Star of Africa. Scott Mariani
in turn and dumped them on the pavement next to their boss.
Once that was done, Ben grabbed Dracul’s jacket collar and yanked him into a sitting position against the copy shop wall, and slapped his scarred face a few times until the Romanian’s eyes fluttered open. Dracul blinked and tried to shake his head into focus. He seemed about to say something, then let out a sharp cry as Ben’s boot toecap landed hard and square in his testicles.
‘Consider yourself lucky you get to keep them,’ Ben told him. ‘Normally, depraved losers who want to molest innocent young girls should have them sliced off. But I don’t like to get my hands all blooded up.’ He knelt beside the groaning Dracul. ‘Now listen to me carefully, because you’ll hear it only once. Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to disband your merry men and wrap up your operation, lock, stock and barrel, effective as of today. Then you’re going to return all the money you took, with interest. Then you’ll apologise in person to the people you hurt, begging for their forgiveness. After that, you’re going to get yourself into a better line of work and never bother anyone again. If I hear you didn’t do any of that and decided to play sillybuggers behind my back instead, you won’t see me coming, because you’ll already be dead. Now, what did I just say?’
Dracul grimaced in pain and groggily repeated back what Ben had told him.
‘Excellent,’ Ben said. ‘Now you’re going to go sleepy-byes for a while. Your new life begins from the moment you wake up.’ He whacked Dracul over the head with the flat of the hammer. The Romanian’s eyes rolled back in their sockets and he went limp.
Taking the scissors from his bag, Ben grabbed a handful of Dracul’s thick black hair and sheared it roughly off, close to the scalp. He kept scissoring away until the pavement looked like the floor of a dog grooming parlour and the gang leader resembled Samson in the Old Testament story, after Delilah had chopped off his hair and robbed him of his superhuman power. For quite some time to come, whenever Dracul looked in the mirror, he’d be reminded of the promise he’d just made.
Ben left the piles of black curls lying around next to him to find when he came to. More people were staring from the apartment block. A couple of people cheered. Others might not be so happy to see their local dealers being put out of business.
Ben was nearly done. Just a couple more finishing touches, and he’d be gone before the police turned up. Lining up the unconscious bodies in a row, he used the heel of his boot to break all their wrists and ankles. Snap, snap, snap, snap, four times over. Sixteen fractures, with about ten years’ worth of healing between them. That seemed a reasonable amount of punishment. The final icing on the cake wasn’t going to hurt them, at least not physically. Ben reached into his bag for the half-litre tin of buttercup-yellow paint he’d bought to refresh his kitchen door with. The kitchen door would just have to wait. He levered the lid off with the claw of the hammer, tossed it away, upturned the pot and poured the paint all over Dracul and his men. Yellow, the universal colour of cowardly little bullies, extortionists and rapists.
‘That should do the trick,’ Ben said to himself, standing back to survey the final humiliation. Then he walked back to the car, climbed in, fired it up and took off with a squeal of tyres.
It was dark by the time the Alpina bumped down the track to the security gate that barred public entry to the complex at Le Val, three hours and twenty-two minutes later. Ben still had a pass card, and fed it into the scanner to open the gate and drive on through.
The November drizzle had been thickening steadily since nightfall. A cold mist swirled around the beams of his headlights as Ben drove into the main yard of what had once been his home. It seemed weird to be back after such a prolonged absence.
The dogs were the first to notice his arrival. The four German shepherds that freely roamed the twenty-acre compound like a pack of wolves would have been enough to petrify any unauthorised visitor, but the sight of them charging towards him out of the mist as he stepped from the car brought a wide smile to Ben’s face.
‘Storm! Mauser! Luger! Solo!’ He greeted them warmly in turn, crouching down to give each a hug as they swarmed happily around him, slapping him with their big hairy tails and panting their hot doggy breath all over him and slathering his face and hands with their lolling tongues. Storm was the pack leader out of the four, and had always been Ben’s particular favourite, often accompanying him on long runs and rambles through the Normandy countryside. Ben hadn’t seen him in such a long time that he hadn’t been certain if the dog would even recognise him. Storm’s delight at his master’s return almost brought a tear to Ben’s eye – not that he’d ever have admitted as much to Jeff.
The fifth dog to come bowling out of the darkness to meet him was less of a customary sight at Le Val. It was Scruffy, the wiry-haired terrier of indeterminate breed and independent spirit who, if he could be said to be anyone’s property, belonged to Jude Arundel and lived with him in the English country vicarage where he’d grown up. Ben patted the terrier affectionately. ‘Hey, Scruff. What the hell are you doing here?’ Then what the new guy had told Ben on the phone had to be true. ‘Where’s Jude?’ Ben asked the dog, but Scruffy wasn’t telling.
Just then, floodlights on masts burst into life and illuminated the whole inner compound and buildings: the big stone farmhouse and annexe, the training yard, the residential huts, the killing house and storerooms. Ben gazed around him, filled with all kinds of memories.
‘Ben?’ yelled a familiar voice. Ben turned to see Jeff Dekker running down the steps from the house. Jeff was wearing his usual winter attire, old-pattern DPM combat trousers and a submariner-style jumper. His eyes were huge with surprise, and a grin wider than the radiator grille on a ’58 Chevy Impala was spreading over his face. ‘Christ, it is you. Welcome, stranger.’
‘Hello, Jeff.’
‘Well, fuck me sideways. You’re about the last person I’d expected to turn up out of the blue.’
‘Lucky you,’ Ben said. ‘I did try to call to say I was coming.’
‘Are you staying? Or running off again?’
‘I just popped over to check you haven’t totally destroyed the place in my absence.’
‘Oh, I think we’re scraping by okay,’ Jeff said, grinning even more widely. ‘Come inside. I just opened a bottle.’
‘Scotch?’
‘’Fraid we don’t carry much of a stock of the hard stuff since you buggered off and left us. Make do with wine?’
‘Good enough,’ Ben said.
Jeff had moved out of his quarters in the annexe after Ben’s departure, and taken up residence in the farmhouse. He led Ben into the familiar old stone-floored rustic kitchen. Gazing around him, Ben saw that nothing had changed. The solid fuel range was lit and filling the kitchen with a rosy glow of warmth.
‘Cold tonight,’ Ben said.
‘Colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra,’ Jeff said. Jeff had always had that way with words. He grabbed an extra wineglass from the side and set about filling it up from the open bottle of Côtes du Rhône. They sat at the table where the two of them had spent many an evening drinking, playing chess, and sharing ideas about how they were going to make Le Val a success. Jeff slid Ben’s glass to him over the worn pine table.
They clinked. ‘Cheers,’ Jeff said. ‘To old times.’
‘Old times.’
‘And future ones, maybe,’ Jeff said.
‘We’ll have to see about that.’
‘So, dare I ask to what we owe the pleasure of your company?’
Ben savoured a gulp of the wine. ‘You can ask,’ he said. ‘Let’s just say I’m