‘Paris sounds good,’ Jude said, nodding. ‘Great. Cool.’
Ben heard the phoney tone in Jude’s voice and knew he had a problem. It wasn’t the security of the safehouse. It was a question of whether he could trust this young hothead to stay put for five minutes while he tried to get to the bottom of this. Somehow, he didn’t think so.
Chapter Thirty
‘How can they have disappeared?’ Penrose Lucas shouted, thumping on the desk. He was still bleary from being woken up in the middle of the night with this appalling news. He slumped in his desk chair, hair awry, his satin dressing gown hanging open to reveal the butt of the .357 Magnum protruding from the waistband of his boxer shorts. He’d now taken to sleeping with the gun at night, clutching it as he dreamed.
‘That’s all I can tell you.’ Cutter replied. ‘Napier called me to say they’d followed Hope to Cornwall. That’s where they planned to take him out. There’s been nothing since. None of them are answering their phones.’ His voice was showing the strain of worry. ‘If Vince Napier hasn’t got back to me, something’s wrong.’
‘You sent six men after one and you tell me something’s wrong?! You told me Napier was one of your top people!’ Penrose screeched.
‘He is,’ Cutter said, resting his balled fists on the desktop and looking Penrose in the eye. The dressing on Cutter’s brow had been removed, showing the nasty gash that Ben Hope had administered with the shotgun barrel. The split lip hadn’t fully healed yet, and it hurt when he talked. He was still fully dressed, too edgy to sleep.
‘Or was!’ Penrose yelled. The migraine punched through his head like a spear blade. He screwed his eyes shut and dug the balls of his thumbs into his temples, thinking of all the money and treats he’d expended on these men, only for them to be snuffed out just like that, thanks to this Ben Hope. It was becoming a nightmare.
‘And I suppose you have no idea where Hope is now?’ Penrose grated. He glanced across at O’Neill, who just shook his head. Like Cutter, O’Neill hadn’t been to bed that night.
‘We’ll find him,’ Cutter insisted.
‘That’s what you said about Holland, too,’ Penrose snapped. ‘And even if you do find him, what then?’
‘I’m calling in more men,’ Cutter said. He’d already made the call to his old associate Linus Gant. They’d worked together in Somalia. ‘But it’s going to cost more. They don’t come cheap.’
Penrose stared at him. ‘Cheap? You call what I’ve been paying you cheap?’
‘How much more?’ O’Neill asked.
‘A grand a day. That’s the new price for all of us.’
‘Fine, fine,’ Penrose said, waving his arms. ‘Whatever it takes.’
But O’Neill was stony-faced. ‘I feel we’re drifting off target here,’ he ventured after a moment’s silence. ‘In my opinion it’s time to re-evaluate the whole plan. This is not in line with our objective. Which I thought had been made clear to you.’
Penrose’s face paled white. He bared his teeth. There was a fleck of foam at the corner of his mouth as he tore himself away from the desk, paced across the room towards O’Neill and stabbed the air with a trembling finger. ‘Are you questioning my orders?’
As well as your rational judgement, O’Neill wanted to reply. But he could see the fire burning in Penrose’s bulging eyes and was watching the hand that might at any second dart inside the folds of the satin gown and come out shooting. He thought of his wife back home in London, and said nothing.
Penrose glared at him in disgust, then whipped back around to face Cutter. ‘You tell your contacts I’ll pay twelve hundred a day, damn it. And I’m offering a million bounty to whoever brings me Ben Hope’s head on a plate.’
Chapter Thirty-One
Three and a half hours later, with the fuel gauge deep into the red and Jude slumped fast asleep in the passenger seat, Ben pulled up at a frosty truck stop off the M4 motorway before London to grab some rest. He’d slept in a lot more uncomfortable places than the dank interior of a half-decrepit Vauxhall on a freezing December morning, but his mind was too agitated to let him drift off. Dawn was still some way away when he finally gave up on the idea of sleep, and drove to the nearby Murco filling station.
While Ben attended to the fuel pump, Jude let Scruffy out of the car and wandered around the forecourt, stretching his legs and flapping his arms to stay warm, and then went inside the filling station shop to stand in the blast of the fan heater.
Ben had just finishing fuelling up and was about to go to pay when he heard the commotion from inside the shop. He hurried over to find Jude in an argument with the fat guy manning the counter, under the eye of the CCTV cameras. A newspaper stand had been knocked over and there were crumpled tabloids scattered on the floor. The fat guy yelled as Jude kicked over another one. ‘Fucking lies!’ Jude was shouting. There were tears in his eyes.
‘What is it?’ Ben said, bewildered, and Jude thrust one of the crumpled newspapers into his hands. ‘Look at this shit.’ It was that morning’s paper, dated December 20th.
‘Is he with you?’ the shopkeeper raged at Ben. ‘You’re going to pay for this damage, mate.’
‘Step back, pork chop, or I’ll do some more,’ Jude growled. The guy flushed purple and made a grab for him. Ben gently nudged the shopkeeper back a step and gave him a look that quietened him for a moment. ‘Now what’s this about?’ he said to Jude. Then he looked at the headline Jude was showing him, and his heart skipped two beats.
JOYRIDING VICAR IN LOTUS DEATH PLUNGE.
The colour photo underneath the huge bold print showed the crumpled car being winched out of the river. The partially demolished bridge was clearly visible in the background.
‘What the—?’ The pages crumpled in Ben’s fists as he scanned the text below. Jude had snatched another copy off the floor and began to read out loud, barely able to speak for fury. ‘Reverend Arundel was well known locally for being a playboy and a reckless driver. According to a witness at the scene of the crash, “Thank God there was nobody else on the road, the speed he was going at. They wouldn’t have stood a chance.”’ Jude’s face contorted in anger. He screwed the newspaper into a tight ball, hurled it down and started stamping on it.
‘That’s it. I’m calling the police,’ the fat guy said, hovering warily a few yards away.
‘Listen, Ben told him. ‘The article’s about somebody close. He’s just upset.’ Shelling out a fifty and a twenty from his wallet, he handed them over. ‘The twenty’s for the fuel. The rest is for you. Take it easy, my friend.’
The fat guy’s mouth twisted. He wasn’t convinced.
‘Come on,’ Ben said. ‘It’s Christmas.’
The fat guy was breathing heavily and clutching his money as Ben picked up the fallen stands and tidied up the mess. Jude had stormed outside. Ben found him pacing furiously near