‘Don’t joke about it. Whoever you’ve managed to piss off this time, they’re not kidding around.’
‘That’s what I have you for,’ she said with a bitter smile. ‘Reverend.’
Ben ignored the jibe and got to his feet. His left leg was stiffening up from the bullet impact and there was a lancing pain in his right side from the punch he’d taken in the ribs.
‘Don’t think we’ll be seeing him again,’ Roberta muttered, peering down over the edge. There was no trace of sympathy in her eyes as she watched the surface of the wet concrete smooth itself out, with hardly a ripple left to show for the man’s body under it.
‘Not for a few centuries,’ Ben said. ‘But maybe his friend can tell us what the hell’s going on here.’
Ben and Roberta made their way down from the scaffold. The gun he’d tipped over the edge was scuffed from its impact against the ground, but weapons of war could take the odd knock or two. He dusted it off and kept it ready, just in case, as they headed back towards the building where they’d left the younger man lying unconscious.
When they reached the spot, Ben saw with a sinking heart that the worry that had been growing inside him was proved right: the house was empty. All that remained of the gunman was a thin trail of blood where he’d picked himself up and managed to escape. Where he was now was anybody’s guess.
‘It’s my fault he got away,’ Ben muttered in self-reproach as they left the construction site behind and hurried back across the field towards the park. ‘I didn’t hit him hard enough.’
‘Hey, any harder, you’d have killed him,’ Roberta said, then added glumly, ‘Either way, we’d still be back to square one. So what happens next?’
‘You got what you came for,’ Ben said. ‘Me. And I want to know more about all this physics research stuff.’
‘I told you just about all I know.’
‘Then we’ll have to figure it out the hard way,’ he said. ‘Bit by bit, one piece at a time. How’s the ankle?’
‘Hardly hurts anymore.’
‘Good, because we’ve got some travelling to do.’
Reaching the edge of the park, they climbed back over the wall, passed the bullet-riddled bench and walked along the footpath towards the car park. Ben had the MX4 wrapped up in an old cement bag he’d picked up from the building site. The last thing he needed now was ‘MACHINE GUN PHONEY VICAR IN POLICE CHASE’. He already had more to deal with than he even wanted to contemplate.
As they approached the car park, Ben saw the black Audi S6 performance saloon sitting empty next to Roberta’s rental Vauxhall. He reached in his trouser pocket and, gingerly against his bruised thigh, drew out the Audi ignition key he’d taken from the shooter he’d knocked out. He pressed the key’s remote button and wasn’t surprised when its central locking system clunked open with a bleep and a flash of indicators. The gunmen were as well equipped for travel as for killing.
‘Better get your stuff out of there,’ he said, pointing at the back window of the rental, to where Roberta’s small travel bag was sitting on the rear seat. ‘We have to ditch your Vauxhall.’
She frowned. ‘You figure that’s how they tracked me all the way out here?’
‘Did you stop for fuel on the way? Pay by credit card?’ he asked her.
‘I was running on fumes by the time I reached Oxfordshire. Had to stop at the filling station just before the village. Didn’t have any UK currency on me. How was I supposed to know they could follow my movements?’
Ben didn’t reply. The implications were as deeply worrying as they were far-reaching. They were sinking in for Roberta too. ‘What you’re saying, it’d mean—’
He nodded, and finished the sentence for her. ‘That whoever these new friends of yours are, they’re considerably more organised and deeper inside the system than the charming bunch who were trying to kill you before. You certainly pick them.’
‘I didn’t pick anyone. I’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘Someone seems to think otherwise.’
‘But who? Who?’
‘They,’ he said. ‘You said it yourself, they don’t want anyone to know who they are. All I know is, this is going to make last time look like a cakewalk.’
‘You always did have that reassuring way about you,’ she muttered as she unlocked the Vauxhall to get her travel bag.
‘Leave the key in it,’ he told her.
Reluctantly, she tossed the key on the front seat and slammed the door. ‘The rental company will totally blacklist me, not that it matters right now.’
‘Join the club,’ Ben said. He’d long ago stopped keeping count of the number of hire cars that had been crashed, burned or shot to pieces while in his charge. Theologians shouldn’t have these problems. ‘Now, give me your phone, please.’
‘My phone?’ she said guardedly. ‘What do you want it for?’
‘Just give it here,’ he said, holding out a hand. She hesitated, then slipped a BlackBerry out of her pocket and passed it over. Without a word, he dropped it on the concrete at his feet, dashed it to pieces with the heel of his shoe and kicked the plastic fragments into the bushes.
‘You sonofabitch, that’s the second time you’ve done that to me. Now I’ve got no phone!’
‘And now there’s one way fewer of tracking your movements,’ he said.
‘Bullshit. Nobody can track a cellphone without an official warrant.’
‘Ho, ho. You say I’m talking bullshit?’ He walked up to the Audi and yanked open the driver’s door. He wasn’t expecting to find any clues inside the vehicle as to the gunmen’s identities or who they worked for, but the car itself would do to get out of here before whoever they were sent in reinforcements to finish the job. He tossed the wrapped-up gun on the back seat. ‘Let’s move.’
It was almost two o’clock when Ben turned the powerful car in through the vicarage gates and rasped to a halt on the gravel. Roberta had gone very quiet. ‘You all right?’ he said, laying a hand on her arm. Her muscles felt hard and tense. She gave a quick nod. Pointed at the dusty Suzuki four-wheel drive that was parked in front of the vicarage. ‘Someone’s here.’
Ben had already noticed it. The Grand Vitara’s rear hatch was open a foot and tied down with a strap. A huge rolled-up Persian rug was protruding a yard from the gap.
Brooke’s car. Normally the sight of it, and the anticipation of seeing her again, would have made him break into a smile. Now it was different. Now he had to try to figure out what he was going to say to her, and it wasn’t going to
