The Bach Manuscript

Chapter 26

Ben looked at her, more confused than ever. ‘What scam?’

‘You are hurting me. Get off me and take that gun out of my face, and I tell you, if you do not hurt me any more.’

Ben stood up and lowered the pistol, but kept hold of it in case she tried to run. Lena sat up, brushed the dirt from her face and plucked leaves from her hair.

‘You have a cigarette? Mine are in the car.’

Ben tossed her the pack of Gauloises and his Zippo.

As she knelt in the leaves and smoked her cigarette like a condemned prisoner with nothing left to hide, soul bared to God, Lena made her confession.

The scam had been Dragan’s brainchild, a new addition to the range of profitable criminal enterprises that he and his gang were already running. Lena’s line of work had given him the idea that snaring plump, middle-aged Atreus Club members with dirty little secrets and everything to lose could be a highly lucrative operation.

In short, it was an extortion racket. Miroslav was Dragan’s cousin, as well as being a skilled photographer and the owner of a camera with a long lens. Miroslav was pretty good at climbing trees, too. He’d used the big oak in the manor house gardens to achieve a bird’s-eye view of the window behind which her clients received their regular chastisements at the business end of Lena’s well-practised whip. She explained to Ben that was her speciality, the S&M stuff. With the juicy pictures in the bag, all that remained was to deliver the blackmail demand: pay up or face scandal, humiliation, divorce.

‘How long has this been going on?’

She shook her head. ‘Not long. Graves was the first. Dragan say, if it works we will do others. Like, how you say? An experiment.’

‘Why pick on Graves, with dozens of others to choose from?’

Lena shrugged. ‘Because he like me. He say he was in love with me. He buy me expensive presents all the time.’

‘And that’s how you decided to repay his affections.’

‘I told you, it was Dragan’s idea. Once he makes his mind up about something, you cannot say no to him. So they tell Graves he must pay a hundred thousand or they show the pictures to his wife. He have three days to come up with the cash.’

Now Ben understood why Graves had seemed so stressed-out at Nick’s lunch buffet, with a blackmail demand crushing him into the ground. ‘But why would he offer money to the crooks who were already extorting him for ten times that much?’

‘Are you dumb? He did not know it was Dragan, until this morning.’

‘Then how did he come to approach Dragan in the first place?’

‘Because I had told him about my brother, the poor Serbian immigrant who cannot find honest work and must make his living stealing things.’

‘Nice job, Lena. If he hadn’t known that, none of this would have happened. A man like Graves wouldn’t have known which way to turn. There would have been no robbery. And Nick would still be alive.’

Her eyes flashed. ‘Hey, what do you want? This man, he know nothing about real life. He annoy me with his attitude, like the world is this big happy place where everyone is so fucking civilised and a girl like me only sell herself because she like it. He was an asshole.’ Lena’s favourite word.

‘I don’t give a damn about Adrian Graves,’ Ben said. ‘You want to run your little schemes, entrapping a bunch of perverts and putting them through the grinder, fine by me. They had it coming. But Nick Hawthorne didn’t.’

‘How was I to know what would happen? It is bad luck for him, that is all.’

‘Bad luck for Dragan, too,’ Ben said. ‘Because I’m in this now.’

She looked up at him. ‘I do not even know who you are.’

‘Dragan will find out who I am, soon enough. So will Miroslav and Danilo, and whoever else gets in my path.’

Her eyes went to the gun. ‘You will kill them?’

‘Then at least you wouldn’t have to worry about what they might do to you for selling them out.’

‘This would not be so easy to handle as you think. They have dogs.’

‘That’s okay,’ Ben said. ‘Dogs love me.’

‘Not these dogs. And they have guns, too. Some to sell, others for defence. Like I tell you, Dragan is a bad man.’

‘Whatever he is, I’m worse.’

Lena looked at him. She nodded. ‘I can see you are not afraid. Maybe you are crazy. Or maybe you are dangerous. Dragan is still my brother. I don’t want him to die.’

‘Help me to catch him,’ Ben said, ‘and maybe he won’t have to. He can spend the next few years in a prison cell instead.’

Lena said, ‘You want me to betray my own blood?’

‘You already have,’ Ben said. ‘Now’s the time to make good.’

‘And if I say no?’

‘Worse for him, worse for you. You’re not in a position to refuse, Lena. Where does Dragan live?’

‘He has a place in Blackbird Leys,’ she said after a reluctant pause.

Ben knew where it was. A sprawling estate the other side of Cowley on the eastern side of Oxford, built in the fifties and sixties to relieve the dilapidated inner city and house the workforce of the then-booming Morris Motors car plant. Across the town-and-gown divide that dominated the social identity of the city, Blackbird Leys was the extreme opposite pole to the serenity and beauty of a sanctuary like Christ Church. By the early nineties the estate had earned itself an ugly reputation for knife crime, riots and joyriding. Ben was sure it had become a culture haven for tourists since those days.

‘What about the rest of them?’

‘They live close together. They are always together. Hang out together. Party late every night, with girls, booze, smoke dope, do meth.’

‘Sounds like my kind of social occasion,’ Ben said. ‘What about you, where do you live?’

‘Barton.’

‘Alone or with someone?’

‘I get enough of men in my work. Men are dirty, smelly, like apes.’ She pulled a disgusted face, then looked at Ben. ‘Maybe not all,’ she conceded, with a sly glimmer in her eye. ‘Anyhow, I like to be by myself.’

‘Sure about that? I wouldn’t like to think there’s a seven-foot rugby player waiting in your front hallway. He might get a nasty surprise, you turning up with someone like me.’

‘Why would I lie?’

‘Of course, I forgot. You’re a paragon of truth, Angelique. Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going back to your place for a few hours. Bide our time, wait until evening.’

Lena looked as if she was still waiting for him to take her up on her earlier offer of a trade. She frowned, then asked, ‘And then what?’

Ben said, ‘And then you and I are going to crash a party.’