The Truth

by Peter James

  She exited the freeway at Venice and it was only a couple of miles now. Just a couple of miles and she’d be home. London was a long way away, another planet. Maybe it had all been a bad dream, and London didn’t really exist, or maybe it did, but in a parallel universe and, in another parallel universe, Fergus Donleavy was still alive.

  This was her reality now, here. She wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. Bump was real. This was her one certainty. Bump was the most real thing ever, in her entire life.

  And, in just a few minutes now, they’d be home and safe.

  And now she had to figure out what she still had not yet figured out. Which was what the hell she was going to tell her parents.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Computers talk to each other, they shake hands down telephone lines and across radio waves, they trade digital data.

  This concept, excited Kündz, this world he could not see that went on inside boxes. It had the magic of telepathy, but it was more focused, so much more precise, so much easier to use.

  He found it incredible.

  Three computers were talking to each other now – it was like a conference call. One was a circuit board in a tiny metal box clipped to the underside of Archie Warren’s Aston Martin; one was inside a satellite orbiting the Earth; and the third was located in the rack of computers that lined one wall of Kündz’s windowless monitoring room in his attic flat.

  This computer here, right in front of him, was not happy. It switched on a warning light and an audible alarm. Archie Warren’s Aston Martin had deviated from its normal route after squash on a Tuesday night. It should be heading home, but it wasn’t. It was going in the opposite direction. It was going back towards the offices of Loeb-Goldsmid-Saxon.

  The tyres squealed as Archie pulled into the entrance of the underground car park. He did this deliberately, to impress the night-security man; with this Aston Archie was like a big kid showing off his toy.

  The night-security man, whose badge bore the name Ron Wicks, nodded at him from behind his glass window. Ron Wicks saw a fat prick in a flashy motor. He didn’t know it was an Aston Martin, he wasn’t interested in cars, he couldn’t tell an Aston Martin from a Toyota, he didn’t give a shit about them.

  The only thing Ron Wicks cared about was whether his wife, Min, whose breast cancer had spread, would live to see their first grandchild born in three months’ time, because that was what Min desperately wanted. There was nothing unusual about an employee arriving at nine thirty p.m. This company traded around the clock with the world; people were coming and going all the time in their flash cars and their flash suits.

  Archie, driven by curiosity and by a desire to help John, who had seemed genuinely worried, rode the twenty storeys in the bronze elevator. Something was going on with John Carter and this deal with the Vörn Bank that was chewing him to pieces. Archie had repeatedly questioned his friend, but John had not been forthcoming. The only thing Archie could come up with was that the bank might have links with organised crime, and that John might be under some pressure over repayments – or at least something like that. But why wouldn’t John tell him that?

  The elevator doors opened and he stepped out into a dark corridor. Almost instantly, the lights came on. They were on a sensor that worked off human body heat, switching on when people came into a room and off when they departed.

  The dealing room where he worked was deserted. As he opened the door the lights came on with just the faintest click. The cleaning people had already been: the detritus of the day was gone, no half-empty coffee cups and soft-drink cans littered the desks, it all looked pristine and reeked, squeaky clean, of polish. Only the computers were awake, the screens glowing different colours. Flying toasters drifted across one, tropical goldfish swam across another.

  Archie sat at his desk and, out of habit, because it was like a drug from which he could not break free, he logged on, and quickly looked at the US government bonds page to check there had been no drastic movements of the Dow Jones. He also checked the Japanese Futures in Chicago. No movements worth noting since he’d left the office, he was relieved to see, and he hoped it would stay that way until five tomorrow morning, when his trading day began.

  Glancing furtively at the door, he slipped from his desk to the one alongside it, belonging to Oliver Walton. The chair, although the same as his own, felt quite different, and the keyboard, also identical, felt lighter. He entered the log-in command, and when asked for his user name, he typed, using the house style of the company, the man’s initial followed by his surname: owalton.

  The computer then requested his password, and Archie had no problem with this: he’d watched Oliver Walton’s fingers countless times as he logged on, knew exactly which keys he touched and in which sequence. It had never occurred to him before that there was any point in knowing Oliver Walton’s password, but now this little titbit came good.

  He typed: verity.

  And then he wondered, Why verity? But he didn’t dwell on it. He was now into Oliver Walton’s system. He studied the screen carefully, trying to orient himself with the layout, which was pretty much the same as on his own computer, the standard software package that all employees used. Vertical columns of icons. A row of analogue clock faces horizontally along the top of the screen, covering key time zones across the globe. An organiser on the left of the screen displaying a list of priorities for tomorrow.

  He tried a quick scan through Walton’s file headings then, after glancing warily around once more, typed in a search command for the name, Vörn Bank, and pressed the return key.

  Moments later a list of what appeared to be file headings appeared but, to his surprise, they were in a language he could not identify, perhaps Greek, he thought, trying to recall any Greek texts he might have seen in his schooldays. He looked for familiar letters, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Omega, but there were none. Maybe it was a code, except it didn’t look like one.

  He moved the egg-timer cursor to the top line and double-clicked on it. There was a brief pause and then the screen filled with data, a mass of numbers, letters, symbols, all completely unintelligible. He laboriously opened each of the other file headings in turn, which all appeared to be encrypted in this same code.

  Glancing anxiously at his watch, he knew Pila was going to be livid with him for being so late, but he couldn’t help that. He turned his attention back to the screen, clicking on each of the icons in turn, in the hope of discovering a program that would translate the code, but without luck.

  Computers had never been his forte; there might be something simple that he needed to do, and maybe if he spoke to John and described the code, he’d be able to tell him what it was. He reached for the phone, then hesitated, thinking about the time again, and had a better idea.

  He started a new file, then opened the first heading and saved the contents off into the new file. Then he copied this file across to one of his own private files, deleted all traces from Walton’s screen of what he had done, and logged off.

  Sitting back at his own desk, Archie hastily typed out an e-mail to John, attaching the file. He sent it, then logged off, and phoned Pila to tell her he’d be over to pick her up in twenty minutes. She yelled a torrent of abuse at him.

  ‘Hey! Calm down.’

  ‘Calm down? Me – why I calm down? You say half past eight you gone be home. I cook the dinner ready for half past eight – you know the time is now? Huh? Ten o’clock.’

  ‘I’ve been in hospital. Emergency.’

  ‘’Ospital?’ Her whole tone changed. ‘No, oh, no, darling, what happened?’

  ‘I had emergency surgery to have my nipple reattached.’

  There was a moment of silence. For an instant she sounded shocked. ‘No, you –’ Then she cottoned on. ‘You bassard! You make me all worried!’

  ‘I’ll be home in twenty minutes. Get your clothes off!’

  ‘No sex!’ she said. ‘Food!’

  As he walked back down the corridor to th
e elevators, with a big grin on his face, he didn’t notice that the lights in the dealing room had stayed on. They should have switched off automatically but they hadn’t, because someone else had entered the room, from another door.

  Oliver Walton sat down at his desk, and typed a command on his keyboard for a log trace. It took him less than a minute to find what he was looking for. Then he punched out a number on his phone.

  Kündz answered on the first ring. He said, ‘Yes.’ And then he said, ‘Yes,’ again. He flipped open the lid of the gold Dunhill cigarette lighter he was holding, heard the hiss of escaping gas, then closed the lid and replaced the receiver. He stared at the lighter. The gold casing had a gridded pattern so it was not smooth, it was like frosted glass. The reflection was just shadow, a blur. He flicked open the lid, then closed it again. He liked this action: it was so well engineered, this lighter, it was a real pleasure to open and close the lid.

  He telephoned Mr Sarotzini at his home number in Switzerland. ‘I need your energy for a communication,’ he said.

  ‘This is early, Stefan. I was not expecting your call until tomorrow morning.’

  ‘This is a different situation, an emergency.’

  ‘You need my energy now and you need it again tomorrow morning? You are not leaving me much time to recover my strength.’

  ‘This is necessary,’ Kündz said.

  ‘You have in your hand a personal object?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. I am with you now. Can you feel me?’

  ‘I can feel you.’

  And he could, he really could. Kündz concentrated hard and, after only a few moments, he felt the connection between the two of them increasing, getting stronger and stronger until it felt as if Mr Sarotzini had slipped out of his own body and into Kündz’s.

  ‘Now tune in the object, be gentle with it, let it speak,’ Mr Sarotzini said.

  Kündz did as he was told. He held the lighter gently, cradling it in the palm of his massive hand, and allowed the feelings, the imprint, the vibrations, the memories of this lighter’s owner to pour out into his hand. He felt the tiny pulses spread out and upwards through his body. He was a modem now. He was shaking hands with this lighter’s owner across the airwaves, they were finding a matching vibration level between them … now they were connecting … they were exchanging signals. Yes … good … this was good … the image was forming.

  Kündz saw an underground car park. A man who needed to lose weight was walking across it. He could smell cigarettes on this man. The car park was almost empty, just six cars. One was a red convertible, and this man had almost reached it.

  Kündz opened the lid of the cigarette lighter with a sharp flick, and heard the click. He shut it again, click. Then he opened it again. Shut it again. Each time a satisfying click. Mechanical excellence.

  He could feel every atom in its owner’s body.

  Archie opened the door of his Aston Martin, clambered in, closed it. It shut with a solid thud. It was a hand-made door, hand-fitted, it was beautifully engineered. As he turned the ignition key, there was a click as the electrics came on. And there was another click as the CD powered up. And there was another click, but this was distant, faint, so faint, so deep inside his head that Archie barely noticed it.

  The engine rumbled into life, and it sounded like an orchestra. Archie, the conductor, blipped the accelerator. The tremor of power rocked the Aston Martin and the music of the exhausts filled the car park.

  Archie pressed his left foot down on the clutch, but nothing happened. Puzzled, he tried again. The signal travelled from his brain to his foot, but his foot did not respond. He tried a third time, and still no success.

  Gone to sleep, he thought. It’s gone numb.

  He tried to shift position in his seat, but now his arms wouldn’t do what he told them either. This was freaky. He saw the rev counter hovering around the thousand mark, dipping and rising. He could hear the rumble of the engine, the boom of the exhaust, and he had his sense of smell, no problem with that, he could smell the rich aroma of the Connolly hide leather interior.

  He heard another strange click inside his head, much louder than before.

  Someone was tapping on the window. Archie wanted to look round, he knew he must look round, but he couldn’t, his head wouldn’t rotate.

  A voice – Archie didn’t recognise it, it might be the car park attendant. The voice was shouting, ‘Oi? Oi? Hello in there, hello?’

  Archie wondered if the man wanted a light.

  At half past eleven, the phone rang. John, sitting downstairs in front of the television, snatched up the receiver, hoping it was Susan – it must be Susan, please be Susan.

  It was Pila. She sounded worried, angry, hurt, and a little drunk.

  ‘Hello, John,’ she said. ‘Look I’s worried, I sorry it’s late but I’s really worried. Archie say he was playing squash with you tonight.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘He telephone me, I don’ know, hour and half ago, he was gone be here in twenty minutes. I try ringing him, no answer his home, his mobile, his office. Where he gone?’

  John told her the truth, that he had left Archie at the club at nine o’clock. But he wasn’t going to tell her that Archie had half a dozen girlfriends on the side at any one time, and might well have stopped off for a quick bonk on the way home.

  And he decided not to tell her that Susan wasn’t here, because he didn’t want this crazy Spanish wildcat jumping to conclusions about Archie and Susan having run off together. He told her not to worry, Archie would turn up, and that if she was really worried she could try the police stations and the hospitals, just in case he’d had an accident.

  After he’d hung up, he poured himself a brandy and finally broke open the pack of cigarettes he’d had in his briefcase for two months.

  Susan had packed and gone somewhere. Now Archie had disappeared.

  For a wild moment his brain connected the two of them, but he instantly dismissed it. If they were running off together tonight, Archie would hardly have played squash with him first. In any case, Archie was genuinely fond of Pila, far more fond of her than John could remember him being of any previous girlfriend.

  And Susan, nearly eight months pregnant, was not about to run off with anyone. Except Mr Sarotzini.

  Never.

  Was Archie helping Susan to hide?

  No way. He lit the cigarette and the first puff made him giddy. He took a second and that felt better: the taste was sweet, intoxicating, comforting; he felt as if he’d had a rush of adrenaline to his chest.

  Archie was not involved in this. He wasn’t devious. If Susan had asked Archie to help her, Archie would have told him. Archie was his friend, his chum, not Susan’s. Archie was off bonking somewhere, simple as that. But Susan?

  Where the hell was Susan?

  As he drew on his cigarette and drank his brandy, he ran through the list of possibilities for the hundredth time tonight.

  It was a pitifully short list.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  ‘He’s been like that for an hour,’ Ron Wicks said.

  He stood beside Archie’s Aston Martin with the two uniformed police officers, who had just arrived. The car’s engine was still running and the air was thick with exhaust fumes.

  One officer opened the door and tapped Archie on the shoulder. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘Good evening, sir?’

  Archie didn’t react. He sat, eyes open under the brightness of the dome light, staring ahead.

  ‘He’s not said anything?’ the second policeman asked.

  ‘Not a word.’

  ‘Catatonic,’ the first policeman said. ‘I’ve seen someone go like that with shock, a father at a car accident when his daughter was decapitated.’

  ‘He might have had a stroke,’ the other said. ‘Have you called an ambulance?’

  ‘No,’ Ron Wicks replied. ‘I didn’t know what I ought to do.’

  ‘I’ll call one.’ The officer spoke into his
radio.

  Archie made a strange upward flicking motion with his thumb.

  ‘You say he keeps doing this? With his thumb?’ the second policeman asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Wicks said. ‘Think he’s trying to signal to us?’

  ‘Dunno,’ the man said, frowning. ‘It’s odd. Looks more like he’s trying to light a cigarette.’

  The house sat six blocks back from Venice Beach, but it was more than just a few hundred yards of distance that separated it from the million-dollar homes hunched along the promenade.

  It was small, a humble single storey with a dormer and the warped clapboard was badly in need of the same lick of paint it had been needing for a decade. Once it had been white, now it was the colour of nicotine. Beneath the corrugated iron mail-box was a peeling strip of lettering spelling the name Corrigan.

  The vehicles parked outside were in a similar condition. Her father’s pick-up had a list to starboard, and her mother’s Corolla just looked plain sad. Anyone walking their dog along this neighbourhood could have been forgiven for thinking that a couple of hillbillies lived in here. But they’d have been wrong.

  They’d have been surprised by the back yard, with its immaculate flower-beds and its carefully pruned fruit trees, and they’d have been even more surprised by the interior, elegantly crammed with antiques, books and paintings, many of which – all those of boats and seascapes – were by Susan’s father.

  Susan lugged her blue suitcase up to the front porch, then stood, tense, and with a lump in her throat. It felt strange arriving like this, unannounced, a child fleeing home to its parents. Was she coming back to Los Angeles for good? Had her life with John been just a seven-year interlude? Her emotions were in turmoil, and she was exhausted from the flight and the time difference. It was six p.m. here in Los Angeles, two a.m. London time. The pain in her abdomen was terrible, just solid, endless, red-hot-knife pain now and all the time it felt like it was getting steadily worse.

  She still had a key in her purse, but she decided not to use it. This was not the occasion to waltz in, like some great happy surprise. Instead she pulled open the fly-screen, stepped inside the porch out of the rain, and rang the doorbell.