Ben brought the Mazda round in a handbrake turn, sending up a wave of watery mud as it came to rest among a thick bank of reeds. ‘You okay?’ he asked Jude.
‘I think so,’ Jude mumbled. Ben grabbed the shotgun, stepped out of the car and immediately felt his feet sinking into the ground. This isn’t a marsh, he thought, stepping quickly back towards the firmer ground on which the Mazda was resting. This is a bog.
The Range Rover had come to a stop right in the softest part of it. One of its headlights was still intact, and in its beam Ben could see the sucking brown mud working its way up the crumpled bodywork as the vehicle began to sink.
‘Help me,’ the Range Rover’s driver croaked. He was a few feet in front of the overturned vehicle. His legs had already sunk deep into the bog. He reached out a hand in supplication. The other arm was mangled and twisted at his side. His ski mask had been ripped away in the crash. Most of his face was covered in the blood that was pouring from an open gash across his scalp, but Ben could see the look of utter horror in his eyes as the bog squelched and sucked at him, drawing him inexorably down inch by inch. ‘Help me. Please.’
Jude had climbed out of the car and stood at Ben’s side. ‘We can’t just leave the guy to drown,’ he said shakily. ‘It’s awful.’
Ben spotted the half-submerged remains of an old tree that lay crossways like a bridge between him and the sinking driver. Slinging the shotgun across his shoulder, he placed his foot on it. The bog heaved around the rotten wood like a living thing, but the trunk took Ben’s weight. He took a step towards the man, then another. It was unsteady beneath his feet. One slip, and he’d be next in line crying to be rescued.
‘Help me,’ the man moaned again, stretching out with his clawed hand.
Ben took another step forwards. He looked at the hand.
‘Pull him out!’ Jude called across from firm ground.
Ben looked at the man’s pleading face. He took in the lean features under the mask of blood, and the scar over the eye. He knew that face. He’d seen it before. And he remembered where.
The man had sunk in almost up to his chest now. He was beginning to gibber in panic. ‘Ben!’ Jude yelled. ‘Grab his hand! You’ve got to help him. for God’s sake!’
Ben didn’t grab the hand, not for God’s sake or anyone else’s. He reached into his jacket pocket for the printout of the photo from Petra Norrington’s camera. He unfolded it, studied it briefly in the glare from the Range Rover’s rapidly-disappearing headlight. Then he crumpled the printout into a ball and lobbed it over to Jude.
Jude caught it, uncrumpled it and stared at it mutely.
Slowly, calmly, Ben unslung the shotgun from his shoulder. His injured arm hurt as he worked the pump. The empty shell spat out and landed with a plop in the mud. The last round in the magazine fed into the chamber. Ben pointed the gun at the sinking man.
‘What are you doing?’ Jude yelled, still clutching the crumpled printout.
‘That picture was taken the night your parents died,’ Ben told him, not taking his eyes off the whimpering, groaning man in the bog. The mud was almost up to his neck now. He was flailing with his free arm. The other was well beneath the surface. A few feet away, the Range Rover was almost completely submerged.
‘This is the man who ran them off the road,’ Ben said.
‘I’m begging you. Pull me out!’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Napier,’ the man moaned. ‘Vincent Napier.’
‘Is that your real name? Not that it matters any more.’
‘Don’t let me die like this!’ Napier sobbed. His free hand clawed desperately at the air. His head thrashed from side to side.
‘The more you struggle,’ Ben said. ‘The quicker you’ll go down.’
‘Ben!’ Jude shouted from firm ground. ‘Help him!’
‘Please,’ Napier wept. ‘Look, I only do what I’m told to do.’
‘Just business,’ Ben said.
‘Yes! You’ve got to understand.’
‘I understand you’ve got less than half a minute left, Vincent,’ Ben said. ‘Tell me who you people are working for.’
‘I don’t know his name! He’s just the boss! I’ve only met him once!’
Ben believed him. People in these kinds of situations generally didn’t tell lies. ‘Then that doesn’t make you very useful to me, does it?’ he said.
‘Please don’t let me drown.’ The mud was up to Napier’s chin and the arm reaching out was submerged to the elbow.
‘Ben!’ Jude shouted.
Ben didn’t look back at him. ‘Turn around, Jude,’ he said.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Jude yelled hoarsely.
Ben edged a few more inches across the tree trunk and reached out to the drowning man. Not with his hand. With his foot. He planted the sole of his shoe on Napier’s bloody forehead and pushed.
‘No!’ Napier screamed. Then the mud filled his mouth and his cry became a bubbling gurgle. His eyes stared upwards in horror in the last light of the Range Rover’s sinking headlamp. Then the light was gone, and so was the top of Vincent Napier’s head as Ben pressed him under with a final shove of his heel. A few bubbles clustered and popped on the surface of the swirling mud.
Ben watched for a few seconds until the bubbles stopped, then turned and started making his way back to firm ground.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘I can’t believe what I just saw you do to that guy,’ Jude said sullenly as Ben returned to the Mazda.
‘I told you not to look,’ Ben replied.
Jude was too shocked to reply. He breathed heavily for a few moments, then suddenly took out his phone and started punching in a number.
‘What are you doing?’
‘What do you think I’m doing? I’m calling the police.’
Ben stepped up and grabbed the phone from him. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Hey. Give me that back.’
Ben tossed the phone into the bog where the Range Rover had now completely vanished. It hit the mud with a splash and sank almost instantly.
‘That was my Nokia!’
‘You never answer it anyway,’ Ben said.
‘This isn’t happening,’ Jude groaned, sitting on a grassy mound and rubbing his face. ‘It’s all a nightmare.’ He glowered up at Ben. ‘Just who the fuck are you?’
‘You keep asking me that. I told you. I was at college with your parents. I was on the same course your dad did.’
‘Theology? You?’
Ben nodded.
‘What kind of theologian guns people down in cold blood and drowns them in bogs?’
‘One who’s spent too many years doing stuff you don’t want to know about,’ Ben said.
Jude