Perfect People

by Peter James

  ‘I thought this information is confidential,’ Naomi said.

  ‘It is,’ the psychiatrist replied. ‘And that’s why the people I contacted spoke to the parents about sharing the information and allowing me to make contact with them.’

  She glanced back at the screen, then, putting her hands on her desk, leaned forward. ‘All the children are twins, and in each case this was a surprise to the parents. All have identical advanced intelligence, advanced looks for their age, and identical behavioural problems to Luke and Phoebe.’

  89

  John and Naomi said nothing for a full minute, both of them absorbing what Dr Michaelides had just told them.

  ‘Are you suggesting they are clones?’ John asked, feeling the sudden tightness of panic in his throat.

  ‘No. I had several of the parents send me photographs because I did wonder that. None of the children look the same.’ She smiled. ‘I see a lot of parents and children, and I can assure you that there are many very clear points of physical resemblance between yourselves and Luke and Phoebe.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Naomi said.

  ‘The same intelligence, the same advanced looks, the same behavioural problems with all the twins – how can that be?’ John asked. ‘We only selected a specific number of options – other parents will have made different choices – some a lot more radical than ours. How can the children all be so similar?’

  ‘Maybe for the same reason that you all wanted one child and ended up having twins?’ the psychologist suggested, with a quizzical expression.

  Naomi stared back at her. ‘Meaning what, exactly?’

  ‘That perhaps Dr Dettore had an agenda of his own, is what Dr Michaelides is implying,’ John said.

  Naomi nodded. ‘You know, deep down I have felt that ever since they were born.’

  ‘Your Dr Dettore seems to have a pretty ruthless reputation among scientists,’ Sheila Michaelides said. ‘You just have to read some of his press interviews over the years to see a man with complete tunnel vision and no regard for medical ethics, nor any of his critics.’

  ‘You think he used Naomi – and dozens of other mothers – as a kind of unwitting host womb for an experiment?’

  ‘It is a distinct possibility, I’m afraid.’

  John and Naomi looked at each other, both momentarily lost for words.

  ‘But this shouldn’t affect your relationship with your children,’ Dr Michaelides went on. ‘Even if their genetic make-up isn’t how you ordered it, they are still your children, your flesh and blood.’

  ‘Where do we go from here?’ Naomi asked grimly. ‘Into some tunnel of perpetual social experiments? Are Luke and Phoebe going to become lab rats to a global bunch of shrinks and scientists?’

  ‘What about the whole nature versus nurture argument?’ John said. ‘Dr Dettore told us that whatever we did with the genes of our child – children – that would only ever be a small element of it. He said the major part of shaping a child would always be down to us as parents. If we love them enough and care for them enough, can’t we in time influence them and shape them? Won’t it be my wife and I who matter more to them, in the long run, than anything Dr Dettore has done?’

  ‘Under normal circumstances I would agree with you to a considerable extent. I talked to you last week about epistemic boundedness, the way that humans are hardwired, and the limits of normal human brainpower. But the manipulative behavioural patterns of your children suggest that normal restraints of human existence are just not there. Your children at the age of three are showing characteristics I would expect to find in adolescents five times their age.’

  She twisted the cap on a bottle of mineral water and filled a glass on her desk. ‘The most important thing for any parent is to connect with their child. To establish a bond. It seems to me that’s what you don’t have and it’s what you’re seeking. Is that a fair comment?’

  ‘Yes,’ Naomi said. ‘Absolutely. I’m their servant, that’s all. I wash them, feed them, clean up after them. That’s all I’m able to do – and it’s all they seem to want me to do. The other day Luke cut himself – but he didn’t come to me for a cuddle, he went and showed it to Phoebe. He never thanked me when I put a plaster on it.’

  ‘I think it might be helpful for you to speak to some of these other parents, very definitely, if they are willing.’

  ‘Are there any others in England?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘Not that I have discovered so far. But there must be quite a lot more out there that I haven’t heard about.’

  ‘I’ll speak to any parent, anywhere in the world,’ Naomi said. ‘Willingly.’

  The psychologist drank some water. ‘I’ll see what I can arrange – but I must warn you, don’t set your hopes too high on getting any magical answers. All the people I have spoken to tell me the parents are in the same situation as yourselves.’

  ‘Have any of these children killed their pets, like Luke and Phoebe did?’ John asked.

  ‘I haven’t had in-depth discussions with many of them,’ she said. ‘But a pair of twins in La Jolla, Southern California, strangled the family’s pet spaniel after their father had complained about its incessant barking. They thought their father would be pleased that they had solved a problem for him. A pair of twins in Krefeld in Germany cut the throat of their family cat after their mother had screamed when it brought a mouse into the kitchen. I’m afraid it seems that the inability to distinguish between what is alive and dead may be a common trait. It’s not that they are wicked in any sense – more that they have a wholly different value system. What you and I think is normal, they can’t see.’

  ‘But we must be able to educate them, surely?’ Naomi said. ‘There must be ways we can deal with them as parents. That’s what you have to show us.’

  ‘I think it would be very helpful to speak with other parents,’ John said. ‘We should take her offer up, hon. I think we should talk to as many as possible.’

  ‘You obviously have happy, successful children, Dr Michaelides,’ Naomi said. ‘You probably can’t appreciate how – so – so bloody inadequate. That’s what I feel. So empty. It’s like I’m just some discarded container they hitched a ride in. I want the babies I gave birth to back, Dr Michaelides, that’s what I want. I want my children back, not as freaks, but as children. That’s what I want from you.’

  The psychologist smiled at her sympathetically. ‘I understand; it’s what any mother would want. But I don’t know that I can give you that. Before you can move forward in your relationship with Luke and Phoebe, your goals are going to have to change. We’re going to have to do some redefining.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘In the first instance, it might help for you to stop thinking of them so much as children, and more as people. You hired a children’s entertainer for their birthday party, right?’ She stared at them.

  ‘You think that was a mistake?’ John asked.

  ‘I think you are going to have to change your mindsets totally. If you want to connect to them, it may be that you’ve got to start treating them as if they are teenagers, because that’s how old they are intellectually.’

  ‘What about their childhood?’ Naomi said. ‘And what teenager is going to be interested in them? This is just – I mean—’ She shook her head in despair. ‘OK, I know there have been child prodigies who have gone to university as young as twelve, but you read about them years later, and they’re usually burnt out by thirty. What you are telling us is that we should tear up the rule books.’

  ‘Mrs Klaesson,’ the psychologist said, gently but insistently, ‘there are no rule books to tear up. I’m afraid you and your husband threw them all out of the window the day you went to Dr Dettore.’

  90

  Staring through the car windscreen at the sodden countryside, Naomi thought, glumly, January. Those flat weeks after the Christmas decorations had come down, when all the joy seemed to have gone from winter, and you still had February ahead of you, and much of Ma
rch before the weather started to relent.

  Two o’clock; already the light was starting to fade. In a couple hours of it would be almost dark. As John swung into their drive, the Saab splashed through a deep puddle and water burst over the windscreen. The wipers clouted it away. Naomi stared at the stark, bare hedgerows. A hen pheasant scuttled forlornly along the grass verge, as if it was a toy with a battery that was running down.

  The cattle grid clattered, then the tyres scrunched on the gravel. John halted the car in front of the house, between Naomi’s grimy white Subaru and her mother’s little Nissan Micra.

  With the wipers stopped, the windscreen quickly became opaque with rain. Naomi turned towards John and was alarmed by how bleak he looked. ‘Darling, I know I’ve been against having anyone in to look after them, and last week I totally rejected Dr Michaelides’s suggestion that they go to some special school – but after seeing her again now, I feel differently. I think she might be right, that they need specialist care – nurturing – teaching – whatever they want to call it.’

  ‘You don’t think that’s admitting defeat?’ John said.

  ‘Us letting ourselves get down about Luke and Phoebe would be admitting defeat. We have to stop feeling we’ve failed in any way. We have to find a way to turn their lives into a positive for them – and for us.’

  He sat in silence. Then he touched her cheek with his hand. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I really do love you. I’m sorry for all I’ve put you through.’

  ‘I love you, too. It was your strength that got me through Halley.’ She smiled tearfully. ‘Now we have two healthy children. We – we’ve—’ She sniffed. ‘We have to count our blessings, don’t you think?’

  ‘Sure.’ He nodded. ‘You’re right. That’s what we have to do.’

  Ducking their heads against the rain, they hurried in through the front door. Peeling off her coat, Naomi called out, ‘Hi! We’re back!’

  John could hear voices, American accents. He wrestled himself out of his wet coat, hung it on the stand, then followed Naomi through into the living room.

  Her mother was sitting on the sofa, in an Arran sweater way too big for her, working on a tapestry in front of the television. An old black-and-white movie was on, the sound turned up almost deafeningly loud, the way she always had it.

  ‘How did it go?’ her mother asked them.

  ‘OK, thanks,’ Naomi replied, turning the volume down a little. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Playing on the computer upstairs.’

  ‘Anybody call?’ she asked.

  ‘No phone calls,’ she said. ‘The phone’s been very quiet.’ She frowned at something in her tapestry for some moments, then said absently, ‘We had a visitor, though, about an hour after you left.’

  ‘Oh?’ Naomi said.

  ‘A very pleasant young man. He was American, I think.’

  ‘American?’ Naomi echoed, a tad uneasily. ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Oh, he’d come to the wrong address – he was trying to find something farm – I can’t remember exactly – I’d never heard of it.’

  ‘What did he look like, this guy?’ John asked.

  Her mother took some moments of careful thought, then said, ‘He was nicely dressed, very polite. He wore a shirt and tie, and a dark suit. But there was one thing – he did something your father did often, you know? Your father used to put on his tie, but forget in his hurry to do up some of the buttons on his shirt beneath. This young man had forgotten two buttons on his shirt and I could see, beneath his shirt, he was wearing one of those religious crosses – what are they called – gosh, my memory’s so bad these days, I keep forgetting words! What on earth are they called? Oh yes, of course, how silly of me – a crucifix.’

  91

  American. Crucifix.

  John sat in his den, his whole damned body shaking.

  This man, it didn’t have to mean anything bad. It didn’t have to mean that—

  Except that a bunch of crazed American fanatics, calling themselves Disciples, had been murdering couples who had been to Dr Dettore and had twins, and now an American wearing a cross around his neck had turned up to a remote English house where there just happened to be a couple who had been to Dr Dettore and had twins.

  He tried to think what further security measures they could take. They’d had toughened glass put in the windows. Window locks. Security lights. High-quality door locks. An alarm that rang through to a control centre. Panic buttons. Maybe he needed to get Naomi and the children away from here, for a while, at any rate. Go to Sweden, perhaps?

  Or check into a hotel? But for how long?

  They were looking into getting guard dogs. And there was one other security option they hadn’t yet taken. The firm who had done all their installations had included details and a quote at the time, but it had been quite expensive and they hadn’t seen the point. Now he regretted that decision. He went to the filing cabinet, pulled open the bottom drawer and lifted out the file marked Security Systems.

  Then he rang the firm and asked how quickly they could install the security cameras they had quoted on. He was told it would be about ten days. John told them if they could do it tomorrow, he would order it now. After keeping him on hold for a couple of minutes he was told they would be along at nine o’clock the next morning to install them.

  When he had hung up, he then typed out an email to Kalle Almtorp at the Swedish embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

  Kalle, hope you had a good Christmas and New Year – no snow, I guess??

  In December you emailed that your contact at the FBI says they now have a lead in their search for these Disciples of the Third Millennium. I’m asking because a potentially worrying situation has arisen here and I need to know just how concerned I should be about it. Any further information you could let me have, as a matter of great urgency, would be much appreciated.

  Love to Anna and the kids.

  Hälsningar!

  John

  He sent the email then went upstairs to the box room, where Luke and Phoebe were sitting on the floor in front of their computer. They must have heard him coming, he thought, because he saw the screen flicker as he entered the room, as if they had hurriedly switched from whatever they had been looking at to something innocuous.

  ‘Hi!’ he said.

  Neither of them looked at him.

  More loudly now, he said, ‘Luke! Phoebe! Hallo!’

  Both turned their heads very slowly, in unison, and said, ‘Hello.’ Then they stared at him, for some moments, smiling, as if they were reacting as they were expected to.

  Cold air eddied through his veins. They looked too neat and tidy, too immaculate. Phoebe wore a bottle-green tracksuit and white trainers; Luke wore a navy roll-neck jumper, neatly pressed jeans, spotless trainers. Neither had a hair out of place. For a moment he had the impression he was looking at robots, not at real people, not at his children. It made him want to back out of the room, but instead he persevered, trying to put into practice what Dr Michaelides had just told them they should do.

  As nonchalantly and cheerily as he could, he knelt down and presented his cheek first to Luke, then to Phoebe. Both of them drew their faces sharply back, in turn.

  ‘No kiss for Daddy?’

  ‘Kissing leads to sex,’ Luke said, dismissively turning back to the screen.

  ‘What? What did you say, Luke?’ John asked, astonished, all kinds of alarm bells suddenly ringing, wondering, hoping, desperately hoping that he had misheard his son. But moments later, Phoebe confirmed that he hadn’t.

  ‘We don’t kiss,’ Phoebe said haughtily. ‘We don’t want to be abused.’ Then she, too, turned back to the screen.

  ‘Hey,’ John said, floundering for a reply. ‘Hey, you listen to me—’ He stared at the shiny casing of the computer, at the keyboard, at the mouse, at the multi-coloured mouse pad, his nostrils filled with the sour reek of plastic. He felt numb.

  Beyond numb.

  Luke moved the mouse and John
saw the cursor sweep up the screen and stop on a square. He double-clicked and the square opened, like a miniature window, to reveal a flashing sequence of numbers.

  John stood up, went to the wall, and pulled out the plug. Both children looked up at him without even a hint of surprise on their faces. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘What is this talk about abuse? Where’s this from? The internet?’

  Neither of them said anything.

  ‘Is that what you think about your mummy and I? That we’re going to abuse you? Because it’s not a very funny joke.’

  Both of them stood up and walked out of the room.

  ‘Luke! Phoebe!’ John said, barely controlling his anger. ‘Come back, I’m talking to you!’

  He burst out of the door after them and yelled at them. ‘LUKE! PHOEBE! COME BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!’

  Continuing to ignore him, they went downstairs.

  He started after them, then stopped. How was he supposed to deal with this? It was like dealing with moody teenagers. Is that what they were?

  He was really trembling badly now, his brain misty with anger. He just wanted to grab hold of them, shake them, shake the little bastards until the truth fell out of them. But Sheila Michaelides had told them that confrontation with the twins would just drive them further into their shells – exactly like teenagers, he thought.

  Oh sure, easy to say, Dr Michaelides – but how the hell are we supposed to avoid getting angry when they say something like this?

  Remembering for a moment his reason for coming upstairs, he went into his bedroom, took the two keys that were hidden underneath his handkerchiefs, then opened his wardrobe, pushed his suits and shirts over to one side, the hangers clacking, to reveal the steel gun cabinet he’d had fixed into the wall. Then he unlocked the door and lifted out the heavy shotgun that nestled inside.

  It was a Russian-made twelve-bore, which he had bought, second-hand, after a three-month wait for the licence, at the same time as they had put in the other security measures here. He had never used the gun, and Naomi had disapproved strongly at the time. Nonetheless, he had always felt better at night for knowing it was there.