CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was mid-afternoon. He’d done as Nikolas had asked and investigated the stepfather, and now everything had changed. Clearly, Nikolas had been privy to information that Ben hadn’t been given. This and the slight niggle that Kate had been offered a job—a well-paying job—without Ben being consulted (or paid himself), made Ben reluctant to return home just yet. On a whim, he continued driving out of London and onto the M4. He was still driving when he hit the M5 interchange and still motoring when he reached Exeter. Radulf was clearly fascinated by Devon. He’d pulled his head in on the motorway, his jowls in imminent danger of detaching, but now, winding around the narrow lanes, he had his face to the wind with grinning trails of saliva streaming out and messing the rear window. Ben smiled at him in the mirror. He was relieved that he could still smile.
He reached the cottage by early evening. Clicking his fingers to the dog for him to follow, he rang the bell. Tim answered the door. They hadn’t seen each other for almost two months, and the last time they had, Tim had still been suffering the physical effects of his beating from the Mafferty brothers. “We have phones in Devon, stranger. You could always call first, you know.” Tim grinned. “Don’t ever see that as an imposition.”
“Dickhead.” Ben pushed past. “This is Radulf. He likes sausages. John home?” Tim shook his head.
“He’s at a conference in Bristol. You hungry?”
Ben was about to reply that he was always hungry, which was always true, except suddenly the thought of food made him feel sick. Tim saw the pale tinge around Ben’s eyes and made him sit. “Tea. I’ll make some tea.” He kept a wary eye on Ben as he boiled the kettle. “What’s up, Jaime? Joking aside, you don’t ring for two months? Two months and then you just turn up?”
Ben was playing with Radulf’s ears, turning them inside out so he had to flick them back, both enjoying the game. He sighed. “It’s Ben, and I need your advice.”
Tim’s eyebrows rose. “But you do know I’m a professor of ethics, right? I didn’t think you worried yourself overmuch with ethical dilemmas…Ben.”
“Maybe I don’t. Maybe I just need someone to agree with me. To agree with what I’m going to do.”
“And your…friend? The man you were working for…? He can’t help you with this?”
Ben frowned. “It’s complicated. I don’t want him—” What? Involved? To intervene? Hurt? All or none of these? Ben felt the oddest sensation. A pricking behind his eyes. He swallowed. Fuck, was he about to cry? Tim put a mug of tea in front of him.
“Talk to me.”
Ben did. He told Tim about the case from beginning to end, about his doubts and then about Jeremy and what he had found on the computer. Tim interrupted, “Where is the computer now?”
“In the car.”
“Jesus. Bring it in. If your car was broken into…”
Ben retrieved the computer and placed it on the table between them. They both stared at it as if it were a ticking time bomb.
“One thing’s bloody clear, Ben. The girl has to be protected from this man.”
“Yes, I know. That far I got all by myself.”
“Well, I guess there are only two ways that can happen. Remove her from him or vice versa. The first option takes her from her mother. Although I agree the mother has some degree of blame here, she has kept the girl safe so far—it doesn’t sound as if she lets her out of her sight or leaves her with the stepfather. The second option leaves the girl with her mother and in her own home—no trauma, childhood preserved.”
Ben caught his gaze and held it. Tim didn’t blink. Ben said hesitantly, “You know what you are saying, don’t you? Remove him from her? I don’t think either of us is thinking go to the police with this …”
Tim gave a fractional shake of his head and keeping Ben’s gaze said clearly, “Utter. Complete. Waste. Of. Time. The police in this country aren’t concerned with protecting anyone, Ben—except their paymasters. They’ll probably accuse you of a hate crime, burglary and stalking, and you’ll have to pay him compensation.”
Ben pursed his lips, taken aback. “So what happens when you have no faith in the system left then?” Tim’s gaze still didn’t falter. Ben raised his eyebrows. “Interesting ethics course you must teach, Professor.”
Tim suddenly put his head into his hands. “I did a lot of thinking after our last encounter, Ben. Meeting someone like you, seeing the things you did…Surely the whole point of what I do is to try and see the world from an ethical viewpoint? It’s not a case of what is legal or illegal but what is fundamentally right or wrong—what the universe would want each of us to do. And it never seems as if those who have the power ever think like that. Can you give me one example of anything a politician has ever done that was actually good for the people? One thing? I can’t. Can you give me an example of where the guilty got what they deserved, and the innocent and good got to live the lives they’ve earned by being righteous? I can’t. ”
“You’re saying killing the fucker is the ethical way to go?”
Tim blanched and looked away. “Put like that…” Then he squared his shoulders. “Yes. I’m sick of living in a world where there is so much wrong, Ben. I’m sick of it. I want to make the world a better place, and all I do is teach because I can’t do. You told me once to be on the side of the angels. Well, here I am—I’m on your side. I want to be the change.”
Ben leant back in his chair. “All right. Then it’s decided.” He closed his eyes. “I’m so fucking tired, Tim. Of it all.” He felt a hand on his leg.
“Come to bed…?”
Ben opened his eyes. He could see the whole scenario play out, mounting the stairs, shedding clothes and inhibitions, and then the mounting of other things. But his life had changed now. “I’m pathetic, Tim. I’m sorry. I’m so bloody sorry. I love him. I can’t stop thinking about him. Doesn’t matter what I’m doing, he’s like an obsession, an addiction I can’t cure. The more I get of him, the more I want. I think I know him, but he just ups and changes again. He’s my slippery slope. I think he’ll be the death of me…and this is way too much information given the…” He waved vaguely at the stairs.
Tim shook his head fondly. “Then take the spare room, Ben, and just sleep. Even for a few hours. You’ve been thinking too much for too long, if you ask me. I guess you’ll need clarity and focus now for what you have to do—if you go through with it.”
Ben took the laptop with him, reluctant now to let it out of his sight. Radulf followed him to the bedroom and took the opportunity of being in a stranger’s house to climb onto the bed. Ben let him. He wanted the comfort. He was even more pathetic than he thought, having a scruffy hound in bed with him rather than the gorgeous, eminently beddable professor of ethics he could hear undressing in the next room. Being in love was a total bitch.
§§§
Ben left Devon with a slightly lighter heart. He headed home and arrived in London by mid-morning. Nikolas was in the kitchen, for once not smoking. He was standing at the window, watching a cat negotiating the garden wall. “Hello, stranger.”
Ben put the computer on the table. “We need to talk.”
Nikolas didn’t turn around. “About your latest overnight trip to Devon?”
“Oh, fuck off, you idiot, and sit down.” Nikolas turned, a flash of real anger in his eyes, until he saw Ben’s expression.
“What’s wrong?”
Ben nodded at the chair. Nikolas sat down. Ben leant forward and told him everything—including what he intended to do about it. Then he added, “I slept with the bloody dog, by the way. In case you missed the last month—I love you, you moron.”
Nikolas toyed with the computer, turning it around in small circles, thinking.
“How will you kill him?”
Ben let out a breath of relief. He’d wanted Tim’s advice, but he needed—craved—Nikolas’s affirmation. He always had.
“That’s the easy part.”
“So, the hard part?”
“I’m going to take Alice to her father afterward—as we agreed.”
Nikolas looked up. “That does surprise me. Why?”
Ben shrugged. “She sacrificed her child for a good life. For lunches and fucking clothes and—”
“Ben. No. That is what you believe of your mother.” Nikolas raised his eyes. “Benjamin, I am so sorry, you are seeing parallels here that do not exist.”
Ben’s eyes widened. “No! She—” He couldn’t continue.
All the confusion of the case came flooding out, all his suppressed pain, the connection he’d felt to Alice from the very first day—because Nik was right, that was his mother. She’d left him with his father so she could have a better life. He pushed his chair away from the table, blindly heading to the door and privacy. He felt a hand seize his arm and another catch him around his neck, and he was pulled into a tight embrace. They didn’t speak for many minutes. Ben wasn’t used to being outwardly emotional, and Nikolas certainly wasn’t used to dealing with emotion, but they both coped remarkably well, mainly because the embrace turned to kissing, and Ben’s repressed tears flowed on the intense pleasure of feeling Nikolas’s lips kissing them away. Before they knew it, they were unbuttoning shirts, shrugging off jeans and finding skin. Nikolas utterly refused to lie down on the kitchen floor, so they had to take it to the bed, and by the time he had Nikolas pliant and welcoming beneath him, Ben had recovered from his emotional meltdown. He brushed his thumb over Nikolas’s cheekbone and kissed him again. Nikolas held the back of Ben’s neck and murmured around the kissing, “Do not blame the mother too much, Ben. She has kept the girl safe this far. I believe she has been trying to leave him for sometime, but no one will help her.”
Ben stopped kissing him. “She should just leave!”
Nikolas shook his head sadly, eyeing Ben. “Life is not black and white.”
“Yes. It is. It can be.”
“No. It is not. If she leaves, the child’s whole life changes. No private school, no ballet, no riding lessons, no nice house. Everything changes. Is that better for her?”
“Yes! She’d be safe!”
Nikolas closed his eyes. “Ben, such things as this Jeremy would do…sometimes there is no one to help, and the child has to learn to adapt, to hide in the shadows…” He opened his eyes and sighed. “But that was another child. He learnt too well, perhaps.”
Ben was still fixated on his own thoughts and hardly listening to Nikolas. He rolled off. “You don’t want me to take her to her father? Isn’t that where we came into this case?”
“I do not know. I am confused by this, too. If he suspected this man Jeremy, why not help the wife and daughter together? It strikes me that he may be taking Alice more to punish his ex-wife than he is concerned by the girl’s welfare.”
“Shit! I wish we’d never taken this case. In fact I wish we’d give up this whole line of work. Why are we doing it? We could both do other things.”
“Oh, this will be interesting.”
“You could…crap, I don’t know. Be a translator! There you go.”
“This is true. You could be a dog walker.”
“Thanks. You could run a riding stable.”
“Death first. You could be a model.”
Ben smiled. “Aftershave?”
Nikolas raised an eyebrow. “I was hoping for underwear.”
“Oh, God, all right. She stays with her mother. But what’s to stop her bringing another man into the house? She’s…needy, Nik. She’s weak.”
“Ben, she had the right to try and find a good life for herself—your mother. Don’t blame her too much. Don’t let it cloud your whole life.”
“Don’t blame her!” Ben punched the pillow and Nikolas winced. “I was eight, Nik. I came home from school one day and all her things were gone. Dad came home from work and found me there. I didn’t speak a word for six months. I ran away every chance I got to look for her. I never believed she’d gone voluntarily. I thought she’d been taken. I thought if I gave up looking she’d be in just…the next place. Eight, Nik, I was eight, climbing out of my window at night to look for her! My dad died of a broken heart. He never even got to see me join the army.”
“I know, Ben. I know all this.”
“And you tell me not to blame her?”
“Yes. It is sad. I know this for you. But she may not have been to blame so much.”
“Fuck off. I was eight. Talk to me about sad.”
Nikolas began to run his fingers through Ben’s hair. Ben resisted at first but then allowed it, turning into the comfort offered. “By the way, Benjamin, I prefer it when you say fuck me rather than fuck off.”
Ben nodded into Nikolas’s chest. “Sorry. It’s been a bloody awful few days.”
“So, what will you do with the stepfather? Nothing must come back to us.”
“No. I was thinking he was going to kill himself.”
“No. Make him disappear.”
“But then there’s no closure for Felicity or Alice.”
“An accidental death then.”
“He doesn’t deserve that.”
“A very painful accidental death?”
Ben chuckled, even though he knew this was hardly appropriate. Nik stopped running his fingers through Ben’s tousled black hair and slapped his head lightly instead in admonition. “Remember the girl and the woman. They will know the method of the death eventually. You would wish to spare them that. It is not easy to know someone died a horrible death, even if you no longer love them.”
Ben raised his head from Nikolas’s chest and took a deep breath for courage. “Is that a personal reflection from prison camp?”
Nikolas pressed Ben’s head back onto his chest. “Good things can come from bad beginnings. You do realise that the nine-year-old boy living rough on the moors turned into the SAS solider I eventually recruited, don’t you? By the time you were sixteen, you were already an exceptional young man with unusual skills and self-reliance.”
“You neatly turned that conversation from you back to me.”
“As I always will. Come.” Nikolas tapped him on the shoulder. “You have work to do. Do it well, Ben. Nothing to tie this to us.”