by Peter James
'Not important.'
'There's bread in the freezer. Long-life milk. Tons of wine and beer in the cellar. Use it all, OK? Eat anything you can find.'
'I'll get some stuff.'
'You don't have to. You remember where the spare key's kept?'
'Sure.'
'And the code for the alarm?'
'Uh-huh. Look, I need one other very big favour from you, Gerry.'
'What's that?'
'That you don't tell anyone where I am. Not a soul.'
'Absolutely. You've had the most appalling tragedy, and you must be sick of the media. My lips are sealed. One of my ancestors survived six months of torture by the Inquisition in the sixteenth century. They crushed every one of his fingers and toes with a thumbscrew because he wouldn't reveal the names of any heretics. They stretched him on the rack, they hammered him into a spiked chair, they inserted a stretching tool up inside him, and split his rectum open so badly he was never able to sit on a chair for the rest of his life. We Hammersleys know how to keep quiet, Oliver. It's in our genes.'
As Oliver hung up, Faith said quietly, 'We have to collect Alec'
'Alec?'
'Ross will use him against me if we don't.'
Incredulously Oliver said, 'You want to go to your house and get him?'
'We have to.'
'Do you understand what's happened to you and what we're doing?'
'I — I think so.'
Oliver talked her through it. Every few moments he tested her to ensure that she was lucid enough to take it in. She seemed to be. But when he had finished, she was still adamant they had to collect Alec.
Oliver looked at his watch: 8.35.
Faith touched his arm and turned towards him with fear in her eyes. 'Please, Oliver, I don't know what Ross is capable of any more. If something happened to Alec — if he did something to him to get back at me — I don't think I could ever —'
Oliver didn't like it but he understood. 'We'll get him,' he said. 'We'll go get him now.'
92
The safety chain was on the front door. Rasputin was in a frenzy. In the porch of Little Scaynes Manor Faith yelled, over his barking, 'Mummy, open this door!'
'I'm phoning the police. It's for your own good!' her mother replied.
Faith screamed, hammering on the door with her fists, 'Open this door!' Turning wildly to Oliver she said, 'Your mobile — phone the number here, quickly! Phone it and block it so she can't call out!'
'Give me the number.'
She told him. Repeating it to himself, Oliver ran to the Jeep and dialled it.
'Let me in or I'll break a window!' Faith shrieked, trying to think clearly. The key also worked for the kitchen door at the back, but there would be a safety chain on it, too, no doubt. Her mother was nervous of the isolation here.
'Mummy!' she screamed, even louder. 'Mummy! Damn you, let me in!'
Through the bay window of Ross's study she could see her mother, standing at the desk, picking up the phone. She was about to run across and pound on the window, smash it if necessary, when on the other side of the door she heard a little voice.
'Mummy! Mummy's home!'
'Alec! Darling! Undo the chain!'
The door opened and Rasputin leaped out, almost knocking her flat. Alec jumped up, locking his arms around her neck and hugging her.
Oliver stood behind her, mobile phone to his ear. Faith ran through the hall into Ross's study, grabbed the receiver out of her mother's hand and ripped the phone base away from the desk, tearing out the wires.
'He's poisoning me!' she yelled at her mother. 'You stupid woman, my husband is poisoning me and you're letting him!'
'Faith, listen, Faith — listen to me, darling, you're —'
'You listen to me,' Oliver said. 'Mrs Phillips, I —'
'I know you, you were here earlier. Who are you? What are you doing with my daughter?'
'I'm your daughter's doctor.'
'My daughter is under Dr Ritterman.'
Oliver signalled to Faith with his eyes. 'Passports,' he said to her. 'Clothes.'
Faith made for the door. Oliver went over to her and whispered in her ear, 'Tear every phone in the house out of its socket. Does she have a mobile?'
Faith shook her head.
'Two minutes and we're out of here.' He turned back to her mother. 'Mrs Phillips, do you know the drug ketamine?'
Standing barefoot in a baggy T-shirt and jeans, Margaret Phillips folded her meaty arms. 'What of it?'
'It's an anaesthetic that can cause hallucinations and seemingly psychotic behaviour. Your son-in-law has been giving this to your daughter.'
'My daughter is extremely sick.'
'No, she is not extremely sick, not yet. She has a disease I think we can cure. Your son-in-law is giving her a drug that is nothing whatever to do with this disease. He's giving to it her because he is insane.'
'You don't know what you're saying. Ross worships my daughter. He's the most wonderful husband to her and the most devoted father, and one of the most brilliant and dedicated surgeons in this country. Don't you start coming here telling me —'
'Mrs Phillips, please listen to me —'
'You listen to me,' she said. 'I had a phone call less than ten minutes ago from the Grove Hospital, telling me that my daughter was visited by a Dr Oliver Cabot — presumably you — earlier this evening and that she had vanished. They asked me to let them know if she turned up here, and that is exactly what I propose to do.'
'Don't you love Faith?' Oliver said. He tried to engage her eyes but she was too angry, too fired up.
'She's my daughter, Dr Cabot. I love her deeply.'
'Then help us. If you send her back to the Grove Hospital, her husband is going to kill her,'
'Oh, yes?' she said, sarcastically. 'And I suppose you're going to give her some miracle cure.'
'A cure,' Oliver said. 'Not a miracle, just a cure.'
There was an instant of hesitation in the woman's face. 'My daughter is under a Mental Health Act section order. If you are really her doctor, I expect you to act according to the law and return her to the hospital where she was being held.'
'Mr Ransome drugged Faith to get that order. I have the evidence.' Oliver pulled the envelope from Sister Durrant out of his pocket, ripped it open and held out the vial. 'Your daughter's blood is in there. When I take that to the Path Lab tomorrow it's going to show ketamine. Someone's going to have a problem explaining what a trauma anaesthetic's doing in her system.'
'Whatever he may have done, he will have done it for the best of reasons. I would trust him with my life. Do I make myself clear?'
'I'm taking Faith and she wants her son to come with us. I will take them wherever she wants to go, and if you truly love your daughter, you'll let her go and you won't inform anyone about this.'
'I'm phoning the hospital the moment you leave here with her. If you really are her doctor, I would suggest you leave Alec here and take her straight back. If you don't, I think you're going to find yourself in a great deal of trouble.'
'Mrs Phillips,' he said, trying one last time, 'please believe me, please trust me. Tell me what I have to do to convince you.'
Her arms still folded, Faith's mother said, 'Ross has told me everything about you, Dr Cabot. You're a charlatan and you have some kind of hold over my daughter. I think you are a dangerous and evil man. You can't convince me, Dr Cabot. Hell will freeze over before you do.'
93
On the far side of an opaque glass wall a phone was ringing, the volume increasing with each ring. Got to get to it, got to answer it, got to got to got to —
He butted the glass wall with his head. Then again, harder. The glass was soft, it was polythene, it dented, and he threw his full weight against it, feeling it yielding, ripping, only now it was suddenly solid again, a wall of glass that was exploding into a million shards. Air blasted his face. All around him shards of glass were falling away and then, suddenly, they began like feathers in
a squall to rise up and disperse.
Cold black waves the size of houses rolled at him. He ducked with a scream. Opened his eyes. Strange, translucent light. One light source, a doorway on to a corridor, bright light out there, darkness in here. The phone ringing. In bed. He reached across to the table but the table had gone.
Where the fuck am I?
Ringing louder still. Phone on his right. He slept on the left. Everything on his left. Water, book, handkerchief, alarm, phone.
The phone was on his right.
Memories were coming at him now. He reached out, found the mobile phone, dropped it, picked it up again, felt for one of the keys, pushed it, brought the phone to his ear.
An Irish accent. Familiar. 'Mr Ransome?'
Who the fuck was this? 'Yrr.'
Head spinning like a gyroscope through the void of darkness. Partly remembered thoughts glimpsed for an instant then lost.
'You phoned me earlier, you were trying to get hold of me. Is there something that you wanted?' The tone was insolent.
He knew the name, saw it stuck firmly to a patch of darkness, but had to wait to come full circle before he arrived back at it. Now he could see it again. 'Caven?'
'Maybe we should talk in the morning?'
'Morning?'
'We'll talk in the morning, I've woken you. Call me in the morning.'
Something screaming inside his head. Some urgency, emergency, some need not to let this — 'No! Now! I — I have — have to talk — we have to talk — now —'
'Have you been drinking?'
Black soup slopped around inside his skull. Had he been drinking?
Where the fuck am I?
'No — I'm — I've just woken — Caven — you and I — we have talks to have — there are things we need to talk —'
I'm in the clinic. I'm in the fucking clinic, I'm in a bed in the clinic! The Grove. Hospital. I came because —
Grolsch? Two Grolschs? The heat?
Something in a lift. Something had happened in a lift but there was a locked and bolted door at the entrance to that memory path. Caven. Why did he need to speak to him?
Then he remembered. The police! That was it! Had to stop Caven talking to the police.
'We need to talk now, Caven. Wasstime?'
'Five past ten.'
'Night?'
'Yes, five past ten at night. You have been drinking, call me in the morning when you're sober.'
'No — no, hold. Hallo? Caven?'
'I'm still here.'
It was starting to come back now. The underground car park this afternoon. 'We — we didn't have a good meeting earlier — not at all good. Shwee — weesh —' Christ, his brain was all a mess, the words weren't coming out right. 'We — you, I, we — need to talk — somewhere now?'
'It's five past ten at night,' the private investigator said.
'Half an hour. Just need to get my head together.'
'In the morning.'
There were three sharp beeps. Caven had disconnected.
'Fuck you.' Ross stared, blinking, at the bright light of the corridor. His eyes were tuning in to the room now. He was in one of the private rooms, lying on a bed. Why?
It's five past ten at night.
What the hell time had he come here? Anson. Detective Sergeant Anson. They'd drunk a couple of beers and then he'd walked over here — eight — about eight — and then?
He hit the locked door in his brain.
Swung his feet off the bed, on to the carpeted floor. His shoes were off. The floor tipped sharply away from him. He stumbled forwards, then sideways, clung to something, anything, a side-table, falling with it now, crashing to the floor. The sound of breaking glass.
Then the room flooded with light.
He looked up. A nurse in a chequered tunic was looking down at him. He knew her face but the name was gone. She was looking at him as if he was a child. Then she bent down and helped him to his feet.
'Are you all right, Mr Ransome?'
'Sh-shokay.'
'You've cut your cheek — I'll put a little plaster on it. Lie down again. Let's get you back on that bed,'
He shook her away, panic seizing him, memory returning, the drip, should have changed the drip at half past six —
Staggering to his feet he said, 'Faith, my wife, I — have to go to my wife.' Then he realised his jacket had been removed.
The drip bag had been in the pocket.
'Where's my jacket?'
She pointed to the back of the door. He went over to it, unhitched it from the hook and could feel immediately from the weight that the drip bag wasn't there. Had she taken it? She was looking at him damned strangely.
'I'll go and fetch a plaster for your cheek,' she said, and left the room.
He dug his hands into the pockets. The right-hand pocket. Something damp and crumpled. Pulled it out. An empty drip bag.
His panic subsided. Relief. I must have changed the bag!
The nurse came back in holding a sticking plaster, a wad of cotton wool and a bottle of what looked like antiseptic. He sat on the bed while she dressed the cut.
'Howsh — how — howsh my wife?' He read the badge on her lapel. Ward Sister Sheila Durrant.
'Your wife has left, Mr Ransome.'
It took a moment to register. 'I — don't understand. Left what?'
'Here. She's gone. Disappeared.'
'Whaaaat?'
'I'm sorry.'
He stood up, backed away, fury erupting inside him. 'Whaaat? Left? Left?'
'Her doctor came to see her. Dr Cabot. They've both gone.'
'You're not serious?'
'I'm afraid I am.'
His fists balled at his side. 'How can she have left? This is a secure hospital for Chrissake — how? How? How?'
'No one knows.'
'She's sectioned — she can't fucking leave.' The inside of his head was revolving again. 'Where is she?'
'We don't know.'
'Have the police been told?'
'Yes.'
He slumped against a wall and it began to revolve like a fairground centrifuge. 'This creep Cabot, this charlatan, he's her lover. They're sleeping together. He's screwing my wife. You let her lover come in and take her away?'
'I'm sorry, Mr Ransome. You arrived here rather the worse for wear, to put it mildly, and it took everyone we had to get you on to a bed for your own sake — to avoid embarrassment for you.'
'Very fucking kind of you.'
'If you're going to stand there swearing at me, I'm going to leave you and I'll talk to you again when you've sobered up a little more. All right?'
'Not fucking all right at —'
She walked out of the door and slammed it behind her.
Ross sat down on the bed. The room was jigging up and down and there was a strange buzzing sensation inside his skull, as if some insect, a moth or a large bee, was thwacking around. He saw a mobile phone lying on the floor, realised it was his own.
He picked it up, ran through the programme selector until he reached the last call-received indicator, displayed it then pressed the button to dial the number.
Hugh Caven answered on the second ring. 'Yes, hallo?'
'Meet me tonight, Caven, and I'll bring you the money I owe you, plus more.'
'How much more?'
'Another thousand.'
'Where do you suggest?' Caven said.
'I — ah —'
'Where are you?'
'Grove Hospital — close — Wellington Road. Maida Vale?'
'There's a Hilton near you, opposite Lords cricket ground. Do you know it?'
'Fy — I — I — find.'
'There's a coffee shop and a bar just off the lobby. I'll meet you there in half an hour, but don't keep me waiting. They're showing the film of Woodstock on Sky television at midnight. That's a rare treat and I don't intend missing it. Are you hearing me loud and clear, Mr Ransome?'
'Woodstock, midnight. Crap hippie film. Loud and clear,' Ross replied. 'I'm
on my way now. You've got to be sad to want to watch a film like that, Caven.'
94
Oliver drove in silence for twenty-five minutes, one eye almost permanently watching in the mirrors for police. It was just coming up to half past eleven. If the security guard at the Grove Hospital hadn't reported his number, Faith's mother would either have got one of the phones working or gone round to a neighbour and called the police by now.
Just five miles to go.
Less than five minutes.
He cautiously pushed their speed from seventy-five up to eighty. Alec behind him was absorbed with his GameBoy. Faith, he thought, was asleep.
There was another sign ahead, pointing to the left, with the drawing of an aeroplane next to it. Gatwick Airport.
His nerves tightened. Just a minute or so more, that's all. Something in his mirror now, something with a light on the roof, shit, then he breathed out in relief. Just a taxi.
Entering the airport complex, the smell of kerosene seeping into the car, he followed the signs towards the long-term car-park, and halted at a booth. They could be just a couple and their kid parking their car and catching a late flight, like a thousand other families. He pulled a ticket out of the machine and, as the barrier rose, drove forward a few yards. Two car-parks to select from.
Choosing the NCP at random, he followed the signs along the perimeter fencing, then in through a gate into a vast lot, then through into another. There were acres of parked cars all around him.
Perfect.
He drove along one aisle, all the vehicles clearly visible in the sodium lighting. He passed a Jeep Cherokee, similar to his own, but the wrong year and colour. Tempting, but hopefully he could do better. He drove along another aisle, then another. Two more Jeeps, one also the wrong year and colour, the other too near to a bus stop where a man was waiting with a suitcase.
Then, at the far end, in a relatively dark area against the perimeter fencing, he saw a navy Cherokee, identical to his own. He drove round and cruised slowly past it. The licence plate showed it was the same year as his. And there was a space three cars along from it.
No sign of anyone around.
'Are we going in an aeroplane?' Alec piped up, his voice full of excitement.