The Bach Manuscript

Chapter 5

‘I still can’t believe it’s you,’ Nick Hawthorne said. ‘Feels like such a blast from the past.’

‘Feels strange for me too,’ Ben replied. ‘Being back here after all these years. Time seems to have stood still.’

They’d finished breakfast and were walking down the stone staircase from the Great Hall. Sunlight shone from the archway that led to the south-east corner of Tom Quad.

‘Speaking of time,’ Nick said, ‘do you have any plans for the rest of the morning, or lunch?’

‘None in particular.’

‘Only, I’m having a few people over at my place for drinks and a bit of a buffet this lunchtime. Nothing formal, you know. It’s a way for me to loosen up with a few laughs and a couple of glasses of wine before tonight’s performance. Why don’t you come?’

‘I’d like that very much,’ Ben said.

Nick looked pleased. He glanced up at the clock that adorned the massive Tom Tower, which straddled the college’s entrance and loomed over St Aldate’s. ‘There are still a couple of hours before the first guests will start to turn up,’ Nick said. ‘If you like, we could head over there now. Give us a chance to catch up a bit on old times. And if you don’t mind, you can help me set up the buffet while we’re chatting.’

‘On one condition,’ Ben said.

‘What’s that?’

‘You make me a cup of real coffee.’

‘Done. You ready? Let’s go and grab a bus. I live up in north Oxford, going towards Summertown.’

‘No car?’

‘I bought one last year, an Aston Martin,’ Nick said with a casual wave. ‘Total white elephant. I never even use the damn thing.’

‘Business must be good if you can afford a car like that,’ Ben said. He was still hurting from the cost of his new BMW.

‘I get by,’ Nick replied with a grin. ‘You must tell me all about yours.’

Ben had so far avoided divulging much about what he was doing these days, except that he co-ran a business in Normandy. He shrugged. ‘It’s nothing that exciting.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true at all,’ Nick replied.

They strolled up the hill to Carfax, which was the bustling hub of the city centre and more choked than ever with buses and milling shoppers. At Carfax Tower they jumped on a double-decker going north up Banbury Road, and climbed to the empty top deck to sit at the front. To Ben, it felt like being a student again. Except back in his day, you were allowed to smoke upstairs. Do it now, and they would probably cart you away to serve ten years in a max-security prison.

They took their seats, Nick by the window, Ben by the centre aisle. Small tremors rocked the bus as more passengers boarded downstairs. Nick was about to resume their conversation when heavy footsteps came up the double-decker’s stairwell. The footsteps paused at the top of the stairs, then approached. Nick glanced back, Ben felt him go as tense as a spheksophobe near a wasp’s nest.

‘Oh Christ, it’s one of them,’ Nick muttered sotto voce.

‘One of who?’ Ben asked him.

‘Crusties. Beggars. Whatever you call them. They cause a lot of trouble on the buses. Don’t make eye contact with him. Maybe he’ll leave us alone.’

The guy was on his own, walking up to the front of the top deck with a shoulder-rolling swagger to his step and a cocky grin on his face. He was large, over six feet tall and thick-chested, somewhere north of thirty. Which meant he probably hadn’t taken a shower since his twenties. It was hard to tell which were dirtier, his jeans, hoodie or his straggly hair and beard. From under heavy brows he eyed Ben, then Nick. He raised a grubby finger as if it was a gun and pointed it at them.

‘You’re in my seat.’ The guy’s voice was harsh and crackly. Ben got a whiff of body odour and unwashed clothes coming off him like rotten cabbages, mixed with the sour smell of stale booze.

‘We’ll move,’ Nick said quickly, starting to get up. Ben touched his arm to still him.

The guy’s eyes flickered back to Nick and lingered there. ‘I know you.’

Nick seemed to hesitate and looked uncomfortable for a moment. He replied anxiously, ‘I… I don’t have any money for you today.’

‘You’re in my seat,’ the guy repeated. Heaping on the menace. Trying to.

Ben turned to gaze up at the guy from where he sat. He motioned at the empty deck and said, ‘Plenty of seats free for you back there. How about you make yourself comfortable a few rows behind us, where I can’t smell you?’

‘Ben, no,’ Nick warned in a low whisper.

‘You mean, don’t provoke him?’ Ben said. ‘This moron was born provoked. But that’s okay. He doesn’t worry me.’

The big guy fixed Ben with a glare. His pupils shrank down to the size of pinheads. Eyes rimmed red. ‘I don’t think you heard me, arsehole. This is my seat.’

‘I heard you fine,’ Ben said. ‘Except I don’t see any reservation signs. And I like the view from up front here. I think we’ll stay.’

The hand pointing the finger disappeared into one of the pockets of the guy’s hoodie. It came out again clutching a small paring knife.

‘Oh, God,’ Nick quavered in Ben’s ear. ‘I told you—’ Like it was Ben’s fault that one of the passengers was waving a blade at them.

‘You got a mouth on you,’ the guy said. ‘Maybe I need to teach you a lesson.’

Ben looked at the paring knife. ‘Thanks, but I already know how to peel potatoes.’

‘Give me your fuckin’ wallet, prick. Now.’

The bus was starting to move. The driver obviously hadn’t bothered to check the fish-eye mirror above him that gave a view of the upstairs. Or maybe these things happened so often on board that he’d given up caring. Welcome to the city of the dreaming spires. Ben had almost forgotten how colourful the streets of Oxford could get at times.

The big guy reached out with his free hand to steady himself against the sudden lurch of the transmission as the bus lumbered forwards. Then the driver braked sharply as a couple of kids darted across the road in his path. The big guy rocked on his feet. The knife stayed pointed at Ben.

Ben used the momentum of the braking bus to come forwards out of his seat, faster than the big guy could register. In the next instant, the knife was out of his hand and in Ben’s. Boggle-eyed with surprise, the guy swung a clumsy roundhouse punch Ben’s way. Ben could have run down to the nearest coffee shop to order a takeaway espresso in the time it took coming. He trapped the arm, twisted it up and under the guy’s ribs and behind his back, and used the leverage to dump the guy into a seat a row back on the opposite side of the aisle. Up close, the guy smelled even more strongly of stale sweat and booze. He tried to struggle and kick. Ben jammed him up against the window and pinched off the carotid artery at the base of his neck to shut down the blood flow to what little brain he had.

It normally took between five to eight seconds before the subject lost consciousness. This guy’s system had been running on bad fuel for so long that his bloodstream was already starved of oxygen, and he held out for much less time. Ben kept the stranglehold clamped down tight until he felt him go limp.

The bus rumbled on up the street.

Nick was staring.

Ben checked the big guy’s hoodie pockets. He found nearly fifty pounds in rumpled and grimy notes, along with a small bottle of ecstasy pills and a paper bag containing some dried-out magic mushrooms. ‘That’s your lesson for the day,’ he said to the unconscious hulk as he counted the money and shoved all the stuff in his own jacket pocket. ‘Cost of doing business with the wrong people.’

‘What did you do to him?’ Nick gasped.

‘He’s just grabbing forty winks,’ Ben said. They were approaching another stop, crowded with people waiting to board. ‘Smells in here. I vote we change buses.’