The Truth

by Peter James

  ‘Your wife,’ Sarotzini said, suddenly, ‘does she find it hard, sometimes, not having children? Does she find people, at dinners such as this, making tactless remarks that wound her?’

  ‘Yes. But she’s very good about it.’

  ‘And there is no biological reason preventing her from conceiving?’

  ‘We’ve never checked.’ John cast a glance at Lady Trouton. She was cutting her lamb into tiny squares, totally preoccupied.

  ‘Forgive me for being so personal,’ Mr Sarotzini said. ‘It is a fault of mine.’

  ‘No problem.’ John smiled. ‘Did you and your wife make a conscious decision not to have children?’

  The question brought back the air of sadness to Mr Sarotzini’s face and John wished he hadn’t asked it.

  ‘Yes,’ Mr Sarotzini replied. ‘Yes, a conscious decision,’ he echoed, and his face seemed to age ten years.

  With the arrival of tarte tatin Mr Sarotzini finally enquired about the nature of John’s business. At first John gave him only sketchy details, but then, when he saw the man’s interest, he opened up a little more. And then more still. By the time port was being poured and the cheese board presented, John was entertaining Mr Sarotzini with a detailed account of his meeting with Clake.

  And Mr Sarotzini was surprisingly sympathetic, telling John of his deep scorn for high-street banks. ‘You know,’ he told John wryly, ‘such a bank will only lend you money if you can prove to them that you really and truly do not need it.’

  John smiled, and said, finally, ‘So what do you do?’

  Mr Sarotzini smiled back. ‘I’m a banker,’ he said.

  John had to make a supreme effort not to let his elation show in his face or his voice. ‘Oh, really?’ he said. ‘What – what kind of banking are you involved in?’

  Mr Sarotzini handed him a business card. On it was printed: E. Sarotzini. Director. Vörn Bank.

  Beneath was a PO box number in Zürich.

  John studied the card. Something was missing.

  ‘No phone number?’ he asked.

  ‘We like to choose to whom we speak, Mr Carter. We are most selective. We have interests in a number of companies in the technology and biotechnology sectors. Perhaps we should have a further conversation?’

  John pulled out a card of his own. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Thank you, I’d like to very much.’

  Chapter Twelve

  It was quiet in the Carters’ house. Kündz, wearing his headphones, did a routine flick through the channel selector. He could hear the hum of the fridge in Susan’s kitchen, but in all the other rooms there was silence.

  But even listening to this silence gave him pleasure, because this was Susan Carter’s silence.

  The Carters were out tonight at dinner with Mr and Mrs Walter Thomas Carmichael, and he wondered how they were getting on. Mr Sarotzini was at this dinner also, and Kündz was not quite sure about the agenda there. Sometimes Mr Sarotzini only told him so much, leaving him a little in the dark, almost as if he was teasing him; that was one of the things that seemed to give Mr Sarotzini pleasure, playing games with him. But Kündz didn’t mind. He knew from experience that Mr Sarotzini did nothing without a reason, which always eventually became clear.

  He continued listening to Susan Carter’s silence, picturing in his mind the exact position of every item in that round bedroom in the turret perfumed with her smells.

  It was quiet also in Kündz’s attic flat in Pembroke Road in Earl’s Court. The walls, floors and ceiling were lined with soundproofing material he had installed. The room beneath the eaves, in which he was now sitting, his monitoring room, had no windows: it was completely secure, and as quiet as the grave.

  It was also as solitary as the grave. Kündz felt lonely in London. He missed his apartment in Geneva, the only home of his own he’d ever had, and he felt insecure being so far away from Mr Sarotzini. Although he was never really far away from Mr Sarotzini. Physical distance made no difference because, wherever he was, Mr Sarotzini was always with him, connected to his thoughts, reading his mind, sometimes letting him get on with it, other times instructing him. It was as if Mr Sarotzini could step in and out of his head, from wherever he was in the world, and manipulate him.

  And Kündz did not mind this. Mr Sarotzini had always given him guidance, and he was never wrong. Kündz understood implicitly that it was his life’s duty to serve Mr Sarotzini.

  He had been groomed for this role since the earliest days of his conscious memory, in the château above Lake Geneva to which Mr Sarotzini had brought him all those years back and which he had left only rarely throughout his childhood, mostly to accompany Mr Sarotzini on his travels. Mr Sarotzini had instilled in Kündz from an early age that he had been put into this world for a higher purpose than ordinary mortals, and Kündz had accepted this without question.

  And now, here in London, Kündz was afraid that on this important mission he might fail Mr Sarotzini. It wasn’t the pain that Mr Sarotzini might inflict that worried him. It was the fear of being rejected by him that was really terrifying.

  But, so far in London, everything was proceeding well, Mr Sarotzini had been pleased with the first results, more pleased than Kündz had dared to hope. He sensed Mr Sarotzini’s presence in the room with him: Mr Sarotzini, at the dinner table, was thinking about him. Kündz picked up the warm thoughts, and felt a little less lonely; he was grateful to Mr Sarotzini for this small kindness he was showing him.

  Kündz tried to send back a signal of gratitude. Mr Sarotzini had taught him that it was possible to transmit thoughts, and even, if you concentrated hard enough, to influence other people’s minds.

  He wondered if the signal had reached Mr Sarotzini. He wondered if Mr Sarotzini was close to Susan Carter and if he could smell her. Then he picked up his book, Homer’s Iliad in Greek – Mr Sarotzini had taught him that one should always read a book in its original language, never in translation – and began to read.

  This was something else he missed in London: his books. The vast library in Mr Sarotzini’s house had been his starting point where, under Mr Sarotzini’s tutelage, he had read every volume on its shelves. His own apartment was overflowing with books, which he had regretted having to leave behind. He valued them far more than he valued the company of people, for they presented interpretations of the world, past, present and future, from which he was able to form his own understandings.

  Sometimes he interpreted his understandings with the intricate drawings he made with his airbrush. He was a fine artist; Mr Sarotzini had often praised his work, and that made him proud.

  He missed the gym, too, where he did his daily workout, and the special muesli with blueberries in the konditorei on Rue de la Confédération where he had his breakfast, and the cool breezes off the lake, and his black Mercedes SL600 – but he understood that that was too conspicuous, and in London he needed to blend into his surroundings.

  And he missed his wardrobe. He had racks of hand-made suits, in fine wools, silks and linens, shelves stacked with hand-made shirts and hand-made shoes laid out in long lines. Mr Sarotzini had taught him about the value of quality, and detail. Everything that Kündz wore was the best, and the luggage in which he carried them was the best also, beautiful leather with hand-stitching finish, all of the cases matching.

  When he had been alone in Susan Carter’s bedroom and had been through the drawers and wardrobes, he had noted that John Carter’s suits and shirts were brand names, Boss, Armani, Conran, off-the-peg. It hurt him to think that Susan Carter could be penetrated by a man who bought ready-to-wear clothes. She deserved so much better. The words of the Twenty-third Truth came into his mind: ‘Mediocrity recognises nothing higher than itself. Talent instantly recognises genius.’

  Many eminent and famous people came as guests to Mr Sarotzini’s château from all over the world: heads of state, cabinet ministers, senators, royalty, movie celebrities, scientists, industrialists. Mr Sarotzini had taught Kündz to imagine each of these people
sitting on the lavatory, excreting then wiping their backsides. He wanted to make Kündz realise that title, rank, noble birth or any level of fame only made a human being different from his fellow man in some ways, not all.

  Susan Carter was different.

  She was truly different.

  Kündz found himself thinking of Claudie and wondered if Mr Sarotzini had put this thought into his mind to distract him from Susan Carter. It was hard, sometimes, to differentiate between thoughts that were his own, and those that Mr Sarotzini planted in his head.

  Claudie. He imagined himself in his apartment with her, doing something dirty with her; she liked to do things that were dirty. Before he had been inside Susan Carter’s house, and had stood in Susan Carter’s presence and breathed in her smells, he had missed Claudie. But no longer.

  On the small desk beside him was an envelope containing a ticket for a performance of Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne on Sunday. It was a reward from Mr Sarotzini for his good work. He wished he could take Susan Carter with him and make love to her afterwards, with the roiling energy of the music bursting through their bodies.

  But that would not be possible.

  ‘Susan,’ he whispered quietly.

  Susan stared at him from every wall. Photographs he had taken from the tiny camera concealed behind the badge of his British Telecom uniform those three glorious days when he has been in her house.

  They were grainy, which irritated him. She was inanimate and that irritated him too. He wanted to see Susan Carter move, he wanted to see her undress, he wanted to see her doing dirty things with her husband.

  He wanted, although he did not need, an excuse to hate her husband even more than he already did.

  He switched to a different channel and listened in to his apartment in Geneva. From the living room he could hear voices, the television. He adjusted a filter and the sound of the television faded. Then he listened for other voices, for any sound that Claudie might have a man in the apartment with her.

  He checked out the bedroom and that was fine. Then he tapped a command on his computer keyboard. The screen came to life. On it appeared a colour image of Claudie, his favourite photograph of her: she was sitting naked on a chair, facing the camera, her legs spread open. He imagined that it was not Claudie, but Susan Carter.

  He picked up the phone and punched a number. Claudie answered. He imagined he was hearing Susan Carter’s voice.

  He asked, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Watching television.’

  ‘What are you wearing?’

  Teasing. ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘What do you smell of?’

  ‘You,’ she said.

  ‘I want to see you,’ he said.

  ‘And I want to see you, too.’

  He keyed in another command and logged onto the Internet. A new image appeared: an empty chair facing the camera. In a moment, Claudie, naked, moved into the frame and sat in the chair. The technology was not yet perfect. He was watching her now, in real time, but each movement was jerky as if in slow motion, as the images travelled down the cables from Geneva to London.

  He stared at the live image of Claudie, naked, her long brown hair resting on her shoulders. She was looking directly at him and knew he was watching her. But she did not know that in his mind he was no longer seeing her but Susan Carter.

  ‘Touch yourself,’ Kündz said.

  He watched her touching herself. The jerky images added to the sensuality. He watched her pressing her fingers up inside herself. He watched the expression on her face change. As she worked her fingers, a certain dreaminess softened her face, and he wondered if this was how it would be with Susan Carter also.

  Then her lips were moving, she was speaking. Yes, speak to me, oh, my Susan, speak to me.

  ‘Now let me see you,’ she said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  John felt queasy, tired, and he had a blinding headache. Port always did this to him, and at the dinner last night he had poured it down his throat recklessly.

  On the advice of his accountant, he had been to see an insolvency practitioner, and was talking on the phone to him now. The news he gave John about what he would be able to salvage from the business if the bank pulled the plug wasn’t good. If John had seen the writing on the wall a year back, he could have formed a separate company and started transferring business into it. But he hadn’t made any such preparations.

  He replaced the receiver, deeply gloomy. His secretary brought him in a second cup of coffee and gave him a strange look, making him wonder whether she’d overheard him. Stella wasn’t stupid, she knew something was going on, but in her usual discreet way she hadn’t asked.

  She’d been with him right from the start, when he had been operating from a tiny office above a pet shop in Marylebone, and Gareth had been moonlighting from his day job in computer graphics at a firm of architects. Stella was a bright, sassy girl, pretty and elegant, with short brown hair, and a tiresome boyfriend she supported, a permanently resting actor with an ego the size of the Atlantic. She’d get another job quickly – anyone in their right mind would snap her up – but losing her was going to be a terrible blow.

  He would have to tell Gareth soon, and all their employees. So far the only person in the company who knew anything was the financial controller, a quiet, efficient, conscientious woman called Janet Pennington. She had prepared the figures for John’s pitch documents to other banks and institutions, and he knew he could rely on her to say nothing.

  He had just thirteen days left until Clake’s deadline. And last night there had been a slim ray of hope, the Swiss banker with the odd name.

  ‘How’s your headache?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Bad.’ Headaches had become an almost daily feature of his life but this was the mother of them all.

  ‘I’ll give you two more paracetamol before you go.’

  It was a quarter to ten. In an hour’s time he would have to leave the office, get home, change into his morning suit and drive with Susan to join Archie’s party at Ascot.

  He was glad to be out of the office today – there was no way he’d be able to concentrate on much in his state – and Susan was right: someone there might be willing to take a gamble on DigiTrak. And that banker last night had given him a couple of tips. John had checked the horses in the morning paper and they were both outsiders. He decided he would bang them hard.

  His head took a turn for the worse, and he pressed his knuckles into his temples, trying to ease the pain. Looking lamely up at Stella, he said, ‘Be an angel and get me a Coke, full strength.’

  ‘Sure.’ She smiled sympathetically, knowing from experience that when he asked for a Coke, he must be in bad shape: it was the hangover cure he used as a last resort.

  John fished in his wallet, and found the banker’s card. E. Sarotzini. He started to compose a letter in his head, then picked up his dictating machine. As he did so, his telephone warbled. It was Stella: she had a Mr Sarotzini on the line, did John want to speak to him?

  Mr Sarotzini sounded polite, but much more formal than he had last night, as if he had moved from party into business mode. ‘It was very pleasant to make your acquaintance,’ he said.

  John remembered the man’s use of the word pleasant in his rather condescending appraisal of the banqueting hall, and wondered, his heart sinking a little, if in the banker’s eyes the same mediocrity applied to himself.

  ‘Likewise,’ John said.

  ‘I may perhaps see you at Ascot today?’ It was clear from the way Mr Sarotzini spoke that this remark was merely a courtesy and not a serious invitation to rendezvous.

  ‘I’ll keep a look-out for you. I’ve remembered the tips you gave me.’

  ‘Don’t put your house on them,’ Mr Sarotzini said. ‘But they are worth a little flutter.’

  Something about the way Mr Sarotzini spoke convinced John that he should bet on these two horses even more heavily than he had already intended.

  There was a brief si
lence, and then Mr Sarotzini said, ‘I have to return to Switzerland at the weekend. I wondered if by any chance you might be free to join me for lunch tomorrow, Mr Carter?’

  John looked at his diary. Friday, 18 June. Lunch with his accountant was marked in. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have something I could move, I can manage that.’

  ‘I will come to your office at midday.’

  ‘Sure, fine.’

  ‘It would be most helpful if you could have prepared for me the last three years’ audited accounts, your forward projections, your cash flow – and a five-year plan?’

  John tried not to give away his excitement in his voice.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Venerable Doctor Euan Freer, Professor of Systematic Theology of the University of London, and Archdeacon Emeritus of Oxford, was the most intelligent and influential clergyman Fergus Donleavy knew.

  Fergus sat, ignoring the broken spring beneath him, in an ancient leather armchair in the sitting room of Freer’s residence at the university. It was a masculine room, with battered furniture, threadbare rugs, sagging bookshelves and a small open grate; the sash window was raised and the sweet air of freshly mown grass filled the room from the communal gardens below.

  He took a bite of a digestive biscuit, and drank some coffee, savouring the cool air in here after the blazing heat of the June sun outside. He and Freer were old friends and they had been trying to work out how many years it was since they had last seen or spoken to each other.

  Fergus bided his time while they caught up on each other’s news. He told Freer that the church had kept him looking young (although he did not tell him that he had become rather plump and that his hair had turned alarmingly grey) and Freer, in his black cassock, laughed and told Fergus he wished he looked as fit as him.

  If Freer had not elected this vocation, and the vow of celibacy that went with his Brotherhood, he could have been a devastating womaniser. He was good-looking, in a swarthy Latin way that caused many people, including Fergus, to comment on his resemblance to Robert de Niro.