Читать книгу The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET - Scott Mariani, Scott Mariani - Страница 104

It had taken a long time to calm Leigh afterwards. Eventually, the tranquillizers began to take effect and she lay sleeping on the hotel bed, her black hair spread across the pillow and her body rising and falling slowly.

Ben covered her with a blanket and sat beside her on the edge of the bed, watching over her and thinking hard. Then he stood up, went back to the desk and watched the video-clip again.

He watched it three times, pausing it frequently to study the details. He watched it right to the end. After the victim was disembowelled the cameraman had had enough. The picture went jerky, dark, then jerky again. He could hear Oliver’s ragged breathing. He was running.

Ben kept pausing the clip, staring at the screen. Stone walls. Some kind of staircase. The picture was crazy but by pausing frame by frame he could just about make it out. As Oliver ran on, the rough stone walls disappeared and he seemed to be in what looked like a very opulent house. A doorway, then a corridor. Shiny wood panels. A painting, brightly illuminated by a lamp above its frame. Ben paused the clip and studied it closely.

It was hard to tell, but the painting seemed to show some kind of meeting. The setting was a big hall. There were columns that looked a lot like the ones in the room where the victim had been executed. The same tiles on the floor. The men in the painting wore wigs and were dressed in what looked like eighteenth-century clothes-brocade jackets and silk stockings. There were symbols around the walls, but he couldn’t make them out.

He let the clip run on. Oliver’s breath was rasping out of the speaker as he staggered down the corridor. He stopped, swung round as if looking back to see if someone was following him. Nobody was.

Ben paused the clip again. He could see something. An alcove in the wall. Inside the alcove stood a statue that looked Egyptian, like a Pharaoh’s death mask.

Then the clip came to an end. Oliver must have turned off the camera. Ben was left staring at a black screen.

He struggled to understand what he’d seen. He clicked on the file properties. The video-clip had been created at 9.26 on the night Oliver died.

None of this made sense. The official version of the story, that Oliver had been drunkenly messing about on the lake with some woman he’d picked up at a party, was impossible to reconcile with the fact that, not long before his death, he’d witnessed a brutal ritualistic murder. Would Oliver have been capable of putting such a thing out of his mind to go off and enjoy himself? Who would?

Ben ran over what he knew. Oliver had witnessed a crime carried out by some highly organized and very dangerous people. He’d had evidence and he’d been desperate to hide it. Soon after he’d posted the CD to Leigh, he’d drowned in the frozen lake. The investigation into his death had been a little too rushed, a little too sketchy. And ever since Leigh had mentioned to a TV audience that she was in possession of Oliver’s notes, someone had been out to do her harm.

He looked down at Leigh as she slept and resisted the impulse to brush a lock of hair away from her face. Just as she’d been starting to come to terms with Oliver’s accident, she was going to have to go through the whole thing again-only this time knowing, almost for certain, that her brother’s death had been no accident. He hadn’t died messing around in a cheerfully drunken state. He’d died in fear. Someone had coldly and calculatedly ended his life.

Who did it, Oliver?

Ben moved away from the bed and settled into the armchair in the far corner of the hotel room. He reached for his Turkish cigarettes, flipped the wheel of his Zippo lighter and leaned back as he inhaled the strong, thick smoke. He closed his eyes, feeling fatigue wash over him. He hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep in four weeks.

His thoughts wandered as he smoked. He recalled fragments of old memories. He remembered Oliver’s face as a younger man, the sound of his old friend’s voice.

And he remembered the day, all those years ago, when Oliver had saved his life.

It had been the coldest winter he could remember. After three years of army service, Lance-Corporal Benedict Hope had travelled to Hereford in the Welsh borders along with 138 other hopefuls from other regiments for what he knew was going to be the toughest endurance test of his life. Selection for 22 Special Air Service, the most elite fighting force in the British Army.

Quite why Oliver had wanted to come along with him, Ben didn’t know. For the food, Oliver had joked. 22 SAS was famous for the mountains of roast beef and lamb chops on which selection candidates feasted before being sent into the hellish ‘Sickener 1’, the first phase of selection training.

As the convoy of trucks left the base in Hereford at dawn on day one and headed deep into the Cambrian Mountains of mid-Wales in driving snow, Oliver had been one of the only men able to joke about the long day ahead. Ben had sat in the corner of the rocking Bedford, cradling his rifle and steeling himself for the nightmare of physical and mental torture that would mark the start of the toughest few weeks of his life. He knew that the small minority who survived the initial selection process would be subjected to fourteen more torturous weeks of advanced weapons and survival instruction, a parachute course, jungle warfare training, language and initiative testing, a one-thousand-yard swim in uniform, and interrogation resistance exercises designed to stress a man’s spirit past the limits of endurance. Only the very best would get through to be awarded the coveted winged dagger badge and entry into the legendary regiment. Some years, nobody got through at all.

As it turned out, Sickener 1 was every bit as tough as he’d expected and a bit more. With each freezing cold dawn the number of exhausted men setting off for another round of torture dwindled a little further. Base camp each night was a huddled circle of silent bodies under dripping canvas. Oliver’s expectations of a nightly feast had been quickly dashed and his morale plummeted accordingly. That was the idea.

The following week was way beyond even Ben’s expectations. Weather conditions were the worst in years. Pain, injury and absolute demoralization had reduced the 138 men to only a dozen. During a twenty-hour march through a howling blizzard, an SAS major who had volunteered for the course to prove to himself he still had what it took in his mid-thirties had collapsed and been found dead in a snowdrift.

But Ben had willed himself to go on, trudging through the pain barrier and finding new heights of endurance. His only stops were to drink a little melted snow now and then and take a bite from one of the rock-hard Mars Bars he’d stowed in his bergen. The rush from the sugar gave his depleted body the energy to keep going. In his mind he fought a furious battle to quell the desire to give up this madness. He could end the agony at any time, just by deciding to. Sometimes the temptation was unbearable. That was also the idea, and he knew it. Every moment was a test.

And it didn’t get easier. Every night the exhaustion was worse. Back at camp he meticulously soaked his socks in olive oil to ease the torment of blistered feet, and he passed each day in a trance of grim determination as the marches got longer and their packs got heavier. All that mattered was the next step forward. Then the next. He kept his mind clear of the distance still ahead of him. And the pain that was only going to get worse.

By the fourth day of week three there were only eight men left. Pausing for breath on a high ridge near the summit of the notorious Pen-y-fan Mountain, Ben looked back and could see some of the others as distant green dots labouring across the blanket of snow between the trees far below.

Oliver was thirty yards behind him. Ben waited for him to catch up. It took a while. He was amazed that his friend had got this far, but now Oliver was visibly flagging. His steady trudge had deteriorated to a desperate plod and from there to a stagger. He sank to his knees, clutching his rifle. ‘You go on,’ he wheezed. ‘I’m whacked. I’ll see you at camp.’

Ben looked at him with concern. ‘Come on, there’s just a few miles to go.’

‘No chance. I can’t fucking move another inch.’

‘I’ll stay with you,’ Ben said, meaning it.

Oliver wiped snow from his eyes as he looked up. He coughed. ‘You will not,’ he said. ‘You need to keep moving. Go. Get out of here.’

Ben’s feet were stripped raw and he could feel his clothes stuck to the bleeding sores on his back where his bergen was constantly rubbing. It was all he could do to support his own weight. There was no way he could help Oliver walk very far, let alone carry him. And the slightest sign of hesitation could mean the humiliation of a Return To Unit order. The rules were brutal. They were intended that way. ‘You’ll be OK,’ he said. ‘There’s an instructor coming up the mountain. He’ll take you back.’

Oliver waved him on. ‘Yes, I’ll be OK. Now piss off before you get RTU’d. You want the badge, don’t you? Don’t wait for me.’

Racked with guilt now as well as pain, Ben walked on. The wind tore at his smock. He struggled down a near-vertical rocky slope, his boots slipping in the snow. He reached the ice-crusted rim of a collapsed rock mound and saw a movement through the mist of exhaustion. A hooded figure emerged from a clump of pines.

Ben recognized his face. He was a lieutenant of the Royal Fusiliers. Ben hadn’t seen him since setting out at dawn. The tough, craggy Londoner had kept himself apart from the others ever since arriving at Hereford and Ben detected a cold remoteness in his grey eyes that he mistrusted.

‘Didn’t think you’d make it this far, Hope,’ he said.

‘No? Then you were wrong. Sir.’

The lieutenant was watching him with a faint smile. ‘Got a light?’

‘There’s no time to sm—’

Suddenly Ben felt a broad hand shove him hard in the chest and he was tumbling down the slope, the weight of his fifty-pound pack dragging him down. He scrabbled for grip, losing his rifle. His legs crashed through thin ice and into the stinking mud of a stagnant bog.

Above him, the lieutenant stared at him for a moment, then trudged on.

Ben was sinking into the bog. He fought to unsaddle his bergen but the straps were tight around his shoulders, the weight dragging him down deeper. His fingers closed on a clump of ice-frosted reeds and he pulled hard, kicking back with his legs. The reeds ripped out of the mud with a gurgle and he sank down another six inches. He felt the cold, soft clay sucking at his waist, gaining another inch every few seconds. He sank in up to his belt, then to the bottom of his ribcage. He splashed weakly in the mud, his shouts deadened by the wind.

Now the cloying bog was drawing him deeper still. He could feel himself sliding steadily down. It was swallowing him. His legs were starting to feel numb. He tried kicking again, but the mud felt heavy and his legs were starting to become numb and unresponsive. In a few minutes he would start to go hypothermic unless he could get out. He gave up kicking and scrabbled at the bank, his fingers raking through loose mud and bits of coarse, sharp flint. There was no grip and his strength was ebbing fast. The mud was up to his chest now and it was getting harder to breathe.

He wasn’t going to get out. He was going to die here, sucked down and drowned in this shitty bog. He kicked again. His legs were too weak to move.

‘Ben!’

Someone was calling his name. He looked up. Through the drifting snowflakes he could make out the shape of a soldier scrambling down the slope towards him. He blinked, wiped snow from his eyes with his muddy fingers. The figure came closer.

It was Oliver.

‘Grab this.’ Oliver extended the butt of his rifle and Ben reached out for it, wrapping the webbing sling around his wrist. Oliver braced his feet against the rocks and grunted with effort as he gripped the rifle barrel with both hands and heaved. Ben felt himself rising out of the bog. An inch, then another. The mud made a loud sucking noise. He kicked with his legs again and gained a foothold.

Then he was out, and he gasped as Oliver helped him to crawl up onto solid ground. Ben collapsed onto his stomach and lay panting hard.

Oliver slung the muddy rifle over his shoulder and reached out his hand. ‘Come on, brother,’ he grinned. ‘On your feet. You’ve got a badge to earn.’

Only half a dozen men made it to the end of that day, the rest limping dejected and exhausted for the railway station at Hereford and back to their units.

One of the six weary survivors to return to base in the now almost empty truck was the lieutenant who had shoved Ben down the bank. Ben avoided his eye and said nothing. There were no witnesses and he was outranked. To speak out could mean an RTU, or worse. Anyway, people trying to kill him was something he was going to have to get used to if he made it into 22 SAS.

That night, the eve of the endurance march that was to be the final test of initial selection, Oliver produced a smuggled half-bottle of whisky and the two friends shared it in the dormitory, sitting side by side on a canvas bunk.

‘One more day,’ Ben said, as he felt the welcome sting on his tongue.

‘Not for me,’ Oliver said, staring into his tin mug. His face was pale and his eyes ringed with pain. ‘No badge is worth this. I’ve had enough.’

‘You’ll make it. You’re nearly there.’

Oliver chuckled. ‘I don’t give a shit if I make it or not. I’m done with this madness. I’ve been thinking. I’m not like you, Ben. I’m not a soldier. I’m just a middle-class kid at heart, who wanted to rebel against Dad and all the music shit. As soon as I get the chance, I’m leaving the army.’

Ben turned to stare at his friend. ‘What’ll you do?’

Oliver shrugged. ‘Get back into the music, I guess. It’s in the blood. OK, maybe I haven’t got the talent Leigh has-she’ll go far.’

Ben looked uncomfortably at his feet.

Oliver went on. ‘But I have my degree. I’m a passable pianist. I’ll do the odd recital. Maybe teach a bit too. I’ll make do. Then I’ll find meself a good wee Welsh woman and settle down.’

‘That’ll be the day.’ Ben drank down a gulp of whisky and lay on the bunk, wincing at the pain in his back.

‘And talking of my sister,’ Oliver continued, wagging a finger at Ben, ‘you do realize that it’s my official duty as the elder sibling to beat the shit out of you?’ He poured them both another shot of whisky. ‘I can’t, of course, because you’re a better fighter than me and you’d break both my arms. But consider yourself reprimanded nonetheless.’

Ben closed his eyes and sighed.

‘She’s not a kid,’ Oliver said. ‘She’s serious about what she does. And she was serious about you, too. You broke her heart, Ben. She’s always asking me if I’ve seen you. She wants to know why you walked out on her. What am I supposed to tell her?’

Ben was silent for a while. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, and meant it. ‘I didn’t want to hurt her. The truth is, Ol, I think she deserves someone better than me.’

Oliver slurped back more whisky and smacked his lips, then turned to Ben. ‘Listen, I’ve been thinking about all this,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come with me? Forget about this fighting-for-Queen-and-country crap. Who Dares Wins? Who cares who wins? Even if they do take you in, you won’t even retain rank-you’ll be busted right down to Trooper.’

Ben nodded. ‘I know.’

‘And then what? Get shot to bits in a stupid war that you don’t even understand? Die in some stinking jungle? Your name up on the clock-tower at Hereford for the sake of a bunch of double-dealing suits in Whitehall?’

Ben had no answer to that.

‘Look, man, think about it for a minute. Come back to Builth with me. We’re a good team, you and I. We’ll set up in business together.’

Ben laughed wearily, looking up at the ceiling. ‘Yeah, I can just see that. Doing what?’

‘Details, details. We’ll think of something. Something nice and easy that’ll make us rich and fat. You can get down on your knee and beg Leigh’s forgiveness, then she’ll marry you and we’ll all be happy.’ Oliver smiled.

Ben glanced over at his friend and marvelled at his view of life. It really was as simple as that for Oliver. ‘You think she’d still want me?’ he asked. ‘After what I did?’

‘Ask her yourself.’

Ben raised his head off the bunk. For a few seconds it all seemed to make such perfect sense. He wavered on the brink.

‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘If I get through tomorrow, I’m going on with it. I want the badge.’

Fifteen years later, Ben Hope stubbed out the Turkish cigarette and looked across the hotel room. Leigh was still fast asleep, with just the occasional flicker of a frown passing over her face that hinted at the unsettled dreams in her mind.

He watched her, and not for the first time he found himself wondering how his life might have been if he’d headed back with Oliver that next morning.