Love is a Stranger (18 page)

Ben raised his head from Nikolas’s chest and took a deep breath for courage. “Is that a personal reflection from prison camp?”

Nikolas pressed Ben’s head back onto his chest. “Good things can come from bad beginnings. You do realise that the nine-year-old boy living rough on the moors turned into the SAS solider I eventually recruited, don’t you? By the time you were sixteen, you were already an exceptional young man with unusual skills and self-reliance.”

“You neatly turned that conversation from you back to me.”

“As I always will. Come.” Nikolas tapped him on the shoulder. “You have work to do. Do it well, Ben. Nothing to tie this to us.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Ben was interested to read in the paper, which he uncharacteristically scanned very carefully every day that week, that a corporate lawyer in the city had recently died in a fluke, but tragic, accident. According to the journalist, the man, Jeremy Haxton, had left work one night and discovered he had a flat tyre. He’d apparently tried to change the wheel. Given the dark of the underground car park, the police concluded he’d been unable to fit the jack correctly. It was an unusual accidental death, they said, but not entirely unheard of. The story went on to point out that the BMW X5 was not one of the heaviest vehicles on the road, but at just under 5,000lbs curb weight, it was heavy enough. Quoted, the coroner explained, “The human head is little more than blancmange wrapped in cling film inside a paper bag placed in a cardboard box wrapped in brown paper.” A diagram of this concept had been provided. Ben liked it. The little brain looked like a sick birthday present.

Ben wondered if there was a widow somewhere reading this same story and, if so, whether she was interested in blancmange brains, or whether she was more concerned to have it confirmed that her husband, Jeremy Haxton, was indeed dead. He hoped that was the case.

§§§

Killing Jeremy had been one of the easiest things Ben had ever done. In so many ways, he’d wanted the man to know what his death was about, but having time to torment your victim with a recitation of his crimes existed only in fiction. Ben had seen a narrow window of opportunity and had taken it. The man never knew what had hit him as he’d emerged from the stairwell late one night.

The laptop’s hard drive he destroyed. Then he smashed the laptop, just because he wanted to.

§§§

When Ben returned home, however, he didn’t know what to do with himself. He felt completely numb. For one terrifying moment, all he wanted to do was run away to the moors. And with a sickening realisation, he saw that this was just like the weeks and months after his mother had abandoned him. He couldn’t concentrate, and he couldn’t care about anyone or anything. Even with Nikolas he was numb, disassociated. He went through the motions of eating, wandering around the house, walking the dog, but nothing registered.

It was worse at night. For the first time in his adult life, he wasn’t interested in sex. It all seemed too much effort, something that should be happening to someone else. The first night, Nikolas had slid into bed alongside him, cupping his face for a kiss. Ben had pushed him off and turned his back, shoulders stiff. He needed endless sleep and felt tired after only a few hours of rising. In some part of his brain, all this worried him for he could see no reason for it—after all, he had killed many people before with less justification—but in the other portion, he just couldn’t care enough to care. He drifted, silent on a still sea of pleasant numbness. He almost stopped talking and dreamt endlessly of the moors. He was almost pleased he could see no end in sight, and wondered whether if he tried hard enough he might just disappear entirely. After three days and nights of seeing his life as a pinprick of light at the end of a long dark tunnel, the end came startlingly abruptly one morning when Nikolas woke him by throwing some clothes at him. “Get up.”

Ben grunted something that sounded remarkably like fuck off but was mumbled enough so Nikolas might just mishear. Nikolas dragged the covers off Ben’s naked body. “Get up. We have a long drive ahead of us.”

Ben sat up reluctantly. “Another job?”

Nikolas pursed his lips, placing a leather travel bag on the bed. “No. Get dressed and then pack for a few nights.”

“Tell me where we’re going first.”

Nikolas gave a sour smile. “And spoil the surprise?”

“I don’t like bloody surprises.”

“Ah. Something we finally have in common. But it is my birthday, so I am enduring one for your sake.”

“You’re giving me a surprise for your—Wait, it’s your birthday? Today?”

“I think I just said that, yes.”

“You didn’t tell me. I didn’t get you—”

“I did not want you to. But I have decided to get myself something. It is a prerogative of old age. Now, get dressed and get in the car or I will go without you. Five minutes.”

“What about Radulf?”

“I have left him some tins and shown him how to use the opener.”

“You can’t just―!”

“He was packed and in the car five minutes ago.” Nik zipped his bag with a look of utter derision.

Ben took half an hour to get ready, but he noticed Nikolas wasn’t holding him to the deadline. He was tossed the keys. “I’m driving?”

“Of course. Why keep a dog and bark yourself. Get in and drive. North.”

“North. Just north?”

“Yes.”

Neither of them was in the mood to make small talk. Radulf was too busy pretending to be important on the rear seat to do his part in easing the tension. Nik turned on Radio 4 and listened to a debate about the economy. Ben felt like screaming. He’d come out of his strange disassociated state with something of a head rush. He wasn’t sailing along numb anymore. He was apparently driving north with the man who he could now see was the cause of all his problems: Sir Nikolas bloody Mikkelsen. He was the one who’d pulled Ben out of the army, which he’d loved and been good at. He was the one who’d turned him into an amoral killer. He was the one who’d seduced him and fucked him over a billiard table. He was the one who’d taken him from the department where at least he’d had a life separate to fucking Nikolas. Literally. Piece by piece, his whole identity had been subsumed by Nikolas Mikkelsen until there was almost nothing of Ben Rider left. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure if that was his real name anymore. He held his tongue until the M1 then silenced John Humphries, asking acidly, “What exactly am I? In this agency?”

“You are frequently annoying. Put the radio back on.”

“Am I your partner?”

Nikolas glanced at the radio then sighed and stared out of the side window. “Of course.”

“Then why did you ask Kate to come and work for you—us—without asking—consulting—me?”

“What would you have said?”

“I don’t know! I haven’t thought about it!”

“Think about it now.”

“Well, she’s ideal, I guess, but that’s—”

“Well, there you go. You agree with me, so it is just as well I did not waste your time or mine by asking—
consulting
—you.”

Ben thought about this answer—this patronising, annoying, provoking answer—for a while, contemplating all the bad things he wanted to do to Nikolas. Instead of acting on any of them, he said casually, “I considered asking her to marry me once.”

Nikolas shrugged. “I am married. Your point?”

“Fuck you.” He pulled out into the outer lane and broke the speed limit by some considerable margin until he could see this bothered Nikolas as much as his attempt to make him jealous, not at all. He slowed down and turned the radio back on—to Radio 1. Nik chuckled and turned it off. “Stop trying to be annoying, Ben. You are annoying enough without any effort on your part, and if you say
fuck
to me again in any context, I will put you out of the car.”

“You are not my fuc—boss anymore! Stop treating me like a bloody child!”

“I treat you as you deserve to be treated.” He twisted around in the seat to face Ben, and Ben could see Nikolas wasn’t as calm or as detached as he’d tried to give the impression he was. “Where have you been the last three days, Benjamin? Who am I sharing you with now?”

Ben frowned and glanced over. “What do you mean? I’ve been nowhere. Just here—I mean at home, with you.”

“No. Wherever you were, it was not with me, and you were not at home. You were not at home to
me
. So, I treat you accordingly.”

Ben gave him an incredulous look. “Is this about us not having sex? Jesus fucking Christ, it is! Three nights without sex and you’ve gone totally psychotic.”

“That is exactly where your mind would go. Because you have never seen anything else between us but sex. I did not say sex, and I did not mean sex. You are such a
child
sometimes. You do nothing but take emotionally and you do not give back. Everything is fall—Stop the car.”

“What? We’re doing ninety.”

“At the next services. Pull over.”

Ben did as he was asked. Nikolas got out of the car and slammed the door as he headed toward the coffee stand. Ben watched him walk away. The dog stuck his head between the seats, and Ben patted him absently, then he clipped on the lead and took him out, keeping a wary eye on Nikolas, who was now leaning casually against the wall, drinking coffee, face tipped to the sun. When the dog was done, Ben climbed back in and waited for Nikolas. Nikolas returned, his earlier, totally uncharacteristic outburst seemingly forgotten. Ben sat staring out of the windscreen. Nikolas frowned. “Come on. We have a long way to go.”

Ben nodded. “Yeah. I think we do.
I do
.” He closed his eyes for a moment then opened them to see Nikolas’s eyes, dark and unreadable, watching him intently before the gaze was flicked away. Ben turned to look out of his side window, wishing he wasn’t trapped in the car for this conversation. “I do act like a child. I don’t know why. I just let you do everything—make all the decisions. I’m not like that with other people, so why am I like it with you? I just take and take from you, and then as soon as I get crossed in the slightest, I treat you like shit. On your birthday, too. I didn’t even know it was your birthday…”

Nikolas sighed and put his hand on Ben’s thigh. “Don’t. I lied to you, Benjamin.”

Ben turned, his eyes wide. “Don’t say it.
Please
, whatever you do,
don’t say it
. Let’s just stay as we are now, please, Nik.”

“Don’t say what?”

“I don’t know! Whatever you were going to say—that you don’t love me. That you’re going back to your wife. That you’ve found someone else to do my job. I don’t know!”

“Dear God, you are foolish sometimes. I was referring to something else entirely.” It was Nikolas’s turn to stare out of his window. “Look, this is neither the time nor the place to have this conversation. I—Do you trust me?”

“You keep asking me that! Yes! You know I do.”

“Then trust me now and just drive, and perhaps when we get where we are going, things will sort themselves out more easily than we can see at present.”

Ben put his hand over Nikolas’s. “Tell me you love me first.”

Nikolas eased his own hand away. “That is not—”

“I don’t fucking care about whether that’s what you do or don’t do. I need to hear it.”

Nik turned to him. “I would have thought all this would say it for me. Would I bother with all this for anyone else?”

“Why can’t you just say it?”

A fleeting expression passed over Nikolas’s face. Ben thought he wasn’t going to reply, but he said with so much stress in his voice that his accent almost totally mangled the words, “Everyone I have said that to has left me. Do not make me lose you, too.”

Ben took Nikolas’s face in a painful hold. “I will
never
leave you.”

Nikolas eased his hands off with a sad expression. “Sometimes we have no choice in this world. We are left alone by those who would so very much prefer to stay with us.”

Ben leant his forehead to Nikolas’s. “All right. I’m sorry.” He straightened in his seat then started the car and pulled back out onto the motorway. Nikolas’s hand returned to Ben’s thigh, his thumb occasionally stroking the outside seam of his jeans, and Ben was content to let that uncharacteristic gesture be all the declaration of love he needed.