The Shadow Project. Scott Mariani

       Chapter Sixteen

      Ben spent a little while before lunch wandering about the estate, checking things over and familiarising himself with the layout. Peacocks strutted over the immaculate green lawns. Attached to the château’s west wing was a large glass-domed conservatory filled with exotic plants, with an ornate fountain in its centre and a bronze statue of the Roman sea god Neptune standing amid the waves, his trident pointing upwards. Ben stopped to look at it, then walked on. Bees hummed around the flowers in the formal gardens. Gardeners in white uniforms were mowing the velvety turf of the tennis courts. Through a gated archway Ben could see the neatly-trimmed entrance to a maze. The sky was blue, and even with the mountain breeze the sun was beating down hard.

      A little further on, he heard angry shouts in the distance, and followed the sound to see a man he instantly knew was Otto, heir to the Steiner fortune, storming angrily across the golf course. In a business suit, he might have passed for a younger version of his uncle, but the check trousers, the brightly coloured golf shirt and the jaunty white cap on his head made him appear faintly clownish. A miserable-looking caddie stumbled along after him. Otto turned and started raging at him, then grabbed a club from the golf bag, threw it clumsily at him and screamed at him in German to fuck off.

      Any other time, Ben might have smiled to himself at the spectacle. Not today. The whole situation was a mess. He didn’t want to be here, sandwiched between a prickly despot and a team of idiots. All he wanted was to be back home at Le Val. Even the idea of sitting at the desk doing paperwork seemed deeply attractive at this moment. And he’d brought the whole thing on himself.

      Ben watched Otto stamp off towards his private villa, then turned and carried on, thinking about what a difference there was between the two Steiner men. He wondered how they got on.

      As he walked, he spotted a building that made him stop and look. Nestling in among the trees, its stained glass windows caught the sunlight.

      It was a little grey stone chapel. If the Steiners had had it built specially for them, it was the best reproduction of an eighteenth-century church that Ben had ever seen. He felt himself drawn towards it. Pushed open the studded oak door and walked in.

      It was cool inside, and his footsteps echoed off the tiled floor. He wandered up the aisle, between the rows of glistening pews, and stopped in front of the altar. The light from the stained glass windows shone down on him. He looked up at the statue of the crucified Jesus on the back wall behind the altar. Sighed and closed his eyes.

      He hadn’t prayed for a long time.

      Lord, I know you and I have had our differences. I know I’ve been inconstant and done a lot of bad things.

      He paused.

       But please give me the strength to see this through. Give me the patience not to tell them all to go to hell, drive straight

      back to Le Val and make sure Rupert Shannon spends the next year sucking his meals out of a tube.

      He opened his eyes. It hadn’t quite come out the way he’d intended. A little dark, perhaps. But it would have to do, and he hoped God understood. He turned away from the altar and walked back up the aisle feeling just a little lighter. Maybe prayer was good for you after all.

      As he headed back towards the house, he heard the piano again. This time he recognised the piece. Bartók. Harmonically dissonant and jarring on the ear, it was the kind of music he liked. And Silvia Steiner played it beautifully, as though she really understood it.

      The music was drifting from a pair of open French windows. He walked towards them, paused to listen and peered inside.

      She was sitting at her concert grand in a large white room. A little way from the piano stool a gilt harp, and nearby a cello case was lying on the floor. There was a sofa piled with cushions, that looked as though people actually sat on it. In one corner was a messy stack of music books and manuscripts, and tatty rugs were arranged ad hoc on the floor. Flowers and plants spilled out of vases everywhere. Ben sensed that this was Silvia Steiner’s personal haven, cosy and inviting, untainted by her husband’s cold, rigid formality.

      She noticed Ben standing there in the window, lifted her hands from the keys and smiled. ‘Hello again.’

      ‘Please don’t stop,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I was just listening to the Bartók.’

      Her smile broadened. She got up from the piano stool and walked round the side of the instrument towards him. ‘In this house, most people keep their distance when I’m playing Bartók. Especially Max. He says it makes him feel tense and uncomfortable.’

      ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘I find it relaxing.’

      She laughed, and considered him for a moment with the same curious look she’d given him before. ‘You’re an unusual man,’ she said.

      ‘Not so unusual,’ he replied.

      ‘I’m sorry my husband spoke sharply to you earlier on.’ Catching Ben’s expression of surprise, she added, ‘Heinrich told me. You know, Max has been under a lot of stress lately with all that’s been happening. These awful terrorists. Pressure of the business. Family problems.’ She looked out of the window, across the golf course to where Otto had been a few minutes earlier, and Ben thought he could see a look of sadness pass over her face. ‘Max isn’t normally difficult to deal with,’ she went on. ‘He’s really a wonderful man.’

      Ben found that hard to believe. ‘I understand that Herr Steiner is under a lot of stress. It’s perfectly normal, in these circumstances.’

      ‘Thank you for being so understanding,’ she said. ‘You seem like a very kind, decent person.’

      Ben didn’t quite know how to respond to that. He glanced down at his feet.

      ‘I believe you live in France?’ she asked.

      ‘Normandy.’

      ‘But you’re English.’

      ‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘Half English, half Irish. Before I moved to France I had a place in Galway, by the sea.’

      ‘How beautiful. You must miss it.’

      ‘I do, sometimes. But life moves on.’

      ‘It certainly does.’ She sighed. For an instant she seemed far away, then caught herself. ‘Are you sure we’ve never met?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Quite sure?’

      ‘Pretty sure. Why?’

      She shook her head slowly, as if trying to place him. Her eyes seemed to search his. ‘It’s strange. Somehow I feel that I know you. You seem terribly familiar to me.’

      ‘I have a good memory for faces,’ he said. ‘If we’d ever met, I would remember.’ He smiled. ‘Now I’d better leave you to your music. I have to get back to my work.’

      After he’d finished his rounds of the estate and made all the mental notes he needed, Ben went back to the security team’s quarters. He got there just as lunch was being served. Once he’d checked that Neville had sorted out the Flash-Balls as instructed, he grabbed a ham salad baguette and a bottle of mineral water and went back to his room to eat alone once again.

      As he ate, he could hear the laughter of the others over the blare of the TV. He shut the noise out