The Bach Manuscript

This could go on for quite some time. As the blonde knew very well, because it usually did and she was his regular pick. She had the technique down better than any of the other girls. Something in the wrist action. For some reason, she was a natural at it. He knew her as Angelique, which, needless to say, wasn’t her real name.

Another piece of information the client lacked was that the private session he was currently enjoying was, in fact, anything but.

The tall, mature oak tree on the front lawn was about as close to the house as it was possible for a hidden observer to get without being spotted from the windows, and you could reach it easily enough by darting from hedge to bush. Plenty close enough, for the man who was perched high up in its branches. The only challenging part of his job had been getting over the wall unscathed. The rest was easy. Almost fun. He had an excellent view through the window in question, and at this range the telephoto lens on his camera was capable of producing crystal-clear close-ups of both the client and the girl whipping him.

The watcher wasn’t so interested in the girl. The client was another matter. Just a few more snaps, and the watcher would descend unseen from his perch and make his way back out of the grounds and over the wall to his vehicle.

The watcher permitted himself a smile as he watched the blonde step back to give herself space, then swing the cane and whack the old perv again. He could almost hear the snap of the thin rattan against soft, loose, white flesh. Framed in the viewfinder the client’s eyes were rolled upwards and his mouth was open with a sigh of ecstasy.

The shutter clicked one more time.

A perfect shot.

Someone was going to be happy.

Chapter 2 (#ulink_205c65a8-671c-51b8-bbaa-4207553e0209)

Ben Hope sat on the edge of the single bed with his old green canvas bag wedged between his feet and gazed around him at his strange, yet so familiar, surroundings.

And wondered, What the hell am I doing back here?

In some ways he felt like much the same person who had once lived in this very room, slept in this very bed, done all the things that a restless nineteen-year-old with the devil inside him and too many troubles for his young mind to bear is wont to do. In other ways, he was a very different person now. Twenty-something years of the kind of existence Ben had led since leaving this place couldn’t but profoundly change a man, if it didn’t kill him altogether.

But one thing was for sure. The place itself had barely changed at all during his long, long absence. Old Library 7 still had the same fusty smell of a building overdue for renovation by a century or longer. The yellowed and chipped woodwork of the ancient bow window was maybe a little more in need of repair. The carpet was still worn in all the same places he remembered. The thinly upholstered armchairs were the same ones he’d sprawled in evening after evening, meant to be reading but usually ending up asleep with the book upturned and dog-eared on his lap. Even the battered desk was original equipment, still bearing the black marks of cigarette burns and the scar from the time he’d smashed a bottle against it in some drunken fit of anger.

He’d been angry a lot of the time back in those days. Drunk even more of the time. Not the best of memories.

The only thing missing from the room was the old piano that had once stood over by the window, its place now taken by a saggy couch. Which seemed to make more sense. Quite why the college authorities had ever seen fit to put a piano in an undergraduate’s room had always been a mystery to him. He’d never even opened the lid, having never attempted to play a musical instrument of any variety in his life before or since.

Ben stood up and walked by where the piano had been. He undid the Victorian sash window latch, painted over so many times that it needed force to open it, and worked the stubborn window frame upwards until it was far open enough to lean out.

The view of the quadrangle below was exactly the same as it had been twenty-something years ago, with the rear façade of Meadow Buildings facing him. The wide open space of Christ Church Meadow lay beyond. Here in the middle of a hundred and sixty thousand people, the college’s nearly forty acres of unspoilt fields and woodland were a tranquil haven for wildlife, and for Ben. He could smell the river and hear the traffic rumble in the distance. It was a crisp and sunny Easter-time morning, in the break between Hilary and Trinity terms, and the usual troop of camera-toting tourists was bustling about the quad. Spanish, judging by the barking narrative of the guide who was busily ushering them around the hallowed college grounds.

It seemed an ironic coincidence that he should have been given his old room. Or was it? Maybe he had Seraphina to thank for it, looking up old records and being over-efficient. Perhaps she thought he’d go all mushy and nostalgic and be forever grateful to her for the gesture. In which case, she obviously didn’t know enough of Ben’s history with the place, or the circumstances under which he’d left it.

Which in turn brought him once again to asking himself the same question that had been in his mind ever since he’d arrived in Oxford early that morning.

What the hell am I doing back here?

Ben knew what.

It had been a spur of the moment thing. A snap decision. Perhaps not, in retrospect, the wisest idea he’d ever had. Perhaps he was getting sentimental, after all. Which wasn’t like him, or so he would have preferred to think. But he was here now. One night, and tomorrow he’d be sixty miles away having his business meeting; then soon after that he’d be home again at Le Val, getting on with life and work.

It was no big deal. He’d survived worse things in his time.

He looked at his watch. They’d still be serving breakfast in Hall, and he needed a coffee. But he felt grubby after the long drive up from Normandy and decided to take a quick shower first. Old Library was, as its name suggested, the oldest block of undergraduate accommodation within the college buildings, and convenience of facilities hadn’t been uppermost in the minds of the architects back then. Each floor had just one communal bathroom, which in Ben’s case was down the musty-smelling corridor from his room, past a series of deep-set oval windows and down a short flight of creaky steps.

The bathroom was still pretty much as scabby and mouldy as Ben remembered, and the plumbing still howled like a werewolf at full moon. He showered in tepid water, dressed quickly, then locked up his room. The oversized door key he’d been issued at the Porter’s Lodge on arrival was the same Victorian affair he’d used back in the day. He slipped it in his pocket and hurried downstairs and out of the iron-studded door of Old Library. The way to the Great Hall was through a small cloistered quad, which until about 1520 had been the site of an eighth-century priory. Lots of history in this place. But right now Ben was more concerned about missing his morning coffee, and he quickened his step up the grand staircase to the Great Hall.

That hadn’t changed either, with its grand vaulted ceiling and richly wood-panelled walls hung with scores of old gilt-framed portraits of Oxford luminaries through the ages whose names Ben had never cared to remember, and the three immensely long tables on which those students brave enough to consume college food took their meals. Ben vaguely remembered hearing a while back that some big movie production had used the hall as a location. Something about a boy wizard, he remembered, but that was all. He didn’t watch a lot of movies.

Breakfast time was winding to a close. A few people were filing along the self-service aisle on the left of the hall, picking up pastries and croissants and being poured coffees by the college staff. Ben got himself a mug of black coffee, nothing to eat, and took it over to sit on his own at the bottom end of one of the long trestle dining tables, not too far from the door, intending to gulp down his coffee and slip away without having to get into conversation with anyone.

He glanced at the faces of the others in the hall. They were mostly about his age, and he supposed they were old members from his year, here like him to attend the college reunion. Some of them knew each other and had bundled together into little groups, their laughter and excited chatter echoing in the huge room. He didn’t remember them.

But he quickly remembered the college coffee at the first swallow. It was just as bad as ever. Something on a par with British army coffee, a comparison Ben hadn’t been able to make back in those days. It was too vile to gulp down in a hurry, so he sat sipping it, alone with his thoughts.

That was when a voice from behind him said, in a tone of astonishment, ‘Ben Hope?’

Ben turned, coffee in hand, and looked at the guy standing there, carrying a tray laden with a pot of tea, cup, saucer, jug of milk, bowl of cereal, glass of orange juice. For a second or two they stared at one another. The guy was a little older than him. Neither short nor tall, thin nor plump. Light brown hair beginning to show a dusting of grey around the temples. The face was very familiar. Even more than the face, the eyes. Sharply green, filled with a mischievous kind of sparkle as they peered closely into Ben’s.

‘Ben Hope, it is you, isn’t it? Of course it is. My God, how long has it been?’

‘Nicholas? Nicholas Hawthorne?’

‘Thank God, you remember. I was beginning to think I must have aged beyond recognition. Not you, though. You haven’t changed a bit.’

‘I know that’s not true,’ Ben said. ‘But thanks anyway.’ He motioned at the empty space next to him at the table. ‘Will you join me, Nicholas?’

‘Why, gladly.’ Nicholas Hawthorne settled himself on the bench seat beside Ben. There was that strange, hesitant uncertainty between them that you got when old friends who had gone their separate ways were reunited after many years, and the ice needed to be rebroken. ‘It’s just Nick these days,’ he said with a smile. ‘I only use Nicholas as a performance name. The agent’s idea. He says the formality of it is more appropriate to the classical market. But never mind boring old me. What about you? You’re the last person I ever expected to see here.’

‘Me too.’

‘What have you been doing with yourself all this time?’

‘Oh, this and that.’ The fact was, very little of what Ben had done in the last couple of decades could be discussed in anything more than the vaguest terms. Even if he could have talked about it, and hadn’t been the kind of person who preferred to keep things to himself, the details would only upset most normal, gentle folks for whom his life of risk, trouble and danger would seem alien, even frightening. He’d come prepared for that. His strategy was to provide the briefest and sketchiest account of himself possible, keep it vague and dodge direct questions. He said, ‘I live in France now.’

‘Business or pleasure?’

‘Bit of both.’

‘Are you married? Children?’

Ben shook his head. The easiest answer. The truth was complicated. Like most things in his life.

‘I wouldn’t have thought so, somehow. Not the children part, anyway. Nor me. Too busy with work.’ Nick paused. ‘Actually, what I heard is, you ran off and joined the army. Did very well there, or so the rumour went.’

‘You shouldn’t listen to rumour,’ Ben said.

‘Very true,’ Nick said, laughing. ‘Not that I was the least bit surprised to hear it.’

‘No?’

‘Absolutely not. I mean, the wild man of Christ Church, the legends of whose exploits still echo around the college walls?’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Ben said. He hoped he wasn’t about to be treated to one of the stories. They weren’t ones he wanted to hear.

He didn’t have to. Nick seemed to pick up on his unwillingness to discuss the legend that had been young Ben Hope, and quickly changed the subject.