Ben was examining his and shook his head. ‘Useless. But it’s all backed up. Yours?’
Aleksey held his gingerly in his hand. The Harry Black had not survived the flames any better than the poor man had done. It was finally dead. Quickly, he bent and wrote something in the dust. ‘Remember this.’
Ben glanced at it, nodded, and Aleksey toed it away with his boot.
‘We must go. Now. Peyton can call this in, just as the moron did for Neil.’
Ben hesitated for a moment then ducked his head in agreement.
Fortunately it was dark.
It was still pouring with rain.
They made it back to their vehicle, heads down, just two very scruffy men, unrecognisable and unobserved by the sleeping residents of Exeter.
* * *
They showered, dressed in warm clothes and sat in the kitchen with a formidable first aid box between them. Neither of them was badly burned, but all such wounds hurt, and Aleksey could see Ben’s weary resignation to a few days of unpleasantness. He gently soothed some aloe gel over each of Ben’s scorched areas. They’d both become rather fond of this natural remedy.
Ben then took his fingers gingerly. ‘Is there anywhere on your body that isn’t scarred and battered?’
Aleksey quirked his lip. ‘My brain? That’s actually been…getting better recently.’
The illumination of Ben’s grin would have taken away any pain. Ben knew who was responsible for the improvement in his thinking.
‘So, they take the homeless men somewhere, do something to them that either drives them mad or causes them to self-harm…’ Ben drew his fingers in illustration down his face. ‘And take them back to where they found them and kill them. Stage it to look like accidents. Have I got that right?’
Aleksey nodded.
‘Okay. Why? What the fuck for? What the hell is this all about?’
‘There’s another question too. Remember what Lee said: far fewer of his community were left. That’s what Harry observed, too. That’s what he actually took note of and was curious enough about to tell the moron.’
‘So, what, they’re…not all actually getting brought back?’
‘That’s what I’m assuming, yes. I think those may have been the…lucky ones.’
‘Jesus.’
‘There are many things I could add to my list of possible fates for them. They could have been forced into pits to fight dogs. That would explain those facial wounds, no? In Russia it would be bears.’
Ben’s expression made him add swiftly, ‘These things happen. We have not come so far from being baying crowds in a Roman arena. Now we just film such things and put it up for clicks and likes on the dark web. Maybe they were forced to fight each other—last man alive wins. Many of them are chronic drug and alcohol abusers and would do anything for money to feed those addictions. They are often mentally ill or confused. People making content for videos pay them to injure themselves. All this is possible.’
Ben muttered sceptically, ‘I don’t think those men were vloggers. They looked more like homeless themselves.’
‘Yes. An easy enough look to acquire though. We did a pretty good job ourselves tonight of blending in.’ Ben finished with his hands, and he drew them back and pulled his other, newer, phone over. He checked the time. Five a.m. He left a text for Peyton to contact him when he got up. Surprisingly, he got one back straight away. Apparently the big man was eighty hours intoDragon Age: Inquisition. Aleksey was none the wiser after this information but messaged back with his instructions, and the licence plate number he’d got from the van. He showed it to Ben first for confirmation. Ben nodded and he sent it.
They leaned back at the same time.
‘I think they had plied him with a lot of alcohol, Ben, or he was high. He was not entirelycompos mentis. It might have helped him a little. At the end.’
‘They were ex-army. You clocked that too, didn’t you.’
Aleksey nodded. It had not been a question. It hadn’t needed to be. Of course he’d seen what Ben had: the swift calm of their actions; the silent coordination through hand signals; the laying out of the kit. Even they way they had held themselves physically.
It was only as he was falling asleep later that night, Ben breathing quietly alongside him, that he remembered someone had been talking about an army unit with him only recently. It was possibly the conversation he’d had with Ben about the artillery ranges on Benbecula, but somehow he didn’t think so.
* * *
