Chapter Fifteen

Ben walked into the hotel bar. The place was empty. He leaned against the counter and ran his eye along the row of whisky optics. The barman appeared. Ben produced his flask. ‘Any chance you can refill this for me?’ he asked. He pointed. ‘The Laphroaig.’

When he got back upstairs to the room, Leigh was awake and talking on her phone. She looked tired, still a little groggy from the sedative. As Ben came in and shut the door she was saying thanks for calling and goodbye. She ended the call and tossed the phone down on the bed in front of her.

‘Who was that?’ he asked.

‘Police.’

‘You called them?’

‘They called me.’

‘Was it the same guy who called you at Langton Hall?’

She nodded.

‘What did he want?’

‘Just to know how I was. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him anything about what happened, OK? And I didn’t mention what’s on there either.’ She pointed over at the laptop on the table.

Ben looked serious. ‘How long were you talking?’

‘Not long. About two or three minutes. Why?’

‘Get your things together. We’ve got to leave.’ He ejected the disc from the laptop, clipped it in its case and put it in his pocket. He quickly packed the computer in its carry-bag, threw the Mozart file into his haversack and used a bathroom towel to wipe down anything they’d touched in the room.

‘What’s wrong? Why do we have to leave so suddenly?’

‘Give me your phone.’

She handed it to him. He turned it off and pocketed it. ‘I’m going to have to dispose of this,’ he said.

‘I need that phone,’ she protested. ‘All my numbers are on it.’

‘You can’t keep it,’ he said. ‘I’ll explain later.’ He led her briskly downstairs and settled the bill in cash, using his false name.

‘Aren’t you going to tell me what’s going on?’ she asked as he guided her out to the car.

Ben started the green TVR. The throaty exhausts rasped and the wide tyres crunched on the gravel. The big car park had two entrances flanked by neat conifers. About to pull out, he glanced in the mirror.

There were two black Range Rovers behind them. They were identical. Private plates, tinted glass, headlights blazing. They turned into the other entrance in a hurry and pulled up right outside the hotel, one behind the other. All four doors opened simultaneously. Ben framed them in the mirror. He counted six men getting out. All six were serious-looking, professional in their movements.

Time to go. He tried to pull away discreetly, but that was hard to do in an ostentatious sports car like the TVR. The rasp of the engine reached their ears. Heads turned. One of the men pointed. They exchanged signals, then headed back to the Range Rovers.

‘Is this car registered to you?’ he asked quickly.

‘Yes, of course it is. You still haven’t told me what-’

Ben dumped the clutch and the TVR spun its wheels, pressing them back in their seats. He accelerated hard away.

That was twice now. No coincidence. He spoke loudly over the rising pitch of the engine. ‘They’re using your phone to track us, Leigh. They can triangulate the signal to within a few feet.’

She looked horrified. ‘But who? The police?’

‘Maybe the police. Or someone on the outside, someone connected. Someone with access to that kind of information.’

‘Who could that be?’ she asked, turning pale.

Ben said nothing. He pressed the accelerator down a little harder.

The Range Rovers were a hundred yards behind them as Ben turned off the quiet country road and joined the lumbering, dense traffic heading towards the city of Oxford. He managed to put a few vehicles between them, but the steady stream coming the other way made overtaking difficult. He saw a gap and nipped past an Oxford Tube coach, but when he looked in the mirror the first Range Rover had got past it as well. Horns honked in the distance.

Leigh was gripping the edge of her seat. ‘Where are we going?’ she gasped.

‘If we can get into the city we might be able to lose them,’ he said. ‘I know Oxford pretty well.’

By the time they reached Headington Hill on the outskirts of east Oxford the Range Rovers were together again, just a dozen or so cars back. At the bottom of the hill they hit the traffic lights coming into St Clements.

‘There are police cars down there,’ she said, pointing.

Ben had seen them. ‘It’s not for us.’ Part of the road had been cordoned off and there was an ambulance. Traffic was moving at a crawl. The Range Rovers threaded through the tailback as more horns blared.

A policeman stepped into the road four cars ahead of the TVR and signalled to let cars come the other way. Ben twisted in his seat. The Range Rovers were pulling up behind.

‘They’re coming,’ Leigh said. Her eyes were wide.

Ben was thinking fast as he watched the passenger doors of the Range Rovers swing open and three men climb out. Their faces were set as they walked towards the stationary TVR. They were just twenty yards away.

He pulled the car into the side, ripped out the key and threw open his door. ‘Come on.’ He grabbed his haversack and took her wrist, and they ran down the uneven pavement, past shop windows. Paramedics were loading an injured cyclist into the back of the ambulance on a stretcher. There was a twisted bicycle in the gutter. They ran on.

Behind them, the three men quickened their pace.

Leaving behind the mess of congested traffic and past more shops, Ben could see the big roundabout up ahead called the Plain. He remembered that it led to Magdalen Bridge and the High Street, straight into the heart of the city.

They raced across the road and the three men followed at a trot, threading through slow-moving cars. Off the Plain was a big wine-shop. A young man who looked like a student was parking a scooter on the kerb outside. He went into the shop, taking off his helmet and leaving the key dangling from the ignition.

Ben dragged the lightweight machine away from the window and swung his leg over the saddle. Leigh jumped on behind him as he started the engine. The student turned round and ran out of the shop, yelling at them to stop. One of the three men giving chase was talking urgently into a phone.

A hundred yards back down St Clements the Range Rovers battered through the stationary, honking traffic, smashing aside anything in their way and sending the police running for cover.

Ben twisted the throttle of the scooter. It was like driving a sewing machine. The little bike lurched into a sea of red and green buses, taxis and cars rumbling away from the Plain and across the Thames over Magdalen Bridge. Leigh’s arms were wrapped tightly around Ben’s waist as she perched precariously on the tiny pillion seat. He could hear police sirens in the distance behind them. He looked over his shoulder. The Range Rovers were coming up fast. The police cars had given chase, blue lights flashing.

Up ahead the traffic had stopped for a red light. Ben aimed the whining scooter at the kerb and it almost threw them off as it bumped up onto the pavement with a lurching wobble. He opened the throttle again and sent pedestrians scattering as he headed over the bridge. People turned and stared, some shouted. They made it halfway up the High Street, swerving wildly all over the pavement.

A shop door opened and the front wheels of a pram rolled out in front of them. It was carrying a baby wrapped in a blanket. The young mother was looking the other way and hadn’t seen the scooter racing towards her. She turned around and stopped, her mouth opening in horror.

Ben squeezed the brakes too hard and felt the scooter’s wheels lock up. He kicked out, tried to save it, but it skidded out from under them. He and Leigh tumbled to the ground. The machine scraped across the pavement on its side, hit a signpost and slid out into the path of a double-decker. The bus couldn’t stop in time. Sparks showered across the road as the scooter was flattened and mangled, pieces of smashed plastic bodywork spinning across the tarmac.