Uncertain, but clearly willing to take this odd group at face value, because accepting them was the easiest alternative, the big man claimed he didn’t know what they were talking about, that they were in the wrong place, that he was just the best boy grip, and he’d take them to the producer’s trailer.
They returned to the frosty night air.
It was something of a relief.
To Nikolas’s astonishment, there were tiny flakes of snow drifting down from dark, heavy clouds.It was much colder here than in London and exceptionally chilly compared to the balmy climate of Devon.He shivered, realised in the past he would have offered his coat to Kate and felt sad he wasn’t about to now.Then he slipped it off and put it over her shoulders.Full length, cashmere, made to measure for his frame, it dwarfed her.She wrapped it tightly around herself and closed her eyes for a moment, then swallowed and continued to follow them across the pitted ground to the encampment of trailers.
Squeezy was probing the large man about the technicalities of being someone whose job it was to grip best boys and asking him, much to Tim’s obvious annoyance, whether there were any vacancies and what the requirements were for such a job.
Ben’s bike was parked outside the trailer they were led to.His helmet rested on the seat.
Nikolas shivered again, not from the cold this time, but from the realisation he was about to meet Ben again, with everything Ben now knew and thought between them, poisoning them.It took some not inconsiderable portion of his courage to enter the trailer after the grip.
It was empty.
* * *
Fergus Atwell couldn’t even account for the whereabouts of the men he’d radicalised and sent out into the world to make it a worse place than they’d inherited.This was appalling to a soldier.Ben listened to frantic phone calls as they drove north, Fergus trying to find and locate lost men.By the time they arrived back in Lancashire, he’d managed to find and summon only six.An army of six for what they had to do.
Ben wasn’t all that surprised when he saw where they were headed.
He pictured Nikolas standing out of the illumination of the streetlight, calming himself, and was glad Nikolas wasn’t here now—that he had no part in this.
He had to do this himself.
Heowedit.
* * *
The grip went immediately to a rack of keys hanging on the wall of the trailer.“He’s taken the Golf.”
Kate took the details of the registration and colour of the hatchback vehicle and plugged them into her software.“This might take some time.”
Unsure what to do with his unexpected guests, the large man shrugged and left them to it.
Nikolas sat next to Kate.
“Keep working on this Fergus-Freddie man’s background while you run the search.Where will they have gone?It will be somewhere familiar and safe to him.”
She nodded, switched screens and began typing.
Squeezy found a bottle of whiskey and poured them each a generous measure.Kate refused hers and continued working.
* * *
Now empty and deserted, it was obvious the bar hadn’t been used for many years.Ben wondered why he hadn’t seen it before, but with the simple addition of a modern music system, a video, and some fake patrons, he’d been made to believe he’d come into a working bar in Burnley.“They were actors, too?”
Fergus nodded, his eyes darting anxiously around.
“Did they know?Were they in on it all?Here and at the…” It was hard to say.He swallowed.“The mill.Did they know what they were doing?That we didn’t know they were just acting?”
Atwell turned to look at Ben for the first time, catching his gaze voluntarily.“Your friend did know.”
“What?”
“Your big, blond friend who was pretending to be Nigel Stannis—he took their driving licences and their phones after the fight.They were all still working in the business.He must have known.”
Ben sat at the table he’d sat at with Nikolas and thought about this.
