He thought it ill-omened that they descended at all. He’d once worked in a building that had many unnamed floors beneath the ground. These were not places you visited unless you had a very, very strong stomach.
He rang the bell for Streatham.
But apparently microbiologists didn’t work on Sundays.
He toed the ground for a while, thinking things through, then tugged out his phone and called Tim. He recalled a conversation around a fire pit, stars so bright they cast shadows, the taste of wine and the feel of heat radiating off Ben’s powerful body, and then the anticipation of running his hands over that beautiful skin that night.
Max, a house on a river, and owing a lot of money—he remembered that too.
Tim gave him the address.
Why was he not surprised when he heard it?
Topsham Barracks—or what had once been Topsham Barracks. The regiment it had served was now disbanded, incorporated into a larger, new infantry battalion, and the barracks had been sold for redevelopment. Everything was a cycle of life, dissolution and renewal. As Rachel had told him, nothing ever really dies.
He checked the time, climbed back in the car and drove to Topsham.
He knew the way, after all.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-One
The camp was, of course, on the river. He could have predicted this new loop on the descending spiral, although on the surface this should not have been particularly worrying. After all, the huge Royal Marine training facility, Lympstone, was only a few miles further downstream. When the Devonshire Regiment had been founded, there had been no trains or cars, few roads come to that, and soldiers would have arrived and departed for their various wars via the river.
The original solid redbrick wall still surrounded the whole site, and when Aleksey pulled up, the gates were shut, but when he rattled them, they swung open, so he decided to just drive in. He hadn’t been too sure what to expect, but wasn’t all that surprised to see one smallish manor house, the same redbrick as the wall, and a few less attractive structures scattered around which were more utilitarian and made of concrete: an officer’s mess and the soldiers’ barracks. Knowing something about houses and renovations, Aleksey reckoned Tim’s assessmentmortgaged to the hilthardly covered it. If Max was planning to turn this old army facility into a residential house, it would probably be cheaper to knock it all down and start again.
He pulled up to the front of the officers’ mess and climbed out of the car. One of the buildings off to the side was apparently being used as a garage, for a man was stripped to the waist alongside it, hosing down a motorbike. The sight made him smile and think of Ben. He resisted the temptation to glance up into the sky in case that very act of hubris made a Cessna on its first solo check instantly explode into a fiery ball.
While he was berating himself for this foolishness, Max appeared at the front door. He looked startled to see who his visitor was, as well he might, and glanced towards the gate with a frown. ‘Sorry, I thought you’d be someone else. Hello, again. Aleksey, yes?’
Aleksey nodded. Now he was here, he was at something of a loss. He wasn’t sure what to say or ask. What do you know about homeless men being murdered? What do you know about a chimera? Both these very valid questions seemed a little abrupt, even for him.
Then he had something of a brainwave, his thoughts about the house still churning in his mind. ‘Yes. It was a spur of the moment thing. Tim was telling me some more about your work and your company, and I was interested—from a business standpoint. Do you know…who I am?’ It was hard to be self-deprecating and subtle. What he really wanted to ask was do you know I’m a billionaire?
Max appeared to hear the former but intuit something of the latter, because he nodded slowly and admitted, ‘Well, that’s interesting. I do actually—Ben was telling me quite a lot about you.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘He’s a really nice guy.’
Yes. Aleksey knew this. He smiled like that when he thought about Ben, he supposed. ‘Did he mention I had recently spoken of…diversifying some of my investments?’
Now Max’s grin was very wide indeed. Aleksey wondered if he was about to be offered a second-hand car. ‘Pharmaceuticals? Hedidactually. I obviously told him about Bellerophon, but I’m not sure he found my work all that interesting.’
‘No. Although he might have done if you’d talked about killer rats, flea vomit and plague. He likes that kind of thing a lot.’ It worked a trick. Max’s face turned stony.
‘Ah, I wondered what my delightful sister was telling you. She was very animated, although I suspect there was another reason for that heated flush. All of that’s in the past. She drinks too much and then talks too much and can’t seem to let it go like I have. The drinking, unfortunately, is a bit of a family curse—our mother was a total lush.’
‘Ah, I wouldn’t know about such things. Teetotaller myself. But I thought she was extremely interesting.’
‘Batshit crazy if you ask me—and that’s the scientific term for it. Look, come in. Have a cuppa, and we’ll chat. If you’re genuinely interested in investing. It’s the industry to be in these days. Microbiologists are the most overlooked of scientists, and bacteria are the smallest most ignored life forms, but put the two together and you’ve got unlimited potential.’ He turned and walked into gloomy depths of the house. Aleksey glanced around for a moment, ignored his gut instinct, and followed.
He was led down a long stone-flagged hallway which opened into a kitchen at the back of the house. This had clearly been a working area where only the staff would have ventured and so wasn’t a feature place decked out in glass, as he always created. He went over to an old pine table, which appeared to be laid with cheese and wine alongside some pâté and crackers for two. Before he could sit, Max removed one plate and full glass and put them under the counter. Then he waved Aleksey to a chair and put the kettle on.
It was gloomy in the kitchen. Out of the window, he could see a gardener cutting the grass on a ride-on mower and another strimming the borders of the lawn. It was a peaceful sight.
Max brought the tea over and sat across from him.
‘You having a day off from family? Ben was telling me all about your daughter and the other children.’
‘Yes, they’ve gone on holiday.’
