‘Oh, I know you do. But I have noticed a distinct speed increase since you also learnt to fly. Purely coincidental, I am sure.’
Ben huffed, but did slow down. ‘Are we actually buying furniture then?’
Aleksey laughed. ‘Already bought and on its way.’
They passed once more the renowned smuggler’s inn high on Bodmin moor, and Tim craned his neck around, murmuring, ‘That’s one of the most haunted pubs in England. I would love to stay there for a weekend.’
Aleksey heard a theatrical gasp of offence, before Squeezy elaborated, ‘If you’re lacking bumps in the night, you need to be a bit more forthcoming, matey. You ask Diesel here—he gets bought planes cus he knows when to put out.’
Ben was actually smirking at this, so Aleksey wasn’t too worried about a possible furious lunge into the backseat. Ben just glanced into the rear view mirror and asked, ‘You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?’
Tim pushed his glasses up, apparently glad to be off the previous subject—and perhaps his method of punishing his partner for his deceit. ‘Not as spirits of dead people, obviously. But some accounts of manifestations are very hard to explain away. I want to experience one myself, and then I could assess it one way or another.’
Aleksey murmured, ‘Eyes? Road?’
Ben returned his concentration to the front but asserted casually, apparently in retribution, ‘Nikolas sees ghosts.’
There was a slightly uncomfortable silence in the car after this, possibly for the unusual betrayal—Ben rarely offered up any ofhismany quirks for general consumption—possiblybecause he’d used the old name, which he must have known by now annoyed him, but more likely because Ben had just claimed that the vaunted sceptic of pretty much everything actually believed in the supernatural.
Squeezy, predictably, leaned forwards and even had the audacity to fold his arms on the back of the passenger seat and breathe on him. ‘That true, Crusoe? You seen a ghost? Where? When? What did it look like? Maybe it was just one of your victims not entirely dead, like, and he got back up when you weren’t expecting it.’
‘I donotsee ghosts. Such things are merely products of a deranged brain. Get off my seat.’
There was sudden and universal hilarity in the car. Even Radulf appeared to be sniggering, but the wheezing could just have been a hairball about to make an appearance.
Aleksey played back what he’d said, clenched his jaw and stared out of his side window, refusing to have anything more to do with the other occupants of his car.
The other three made up for it, and a very animated discussion continued until they reached Penzance. He stared out at the moors and pondered the bleakness of it all.
For a change, and because he and Ben had not done it yet, they’d decided instead of hiring a boat that they would take the passenger ferry to St Mary’s. The Scillonian had been sailing the route between the mainland and the archipelago’s largest island for over forty years. They were waved to an allocated parking space alongside the dock and Aleksey left the other three to bring their bags, going on ahead alone.
The trip took nearly three hours, but up on deck, gazing starboard over the stunning scenery of the Cornish coastline, or to port out into the Atlantic, there probably wasn’t a better way to be spending that time.
Aleksey had been looking forward to the trip, but he felt angry now, and he hadn’t experienced that emotion for a long time. It brought up bad associations for him—not about other people, but about his own inability to handle the feeling. He leaned his forearms on the rail, watching the white spray below where the bow of the ferry cut through the water. Neither Radulf nor PB liked the motion of this vessel at all, or perhaps the smell of diesel and the vibration, and so were lying unhappily at his feet.
He heard someone come to stand alongside him.
Ben copied him, leaning on the rail. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t know. What do you think is wrong?’
Ben turned his head to regard him. ‘That you’re moody and difficult to live with?’
Aleksey jerked his head back and looked him straight in the eye. Ben looked defiant. ‘They would have just laughed it off if you hadn’t made such a big deal of it. It was just a joke!’
‘No. It wasn’t. It was you making a pointed comment about me criticising your driving.’
‘Well, why do you do it then? For Christ’s sake! You used to drive like a fucking maniac when we first met.’
‘Are you remembering some previous man you fucked, Benjamin, because I have never driven over the speed limit in my entire life.’
‘What! You—’ He turned in apparent frustration and hooked his elbows over the top rail and put one foot up on the lower one. ‘You are such a liar.’
Aleksey snorted. ‘And this is a surprise to you? I lie about everything. You know this.’
‘If you want to drive, you drive.’
‘I don’t want to drive. I want to arrive places alive.’
