Star of Africa (Ben Hope, Book 13) Read Online Free PDF Page B

you. Welcome, stranger.’
    ‘Hello, Jeff.’
    ‘Well, fuck me sideways. You’re about the last person I’d expected to turn up out of the blue.’
    ‘Lucky you,’ Ben said. ‘I did try to call to say I was coming.’
    ‘Are you staying? Or running off again?’
    ‘I just popped over to check you haven’t totally destroyed the place in my absence.’
    ‘Oh, I think we’re scraping by okay,’ Jeff said, grinning even more widely. ‘Come inside. I just opened a bottle.’
    ‘Scotch?’
    ‘’Fraid we don’t carry much of a stock of the hard stuff since you buggered off and left us. Make do with wine?’
    ‘Good enough,’ Ben said.
    Jeff had moved out of his quarters in the annexe after Ben’s departure, and taken up residence in the farmhouse. He led Ben into the familiar old stone-floored rustic kitchen. Gazing around him, Ben saw that nothing had changed. The solid fuel range was lit and filling the kitchen with a rosy glow of warmth.
    ‘Cold tonight,’ Ben said.
    ‘Colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra,’ Jeff said. Jeff had always had that way with words. He grabbed an extra wineglass from the side and set about filling it up from the open bottle of Côtes du Rhône. They sat at the table where the two of them had spent many an evening drinking, playing chess, and sharing ideas about how they were going to make Le Val a success. Jeff slid Ben’s glass to him over the worn pine table.
    They clinked. ‘Cheers,’ Jeff said. ‘To old times.’
    ‘Old times.’
    ‘And future ones, maybe,’ Jeff said.
    ‘We’ll have to see about that.’
    ‘So, dare I ask to what we owe the pleasure of your company?’
    Ben savoured a gulp of the wine. ‘You can ask,’ he said. ‘Let’s just say I’m staying away from town for a few days.’ Dracul’s Taurus was still in his belt. He slipped it out, ejected the mag, locked back the slide to make the weapon safe and laid it on the table. ‘Might want to stick that in the armoury when you get a moment. Its owner won’t be needing it any more.’
    Jeff gazed pensively at the gun. ‘On second thoughts, mate, I’m not sure I want to know.’
    They spent a few minutes catching up. Ben had little to report on his activities since they’d last seen each other, even though there was enough there to fill volumes. He especially had nothing to report on the love life front. He wasn’t hiding anything on that score.
    For his own part, Jeff revealed with a coy grin that he’d recently met a woman he liked. Her name was Chantal and she was a primary school teacher in the nearby village. It sounded serious, which was a departure for Jeff, whose long string of part-time, on-off, short-term girlfriends had been scattered across most of Lower Normandy and had seldom ever been brought home to Le Val – partly because he’d never met one he wanted to get too permanent with, and partly due to the sensitive nature of the business that went on there.
    ‘How is business?’ Ben asked, reaching for his cigarettes and Zippo lighter.
    ‘Oh, you know, booming.’ Jeff spent a few more minutes updating him on all the latest developments at Le Val, while Ben smoked and helped himself to more wine. Final touches were being put to the extended rifle range and the new classroom facilities, and they had contracts coming in from all over the place with a five-month waiting list because they couldn’t cram it all in.
    ‘If things keep up at this crazy pace, we’re going to outgrow this place and need to start up another, just to meet demand,’ Jeff said. Just when things had been getting ridiculously busy, Paul Bonnard, who had been with the team since the beginning, had left to take a job at the renowned Gunsite tactical training academy in Paulden, Arizona. Jeff had employed two new staff members to fill the gap left by his departure. One was Ludivine Tournoy, a sixty-year-old former bank manager’s secretary from the nearby village who was now coming in part-time as an