The Truth

by Peter James

  ‘It’s Horace. I did A level Latin, so I recognised it. “Si possis recte, si non, quocumque modo rem.”’

  John grinned. ‘What’s that in English?’

  ‘“By right means, if you can, but by any means make money.”’

  John unzipped his own racquet. ‘Shows he has a bit of culture. What’s your problem with that?’

  ‘I don’t have a problem with that. This is what I have a problem with: he’s standing by my desk, looking at Oliver’s screen – Oliver’s giving him a demo of our system. I go and have a piss and when I come back my cigarette lighter’s missing from my desk.’

  John looked at him in disbelief. ‘What?’

  ‘My gold Dunhill.’

  ‘Missing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was on your desk? You’re sure?’

  ‘It’s always on my desk.’

  ‘Perhaps it fell on the floor.’

  ‘John, I took my desk apart. I grilled the whole bloody room. Nobody else had come in. No one.’

  John fought laughter – he couldn’t help it, he was finding this comical and he knew he shouldn’t.

  Archie looked indignant. ‘You think it’s funny?’

  John, grinning broadly, said, ‘I’m sorry, I do. Here’s this guy, he buys five million quid’s worth of bonds and he steals your lighter.’

  ‘Not even my client. I don’t get the commission.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘What the hell could I do? They’ve got over fifty million pounds of business with us, I can hardly ask the guy to turn out his pockets.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask him if maybe he’d picked it up by mistake?’

  ‘I did. He looked at me as if I was a dog turd and said, “I am zorry, I am not a man who smokes.”’

  Archie lobbed the ball in the air and whacked it furiously down the court. It hit the tin and died. ‘Nice friends you’ve got.’

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Swingeing cuts were due to be made by Magellan Lowry’s new owners, and staff were bracing themselves for redundancy letters.

  With only nine days to Christmas, there were cards up everywhere, and the art department had plastered glitzy angels and bits of tinsel all around the offices. Some wit had also produced a 3-D cut-out of a well-endowed Santa Claus having a good time with Rudolf but staff were finding it hard to be jolly. All the same, they were trying and everyone was thinking: Maybe it won’t be me.

  Meanwhile they went to all the publishing industry parties they could find and networked like crazy. A hundred jobs were being edited out and a hundred and fifty people were employed at Magellan Lowry.

  Susan was about the only person who didn’t have a long face: she was happy to take what she viewed as early maternity leave at Christmas and, after that, she’d have to see. She wasn’t sure about anything beyond the birth of the baby. All she knew was that the feeling was growing stronger every day that after the baby was born she was not going to be handing it over to Mr Sarotzini or anyone else.

  She caressed her abdomen. ‘Hi, Bump,’ she murmured. ‘How you doing today? Looking forward to Christmas? Me, too! We’re going to buy a tree this weekend. You won’t be able to see it, but you can help us choose it, can’t you?’

  Bump responded with a tiny kick.

  Her door opened and Kate Fox came in. ‘Susan, you said you and John hadn’t made any plans for Christmas. Well, we’re having a big family do, and if you’re at a loose end, you’d be very welcome to join Martin and me.’

  Susan thanked her warmly, imagining what John would say. ‘That’s very sweet of you but we’re going down to the Cotswolds that week to stay with the Harrisons, but thanks anyway.’

  ‘Not at all. We’ll have you over some time early in the New Year.’

  ‘That would be great.’

  ‘And how’s Junior today?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Lively. Busy kicking me.’

  ‘Now, right, that’s what I’ve been meaning to tell you. You know, when you can feel the baby moving for the first time, it’s like a finger tickling you inside?’

  Susan nodded. ‘Yes, I know! That’s exactly what it felt like!’

  ‘Well, I remembered what it’s called. The quickening.’

  ‘The quickening?’

  ‘That’s the old-fashioned term for it. From the quick and the dead.’

  Susan patted her abdomen. ‘The quickening,’ she murmured. ‘Did you hear that, Bump?’

  Bump heard it.

  ‘It’s really good to talk to your baby,’ Kate said.

  ‘I know, Miles Van Rhoe told me that. And he said I should play music.’

  ‘I played music to all mine.’

  ‘I’ve started doing that too. Bump likes Mozart best, prefers it to rock.’

  ‘Going to be a classy baby,’ Kate said.

  ‘You bet.’

  Kate went out and Susan caressed her abdomen again. ‘You hear that, Bump? You’re going to be a classy baby.’

  Bump kicked again.

  ‘That’s right, you got it. You’re going to be the classiest baby of all time.’

  Then her intercom buzzed. It was the receptionist, telling Susan her lunch date had arrived.

  Susan told her she would be right down, then yawned. She felt more like going to sleep than going out to lunch. Except there was a question she very much wanted to ask her lunch date. Forcing herself to perk up, she said, ‘Bump, you are privileged. You’re going to have lunch with a very famous author. How do you feel about that?’

  There was no reaction from Bump.

  ‘OK, you wanna be laid back about famous people, that’s OK by me, that’s cool. I think you’re going to be seriously cool when you grow up.’

  The Very Famous Author sat opposite her, in his tweed jacket and open-necked denim shirt. There had been a stiffness bordering on a coldness in his attitude towards Susan that she had noticed ever since his attempt in the summer to kiss her on the Embankment. Susan wasn’t sure how much was due to her rebuff of his advance, and how much was pique at the stringent cuts she had been continuing to make in his redrafted chapters.

  However, today he seemed more relaxed, more his old self. The rewrite was shaping up, in fact it was coming along brilliantly now, she told him, this was much more the ticket.

  Then, plucking up courage, Susan dropped the bombshell that he was going to have a new editor after Christmas.

  ‘Why?’ Fergus asked. Then he stared at her a little harder, and said, ‘Oh, shit! I should have realised. This thing about coffee, cigarette smoke, alcohol – you’re pregnant, aren’t you?’

  Susan nodded. She saw a wary expression appear on his face and it all came back to her, the conversation they’d had way back in the summer when he had started to tell her about a dream, and then stopped. She pushed a square of tuna ravioli around her plate, with no appetite.

  ‘That’s terrific!’ Fergus said, his voice forced. ‘Great news!’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Your husband – both of you – you must be thrilled.’

  She found a radiant beam somewhere in the attic of her brain, hauled it out, stuck it on like a mask. ‘Yes, yes, we are.’

  ‘When’s it due?’

  ‘April the twenty-sixth.’

  ‘Maybe we should have a bottle of champagne?’

  Susan took off the beam, and shook her head. ‘No, Fergus, thanks, I don’t think that’s too good for the baby – and I have to work this afternoon.’

  ‘A glass?’

  She smiled. ‘It’s wasted on me now, tastes of metal.’

  Fergus ordered a whole bottle. It was Christmas and he’d drink what she didn’t want. He was in an irrepressible mood today: he was going to get the rewrite finished by Christmas, and he was determined to persuade Susan to carry on editing it – even if she was no longer at the firm, she couldn’t just sit at home and talk to her swollen abdomen all day, she’d go out of her mind. ‘Wouldn’t you?’ he asked.

  �
�We have great conversations,’ she said, ‘Bump and I.’

  Fergus looked at her in amazement, she’d said it with such feeling, so seriously; then he frowned. For God’s sake, she was serious.

  And he was starting to remember, a long time back, his own wife, Suki, pregnant with their child. Tammy was twenty-one now, at Duke University, North Carolina. He remembered all those feelings Suki had had. Pregnancy did this to women, made them strange. It was the hormones, but most of them came back to normal afterwards.

  And he was remembering something else, even more vividly. ‘Susan, earlier this year we had a conversation. You told me that you and John had made a decision never to have children. I’m interested – what’s changed your mind?’

  She tried to give a casual shrug and was aware that she didn’t do it very well. ‘Oh, you know, I guess we change, don’t we?’

  He gave her a probing stare. ‘Do we?’

  She lowered her eyes, knowing he wasn’t fooled by her reply. But equally he had no way of finding out the truth. Yet something was preying on her mind that she had been wanting to ask him for some time. Now seemed the appropriate moment. ‘You told me you had a dream, Fergus, back in the summer. Something about my having a child. You said that as I wasn’t pregnant it didn’t matter. Do you remember?’

  He could still recall it vividly, every detail as fresh as if he had dreamed it last night.

  A baby, a tiny new-born infant, alone in a terrible darkness, crying. He could hear that cry now, the utter terror in it. And then in the dream he had seen Susan Carter fumbling around in the darkness with a torch, crying, unable to find the baby and begging him to help her.

  And his reply in the dream was to tell her no, leave the baby, don’t try to find it, let it die. For God’s sake, let it die.

  But what was to be achieved by telling Susan that now, other than worrying her? ‘I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘Don’t recall that at all.’

  ‘It seemed important to you at the time.’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘Not, really.’

  ‘You saw something, didn’t you?’

  And then it happened. The pain, worse than ever before. It was as if a bayonet had been rammed into her stomach and twisted. She leant forward, bashing against the table in shock, her mouth open, her eyeballs feeling like they were bursting in their sockets. And then it came again, even worse. Her champagne glass fell and smashed but she didn’t notice. The pain, the white-hot blade inside her, was twisting again.

  Fergus was on his feet. There was a babble of voices. Susan heard the word ‘doctor’, then she heard the word ‘ambulance’. And Fergus was saying ‘pregnant’, and then she heard the word ‘miscarriage.’

  And she was on a fairground ride, the restaurant was spinning, she was losing it. And all the time she was trying to tell them Van Rhoe, only call Van Rhoe, no one else.

  And then, as suddenly as it always came on, the pain stopped.

  The nausea subsided, leaving her cold, shivery, dripping with perspiration. There was still a pain inside her but it was no longer acute, just a dull throb. People were standing around her, crowding her in, Fergus, a waiter, a man who stuck his face close to hers and told her he was a doctor.

  ‘I’m OK,’ Susan said. ‘Please, I’m OK, I get these, they’re nothing, I have some pills.’

  ‘You keep getting these pains?’ asked the man who had said he was a doctor.

  ‘It’s all right, I have just a tiny cyst, I’m under Mr Van Rhoe. It’s not a problem.’

  The doctor was giving her a hard look. ‘Miles Van Rhoe? He’s your obstetrician?’

  Susan nodded.

  ‘Well, you’re in good hands. I think you should go straight to see him today.’

  ‘I’ll call him, thank you, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’d better take you home,’ Fergus said.

  She shook her head. ‘I have a meeting in the office, an author coming in, I can’t cancel him.’

  Fergus looked reproachful. ‘Your health is more important.’

  ‘I’m OK, I’ll be fine now.’ She popped two pills. Fergus handed her his glass and she swallowed them with the champagne, downing it in one gulp so that she didn’t have to taste it, hoping it would help dull the pain. Then Fergus perched on the edge of his chair. ‘Did you say you have a cyst?’

  ‘It’s tiny, nothing. I occasionally get a bit of pain from it, that’s all.’ The champagne was making her feel light-headed – it was the first alcohol she’d drunk in ages.

  ‘That wasn’t just a bit of pain, Susan. How long has this been going on?’

  It took her a moment to answer, and then she said, ‘About three months.’

  Fergus told her gently, ‘Susan, I know this isn’t a very flattering thing to say but has anyone told you how terrible you look?’

  She said nothing. He was right, she knew that she looked like a ghost. A ghost with huge dark rings beneath her eyes. Not many people had come out with it, because most of the time she’d masked it with make-up, but Fergus seemed able to see through it.

  ‘This man, Van Rhoe, his name’s familiar,’ he said.

  ‘Every time anyone famous has a baby, he delivers it. He’s in the papers a lot. Then, before she realised it, she told him, ‘Mr Sarotzini was adamant that I see him and no one –’

  She checked herself in mid-sentence, as she saw a strange look on Fergus’s face.

  A chasm of silence opened up between them. Finally, Fergus bridged it. ‘Sarotzini? Did you say Mr Sarotzini?’

  There was something about the way Fergus said the name that made her feel uncomfortable. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is he your doctor?’

  Aware that she’d trapped herself, she tried to think of a suitable reply. ‘No, he’s a banker. He helped my husband. He – he likes to give advice.’

  Fergus pulled out his cigarettes. ‘Do you mind – if I blow the smoke away from you?’

  ‘No, go ahead, I’m better about smoke now, doesn’t bother me so much.’

  He lit up then spelled out the name: ‘S-A-R-O-T-Z-I-N-I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s his first name?’

  This momentarily threw Susan. She scrolled through her mind, then said, ‘Emil.’

  Unless she had imagined it, his face darkened.

  ‘Why do you ask? Do you know him?’ she said.

  He lit his cigarette. ‘The name has connotations, that’s all. And it’s an unusual name.’

  ‘What connotations?’

  And then that knife twisted inside her again. It wasn’t as acute as before and she managed to swallow the cry before it escaped her lips. But Fergus noticed. ‘Susan, you’re not right.’

  ‘I’m OK, really, it was just a twinge.’

  He stared at her in silence, looking dubious. Then, gently, he asked, ‘What are you and your husband doing for Christmas?’

  ‘We’re having a quiet one. Going to spend the week of Christmas through the New Year down in the Cotswolds with old friends of John – he was best man at our wedding. And you?’

  ‘I don’t know, I haven’t decided. There’s the annual gathering of the Donleavy clan in Waterford, but I’m not much into ancestor worship. I might go to Prague, or St Petersburg, somewhere that’s cold, with real snow, somewhere that looks like Christmas should look.’

  ‘I’d like to spend Christmas somewhere like that, too,’ she said wistfully, and glanced down, thinking suddenly about Bump and how Bump was going to take to the snow in a year or two’s time.

  ‘Is it going to be a boy or girl?’ Fergus asked.

  ‘I haven’t – wanted to know.’ Then she changed the subject. ‘Fergus, you’re becoming a real man of mystery, aren’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you have this dream, and now you can’t remember what it was about – or you don’t want to tell me. And now this name, Sarotzini, this has connotations and you don’t want to tell me what those are.’

  He tilted up his he
ad and blew a long jet of smoke at the ceiling. It hung there, drifting away slowly over the heads of other diners until air from a heating duct caught it and it exploded, like surf. ‘How old is this Emil Sarotzini?’

  ‘I don’t know – late fifties, early sixties, perhaps.’

  Fergus shook his head. ‘There’s no connection, other than perhaps the name.’

  ‘What is it with the name?’

  He tapped ash off his cigarette, looking thoughtful. ‘There was a strange character back in the twenties with that name. All kinds of rumours about him at the time. That he was into black magic, satanism – he was tied up with Aleister Crowley, part of that lot.’ Fergus smiled. ‘It was all a long time back in the past. He’s been dead for decades. Your banker friend, presumably, is very much alive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He turned the conversation back to his book, and Susan let the subject of Mr Sarotzini drop. There was one chapter they still did not agree on: Susan wanted it out, he wanted to keep it in.

  Half an hour later they rose from the table, and a waitress helped them on with their coats. They paid no attention to the man at the table nearby who had been eating lunch on his own, his face buried in a paperback. He had already paid his bill and now he stood up. Casually, as if he had all the time in the world, he followed them out of the door.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The grass, coated with the white January frost, crunched underfoot.

  The ducks saw the solitary figure approaching and, in a din of quacking, paddled urgently over to his side of the pond. He was as certain to them as any of the landmarks of their world, this man in his crêpe-soled black shoes, his dog-tooth greatcoat and black cassock, his small leather satchel slung from his shoulder, the Venerable Doctor Euan Freer.

  He removed a woollen glove, dug a handful of mixed corn from inside the satchel and scattered it on the ground at the water’s edge, gently chiding the ducks as they trampled each other in their greed. ‘Hey, come on, calm down, there’s plenty for all of you.’ Then ritually, he counted them, checking that they’d all survived since yesterday. Twenty-two. Good.

  It was a fine morning: the tower of the Hilton Hotel and the rest of the jagged London architecture, hazy beyond the far trees, looked surreal, like another planet. There weren’t many people around yet, a few joggers, some people walking their dogs before they went to work. Freer always found innocence in the early morning, a fresh hope that lay as yet unsullied by the day ahead.