Absolute Proof

by Peter James

  ‘Absolutely they know who you are. Your name is Maurice Winters and you are a very successful London property developer, up here in Leeds to look at a development opportunity.’

  ‘Praise the Lord! I think you may be redeeming yourself, Smilealot!’

  ‘You’re a very naughty boy,’ Pope retorted, wheeling out one of the few Biblical quotes he knew by heart, which he liked to use occasionally to taunt his boss. ‘Revelation. “Then one of the seven angels came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the judgement of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.’”’

  ‘Up yours.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m hoping will happen tonight.’ Pope smiled and rolled his eyes, dreamily. ‘Each to his own.’

  76

  Tuesday, 14 March

  The Ducati’s engine burbled on tickover as the fatigued rider leaned across and pressed the button on the panel beside the tall white gates of the house on Richmond Hill, in south-west London. He was conscious of the camera pointing at him, and kept his visor lowered.

  ‘Hello?’ a female voice said.

  ‘Delivery,’ he said, masking his American accent as best he could, the helmet helping to muffle his voice.

  The gates swung open. Gravel. Big Tony hated gravel. The sight of it added to his filthy mood. Stuck two hours on the M40, thanks to an idiot overturning a caravan and the police totally closing the road. He rode slowly up the drive, keeping his legs out wide, ready to dig in his boots if the machine tried to get away from him. As he approached the large, modern red-brick mansion, floodlights came on.

  Dismounting outside the front door, he switched off the engine, kicked down the stand and propped the bike carefully, making sure it was secure before stepping away. He took care of his machines. Checking that the Monaco licence plate was still fully covered by the false English one, he walked up the imposing steps to the entrance porch and rang the front doorbell.

  Another security-light beam shone at him.

  Inside he heard ferocious barking. Then a redhead in her early forties, in a tracksuit and trainers, opened the door and peered at him. ‘You have a delivery?’ she asked in what sounded to him like a posh English voice. The barking continued somewhere behind her.

  ‘For Mr Brown. I have a collection to make first,’ Big Tony replied.

  ‘I think my husband was expecting you quite a bit earlier.’

  ‘Is that so? Maybe he should have fixed the traffic for me.’

  ‘He’s just on a conference call – can I sign for the delivery? What is it you are here to collect?’

  ‘I need to see your husband, but I don’t wait for people on phones, lady,’ he said, letting his American accent slip out. ‘Guess what I have for him isn’t important enough.’

  He headed back down the steps. At the bottom he turned round and called out to her, ‘Tell Mr Brown that Big Tony swung by – he knows how to get in touch with me.’

  ‘Wait!’ she called out. ‘He’s just coming – Mr Brown, did you say? I think you have the wrong –’

  Big Tony saw the tall, gangly man he knew as Mr Brown, in suit trousers, red braces over an open-neck business shirt, red-framed glasses and monogrammed slippers, hurry out of the door.

  ‘Tony, hi! Sorry to keep you! You had a bad journey?’

  Turning his back on him, Big Tony swung a leg over the saddle. The man came running up to him. ‘You have it – the memory stick?’

  ‘Yeah. Thought you might want it, went to a bit of trouble for you, but you don’t seem to want it that urgently. Maybe I’ll take it away, charge you storage, you can let me know when you want to come and collect it.’

  ‘No, please, we really need this.’

  ‘Maybe I should put the price up some more then?’

  ‘I have the money for you. I got it out of the safe, it’s in my study. Just wait one minute.’

  ‘I told the lady I don’t wait ever, for anyone. I’ll give you one minute, exactly.’ He peeled the cuff of his glove back to check his watch.

  The man ran back up the steps and went sprawling. Big Tony smiled. The man’s fancy glasses had come off. As he stood up, pulling them back on, the motorcyclist could see blood running down the side of the man’s cheek. He didn’t like Mr Brown, he really didn’t like him at all. He’d been around plenty of evil people in his life – people as evil as they get, like himself. And this man, limping away down the hallway of his house now, was like he had been marinated in evil, like he had let it seep into every pore of his skin.

  Big Tony checked his watch. Fifty-five seconds gone. Fifty-eight. Sixty.

  He pressed the starter button, rolled the bike forward off its stand, engaged first gear and, in a hail of gravel, the rear of the bike slewing wildly, accelerated hard down towards the still-open gates.

  77

  Tuesday, 14 March

  Ross was tired, hungry and very shaken as he drove south on the M40 motorway, in darkness and rain that was still falling heavily, and a new hazard that was slowing his journey even more than the traffic – steadily thickening fog. He was playing some of his favourite Glen Campbell tracks on the music system to cheer himself up. At the moment, it was ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’.

  ‘Now I really don’t mind the rain . . . And a smile can hide all the pain . . .’

  Sorry, Glen, he thought. I am minding the rain and I ain’t smiling.

  And his wife wasn’t returning his calls. He’d left two voicemails and sent a text.

  He overtook a lorry, the spray momentarily blinding him, then he was past and the wipers cleared the screen enough so he could see the tail lights some distance in front of him.

  As he drove, keeping a safe distance from the car in front, he was thinking constantly about the events of the past few hours.

  The receptionist had called the police as well as an ambulance because of the strange and suspicious way the previous client had rushed out. Ross had waited, then accompanied her and the two paramedics upstairs. He’d watched from the doorway as they attempted CPR, while the woman stood beside them, distraught and sobbing her heart out.

  During all the distraction, Ross had taken the opportunity to slip, unnoticed, behind the desk and read the names on the files piled on it. He saw his own name almost immediately, on a green folder. Making sure no one was looking at him, he flipped it open. It was empty.

  After about ten minutes the paramedics stopped their attempts, finally declaring the solicitor dead. There were no apparent marks on the man’s body and their initial conclusion was he had suffered either a massive heart attack or stroke.

  Despite the apparent natural causes, the previous client aroused the police’s suspicion – as he did Ross’s, although he’d not said anything about that. Had the solicitor died whilst the client in motorcycling leathers had been in there? If so, why had he not immediately rushed and told the receptionist? And there was a mystery over the man’s identity.

  He had booked his appointment with the solicitor under the name Terence Dunn, as a new client purportedly seeking legal advice over a disputed legacy. A swift check by the police had revealed the number was a pay-as-you-go phone. There was no answer when they rang it.

  Given he had seen the man leave and found the solicitor dead, Ross had agreed to accompany the two detectives to the police station to give a witness statement.

  He had been unsure how much he would tell them, but then, sitting in the waiting area, a man in his late thirties, smartly dressed, had walked across to him. ‘Nice to meet you again, Mr Hunter. DCI Martin Starr from Birmingham Major Crime Unit. Looks like you’re making a bit of a habit of this, arriving at meetings with dead people.’

  The DCI was at pains to reassure him he was not under arrest, nor a suspect, he just wanted Ross to tell him everything he could remember. He was joined by a female detective constable, Maria Stevens, who c
learly thought differently and treated him more like a suspect than a witness.

  The first question Starr asked him was whether he had seen anyone actually leave Robert Anholt-Sperry’s office. He’d replied he had not, but a motorcyclist, whom he had assumed was a courier, had rudely barged past him as he arrived at the building – and fitted the description of the solicitor’s previous client given by the receptionist. Ross was not able to give any description, because the motorcyclist’s dark visor had been down, but he – or it could have been a she – had been holding a small briefcase, and there had been a Ducati motorcycle parked outside the building. He told the two detectives he’d noticed it because he had always fancied owning one.

  Starr’s questioning became awkward when he asked how much he knew of the connection between the dead solicitor and Cook.

  From his journalism training, Ross knew there were strict rules of client confidentiality around solicitors, and decided to use that if need be.

  ‘So, there was no connection between Dr Cook’s claims of proof of God and your visit to Mr Anholt-Sperry?’ Maria Stevens had quizzed.

  ‘I had decided to meet Mr Anholt-Sperry to try to find out more about his deceased client, for a piece I’m working on for the Sunday Times,’ Ross had replied, evasively.

  He signed a brief statement and agreed, if required, to make a fuller statement. Finally he had left for the long drive back to Brighton, shortly before 8 p.m.

  Was the old solicitor’s death connected to all that was going on? Or just coincidence? Anholt-Sperry was elderly and overweight with a heart problem; and he hadn’t looked a healthy specimen when he had last seen him. It could have been the stress.

  Or?

  He’d covered a news story some years back about a solicitor who had been killed by a disgruntled client. Perhaps Robert Anholt-Sperry had angered someone in the past.

  But he doubted that. He was certain that the deaths of Cook and Anholt-Sperry were connected. Yet there were no apparent injuries, certainly none visible, on the solicitor.

  He thought about the empty file with his name on, sitting on the desk. Had the motorcyclist taken the contents? Or had the solicitor been about to put something inside it?

  The crucial third set of compass coordinates?

  Remembering Imogen had said she would be home late – that she was meeting a friend – he tried calling her again now, dialling her number on his hands-free. To his relief, this time she answered almost instantly.

  ‘Hi!’ he said. ‘I’ve been so worried – I phoned and texted you. Are you OK?’

  She sounded shaken to the core. ‘No, Ross,’ she said, breaking into a hysterical shout. ‘I’ve just got home and I am very not OK. I AM NOT AT ALL OK.’

  78

  Tuesday, 14 March

  Boris seemed to be getting the hang of things, Ainsley Bloor thought, as he watched the monkey hammering away at the keyboard. He was hitting the keys ‘a’ and ‘i’ with increasing regularity, greedily grabbing the peanut, grape or banana treat that was delivered down the chute each time. And from the pages of printout spewing from the printer, Boris seemed to have figured that typing the entire word, ‘the’, delivered an extra special treat of a whole apple, orange or banana.

  None of the other five monkeys had yet figured out any of it. And the complete works of Shakespeare were a long sodding way off.

  Bloor had been working on a new algorithm to reward Boris when he typed a longer word, but so far, the dumb creature hadn’t responded. He just kept hammering out those single ‘a’ and ‘i’ letters, and the occasional ‘the’.

  But at this moment, shivering from the damp cold, the experiment was the least of Bloor’s problems. He yawned, tired after a long and frustrating day, looking forward to going indoors and pouring himself a stiff drink. His pilot had advised him that the fog was too thick to risk flying home, so he’d travelled down by car, his chauffeur driving at a ridiculously slow speed in the poor visibility. It was gone 8.30, and early tomorrow morning he had a Radio 4 Today interview on his company’s work in the field of gene therapies to prepare for, and a board meeting in London later.

  Adding to his anger was the fact that the phone call he had been awaiting hadn’t come. Was everyone in his organization as incompetent as his sodding monkeys?

  ‘Come on, Boris, you can do it!’ he shouted.

  The monkey turned for an instant in his direction, then as if hearing his master, tapped the keyboard again. A grape came down the chute.

  Another letter ‘i’.

  ‘You cretin!’ his master yelled at him – and at all six of the monkeys. ‘You don’t know how good you have it, you dumb dwarf apes!’

  As he turned away in anger, and began striding across the wet grass towards the house, which lay some distance beyond the wall of fog, his phone rang. His display showed the caller’s name.

  ‘Yes, Julius?’ he answered. ‘You’ve got it?’

  ‘Houston, we have a problem,’ Helmsley said.

  79

  Tuesday, 14 March

  It was 11.15 p.m. when Ross, barely able to keep his eyes open, pulled up alongside Imogen’s car outside their house. Despite his exhaustion, it was second nature now to check carefully all around before getting out of the Audi. The street was deserted. He’d seen no sign of anyone following him throughout the journey.

  Lights were on in the house. Too many. All of them, blazing through the windows of every room, which was odd, he thought, apprehensively, as he pressed the key fob to lock the Audi’s doors. He looked up at the three CCTV cameras just below the eaves, which had been fixed by their electrician. And frowned, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  The lens of each was shattered.

  The front door opened before he reached it, and Imogen was standing there, in dungarees and a white T-shirt, hair ragged, her complexion deathly white, her face tear-stained.

  ‘Hi!’ he said, striding towards her with his arms open, but she shrank back as he reached her.

  ‘You’d better take a look at what’s happened to your home, Ross. Our home. What was our home.’ She was shaking.

  He entered, and stopped in his tracks. Spray-painted in black on the hall wall were two inverted crucifixes. Across one of the crosses was scrawled, in blood red, ROSS HUNTER, FRIEND OF THE ANTICHRIST, and across the other, IMOGEN HUNTER, EXPECTENT MOTHER OF THE ANTICHRIST.

  His blood ran cold.

  All the drawers of the hall table had been pulled out and lay on the floor, the contents scattered around.

  ‘It’s not just here, Ross, it’s everywhere. This is what I came home to.’

  He went through into the kitchen. Monty, who would normally have come running over to him, sat cowering in his basket.

  STOOGES OF THE DEVIL was scrawled across one wall, in large writing. Everything in here had been pulled out of the drawers and taken off the shelves and just strewn about.

  He went back into the hall and looked up the stairs and saw more writing.

  AND BEHOLD, IN THIS HORN WERE EYES LIKE THE EYES OF A MAN, AND A MOUTH SPEAKING GREAT THINGS.

  He tried the integral door to the garage and it opened. He switched on the garage light. His tools and golf clubs lay scattered around, and his road bike lay wrecked on the floor, its cross-bar hacked open.

  He ran back inside and up to the landing. There was more religious scrawl on the walls. And in their bedroom across the wall to the left of their bed, in large black writing:

  LET HIM THAT HATH UNDERSTANDING COUNT THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST . . .

  He went into his office. Every wall there was covered in writing, too. All his filing cabinet drawers were opened and his papers strewn everywhere. His computer backup, he saw, was no longer on his desk.

  If there was one thing he could salvage from this horror, he thought, one small speck of relief, it was that he had taken his laptop with him in the car. Otherwise, for sure, that would be gone, too.

  He turned to Imogen who was standing behind him in
the doorway. ‘Seen enough?’ she said.

  ‘How did they get in – did they break a window?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ he echoed. ‘Yes, I want to make sure the house is secure, in case they decide to come back. Did you call the police?’

  ‘Of course I called the police. They came within minutes. They pointed out that our wonderful CCTV cameras are all broken. One of them said it looked like they’d been shot out with an air rifle. There are detectives or CSIs or whatever coming round to take fingerprints. They said they’d try to get someone over tonight, or else it would be in the morning.’

  ‘Babes.’ He tried to hug her but she shrank away from him.

  ‘I’ve phoned Virginia,’ she said. ‘I’m going to stay with her and Ben tonight. You can come too, if you want.’

  Her sister and her brother-in-law lived with their three children in a small village about fifteen miles north of Patcham.

  ‘What about Monty? Ben’s allergic to all dogs, isn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t care about the dog. Our baby’s what matters to me at this moment. If I have to commute, I’ll do that. I’m not staying here another night until –’

  ‘Until?’

  ‘Until you forget all of this. I can’t believe you turned down that job to interview the Euro MPs in Strasbourg, which would have paid you three thousand. We need the money – why do we have to go through this hell? Let’s sell whatever you have to the Vatican if they’re serious. Maybe we’ll get enough money to pay off the mortgage.’

  ‘I can’t do that. Not after –’

  ‘After what, Ross? After we’re both dead? Is this crazy story worth risking everything you – we – have?’

  ‘Crazy story? You’re a believer. You’re a Christian. What’s crazy about this story?’

  She threw her arms open, pointing at the writing on the wall. ‘This is not crazy? I don’t need proof, I don’t need absolute proof, I’m a believer, yes, that’s enough for me. The world’s in a fragile enough state as it is without you stirring up a religious storm – thanks to the ramblings of an elderly loony.’