The Truth

by Peter James

  Mr Sarotzini pointed to the bedside table, and she saw a phone sitting on it, plugged into the socket.

  ‘We removed it for your own protection, Susan,’ he said, good-humouredly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Perhaps it is better that you do not remember. Your behaviour was – shall we say? – a little erratic yesterday.’

  ‘What do you mean, erratic?’

  He raised a hand, as if to signal the subject was closed. ‘And how is Verity this morning?’

  Startled, she asked, ‘How do you – know – her name?’

  ‘It’s a pretty name, so appropriate.’

  ‘How do you know it?’ she asked again, more insistently.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Perhaps I know you too well, Susan.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think you do, I don’t think you know me at all.’ She glanced anxiously at Verity, who was sleeping peacefully.

  Mr Sarotzini continued to smile at Susan. ‘I am so very proud of you. You are going to make a wonderful mother, I always knew you would.’

  ‘What went on last night?’ she asked, sternly. ‘Who were all those people, and what did they think they were doing – you, and all of them – coming into my room? And who was playing the music? The flute?’

  He folded his hands neatly together and gazed at Verity, with a strangely distant look in his eyes. ‘It was a little blessing ceremony for the new-born child.’

  ‘A blessing?’ she retorted, scathingly.

  He turned his head and stared at Susan. ‘My dear Susan, there is so much you are going to have to learn. There really is such a very great amount.’

  Susan stared icily back at him. ‘Mr Sarotzini, Verity is my baby. I am her mother and you need to understand that what I say counts. If you ever again want to bring your weirdo friends to a party in my room in the middle of the night, I don’t care what your reason is, you ask me first, OK?’

  Mr Sarotzini moved his focus from Susan to Verity, then back. ‘Susan, I know you’ve been dredging up the law on surrogacy and taking advice, but you don’t have to worry.’ He smiled again. ‘You really do not have to worry. I just wanted to see proof for myself that you could love this child as much as if she were a child of your very own. And you have given me that proof.’

  Susan’s thoughts went haywire. He knew? He knew that she’d been to a lawyer? How? Had John told him?

  Of course he had. John was in on this. John had told him.

  ‘I – I don’t quite know what you mean,’ she replied.

  ‘I think we can do business together, Susan, that’s what I mean. We made one deal for you to have this baby, I think we can come to another arrangement that will enable you to keep her.’

  She stared back at the aristocratic face, the silver-flecked hair, the finely tailored suit, the elegant tie, feeling astonishment – and a strong tinge of suspicion. ‘I can – keep – Verity? You’re going to let me? Keep her?’

  ‘A baby belongs with its mother, Susan.’

  ‘What about your wife?’

  He ignored the question. ‘Tell me, how much do you love Verity?’

  She gave a nervous half-laugh. ‘I – I don’t know, I can’t measure it. I love her with all my heart.’

  ‘Si parva licet componere magnis,’ Mr Sarotzini replied. ‘ “If one may measure small things by great.” Virgil.’ He looked at Verity fondly, yet with a certain distance, a remoteness. ‘Your husband? How will you deal with this problem?’

  Susan looked at him suspiciously. What exactly had he and John agreed? ‘When John sees Verity, I’m sure …’ She hesitated.

  Mr Sarotzini said, ‘If you can imagine something, then it exists.’

  She frowned, still on guard, then said, a little cynically, ‘So if I can imagine John loving Verity, he will? Just like that?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  Suddenly, Susan understood what was going on. Of course. ‘When we met in London, you told us how much you and your wife wanted a child, and that you couldn’t have one because she had had a cancer operation. Was it a boy you wanted? A son and heir? Is that why you don’t want Verity?’

  There was a long silence. She watched his face like a hawk, but instead of shiftiness, all she registered was sadness.

  ‘Susan,’ he said finally, ‘I told you a small white lie when we met.’ He fell silent again. Then he said, ‘I have no wife. I have never married.’

  The words hung in the air. They didn’t dissolve but they weren’t absorbed into Susan’s brain for a long time. She just heard them repeating, echoing, endlessly going round and round. The banker’s face was rigid, as if he were trying to shield himself from his own emotions. His eyes had become two wells of sadness.

  ‘Not married?’ she says. ‘You – you don’t – you have no wife?’

  And as she looked at him, she couldn’t help feeling sorrow for the man in spite of her shock. But with it came the growing, angry realisation that she had been conned. And confusion.

  ‘A small white lie?’ she said.

  He seemed to be ageing as they spoke. His shoulders sagged, he clenched his hands, and creases like fault lines were breaking out along his forehead. When he spoke, it was no longer the voice of a powerful, man-of-the-world international banker, but the voice of a lonely old man. ‘Susan, I – I cannot explain this easily. This is not something that will take just a few minutes.’

  ‘I’m very confused, I don’t understand what you want. What’s going on?’

  ‘Let me try to explain. You see, I am the last in the line of a very old family. We can trace our ancestry back in direct lineage for twenty-five thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ, the Great Impostor. I have a duty to pass on the baton. I cannot be the one to let this die out, to end this line, Susan. Not now, not at this time in history.’ He looked again at Verity. ‘Not when our greatest dream has finally come true.’

  ‘What baton? What dream?’

  He was quiet for a moment, and then he answered, ‘My religion.’

  Susan felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Fergus’s words came back to her. Was it possible? The devil incarnate. Was she was sitting here with the devil incarnate and his baby?

  Her baby.

  Fathered by the man who had murdered Fergus?

  Had she conceived the devil incarnate’s child, carried it in her womb, given birth to it?

  She looked at Verity and then at Mr Sarotzini, feeling a prickle like a current running through her. And there was a power coming from his man, she could feel it. Her skin was crawling as if it was alive with static electricity. But the devil incarnate? What did it mean? What had Fergus meant? What was the devil incarnate? A madman? An obscenely rich dilettante with delusions of grandeur?

  Someone who had the power to kill Zak Danziger, Harvey Addison, Fergus Donleavy?

  She looked at her innocent baby, then at Mr Sarotzini again. ‘What religion?’ she asked. ‘You’re a devil worshipper, is that it?’

  He smiled. His confidence seemed to be returning and, with it, his stature and assurance. ‘And you worship the Great Impostor, Susan, who teaches us that we are all cursed with Original Sin. That we are born evil and corrupt and we can only obtain salvation through divine grace. Through pouring money into a church collection box.’ His face regained its normal good-humoured expression. ‘Look at your daughter, look at her – look at Verity. Is she evil? Is she corrupt? Is that how she has been born? Is that how you view her when you look at her, hold her, suckle her? An evil, corrupt monster? Is it, Susan?’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘No, you are right,’ he said wistfully. ‘It is not that simple and we have much to talk about. It will take many days, Susan. Perhaps at the end you will still not agree with me, but you will understand the validity of my reasoning. And you will agree to bring up Verity in my customs and in my family’s religion.’

  Susan shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll bring up my child in my customs and
in my religion. You can’t just walk into my life and think you can buy my beliefs. They’re not for sale, I’m sorry. End of story.’

  Mr Sarotzini nodded, and sat in silence. Verity rolled her head and opened her eyes. He touched the baby’s hand with his finger, then stood over her and made faces at her, trying to get her to smile. Just watching this intimacy made Susan angry and possessive.

  Then, lowering his voice, as if he didn’t want the baby to hear, Mr Sarotzini said, ‘I can ruin your life, Susan. It will take just one phone call.’

  It wasn’t the words he’d said, or the way he said them. It was something in his face as he spoke that truly frightened Susan. She saw, for the first time, the power, an immense, dark power. And it stripped away all her new-found confidence. Mesmerised, she said, ‘I – I don’t understand?’

  ‘You have been told that your sister, Casey, is dead?’

  She stared at him in disbelief, as if convinced he was playing a game and had said this to shok her. ‘What? What did you –?’

  Her voice fell away. ‘Casey?’ she said, her scalp tightening. He was not playing a game. Black, icy water swirled in her guts. Mr Sarotzini went out of focus. ‘Casey. Dead?’ There was a mistake here, there had to be. Please God let there be.

  ‘You have not been told?’

  She looked for some sign in his blur of a face, something she could reach out to that could give her hope, that would tell her perhaps that he had made a mistake. Her voice came out as a squeak. ‘Dead?’ It wasn’t possible, ‘Casey was fine, she was alive, she –’

  ‘I am aware how much you loved her, Susan.’

  He was so calm, so matter-of-fact. Casey was dead and Mr Sarotzini was being calm. She wanted to lash out at him, scream at him. Instead she spoke quietly, her voice stretched tight, at its outer limits, on the verge of breaking up altogether. ‘What – what do you mean, Casey’s dead?’

  He returned her stare, saying nothing.

  Something was all wrong about this. Casey wasn’t dead, she’d been in her room, the air line – something – disconnected – Her grip on reality seemed to be shrinking away from her. She sniffed, her eyes filling with tears. ‘The nurse said – she said Casey was OK, she –’

  ‘She’s dead, Susan,’ he said, with a sudden coldness. ‘Would you like to see her corpse?’

  She covered her mouth with her hand, closed her eyes, shaking terribly. ‘It isn’t true, please tell me it isn’t true.’

  ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘Wh – when? When did – did she – die?’

  ‘You know the answer to that, Susan. You were in her room at four o’clock yesterday morning, holding her severed air line.’

  And as she looked at him she saw what he was implying. Tears streaming down, she shook her head, barely able to believe this. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘No, no, no, no, you’ve got this wrong.’

  He stared resolutely back at her.

  ‘I loved Casey.’ She broke down, sobbing, and it was some moments before she was composed enough to speak again. ‘I loved her so much. I agreed to have Verity to help Casey, to pay for Casey to stay here, that’s why I agreed.’ She fumbled for a tissue to staunch the tears. ‘I loved her, Mr Sarotzini, I couldn’t harm – her, I –’ Now she was crying too much to talk.

  Verity, picking up on her distress, began to cry too. Mr Sarotzini lifted her from the cot and placed her in Susan’s arms. Almost instantly Verity quietened, and the effect of holding her baby calmed Susan a little also. She looked at him imploringly. ‘Please tell me it isn’t true?’

  Mr Sarotzini said, ‘Susan, I believe you did not intend to harm her, that what you did was caused by the emotional state you were in, and I am sure that in your mind at the time you did it with the best intentions.’

  ‘I didn’t – I didn’t do it, I did not kill her. The air line was broken when I got there. Nurse – the nurse – Caulk, Nurse Caulk, ask her –’

  Mr Sarotzini looked at her with an expression of deep compassion. ‘Susan, do you think I would entrust you with my child if I thought you had really intended to harm Casey? I believe it was a temporary state of mind, a moment of madness borne from despair. But would a judge and jury believe you?’ Suddenly, his tone hardened again. ‘All I have to do is pick up the phone and call the police and give them the affidavit I have from Nurse Caulk, and you’ll be spending the next ten years of your life in and out of prison, fighting court battles.’

  Susan was unable to believe what she was hearing, and barely able, through her grief, to comprehend. ‘You think I did it? You really think I did it?’

  ‘Do you recall what you did yesterday afternoon, Susan? It was hardly the behaviour of someone in their normal frame of mind.’

  Running. She remembered running. Lunging out. Miles Van Rhoe sinking to the ground with a cellular phone jammed in his eye. Was that what he meant? Yesterday afternoon?

  It wasn’t a dream?

  ‘And please think about this, Susan. If I make that call, you will never see Verity again. I will be given immediate custody, no argument. And, Susan, this is important for the future. There is no statute of limitations for murder in the state of California. I can pick up the phone right now, or in ten years’ time, or in twenty years’ time. Perhaps at the end of it you’ll get the death penalty, perhaps you’ll get life, perhaps you’ll be committed to an institute for the criminally insane. Possibly you’ll go free.’

  ‘Please, please stop.’ She was shivering terribly, trying to think straight, to think back to when she arrived, to reconstruct those moments. Could she have done it?

  Casey is dead.

  Could she have done it? Could she? Could Mr Sarotzini be right?

  Had she hurt Miles Van Rhoe, too? Why hadn’t he been in to see her? Had she killed him, too?

  Van Rhoe hadn’t been in to see her because he’d gone back to England, that was why … if he had ever really been here at all… yesterday afternoon … Reality was slipping away … Do you recall what you did yesterday afternoon, Susan?

  A tremor rocked through her. She hugged Verity even harder, as if the baby was all the reality left to her in the world. Her brain was screaming at her no, no way did she harm Casey.

  But it was also reminding her of all the discussions she’d had with her parents and the doctors over the years, about not giving Casey medication if she got sick and letting her slip away. It was her mother who had fought for the ventilator. Susan had studied all the literature available on people in persistent vegetative states, and believed that Casey shouldn’t have been given a ventilator. If she could breathe on her own, fine, but with almost zero brain activity, if she couldn’t breathe on her own, then was there any point in keeping her alive?

  Oh, God, how she’d wanted her to slip away, wanted it so much. In those early days, she and her father had even talked about finding a way to do it themselves. Except neither of them ever could have done, they loved her too much. Didn’t they?

  Hadn’t she?

  And they had been hoping for a miracle, or a breakthrough in neurosurgery. It was possible: so long as Casey was still alive, it was possible that one day she might smile and laugh again, and stand on the stage at the Red Rocks and sing her heart out.

  Do you recall what you did yesterday afternoon, Susan?

  Mr Sarotzini leant forward and stroked Verity’s head lightly with his index finger. ‘Susan, I can’t tell you how much it would hurt me to put you through all this. Not, of course, to mention the trouble I would have in finding another mother as wonderful as yourself, but you must believe that if you make me, I will do it, you will leave me no alternative.’

  ‘Then go ahead, do it.’ She nodded at the phone. ‘Do it.’

  He looked at her seriously. ‘You need to think this through, Susan.’

  ‘Do it,’ she said, bitterly.

  ‘They will come here and arrest you, Susan. I have the legal documentation with me, establishing myself to be Verity’s father. I will fly to Switzerland w
ith her today and you will never see her again.’ He continued to stroke Verity’s head; she was fast asleep now.

  Casey was dead. Nothing mattered any more. She didn’t care what happened any more. She felt drained, her batteries were flat. They could kill her too. As if in protest, Verity suddenly opened her eyes, stared, blinking at Susan, then went back to sleep. Me, she seemed to be saying. Me, I matter.

  Susan held her closer, tighter, suddenly jolted back to sense, and lowered her voice. ‘I won’t bring her up under your terms, Mr Sarotzini. I will not bring up my child to be a devil worshipper, or any other loony things you might want her to do, I won’t, so you’d better make that call, just do it, do it now.’

  He lifted the receiver and calmly asked the operator to put him through to the Orange County Police Headquarters. Susan watched him, as if he were some figure in a distant landscape, her thoughts in turmoil, seesawing wildly. Casey was dead. Verity was connected to that, somehow. Casey, the air line, the dark room, the broken air line – she could picture it so vividly.

  Or could she?

  Mr Sarotzini said into the phone, ‘Homicide division, please.’

  She closed her eyes and heard him say, ‘Yes, good morning. I am a director of the Cypress Palisades Clinic, and I wish to report the suspected murder of one of our patients.’ There was a pause, and then Mr Sarotzini said, ‘Of course, certainly.’ There was another pause. ‘Yes, of course … the patient’s name … it is Casey Corrigan.’ He started to spell it out.

  Something snapped inside her and Susan screamed at him, ‘Stop! Please, no, no, no.’

  Verity’s eyes opened in alarm. Susan was sobbing uncontrollably. ‘Please don’t, please, please, I didn’t do it, I didn’t, please. Please don’t take Verity, too.’ She held her even more tightly. ‘Please, please, let me keep her, I’ll be a good mother, I promise I will!’ She closed her eyes again, sobbing and hugging her baby.

  There was silence.

  The silence continued. She opened her eyes. Mr Sarotzini was holding out the receiver to her. She took it and listened, unsure what she was expected to say. And then she realised.