at the gun.
‘Pretty surprised, aren’t you, Major?’ Chris gave a tense little laugh. ‘Leigh, this is what your boyfriend’s really about. Look what I found in his bag. Three of them, and ammunition.’ Keeping the gun trained on Ben, he reached behind the door of his cabin. He brought out the haversack and chucked it on the floor between them. ‘Not to mention something like fifteen thousand euros in cash in there,’ he said. ‘All tied up in neat little stacks. What’s the game, Major? Gun-running? Dope-dealing? Bit of both?’ Chris grinned triumphantly at Leigh. ‘Either way, he’s in the shit now. This is a citizen’s arrest. I’m calling the police and the coastguard.’
‘Chris!’ Leigh moaned.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t mention your name. It’s nothing to do with you-is it?’
‘You’re being so stupid,’ she said. ‘Don’t do this. I’ll explain everything to you another time. Trust me, all right?’
Chris ignored her and waggled the gun at Ben. ‘Not so tough now, are you, Major?’
Ben went on eating. ‘You don’t know about the three conditions, do you, Chris?’
Chris flushed, and his triumphant grin faded a little. ‘What are you on about?’
‘I didn’t think so. I’m talking about the three conditions of readiness for a single-action semi-automatic pistol.’
Chris’s smile was wavering, uncertain what to make of this.
Ben went on calmly. ‘Condition one, cocked and locked. You only have to flick off the safety, pull the trigger and I’m dead.’ He pushed his plate away from him, stood up and took a step towards Chris.
‘Careful, I’ll shoot,’ Chris stammered.
‘Condition two, there’s a round in the chamber, but you still need to cock the hammer with your thumb.’ Ben took another step forward.
‘I’m warning you…’
‘Condition three, there’s no round in the chamber at all, and all the weapon’s good for is hammering nails.’ Ben had reached Chris now, and the gun’s muzzle was a few inches from his face. It was beginning to tremble.
‘You’re in condition three, you arsehole. Now give me that before you poke your eye out with it.’ Ben reached out and snatched the .45 from Chris. He checked the magazine. Eleven cartridges. He picked up the fallen haversack. It was light. The money was still there but the guns and spare magazines were gone. ‘What have you done with the other pistols?’ he demanded.
Chris rubbed his hand, turning pale. ‘Tossed them,’ he said in a low voice.
‘Overboard?’
Chris nodded.
‘Idiot.’ Ben tucked the Para-Ordnance into his belt. ‘Leigh, get me whatever maps there are of the French coast. As for you,’ he said to Chris, ‘get back in your cabin and don’t let me see your face again, or I swear I’ll strap you to the anchor and leave you at the bottom of the sea.’
Chris retreated quickly towards the master cabin.
‘Oh, and Chris?’ Ben added.
‘What?’ Chris said sullenly.
‘I did see Outcast. And I thought the score was shit.’
It was a lie, but it hit Chris right where he’d wanted it to.
Chris shut his cabin door. He didn’t come out again.
‘You didn’t have to be so hard on him,’ Leigh said, laying a pile of maps on the table. ‘He was just trying to protect me.’
Ben said nothing. He munched a piece of bacon as he spread a map out and studied the coastline.
The Isolde cruised towards the French coast under a clear blue sky as Ben and Leigh brought their things up on deck. Mick the skipper steered the yacht into a deserted little cove a mile or so from Saint-Vaast-La-Hougue, and two hundred yards from shore Ben lowered the dinghy with his and Leigh’s things in it. Then he disappeared down below for a minute as she said goodbye to the skipper on the deck.
‘I don’t know what’s been going on with you and Mr Anderson,’ the sailor said. ‘But good luck, love.’
‘I’ll see you again sometime, Mick,’ she replied, and kissed his bearded cheek.
They climbed down the side and Ben started the dinghy’s outboard motor. He grabbed the tiller and steered the burbling boat away from the yacht. Leigh huddled at the dinghy’s prow, drawing her suede coat around her against the chilly sea breeze. Gulls circled and called overhead.
‘Do you think Chris will call the police now we’re gone?’ she asked anxiously.
‘No, I don’t think there’s any danger of that,’ Ben said, peering towards the shore.
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because I told him just now that if he did, I’d come back and blow his brains out.’
She frowned and didn’t reply.
A few minutes later Ben was dragging the dinghy up onto the pebbly shore. Across a stretch of beach, beyond some sand dunes, he could see the rooftops and church spire of a coast village. ‘This way,’ he said, grabbing his bag.
They hiked over the dunes and across a piece of rough grassland that bordered onto a golf course. A winding path led them into the heart of the village, and they soon found a little garage where Ben paid cash for a cheap second-hand Citroën.
They set off. Ben didn’t need a road-map. His kidnap and ransom work had taken him to France on more than one occasion, and he knew the country well. He stuck to the back roads. Kept a sharp eye out for police, just in case, but saw nothing.
It was a thirteen-hour drive across the country and into Italy, and they took turns at the wheel. They stopped only for fuel, and ate on the move. It was cold and they kept the car heater on high. They were tired and spoke little.
As they crossed the Italian border in darkness a thick fog was coming down, and Ben drove in silence, concentrating on the tunnel that the headlights carved out ahead. Leigh sat with her thoughts, a little drowsy with the heat of the blower. Then she remembered something. ‘Can I have my phone?’
‘It’s at the bottom of the Channel,’ he said. ‘I told you I had to get rid of it.’
‘Well, can I use yours, then?’
‘Who do you want to call?’
‘Pam.’
‘Your PA? Why?’
‘I’ve been gone for days. She’ll
