The Bach Manuscript Read online

  ‘Have I misbehaved?’

  ‘No, you’re being perfectly sweet. Mother likes you.’

  Ben was relieved he’d managed to earn the Ward stamp of approval, thus far. But Hamlet was the family member who seemed to have taken the biggest shine to him. The Peke was trotting around everywhere behind him, gazing up adoringly. ‘You haven’t been feeding him chicken, have you?’ Michaela said with a frown. ‘It upsets him.’

  ‘No, he just follows me. He and I are getting along great.’ Ben waggled his half-eaten chicken drumstick at Michaela. ‘You tried any of this?’

  ‘Ugh, no.’ She pulled a face and her hands went to her stomach.

  ‘It’s good.’

  ‘I’m feeling a bit queasy. Think I must have a tummy bug or something.’

  Ben was sorry to hear she wasn’t feeling well. The real significance of her queasiness, however, would not be revealed to him for more than twenty years.

  Soon afterwards Michaela got accosted in conversation by some family friends, while her father singled Ben out to regale him with tales of the stock market and political affairs chat. ‘What do you think about this Saddam Hussein fellow, Benedict?’ The Iraqi Army had recently invaded Kuwait, causing chaos to oil prices. Magnus Ward was concerned about the effect it was having on his investments, but expressed certainty that Hussein would soon back down in the face of US military threats and market stability would return. He blustered on about it until Ben offered his view that, ‘No, Saddam won’t back down. That’s not his way. Then the Americans will launch everything they’ve got at him, and there’ll be full-scale war in the Gulf. It’s going to get ugly. I wouldn’t bet on oil prices recovering any time soon.’

  Suddenly Magnus Ward didn’t want to talk politics any more, leaving Ben alone and wondering if he’d said the wrong thing. He sat at a garden table to one side of the patio, drank some more of his scotch (thinking the bottle must have a leak because it was going down strangely fast) and ate more chicken, content to be on his own with Hamlet who, it had to be said, was the most interesting new acquaintance Ben had met so far.

  Ben’s moment of solitude didn’t last long. He was happy to see Michaela coming back, but not so happy to see the red-faced loudmouth who came swaggering through the party calling ‘Ciao’ left and right and plonked himself down beside them soon afterwards. ‘This is Eddie Carver,’ Michaela said. Ben was in the middle of introducing himself when Eddie rudely cut him off by braying, ‘So how’s my favourite little cousin, then?’ and insisted on giving her a big expansive hug that almost knocked the drinks off the table.

  Ben sensed he wasn’t the only one to have taken a dislike to Eddie. Hamlet must have been feeling that way for a long time, and was eyeing him with hostility from where he sat between Ben’s feet. Ben reached down and stroked the dog’s little head. You and me, pal.

  As Eddie began prattling on about the celebrities he’d been teaching to play golf, none of whom Ben had ever heard of, Michaela’s mother wafted across from the house and asked Michaela if she’d be a dear and come and help prepare the strawberries.

  ‘Take the dog with you,’ Eddie said. He added under his breath, ‘The horrible little mutt,’ but only Ben heard it over the buzz of the party.

  ‘I think he’d rather stay here with his new best friend,’ Michaela said with a smile. Then she was gone, and Ben was stuck with Eddie.

  ‘So Michaela tells me you’re one of the god squad,’ Eddie said to Ben.

  ‘I’m sure she didn’t put it that way.’

  Eddie shrugged. ‘Whatever. Said you’re set on getting ordained, and all that crap.’

  ‘All that crap,’ Ben repeated. Funnily, he’d been thinking the same way about it himself, the last few months. The more he’d become focused on a future in the church, the more he’d begun to realise that it was not the right one for him. The trouble was that he’d wanted it so long, with no room in his heart for any other dream or goal, that the future he now envisaged seemed blank and empty.

  ‘They ought to scrap all that religion nonsense,’ Eddie declared on behalf of all Mankind. ‘Do you play golf, Benjamin?’

  ‘No, I don’t play golf, Eddie. And the name’s Ben.’

  Hamlet growled at Eddie from under the table.

  ‘You watch it,’ Eddie warned him, pointing.

  ‘You shouldn’t point at him,’ Ben said. ‘He senses it as a threat.’

  ‘That’s exactly what it is. I swear, if he bites me—’

  ‘You don’t like dogs?’

  ‘That’s a rat monkey, not a dog. He stinks, and I don’t like the way he’s looking at me.’

  ‘Dogs understand everything you’re thinking,’ Ben said. ‘If he doesn’t like you, it’s because he knows you don’t like him.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  Ben decided he wanted another chicken drumstick. Maybe he would give a bit to Hamlet, after all. ‘Stay,’ he said softly to the dog, then got up and made his way over to the barbecue where they were just taking a fresh load of chicken off the grill. As Ben was helping himself, he glanced back and noticed Eddie aim a sly kick at Hamlet’s head under the table. The little dog yelped and slunk away with his tail coiled tightly up between his hind legs.

  Ben laid down his plate. He stalked back towards the table. Eddie saw him approaching, saw the look on his face, and his eyes opened wide with sudden panic as he realised that Ben was coming right for him. Eddie started getting up, but it was too late.

  Ben grabbed him by the neck, pulled him close and said, ‘How about you try kicking someone your own size?’

  Eddie struggled, but Ben wouldn’t let him go. The table toppled on its side, sending Eddie’s wine glass splashing over the back of a woman’s dress nearby. A less refined crowd might have started chanting, ‘FIGHT! FIGHT!’, but not this one. Some people started crying out in alarm, including Eddie himself who was squealing like a piglet as Ben gripped him by the collar and the belt and dragged him towards the swimming pool. A few of the male party guests stepped up to stop the fight, but saw the expression on Ben’s face and halted in their tracks.

  The next moment, Eddie was airborne. He hit the water with a tremendous splash that soaked the guests who failed to get out of the way in time. Floundering wildly in the water, Eddie just had time to gurgle, ‘You bastard!’ before he began to sink.

  That was when Ben realised Eddie might be able to golf, but he sure as heck couldn’t swim.

  The party dissolved into total mayhem. Hamlet stood at the edge of the pool, barking. Almost everyone else was screaming and yelling, dozens of accusing fingers and horrified looks directed Ben’s way. Magnus Ward pushed through the panicked throng crowding the poolside, roaring, ‘What the devil is going on here?’ Eddie was now just a thrashing blur at the bottom of the pool, and not about to come up for air any time soon. Ben would have jumped in to rescue him, but Magnus beat him to it, stripping off his jacket and diving into the pool with a splash. Two more brave souls followed his example, and moments later the bedraggled, spluttering Eddie was being hauled out of the water like a big fat trout.

  Someone shouted at Ben, ‘You bloody psychopathic maniac!’ Next Michaela was running over from the house, with Lydia Ward in her wake. Hearing the yells of, ‘He tried to drown Eddie!’, she stared at Ben with so much disappointment and hurt in her eyes that he almost regretted what he’d done.

  Almost.

  The party never recovered from the drama. Magnus Ward had to be physically restrained from attacking Ben, which probably would have resulted in an even worse situation. Lydia Ward was having hysterical fits and screeching at Ben, in a voice that could be heard in the next county, to get out of her house. Michaela was so furious she could barely speak to Ben except to say tersely, ‘We’re going. Give me the keys to Simeon’s car.’

  ‘I haven’t had that much to drink,’ Ben protested. ‘I can drive us back.’

  ‘No, Ben. We’re not going back together.’

  He found out what
she meant soon afterwards, when she pulled the Lotus up outside Caterham railway station and told him to get out of the car. He couldn’t understand why she was so upset. He kept trying to tell her what Eddie had done, but she wouldn’t listen. With tears streaming down her face she sobbed, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Ben. I don’t. I can’t take this any more. Go!’

  Ben took the train back to Oxford, returned to Christ Church and kept a low profile in Old Library 7 for a couple of days. It wasn’t until the third day that he spoke to Michaela. After returning the car to Simeon, she had spent some time with him talking things over, opening her heart to him as only the closest of friends can. Simeon was someone you could turn to. By the time she and Ben met again, she had made up her mind.

  ‘It’s over between us, Ben,’ she told him. ‘That was the last straw. You’re too wild. It’s in your blood. You’ll never change.’

  ‘Did your parents put you up to this?’ he demanded, bewildered and hurt. But nothing he said could bring her back, and after a lot of tears and pain he said nothing more.

  Soon after that, the young Ben Hope would quit his studies and leave Oxford, not to set eyes on the place again for a long, long time.

  He knew then, and he still knew many years later, that Michaela had been right to dump him. The wildness in his blood was something he had not yet learned to control. But she was wrong to believe that he couldn’t change. That missing element was what his military trainers would begin to instil in their young recruit when, some time afterwards, he turned up at the Armed Forces Careers Office in Reading and signed up as an infantry soldier.

  The army instructors could see the untamed force in him too. But they could use that. They knew how to model it, hone it, channel it, cool his blood, give him purpose. In time, they would turn him into one of the most dangerous and effective fighting men their most elite regiment had ever produced.

  And in many ways, in retrospect, the wiser, calmer Ben would have Cousin Eddie to thank for what he had become.

  Chapter 19

  Ben drove away from Nick’s place and headed north out of the city, passing through the suburb of Summertown before he hit the A40 dual carriageway going west. He had no particular destination in mind. Once on the open road he put on the CD that was currently living in the Alpina’s audio system, the Miles Davis Quintet live at the 1969 Antibes Jazz Festival. He turned it up loud and put his foot down. Driving hard, overtaking everything in front of him as the Oxfordshire countryside flashed by to the wild sounds of ‘Miles Runs the Voodoo Down’. His body was relaxed, but there was a fire burning inside.

  Because while he’d been talking to McAllister, something had come to him. Now he needed the time and space to work his thoughts through, step by step, methodically, analytically. Some people did that by taking windy walks, others by sitting in a favourite chair with carpet slippers and pipe. Ben Hope did it by blazing down the road at a hundred miles an hour with frenetic jazz-rock fusion screaming in his ears.

  He stayed on the A40 until he was nearing the market town of Witney some thirteen miles west of Oxford, then took a turnoff to the left and raced down a long, straight and narrow country road that took him to the village of Aston. Five miles the other side of Aston was another village called Little Denton. He hadn’t intentionally come this way, but as he rolled into the village he wondered what subconscious impulse had chosen the route for him. Who was he to argue with the subconscious mind?

  He followed the familiar road through Little Denton and pulled up outside the gated driveway entrance to the old vicarage. The house was unoccupied, which Ben knew for a fact as he employed a private security company to keep an eye on it, and a gardening services firm to keep the lawn mown and the ivy around the windows trim. Despite the maintenance, the place looked sad. Or maybe it just looked that way because that was how it made him feel.

  This had been the home of Michaela and Simeon Arundel for many years. Jude had grown up here, and the house technically belonged to him even if he didn’t use or look after it. He was currently in America, living with his girlfriend, Rae. Helping her to save the world, Ben supposed. Rae was the ideological type. Ben didn’t know how long the relationship would last, but as long as Jude was happy, it was fine with him.

  Happy. As if anyone who’d had both their beloved parents brutally snatched from them in a horrific car wreck, only to discover that they’d been brought up believing a lie, could ever truly be happy ever again. Michaela and Simeon had raised Jude as though he were their biological son. The truth was a closely guarded family secret that had only been revealed after their deaths, both to Jude and to his real father. The revelation had come in the form of a letter that Michaela had written to Ben shortly before she died.

  It was hard to say which of them, the child or the real father, had had the toughest time accepting it. Jude had flipped off the rails for a while, quitting his university studies, toying with ideas like joining the navy. As for Ben, it had come as no less of a shock to him to discover, right out of the blue, after all those years, that he had a grown-up son. He still sometimes had trouble believing it, even now. And he could only wonder at the saintliness of his dear old friend Simeon, who had been there to step in and support Michaela when Ben hadn’t been. Few men would have done what Simeon did, or shown as much selfless devotion. For all the high-risk challenges and crazy odds Ben had happily faced down in his life, he didn’t think he’d have had the courage or the integrity to raise another man’s child as though he were his own, and never speak of it to anyone.

  As Ben had once said to Michaela, the very last time he’d been alone with her before she died, ‘You ended up with a much better man.’

  Ben got out of the car and stood looking for a while at the empty vicarage, then heaved a sigh and drove on until he came to the Trout pub on the edge of the village. Inside, he took a corner table at the back where he could sit facing the entrance and watch the approach to the pub through the window. Defensive planning was a deeply ingrained habit of his that would never die. He ordered a pint of local real ale and a home-made beef pie, which he ate half-heartedly just to get something inside him. The pie was probably excellent, but he was too deep in thought to even register its taste.

  After mulling it over all the way from Oxford, Ben was almost completely certain that the idea that had come to him back at Nick’s place was right. To eliminate all doubt, he now went back over it once more, flashing back to the events of yesterday like a movie replaying in slow motion through his mind. He saw himself standing by the display cabinet in Nick’s apartment, peering through the glass at the manuscript with J.S. Bach’s signature on the top. Then as if from faraway, he heard his friend’s echoing voice saying, ‘Don’t be taken in. It’s a fake.’ Followed by his own voice, replying, ‘You could have fooled me. It looks real enough. But then, I’m hardly an expert.’

  Nick had sounded so sure. Had he been lying? Ben didn’t believe his friend had possessed a single deceitful bone in his body. He could have come on the big authority, but instead he’d been quite candid in his admission that he was far from being an expert himself, not one of the hardcore scholarly types who devoted themselves to collecting valuable, original music scores. Why would he have pretended?

  But there was no doubt that someone out there believed it was real. Someone who knew about these things, and who knew the value of the manuscript if, indeed, it was what it purported to be.

  What was it Nick had said? Ben replayed the words in his mind. Believe me, if it was the genuine item, it’d probably be worth as much as this apartment and everything in it, plus that daft car outside.

  Which sounded like a lot of money for a piece of paper covered in funny little squiggles, even if those squiggles could be translated into heavenly music. Ben took out his smartphone and did a quick google of original music manuscript values. Within moments, his search took him to the site of the famous London auction house Christie’s, where he found that a rare, original copy of
a Prelude in E flat major, catalogue number BWV 998, handwritten by J. S. Bach, had sold in July 2016 for over £2.5 million.

  Ben whistled to himself and put the phone away, needing no further proof that there was, indeed, a lot of money to be made out of those funny little squiggles. Nick had been right about that. But assuming he’d been wrong about it being a fake, it would take a rare breed of expert to recognise the manuscript for what it was. Obviously someone who knew more about them than a hands-on performer like Nick Hawthorne.

  As Ben had said to Tom McAllister, that already thinned out the list of potential suspects quite considerably. The more you narrowed down the profile, the closer you got. Like whittling a stick until its point is so sharp that it can only point to a single person.

  That person would be a specialist. A highly distinguished music scholar. An academic, not a criminal. Someone who’d spent their life in museums and music libraries and poring over books, studying these things in extreme detail. Someone educated and refined, mild-mannered, middle-class, what they used to call a gent, who shared the same social circles as Nick Hawthorne and knew him well enough to have visited his home and seen the manuscript on display there.

  Someone who, if they wanted something like this badly enough to be driven to steal it, would have to employ a rougher, more brutal breed of man to do the job for them. Even if they did so in the knowledge that the kind of rough, hard men whose services they could afford would likely commit violence to obtain it.

  Therefore, someone with a pressing motive that overrode the bounds of morality and civilised behaviour by which such an individual would normally be constrained.