his hands in frustration. ‘I don’t know, Roberta. You come to me saying you’re in trouble, then you start talking about all this stuff, which, frankly, sounds to me like a load of … what do you Americans call it? Hooey. Just like all that alchemical stuff you were fixated on before.’
‘It is not hooey,’ she said firmly.
‘I can see you sincerely believe that. But what am I supposed to make of it? What can I do?’
She leaned close to him and replied, ‘Help me.’
‘What makes you think I even could?’
‘You’re Ben Hope. What more is there to say?’ She paused, looking entreatingly into his face. ‘You helped me once. It wasn’t so long ago. Won’t you help me again?’
He didn’t reply.
There was a long silence. The young mother had taken her child away from the swings and was holding his hand as they made their way along the tree-shaded footpath into the distance. The park was empty now, apart from just the two of them sitting on the bench.
‘I shouldn’t have come here,’ Roberta said bitterly. ‘I’m wasting my time.’
‘I’m getting married in three days, Roberta,’ Ben said.
‘Yeah. Married. Thanks for reminding me.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Jesus, I remember it all so well, everything that happened between us. It seems like yesterday. Then that day you came to Canada to find me … I thought …’
‘Do we have to go over this?’ he said. ‘I came to make sure you were all right. And to say goodbye.’
‘I really cared for you. You know that, don’t you? We had something together.’
‘It wouldn’t have worked, Roberta. A guy like me – I don’t know. I was restless then. I just wasn’t ready to settle in one place.’
‘Or with one woman,’ she said. ‘But apparently, you are now.’
‘I told you. I’m different now.’
‘Or maybe you just found the right woman now.’ She let out a long sigh, then tried to smile. ‘That’s fine, Ben. I’m happy for you. I mean it. I can see now that I shouldn’t have troubled you. You’ve made a new life for yourself. Who the hell am I to turn up like this out of no place and disturb it?’
‘You know who you are to me,’ he said.
‘Was,’ she snorted. ‘I guess that’s ancient history too, huh?’ She started plucking at her handbag for her car keys. ‘Let’s go. I’ll drive you back to your domestic bliss. Then I’ll be gone, and I swear I’ll never bother you again.’
‘Hey.’ He reached out a hand.
She flinched away from his touch. ‘Don’t worry about me. I don’t need your help anyway.’ Her eyes had filled with tears again. She wiped them angrily away. ‘Shit, where’d I put the goddamned keys?’
Ben’s throat felt tight and he was confused with so many emotions. ‘You look tired, Roberta. Why don’t you stay a night or two at the vicarage? Jude would welcome having a house guest.’
She let out a mirthless laugh. ‘I suppose you’d want me to come to the wedding, too? Act as maid of honour or something? No thanks.’ Finding the keys, she stood up from the bench abruptly.
Ben opened his mouth to say something, but the words were still on his lips when the splinters flew with a sharp crack from the backrest of the bench and something smacked hard off the wall behind them.
For a short fraction of a second that seemed like a full minute, he stared at the small bullet hole that had appeared right where Roberta had been sitting just a moment earlier and only a few inches away from him.
Half a second was all the time he had to react before a volley of silenced gunfire erupted from across the park.
In the same instant that splinters and pieces of tree bark exploded all around them, Ben jack-knifed violently over the back of the bench, grabbing Roberta’s arm and hauling her roughly down to the ground with him.
The gunfire paused for a heartbeat as whoever was shooting at them adjusted their aim. Then another volley of bullets churned up the ground and spat dirt around the base of the bench. A round screamed off the cast-iron leg Ben was pressed hard up against and he felt the hot copper-jacketed lead pass through his hair, millimetres from his skull.
Roberta was curled up in a ball on the ground, crying out in terror. Ben scrambled over to her to cover her body with his. With his face pressed down in the dirt he caught a momentary glimpse of movement among the bushes across the park. Even as he tried desperately to shield Roberta, some detached reptilian part of his mind was busy calculating the enemy’s position and strength.
Range: eighty yards. More than one shooter. Nine-millimetre subsonic ammunition, fully-automatic weapons fitted with sound moderators. This wasn’t local kids larking about with airguns. Conclusion: time to get the hell away from here before they both got shot to pieces.
In seconds, the bench was riddled with holes and offering less and less cover with every passing moment as bullets ripped through the weather-beaten wood and drilled into the ground, ploughed into the trees and threw up spatters of earth left and right. A howling ricochet off something hard and a shower of brick dust suddenly reminded Ben of the low wall behind the bench. In a momentary lull in the shooting as both gunmen reloaded their expended magazines, he sprang up, dragged Roberta bodily to her feet and half-threw, half-pulled her over the wall.
It was a four-foot drop down to the sloping grassy bank on the other side. The two of them hit the soft earth and went tumbling down the slope to the flat ground of the field adjoining the parkland.
Ben was first on his feet. ‘Are you hit?’ he asked urgently as Roberta stood uncertainly. ‘Are you bleeding?’ The shooting had stopped, and for the moment they were out of range of the gunmen. That wouldn’t be the case for long.
‘I don’t think so,’ Roberta answered. Her voice sounded faraway and dazed. Ben quickly inspected her for blood. He’d seen men mortally wounded who hadn’t even known about it for several minutes after getting shot. But Roberta’s only injury seemed to be the small cut to her brow where a flying splinter had broken the skin. ‘You’re okay. Stay there,’ he said, clambered back up the grassy bank and peeped over the wall.
He’d been right about a pair of shooters. He could see them now. The two men had emerged from the cover of the bushes. One was younger, taller, dark-haired, the other older and squatter. They looked fit and strong, and were running across the deserted park towards them with an air of absolute purpose. They were making no attempt to conceal the weapons in their hands. Few men in a vicar’s garb would have been able to make the identification, but Ben instantly knew the stubby black outlines of the Beretta MX4 Storm submachine gun. He’d had half a dozen of their civilian semi-automatic cousins locked up in the armoury at Le Val. The military version was a pure weapon of war. Totally illegal in most countries of the world. Extremely hard to obtain. The choice of professionals.
Who were these men? Ben didn’t have much time to consider the answer, or to yell at Roberta ‘What the hell have you got yourself mixed up in?’. The shooters were halfway across the park already, running fast. Ben slithered back down the bank and rejoined Roberta.
She still appeared stunned from the suddenness and violence of the attack. ‘They’re coming,’ he said. ‘Let’s move.’
‘Where to?’ she gasped, looking around her wide-eyed. Once they left the shelter of the wall, there’d be nothing around them but open field. The nearest cover was the half-built housing estate a hundred and fifty or more yards away, shimmering like