Scott Mariani - The Bach Manuscript

‘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.