Mr Beck?”
Ben was about to confess to it all, but Nikolas did one of his best dismissive waves and said, “I’m tired now, gentlemen. I’d like you to leave.”
“Mr Beck, we didn’t want to have this conversation with Mr Rider present. Does Mr Rider have some sort of hold over you?”
Nikolas chuckled and considered Ben for a moment. “That I will confirm for you. Yes, he does most definitely have a hold over me. Now, as I’ve already told you, detectives, it’s time for you to leave.”
“We’re not—”
“Yes, we are finished. As you’re very well aware by now, there’s not a shred of forensic evidence to support your theory. Mr Rider was never in the shed. Mr Rider and I may stay on Aeroe for Christmas; we may return to London. If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact my lawyer.”
After they’d gone, Nikolas beckoned Ben to sit alongside him. He stared at Ben expectantly for a while, but when he got no response, he asked, “That’s what you shaved your hair for? Seriously, Ben? I have scabs and no hair to play with because you let them get to you?”
Ben closed his eyes. “You weren’t there. It was awful.”
“No, I wasn’t there. Come here.” He cupped Ben behind the back of his neck and pulled him down to lie in his lap. He tipped his head back on the sofa, clearly in some considerable pain now and very tired, just brushing his palm over Ben’s absent hair. “When does our partner in crime return? The last thing I remember is his hideous barking. He must be reprimanded for that, no? Perhaps it’s time for him to return to the shelter…”
§ § §
Ben called Squeezy and asked him to fetch Radulf the next day. He refused to leave Nikolas alone again and told Nikolas he had no intention of doing so until they were both too old to notice if they were abducted.
Radulf walked into the cabin unaided but bumped into the end of the sofa. He couldn’t coordinate yet with such little vision. Ben called to him gently, not wanting to startle him. He ignored the call and searched the room with his one faintly seeing eye. To do this he tilted his head theatrically, which made one ear flop up and over and his jowls hang open as if he were laughing. Nikolas snorted, and immediately Radulf seemed to find what he was searching for. He turned toward him, climbed up on the sofa next to him, and laid his head down in his lap. Ben was watching Nikolas’s face, and he quickly grabbed Squeezy’s arm and took him outside to look at the snow.
When Nikolas had recovered from his uncharacteristic moment of vulnerability, he ran his fingers through Radulf’s fur. Radulf stared up at him, one eye wide and unblinking, one milky and dead. They shared a bond now—a burden—memory of the pleasure of human blood and death. Nikolas chided softly, “You’re a bad dog.” Radulf banged his tail in agreement. Nikolas smiled as best he could. “We’ll be bad together, you and I.”