The Truth

by Peter James

  He was thinking, One day, you and I, one day.

  And she was thinking, You have a gorgeous wife you adore, and three beautiful children you adore, and what chance do I have? And, anyway, even though you look gorgeous, you’re a terrible flirt, and would I really want that situation?

  And the answer, which she didn’t want to hear, and kept slamming away in a tiling cabinet in her brain, was Yes, yes, I do, and maybe, who knows, one day? But not now. His agenda was full. And the day ahead was full.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said.

  ‘Hi, gorgeous. How’s the diary?’

  She turned it round for him to read. He glanced at the date, Thursday, 11 January, then scanned the entries. ‘Four thirty, Susan Carter, that’s John Carter’s wife.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Look after her when she arrives – give her some tea or something if I’m running behind.’

  ‘Of course.’ She told him the urgent messages, and reminded him of a patient who was due to go into labour that night. She told him the BBC had rung, wanting to set up another meeting about the new series proposal they’d put to him. And then, giving him a rather odd look, she said, ‘There’s a man waiting to see you – a Mr Kündz?’

  He frowned. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought he must be someone you knew. He seems to know you. I told him you never saw anyone without an appointment, but he’s absolutely adamant that he must see you.’

  ‘Is he a rep?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘So who is he? He’s not the pervert who wrote to us wanting to buy all our used surgical gloves?’

  Sarah shook her head with a smile. ‘He said something like you’d understand the importance when you met him.’

  Harvey lowered his voice and tapped his head. ‘A nutter?’

  She gave a your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine shrug.

  He felt uneasy, suddenly. Who was Kündz? A private detective? Someone from the Medical Complaints Board? He hung up his coat. ‘You’d better get me Sally Hurworth. Did she say when the bleeding started?’

  ‘She noticed it when she woke up this morning.’

  He opened his office door.

  ‘Are you going to see this Mr Kündz?’ she asked. ‘Or shall I get rid of him?’

  He thought for a moment, edgy about who this man was, and remembered the many skeletons in his closet. ‘I’ll give him two minutes. But not yet. Let me make these calls. Anyone else waiting?’

  ‘No, your first appointment’s late.’

  Five minutes later, Harvey Addison sat behind his elegant antique desk and watched the tall, powerfully built, unsmiling man come in and close the door behind him. The man was wearing a Burberry trench coat over a shiny suit, a roll-neck sweater, expensive, rather flashy black shoes, and had a leather carrying case slung over his shoulder. He didn’t look like a rep or a private detective. Harvey Addison wasn’t sure what he looked like – he was built like an American footballer, but he had an air of menace, not of a sportsman.

  ‘Mr Kündz, how can I help you?’

  Kündz sat down in front of the impressive desk and lowered his bag to the floor. He looked at the obstetrician silently, and then said, in his perfect English accent but with clumsy grammar, ‘Mr Addison, are you a man who is familiar with the work of Thomas à Kempis who died in fourteen seventy-one?’

  Harvey Addison was not and he told Kündz this, deciding that the man clearly was a nutter, but he was still wary of him. He had an intensity about him which, combined with his physique, gave him the scary, unpredictable air of a fanatic.

  Kündz responded, ‘Thomas à Kempis sad: “It is much safer to obey than to rule.” ’

  This was also the Eleventh Truth, but Kündz decided that Harvey Addison did not need to know this.

  Addison had no idea where this man was coming from, and he was regretting having agreed to see him. And then Kündz made him feel a whole lot more uneasy: ‘Mr Addison, I am of the certain knowledge that you are a busy man. If you agree to do what I ask of you, you will never see me again, you will never hear from me again, I will get out of your face. But if you are not prepared to agree, I will destroy your life. Do we understand each other?’

  Addison wondered whether the man was armed, whether to buzz Sarah and get her to call the police, or dial them himself. ‘No,’ he said, trying to keep his cool. ‘I don’t think I understand you at all.’

  Kündz unzipped one side of his shoulder bag and produced an envelope from which he pulled out several large photographs; he laid them in a line on the obstetrician’s desk. The photographs were of the same woman and children who were smiling out from the silver frames on this desk, but just in case Harvey Addison had any problem with their identification, Kündz spelled it out for him. ‘This is your wife, Julia, and this is your son, Adam. This one is your elder daughter, Jessica, and this one here, the girl on the bicycle, is your younger daughter, Lucy.’

  The obstetrician stared in nervous silence at the pictures. His wife and the children all had suntans, so these must have been taken within the last few days. Briefly anger overcame his fear of the man. Threaten my family, he thought, lift one finger to harm any of my family, and you are a dead man, Mr Kündz.

  Kündz picked up the photograph of Harvey Addison’s son. ‘Adam,’ he said. ‘It was his fifth birthday on Sunday, you had a Punch and Judy man come to your house at fourteen Curlew Gardens, Adam was sick afterwards and you told him he was silly to have eaten so much. He has a peanut allergy. Just one nut could kill him, that is correct?’

  But before Harvey Addison had a chance to speak, Kündz continued, ‘Your daughter Jessica, who is seven, kept you awake last night, because she was scared of the thunderstorm. At three fifteen she came into bed with you and your wife. You told her a story about a sheep called Boris.’

  Good, Kündz thought, he could smell fear starting to rise from the man, which always made him feel comfortable. He could smell anger too, but it was nothing compared to fear.

  ‘What the hell is all this about, Mr Kündz? Spying on me and on my family. What game do you think you’re playing?’

  Kündz ignored the questions. ‘Mr Addison, you have a code of client confidentiality in your profession, the Hippocratic Oath. You cannot discuss a patient, but I have to ask you to break this confidentiality. She is not a patient yet, and she will not become one until you have reached this afternoon, so we’ll talk about her.’

  Harvey Addison was finding this man’s tortuous way of speaking a little hard to navigate. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Her name is Susan Carter. There is something that is very important for you to understand about this situation before you see her.’

  Addison’s voice became brittle: he was close to exploding. ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Susan Carter is pregnant, but John Carter is not the father. She is acting as a surrogate mother in exchange for a large amount of money, I imagine you are not aware of this.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘She has an ovarian cyst which, from time to time, is twisting and this is causing the pains. If she were a normal patient, and these were normal circumstances, Mr Van Rhoe would have operated to remove this cyst.’

  The surprise of this information helped Harvey Addison to contain himself. ‘What do you mean by a normal patient? And what is this rubbish about her being a surrogate mother?’

  ‘You will have to accept my word for it, Mr Addison, Susan Carter is a very special patient. As you know, such an operation carries a risk of the mother aborting. Mr Van Rhoe is not in a position to take that risk.’

  ‘I can’t comment about a patient, let alone one I haven’t yet seen, Mr Kündz, but operations to remove ovarian cysts are carried out frequently on pregnant women with only minimal risk to the foetus.’

  ‘I am instructed that it is not merely the risk of spontaneous aborting. There is unquantifiable damage that may be inflicted by the anaesthetics on the baby’s developing bra
in.’

  ‘With respect, Mr Kündz, I don’t know where you are getting your information from but that is ludicrous.’

  ‘I have not paid this visit to argue with you. These are not my instructions. I wish to remind you of the words of Tomas à Kempis. “It is much safer to obey than to rule.” ’

  ‘Mr Kündz, I’m going to call the police.’

  Kündz smiled. ‘Mr Addison, I am not in any way of the opinion that this is your best option. You have a more important phone call to make. You need to phone Adam’s school. The packed lunch your wife has given Adam. Something has happened to this lunch, a terrible error. Somehow, Mr Addison, your little son, Adam, who has this allergy to peanuts that can kill him in minutes, somehow Adam has peanut-butter sandwiches in his packed lunch.’

  Harvey Addison thought about his son, with his flop of blond hair, permanent grin, and passion for bringing insects into the house. Adam, whom he had kissed goodbye not much more than an hour ago. He stared at the man sitting in front of him and wanted to hurt him. He felt a loathing for this man that was cracking the concrete edifice of his emotional dam.

  Kündz watched Harvey Addison’s knuckles clench and whiten. He could read the obstetrician’s mind clearly: the man was deciding whether to assault him with his bare hands, but he was afraid of him. He thought about it too long, the moment for spontaneity passed, his anger was dissolving into fear for his child.

  And now Kündz could really breathe in this man’s fear: it was so strong, the atmosphere in this room was thick with it – not such a good perfume as the scents of Susan Carter but it had its own attraction.

  Harvey Addison reached for his phone, but Kündz’s hand was already there. ‘Mr Addison, you have plenty of time. Adam is in class, doing a geography project, all about the Serengheti – you have visited the Serengheti?’

  ‘Bugger the Serengheti.’

  ‘You should know things about the Serengheti, Mr Addison. Adam may come home from school tonight and ask you questions. It is worth visiting, I can assure you. It has many insect species that would interest Adam. But you must take care with the time of year. To see the wildebeest on the move, their annual migration, that is something you should not overlook, Mr Addison. But you are right, we should not digress. For the moment, Adam: when he finishes this class, he has gym. Then he will have his shower and it is not until after his shower that he will open his lunch box. At a quarter to one. You have three and a half hours to save his life, Mr Addison, and I’m offering you such a simple deal. You save the life of Susan Carter’s baby, and I will help you save your son Adam’s life.’

  In the silence that followed, Kündz soaked up the smell, he bathed in it, he was becoming energised by it, and always, when this happened, his thoughts turned to Mr Sarotzini. He felt such gratitude towards Mr Sarotzini, such incredible gratitude.

  ‘And what are you expecting me to do to save the life of Susan Carter’s baby?’

  ‘Nothing, Mr Addison.’ Kündz smiled. ‘That’s the beauty of it. It is so simple. You have to do nothing. You take an ultrasound scan, you tell Mr and Mrs Carter that the cyst is small, it is tiny, and these pains, they may be bad when they happen, but they are not serious, it is no worse than an insect bite. That is all you have to do, it is so simple.’

  ‘And if I’m not happy with the scan, you expect me to shut up and live with this on my conscience?’

  Kündz pulled a portable video player from his leather bag, switched it on, pushed in a tape, and turned the screen towards Addison.

  When the tape stabilised, it showed a woman in her late twenties, lying on the couch in this room. A man, half undressed, was lowering his head between her legs. The date, displayed at the top of the screen said, Tuesday, 9 January.

  Kündz let the tape run on, glancing every few seconds at the obstetrician, who was watching the screen stonily.

  Eventually the man changed his position, preparing to mount the woman: the camera now showed a perfect side profile of Harvey Addison.

  Kündz said, ‘This lady is a patient of yours, her name is Charlotte Harper. Her husband is the cardiologist Kieran Harper. Also he is one of your oldest friends – you were his best man at their wedding. I am not of any opinion that your conscience affects you too much, Mr Addison.’ He switched off the machine and waited. It was some moments before Harvey Addison lifted his eyes from the blank screen and looked, like a stricken animal, at Kündz.

  ‘I have further instructions to relay to you, Mr Addison. If you do not allay Mr and Mrs Carter’s fears totally this afternoon, there will be consequences for the rest of your family that I shall be unable to prevent. Your daughter Lucy, who is so pretty, will be so disfigured by acid you will not recognise her, your daughter Jessica will lose both her eyes, and your wife Caroline will be paralysed from the neck down.’

  Kündz replaced the video player in the carrying case, along with the photographs, and stood up. ‘I will remind you one more time to think about the words of Thomas a Kempis. I am not waiting for your answer. We will know that at half past four this afternoon.’

  And then, as Kündz reached the door, he turned and added, ‘Don’t forget to telephone the school. Please have a nice day.’

  Chapter Forty-one

  John arrived home late to collect Susan for her appointment with Harvey Addison. He was in a foul mood. And it was a foul afternoon, January at its worst, four p.m. and it was almost dark, rain drumming on the fabric roof of the car, great fat sheets of it bursting out of puddles and slapping the windscreen like sea against a breakwater.

  As he drove through the clogged London traffic, Susan sat beside him, the A–Z open on her knees, deciding it was best not to speak, just to let him concentrate and hopefully calm down.

  Her silence irritated him, and she had the radio tuned to some classical music that irritated him even more. It was really depressing stuff, a violin that sounded like a rusty swing-door. He switched to Virgin and turned up the volume on a track of techno rock. Then he glanced at Susan. If she told him that Bump had been enjoying the music he would brain her. But she didn’t say anything.

  For several minutes he drove on in silence, then said, ‘You took the pram back to Mothercare?’

  Susan said nothing.

  There was an advert on the radio now. He turned down the volume. ‘You took the pram back?’ he repeated, accelerating hard. ‘Keep an eye open for the turning, I always miss it. Arthur Street, immediately after Vane Place.’

  ‘Vane Place,’ she said, peering down at the A-Z, then at the street names on their left. ‘I’m taking it tomorrow – it’s been raining like this all day.’

  ‘Have you phoned them?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mothercare.’

  ‘This is it, next left, slow down, you’re going to miss it. Slow down!’ she said.

  They did miss it.

  As he held the ultrasound scanner to Susan’s abdomen, Harvey Addison couldn’t believe what he was looking at. This thing on the screen, which was angled away, thank God, from Susan and John Carter, was the size of a grapefruit.

  It could be a dermoid cyst, a benign teratoma, which was a semi-solid mass of skin, hair, teeth, lungs, or it could be a compound malignant ovarian cancer. There was no way to tell without a biopsy, and that required an operation. And Susan Carter could not have an operation.

  He could see why she was getting these attacks of pain. It had been twisting round on itself and untwisting. The pain came from the twisting motion. Although agonising, this in itself was not harmful. The danger would be if it seized up in a twisted state, because all the blood vessels supplying it would become blocked. Then it could undergo ischaemic necrosis, and turn gangrenous. He tuned the machine to make the image more fuzzy than it need be.

  John came over and peered at the screen ‘What can you see?’ he asked.

  The obstetrician knew that John wouldn’t know what he was looking at. ‘Nothing,’ he said, more loudly than he normally spoke, for the ben
efit of Kündz’s unseen microphone. ‘It’s too small to see. It must be a tiny cyst. It’s quite amazing how painful they can be sometimes.’

  He switched off the machine, absently telling Susan that she could put her blouse back on, deep in thought about what might happen to her.

  It could be malignant, in which case if it wasn’t removed it would kill her. It might turn gangrenous, and there were clear danger signs that that could be happening, in which case she would lose the baby and die of chemical peritonitis if she wasn’t hospitalised. Or it might be benign. It might stay as it was, continuing to twist, giving her continual dull pain, and the occasional acute pain that hurt like hell.

  Today was 11 January. The baby was due 26 April. If she could cope with the pain for another two months, then perhaps he could persuade this madman, Kündz, that they should go for a Caesarean. It would be eight months then, just a month premature; its chances of survival would be good. But two months of this pain? It was inhuman to put her through that.

  He wanted desperately to find a way of asking John and Susan the truth about the baby. Was she really having a surrogate child? It seemed unbelievable, but he dared not say anything now. He would ask John quietly some time soon, when they were alone together.

  He also wanted to know what Miles Van Rhoe’s position was. There was no way he could have failed to diagnose exactly the same thing as himself. Did Kündz have a hold on him, too?

  Harvey Addison felt a deep sense of outrage. This was criminal. All his medical training and experience was telling him that this cyst had to come out. His eyes shot up to the ceiling. He’d spent his lunch break searching for the hidden camera, for a microphone, and he had found nothing.

  He was scared out of his wits.

  The peanut-butter sandwich had been in Adam’s lunch box. And Caroline couldn’t believe it when he’d phoned and told her that Adam had a peanut-butter sandwich in his lunch box. She’d told him there was no way it could have come from their home, she kept no peanut butter or any peanut-based products in the house, she was scrupulously careful about it.