She walked very slowly and very upright towards the door, but Nikolas knew without a doubt had he not been there she would have been using the walking frame he could see in the corner.
When she’d disappeared into the gloom, Nikolas turned to Miles.
Miles just opened his arms in a helpless gesture then slumped. “I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t like this but…” He struggled to his feet and handed Nikolas a picture from the sideboard. A family posed for the photograph in front of the bungalow. Mrs Toogood he recognised, younger and not apparently infirm, with clearly the same upright look. There was a young man and woman and a baby. “That’s me.”
“Which one?”
Miles leant over Nikolas’s shoulder to point out the baby. He didn’t appear to have any sense of humour at all.
The most remarkable thing about the scene was that there were no trees. The bungalow was situated on a sweeping hillside with views to all sides down across the loch and to mountains in the distance. It was very pretty indeed.
“Here we are then.” Mrs Toogood had a little tray on wheels in front of her, which she pushed, inch by agonised inch, towards them. Nikolas immediately made to get up, but the merest touch on his shoulder held him down. The old lady was proud and her grandson knew it.
Eventually, tea was poured, and Nikolas had accepted a large piece of homemade shortbread. He didn’t eat carbs (particularly refined sugar), as he’d told the boy, but manners always outweighed personal preferences. Besides, it reminded him of Ben. Sitting in the gloom, in the depressing atmosphere, he felt like thinking about Ben. And that he wasn’t speaking to him.
Nikolas tactfully drew the old lady’s attention to the photo, and her smile was very sad. “That’s my daughter, Morag, and her husband, James. Miles’s parents. They were killed the day after that picture was taken. Car crash.”
“I’m sorry. Things have changed in seven years.”
She could take that to mean the boy and chat about her grandson, or she could admit the elephant in the room—that it was pitch dark even at midday in June.
She nodded. “We—my husband and I—owned the Manse, and when Morag got married we had this bungalow built in the grounds, and she and James moved into the big house. It was lovely. We could walk up the hill and visit. The house is…well, it’s gone now, of course. They’ve built a new one…Very modern, I suppose.” She sipped her tea, far away in memories. “He’s gone to Ibiza for two weeks. It’s been quite peaceful.”
“The trees?”
“Oh, yes, well, when Morag died, I had to sell the big house. I couldn’t keep it on. Then, of course, it wasn’t so convenient for the new owner when he built his new house on the site having this little bungalow here, right in his view, so to speak. He planted the trees. When was it, darling? Oh, you were too little to remember. Seven years ago? It’s astonishing how they grow, isn’t it?”
“This is not—you don’t own the land around the house?”
“Oh, no, not now. Just this little bungalow. I should have sold it to him as well, I suppose. He wanted it. But…well, you know how it is.”
Nikolas asked her where she would like her grandson’s trunk put, and on the excuse of fetching it went back out to the car, motioning for Miles to accompany him. They walked around the outside of the box of trees. When they reached the back, Miles puffing already, Nikolas came face-to-face with the “big house”. He supposed, superficially, the situation was the same as theirs in Devon: a contemporary house built on the site of an older property. But that’s where the resemblance ended. This was faux Tudor, faux taste. It was a monstrosity of ostentatious wealth. “What does this man do?”
Miles screwed up his face. “I think he’s an author. Granny said he was a bookmaker. She has very old fashioned expressions sometimes.”
“A bookmaker? I won’t look out for his books in the library.”
“Do you read a lot?”
“Mostly irony. You have apparently not discovered it yet. So, what’s to be done?”
“Is that rhetorical?”
Nikolas laughed. “I’m not sure. What does your grandmother want to happen?”
“Oh, don’t mention it! Please, don’t tell her what I’ve done. She worries enough about me as it is. And now I’ve gone and done this.”
“Do not cry again. Warriors, remember?”
Miles pouted glumly. “It’s hard to be a warrior when I see her. It can’t be good to live in the dark, can it?”
“Like being in a gulag?”
The boy nodded, toeing the ground. “I was researching escapes. That’s how I got so interested in them. But reading doesn’t do any good really, does it? None of it’s real. Superheroes don’t exist. This is real life and it’s horrible!” He began to cry once more.
Nikolas watched him for a moment then asked casually, “Do you know how to use a chainsaw?”
§§§
Once they got started, it was relatively easy and immensely good fun. Nikolas bought two chainsaws, once each, and they worked out how to use them together. Nikolas never had any qualms about little boys doing dangerous things. If he’d been given a chainsaw when he was seven, his life might have turned out very differently. The knack was getting the trees to fall the right way, clearly important to the overall operation, and they solved this by lashing each one to the hire car with rope and taking turns to cut or drive. Miles proved very effective at both tasks.
In two hours, they had them all down.
He’d booked a local builder to come and take them away—and give him a quote for something else as well.
The bungalow was suddenly flooded with late afternoon, June sunshine, and the loch sparkled in every window, the glass of which had been kept immaculately clean, despite having only a view of green needles for seven years.
Mrs Toogood had been removed for the whole of the operation on the excuse of Miles needing a huge amount of new uniform, which he later told Nikolas with a blush wasn’t actually an excuse, as all his was now too tight for him. So the grandmother had taken her tiny car and bounced off down the lane, back straight, thinking about socks and blazers, and other such important things.
Nikolas, with Miles stripped to the waist, had got to work.
Once they’d got the chainsaws going, which only Nikolas could do, as it took some considerable pull on the cords, the first tree had been selected for death. One by one, they’d tackled the enemy, giving the green abominations names just before they’d killed them. Some they’d taken the chainsaws to once they were down, just to ensure they were dead. Some they’d beheaded, some they’d dismembered (cut off the branches), and by the time the builder had turned up with his digger and industrial shredder, Nikolas and Miles were drinking tea in the sunshine. Miles, Nikolas noted, immediately put his very baggy T-shirt back on as soon as the other men had arrived.
Nikolas walked the owner of the building company up the hill a little way to discuss his other commission.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ben met with Peter Cameron at a little café in the town.
He was beginning to recover his balance, his perspective on the events at the ball. Nikolas had sent him various texts all morning, messages ranging in tone from telling him he loved him to an obscene gay joke, which Ben had deleted in case anyone read his texts ever. It was funny though. He was just missing Nikolas, he guessed. Nikolas was a bit of a force of nature, like air—as Ben had once told him. Not breathing, he missed it.
They sat down and ordered something. Ben hadn’t had breakfast, but for some reason wasn’t hungry, so he just ordered what Peter did and poked it around for a while, Nikolas-style. The tea was welcome though. It gave him something to hold, to bury his face into and avoid catching the other man’s gaze. Whatever this “date” was, it was embarrassing, and he wanted it over.
“Did you watch the DVD?”
Ben felt a stab of guilt, remembering. “No, sorry. I kinda forgot. Something came up.”
For some reason, Pe
ter seemed to find this amusing, and he nodded happily. “No, that’s fine, no problem.” He rummaged in a briefcase at his feet for a moment and came up with an A4-sized photo. He pushed it across the table at Ben. It was a picture of a man some little distance away from the camera, kneeling on a hillside by a backpack. Someone had apparently called out to him, he’d raised his face, and the picture had been snapped.
Ben frowned deeply. “Where did you get this?” Before Peter could answer, he added, wide-eyed, “Wait, hang on, it’s not me.” He looked up, confused. “Sorry. I thought it was me for a minute. Who’s this?”
Peter was still nodding, watching Ben’s reactions very carefully. “He’s called Ollie Whitestone. Or was. He’s dead. You don’t recognise him?”
“Well, yeah, vaguely, I do. I don’t know why though…”
“The DVD I gave you last night was of a show called After the Wars. Have you heard of it?”
“I don’t…I guess. It’s on TV?”
“Not here in the UK yet, but they’re airing Season 3 in the States now. Ollie was the star, so the show’s taking a hiatus while they recast.”
“What’s it about?” Ben held the photo, studying the dead man’s face. The resemblance he’d seen was superficial really, but…fundamental. They shared the same wide-set eyes, the slightly exotic features, the high, defined cheekbones.
“It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world—a world that has been destroyed by wars. The survivors blame the army for the devastation, so soldiers are hunted down, captured and kept as slaves—as fighters. Conflicts between groups are now settled on the outcome of staged fights between these modern-day gladiators. Ollie played a soldier captured by a group in what remains of Louisiana.”
“Huh. ’K. How did he die?”
“He killed himself.”
Ben scratched absentmindedly at the scar on his wrist. “I’m sorry, but I’m still not seeing—”
“My ex-wife is a writer on After the Wars. I want to do a movie about Oliver—his life, his meteoric rise to fame through this role, and then his death. I’m a director, by the way. I’ve made one or two movies already.”
“Anything I’d know?”
Peter then proceeded to name three of the highest grossing movies of the last decade. They all had impressive explosions in them, and most characters suffered major head trauma at one time or another, so Ben had actually seen them all. “You’re that Peter Cameron.”
Peter quirked a small smile. “Yes. So, anyway. What do you say?”
Ben frowned and rewound the conversation.
Peter, still watching him closely, added, “I need someone who can play Ollie convincingly on screen. It’s not going to be a traditional movie. Acting…per se. It’s more a biopic being narrated—I’m trying to get Ollie’s co-star in After the Wars to do the narration, which would be awesome. I want you to be my Ollie Whitestone.”
Ben felt like glancing around. Nikolas wasn’t exactly known for practical jokes, but he didn’t put it past him…if he were bored enough…
“I have no idea why—”
“Paige, my daughter, saw you on a documentary about girls in a school in Afghanistan the week after I told her my idea for Ollie’s biopic—and then Emmy told her she knew you. It was fate, if you like. See, here’s the thing, I could get someone who vaguely looks like Oliver. I could get someone with the right gladiatorial physique. I could get an unknown who could come to this role with the anonymity I want—I don’t want someone recognisable in their own right trying to “be” Ollie for the wrong reasons—but I can’t get them all in one package…without you. You have it all, Ben. You look like him enough to be mistaken for him. You have the build—hell, do you know how many actors in Hollywood are actually really short? You are a fucking gladiator. Sorry, Gina—my ex—says I’ve got a bit obsessed about this project. She doesn’t want me to do it. But I knew Ollie really well. I had plans for him. I want to tell his story, Ben, and I want you to be my Oliver Whitestone.”
Ben didn’t know where to start refusing this offer. Before he could point out any of the things that made it impossible though, Peter Cameron added, “I want to start filming in New Zealand next month. Ollie was a Kiwi, and that’s where he got his start in the business. We film there for a few weeks and then go to Louisiana.”
Ben said yes.
He’d go to New Zealand and tell Oliver Whitestone’s story.
He thought maybe it would help him find his own.
CHAPTER NINE
When Enid Toogood returned to her bungalow with some very large school shorts in her bag, she took a long time to process what she was seeing.
She hadn’t examined her bungalow for a number of years and appeared to be noting that the tiles were a little mossy. Being in the dark for seven years would do that to a roof.
Nikolas and Miles were sitting on a couple of the stumps, watching her watching them.
Eventually, she struggled out and came over, painfully slowly. She wrapped her arms around Miles, sweaty T-shirt and all, and murmured, “My silly boy. My wonderful, silly boy.” Then to Nikolas she implored, worry aging her already craggy face, “What will he say when he sees this? What will he do?”
Nikolas shrugged. “I don’t think he’ll notice.” Miles sniggered quietly and happily in his grandmother’s embrace, and Nikolas added, “I think he’ll have other things to think about.”
There was a terrible crashing, grinding sound, and the grandmother straightened in alarm. Miles tugged her cardigan. “Don’t worry.”
“What’s that horrible—?”
Something came through the front of the faux monstrosity on the slope above them.
It was amazing how badly built the house had been, considering what it had probably cost. Nikolas was shocked on behalf of would-be architects everywhere. But then, he reflected, a wrecking ball would do a fair bit of damage to his glass house, should anyone ever employ one on it. It didn’t bear thinking about. Much more fun to see someone else’s property being knocked down. Which is what he and Miles had been doing since their success with the trees.
The wrecking ball had only been on site half an hour, and it was nearly all down, just rubble.
They helped Mrs Toogood into her bungalow and made her a cup of tea. She could see to drink it now. She was very pale, but Nikolas asked Miles to leave them for a moment, and then very succinctly he explained why she didn’t have to worry about the reaction of her neighbour when he returned from his holiday.
Nikolas had a way with him that people responded to when he wanted or needed them to. It was why he was who he was, he reckoned. Why he’d survived as long as he had. He employed that facet of his psyche on Mrs Toogood now, and she couldn’t withstand the force of his personality any better than all the other people he’d persuaded to believe him. Ben, he reflected rather sadly, would probably be sympathising with her right about now and shaking his head in warning behind his back. It hadn’t done Benjamin Rider much good trusting him over the years. Anyway, this was a different issue. She could have faith in him. He told her she could, and she believed him. She didn’t have any other option.
Nikolas returned to his stump next to Miles to view the next part of the operation—clearing the grounds. Some of the house had survived the wrecking ball intact—the marble staircase still looked in one piece, the faux-Victorian bathtub still recognisable—but it all got scooped up the same and dumped into a succession of skips, which were picked up and removed in rotation. It was all terribly noisy, especially as one seven-year-old little boy kept cheering at each crashing drop into a metal container.
Nikolas took a moment from the fun and went back to the car to call Ben. He’d not had a reply to a single one of his texts, but now he needed to speak with him—he planned to stay on for a few days to complete his ten-pound contract, so Ben would have to fly with Babushka and Emilia on his own that evening.
The phone rang for a while. Nikolas glanced at the time. Five o’clock. His arm was very brown
. His watch still pleased him a great deal. It had been a good spend of a million dollars.
“What?”
It wasn’t Ben’s best greeting, but it was very hard, Nikolas assumed, to not talk to someone over the phone. Ben had been forced to say something.
“I’m still with Miles Toogood.”
“We’re leaving for the airport in half an hour!”
“I know. That’s why I’m calling. Go on with Babushka and Emilia, and I’ll fly back when I’m done here.”
“What’s that noise?”
“I have no idea. I think there must be some building going on somewhere.”
“Where are you?”
“With Miles Toogood. I told you.”
“Why do you keep calling him that?”
“Because it’s a name that needs to be said. Anyway, how did your lunch with the pervert go?”
“He’s not—Good. It was good. Interesting. I’ll tell you when you get home.”
“Oh, so you’ll be talking to me again then, will you?”
“I’m talking to you now.”
“No, this is being forced to talk because we’re on the phone and surly looks don’t translate well.”
“Fuck off, Nikolas.” Ben hung up on him.
Nikolas lifted his brows and regarded the peeling Harry Black for a while.
“Who were you calling?”
Nikolas started at the unexpected interruption to his gloomy thoughts. “Don’t ask adults questions. It’s rude.”
“Why? How would children learn things if they didn’t ask questions? Was that Emilia?”
“No. Have they finished?”
“They’re scraping the whole site now.”
“Don’t sound so gleeful and stop skipping.”
“Can we go see?”
“No. Building sites are dangerous for babies.”
“Did you know that William the Conqueror destroyed the whole of northern England just like this? He knocked down everything and burnt all the land. It was called raising the north, which is very odd when it was all flattened. I love William the Conqueror. He’s one of my heroes.”
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