The Lost Relic

He couldn’t move it properly. Touching it, his fingertips came away dripping red. He could feel blood trickling down inside his sleeve. A cold wave of nausea gushed through his body and his heart began to hammer at the base of his throat. He blinked sweat out of his eyes, willed himself to keep moving.

Stepping over the wreckage to the shattered warehouse window, he could see the police piling out of their vehicles down below, pulling guns and scattering into teams searching for an entrance to the warehouse. The police helicopter that had chased him was still hovering over the industrial estate.

Then, as Ben watched, a second chopper came thudding in out of the night sky and settled beyond the cluster of police vehicles. Before it had fully touched down, its hatch flew open and a figure in black jumped out.

Her black hair flew loose in the wind from the rotor blades. Even at this distance, Ben could see the look of ferocious determination on her face.

Darcey Kane.

Ben almost smiled. He’d known he’d see her again. What was it with this woman?

Behind her came a tall, bald man whom Ben instantly recognised as the man who’d been with her in the catacomb in Rome. The two of them were quickly briefed by uniformed officers and some of the paramilitary tactical firearms team who had rolled up in an unmarked black van. Darcey Kane looked up at the warehouse, then drew her weapon and started striding fast towards the wrecked building.

Ben moved away from the window and looked around him for a way out.

Darcey led the tactical firearms squad into the warehouse. Weapons cocked and ready and darting torch beams left and right, they covered each other as they climbed from level to level up clattering iron stairs.

Emerging onto the third floor, the sharp odour of spilled motor fluids and hot metal reached their nostrils, and they shone their torches on the car wreck.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Buitoni murmured. ‘He can’t have walked away from this.’

Darcey was already approaching the vehicle, her weapon out in front of her.

The car was empty. There was no sign of Hope anywhere. Then she saw the trail of blood spots that led away from the car and followed it with her Maglite across the concrete floor to the window, where it pooled in a gleaming puddle.

‘He’s hurt,’ Buitoni said.

‘Not that badly,’ she said. ‘He was watching us from here.’ A further blood trail led back in the opposite direction. ‘This way,’ she called, and Buitoni and the team followed.

The blood spots ended below a round ceiling hatch that was accessed by a metal ladder. Some of the rungs were smeared red and there was a red handprint on the trapdoor overhead. Darcey hauled herself up the ladder, pushed through the trapdoor and stepped out onto the flat roof. She cast her torchbeam through the darkness, and saw the row of warehouses whose rooftops stood close enough together for Hope to have made his escape that way.

Darcey felt the first heavy patter of rain on her cheek. Then a second. She looked up at the sky.

‘Fuck,’ she said.

And the gathering rain clouds opened up. In seconds, everyone except Darcey was taking cover from the deluge and the warehouse roof was running slick with water.

She could only stare as the blood trail washed away, and with it her chances of catching Ben Hope that night.

‘Fuck,’ she said again.

Chapter Fifty-Three

The rain was pounding down like warm hail as Ben staggered away from the industrial area. The pain in his arm was intensifying, and he tucked his wrist through his belt to keep the limb supported as he ran. He made for the side of a tin building where old pallets were stacked in five-metre-high piles. Ducking in among them, he stripped off his shirt and examined his wound. The blood was oozing out as fast as the rain could wash it away. The bullet was still in there, lodged somewhere up against the triceps muscle. He didn’t think it had struck bone. He tore the right sleeve off the shirt and tied it as tightly as he could around his arm to stem the bleeding. Not much of a field dressing, but it would have to do for now.

He bundled the rest of the shirt out of sight into a gap between the pallets, then peered through the hammering rain to get his bearings. The other side of a wire fence, two hundred metres across a piece of wasteground, was a road. He ran to the fence and scaled it using just his good hand. Dropping down the other side, he crossed the wasteground and walked along the road for a couple of hundred metres, glancing back frequently for the police cars he kept expecting to see bearing down on him at any moment.

None had appeared by the time Ben heard the diesel rumble of a big articulated truck coming his way. He cleared the rain out of his eyes, stuck out his thumb.

The truck slowed and pulled up at the side of the road with a hiss of airbrakes. Ben clambered up into the cab, thanking the driver for stopping and doing his best to hide the bloody bandage with the sleeve of his T- shirt.

‘Travellin’ light, mate,’ the driver said in English with a grin and a strange look as he pulled away and the truck picked up speed. His accent was strongly South African.

Ben looked at the guy in the dim cab lights. Early-tomid-forties, scraggy, hollow-cheeked and unshaven, with greasy sandy hair tied back under a flat cap.

‘Name’s Jan,’ the driver said, putting out his hand. ‘Jan the man.’

‘No comprendo Inglese,’ Ben said. He didn’t take the hand. Jan shrugged and withdrew his hand, then gave another knowing grin and winked exaggeratedly. ‘That’s all right, mate. No hard feelings. You don’t have to pretend with me, know what I mean?’ He laughed, flicked the windscreen wiper lever and the wipers stepped up a notch, batting away the pouring rain.

Ben said nothing.

‘I recognised you right away,’ Jan said. ‘Never forget a face, that’s me.’ He tapped a finger against his temple. The grin was etched on his lips as if someone had carved it with a blade. Maybe somebody had, Ben thought. He wondered whether he could break the guy’s neck and take over at the wheel without needing to stop the truck to do it.

‘Hey, I’m not gonna report you, man,’ Jan said, wrinkling his nose as if this was the most distasteful idea imaginable.

‘No?’

‘Ha! You do speak English. Gave yourself away there, mate. Nah, I’d never shop you to the fuckin’ pigs.’ Jan spat somewhere onto the cab floor. ‘We’re cool, you know? Not enough of us around. See?’ He jerked up the sleeve of his grimy T-shirt and Ben saw the faded, crudely tattooed compass rose insignia on his withered arm. It was the emblem of the South African Special Forces Brigade. It looked fake to Ben. In his experience, the guys who really had been in Special Forces were those who didn’t talk about it.

‘We fear naught but God,’ Jan said, quoting the SASFB official motto. ‘Angola, ’82. I was there, man. We kicked some kaffir arse, let me tell you.’ The laugh again. ‘Those were the days, man. I left South Africa after the fuckin’ kaffirs took over in ’94. Now I have to drive these fuckin’ tractors for a living.’ He gave a loud snort. ‘But hey, man. Imagine you gettin’ in my truck.’ He thumped his fist on the horn, twice. ‘Unbe- fuckin-lievable, eh? Must be fate, or what? You know, what you did back there in Rome was sweet. You ask me, we ought to be droppin’ the hammer on a lot more of these politician bastards. If we’d had more guys like you, guys with bollocks, we’d still have a country back home instead of a fuckin’ zoo, know what I mean? Jesus fuckin’ H Christ.’

Ben sank back in his seat. Maybe tearing Jan’s windpipe out through his mouth would have to wait until he felt a little stronger. ‘You have a first aid kit on board this thing?’