This Other Country (30 page)

Ben nodded and found the suit for him.

“Shirt?”

Ben handed him a new one still in its packaging.

They went into the kitchen for tea, Squeezy immediately starting to play with Radulf. “The bastard out?”

Ben nodded. “Riding.”

Squeezy laughed. “You knew who I meant.”

Ben smiled weakly and put the kettle on.

“You remember that time we went skiing to Berghof Urban with the REME, or is that in your big fucking memory gap?”

“No, I remember.”

“Remember that colonel who drank you under the table? He was there with his daughter? He was my old CO in 1 Para. Killed on his bloody quad bike last week. It rolled over on him. Funeral’s in Salisbury Cathedral. Dead posh. PM’s gonna be there an’ all—course he’s General McConaughey now. Was. Shit. What a fucking stupid way to—”

Ben stared at him. “General McConaughey? The AG?”

“Was, yeah. Retired now, course. Probably too old to ride around on quad bikes, if you ask—What’s wrong?”

“Fuck. He did it. That stupid fucking bastard.”

“Who did what?”

Ben turned away and went into the main living area to the study. He sat down at one of the computers and tried to turn it on. He swore, brushed past Squeezy and went across the swim lane into the private rooms at the back. Squeezy trailed after him. Ben tried Nikolas’s computer too, but swore once more.

“What’s up, Diesel?”

Ben took a deep breath, but before he could answer they heard Nikolas talking to Radulf in the kitchen. Ben pushed past his friend again and followed the sound.

§ § §

Nikolas was windblown, cold, and extremely invigorated. He was about to make a move on Ben, when he spotted the other man behind him, so instead he veered to the counter and asked what the suit on the back of the chair was for. Ben ignored this. “Why have the computers all got passwords on them?”

“What? Why—what do you want to know?”

Ben hesitated. “I want to go out to eat. I was going to look for somewhere.”

“Okay. We can go out. I’ll go and change.” He raised his brows at Squeezy as he passed, and the man gave the tiniest shrug, silently communicating with each other, “
What’s up with him? No idea
.”

Nikolas took longer than he’d planned because he got a text from Emilia with complex questions about her grandmother’s schedule, totally beyond his texting ability to reply to, so he’d told her he’d email her. Once he got on the computer, he checked his recent investments. Then he had to shower and dress.

An hour later, he was in the kitchen, tossing the keys from one hand to the other and annoying Squeezy, his standby when Ben wasn’t available. He checked his watch. “What did he say he was doing?”

“He didn’t say anything to me. I thought he was in the shower, shagging you.”

Nikolas winced. “No. I thought he was with you. Ben?”

There was no sign of him in the house, which although it was made of glass was extremely large and took some time to search. They ended up in the main living room, having gone in opposite directions to find Ben. The computer was on—Google homepage. Nikolas stared at it. “How did he bypass?—he guessed the password.”

“What?”

“Ben! He guessed the password. I just used my own name. I didn’t have time to think one up.”

“Well Nikolas isn’t fucking hard to guess, is it?”

“No. Aleksey. I used Aleksey…”

They were silent for a moment until Squeezy ventured the obvious hesitantly, “He’s got his memory back?”

Nikolas didn’t reply immediately. He licked his lips. “He was cold. When he came back from his run!” Nikolas suddenly took off, Squeezy not far behind.

They crashed into the garage. It was empty. Ben’s bike was gone.

Lying in the centre of the space, neatly placed, was Ben’s watch—the tracker Nikolas had bought him and had him wear.

Nikolas swore again and picked it up almost reverently.

Squeezy joined him in the cursing, only in English. “Where’s he fucking gone?”

Nikolas didn’t even want to think about possible answers to that question. An event that had caused Ben to completely lose his memory—his mind—had come back to him suddenly. What might it cause him to do this time?

Premorbid tendencies.

They went back into the house, Nikolas phoning the rest of the team to let them know what had happened. He sat at the computer and checked the history. Squeezy was perched on the edge of the desk.

“I shouldn’t have mentioned a fucking funeral. Depressing bloody things at the best of times.”

“He was looking for Atwell.”

“Well, duh. He won’t find him that way. We’ve tried. Katie’s tried, and if she can’t…Fuck, Diesel liked the daughter. I remember now. What was she called? Some posh bloody name. Pippa? Posy? Right looker. Not at a funeral, course.”

“Shut up.”

“Yeah, right you are. Sorry. Only McConaughey was a—”

Nikolas jerked his head up at the name.

§ § §

Squeezy told him the story of the retired Adjutant General and the accident on a quad bike. Nikolas remembered an intense ex-major and a message scrawled on a bedroom wall: ‘
I will leave darkness behind me
.’

He frowned back at the computer.

Ben had moved on from Atwell to…gay porn?

Squeezy sniggered then saw Nikolas’s expression as he cursed, “That fucking film!”

“What?”

“He’s going to track Atwell using the film company. I forgot! That pretentious fucker was the executive producer on some dumb shit film. Call Kate. Tell her to meet us at the house.”

§ § §

It was only as they were halfway to London that Nikolas realised his huge error.

He told Squeezy to pull over, and he did at the next service station.

He sent the other man for coffee.

He sat in the car, the engine ticking quietly.

Had he read this all wrong?

What was Ben thinking?

There were several possibilities as far as Nikolas could see, and none of them were good.

Ben had regained his memories of that night in the water mill. But more than this, perhaps, Ben probably now knew the other things that made up the ten years he’d lost.

And now he hadn’t had time and space to gradually absorb these terrible things back into his life, cope with them, compartmentalize them as everyone had to with bad memories. Nikolas had enough of these himself to know this was the only way to cope. Ben, however, had come crashing back to awareness of all these things.

The suicide attempt…

The family he’d gained and lost…

Discovering his mother was dead—murdered…

Premorbid indeed. And all those crushing recollections may have rushed in on top of the last, awful one. “
I’m just an actor
…”

When he’d heard Squeezy’s story of the quad bike accident, Nikolas had immediately assumed Ben had been furious that the legacy of Fergus Atwell’s work was still being felt. His poisonous little army of bitter men, carrying out their personal vendettas under the guise of a righteous anger against a world that had castigated them for being different. Nikolas had imagined Ben was going to find Atwell and end his recruiting campaign for good.

Now he wondered.
I am leaving darkness behind me.

Was Ben going to leave his darkness behind him? Was he going to join them?

Did Ben see this as his only way out from such destructive memories?

Because, of course, hadn’t each one of Atwell’s twisted little group taken their own lives after their acts of revenge? Squeezy’s own nephew, Jono, killed the Islamic students, but then turned the gun on himself. Did Atwell somehow seek out people with a premorbid tendency—those who took the world too seriously, who tried to right wrongs that would always exist, who would always find those wrongs overpowering them—and use their own demons against them?

He thought about the Ben he’d been privileged to meet again this week—he was Ben relieved of the shadow that had crept across him over the ten years he couldn’t remember. Despite his confusion and anger at his memory loss, Ben had smiled more this week than Nikolas had seen in months. He’d had a vitality and rawness to him like a wild creature before taming.

And then the worst thought of all came to Nikolas.

It didn’t rush in with a fanfare, because it had been lurking at the back of his mind, its insidious whispering intruding until he could suppress it no longer. Hadn’t the wellspring of Ben’s darkness over these ten years been…him? If Ben hadn’t met
him,
he would still be in the army doing the job he’d loved. If Ben hadn’t met
him,
he wouldn’t have tried to kill himself. Even the tragic events with Ben’s family would never have had happened if Ben hadn’t met
him
.

He
was the cause of it all.

He
was
Ben’s premorbid tendency.

§ § §

Nikolas didn’t attempt to express any of this until they were in London around the familiar table in his kitchen. Squeezy, Tim, Jackson and…Kate. She was there. She was outwardly unflustered. But she didn’t catch his eye.

He’d called them, intending for them to find Ben before Ben did something he’d regret—something
else
he’d regret. Before he punished Atwell for what he’d caused to happen in the water mill.

Now he didn’t know what to say.

For the first time in many years, Nikolas didn’t know what to say about a situation. Reticent and reserved by nature, except with those he trusted implicitly, he wasn’t about to venture into his private musings about his life with Ben—put words to the thought that
he
was the darkness Ben was running from—perhaps he was afraid they’d all agree too readily…well, duh, we knew
that
…

It didn’t help Kate being there. Not only had she shaken his faith in the loyalty of his team—and therefore his judgement in selecting it—she was tangible proof of how absolute his darkness was.

As far as anyone around this table knew for sure, he and Ben had only started sleeping together four years ago, when they’d both left the department and moved into this house in London together. He knew the truth, of course—and so did Ben, come to that. They’d carried on a secret affair that had begun the first weekend after Ben’s interview for the job in the department, meeting at Barton Combe for the occasional weekend or in hotels between ops. And for six months of this time, Ben had also dated Kate—openly. He’d moved into her apartment for a while, the perfect boyfriend, all the time meeting up with Nikolas to fuck him, be fucked…anonymous, private, and totally secret.

Although Nikolas always maintained he’d wanted their relationship with no strings attached, had he not stepped up the frequency of their meetings after the first time Ben had mentioned Kate?

“What are you doing this weekend?”

“Oh, I’m going out with Kate Armstrong in the typing pool on Saturday.”

“Kate. My computer expert?”

“Yeah. Thought we’d go see the new James Bond.”

“You are going to a film together?”

“Yep. Proper date. Curry house after.”

The weekend after that date, he’d taken Ben to Paris, and they’d spent the whole weekend together. He’d taught Ben lots of good swear words in French as they’d fucked.

He’d deliberately allowed Ben more of himself, just as Ben had begun to dig in with Kate. He knew exactly how their relationship was progressing. He ran a black ops department, for fuck’s sake. He’d had Kate followed, monitored her calls. After that first mention of a date, Ben had never spoken of her again. But Nikolas had watched the growing intimacy with great interest.

It had been so easy. How could Kate compete? And it hadn’t even been done with presents and spoiling Ben, which he could do so much easier than Kate ever could. Nikolas was too clever for that. He’d won Ben over by giving Ben the one thing he’d desperately wanted—attention. Ben was forever seeking something he’d lost at eight years old. Nikolas—wealthy, sophisticated, intelligent, mature—had seen this need as his niche and had ruthlessly exploited Ben’s vulnerabilities. He’d found out about a day spent with Kate at the zoo? That weekend, he’d started teaching Ben how to ride.

Kate hadn’t even been in the race. She’d wanted an
equal
as a partner, a
man
in her life—not someone who wanted to be
absorbed
. Nikolas had seized on the child in Ben, the lost innocent, and wanted that as much as the man.

Nikolas didn’t need to examine his motives too closely to see why the innocent child within Ben had attracted him. Ben wasn’t the only one with loss in his life. Nikolas had seen in Ben an opportunity to find his missing half—his better half. Ben wasn’t his brother Nika, but he was what Nika
represented
. A chance to do things better this time.

And what had Nikolas done with this second chance? This wild, savage creature he’d taken and broken and tamed to his own desire?

Premorbid tendencies.

That’s what he’d done.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Ben made it to Grantham before dark. He had a satnav on his phone and used it to locate the headquarters of the film company: Tremour Productions. It was a nebulous office in a block of other commercial companies. It didn’t feel right. Too corporate. He took off his helmet and left it with his bike, walking into the reception in his leathers and boots. The girls on the desk looked up and…fell. They didn’t stand a chance. He was aware of their reaction to him, something he’d seen all his life from people, men and women alike, but always ignored. Now he used it.

Within five minutes, he had a date for that night, but, more importantly, the address of the studios where the films were shot—an old industrial estate on a farm ten miles east.

He returned to his bike and set the new address.

He had a feeling Nikolas wouldn’t be far behind, and he desperately needed to stay ahead of him.

The film studios were in farm buildings surrounded by temporary structures—mobile homes, camper vans and some tents. Ben reconnoitred for a while at a vantage point some distance away. One feature of the film industry appeared to be messengers on motorcycles. He intercepted one on the lane outside the farm, gave him a hundred pounds and relieved him of his ID, box and clipboard.