by Peter James
5
The house was divided into two flats. There was a metal fire-escape at the rear of the building, accessed from the glass-panelled kitchen door of the first-floor flat.
The boy climbed the fire-escape now, struggling under the weight of the gallon can of petrol, his plimsolls silent on the cast-iron treads. He was eleven, tall for his years, and strangers always guessed his age wrong; to a casual onlooker he might have passed for sixteen. He knew that no one would take any notice of a boy of sixteen out on his bicycle at eleven o'clock at night on the quiet south London streets, and no one would have seen the can, which he had transported here strapped to his chest inside his windcheater.
'Love Me Do' by that new group, the Beatles, who were on the telly all the time, was still playing, and he could hear shouts and laughter too, as if a party was going on somewhere down the road. The words of the song's refrain repeated over and over, strengthening the hatred inside him.
Two hours ago, his father had come into his room and said good night, and an hour later the boy had heard him go to bed. Half an hour after that he had left the house through his bedroom window, and shinned down a drainpipe. When he returned, he would go in via the same route.
He had been planning this for months, every detail, right down to the puncture-repair outfit, the spare bulbs for his bicycle lamps, wrapped in tissue paper in his saddlebag, and the rubber kitchen gloves, which he was putting on now. He had a sharp eye and an enormous capacity for detail, as well as being good with his hands. He had practised and practised until he had made an art of the shaping of his bedclothes to look like himself asleep. He had topped them with a wig he had bought in a joke shop, now cut and dyed to match his own hair.
He had pedalled the route dozens of times from his home to here, timing the journey, and he had rehearsed what he would say to a policeman if he got stopped, and the name and address he would give. And he had had to wait for a night when there was no moon but no rain either to minimise any footprints.
Last night, lying awake, thinking about everything that might go wrong and wreck his plans, he had been nervous. But now that he was here he was feeling fine, calm.
Calmer than he could ever remember feeling in his life.
6
At a quarter to one in the morning, in a former artist's loft close to the Portobello Road, Oliver Cabot sat at his desk, which had been fashioned from the door of a ruined Indian temple.
He stared at his iMac screen, with the numb patience of a hardened cybertraveller, as the small colour photograph of Ross Ransome downloaded inch by reluctant inch.
It was almost there. As if to help, he clicked the cursor on to the scroll bar, moved it up, then down again, but it made no difference. All he could see so far was the top half of the surgeon's head and what looked like bookshelves behind him.
He yawned. In the still of the night, the threshing of the computer's fan reminded him of the dead sound in an airliner. On his desk, trapped in the glare of his Anglepoise lamp, Jake grinned at him from a tortoiseshell picture frame.
Freckled Jake, with his brown fringe and gappy grin — two teeth missing from the front row, taken by the Tooth Fairy and never to be replaced.
Jake, frozen in time, running out of the front door of their waterfront house in Venice, Santa Monica, with its view on to the canal and the appalling stench of sewage. Jake, on his brand-new mountain bike, unaware of the horror waiting for him just five days away.
The tightness in his throat, which always came when he allowed the memories to creep in, was there now. Oliver looked back at the screen, moved the cursor, scrolled down. Now he could see the full picture of Ross Ransome and, to his disappointment, there was no one else in the frame. No Faith Ransome.
Hey, Shit-for-brains, he thought, what kind of a sad bastard are you who trawls the net at this time in the morning looking for a photograph of someone else's wife, a woman you've never even met? An Oliver Cabot kind of a sad bastard.
7
Silence in the car. Ross driving fast. Darkness unspooling from the road ahead, an endless loop, sometimes with brilliant lights bursting from it, sometimes a void. Brahms playing, the violin mournful, as if a prelude to something bad ahead. The smells of Ross's cigar and leather filled the interior of this macho Aston Martin cocoon.
Her father had smoked cigars, and this smell always reminded her of him and of their little semi-detached house. She remembered when her father's arms had stopped working and she had sat by his bed while he clamped his lips doggedly around the soggy butt and looked up at her with a desperate smile to say, 'At least my mouth still works, at least I can still thank God for creating me.'
Faith's mind returned to the man, the stranger in the crush at the bar after the speeches were over. He had been alone. All she needed to do was take four steps and she'd have been in front of him. Ross hadn't even been in the room; he'd stayed at the table talking to someone. Just four steps. Instead, she'd bottled out and broken in on a conversation between Felicity Beard, the wife of a gynaecologist acquaintance of Ross — one of the few medical wives she liked — and another woman, and talked mostly about their holiday in Thailand until Ross had appeared and said he wanted to leave, an early start in the morning.
'I saw you,' he said calmly.
'Saw me what?'
Silence again. Just the violins and the night. A signpost to Brighton flashed past. Eighteen miles. She knew what. There was no point in going through the rigmarole of denial. Ross was calm but there was brooding anger inside him. Best to let it simmer and maybe by the time they were home he'd be too tired to make a big issue. Right now she didn't feel well enough for a fight.
She thought about Alec, long tucked up and asleep by now. He'd be fine, he adored his grandmother, who spoiled him. She enjoyed staying over — Ross had made a palatial space for her in the house, a whole suite of rooms. She'd be awake now, sitting in front of the sixty-inch television he'd bought for her, chain-smoking and watching movies into the small hours, just as she had throughout Faith's childhood, keeping Faith's bedridden, insomniac father company.
It seemed from what she read and people she talked to that few mothers got on with their sons-in-law. But her mother and Ross had taken to each other from the start, and Ross had always been good to her — and to her father during the last years of his life. But this created a problem: Faith found it hard to talk about her marital problems to her mother, whose standard response was that all marriages had their difficulties and that Faith should count her blessings, and accept Ross's behaviour as due to the stress of being a man in his position.
It was twenty past twelve. She thought again about the stranger at the dinner, wondered what life would be like with a different man, a different husband. How could she get out of Ross's clutches? How would Alec —? And then, suddenly, the nausea erupted inside her. 'Stop! Ross quick, pull overt'
The interior of the car seemed to close in around her. Hand rammed over her mouth, just one thought in mind as he pulled on to the hard shoulder, Must not… Not in the car…
They jolted to a stop. She threw the seat-belt clear, found the doorhandle, pushed, stumbled out into the sharp, cold air. Then, on her knees on the tarmac, she threw up.
Moments later, Ross's hand on her forehead. 'My baby, darling, you're OK, my darling, you're fine.'
Sweating, she threw up again, Ross holding his palm firmly against her forehead, the way her mother used to when she was a child, holding her with his firm, comforting hand, then wiping her mouth with his handkerchief.
Back in the car with her seat reclined, the heater turned right up, Ross said, 'Probably that seafood cocktail. Duff prawn or something. If you get seafood poisoning, you know about it within a few hours.'
She wanted to tell him he was wrong: he knew she'd been feeling like this for days, but she was scared to talk in case she threw up again. She lay back, with the darkness and the lights revolving around her and inside her, her contact lenses feeling gritty and uncomfor
table, dimly aware from the motion of the car, the changing resonance of the tyres beneath them, the stops and turns they made, that they were getting closer and closer to their home.
To a glass of water.
* * *
She was sitting at the wide pine table in front of the Aga, listening to Rasputin barking, probably chasing a rabbit outside somewhere, and Ross calling him back in. The clock on the kitchen wall read ten past one.
She heard the patter of paws, then Rasputin was nuzzling his face into her lap. 'Hey, boy, sweetie-pie, how are you?' As she stroked the dog's silky hair, he looked up at her expectantly, two big, soulful eyes. Then he gave her a gentle nudge. Smiling, she said, 'You want a biscuit?' Easing him away, she took one from the store-cupboard, made him sit nicely for it and popped it into his mouth. Then, while he crunched happily, she went over to the sink and swilled her mouth with water, trying to get rid of the sour taste of vomit.
A key clattered, then moments later she heard the rattle of the safety chain as Ross locked up for the night. He came up behind her, rested his hands on her shoulders, and nuzzled her cheek. 'Alec's sound asleep. How're you feeling now?'
'A little better, thanks.'
'The pills kicking in?'
'I think so. What were they?'
'They'll calm your system down.'
It irritated her that he always resisted telling her what pills he gave her, as if she were a child.
He knelt, examined her eyes, told her to stick out her tongue, then examined it with a worried frown.
'What is it?'
'Nothing.' He smiled. 'Bed. There's something I want to show you before we go up — won't take a sec.'
Behind the smile, she again detected a faint unease. 'What did you notice with my tongue?'
After a momentary hesitation, his voice, full of confidence, said, 'Nothing to worry about.'
She picked her evening bag up from the kitchen table, and followed him down the corridor, which was lined with prints of historical military uniforms, interspersed with shields and swords hung in brackets, into his study. Whether it was the throwing up or the pills she did not know, but she was definitely feeling better now — and wide awake.
Ross walked across to his computer, touched the keyboard and the screen came to life. Then he switched on his desk light, snapped open his briefcase, took out a disk and pushed it into the slot. Once Faith had liked the manly, solid feel of this room, but now she felt uncomfortable, like a child in a headmaster's study.
It was spotlessly tidy with deep, leather-upholstered armchairs and sofa. Fine Victorian seascapes hung on the walls, there was a bust of Socrates on a plinth, and bookshelves lined with medical books and periodicals. He worked at a handsome antique walnut partner's desk, which she had bought him for his birthday shortly after they'd moved here, and which had made a big dent in the savings she'd built up during her short career in catering.
She'd given up work at Ross's insistence shortly before their marriage, twelve years ago. Although she loved her job, and the small firm she'd joined after catering college, doing mostly directors' lunches, she had been happy to concentrate on making a home for herself and Ross. Once they were settled she could do what she had always wanted: a degree in nutrition.
But Ross had rejected both the idea of her going back to college, and of her taking a part-time job. While he had made a big issue of not wanting her to exhaust herself though studying or being at work, what she now realised was that he had wanted her at home so that he would know where she was.
Instead, she had plunged into local community life. Their neighbouring hamlet of Little Scaynes consisted of little more than a few rows of Victorian cottages, originally built to house railway workers constructing the London-Brighton line, a haphazard scattering of larger, more recent houses and bungalows, and a Norman church that boasted some fine early frescoes, dry rot, a thriving colony of deathwatch beetle, and a curate whose false teeth rattled when he addressed his puny congregation.
Little Scaynes had no shop and its only pub had closed in 1874 when the main Lewes-London road had been moved three miles to the south. The nearest place for groceries was two miles on, a village store which was facing closure due to the nearby superstore. Faith had been co-opted on to the committee to save the little shop, although like everyone else — and just as guiltily — she only bought emergency items there.
Despite its paltry size Little Scaynes was a hotbed of local politics, with an army of tweed-skirted, stout-shoed, iron-haired activists. It seemed to Faith that country people spent most of their time either trying to save things or trying to halt progress. Ever since moving to the house, ten years ago, she had been a participant in numerous such projects, partly because she wanted to contribute to the community, partly as a way of making friends, and partly because she always found it hard to say no.
Right now, in addition to the village-store campaign, she was on committees to save the church roof, the local library, an ancient copse of beeches threatened by a housing estate, a public footpath blocked for years by a stubborn farmer, and she was an active member of the local branch of the NSPCC. She was involved in attempts to stop the modernisation of a rustic barn on the edge of the hamlet, reverse the approval of a new bypass, foil the building of yet another golf course, and prevent the merger of their parish council with a neighbouring one.
However, the achievement that had given her most satisfaction in recent years was helping to raise over fifty thousand pounds to send the leukaemia-stricken daughter of a local herdsman to America for an operation — Ross had pulled strings — which had saved the five-year-old's life.
Her own face appeared on the computer screen. Moments later it was replaced by another photograph showing it in profile.
'That's how you look now,' Ross said.
She yawned, suddenly leadenly tired again, trying to remember when they had been taken. On the beach outside their hotel in Phuket three weeks ago, she recalled, looking at the background.
Ross was pointing at her nose on the screen. He was making a curve with his finger along the bridge. 'A simple operation, just a few days of discomfort, and then…' He clicked the keyboard and her face disappeared, then reappeared again in profile, but now with a new nose.
Even though she had been expecting something, from the throw-away remarks Ross had been making recently, it shocked her when it came, and even more so that it was now, at this hour, and when she was feeling ill. She realised it was probably for these reasons that he had chosen this moment.
'Can we talk about this in the morning, Ross? I'm too tired.'
'I've organised a room at the clinic next Monday. Your mother can take Alec —'
'No,' she said. 'I've told you, I don't want any more surgery.'
The anger that had been pent-up inside him since dinner was now coming out. 'Faith, do you know how many women would give their right arm for what you get free?'
Smiling acidly, she held out her right arm. 'Cut it off — you've cut bits off just about every other part of me.'
'Don't be ridiculous.'
'I'm not. If you don't like me the way I am, then marry someone else.'
He looked so genuinely hurt that she felt a pang of guilt, which changed rapidly to anger with herself for allowing her feelings to be manipulated like this. Ross was like a fine actor who had his audience in the palm of his hand. He had played with her mind and emotions for years, and she'd been sucked in. But not any more.
'Darling,' he said, 'every plastic surgeon in the world operates on his wife. Hell, when you come to conferences with me, you're the best credentials I can have. People look at you and they see perfection. They think, Look at this guy's wife — he must be brilliant at his work!'
'You look on me as your professional sample? Is that all I am to you? A sample?'
He looked even more hurt now. 'Darling, you always told me you weren't happy with your face — you didn't like your chin, you wished you had stronger cheekbones. That's al
l I ever did to you — and it made you look stunning, you know that, you told me yourself.'
'And my breasts?'
'I didn't cut anything off your breasts, I added to them.'
'Because they weren't big enough for you.'
He moved closer to her, his voice raised. 'Listen, don't ever forget that you were nothing, you were just a plain little girl. I saw your potential. I made you the beautiful woman that you are. You and me — we made each other successful. This is a two-way thing. I help you, you help me in my career, with your looks, personality, your —'
'So why didn't you leave me as I was, if you can't bear to see other men looking at me? Why didn't you let me remain an ugly duckling?'
He stared hard into her eyes, quivering, and although he had never struck her, she had a feeling that now he was going to.
'You weren't just looking at that man at dinner. He was fucking you with his eyes.'
She turned away. 'You're being ridiculous. I'm going to bed.'
Ross gripped her shoulders so hard she cried out in pain. Her handbag fell to the floor and her lipstick and compact spilled out. 'I'm talking to you.'
She knelt and scooped up her things. 'Well, I'm not talking to you any more tonight. I feel ill and I'm going to bed.'
At she reached the top of the staircase he shouted out, 'Faith, I am —'
But she barely heard him as the nausea got her again. She tried to hang on to the banister rail, but her grip slipped and she stumbled forward.
Ross caught her. She braced herself, but now his grip was gentle, and his voice tender. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to shout at you. You just don't know how much you mean to me. I love you to death, Faith. You are everything to me. You and Alec. I didn't have a life before you, not a real one. I didn't know what love or warmth were before I met you. I know I'm not easy sometimes, but that's probably because I care about you too much. Can you understand that?'
