“Ah. Something we finally have in common. But it is my birthday, so I am enduring one for your sake.”
“You’re giving me a surprise for your—Wait, it’s your birthday? Today?”
“I think I just said that, yes.”
“You didn’t tell me. I didn’t get you—”
“I did not want you to. But I have decided to get myself something. It is a prerogative of old age. Now, get dressed and get in the car or I will go without you. Five minutes.”
“What about Radulf?”
“I have left him some tins and shown him how to use the opener.”
“You can’t just?!”
“He was packed and in the car five minutes ago.” Nik zipped his bag with a look of utter derision.
Ben took half an hour to get ready, but he noticed Nikolas wasn’t holding him to the deadline. He was tossed the keys. “I’m driving?”
“Of course. Why keep a dog and bark yourself. Get in and drive. North.”
“North. Just north?”
“Yes.”
Neither of them was in the mood to make small talk. Radulf was too busy pretending to be important on the rear seat to do his part in easing the tension. Nik turned on Radio 4 and listened to a debate about the economy. Ben felt like screaming. He’d come out of his strange disassociated state with something of a head rush. He wasn’t sailing along numb anymore. He was apparently driving north with the man who he could now see was the cause of all his problems: Sir Nikolas bloody Mikkelsen. He was the one who’d pulled Ben out of the army, which he’d loved and been good at. He was the one who’d turned him into an amoral killer. He was the one who’d seduced him and fucked him over a billiard table. He was the one who’d taken him from the department where at least he’d had a life separate to fucking Nikolas. Literally. Piece by piece, his whole identity had been subsumed by Nikolas Mikkelsen until there was almost nothing of Ben Rider left. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure if that was his real name anymore. He held his tongue until the M1 then silenced John Humphries, asking acidly, “What exactly am I? In this agency?”
“You are frequently annoying. Put the radio back on.”
“Am I your partner?”
Nikolas glanced at the radio then sighed and stared out of the side window. “Of course.”
“Then why did you ask Kate to come and work for you—us—without asking—consulting—me?”
“What would you have said?”
“I don’t know! I haven’t thought about it!”
“Think about it now.”
“Well, she’s ideal, I guess, but that’s—”
“Well, there you go. You agree with me, so it is just as well I did not waste your time or mine by asking—consulting—you.”
Ben thought about this answer—this patronising, annoying, provoking answer—for a while, contemplating all the bad things he wanted to do to Nikolas. Instead of acting on any of them, he said casually, “I considered asking her to marry me once.”
Nikolas shrugged. “I am married. Your point?”
“Fuck you.” He pulled out into the outer lane and broke the speed limit by some considerable margin until he could see this bothered Nikolas as much as his attempt to make him jealous, not at all. He slowed down and turned the radio back on—to Radio 1. Nik chuckled and turned it off. “Stop trying to be annoying, Ben. You are annoying enough without any effort on your part, and if you sayfuckto me again in any context, I will put you out of the car.”
“You are not my fuc—boss anymore! Stop treating me like a bloody child!”
“I treat you as you deserve to be treated.” He twisted around in the seat to face Ben, and Ben could see Nikolas wasn’t as calm or as detached as he’d tried to give the impression he was. “Where have you been the last three days, Benjamin? Who am I sharing you with now?”
Ben frowned and glanced over. “What do you mean? I’ve been nowhere. Just here—I mean at home, with you.”
“No. Wherever you were, it was not with me, and you were not at home. You were not at home tome. So, I treat you accordingly.”
