Chapters (45)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Prologue
- 2046
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- About the Author
Safa’s hands tremble. Harry looks genuinely confused. Ben keeps swallowing. They all take turns to stare at each other, as each thinks the others must have been drugged to make the side effects look real. This is a test designed to cause stress and confusion so they will spill the beans about Norway, Holborn and Downing Street. Safa and Ben equally worry about how to convince the others. Harry just sits quietly.
‘My name is Ben Ryder and I had nothing to do with what happened at Holborn . . .’
‘Five years ago,’ Safa says.
‘Yesterday.’
‘Five years ago . . .’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Five years ago.’
‘Yesterday . . . my name is Ben Ryder. It was changed to Ben Calshott after what happened when I was seventeen. I am engaged to Stephanie. We are getting married. I work for Hallows Insurance Investigations.’
Safa smiles coldly and shifts position to face him. ‘What happened when you were seventeen then, Ben Ryder?’
Ben hesitates, not wanting to give voice to the thing he buried for so many years.
‘Go on then,’ Safa says, goading in tone. ‘What happened when you were seventeen, Ben Ryder?’ she adds mockingly.
‘I killed five people . . .’ Ben says.
‘Who?’ She cuts across him as Harry looks at Ben with renewed interest. ‘Who did you kill, Ben Ryder?’
‘Please stop.’ Ben looks away as the memories flood back.
‘Oh, you look all hurt,’ she says in a mock soft tone. ‘Come on, you’re Ben Ryder. Who did you kill?’
‘Carl Pocock, Daryl Evans, Umbassa Ubedi, Sean Harris, Matmoud Hussein. We were in Lovell Lane in a village thirty miles from Birmingham . . .’
‘Yeah yeah, you can get that from Wikipedia.’
‘Yes you can,’ Ben says, having Googled his own name before. ‘But it won’t say that our names were changed to Calshott or that we moved to Surrey, or that my father was given a job in NatWest or my mother was the payroll clerk for the local Tesco’s. Or that we had a dog called Bobo . . . does it say that? Does it say I went to Littlehill Comprehensive? Does it say that the last investigation I worked on before I was sent to London yesterday—’
‘Yes.’
‘And does it . . . what?’
‘Yes it does.’
‘What?’
‘Wikipedia says all of that. That at the time of your death you were engaged to Stephanie Myers. Oh, don’t give me the all-shocked look now, everyone knows it, lightning striking twice? Ben Ryder killed five drugged-up gang members and saved a woman and her child . . . then years later saved hundreds on the London Underground. All there. Every word of it.’
Ben’s heart races, booming in his chest, and his mouth goes dry. Breathing faster, he looks at Safa then at Harry. ‘This is fucked up. Who . . . I mean . . . who are you then?’ he asks Safa.
‘Safa Patel,’ she states as though speaking to the room again. ‘I am a police officer with the Diplomatic Protection Squad.’