Perfect People

by Peter James

  At least if they haven’t found Luke and Phoebe, there’s a chance they are still alive, he thought.

  And in Naomi’s eyes, he saw exactly the same thought reflected back at him.

  106

  As they sat at the round table in his small office, accompanied by Renate Harrison, it seemed to John much longer than twenty-four hours since Detective Inspector Pelham had entered their lives.

  ‘Right,’ he said, looking sharp and fresh. ‘Did you manage some sleep?’

  ‘Not really,’ John said.

  ‘None,’ Naomi said.

  ‘You’ll be able to go back home tonight.’

  ‘Thank you,’ John said.

  Addressing Renate Harrison, Pelham said, ‘You’d better get them fixed up with something to help them sleep.’

  ‘What news do you have?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘Some progress,’ he said. ‘Not as much as any of us would like, but some. OK, this is the latest position. Our mystery man Bruce Preston is still in a coma following sixteen hours of neurosurgery yesterday. He’s under round-the-clock police guard in the Sussex County Hospital, and if he regains consciousness, we’ll interrogate him as soon as we are permitted. But he has severe brain damage and his prognosis is not good.’

  ‘Have you found out about his identity?’ John asked.

  ‘It’s false. I’ve had the FBI check him out and the trail goes cold in Rochester, New York State.’

  ‘No link between him and the cult we told you about?’ Naomi said.

  ‘The Disciples people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘None so far. We’ve sent photographs of him and the woman in the picture in his wallet to the FBI, and we haven’t heard anything back yet.’ He paused to take a sip of coffee. ‘An analyst from our High Tech Crime Unit, who’s been working around the clock on your two computers, has a number of questions he wants to ask you – he’s coming in at ten.’

  ‘Did you find anything on Bruce Preston’s laptop?’ John asked.

  ‘Not yet; it seems he was very careful – or very good at hiding his tracks.’

  ‘How much longer do you need to keep my own laptop?’ John asked. ‘I need it back pretty badly.’

  ‘The analyst is bringing it back for you – both your computers.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘We got the registration of the red Mitsubishi from the security cameras at the Channel Tunnel late yesterday,’ he announced. ‘The plates are false.’

  John and Naomi said nothing.

  ‘At seven o’clock this morning I got a phone call from France. This car has been found at a small airport in Le Touquet. We’ve managed to ascertain between us that a man and a woman, in their mid-to-late twenties, boarded a Panamanian-registered private jet with a small boy and girl who fit Luke and Phoebe’s description, at half six in the morning yesterday. The pilot had flown in from Lyons and filed a flight plan to Nice. But the plane never showed up there.’

  ‘Where did it go?’ John asked.

  ‘It left French airspace, and disappeared into thin air.’

  ‘Does anyone have information about who owns this jet?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘We’re working on it.’

  ‘What’s the range of one of those aircraft?’ John asked. ‘How far could it travel?’

  ‘I’m told it depends entirely on the size of its fuel tanks. It had taken on sufficient fuel, given that its tanks weren’t empty when it arrived, for fourteen hours of flight. Apparently this particular aircraft has a cruising speed of three hundred and fifty knots. Which basically means enough to get to America and halfway back.’

  Going back to his desk, Pelham produced a map of the world, which he laid out in front of them. It had a curved line drawn on it in red ink. ‘This line covers all the destinations the plane could have made safely on its cruising range.’

  John and Naomi stared at it bleakly. The line stretched from Bombay in one direction, to Rio in another. And that was without taking into account any refuelling stops.

  Their children could literally be anywhere on the planet.

  107

  The high tech crime analyst had a pallid complexion, bloodshot eyes and a large gold earring. He was dressed in grubby jeans and several layers of T-shirts and reeked of cigarette smoke. Addressing the floor rather than John and Naomi’s faces, he said, ‘Hi, I’m Cliff Palmer,’ then gave each of them in turn a wet-fish handshake.

  Naomi noticed he had a slight nervous tic.

  He sat down, placed John’s computer in front of him, then pushed his hair back from his forehead with both hands. It immediately slid forward again.

  Renate went out of the room to fetch him a drink.

  ‘You’ve been looking through my computer and the kids’ computer?’ John said.

  ‘Yes, uh-huh.’ He nodded pensively, and pushed his hair back again. ‘I’ve made copies of both hard disks, I thought that was the best thing to do. I’ll go down to the car and fetch your children’s computer in a minute. You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve not been to bed yet – I worked through the night.’ He looked at each of them in turn, as if expecting sympathy. Naomi gave him one tepid quiver of her lips.

  ‘Have you found anything of interest?’ John asked.

  He put his hand in front of his mouth and yawned loudly. ‘Yes, well, it might be of interest – stuff on both the computers, but I can’t do anything without the keys.’ He raised his eyebrows at John.

  ‘Keys?’

  ‘The encryption keys.’

  ‘Do you mean for the passwords?’ John asked.

  Cliff shook his head. ‘Not just those – although there are plenty of those in both systems that I haven’t been able to get beyond, or bypass, yet. But it’s the language they’re using in emails and on chatrooms.’

  Renate Harrison brought him a mug of tea and set it down, and coffees for John and Naomi.

  John said, ‘I warned Detective Inspector Pelham about that yesterday when the computers were taken to you – that they’ve developed a speech code of talking backwards, with every fourth letter missing.’

  The analyst stirred sugar into his tea, then sipped it. ‘Yes, I was told – but it’s way more sophisticated than that. From the progress I’ve made so far, all I can tell you is that they’ve been in touch with quite a number of people all over the world for at least a year – that’s as far back as I’ve gone at the moment. But all the addresses are encrypted and the language is impenetrable.’

  He sipped some tea. ‘I’ve tried all the usual encryption suspects but there’s no match to any of them. There are ciphers out there that are just not breakable by anyone, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘These are three-year-old children, Cliff,’ Renate Harrison reminded him.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he said, a tad irritably. ‘But it’s the same on both machines.’

  ‘Are you saying they’ve devised these?’

  ‘Someone who has been accessing these computers has either been devising them or borrowing them. I can’t tell you who, all I can do is try to find out what they say, and I think I’ve hit a brick wall.’

  Naomi looked at John. ‘What about your guy, Reggie?’

  ‘Reggie Chetwynde-Cunningham? I was about to say that. He’d be the person for this.’ Addressing the analyst, he explained, ‘I work at Morley Park. This man has an entire research facility there – he’s the top encryption expert in the country.’

  Cliff gave a nod. ‘I wouldn’t normally like to admit defeat to a pair of three-year-olds. But under the circumstances—’ He gave a nervous laugh.

  No one laughed with him.

  108

  Lara reversed the rental Fiat into the car park bay so that when she returned she would be able to drive out forwards, saving precious seconds, should she need them.

  Figuring out the pay and display machine, she bought a ticket for the maximum time, four hours, and stuck it where the instructions told her, on the inside of the windscreen. That would give her unt
il six o’clock this evening.

  She tucked the straps of her rucksack inside the bag, then, carrying it like a holdall, she crossed the busy street and entered the front of the Royal Sussex County Hospital. From the little shop in the foyer she bought a small bunch of carnations wrapped in cellophane. Despite the terrible nervousness she felt, she tried to look nonchalant, to blend in, to be just another visitor coming to see a patient and bringing a few belongings for them.

  She hovered for some moments near the information desk, looking for a plan of the place. There were plenty of people around to ask, but she didn’t want to draw any attention to herself, so she just carried on walking, trying to appear confident, as if she knew where she was going, whilst silently and invisibly asking God for guidance.

  She went up an incline and came to a junction of corridors. There were signs here. X-RAY. CARDIOLOGY. OUTPATIENTS. HISTOPATHOLOGY. RENAL UNIT. MATERNITY. PHARMACY.

  NEUROSURGERY.

  She climbed three flights of stairs, then walked along another corridor. She strolled past medics, orderlies, nurses, visitors. She passed an elderly man in a dressing gown and slippers, inching his way on a Zimmer frame with grim determination, and a gurney on which another old man lay, mouth open, toothless, bewildered, as if someone had abandoned him out here.

  Up another flight of stairs. Another corridor. Past a staff rest room. Peering through the window, she could see five female nurses in there. Lara understood the rhythms and beats and logistics of hospitals. She understood the chaos of shifts, the constant ebb and flow of strange faces, the impossibility in a large hospital of everyone being familiar with everyone else, or even recognizing everyone else.

  When she was eighteen, her parents had her admitted to the psychiatric ward of a general hospital in Chicago. She had spent much of that time wandering the corridors, chatting to staff, generally hanging out with anyone who would talk to her, trying to find a little corner of the massive place where she could belong. She made friends with the kitchen staff and for a while belonged there; then she made friends with the laundry staff, and for a while belonged in the laundry. Then with the team at one of the nursing stations.

  It was her sweet, gentle Master, Harald Gatward, who had broken the terrible news to her yesterday about her own beloved Disciple. The Master explained that this was a test from God of her love for Timon Cort and of her love for all the Disciples. There would never be a bigger test for her than this. After this she would truly belong for ever.

  She walked on, saw the sign NEUROSURGERY right ahead of her now, and stopped.

  Reality check.

  She took a breath, said a small, silent prayer for strength and courage.

  Timon was close. He was still alive, she knew that; she’d phoned the ward sister an hour ago, pretending to be a newspaper reporter, and she had confirmed that he was alive still, but she would say no more.

  Inching forward now, one step at a time, pretending to be making an adjustment to the flowers every time someone came by, she reached an intersection. An arrow marked NEUROSURGERY pointed to her right. And she could see at the end of the corridor a nursing station and what looked like a reception area.

  She walked down, and in the bustle of activity as she approached the station no one paid her the slightest attention. Then she froze.

  To her left was a short corridor down to the double doors of a ward. But before those doors was another door, on the right. A uniformed policeman sat on a chair outside it, staring at a newspaper, looking bored out of his tree.

  Her heart skipped.

  Timon was in there!

  Then she turned abruptly away before the policeman noticed her, and walked around to the far side of the island station. Thinking hard for some moments, she made a decision, began retracing her steps back to the stairs, and went down to the next floor, then on down, floor after floor, until she finally reached the basement.

  The lighting was dingy and she heard the rumble of a furnace. There was a smell of boiled cabbage and fuel oil. Massive pipes ran along above her. Ahead she could see steam billowing through an open door.

  ‘Has anyone given you tea?’ she said aloud, to herself, in what she was hoping sounded like an English accent. She said it again. And again. ‘Hez ennyone given yew tee?’

  And one more time, as she dumped the flowers on the floor and set off in search of the laundry storage area.

  ‘Hez ennyone given yew tee?’

  Most of the doors off the corridors down here were marked, and it took her less than five minutes to find the one marked STAFF UNIFORM STORES.

  Putting down the holdall, she went through the door into a cavernous room that seemed out of another century. On one side were shelves stacked with every kind of hospital uniform, and accessories. On the other, a long work bench, at which about a dozen Oriental male and female staff were busily pressing and folding clothes. No one had even noticed that she’d come in.

  She went over to the work bench and addressed an elderly Chinese woman. ‘Hi, I’m an auxiliary nurse – doing an emergency locum in Maternity. They told me to come down here to get a uniform.’

  The woman raised her hands. ‘You go uniform have Personnel make request.’

  In response to Lara’s blank stare, the woman drew a rectangle with her hands. ‘Form! You go request form Personnel. Upstairs. Seggon floor.’

  ‘I’ll take the uniform, bring the form down later!’ Lara said. ‘Emergency!’

  The woman shrugged, muttered angrily and turned back to her labours.

  Lara swiftly took a nursing uniform and blouse, but could see no shoes anywhere. Her trainers would have to do. Plenty of the nurses here were wearing what looked like plimsolls. Hiding everything inside her bulky anorak, she picked up her bag, hurried back up to the ground floor, then made her way to the first toilet she could find, locked herself in a cubicle and changed.

  She carried her bag out of the hospital and over to the parking lot, locked it in the boot of her car, then returned to the hospital. She walked briskly, like any nurse who might be late for her shift, in through a side door this time, and made her way back up to the Neurosurgery ward.

  So easy, she thought. Nothing to it, just look confident!

  As she passed the nursing station, she pulled out of her pocket a hypodermic syringe and a vial, and now held both of these openly. The policeman was still reading his newspaper, and barely even glanced at her as she approached.

  ‘Hez ennyone given yew tee?’ she asked breezily.

  His face brightened. ‘Not for a while, I’d appreciate a cuppa.’

  Giving him a special smile, she said, ‘Two minutes!’ then went into the room, closing the door behind her.

  Then stood still.

  Stared at him.

  At the man she had thought about and prayed for every day and every night for the past three years. Timon. Sweet, sweet Timon, with his gentle voice and his soft touch. Stared at his swollen, distorted face; at the clear plastic breathing tubes in his nostrils. At the array of drip lines running up from his wrist, and at the battery of wires running from electrode pads on his head into a large machine with about ten different digital displays on it.

  She stepped over to the bed, looking at the strip of white gauze on his forehead, and at his closed eyes. She touched his free hand, squeezed it. Timon,’ she whispered. ‘Listen, I have to be quick, I don’t have much time. It’s me, Lara. Can you hear me?’

  To her joy, she felt her hand being squeezed, as if in response.

  Then his eyes opened.

  ‘Timon!’ she said. ‘Timon, my sweet love!’

  His eyes rolled, as if he were trying to focus, but no longer had the motor functions to do so.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘There is something you need to know. You have a son, a beautiful boy called Saul. Our son.’ A tear trickled down her cheek. ‘He’s nearly two and a half years old now. He’s going to be so proud of you.’

  The Disciple’s eyes widened. His mouth opene
d. ‘Lara!’ he murmured. ‘Lara!’

  She shot a nervous glance at the door, then, freeing her hand, pushed the needle in through the seal of the vial, and drew the contents out until the barrel was full. She didn’t bother to squirt out a bit, to ensure there was no air going into the vein. Instead she just leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. ‘I have to do this,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s just to make sure you don’t say anything by mistake to anyone here. You understand, don’t you?’

  His eyes rolled, and for one fleeting instant, she was certain he had actually looked at her face. And signalled his understanding.

  Then, rapidly locating a vein in his wrist, she pushed the needle in, then pressed the plunger all the way home.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she whispered, removing it. ‘Goodbye my sweet, gentle Disciple.’

  The door opened.

  Lara turned, to be confronted by a nurse in her forties, with a stern face and black curly hair, wearing a badge that said, SISTER EILEEN MORGAN.

  ‘Who are you? What’s going on? What are you—’ Lara stabbed her in the neck with the syringe, then burst out of the room, collided with a man in a white coat, a doctor, pushed him out of the way, ignoring shouts behind her, and sprinted down the corridor, past the nursing station, along to the stairs, and threw herself down them.

  She did not look round, just kept going, kept running, taking the stairs two, three at a time.

  Down on the ground floor she crashed through a family with small children, dodged a woman wheeling a trolley laden with library books, pushed open doors marked EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY and instantly heard an alarm klaxon go off.

  Then she was running across the road, digging in her pocket for her car keys. As she reached the car she looked back and saw that the policeman who had been on guard was already coming in through the car-park entrance.

  She unlocked the car, got in, jammed the key into the ignition at the third attempt with her shaking hand, twisted it. The engine burst into life. The policeman was right in front of the car, holding his hands up, yelling at her to stop.