Faith

by Peter James

  On the edge of his bed now, the train still clanking by, Spider said, 'It's a train.' Then, urgently, he said, 'Reward? I ain't seen nothing about a reward.'

  'You don't have my fucking sources. The brother of one of your two fuck-ups, Dr Cabot, agreed it with the police yesterday — they've already been circulating it quietly in a few places where gun-dealers hang out.'

  'Why's it been kept quiet, then?'

  'Guess they didn't want to worry you, Spider. They probably thought you was worried enough already.'

  Spider trembled. Fifty thousand pounds was big money. Big enough to tempt the weasel who'd sold him his piece?'

  Too big for him to fucking turn down.

  And, oh, shit, he still had the Heckler and Koch in the flat. He hadn't wanted to dump it during his panic run through London on Saturday night. He'd just wanted to get as far away from Ladbroke Avenue as he could. On the far side of the park he had stolen a bike, and had cycled like the wind, for miles. He hadn't dared go back for his car, parked just a mile from Cabot's house, not knowing what kind of a cordon the police might have put around the area. Instead he'd gone home and hadn't left again until eleven last night when hunger had driven him to grab a takeaway.

  'You didn't tell me he had a brother,' Spider said.

  'I didn't tell you he had a mother either, or a father.'

  Thinking of the Subaru, Spider said, 'I can still do the job — just give me a couple —'

  'In your dreams. Take my advice and get the hell out of there — vanish.'

  The phone went dead.

  The train had passed now, and in the sudden silence the walls closed in, shrinking the room around him until it no longer felt like his home but a prison cell.

  No time to wash or shave. He got dressed quickly, tripping over his clothes, trying to think clearly about what he needed to take, and where he could go.

  Sevroula's place?

  And if she said no?

  He rammed the Heckler and Koch deep into his trouser pocket. Fucking Turkish drama queen was about to discover that, with Spider, no was not an option.

  70

  In the middle of a consultation, Ross's intercom buzzed. He picked up the phone.

  Nodding a curt apology at his woman patient he said, 'Yes?'

  'Mr Caven's in reception.'

  'Tell him to make an appointment like everyone else.'

  'He says it's urgent.'

  'So are all my appointments.'

  'He seems agitated.'

  There was something in her tone that got through to him. 'I'll see him for two minutes after I've finished with Mrs Levine.'

  When his patient left, the private detective came in, holding his laptop bag in one hand and a brown envelope in the other. He was looking pale, as if he hadn't slept, and reeked of cigarette smoke. Ross closed the door and did not offer him a seat. 'This had better be good,' he said. 'I have one hell of a morning.'

  Caven handed him the brown envelope, looking at him with grave, accusatory eyes. There was a box-shaped object inside, which rattled. In his soft Irish accent he said, 'When you hired me, Mr Ransome, you told me you were wanting photographs. I think you should take a look at this.'

  Ross removed the box from the envelope. There was a videotape inside it. 'What is it?' he said, but he already knew.

  'Do you have a machine to play it on?'

  Ross glanced at his watch, opened the cabinet containing the television and video-recorder, and put in the tape. Still standing, both men watched in silence.

  It was black-and-white footage and the picture quality wasn't great, but it was good enough. It showed a wide-angle bird's-eye view of a large loft apartment. The place seemed to be in darkness. Then suddenly light flared as the lens adjusted, and Ross could see more clearly. A man who looked like Dr Oliver Cabot was coming in at the front door.

  As he walked across the floor a figure appeared out of a doorway behind him, a small man or a woman in a smog mask and biking crash helmet, with a rucksack on his back, holding a pistol with a silencer in one hand and a black object in the other.

  As if hearing his name called, the man who looked like Oliver Cabot turned round. The other figure lurched forward and rammed the black object against Cabot's arm. Cabot staggered a few paces then fell over backwards.

  Ross and Caven watched in silence while the figure dragged the unconscious man a short distance across the floor, propped him up against a sofa, and shot him through the forehead. Immediately the figure disappeared through the doorway he had come from and emerged holding a torch. He hurried to the front door and went out.

  Ross turned to Caven, white-faced.

  Caven said, 'You can turn it off. It's just a small section I've copied for your benefit.'

  Shakily Ross walked over to his desk, picked up his phone and buzzed through to his secretary. 'I'm going to be a few minutes, Lucinda. Hold the fort.' Then he sat down behind his desk, feeling drained, suddenly.

  Caven ejected the tape, put it back into the box and replaced the box in the brown envelope.

  It took Ross all his self-control to prevent himself blurting out, 'I warned Ronnie-fucking-Milward the place was under closed-circuit surveillance. Jesus, I warned him!'

  Instead he stared ahead of him in silence, looking everywhere in the room but at the detective, not wanting to catch his eye, not wanting to give the arrogant little Irishman any chance to pick up on any body language.

  Hugh Caven sat down on the sofa and laid the envelope on the cushion beside him. After some moments he said, 'Mr Ransome, would you be familiar with Occam's Razor?'

  'I've never heard of it. Should I have done, as a surgeon?'

  'William of Occam was a philosopher in the fourteenth century. He based scientific knowledge on experience and self-evident truths. He believed in the Aristotelian principle that one should not seek to complicate issues beyond what is absolutely necessary. His principle became known as Occam's Razor. This was that any problem should be stated in its basic and simplest term. In science the simplest theory that fits the facts of a problem is the one that should be selected.'

  'Please put that to me in some form I can understand.'

  'Certainly, Mr Ransome. 'The simplest explanation is usually the one that is right.'

  'And what exactly is the relevance of this to what we've just seen?'

  Caven linked his hands, glanced around the room as if checking for bugs, and said, 'If someone is murdered, there is a reason. Ninety per cent of murders are within families. Of the other ten per cent, burglary is sometimes a motive, but we've just seen that that is not the case here. If the killer was just committing burglary, he didn't need to execute his victim — he'd already knocked him out with a stun gun.'

  Caven cleared his throat. 'So, you suspect that Dr Cabot is committing adultery with your wife and you hire a private detective to establish this. Dr Cabot's brother, who could be his twin, is murdered in cold blood by what appears to be a professional assassin. Harvey Cabot is a good man, an eminent scientist, happily married, no obvious enemies. But Oliver Cabot has one very obvious enemy.'

  Ross shook his head with a smile that was utterly devoid of any humour. 'Mr Caven, if I'm hearing what I think I'm hearing, that you're about to try to blackmail me, I just hope for your sake you've got a good solicitor. You've already committed two serious offences by installing those cameras — criminal damage and breaking and entering — and I'm sure you've contravened other laws with your bugging of Dr Cabot. I wouldn't advise you to compound them with an absurd attempt at blackmail. I want you to get yourself out of my office and out of my life.'

  Caven did not move. Instead, very quietly, he said, 'Mr Ransome, a second man was killed on Saturday night — the man who was shot in the hall. He was one of my men, one of the best guys I ever worked with. He saw what was happening and tried to do something about it. You may be angry, but don't underestimate how angry I am. You didn't even know Dr Cabot. Barry Gatt was best man at my wedding.'


  'Out,' Ross said, walking to the door. 'Send me your bill. I don't ever want to hear from you again or see you again.'

  'You should calm down, Mr Ransome, we need to talk about —' Ross tore open the door and shoved the detective through it, shouting, 'Get the fuck out of my life!'

  Then he slammed the door so hard a sliver of plaster fell from the wall.

  71

  Spider's thought processes had taken him to the point of believing he had allowed himself to be panicked by Uncle Ronnie. Standing at the washbasin, jaw covered in foam, cigarette burning in the soap-dish, some manic food programme on the television now — he hated food programmes — he went through the calculations again in his head. If there was a reward, the earliest the police could have known would have been yesterday, Sunday. Then they would have to have put the word out and about via a handful of informers, around the pubs and bars and clubs, and on a Sunday word would have travelled slowly. Very few people knew his address. He was in danger, yes, but immediate danger? He couldn't see it.

  The fucking Identikit must have come from that screaming bloke who'd locked himself in his flat, and Spider was bitterly regretting letting him off the hook.

  He pulled the razor down, drawing a clean stripe of flesh through the left side of the Charles Bronson moustache, which hid the botched hare-lip. The moustache that was now reproduced in perfect detail in the Identikit.

  Sevroula told him she never got up before eleven. If he got there while she was still in bed he would have the element of surprise. Maybe she wouldn't like him so much without the moustache. Her problem.

  The Identikit wasn't everything — you couldn't get convicted on an Identikit. That nude bloke couldn't have seen him for more than a few seconds — in a dark hall at midnight. How much weight would his evidence carry? At least he knew he'd left no fingerprints. But forensics were sharp now: they could get you from a single carpet fibre on your shoe. And DNA was a bigger problem still — a bead of sweat or a hair follicle. But the gun was the biggest problem.

  Have to get rid of the gun.

  That was an absolute priority. It was lying on the bed now, he could see it in the mirror, making an indent on the sheet, shiny, still smelling of cordite. Five bullets gone from the magazine.

  The Channel was the best option. Overboard from a ferry in the darkness. Gone for ever. But the ferries would be watched now. It had to be put somewhere it could never be found, and the barrel never matched to the bullets found in the building on Ladbroke Avenue.

  The little weasel he'd bought it from could run to the police in search of his fifty-thousand-quid reward, but unless they could find the Heckler and Koch and establish that this was the gun that had fired the bullets, what evidence did they have?

  And then a really bad thought wormed through his brain.

  Would Uncle Ronnie shop him for fifty gorillas?

  A crazy notion — he did too many jobs for Ronnie, he was worth a lot more to him than a paltry fifty grand. No way would he —

  Except Uncle Ronnie's temper was legendary. He'd had to leave England after an argument in a pub that had ended in him shooting a man in front of thirty witnesses, executed in cold blood, one headline had said. And he remembered that bust in the hall of Ronnie's grand house at Chigwell, of some Greek geezer, Atrium or Arius or some name like that. Uncle Ronnie used to pat the bronze head and tell Spider that when this man fell out with his brother he killed his brother's children and served them to him roasted at a banquet.

  Uncle Ronnie thought that was fucking heroic.

  And for a long time during his childhood, Spider had been nervous of displeasing his uncle Ronnie. Scared that if he upset him, he, too, might find himself roasted and garnished, being served for lunch. And, as an adult, he knew that Ronnie Milward was capable of anything when he lost his rag.

  And something else was just occurring to Spider. The fuck-up of killing the wrong man, then shooting the second man downstairs, went far beyond himself: it meant that Ronnie Milward had lost face with his client. That was the real issue here.

  He'd made his uncle look a fool.

  72

  Faith paid the taxi and climbed out, pressing a pound coin into the hand of the doorman. Then she entered the lobby of the Marble Arch Hotel, negotiated her way through what seemed like the population of a small Japanese city, followed by an Olympic obstacle course of suitcases, and travelled up in a packed lift crushed between two huge American women in baggy shorts with even baggier flesh. At the ninth floor she stepped out, checked the direction of the room numbers, turned right and found number 927 a short way down. She knocked softly, and waited. Somewhere a phone was ringing.

  Oliver opened the door. He was barefoot, in a crumpled navy sweatshirt and jeans. His whole body seemed hunched and crumpled, his unshaven face gaunt, the colour of slate, with black rims around his eyes and deep pouches beneath, his hair matted and awry. For some moments he just stood and stared blankly at her, as if his eyes and brain were no longer linked to each other.

  Faith was shocked. She had never seen grief like this.

  'Faith, it's good of you to come.'

  She threw her arms around him, wanting to protect him, to comfort him, needing to reassure herself that this wasn't a ghost. 'You poor darling,' she said, hugging him hard. 'Oh, God, you poor darling.'

  For a long while they stood there in silence, her face pressed against his chest, his hands massaging her back, his breath riffling a few loose strands of hair across her forehead. 'Faith,' he murmured, 'tell me it isn't real, tell me it hasn't happened.' Then there was anger in his voice. 'How could anyone do this? This is London — it's meant to be safe. Harvey was a wonderful guy. Everyone loved him. Who would want to kill him?'

  Her head was full of questions she wanted to ask him, but not now. Now was just a time for them both to try to calm down a little. Behind her, she could hear the rattle of crockery and cutlery: a room-service cart being wheeled past. In its wake came the aroma of bacon.

  Still holding each other, they moved into the room and Faith pushed the door shut behind her with her foot. She looked up into his sad grey eyes, and felt as if they were staring into her soul. She felt a sudden quickening sensation, as if an electrical current had been switched on inside her. They stood together and she could feel the same current inside him, could feel the dull thud of her heartbeat, then his.

  Excitement ran deep inside her, their eyes locked and they were moving across the floor, lips caressing. His felt so soft, gentle, moist. She was pressing harder against them now, pressing her body against his, the colour of eau-de-nil spinning round them, on the walls, the drapes, the chairs, tables. Images in the same colour slipped past, the window, grey light, another building a dirty brown colour beyond, then eau-de-nil again.

  Her hands were inside his sweat-shirt on the firm flesh of his back, as he tugged at her blouse, pulling it free of her belt.

  Then she felt a shower of sparks so deep inside her she gasped, as his hands went round her stomach, his fingers pressing inside her waist band. She could feel them now further down still in her soft flesh, pressing into the tendrils of her hairs, and in response she pulled open the buckle of his jeans, tore the pop stud and pulled down the metal zipper.

  Slowly, sinking to her knees, taking his jeans and boxers down with her, breathing in the heady smell of his warm flesh, she buried her face into the thick, luxuriant tangle of his pubic hairs, holding him in her hands, holding his beautiful, incredible, rock-hard sex in her fingers. She stroked him in long, slow, gentle movements, feeling his whole body taut as wire, listening to the breaths exploding from his throat, then pressed her lips to the moist tip of this thing, this incredible, exquisite thing, Oliver's thing, the first time she had seen another man's, touched another man's, smelled another man's since — oh my God since — so long, so long before Ross. And this was different. Oliver was so much more beautiful than Ross, than anything, anything imaginable.

  She pulled up his sweatshirt, kissi
ng his stomach, then his nipples, teasing them with her tongue, and he pulled down her panties. Then they were on the floor, clothes part on, part off and she was guiding him into her, whispering his name, and he was silent, cupping her face in his hands, kissing her forehead, her cheeks, her eyes, and the world was a swirl of tangled grey hair and eau-de-nil and his warm minty breath.

  She wanted to freeze the moment, to stay here for ever with Oliver Cabot, so deep inside her that she felt as if she was part of him. She called his name, as she felt herself being locked with him, gripped by him, filled totally and utterly by him. She closed her eyes, then opened them again, unable to believe this was real, that they were here, the two of them alone with each other. Scarcely able to contain the bursts of pleasure exploding inside her, bursts that were deepening every second, she closed her eyes again, praying for this to be real, praying for that look of happiness on Oliver's face to last, praying that this moment could go on and never end.

  Oliver was close now, she could feel him growing larger inside her, as she tried to hold back, to make the moment last. She felt the floor on her back, Oliver's stubble against her face, his hands holding her tight, pulling her up against him, and could sense a kind of crazed desperation bursting through the pleasure in his face as if this was the moment, the one unit of time, that they had both lived their lives for, that this was the one place where their destinies had intertwined.

  She called his name again, shuddering, and he was shuddering too, his breath roaring in her ear.

  Afterwards they lay cradled in each other's arms, in a kind of peace she had forgotten could be found in life.

  73

  Ross, in the spongy vinyl armchair, was sitting too low for comfort. He felt as if he was peering up at the psychiatrist from the bottom of a cliff.