“You would have no issue with the killing?”
“Are you serious? Have you seen that beard?”
“I meant the badgers, Benjamin.”
“Oh. You know, you’re seriously weird for a pretend English aristocrat. You might want to work on that cover of yours a bit, sir.”
“Go to bed, evil child. I will read over the files and let you know what I think in the morning.”
“When would you want me in place? The first training course begins Monday.”
“Training course? To kill a badger? You are not being serious?”
Ben held up another file. “Use of a Rifle. Use of a Shotgun. Site Choice. Baiting Techniques. Something called Dispatch, which I reckon is a euphemism for killing the poor creatures. Use of Night Vision Equipment. Lamping, which might be hitting them with lamps? Badger Ecology and Be—”
“For God’s sake—stop. I apologise for asking. I should send you maybe back to Iraq for an easy life?”
“Oh, there’s a test at the end, too. Multiple choice.”
“Do you think you will pass?”
“Do you think I don’t know how to cheat?”
Nikolas ruffled his hair. “If we go ahead, you will be on the course Monday. The minister received another threat tonight.”
“The missing head?”
“No, a photo of his daughter taken at her desk at school.”
“Shit.”
“Yes.”
“Is he going to call off the cull?”
“What, and damage his political standing? Benjamin,wemay be murderers, liars, and fornicators. These are British politicians. We cannot possibly compete.”
CHAPTER SIX
When Ben packed to leave the next morning, he had the green light for his plan. It was insanely easy to get a place on the culling course. It wasn’t a popular job, specialist skills and mentality being required, and he fit all the criteria, or his fake profile did—ex-infantry Corporal Jamie Lancaster. Monday morning, he reported to the location of the training on a farm near the proposed cull site. He recognised all the others on the course in the way that all soldiers can spot another solider a mile away. He was confident, though, that he had never actually met any of them, his life in the SAS and then the department having taken him far from the routines of their lives. He was paired with an ex-Sergeant from a Scottish lowland regiment called Jock. If Ben had to choose between shooting a badger or Jock, he reckoned the badger would be safe to live another day. He guessed, like working in an abattoir, you didn’t meet the best of British on a training course to cull badgers. But he swallowed his dislike of the aggressive, bullying Scot and concentrated on the job he was really there to do.
Surprisingly, his opportunity to make contact with the protestors came on the very first day. Whilst being driven to the minister’s land to begin what was described as Module 1—identifying, referencing, and recording location of culling area and identifying and classification of setts,they discovered a makeshift barricade across the lane leading to Sir Monty Bancott’s tenant farmer’s land. A transit van was skewed across the road with a few people sitting on the ground in front of it, simple but effective. Ben recognised Julie and her girlfriend. He climbed out with the other course members and their trainer. The DEFRA official—Ben wasn’t sure whether this suited civil servant was representing the environment, the food, or the rural affairs part of the department’s mandate, but from the size of him and the strain on his waistband, Ben reckoned the food section—stayed in his car, making a frantic phone call. But the rep from the local farmers’ union, who had been following them to view the first day’s training, began to remonstrate with the protesters.
As the seated figures began to argue back, a battered old antique traveller appeared and began to manoeuvre alongside the van, clearly intending to block the gap between it and the high hedge to the right. Before he could intervene, Ben saw Jock approach the car and lean into the driver’s window. He appeared to be trying to take the keys from the woman who was driving. From the backseat, an aged springer spaniel raised itself from a tartan blanket and began to bark in a distressed and rheumy voice. Its elderly owner was clearly becoming equally distressed. Ben suddenly saw his opportunity. He stepped over Julie and went up to Jock, taking his arm. He leant down and spoke gently to the woman. “Best you get home today, ma’am.”
“I most certainly will not go home! I’m here to stop you thugs murdering our badgers!”
“It’s just a look around today, ma’am. Save your energy for when it starts.”
She mumbled something under her breath, but on taking a look once more at her dog, she began to back up the lane and away from the protest.
Ben steered Jock over to the side of the road out of anyone’s hearing and whispered something in his ear that told the man exactly what Ben would do to him if he saw him treating old ladies like that again. Then with a disarming smile, he returned to the picket line and gave Julie a wink as he stepped over her once more. She had watched the tiny incident with interest, and he knew she would recognise him another time.
Ben spent the rest of the day doing something he supposed he ought to enjoy, tramping around wet, muddy fields carrying a gun. He’d spent a large portion of his working life doing just that, after all. But the cold and the boredom of the whole thing got to him after a while. He found his thoughts drifting back to the very pleasant weekend he’d just spent enjoying a beautiful house and, yes, if vicious killer badgers dragged the admission from him, the beautiful man he’d been enjoying, too. Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen hadn’t managed to marry into the British Royal Family through unfettered ambition alone. He had a mesmeric northern beauty, his face chiselled from the harsh winds of his native land. More than once, Ben found himself picturing that face instead of concentrating on his lessons. It was just as well he could pass the course as easily as drink a glass of Nikolas’s whisky.
For many reasons, therefore, Ben was delighted later that night when he returned to his hotel to find the subject of his preoccupation sitting on the end of his bed, watching the local news on the television. “Hello, Benjamin.”
Ben grinned privately. He always loved the way Nikolas greeted him. It seemed to say more than it actually did. But then he had a tendency to always try and see more in Nikolas’s words and looks than, possibly, were actually there. Consequently, mindful of not appearing too keen, he replied noncommittally, “Sir.”
