Paul Finch - Hunted

A 45-year-old multi-millionaire bachelor, he was exceptionally handsome – sun-bronzed, with a shock of crisp, grey hair – always fashionably dressed even in casuals, and the owner of two nifty motors, a Bentley Continental V8 and a Hyundai Veloster sport, so it seemed highly unlikely that he wasn’t already one of the most contented men in Britain. He also owned three sumptuous properties: a villa on the Côte d’Azur, where he spent the odd three-day break, a flash apartment in Swiss Cottage, purpose-bought as a crashpad from which to take in the London scene, and his ‘rural retreat’, as he referred to it, though it was actually his regular residence: a palatial, eight-bedroom former farmhouse in the Surrey countryside called Rosewood Grange. With 300 acres of verdant gardens attached, a private tennis court and croquet lawn, its own indoor swimming pool and the near-obligatory complement of priceless artworks and antiques, you’d have expected Rosewood Grange to be the jewel in a party king’s crown, the epicentre of a lavish, playboy lifestyle, where all the best people, including the most glamorous and connected women, came every weekend to get off their face.

Except that it didn’t serve that purpose, and it never really had.

Looks could be deceptive.

Aside from the occasional round of golf and a few restful hours spent angling on the River Mole, Lansing dedicated more energy towards supporting charitable causes than he did his own leisure. In addition, he was a workaholic. He ran several computer companies from his private office in Reigate, and had made the bulk of his money selling software products in the United States and the Far East. He also owned a chain of country inns and hotels aimed at a wealthy clientele. What was more, he liked to stay hands-on with all these interests – not because he didn’t trust his carefully appointed underlings, but more because he couldn’t conceive of a lifestyle spent, to use one of his own phrases, twiddling his thumbs all day.

However, now maybe – just maybe – thanks to a recent accident and a subsequent two-week sojourn in hospital, several days of which he’d spent hooked to a bank of ‘vital signs’ monitors in Intensive Care, he was beginning to readdress things.

As he threw his briefcase into the back of his Bentley that beautiful July morning, he paused briefly to admire the lush, sun-dappled greenery enclosing his home, and to breathe the seductive scents of the English woodland: rosebud, honeysuckle, fresh mint. Quite an improvement on the starch, bleach, and liberally applied antiseptics of the hospital.

Good Lord, it was great to be alive. But how much of a life was he actually living?

Okay, he’d made a kind of resolution while he was in hospital to take more holidays, to travel more regularly and extensively, maybe even to hook up with Monica again. And yet here he was, the first morning of his officially being ‘fit for work’, and he was already heading for the office at seven sharp. It was as though nothing had happened to disrupt his regular-as-clockwork routine. But it wasn’t like it would be difficult to make changes to this; Lansing was the boss after all – the only pressure he ever felt was the pressure he applied to himself. But he would still only get home after eight p.m., and as usual would dine alone on whatever collation Mrs Beetham, his housekeeper, had set out for him – except that no, Mrs Beetham was currently on holiday with Mr Beetham, Lansing’s gardener, so he would actually dine alone on whatever morsel of fast food, most likely a greasy fish and chip supper, he remembered to pick up on the way. His main viewing that night would be the business news, and his bedtime reading the financial press. This was his normal weekday schedule – and he was used to it and satisfied with it. But it was hardly a life in the true sense of the word.

A solitary individual with few real interests outside work, golf and fishing, Lansing had no yearning to ‘go out and do stuff’ as Monica had once tried to persuade him – not long before they broke up, in fact – but the incident on the river had made him realise that unforeseen disaster could be lurking around any corner, and that there were probably quite a few things he had yet to experience that would undoubtedly enrich his time on Earth. The mere memory of the roiling green water thundering in his ears as he was swept over the weir – the weight of it bearing down on top of him, pummelling his body, slamming him again and again on the slimy brickwork at the bottom of the plunge-pool, pinning him deep in that airless, icy void – was enough to set him quaking. How easy to recall the horrific realisation that this was it ; that without expectation, anticipation, or even a hint of warning, it was all suddenly, irreversibly over. Everything. The whole show. There would be no goodbyes, no sorting out of affairs, no time to fix the things that needed fixing. This was simply it. His allotted time had run out. Gone. Zip.

Almost in reflex, Lansing stripped off his blue silk tie.

It wasn’t necessarily a rebellion against the regimented world in which he’d so long been immersed. It didn’t mean that he was suddenly casting his sights further afield – looking out for a good time when he’d normally be assessing the markets. But it was a start, he supposed. Monica would certainly be surprised. He’d try and Skype with her later on, and gauge her reaction – and not just to the missing tie, perhaps to an on-the-hoof dinner invitation for whenever she was next in the UK.

Lansing tossed the tie into the back seat of his Bentley as he climbed behind the wheel. With a few deft strokes, he brought the magnificent machine’s six-litre twin-turbocharged engine purring to life. The dulcet strains of Vivaldi filled its leather interior. He eased it down his white gravel drive, increasingly enthused by his new outlook on life, by his determination to have some fun for a change. At the end of the day, why not? The nearby woods were thick with summer leaf, filled with birdcalls. The sun speared through the overhead canopy. When he looked beyond his desk, this world – which had so very nearly been snatched away from him – really was a glorious and invigorating place.

A short distance from the house, he slowed as he approached the drive entrance. The road beyond was only a B road, but it ran in a more or less direct line between Crawley and Dorking, and passed for long, straight stretches through gentle forest and farmland. As such, it was popular with boy racers, even at this early hour – idiots who’d left it too late to set out for work; idiots who were in danger of missing their flights from Gatwick; idiots who were trying to get home before the day began, so they could try to convince their wives or girlfriends that they hadn’t stayed out all night. But even without such a crowd of jackanapeses on the road, the point where Lansing’s drive connected with it was a bad one; right on a blind bend. To compensate, he’d had a large convex mirror fixed on the twisted oak trunk opposite, giving him excellent vantage in both directions for a considerable distance, and right now the way was clear.

As the ‘Spring’ harpsichord kicked in, he thumbed the volume control on the steering column. Lansing loved classical music, but he particularly loved the pastoral pieces, especially while driving through lush countryside on summer mornings. He checked the mirror opposite one final time – the road was still empty in both directions – and casually cruised out between the tall redbrick obelisks that served as his gateposts.

The sound of his collision with the Porsche Carrera was like a volcanic eruption.

When the sports car struck his front nearside it was doing over seventy miles an hour, and it catapulted over the top of him, flipping end over end through the air, turning into a fireball when it hit the road again some forty yards further on, from which point it continued to crash and roll, setting alight every bush and thicket along the verge, before wrapping itself round a hornbeam, which was almost uprooted by the impact.