The Truth

by Peter James

  ‘A wok?’

  ‘A satellite dish. This is an Iridium, right? So it doesn’t need a satellite dish!’

  John frowned.

  ‘It sends signals digitally up to one of seventeen low-orbit satellites.’

  ‘What kind of signals?’

  ‘Anything – audio, video, e-mail. They can be picked up by anyone who has a base station, anywhere in the world. The system’s brilliant! I’ve been reading about them but this is the first one I’ve seen. I was going to suggest to you that we ought to have these ourselves – they’re really just very sophisticated mobile phones.’

  Gareth probed around further with his screwdriver, like a child with a new toy, scarcely aware of his partner’s silence.

  An hour and a half later, when John arrived home, the protective haze of alcohol was wearing off, and he was now very frightened. If Mr Sarotzini was behind this bugging of their house he would have known everything that was going on. Had Harvey noticed something in his examination of Susan that he wasn’t supposed to have seen? But what? And if he had noticed anything untoward, why hadn’t he told them then and there?

  Fergus had died the night after he had been to see Susan and had put all the occult thoughts in her head. Why? Had he angered Mr Sarotzini – or frightened him? And now Susan had disappeared. Maybe she had gone into hiding. Or, which was more likely considering what he now knew, Mr Sarotzini had become concerned and kidnapped her.

  The sheet of paper on which Detective Sergeant Rice had written his phone number hung from a hook on the dresser. He pulled it down, then removed the cordless phone from its cradle. As he switched it on, the tone indicated that a message was waiting. With unsteady fingers he stabbed out the number to retrieve it.

  It was from his father-in-law in Los Angeles, and he was sounding very distressed.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Susan opened her eyes and the room was empty. There had been people all around her and now they’d gone. Or had she imagined them?

  No, they had been real. She panicked. The baby? Have I had the baby? Have they taken –?

  Bump’s hands pressed hard against the inside of her abdomen and her anxiety subsided. ‘I’m not going to let them,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve promised you, they won’t take you, Bump, I’m not going –’

  The wave of pain caught her unawares – it happened so fast she didn’t even feel it coming. Oh, sweet Jesus. She gritted her teeth, determined not to shriek. She was going to ride this one out, oh, Christ, oh, you bastard, oh, you, shitcreepfuckyoufuckyoufuckyou pain, oh, no, please, please, please stop.

  NOW!

  STOP!

  She was gasping for air; she could taste amalgam in her mouth, and blood; tears were streaming down her face. But the pain had STOPPED!

  And the room was empty. There was no one in it. Nothing! Just medical apparatus, shelves stacked with boxes of hypodermics, vials, surgical gloves, disposable wipes.

  She tried to swing herself off this bed – this thing, this trolley – she was on, but her legs wouldn’t work, the signals from her brain didn’t seem to be reaching them. She pulled at the edge of the trolley with her hands, hauled herself painfully over to her left. For an instant she was aware of air beneath her, then she was toppling, head first. She flung out one arm to brace herself and the other she curled protectively around her abdomen as she crashed, with a cry of shock, on to the hard terrazzo-tiled floor.

  Her left arm was suspended awkwardly in the air above her face, and she thought for a moment she had broken it. Then she realised that the drip line was holding her like a foul-hooked fish.

  She ripped the line out of the cannula, then put both her hands on her abdomen to check on the baby. Bump was moving around, he was fine. Relieved, she crawled on to her knees and, holding the edge of the trolley, hauled herself up. But as soon as she let go, her legs gave way and she crashed back to the floor. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered to Bump. ‘I’m sorry.’ Desperately, she started crawling on her hands and knees towards the door. ‘Get you out of here, Bump, going to get you out of here, somehow going to get you out of here.’

  The door was closed. She grabbed the handle, pulled, and it swung open. Outside was a corridor, and a sign on the far side saying THEATER 6. People were approaching. She could hear rapid footsteps and a trundling sound. Before she had time to close the door, two orderlies wheeled someone past on a gurney but they didn’t see her.

  She made a determined effort once more to get up. This time her legs held, just. She gripped the side of the trolley for several seconds, until she felt confident enough to let go. Her heart was thrashing, or maybe it was the baby’s heart, she didn’t know. She was only thinking about one thing, and that was getting out of here.

  Then she saw that all she was wearing was a hospital gown, and that she was barefoot.

  How long have I been here?

  She looked at her wrist, but her watch had been removed. Across the corridor was an observation window into Theater 6. Checking the corridor both ways, she padded unsteadily over to it, praying for her legs to hold. The clock on the wall said two twenty.

  Confused, her brain leapt between time zones, trying to figure it out. It had been around four in the morning that she’d got here, and now it was two twenty? It must be afternoon now, she reasoned, unless she’d been here even longer than that.

  Another wave of pain was starting. And voices were approaching. She looked, frantically, for an escape route. The corridor stretched into the distance in both directions with operating theatres all the way down. She ran, stumbling and swaying, in the opposite direction to the voices. The pain was worsening, but she didn’t care, she had to fight it. She ran past a window where an operation was in progress, glimpsed a sea of green cloth, bright yellow light, a patch of bare human flesh.

  Crossing a junction, she saw a door marked CHANGING ROOM, and burst in through it. To her relief it was empty. There were racks of surgical gowns, open lockers filled with white clogs, and several suit jackets hanging on pegs. Then, before she could do anything, a blowtorch fired up inside her.

  Stifling a cry, Susan sank, doubled up and drooling, on to a bench. Don’tscreamnotgoingtoscream. Teeth grinding, eyes bulging, nails digging into her palms, she fought back. Her insides were on fire, and the flame of the blowtorch was being turned up stronger and stronger. The pain was going to win this bout, she was swaying, she was going to black out.

  Got to keep conscious.

  The floor rose towards her.

  She pushed it back.

  Her head was spinning, trying to detach itself, to free itself from this agony. She clung to a gown hanging from a peg, held on to it grimly with all the strength that remained to her and somehow, she didn’t know how, but somehow she rode this beast out until it sank back into its lair, the flame flickered, receded, went out.

  Susan staggered to her feet, feeling giddy as hell. Going to faint. Not going to faint.

  A rack of gowns came towards her and she pushed herself away. Head between legs to stop fainting, she remembered, and she tried to do it but the baby was in the way. She took several more deep breaths, which helped. She was going to be all right, she was getting stronger again.

  She grabbed a gown, pulled it on, tied the tapes, then pushed her feet into a pair of white clogs. They were too big but it didn’t matter. She took a mask out of a dispenser, pulled it over her nose and mouth, fumbled with the tapes. Then, from another dispenser, she took a hat that was like an elasticised J-cloth, and dragged it over her hair.

  She looked in the mirror, and a sickly-looking nurse stared back. Good. Throwing a nervous glance at the door, she checked through the jackets that were hanging up, patting them for bulges. In the breast pocket of the fourth she found what she was looking for: a cellular phone.

  The power button lit up when she pressed it, and there was a reassuring beep. And the door opened.

  Susan froze.

  Two men in suits came in, doctors, she presumed. They were
deep in conversation; one gave her a cursory nod, the other didn’t even glance at her. She slipped out past them into the corridor, and as she did so she saw a group of people walking towards the room from which she had fled.

  She turned and hurried away in the opposite direction, her feet slipping around clumsily inside the clogs. There was a FIRE EXIT sign ahead, down at the far end. She broke into a stumbling run, reached the door, pushed down the bar. It opened.

  She was outside.

  It was daylight, and a light drizzle was falling. She was at the back of the clinic somewhere, in a service area. Steam rose from a vent in a low, one-storey building ahead that looked like an annex.

  There were windows above her, and Susan pressed herself hard against the wall so that she couldn’t be seen from them. Then, holding up the phone, she tried to dial 911. But her fingers were shaking too much, and the wrong digits appeared on the display. She lost valuable seconds finding the Clear button, wiping the display and redialling.

  As she was about to hit the Send button, out of the corner of her eyes she saw someone emerge from a door at the far side of the courtyard. It was a nurse in uniform. She looked across at Susan, smiled, then took something from her pocket, and Susan relaxed as she saw what it was: cigarettes. The nurse lit up.

  Susan turned and walked away, trying to look nonchalant, as if she’d just finished a cigarette herself, and skirted around the side of the building, trying to remember, from all her previous visits to Casey, the geography around here. The terrain. There was the long driveway down to the main road, a quarter of a mile or so. No other road, just the shrubbery of the canyon, and miles of arid scrubland beyond.

  She pulled at the two-inch base of the aerial, trying to extend it, but the top was broken and it wouldn’t come out any further; then she pressed the Send button, brought the phone to her ear, and moments later heard the voice of the emergency operator.

  ‘Police,’ Susan said. ‘Quickly, please.’

  There were shouts right behind her, and she turned in alarm to see two men sprinting towards her. A third person, this one dressed in surgical scrubs, burst out of a door behind them, and stared venomously straight at her, before racing after the others, towards her.

  Susan kicked her feet out of the clogs and stumbled into a run. After only a few paces, the pain started coming at her again, but she ignored it, increasing her speed, trampling through a flower-bed, then tripping, stubbing her toe and almost losing her balance as she blundered through a low hedge and into a rockery. Somehow she kept on her feet, put on more speed, sprinting now in spite of her huge burden, running as fast as she’d ever run in her life across prickly grass that was damp and slippery from the drizzle.

  Then she reached the tarmac of the driveway, and the footing was better. A faint voice somewhere was saying, ‘Hello? Hello? Hello, caller, are you all right?’ For a moment she couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.

  She turned her head to look behind her. The two men in suits and the one in surgical scrubs were only yards away and gaining on her. Then she yelled, breathlessly, into the receiver, ‘Please – help me, I’m, I’m at – Palisades Cypress Clinic, Orange County. Please – come – they – murder my baby.’

  She didn’t see the sleeping policeman that tripped her. She just felt an agonised jarring in her foot and then she was flying forward, helplessly, and flung her arms around her baby as she smacked face down on to the tarmac, the phone skittering out of her hand.

  She could hear the footsteps of the men behind her and, near crazed with panic, she scrambled forward, grabbed the phone and somehow got back on her feet all in one motion. The men were yards away now, at full sprint, the one in surgical scrubs out in front was going to catch her. She heard him calling out to her, his familiar, smooth, urbane voice.

  ‘Susan, stop, you must stop!’

  As Miles Van Rhoe reached her, grabbing at her shoulder, she lashed out wildly with her arm at his face and, to her shock, the aerial of the cellular phone plunged into his right eye.

  Everything seemed to go into slow motion, as if she was seeing a video in freeze-frame. Blood gouted out around her fingers, which were still gripping the phone. Van Rhoe’s surgical face mask fell away to reveal his mouth hideously twisted. Then his body began to fold in on itself, sinking to the ground. The cellular phone, grotesquely wedged in his eye socket, slipped from Susan’s grip.

  Whimpering with terror, she tried to turn but, as if she were in a nightmare, her feet would not move. She lashed out with her left fist at a second man who was trying to grab her, and punched him on the jaw. He snatched at her gown and she punched him again, sank her teeth into his wrist then twisted free. Now her legs were working – but he had her gown once more. She pulled with such force that she ripped free of it, stumbled forward and broke into a run again. There was a line of trees ahead, and then the road beyond that. She could see the road.

  It wasn’t far.

  It really wasn’t far.

  She didn’t look left or right, she just ran straight out through the white pillars, flailing her arms, screaming for help, the image of Miles Van Rhoe sinking to the ground, with the cellular phone sticking out of his eye and blood trickling down his face, blinding her to almost everything else. The road was empty. Without pausing, she turned left and started running downhill. She could hear the footsteps inches behind her; a hand grabbed her shoulder; she found another spurt of speed; the hand grabbed her shoulder again.

  She could hear a siren.

  A glint of metal appeared ahead.

  Then the most beautiful sight she had ever seen: a police patrol car rounded the bend in front of her. It screeched to a halt and before the policeman even had a chance to open his door, Susan was there, at his window, and he was smiling at her, a tubby man, with great chubby cheeks.

  It felt as if a huge lever had been pulled inside her, and everything started to shut down. She clutched the window frame as the door swung open, and then he was holding her, had his big comforting arms wrapped round her.

  And now the pain was coming again.

  She looked into the policeman’s eyes. ‘Please help me,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t let them take me back in there.’

  And then the pain erupted. She doubled up, closed her eyes and just heard the voices. They sounded faint, so faint, they could be miles away, she didn’t care, she was safe now, the baby was safe, they were both safe, she was with the police and she just had to deal with this pain, that’s all, her baby was safe, just the pain to deal with now.

  One voice said, ‘I’m sorry, Officer, this patient’s sister died last night and she’s flipped.’

  Another voice said, ‘She has a delusional personality. She’s imagining we’re going to take her baby away and use it for some kind of devil worship.’

  Then the first voice, said, calmly, ‘She’s dangerously sick – the poor young woman has a gangrenous cyst, which is giving her peritonitis, and this is causing her to hallucinate. If we don’t operate immediately we are going to lose her.’

  Then a third voice, kindly but firm, said, ‘Lady, you hear that? Can you hear me? Can you hear what I’m saying to you? You’re not at all well, and you’ve cut your hand. These kind people are going to take you back inside now. This is the best place for you to be, you just relax now, OK? If you have to be sick, this is the best place in the whole of Orange County! They’re gonna take good care of you. Real good care of you and your baby!’

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  ‘John? I appreciate you returning the call,’ Dick Corrigan said. ‘It’s –’ There was a long pause John waited, impatiently. ‘It’s – John, I don’t – know how to put this –’ he broke down in tears.

  John felt a stab of panic. ‘Dick, what is it? What’s happened?’ He looked at his watch. Ten forty. A quick calculation told him it was two forty p.m. in Los Angeles. The cushion against reality from his two pints of Dead Pig an hour or so earlier was fast wearing off.

  ‘John �
�� ah – we’ve –’ His father-in-law was fighting to control his voice.

  John, waited, trying to give him space. He had always liked the man, partly because he reminded him of one of his early screen idols, Henry Fonda. Dick Corrigan had the same build, the same quiet dignity, and John felt genuinely sad that success had never happened for him.

  ‘I’m afraid something real bad’s happened, John. I – I – oh God …’ Dick Corrigan began to sob.

  John went cold. Oh, Christ, what the hell was it? Nothing to Susan, please not, please don’t let anything have happened to her. ‘Dick, what? What’s happened?’ he asked, urgently.

  ‘I – I’m sorry, this is –’ There was another long silence. ‘Casey –’ Dick said, getting her name out with difficulty. ‘Casey’s died.’

  It took a moment to sink in. The room seemed to darken around him. ‘Casey?’ It was the last thing he had expected to hear. ‘Oh, God,’ John said. ‘I’m sorry, Dick, I’m really sorry.’ But inwardly, although shocked, he felt an enormous sense of relief – that it wasn’t bad news about Susan. He tried to mask this in his voice. ‘What happened?’

  There was another long silence. Then Dick Corrigan said, ‘Susan killed her.’

  John almost dropped the cordless phone. There was a terrifying baldness in the statement that sent a slick of goosebumps coursing up his spine. ‘What? What did you say, Dick? What do you mean?’

  ‘It – was her air line. Susan – did something – a connector – she separated a connector – I – oh, God, John, what’s happening?’

  He was sobbing again.

  A maelstrom of thoughts swirled through John’s head. The Vörn Bank owned the clinic. Was this something to do with Mr Sarotzini? Some trick? ‘Susan was in England. She couldn’t –’

  His father-in-law composed himself. ‘John, I wasn’t straight with you – last night when you rang. I told you Susan wasn’t here. Well, she was here. She – ah – she’d begged me and Gayle not to –’

  ‘She’s with you? Susan’s with you? She’s in LA?’ John paced restlessly around the room. He sat on the edge of the kitchen table, stood up again, crossed the room, leant against the sink, then turned, stared at the window, at his stricken, ghostly reflection. ‘You say she’s with you?’