The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (198 page)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Rome

Ben was wandering slowly, alone, down a tunnel that went on forever, listening to the faraway echo of his own footsteps. The walls, floor and ceiling of the tunnel were white and bathed in a bright glow that came from everywhere and nowhere. As he walked on and on, he became aware of the strange works of art suspended either side of him. Their colours seemed to jump out at him, swirling, moving, though he couldn’t make out the images or what they signified.

He hit against something he couldn’t see. Reached his hands out and sideways and groped around until he realised there was a glass wall blocking his path. He could go no further. Narrowing his eyes, he peered through to the other side – and saw the figure standing there. A man in a mask. They gazed at one another, and then the man seemed to smile. He had a gun in his hand. In front of him were two kneeling, huddled shapes – or it could have been a hundred. Ben knew that the man intended to harm them. He thumped against the glass and yelled as the man raised the gun, taking aim at the kneeling figures; but no sound came out, and he was suddenly powerless and trapped as more glass walls seemed to press in from all sides. The man in the mask laughed as he pulled the trigger. His victims were screaming now.

The gun boomed. And again. A deep thud that reverberated through the walls. The victims went on screaming and screaming.

Ben woke suddenly and jerked upright in the darkness, blinking away the fog of sleep. For a few instants part of his mind seemed unwilling to detach itself from his nightmare – and then he realised he really could hear voices shouting, and the heavy thumping that was coming from beyond the rectangular strip of white light that outlined the door.

Reality was suddenly sharp and clear. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was 1.14 a.m. He was still fully dressed, wearing his shoes. He must have fallen asleep on the bed.

‘
Polizia!
’ yelled a voice from outside. The next thump on the door was a shattering crash that splintered the frame. The lock was still holding, but another impact like that and they’d be in.

Three options. One, stick around and find out what they wanted. Two, grab the .45 Ruger and start blasting holes in the door. Ben glanced back at the open window as another massive thud filled the room. He decided he preferred the third option. He snatched up his jacket and slipped it on.

The door crashed open in a shower of splinters. Armed police burst in, yelling and waving their pistols.

Before they’d even stepped over the threshold, Ben was already out of the open window, dropping down out of sight below the ledge and shooting out his right hand to grab hold of the bracket of the neon sign fixed to the wall a metre away. It held his weight. As he hung from it, his legs kicking in space, he could hear the cops crashing about in the hotel room. More yells. Another loud thud as they burst into the bathroom. Probably expecting to find him in the shower.

He glanced down. It was a pretty long drop to the street below, about seven or eight metres. The pavement seemed about an inch wide. Traffic rolled by, skirting around the two police Alfa Romeos that were pulled up outside the hotel entrance.

All he had to do was get down to the street before someone spotted him. He guessed that would happen within about the next fifteen seconds. He scrabbled the toecaps of his shoes against the wall, trying to get a purchase on it, but the stonework was covered in a smooth render that offered no footholds. Two metres to his right, an iron drainpipe was solidly attached to the wall. If he could get to it . . .

But it was too far to reach. He dangled helplessly. Any second now, the cops would be at the window.

Two more police-marked Alfas came screeching around the street corner and skidded to a halt outside the hotel. The doors flew open and four more Carabinieri scrambled out clutching pistols. They made straight for the hotel entrance.

All they had to do was look up.

‘I
told
you we should have taken a right back there!’ Gary Parsons seethed at his wife from behind the wheel of the six-berth motorhome as it lumbered through the night traffic. ‘Christ, you’re the one with the map!’

‘This thing’s all wrong,’ his wife Annabel complained, flapping the unfolded map across the dashboard. ‘I’m telling you I followed it perfectly—’

‘How can it be
wrong
? It’s a fucking
map
, for God’s sake. You read it, it tells you where to go. How hard can it be?’

‘Don’t yell like that. You’ll wake the kids.’

‘We should have been at the campsite hours ago,’ he grumbled bitterly. ‘Now we’re lost in the middle of Rome, thanks to you. I think I’m perfectly justified in yelling.’

‘What’s going on here?’ his wife said, pointing, as they passed a lit-up hotel entrance that was swarming with police.

‘How the hell should I know?’

They both shut up as they heard a soft
thump
from somewhere above them.

‘What was that?’ she said.

‘Dunno. Sounded like something landed on the roof.’

‘Or you’ve gone and hit something, more like,’ she said archly.

Gary looked in the mirrors, then craned his neck out of the window, thinking the high top of the vehicle must have snagged a streetlight or a road sign that he’d failed to notice while they’d been arguing. But he could see nothing. He damn well hoped he hadn’t damaged the new satellite dish.

His wife said, ‘Better stop and see what you’ve done.’

‘I’ve got nowhere to pull over,’ he replied through gritted teeth. ‘Can’t you see I’m in the middle of traffic? Look at all these police cars. You want me to get bloody arrested?’

‘Stop yelling!’

‘This is all
your
fault!’

The couple went on arguing as the motorhome lumbered on by the hotel and continued up the street.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ben lay pressed flat against the broad white expanse of the motorhome roof, feeling the vibrating thrum of the diesel engine through his body as they rolled away from the hotel.

Not exactly the ideal getaway vehicle. The thing couldn’t be doing more than thirty kilometres an hour, and he was plastered across the top of it for all to see. He craned his head to look behind him. Over the top of a large cargo storage box and two kids’ bicycles lashed to a luggage rack he could see the window of what had been his hotel room until just a moment ago. Dark silhouettes of the cops were milling around in the lit-up windows. Nobody was pointing after him, shouting ‘There he goes!’. As long as they all stayed focused on the inside of the room for another few seconds, he was clean away.

The motorhome kept moving, and Ben kept his gaze fixed on the receding hotel window. Nothing happened. Then, as the vehicle reached the corner of the street, it turned sharply to the left and he held on tight to the luggage rack to stop himself sliding sideways. These things hadn’t been designed with roof passengers in mind. He looked back once more as the side of a tall building blocked the hotel and the parked police cars from view.

Nobody came round the corner in pursuit. It wasn’t the most elegant escape ever made, but it was the end result that mattered. Ben imagined the police storming about the place, wondering where the hell he’d disappeared to, kicking in doors all through the hotel and arguing with the receptionist who’d be insisting that the guest hadn’t left the building. In different circumstances it might have made him smile. Maybe he could smile about it later, once he knew what all this was about. Maybe Roberto Lario had decided to have another polite chat about the gallery robbery. More likely, it had something to do with the late Urbano Tassoni.

The joys of celebrity
, Ben thought. Someone must have spotted him going into the politician’s place and recognised him from the newspapers or TV. Just great.

Two hundred metres further up the street, he felt himself sliding towards the bulky overcab section of the roof as the motorhome braked for a red light. ‘This is my stop,’ he muttered as he scrambled back towards the rear of the vehicle, looking for a way down. An aluminium access ladder ran down from the roof. He swung nimbly over the edge, climbed down the narrow rungs and dropped to the road as two young guys in a little Fiat pulled up behind. The lights turned green and the huge white boxy motorhome rumbled off, a giant fridge on wheels with British plates and a big GB sticker on the back.

Ben stepped aside to let the Fiat pass. The two young guys inside were staring at him, and one of them tapped a finger to his temple and said something to his friend that was probably ‘These Brits are crazy’.

Ben didn’t hang around waiting for them to recognise him, too. He ran across the road and began walking fast up the pavement, past closed shop doorways and windows. The streets were mostly empty, which made him feel conspicuous and vulnerable. Another police Alfa sped by, lights flashing.

He paused and turned away from the street to gaze at a bright boutique display. Just a casual window shopper out for a night stroll. Then he realised the window was full of half-naked female mannequins modelling lacy underwear, and moved on quickly. The pervert thing wasn’t an ideal way to avoid police attention.

The Alfa passed on by. Ben kept walking. But then, fifty metres down the road, it suddenly pulled a screeching U-turn and came back after him. He broke into a run, the clapping echo of his footsteps loud in the empty street. The car chased him. A squeal of brakes; he heard its doors open. A voice yelling
‘Alt! Polizia!’

Ben ran faster. Music was thumping from an alleyway up ahead. He darted into it, and the music got louder.

The alley terminated in a cobbled yard at the entrance to what must once have been some kind of warehouse or factory, but was now a late-night dance club. Its doorway was a pair of steel shutters, and the red light strobing from inside made it look like the gates of Hell. A mob of rowdy guys in their twenties were clustered around the cobbled yard, clutching beer bottles and yelling drunkenly in Dutch at some skimpily-clad Italian girls teetering inside the club in high heels. From the way the Dutch boys were taunting the bouncers, Ben guessed they’d been refused entry to the place. The bouncers were both heavy guys, bowling-pin forearms folded across bench-press chests. One wore a goatee and the other had a shaven head with tattoos over his ears. Their body language screamed
do not fuck with us
, but the Dutch guys were either too drunk or too cocky to heed it. It looked like a situation about to kick off. Sure enough, when Ben was still a few metres from the door, one of the Dutch crew lobbed a bottle. It narrowly missed the shaven-headed bouncer and shattered against the brick wall behind him.

The bouncers moved surprisingly fast for such big men. They waded in, and in two seconds three of the Dutch guys were on their backs. Ben slipped into the unguarded entrance before the scuffle turned into a full-on war. In his wake he could hear the yelling as the cops came racing down the alley and found their path blocked by a fistfight in progress. There was a screech of sirens and brakes at the top of the alley as at least two or three more police cars arrived on the scene.

Ben walked quickly through a bare brick corridor, the thump of the music building up to a head-filling roar. The corridor turned a corner and then opened up into a large, murky space that was heaving with bodies and smelled of beer and spirits and hot skin and the mixed perfume of the girls. The lights stuttered red, green, white over the sprawling mêlée of people dancing, making everything look like slow motion.

Beyond the crowded bar, Ben saw what he was looking for – the dim neon exit sign over the back door. He pressed on through the throng. Hearing an angry clamour behind him he glanced back over his shoulder and saw maybe eight, maybe ten Carabinieri swarming into the club, provoking jeers and catcalls from the dancers. They shoved people out of the way as they pressed aggressively through the crowd, scanning left and right. Their hands were on the butts of their holstered pistols and they looked serious.

Ben pushed on towards the exit. A hand on his arm made him turn abruptly, and he saw it was a girl. She was about twenty, skinny with dark hair and heavy eyeshadow. Her face and neck and the bare shoulder where her loose-fitting top had slipped down were shiny with sweat; her eyes were bright as she smiled at him and mouthed inaudible words that he guessed were an invitation to dance. She looked a little high, a little unsteady on her feet.

He hesitated a moment. Two of the cops were drawing close through the crowd. They’d be searching for a guy on his own. Someone nervous and furtive and aiming to put as much distance between himself and them as possible. Someone who’d stand out a mile in here. Ben smiled at the girl and nodded, mouthed ‘Yeah, sure’. She pressed up close to him and began to sway her hips. He danced with her, matching her movements. She closed her eyes and threw back her head and raised her arms high in the air.

The cops came brushing by. Ben took the girl’s arm, whirling her round so his back was to them, and she laughed, and so did he. He grabbed an empty beer bottle from a nearby table and pretended to swig out of it, acting drunk. She laughed louder, her teeth flashing red in the lights.

A few metres away, a tallish guy with fair hair and a slim build was making his way over to the bar. The two cops grabbed his arm and whisked him round. They shone a torch in his face, glanced at one another, then shook their heads and shoved him away.

Time to go, Ben was thinking. He’d picked up the dance moves pretty well by now. Basically you thrashed around, looked completely out of control and grinned like an idiot: that way you blended perfectly into the crowd. Still gyrating his hips and waving the beer bottle about, he guided the girl away from the dance floor and through the exit.

It didn’t lead outside, but through to a lounge where the mood was a lot more sombre and the emphasis seemed to be squarely on getting quietly slaughtered. Some guys were playing pool in one corner, and a few couples and assorted drinkers were clustered round the bar. A little grey guy in a rumpled suit was drowning his sorrows, an attaché case resting against the legs of his stool. Bad day at the office, maybe. A little way from him sat a tired-looking blonde in a low-cut outfit, knocking back what definitely wasn’t her first gin and tonic that night. Nobody was doing much talking. A few faces were turned towards the small TV over the bar, gazing uninterestedly at the passing images even though the sound was muted. From the opposite corner came a draught of cooler air, and Ben noticed another doorway marked TOILETS leading out to a narrow passage littered with beer crates.

The girl he’d been dancing with was watching him expectantly, either because she thought he was going to buy her a drink, or else take her somewhere more private. She staggered a little as she clutched his arm. He asked her name, and in a slurry giggle she told him it was Luisa. He took her wrist and pushed her gently back. ‘Thanks for the dance, Luisa,’ he said. ‘Make sure you get home safe tonight, OK?’

She frowned at him.

‘Hey,’ someone said, nodding at the TV. A few people glanced over.

The smiling face of Urbano Tassoni was plastered all over the screen. Then the picture cut to a dark street, swirling lights of emergency vehicles and a lot of official milling around as a good-looking brunette Ben recognised as the reporter Silvana Lucenzi talked soundlessly into a mike. The heading ‘BREAKING NEWS: URBANO TASSONI MURDERED’ scrolled in bold white letters across the bottom edge of the screen. The barman idly reached for a remote and turned up the volume. The next image to flash up on the screen was Ben’s face, the photo he used for his business website.

‘. . . suspect is believed to be armed and extremely dangerous,’ Silvana Lucenzi was saying. ‘The public are being warned not to approach him under any circumstances . . .’

Faces at the bar turned slowly to stare at Ben. The guys playing pool had laid down their cues and were standing there, frozen. Luisa frowned more deeply, the confusion in her eyes turning quickly to a shade of fear.

Ben shrugged. ‘Don’t believe everything you see on television,’ he said, and then moved for the exit.

Just a little too late. As he made it to the doorway, there was a shout and he turned and saw five cops push through into the lounge bar. The barman pointed but they’d already spotted him. Their pistols were drawn. One was clutching a taser gun.

Ben didn’t much feel like having sharp wire darts embedded in his flesh, connected to an incapacitating electric current that would have even the biggest, most violent guy down on the floor in seconds, struggling as helplessly as a landed fish while cops surrounded him and trussed him up in handcuffs. He ducked away out of the exit, kicking over a stack of crates that blocked his path. Cool night air washed over him and made his clothes feel clammy as he ran down the narrow passage, slammed through the ramshackle door at the end and out into a deserted backstreet.

Racing footsteps and yelling voices came right after him. He ran harder, didn’t look back. After a hundred metre sprint, the backstreet spat him out on the main road. His pursuers weren’t far behind him. He could hear them radioing for support.

He bolted across the street, narrowly avoiding being hit by a passing car. On the other side of the road was an iron railing and a sign for a subway station. He vaulted the railing, went thundering down the concrete steps, shouldered hard through the swing doors. He passed the ticket office without slowing down, and an unshaven guy in a uniform yelled as he hurdled the turnstile. Signs pointed this way and that as gleaming white-tiled tunnels branched off in different directions. Ben sprinted down the nearest one, then hammered down a slow-moving elevator. Another junction, another split-second decision, another snaking tunnel.

Deep under Rome, the atmosphere was thick and stifling. As Ben approached the station platform, a breathy, whistling slap of warm air woofing up the tunnel and a crescendo of wheels on tracks told him that a train was coming.