This Other Country (31 page)

Totally anonymous now, he wandered around the set, watching, listening.

It actually didn’t take him long to find what he was seeking—who he was searching for. At the back of one of the big sheds, in a separate room, a meeting was taking place. It was so incongruous compared to what Ben had expected in his mind when seeing this man again that he couldn’t help hearing Nikolas’s voice—
surreal
, the strong Danish accent mangling the word slightly, as it always did. It
was
surreal—Doctor Fergus Atwell sitting at a table, animatedly discussing…a script. Ben’s mind was in such a place of darkness, where blood and death stalked him, he actually felt his mouth go dry and a prick of anxiety washed over him. Could he do this? He stepped back from the window, discarded the box and clipboard, paused by the door for one moment, then strode in—six foot four, black leather and very, very angry.

Fergus Atwell glanced up.

Another man pointed out unnecessarily, “We’re in a meeting here, bud.”

Ben just nodded, not dropping Atwell’s gaze. The doctor stood uncertainly.

“It was a terrible mistake. I’m sorry. We didn’t…a scene, just like this…We needed something big, something that would get everyone’s attention. National news.” He held up some papers.

Ben nodded. “I know.”

“What do you want?”

Ben came closer, right up close and personal. “I want to leave darkness behind me.”

§ § §

Nikolas shook himself from his reverie and realised they were talking amongst themselves, making their own plans. With the new information, Kate had also found the film company for which Fergus Atwell had been an executive producer on the movie
Dare
. It had registered offices in Grantham, Lincolnshire, no more than a couple of hours from them. Squeezy said he’d be glad if Ben did take the fucker—Nikolas assumed he meant the doctor—out. He deserved it.

“I don’t think he’s going there to stop them. I think he’s going there to join them.”

His comment was met with silence.

Then total derision.

He almost wanted to turn around to see if someone else—someone not their boss, not…him—had just entered the room. He held his ground, outlined some of his reasoning. They listened.

Even Radulf looked derisive now.

This was Ben!

He fucking knew that, gritted his teeth on their incomprehension, and tried again. They weren’t having it.

This was Ben
.

And then it hit him. They’d not been living with
new
Ben for a week. They’d not suffered the terrible revelation that new Ben was
original
Ben—Ben Rider before the darkness of Nikolas Mikkelsen had descended upon him. And they hadn’t got yet that the Ben they knew would have worked this out for himself.

I will leave darkness behind me.

Indeed.

He was wasting his breath. What could he tell them to convince them? He certainly wasn’t going to share his innermost thoughts and feelings with anyone. He wasn’t going to tell them the monster he saw every day in the mirror when he shaved had finally been seen by Benjamin Rider.

They wanted to go to Grantham? He wanted to go to Grantham. Kill the man or help him, it came down to the same plan: find Doctor Fergus Atwell.

§ § §

They had a more private meeting. Ben thought they would. They stood at the back of one of the sets, surrounded by props, and costumes hanging on rails, and the unreality of the whole situation only made it easier. Ben didn’t have to try and justify what he was doing with his real world or try to reconcile memory with reality, he just went with the flow of the now. This was all that mattered.

Atwell was incredibly anxious, all the confidence he’d portrayed as a doctor in the therapy course gone, but it was a bullying kind of nervousness Ben had seen in men before, those thrust into situations they’d sought but then found themselves unwilling or unable to face. Men in combat. Bluster and bluff can only take you so far. True courage has to come into play in the end, and Ben suspected this man was now running on empty. He’d set up that final scene and had been forced to live with the consequences of what had happened—perhaps worse, he
didn’t
know what had happened.

Ben remembered Squeezy being there, knew what Squeezy and Nikolas would have been able to achieve between them—the complete sanitization of the scene. Ben had done the same many times. It was better that way, more visceral, helped you cope and overcome.

Atwell hadn’t had that. No bodies. No information.

His fear was palpable.

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“I think you do.”

“You want…to join us? After everything that happened?”

Ben nodded.

“I don’t have any…targets planned.”

“You don’t have to. I have my own.”

“What? Who?”

Ben smiled. “Don’t you listen to the news?”

§ § §

They arrived at the outskirts of Grantham by evening, Squeezy driving, Nikolas alongside, Tim and Kate in the back.

“Fuck.”

They all turned or twisted around to look at Kate who was working on her laptop. Nikolas diverted Squeezy’s face back to the road but asked, “What?”

“I’ve found him. He’s not a doctor. He was an actor—and not a very good one. Worked for something called Cazzo Film—”

All three men in the car said at the same time, “It’s a gay porn label.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fergus Atwell called himself Freddie Nero.”

“Catchy.”

“And Francis J Nero. No record of any films or activity on the web for three years. Resurfaced running Pay for Gay two years ago.”

Nikolas didn’t want to ask, so was profoundly relieved when Tim did it for him. “Pay for Gay?”

“That’s the name he registered the British version of the American therapy courses under. Catchy, huh? You pay and…” She shrugged. “Take your own guess at that.”

Nikolas stared ahead for a while as they circled the town, thinking about three thousand pounds per client with twenty men on each course. Francis J Nero had the pay part of his equation correct anyway. “How is he connected to Julian Wood? I assume he
is
a doctor?”

“He was a patient of Julian Wood’s. Or Freddie Nero was. Three years ago. I was only searching for a connection with the name Fergus Atwell so I missed it.”

Tim murmured, “I’d love to hear those sessions.”

Nikolas nodded, not actually listening. “Track him down, Kate.”

He didn’t know whether he meant Fergus Atwell, aka Freddie Nero, or Ben. He guessed it didn’t matter. Find one, find the other.

§ § §

When Ben had outlined his plan to Fergus, the other man had paled. His first response had been, “It’s
impossible
. It would
never
work.”

Ben had expected this. “It doesn’t need to work. The attempt will send the same message. In this case, failure is as good as success. Perhaps better in some ways. I become a martyr then. Martyrs are powerful forces, aren’t they?”

Fergus licked his lips.

Ben didn’t give him the respite of lowering his gaze or looking away. He held the doctor in his penetrating green intensity, and finally Fergus had no recourse except to nod in acceptance. “What do you need?”

Ben then released him by blinking slowly, knowing his eyelashes would fan on his defined cheekbones for one moment. “I need an army. I need
your
army.”

§ § §

They arrived at the studios late in the evening. They still appeared to be a hive of activity. They found a place to park and climbed out. Tim glanced nervously at Squeezy. “What would you do—if it was you that came here to kill Atwell? You’re the closest thing to Ben we have. Think like him.”

Nikolas was only barely restraining himself. “He’s not
going
to kill the fucker! He’s going to lead his rainbow army into some dumb shit to make up for what he did. He’s going to fucking sacrifice himself! You don’t know Ben like I do!”

The other three ignored him. Squeezy actually shut his eyes, theatrically trying to think like Ben. “I’d get him away from here, somewhere quiet, make him suffer for a while and then kill him. Somewhere near water. A quarry, if possible. Easiest place to dispose of a body if you don’t have an incinerator.” He opened his eyes, obviously pleased with himself until he saw Tim’s expression. “What? You asked!”

Tim nodded, took a breath, and scrabbled in his inside jacket pocket. He produced a slightly dog-eared card. “Believe it or not—and I find it hard to believe sometimes, trust me—I’m still
Doctor
Tim Watson. A doctor is a doctor, yes? I’ll just go ask for my colleague.”

They watched him walk away. Then before he disappeared from sight into one of the large sheds, they trailed after him. Nikolas was deeply shamed—two ex-Special Forces operatives and a computer expert didn’t have a better plan.

It was incredibly hot inside the shed, for they were filming at night, and all the lights were blazing, pumping out incredible amounts of heat. All four of them paused in the darkness behind the illuminated set.

Five naked men were having sex.

There were a number of shouted instructions from a man off to one side, and for the first time it occurred to Nikolas that any grunts or murmurs of appreciation heard in such movies were added afterward. It wasn’t that much of a passion killer to discover this, because there was absolutely no enthusiasm in the scene anyway. They could have been watching animals mate on the Discovery Channel. In fact it crossed Nikolas’s mind that he
had
seen something more—

They were spotted. The action was halted abruptly, which was interesting to watch for a moment, and then a large man accosted them. Tim handed him a card, introduced himself as a colleague of
Doctor
Fergus Atwell’s, and then out of the blue introduced Nikolas as his Russian backer. Nikolas bowed slightly, shook the man’s hand and reeled off a string of Russian, gesturing knowingly at the lights, cameras, and huddle of naked men. He knew a lot about one of these things, anyway.

Nikolas had a distinct advantage in this unexpected deception—something his friends now took for granted but which always made an impression on first acquaintance—he looked like what he was: a billionaire. It was the cut of his suit, the hang of his cashmere overcoat, the quality leather of his shoes, his watch—even his bloody haircut screamed money. Actually
being
Russian didn’t hurt either.

Uncertain, but clearly willing to take this odd group at face value, because accepting them was the easiest alternative, the big man claimed he didn’t know what they were talking about, that they were in the wrong place, that he was just the best boy grip, and he’d take them to the producer’s trailer.

They returned to the frosty night air.

It was something of a relief.

To Nikolas’s astonishment, there were tiny flakes of snow drifting down from dark, heavy clouds. It was much colder here than in London and exceptionally chilly compared to the balmy climate of Devon. He shivered, realised in the past he would have offered his coat to Kate and felt sad he wasn’t about to now. Then he slipped it off and put it over her shoulders. Full length, cashmere, made to measure for his frame, it dwarfed her. She wrapped it tightly around herself and closed her eyes for a moment, then swallowed and continued to follow them across the pitted ground to the encampment of trailers.

Squeezy was probing the large man about the technicalities of being someone whose job it was to grip best boys and asking him, much to Tim’s obvious annoyance, whether there were any vacancies and what the requirements were for such a job.

Ben’s bike was parked outside the trailer they were led to. His helmet rested on the seat.

Nikolas shivered again, not from the cold this time, but from the realisation he was about to meet Ben again, with everything Ben now knew and thought between them, poisoning them. It took some not inconsiderable portion of his courage to enter the trailer after the grip.

It was empty.

§ § §

Fergus Atwell couldn’t even account for the whereabouts of the men he’d radicalised and sent out into the world to make it a worse place than they’d inherited. This was appalling to a solider. Ben listened to frantic phone calls as they drove north, Fergus trying to find and locate lost men. By the time they arrived back in Lancashire, he’d managed to find and summon only six. An army of six for what they had to do.

Ben wasn’t all that surprised when he saw where they were headed.

He pictured Nikolas standing out of the illumination of the streetlight, calming himself, and was glad Nikolas wasn’t here now—that he had no part in this.

He had to do this himself.

He
owed
it.

§ § §

The grip went immediately to a rack of keys hanging on the wall of the trailer. “He’s taken the Golf.”

Kate took the details of the registration and colour of the hatchback vehicle and plugged them into her software. “This might take some time.”

Unsure what to do with his unexpected guests, the large man shrugged and left them to it.

Nikolas sat next to Kate. “Keep working on this Fergus-Freddie man’s background while you run the search. Where will they have gone? It will be somewhere familiar and safe to him.”

She nodded, switched screens and began typing.

Squeezy found a bottle of whiskey and poured them each a generous measure. Kate refused hers and continued working.

§ § §

Now empty and deserted, it was obvious the bar hadn’t been used for many years. Ben wondered why he hadn’t seen it before, but with the simple addition of a modern music system, a video, and some fake patrons, he’d been made to believe he’d come into a working bar in Burnley. “They were actors, too?”

Fergus nodded, his eyes darting anxiously around.

“Did they know? Were they in on it all? Here and at the…” It was hard to say. He swallowed. “The mill. Did they know what they were doing? That we didn’t know they were just acting?”