The Sacred Sword. Scott Mariani
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an affair with your brother-in-law? The banker?’
‘Bloody hell, what do you take me for? Of course not!’
‘Then what were the two of you doing there together?’
‘All right. He followed me to Portugal,’ Brooke sighed. ‘He thinks …’ – she corrected herself – ‘thought he was in love with me. He’d been stalking me for weeks. I went to the cottage to get away from him. He turned up and I told him once and for all that he’d better clean up his act.’
Ben was speechless for a few moments as he digested her words. He’d replayed the scene so many times inside his head; now he struggled to revisualise it in a whole new way. ‘But he was wearing a bathrobe,’ he protested.
‘There’d been a storm,’ she countered angrily. ‘He was soaking wet so I got him to take a shower. I’d just had one myself when he turned up.’
‘The candles … the wine …’
‘You know it doesn’t take much of a storm to take out the power there. And the wine was for our nerves. He was in a real state. So was I. What you saw was me trying to reason with him gently. I’m a psychologist. It’s what I do.’
Ben stared at her. He had to admit what she was saying was possible. But suddenly a new thought was dawning on him. ‘So this prick Marshall was stalking you all that time and you didn’t even think to tell me?’
‘Oh, that would have been just great. Then you’d have gone and kicked the shit out of him, and then what? A right mess we’d all have been in. And my sister would’ve found out. Phoebe’s emotionally fragile. It would have destroyed her. I had to deal with it myself.’
‘Is that how you see me? Some kind of violent bastard who can only deal with problems by kicking the shit out of people?’
‘No, sometimes you shoot them too.’
‘How could you not have trusted me?’ he yelled.
Brooke gave a scornful laugh. ‘Like you trusted me? How could you think I was cheating on you? All the times I told you I loved you – did you think I was lying?’
The argument had raged on for a long time, both of them equally carried away by their sense of outrage, neither of them willing to relent. By the time Ben had sensed it was going too far, tried to back down and apologise, a lot of hurtful things had been said and the damage had been done.
In the end, Brooke had stormed off in a white-hot rage. The last he’d seen of her was the taxicab disappearing up the track from the farmhouse.
Two days later a letter had arrived in the post, coldly and formally addressed to Major Benedict Hope, Managing Director, Le Val Tactical Training Centre. Just three terse lines to say she was resigning from her post with immediate effect and wouldn’t be back.
When Ben had tried contacting her to persuade her to change her mind, he’d found her phone numbers changed and his emails bouncing back. His letters were returned unopened.
And so now, three months later, here he was outside her ground-floor flat, seriously questioning the wisdom of being here. Unbuckling the straps of his bag, he took out the present he’d bought for her, carefully wrapped in Christmas gift paper with little Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeers all over it. It had taken him three attempts to get it right. But at least he was pretty sure she’d like the present inside. Brooke was half French on her father’s side, and a big movie fan, so he’d bought her a collection of Eric Rohmer films. He couldn’t recall having ever seen one himself.
Feeling like a man stepping up to the gallows, he got out of the Land Rover, crossed the street, went in the little gate that led through Brooke’s flower garden and rang her doorbell.
No response. He tried again. Still nothing. The package was too big to shove through the letterbox. He didn’t think that a mangled DVD box set would please her much. He’d have to post it to her.
With a strange mixture of bitter disappointment and extreme relief, Ben turned away. As he was about to start heading back towards the Land Rover, a tall, good-looking Asian man came strolling down the street and walked through the gate. He was wearing a heavy parka, carrying a shopping bag. Seeing Ben on the steps, he stopped and smiled. ‘Hi,’ he said warmly. ‘You must be Ben, right?’
Ben eyed the stranger uncertainly.
‘I’ve seen your photo,’ said the man. ‘Brooke had it on her desk.’
Ben noticed his use of the past tense.
‘I’m Amal,’ the man said, and as if he’d read Ben’s thoughts he added quickly, ‘Brooke’s neighbour. I have the flat above.’
‘You’re the writer,’ Ben said, remembering. Brooke had sometimes mentioned the aspiring playwright upstairs who somehow managed to pay the extortionate rent despite having no apparent form of income.
‘Trying to be a writer,’ Amal grinned.
‘Do you know where Brooke is?’ Ben asked him.
Amal’s grin turned into a grimace. ‘She’s not here, I’m afraid. Gone to Vienna with her friend Sam.’
Sam, Ben thought. Right.
He paused a few beats. ‘I had a present for her,’ he said, looking down at the package in his hand.
‘I can take that, if you want. I’ll make sure she gets it.’
‘I’d appreciate that.’
Amal glanced up at the sky. The sleet was coming down more heavily, haloed in the amber streetlight. ‘You want to come inside for a coffee? It’s bloody freezing out here.’
Ben shook his head. ‘I’d better get going.’ As he was walking out of the gate, Amal called back, ‘Ben?’
Ben turned.
‘Sam is short for Samantha,’ Amal said with a significant look. ‘Just in case you didn’t … still, you know what I mean.’
Ben nodded. ‘Thanks for letting me know. Happy Christmas, Amal.’
‘You too. Take care, all right?’
Chapter Four
Ben was awake long before sunrise the next day, got out of bed and pumped out five quick sets of twenty press-ups on the carpet of his little room in the farmhouse bed and breakfast. He showered and watched the dawn crack over the rural Oxfordshire skyline with a mug of strong black coffee in his hand. He hadn’t slept well, his mind constantly turning over, switching back and forth from one thing to another and keeping him in a state of tension that only his long-established self-discipline prevented him from soothing with a gulp from his whisky flask.
Some time later, he shrugged on his leather jacket and went downstairs to be met by the smell of bacon, sausages and fried eggs cooked up by the proprietor, Mrs Bold, who looked as though she’d gobbled down a few too many of her own full English breakfasts. Ben politely declined her insistent offer of a coronary on a plate and stepped out into the crisp, cold morning air. Yesterday’s dark clouds and sleet had given way to a clear sky. Pale sunshine filtered through the bare branches of the oaks and beeches and glittered on the frosty lawn.
He swung himself into the cab of the Land Rover. The engine spluttered on starting, and for a moment or two he thought, ‘Oh-oh’; then it fired up with an anaemic-sounding rasp and he went crunching over the gravel of the long drive.
The cemetery was just a few fields away from Langton Hall, in the grounds of a sixteenth-century church ringed by a mossy dry-stone wall. Ben knelt by the grave and delicately brushed away a few dead leaves. The inscription on the granite headstone was simple and plain, as she’d have wanted it to be. Just her name; the year of her birth; that of her death.
She was just thirty-two.
Ben