by Peter James
Protect her from her bastard husband.
But she was protecting herself right now, sitting very upright, arms folded, a classic defensive position. He needed to get her out of guarding mode before they could move on. So he began to mirror her, so subtly she would never notice. First, he studied the rhythm of her breathing, and matched it, breath for breath. Within a couple of minutes they were synchronised. Then holding eye-contact, he folded his own arms. Moments later she took a drink of her mineral water, and he did the same, rapport building, setting down the glass exactly when she did.
Leaning forward a little, Faith said, 'So many words in the States are different from ones we use here.'
Oliver leaned forward too, poker-faced, and said, 'You know, I find absolutely the same thing over here.'
After a moment's hesitation she laughed, and Oliver laughed too, not because he was mirroring her now but because her laughter was so damned infectious.
Their waiter came. Oliver encouraged Faith to select the prawns in coconut sauce starter, ordered the same, then changed his order to prawns with spiced mango.
'Have you had the — er, the shrimp in coconut?' she asked.
'Uh-huh,' Oliver responded, with deliberately downgraded enthusiasm. 'I think the mango's a little more interesting.'
'I'll have it, too,' she said.
Oliver ordered lemongrass chicken, with a spicy nut salad to follow, and to his secret delight, Faith ordered the same.
When the waiter walked away, Oliver lifted his glass and drank some more water. Faith followed suit. When he set down his glass, he leaned back a little in his chair; seconds later, Faith did too.
Now she was unconsciously mirroring him, which meant he had control and she would be compliant. It was a technique he used on his patients to encourage them to believe that they were making the decisions themselves on courses of treatment. If they believed that the treatment was going to work from the outset, its chances of success were greatly enhanced. Right now he needed Faith to believe in him, to open up to him.
Tapping his forehead above his left eye, he said, 'Tell me more about this.'
Raising her finger and touching the plaster, she looked embarrassed. 'I —' She was interrupted by the waiter presenting a bottle of Sancerre to Oliver for inspection.
He nodded the man away, and she continued, 'I — it — it wasn't deliberate. He didn't mean to —'
'Why are you defending him, Faith?'
'No, it's not that I'm defending him, it just needs to be in context.'
The waiter poured some wine for Oliver to taste, and he saw, to his disappointment Faith folding her arms again.
When the waiter left, Oliver folded his own arms, held the position, then reached out and picked up his glass again. He held it towards her. 'Cheers.'
She raised her glass and chinked it against his. 'Cheers.'
He drank and set his glass down, and now she was mirroring him again. He prompted her: 'You were saying about your husband?'
'He has a lot of good points.'
'You wouldn't have married him if he didn't.'
'Do you believe people can change?'
'Heraclitus said that you can't step into the same river twice.'
'Because we move on?' she suggested.
'I think dumb people don't change, because they're not affected by anything that happens to them, but intelligent people change constantly.'
She nodded. 'And can you change from being a kind, caring person into a monster? A psychopath?'
Oliver shook his head. 'We call them sociopaths. You are born one, you don't become one. But the smart ones know how to play the game. When you first meet them they are outwardly kind and caring, until they've gotten what they want. Then they don't need their masks any more and their true character emerges.'
He stared at her, and could see the fear in her eyes, the fear that seemed to be ingrained in her. She was too lovely, too decent a person to have to live in fear. Fear was a hideous, corrosive thing.
Your husband's a sociopath, Faith. You may not be ready to admit that yet, but any man who can hit a woman like that is a monster. And you're in danger because he's going to get worse. And one day he might just hit you so hard you won't get up again. And he'll tell the world he cannot imagine what has happened to you. That you just vanished into thin air. He'll appear on television and do a wonderful job of weeping and parading your little son, who's desperate for his mummy to return. And in twenty years' time they'll find what's left of you under a cement patio.
He shuddered, aware that his thoughts were running wild, but this was what he felt.
Faith was giving him a strange look and the colour was draining from her face. She placed both her hands on the table, steadying herself, as if fighting for control. Control of what? Was she having another bout of what she'd had last time?
Alarmed, he said, 'You OK?'
Even whiter now she nodded but did not speak.
The waiter brought over two tiny appetisers on elegant saucers.
'Faith?'
She was shivering, staring wide-eyed at him. Then she got up and ran to the back of the restaurant, through to the washrooms.
When she returned, she was even paler than when she had left the table. 'I'm sorry,' she said.
Her skin looked clammy, like someone having a heart-attack.
'The bug?' he said.
'Yes. It sometimes — comes on so suddenly.'
'You want to lie down?'
'I'll be OK, really.'
'You need air?'
She looked back at him with such an expression of defeat in her face that he felt a chill deep inside him. Was she more sick than she was letting on? I've only just met you. Don't let me lose you before I've even got to know you. He said, 'What's really wrong with you, Faith? I don't think you're telling me the whole story.'
She was gripping her glass as if desperate for something to hold on to. In a frightened voice, that was barely even a whisper, she said, 'I don't know, no one will tell me.'
'You're married to a doctor and he won't tell you anything?'
'No.'
'You're going to come back to London tomorrow, Faith, to the clinic, and I'm going to take a good look at you, run some tests of my own, find out what's really going on. OK.' It wasn't a question.
Faith nodded, and the fear in her eyes was replaced with a film of gratitude as watery as January sunlight.
38
At eight thirty the following morning, Ross stood in a corner of the Harley Street operating theatre, face mask dangling below his chin, writing up his notes after the first operation of the day. He'd slept badly last night and the operation had not gone well.
It was the kind of work he enjoyed least. A repair: a skin graft he'd performed a month earlier on the neck of a man badly burned in a chemical plant accident had become infected and failed. Now he'd had to crop a fresh flap of skin from the man's thigh and try again. The failure of the first graft had not been his fault, but he didn't see it that way. In his mind, all failures were his fault.
His failing marriage to Faith was his fault: he gave her too much freedom, too much time alone, too much money. And, in some way he didn't fully understand, he felt her illness was his fault and it was down to him to cure her. All these problems could be dealt with: they had to be taken in hand, the bad bits excised, like the necrotic flesh he'd just excised and replaced. There were always solutions. And now, out of the corner of his eye, he saw his anaesthetist, Tommy Pearman, balding, perspiring, misshapen, sidling up to him.
'Came second in my class on Sunday, did I tell you?'
'Didn't know you went to Sunday school, Tommy,' Ross said.
'Ha bloody ha! In my Bentley.'
'Ah, yes, your Bentley.' Ross had a clear picture in his head of the anaesthetist in his green 1930s Bentley. Once Pearman had turned up for Sunday lunch in it, wearing a leather helmet and goggles, as if he was auditioning for the part of Toad.
'At the hill climb.
I told you about that?'
Ross tuned him out while he wrote down an important detail.
Like a child wanting attention, Pearman continued, 'It was at Prescott Hill — home of the Bugatti Owners Club — an open meeting, for all kinds of vintage sports and racing cars.'
'Why didn't you come first, Tommy? You should always try to come first.'
'I just went for a bit of fun,' the anaesthetist said, defensively.
'Coming first is fun,' Ross said, finishing his notes and handing them to the scrub nurse to write up on the computer. 'You shouldn't ever be pleased to come second, Tommy.'
Then he was interrupted by a houseman, 'Mr Ransome, the photographer wants to know if it's for the next operation you need her.'
Ross used photographs for his papers and he put up some of his best operations on his website. 'Mrs Reynauld?' he said. 'She's next — we're going to do quite interesting work on the jawbone. Yes, I do want photographs.' Then he put an arm around the anaesthetist. 'I need a quick word, Tommy,' he said, and propelled him towards the door.
Out in the corridor, Ross said, 'I have to do a talk in Prague in September for the World Confederation of Plastic Surgeons.' Then he dropped his voice as a nurse walked past. 'I'm talking about microcirculation, and I want to spice it up a little. You're into all the future-technology stuff, as well as your old cars, right?'
The anaesthetist nodded dubiously.
'I want to get nanotechnology into my talk. Do you know anything about it?'
'Miniature robots.'
'That's it. Dig something thing up for me, will you?'
'I've got more for you on Lendt's disease, all the data on the drug cocktail Moliou-Orelan are using, the phase-two trials results.'
'And?'
'Just over thirty-five per cent survival rate beyond one year of people taking it.'
Ross clutched him excitedly. 'Thirty-five per cent?'
Pearman rolled his eyes affirmatively.
'That's ace news, Tommy!'
'I wouldn't call it that. Sixty-five per cent of people with the disease die within twelve months — eighty per cent if they're not on the drug — and it's not a pleasant way to go. I don't think a thirty-five per cent cure rate is that impressive.'
'It's brilliant, Tommy! There wasn't anything and now there's thirty-five per cent. Thank you.' He left the anaesthetist in the corridor and hurried into his office, closed the door, then rang Jules Ritterman.
'Ross! I was just going to call you!' Ritterman said.
'I just heard some information about the Moliou-Orelan phase-two trials.'
'That's what I was going to call you about. It's not brilliant, but there's some progress.'
'You have to get her on those phase-three trials, Jules, right now. You've just got to pull any strings you can.'
'I'm working on it. But it is only thirty-five per cent,' he cautioned, 'against twenty-five per cent for the placebo. That's only a ten per cent difference. And, as I told you, we'll have no way of knowing whether Faith will be given the drug itself or a placebo, which cuts the odds in half again.'
Ross barely heard the caveat. 'Faith is fit, she's a strong woman, and she has the right mental attitude. Those are the things that count. It's going to work, Jules, I know it.'
39
Report One. Tuesday 17 May. Surveillance Operative HC.
0915 — Activity. The subject left Little Scaynes Manor unaccompanied, in dark green Range Rover registration S212 CWV. Subject proceeded to Gatwick Airport, car park 3, purchased ticket from Gatwick Express ticket office, boarded the 10.00 Gatwick Express train to London Victoria, and sat on her own in the standard section.
At 10.03 subject made brief call from mobile phone to person (presumed from subsequent actions to be Dr Oliver Linden Cabot — home and office addresses at end of report). The following is the transcript of the recording made of the subject's end of the call by directional microphone (DM):
'Hi, how are you? I'm on my way — caught the ten o'clock, should be in Victoria by ten thirty. Can't — sorry, can't —' (connection terminated by train entering tunnel).
At 10.05 subject redialled (presumed to be same number). Transcript continues: 'Sorry about that, we went into a tunnel. This (indecipherable word) is a bad — (15 seconds indecipherable — passing oncoming train) — same place as Friday? Me too… 'Bye.
10.07. Subject's rail ticket examined by inspector. No exchange of words.
10.10. Subject acquired coffee from trolley. Passed rest of journey reading Daily Mail newspaper. No communications or interaction with any other person.
10.32 — Activity. Arrival in Victoria. Subject left train, exited west from west concourse on to Buckingham Palace Road and met with male, mid-forties, American accent, six foot tall, thin build, wavy greying hair, (later tentatively identified from digital images taken compared against his website photographs as Dr Oliver Cabot — final identity to be confirmed. Photograph 1.1 appendixed). Oliver Cabot was waiting in a navy Jeep Cherokee, registration P321 MDF (registered owner, the Cabot Centre for Complementary Medicine). Transcript from directional microphone (DM):
Dr OC: Faith, hi, great, you made it. Great to see you.
FR: And to see you too. You didn't have to come and collect me again.
Dr OC: I wanted to. OK?
FR: (reply inaudible from passing traffic)
Subject and Cabot enter Jeep Cherokee. Cabot in driving seat. Audio signal lost.
10.37 — Activity. Jeep Cherokee departed from Buckingham Palace Road. Surveillance maintained by taxi. Jeep Cherokee headed into North London. Journey time 43 minutes. Parked outside the Cabot Centre for Complementary medicines, Chapel Hill, Winchmore Hill, London, NW13 3BD.
11.25 — Activity. Subject and Cabot exited Jeep and entered Cabot Centre for Complementary Medicine. Observer unable to get close enough for audio.
11.28 Magnetic tracking transponder secured on underside of Dr OC's Jeep Cherokee.
11.31 Positive voice ID by window scanner microphone on subject and Cabot. Transcription from scanner on first-floor window:
Dr OC: Glass of water you said? Sparkling?
FR: Still.
Dr OC: Coming up. OK, let me slip your coat off. Now, I want to start by taking a complete medical history from you. Let's begin with a few basics — (Voice lost).
40
Oliver sidled across to the wall and peered out furtively through the slats of the blinds. Suddenly he raised a finger to his lips, and walked towards the door, signalling urgently with his eyes.
Faith, puzzled by his behaviour, stood up from the chair in front of his desk, followed him through to his secretary's office and out into the corridor.
He closed the door quietly, then said, 'Is your husband having you followed, Faith?'
Oh, Christ.
She felt a sudden heave of panic inside her as she flashed back to Ross confronting her on Friday night with the recordings of her phone conversations. The possibility had occurred to her. 'Why do you ask?'
'A cab trailed us from Victoria — I'm pretty sure it was the same one all the way. I took a detour but the driver followed. Now there's a man in the street, lurking behind my car — he's talking on a mobile phone, keeps looking directly up at my office, angling the antennae towards my window, like he's trying to pick up our conversation.'
A few moments ago she had been feeling safe, here with Oliver. Now she could sense the darkness of Ross closing around her. 'Anything's possible with him,' she said.
Oliver glanced at the plaster above her eyebrow. 'I don't know much about surveillance except what I've read and seen in movies,' he said, 'but I do know there are devices that can pick up sound waves bounced off glass. We'll go to another room where we aren't going to take that risk.'
'What does he look like?'
'He's —'
They were interrupted by a good-looking man in his mid-thirties, in a grey roll-neck sweater and blue blazer. 'Oliver, when you're free I need a few minutes wi
th you — I want to show you the insulin graph.'
'Can it wait till this afternoon?' Oliver asked.
A moments hesitation, then, 'Sure.'
Introducing them, Oliver said, 'Dr Forester — Faith Ransome. Dr Forester is in charge of hypnotherapy.'
'Nice to meet you,' Faith said, shaking his hand.
'Good to meet you too.'
'Chris,' Oliver said, 'is there anyone in your office right now?'
'No, I have a patient in —' he glanced at his watch '— ten minutes.'
'Can we borrow it?'
Looking surprised, he said, 'Yes — yes, of course.'
Signalling Faith to be silent again, Oliver walked in, then made his way stealthily to the window, edging past a therapy couch to keep out of view of the road below. Then he stopped and pointed towards his Jeep.
Faith followed his finger, but all she could see at first were parked cars. An elderly woman shuffled into view, progressing laboriously along the pavement with two grocery bags. A white van with ladders on the roof flashed past. Then she saw him. A slip of a man with shorn hair, wearing a leather jacket, jeans and trainers, was leaning against a wall, shooting furtive glances up at the clinic. He was holding a mobile phone with a wire trailing to his ear and his lips were moving.
She moved away from the window, and joined Oliver in the corridor. After he had closed the door, he said, 'You haven't seen him before?'
'I don't think so.'
A young woman was clumping on crutches down the corridor towards them.
'Susan, how you doin'?' Oliver greeted her.
She stopped, short of breath. 'OK, I think. The acupuncture's really helping — I just had another session. But I don't like it. It hurts.'
'No gain without pain. Right?' He followed it with the kind of smile that could charm birds out of trees. 'Give me a call when you come for your next appointment — I'd like to take a look at your leg myself and see how it is doing. You seem so much better than when I saw you last. I really mean that.'