The Pandemic Plot

by Scott Mariani

  ‘Saw him? It was me who found him! That’s why they think I did it. I might … I might have touched something. I don’t know any more. I’ve told the story so many times I don’t even know what’s true and what isn’t. I’m losing my mind. You’ve got to help me, Dad!’

  Ben’s mind was swimming as he tried to get a handle on the situation. Storm and Scruffy were looking up at him with anxiety in their eyes. Their acute sense of smell was picking up the stress pheromones he was giving off. He centred himself, controlling his breathing to lower his blood pressure and pulse rate.

  Deep in his heart he knew that Jude would never deliberately hurt a soul. Not like his father had. That was part of Ben’s DNA that Jude just hadn’t inherited, to Ben’s great relief. For a time Jude had talked about going into the Navy with a view to trying out for the Special Boat Service, Jeff Dekker’s old unit. Ben hadn’t been able to imagine his son as a trained killer.

  But Ben also knew that things could happen in the heat of the moment. Fights, accidents, crimes of passion, freaks of circumstance. He had to ask. ‘Jude. Tell me the honest truth. I only need to hear it from you once, and I swear I won’t ask again. You didn’t do this, did you?’

  Jude exploded on the other end of the line. ‘No!’ he yelled. ‘I’m innocent! How could you doubt me?’

  ‘I don’t doubt you, Jude. I just needed to hear you say it.’

  ‘What am I going to do? I’ve never been arrested for anything before. I don’t want to go to jail.’

  Ben asked, ‘Have they charged you for this?’

  ‘Not yet, but I know they’re going to. There’s this plain-clothes guy in charge, some prick of a detective who keeps screaming at me like I’d shot the Queen or something. They’re going to lock me up and throw away the key. I’ve got to get out of here! I can’t live like that!’ Jude’s voice was at breaking point.

  Ben said, ‘Jude.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stop. Close your eyes.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Just do it.’

  A pause. ‘Okay, they’re closed.’

  ‘Now take a few breaths. Slow and deep, through your nose. Let the tension flow out of your muscles.’

  ‘I’m breathing.’

  ‘Now open your eyes and listen to me like you’ve never listened to anyone before in your life.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘You are innocent, Jude. You have nothing to worry about. This whole thing is just some terrible mistake and everything’s going to be okay. Do you hear me?’

  ‘I hear you,’ Jude replied. But he sounded anything but convinced. Then he said, ‘I’m out of time. I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Jude, I’m coming over there. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’

  Then the call was over. Ben sat back in his chair. Picturing his son being marched back to the interview room where the police would continue to grill him until they either let him go or charged him with the crime of murder. Ben wanted to believe it would be the former, but a terrible feeling was building inside him. This wasn’t good.

  ‘Jesus.’

  He lit a cigarette, reached for the phone and called Jeff’s mobile to tell him what had happened and that he had to take off. Jeff was still on the road, in-between stops about twenty miles away. It was like Ben’s old friend and business partner to be all serious efficiency in a moment like this. He replied that he and Tuesday were returning to base immediately. ‘You need me?’

  ‘No, I’ll handle this. I’ll be gone by the time you get back.’

  ‘Copy that. Good luck, mate. Give my best to Jude, tell him to keep his chin up, and keep us in the loop.’

  ‘Thanks, Jeff. Talk later.’ Ben hung up the phone. He stubbed out his unfinished cigarette, launched himself out of his chair and raced for the door. The dogs leaped to their feet and followed him outside and across to the house. ‘You can’t come with me, guys. You need to stay and look after things until your uncle Jeff gets back.’

  Scruffy looked peeved, but Storm seemed to understand. Ben rushed upstairs and started stuffing essential items into his old green canvas bag. He was no stranger to having to rush off like this, and could be packed and ready to go in three minutes flat. He kept thinking he was dreaming. How the hell could something like this have happened to Jude, of all people?

  This was like nothing Ben had had to deal with in the past. If Jude had been kidnapped or was being threatened by dangerous armed assailants, Ben would have known exactly what to do. It had happened before, the time when Jude had found himself a hostage aboard a container ship hijacked by pirates off the coast of Africa. On that occasion, Ben and his comrades had acted decisively and brought him home safely in the end. Their way, playing by their rules. But in this kind of situation Ben knew he was completely outside of his area of expertise. This was a world of courts, judges and lawyers he knew nothing about. He could no more spring his son from a British police cell than he could bust him out of prison, in the worst-case scenario that Jude was remanded in custody.

  Maybe it won’t happen, he told himself over and over. Maybe by the time he got to Oxfordshire this terrible mistake would have been seen for what it was, Jude would have been released without charge, he’d be back home celebrating his regained freedom and the police would have hauled the real killer into custody.

  But the reassuring voice in Ben’s head was doing little to alleviate his thumping heart and the tightness in his shoulders as he threw his bag into the back of his car, leapt behind the wheel and took off in a wild spinning of wheels and clouds of dust.

  Back on the road again. Heading into the unknown. Ben had no idea what awaited him at the end of his journey. But nothing could have prepared him for the reality.

  Chapter 3

  Ben’s car was a high-performance BMW Alpina, the latest in a succession that had sometimes ended their service at the bottom of rivers, crashed or shot to bits. It was metallic blue, not that he cared since he had never cleaned it anyway. Its one main attribute, as far as he was concerned, was speed. Blistering, scorching, eye-watering power that it delivered in buckets – and he made uncompromising use of that capability as he hurtled away from Le Val and made the journey across northern France to the ferry terminal at Calais. Zipping past traffic as though it were standing still he whittled a four-hour drive into three, broke a ton of speed limits and would probably come home to a stack of fines, but he didn’t give a damn.

  Before long he was rolling the Alpina onto the car ferry; some ninety minutes later he was roaring off again on British soil. The last time he’d made this crossing, he’d worried about the customs authorities catching him with the firearm that circumstances had forced him to smuggle across the sea. On this occasion he had other concerns on his mind, but there was nothing he could do to update himself on Jude’s predicament until he reached his destination and tried to pry that information out of the police.

  He was to be disappointed. After two more hours of manic driving he screeched to a halt in the car park of the Thames Valley police station in Abingdon where Jude was being held. The two-storey modern red-brick building looked to him more like a primary school than a law enforcement command centre, set back from the road on the edge of town amid trees and neat hedges. Trying not to look like a maniac desperado he made himself walk, not run, from the car to the main visitors’ reception desk. Some people sat in a waiting area nearby. A desultory-looking female civilian staffer fixed him with a blank gaze from behind a security screen as he explained who he was and why he was here. The staffer spent a long while noting down the details, tapping keys on a computer and made him repeat himself several times while he gritted his teeth and willed himself to keep his patience.

  ‘Your name is Mr Hope?’

  ‘That’s correct. Ben Hope.’

  ‘Ben short for Benjamin?’

  ‘Benedict.’

  ‘How do you spell that?’

  He spelled it for her.

  Tap, tap. She had
black fingernails.

  ‘And the person you’re enquiring about is Mr Jude Arundale?’

  ‘Arundel.’ He spelled that for her as well. ‘A-R-U-N-D-E-L. As far as I know, he’s still being held here. I just want to know if he’s been charged yet.’

  She paused the tapping and frowned at him. ‘Have either yourself or Mr Arundel had a name change?’

  ‘No, those are our names.’

  ‘But you say he’s your son.’

  ‘We have different surnames. Look, it’s a long and complicated story that I don’t have time to go into right now.’ In his rush to get here Ben hadn’t foreseen the issue the disparity between their names might flag up, but now he could see where this was going. Welcome to the wonderful land of bureaucracy.

  ‘Are you able to provide any documentary proof of relationship, such as a full birth certificate showing your identity as parent?’

  Ben sighed. ‘No, I don’t have anything like that.’

  ‘Do you and your son live together?’

  He was about to reply truthfully, ‘No, we never have, not for any great length of time,’ then realised that answer would just make things worse. ‘He’s his own person. He owns a home here. I live in France.’ He took out his driving licence to show her. She gave it only a cursory glance.

  ‘If you could have provided something like a utility bill to show you’re both resident at the same address, that might have been something. Is there nothing you can show me to prove that you’re related?’

  ‘Not really,’ he admitted. That sense of being out of place and helpless was coming back strong. This just wasn’t his world.

  ‘Then I’m sorry, Mr … uh …’

  ‘Hope.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Hope, but without proof of relationship I’m not allowed to give you the information you’re asking for.’

  ‘I just want to know if he’s been charged, that’s all. A simple yes or no. It’s not much to ask.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t. Look at it from my position. You could be anybody.’

  ‘Please. You could tell me by nodding or shaking your head. Nobody would even know.’

  ‘It’s my job.’

  ‘He’s my son.’

  Her lips tightened into a firm line and her eyes hardened with a look of finality. This conversation was over.

  Ben stared at her. The people in the waiting area were all craning their necks to watch the minor drama playing out at the reception desk. He felt his shoulders sag and knew he had to give it up. ‘Fine,’ he said, and turned away from the desk and walked out of the reception area feeling stupid and frustrated.

  Back outside, he lit a Gauloise and turned to gaze at the police station, wondering where Jude might be inside. He imagined that the custody suite would be somewhere in the bowels of the building, comprising interview rooms and cells, some of them probably painted pink to make for a less threatening environment for vulnerable detainees or folks of a special snowflake disposition. Which did nothing to soften the harsh predicament of a person condemned to spend the next indeterminate period of their life behind bars. If charged with the murder of Carter Duggan, Jude would find himself being transported to a real prison that didn’t look like a primary school surrounded by pretty gardens, and didn’t coddle its inmates with the fake comfort of pink cells. For all Ben knew, Jude was already there.

  One thing was for sure: unless he was prepared to break in through the police station roof, abseil through a window or camp outside the building on the off-chance of getting a glimpse of Jude, he wasn’t going to find out anything more here. The afternoon sun was beginning to sink in the sky. He finished the cigarette and flicked the stub into the bushes, then thought fuck it and stalked irritably back to his car.

  With nowhere else to go he drove west and north across Oxfordshire, a dogleg route of twenty-two miles that took him from Abingdon to the village of Little Denton. It was a familiar road that always filled him with bittersweet mem-ories. The village was one of the few in the area that had remained unspoilt by developers. The houses were mostly Cotswold stone and many older cottages retained their thatched roofs. The little church where the Reverend Simeon Arundel had once delivered his sermons still rang its bells on a Sunday morning as it had been doing for centuries. Ben turned off by the village pub, wound his way along a twisty lane running parallel to the Thames, and arrived at the ivy-covered vicarage that stood surrounded by trees behind a high stone wall. He sighed as he reached the place. Before it had become Jude’s, this had been the home of two very dear friends whom he still missed badly.

  When Ben told people that the family background to his relationship with Jude was a long and complicated story, he wasn’t just giving them the brush-off. It was also a story fraught with pain and sadness.

  Jude’s mother Michaela and her husband, Simeon, had raised the boy with a secret that was revealed to nobody until after their tragic deaths in a car smash. For most of his life, Jude had been under the natural impression that his dad was Simeon Arundel, the much-loved vicar of Little Denton, whom his mother had married before he was born. The truth was that Jude’s biological father was the wild young theology student and future soldier with whom she’d had a short, turbulent and passionate fling when they were all at university together: Ben Hope. They’d been something of a gang, the three of them, but the unhappy breakup of Ben and Michaela’s whirlwind relationship had ended all that. He’d been just too much of a handful, back in those days. Soon afterwards, when Ben’s unpredictable life path had led him to veer away from his studies and join the army, Michaela had confessed to Simeon something Ben had no clue about: that she was pregnant.

  One of the kindest and most principled men Ben had ever known, Simeon Arundel had been there for Michaela all those years, and been honoured to bring up Jude as his own son. Had he and Michaela not met such an untimely end, they might have told him the truth one day; but the secret had gone with them to their graves and only a posthumous letter from Michaela had revealed the secret to Ben and, accidentally, to Jude.

  At the time, it had been hard to tell which of the two of them was more shocked by the bombshell discovery. For Ben, it had been the crushing guilt of learning that he’d inadvertently left Michaela in the lurch all those years earlier, combined with the stunning strangeness of becoming a parent for the first time in his life. As for Jude, the poor kid’s whole world had been turned upside down and inside out, and he’d had a hard time dealing with the fact that this person he barely knew, and then only as a distant friend of the family, was actually his father. The relationship between Ben and Jude had started out pretty rocky and gone through a lot of ups and downs before they’d gradually been able to come to terms with the impact it had made on both their lives. More than a son, Ben felt that he’d gained a friend.

  And now this.

  It felt very strange not to drive up the crunchy driveway to the house. Ben’s reason for parking the Alpina outside the gates instead was that the vicarage grounds were already full of vehicles. Thames Valley Police had invaded. The Arundel family home was now the scene of the crime, festooned with blue and white POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS cordon tape. A forensic investigation van was parked close to the front door with a squad car on each side. Ben noticed that one of the squad cars was crushing part of a rose bed that Michaela had planted long ago, and which Jude had lovingly tended in his mother’s memory. Ben didn’t like that very much.

  As he stepped out of the Alpina and walked through the gates towards the house, he noticed something else. Not all four vehicles parked outside the house were painted in blue, white and lurid yellow livery with the shield emblem of Thames Valley Police on their bonnet. The odd one out was unusual. Very unusual. An ordinary unmarked cop car would have caught his eye but this one stood out like an elephant in a sheep enclosure. It was a massive black 1970 Plymouth Barracuda, as long and wide as a canal barge. The American muscle car made the police fleet vehicles look like Dinky toys. But what really d
rew Ben’s attention was that he’d seen it before.

  He paused beside the huge car, peered in the window and was greeted by a furious barking and a flurry of black and tan fur and snapping teeth from inside. The big German shepherd was better than any anti-theft alarm, that was for sure. Ben smiled at the dog. ‘Hello, Radar.’

  Continuing towards the house, Ben ducked under a tape cordon and spotted a uniformed cop emerge from the front door and head for the squad car that was parked on Michaela’s roses. The officer saw him, stopped and fixed Ben with an icy stare. ‘Hey, you. Can’t you see this is a crime scene? No access to members of the public.’

  Ben kept walking. He said, ‘Where’s McAllister?’

  Which completely threw the cop off his rhythm. He blinked at Ben and stammered, ‘H-how … w-what … w-why …’

  Ben had come to Little Denton wanting to see inside the house, but now he’d changed his mind. Partly because he knew the police wouldn’t let him in, partly because the forensic people would already have found anything worth finding, and partly because the presence of the big black Barracuda told him who was presiding over the crime scene investigation. He said to the uniform, ‘Tell him that Ben Hope is here and wants to talk to him.’

  The officer stared at Ben for a beat longer, then nodded without another word and disappeared back inside the house.

  Ben lit up a Gauloise as he waited outside. A few moments later, the owner of the muscle car, Detective Inspector Tom McAllister, stepped out to meet him.

  McAllister was a big guy, broad-shouldered and ugly, but possessed of a rugged kind of charm. His Ulster accent was only a little softened by all the years he’d spent on the Thames Valley force.

  ‘Ben Hope. I thought it must be some kind of frigging joke. How come you’re not dead by now?’

  ‘Nice to see you again too, Tom.’