Bring Him Back

12

Ben barely paused in his stride, even though every nerve in his body was jangling like an alarm bell at the sight of them. Covering his reaction perfectly without a flicker of emotion showing on his face, he walked on a few steps and then paused and gazed in the bakery window, ostensibly to admire hungrily a rack of ornate chocolate-laced delicacies on display.

Drew and Carl passed within just a couple of feet of him and then went walking on up the street. Ben waited a few tantalising seconds, watching them from the corner of his eye as he allowed a little distance to come between himself and the pair, then moved away from the window and began to follow them.

They didn’t seem to be in a hurry, just ambling along at a pace that allowed Ben to merge into the slow-moving crowds about twenty yards behind. Watching them, they could have been any father and son on earth. Nothing whatsoever in Carl’s body language suggested any of the unease or distress Ben would have expected to see in a kidnap victim. What was going on?

But he didn’t have long to dwell over the matter. Because without warning, Carl turned, picked Ben out of the crowd of people and looked right at him.

Ben’s heart skipped a beat. Again, he managed to cover up his reaction, avoiding eye contact and pretending to be gazing at something across the street. For two seconds that felt like minutes, he could feel the boy’s eyes on him.

Finally, Carl turned away and kept walking alongside his father, who didn’t seem to have noticed anything.

It must be a fluke, Ben thought. Okay, so maybe he didn’t quite fit the Monaco image and looked a little rougher, a little less manicured, than the typical good citizen of the place. But surely he didn’t stand out that much. There was no way anyone, let alone a twelve-year-old kid totally untrained in the art of counter-surveillance, could jump to the conclusion or have any inkling that they were being trailed.

He went on following them. Now father and son were in conversation about something. Ben relaxed, certain that he hadn’t been spotted after all.

And then Carl turned again. This time, he whirled around very quickly, too suddenly for Ben to look away until it was too late.

Carl stared right at him. He seemed to know. But how? Had the boy phoned Jessica again that morning? Had she let slip about Ben?

Carl started nudging his father and tugging at his sleeve, pointing back in Ben’s direction. ‘Oh, shit,’ Ben said, and turned to peer in another window. But it was pointless. He was blown.

Drew turned and looked in the direction Carl was pointing, right at Ben. He frowned questioningly down at the boy. The boy nodded up to him, as if to say ‘I’m sure’. Now they were both staring at Ben. The game was up. Fear was in the air. Drew Hunter dropped his shopping basket and his baguettes where he stood. He grabbed his son by the arm, and they took off.

‘Shit,’ Ben said again, and broke through the slow-moving pedestrians to give chase. Drew and Carl dashed across the street, weaving between honking traffic. Ben went after them. Too late, he saw a motorcycle bearing down on him, tried to dive out of its way and lost his footing, falling and grazing his knee. The rider braked hard. Too hard. With a screech, the front wheel locked and washed out from under the machine as it toppled over with a scraping clatter. The rider tumbled to the road, but sprang up again almost instantly, and Ben could see he wasn’t hurt. No time to hang around and help the guy straighten his bent handlebar. Drew and Carl were getting away.

Cursing and ignoring the pain from his scraped knee, Ben ran on after them. People stared and pointed. The motorcyclist yelled after him. Ben lost sight of the father and son among a crowd of shoppers, then saw them again, fifty yards further up the street, battling against the tide of pedestrians. Drew had lost his hat, revealing the black-dyed hair beneath. There was nowhere they could run. Ben sprinted up the road, avoiding the pavement. He could catch them.

A guy in a florid shirt was getting into a white open-top Ferrari that was parked at the kerbside. Drew grabbed him by the collar, spun him away from the car, snatched the key from his hand and leapt behind the wheel, dragging Carl in with him. The car roared into life and took off with a squeal, leaving snakes of rubber on the road and its owner standing bellowing and shaking his fist.

The Ferrari came belting down the street towards Ben, and he bounded onto the kerb to get out of its way. He caught a glimpse of the boy gaping at him from the passenger seat as the car streaked past, heading back the way they’d come, towards the straight and past the scene of yesterday’s crash.

Ben stood in the gutter, helplessly staring at the disappearing car. People were looking and pointing in alarm. The Ferrari’s owner was screaming murder. It wouldn’t be long before the police turned up, bristling with weaponry.

Ben had little chance of catching Drew now, but went sprinting down the street after the Ferrari anyway, yelling at frightened pedestrians to get out of his way and making them scatter. Ahead, a little old woman emerged from a fashion boutique laden with boxes, and he almost ran right into her. ‘Watch where you’re going, asshole!’ she shrieked at him. Across the pavement, a chauffeur in uniform and cap was opening the back door of a stately Rolls Royce to let her in. Its engine was purring softly.

‘Thanks for the ride,’ Ben said to her, and before the chauffeur could stop him, he jumped into the Rolls and floored the accelerator. The car was ungainly but powerful, and Ben was pressed into the red leather of the driver’s seat under the acceleration. The swinging open back door scraped a lamppost and crashed shut. Glancing in the mirror, he could see the little old woman and the chauffeur standing speechless on the pavement.

The Ferrari had long since vanished around the hairpin bend at the bottom, past the café. Ben gunned the Rolls down the straight at full throttle, overtaking everything in sight as if he was trying to re-enact the Grand Prix. But it was no racing car. As soon as Ben entered the bend and felt the heavy bodywork begin to pitch on its soft suspension, he knew it was about to go into a slide. He eased off the gas and changed course, clipping the corner and mounting the kerb. There was no avoiding the empty café tables in his path. The Rolls trampled several of them down. Another flew up onto the bonnet, smacked off the windscreen and went tumbling in his wake.

He hit the gas again as the road straightened up ahead. Still no sign of the Ferrari. Unless—

Yes, there it was, a long way up the road, speeding past the traffic. Ben was still in the chase. As he raced after it, he saw its brake lights flare as it stopped for a red light. Drew wasn’t exactly schooled in the art of urban high-speed pursuit, which only helped even the odds a little in Ben’s favour. The Rolls quickly caught up. He was thirty yards behind the Ferrari when the lights changed and he heard the rasp of its exhausts before it took off again like a bullet fired from a rifle.

The Rolls sped through the junction after it, narrowly avoiding an oncoming car as Ben held the pedal to the floor and struggled to keep this overpowered barge in a straight line. The Ferrari was a shrinking white dot in the distance. There was no way Ben could stay with it. He saw it vanish around a right-hand bend a hundred and fifty yards away, and knew that might be the last he’d see of it.

He couldn’t afford to lose Drew and Carl. Not now that they knew he was after them. They’d simply go to ground and he’d never find them again.

It was time for a short cut. Ben saw the little sidestreet flashing up on his right and took the gamble, turning into it with a squeal of tyres and roaring through the narrow space between the houses. Never mind the no vehicular access sign. If his hunch was right, this would cut off a corner and he’d have a sporting chance of catching the Ferrari at the other end.

Or perhaps not. The sidestreet came to an abrupt end up ahead.

‘Christ,’ Ben muttered as he went to hit the brakes; then he saw it wasn’t a cul-de-sac. It was a steep downward flight of steps, bisected down the middle by an iron hand railing.

There was nothing for it. Ben steered right for the steps, keeping his foot down hard on the gas. The brink flashed towards him, like the edge of a waterfall that was about to tip his boat vertical and send it plummeting down to the bottom. He aimed the big square nose of the Rolls at the gap between the iron railing and the stone wall. Felt his front wheels run out of road; then they seemed to fall into space for a second before hitting the steps with a violent jolt that almost pitched Ben through the windscreen. The space between the railing and the wall was perhaps half an inch wider than the Rolls. With a screeching rending of handbuilt coachwork on stone on one side and solid iron on the other, the car hammered unstoppably down the steps.

All Ben could do was hang on. He braced himself for impact as the bottom of the steps raced closer. The Rolls crunched down at a forty-five-degree angle, bouncing all over the road in a shower of sparks, trailing its badly twisted front bumper and leaving the shattered remains of a headlight behind it. Ben sawed wildly at the wheel and stamped on the accelerator. If the old tank was as solid as it felt, it could take a little abuse. This was nothing.

And there was the Ferrari, dead ahead. Ben’s gamble had paid off. He smiled grimly as he saw Drew glance back with a look of astonishment. ‘You don’t get away that easily, matey boy.’

Moments later, they were approaching the limits of town and roaring into the hills. The last of the buildings gave way to verdant countryside, the road twisting upwards between the trees as they climbed over the town. Once again, the Ferrari’s huge speed advantage quickly began to tell as it shrank smaller and smaller into the distance ahead. Ben swore. Drew was going to leave him far behind, and that would be it. Then all hopes of catching him would have to be pinned on the French and Italian police.

Ben clenched his jaw as he finally lost sight of the tiny white speck of the speeding sports car. He eased back on the throttle, and the Rolls engine settled down to a smooth purr. The chase was over and he’d lost.