The House on Cold Hill

by Peter James

  And for himself.

  3.38; 3.59; 5.03.

  The room was filling with a very faint grey light. From outside Ollie could hear the sporadic birdsong of the dawn chorus. Looking at the clock again, he realized he had actually slept for over an hour. He could just make out the ceiling now; the shape of Caro’s dressing table; the chaise longue beneath the window, strewn with their clothes. Dawn. A new day.

  He felt calmer now. Caro was asleep, breathing deeply. Then, suddenly, he was back in his parents’ house in Yorkshire. But on the walls of every small room he entered was written, in thick black letters,

  WHO’S NEXT? JADE? CARO? YOU?

  Ollie’s mother was admonishing him, saying, ‘You’ve brought this on us all. You and your stupid ambitions.’

  ‘Told you so,’ his father kept saying, repeating it over and over and over.

  In sudden panic Ollie remembered he’d left his laptop, with all the Cholmondley website information to be uploaded, in the garage. He rushed through the door, but the garage was empty. His father followed him and lowered his voice. ‘Cholmondley’s a crook, you know that, son, don’t you? You don’t want to get involved with a man like that. Get yourself a proper job. Do something decent.’

  ‘Where’s my laptop, Dad, what have you done with it?’ Ollie shouted at him. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I’ve sent it away to have some adjustments made. The truth will set you free!’

  Ollie woke with a start, drenched in perspiration. Then relief flooded through him as he began realizing it had just been a dream. He rolled over and looked at the clock.

  8.11.

  But his sense of relief was short-lived, turning rapidly into gloom as everything started to come back to him. He lay still, trying to think clearly. Remembering the conversation he’d had with the retired vicar on Thursday. Remembering his advice.

  Slipping out of bed as quietly as he could, he walked across to the window, opened the curtains a chink and peered out, his eyes raw with tiredness. Tendrils of mist were rising from the lake, and several ducks were moving serenely across the surface, looking purposeful but unhurried. The grass had grown since last weekend and he would need to spend some of today on the ride-on mower, and with the strimmer. But before that, he had other tasks.

  He went out and along the corridor to the airing cupboard, changed into his jogging kit, then went downstairs. As he entered the kitchen, he smelled curry. The remnants of last night’s meal lay on their unwashed plates, along with the takeaway cartons from the curry house on the draining board. Bombay and Sapphire were standing by their food bowls, meowing. He topped them up, changed their water, cleared away the dishes and cartons, then went through to the scullery, unlocked the back door and stepped out into the cool, fresh morning air. It was a fine, still morning, with an almost cloudless sky, full of the promise of those glorious late summer days that occurred so frequently during September.

  He did a few half-hearted stretches then jogged down to the lake, stopping to watch the ducks for some moments. Then he ran round to the far side, through the gate into the paddock, and traversed it, making a trail through the tall, sopping grass. At the far end he let himself out of the gate, then tackled the hill.

  He ran some way up it, through a large field, until he had to stop to get his breath back. He gulped down air and then, feeling too exhausted to go on for a moment, he sat down on the wet grass. A bunch of sheep stood some distance away, a few looking at him with mild curiosity, one of them bleating. Ridiculous, he thought. Normally he’d have run all the way up a hill like this with no problem. Maybe the move and all that had been going on in the house had sapped his energy.

  He hauled himself to his feet, walked further up the hill and then tried to run, but only managed a few steps before he had to walk again, panting hard up the final steep hundred yards to the summit. The soft contours of the South Downs stretched out for miles on either side of him, to Winchester, eighty miles away to the west, and to Eastbourne, twenty miles to the east. He and Caro had been planning to hike the South Downs Way for years, a week-long trek, and now it was literally on their back doorstep, they had no excuse.

  Still breathing hard, his heart racing, he turned and looked back down at the house, directly below him, and at Cold Hill village over to the left. He stared across the rooftops, the gardens, the church spire, the black ribbon of road. The cricket pitch. He saw a large Victorian-looking house, with a swimming pool and tennis court, some distance back from the village, with a long driveway. That must be the Old Rectory that Annie Porter had mentioned, where there were children around Jade’s age.

  It was so beautiful. So peaceful. It could be paradise here.

  If . . .

  The morning was very quiet. He heard another bleat, the caw of a crow, the faint, distant drone of a microlight, as he gazed down at the lake, at the green rectangle of the empty swimming pool, the outbuildings, the red-brick walls of their house, the round tower.

  Were Caro and Jade still asleep in there?

  What the hell else was in there, too?

  Thirty minutes later, standing in the shower, half-listening to his favourite radio show of the week, Saturday Live, he was feeling a lot better and much more positive. Bruce Kaplan was a smart guy. Energy. There was just a load of weird energy in this house, that’s all it was. All of it. Energy had to be harnessed, and Bob Manthorpe, on Thursday, had told him something. He hadn’t used the word energy, but that, Ollie was certain, was what he had meant. He was going to take the old man’s advice.

  As he walked back out of the bathroom, with a towel round his waist, he saw Caro was awake, lying in bed, checking her messages on her phone.

  ‘Hi, darling,’ he said.

  ‘Did you get some sleep?’

  ‘A little, finally.’

  ‘I think we ate too late, I had indigestion,’ she said.

  ‘Me too,’ he lied, thinking it was better she put their lack of sleep down to something tangible, rather than anything else. He heard a rasping sound.

  ‘I think that’s your phone,’ she said. ‘It vibrated earlier while you were out and woke me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He went over to his bedside table and picked the phone up. He always left it on silent at night. Glancing at the display, he could see it was Cholmondley.

  He frowned. This was early for his client to be calling – and at the weekend.

  He answered, breezily. ‘Charles, good morning!’

  There was a brief silence from the other end, followed, rapidly, by an explosion of anger.

  ‘Just what the hell do you think you are playing at, Mr Harcourt?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Ollie replied. ‘Playing at?’

  ‘You’ll be hearing from my lawyers first thing on Monday, if not sooner. How bloody dare you?’

  His heart sinking, and completely confused, Ollie said, ‘I’m sorry, Charles – has something happened? I don’t understand?’

  ‘You don’t understand? Just what the hell do you mean by this – this – outrage? These slurs? Have you taken leave of your senses? What’s your game? What’s your bloody game?’

  Ollie stood, stunned. The towel loosened and began to slip away, but he barely noticed. ‘I’m sorry, Charles, please – can you explain?’

  He turned away from Caro’s curious gaze, and stepped out of the room, the towel falling away completely as he did so, closing the door behind him. ‘Explain?’ Cholmondley said. ‘I think you’re the one who’d better explain.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘No? Is this your way of having a laugh? When you get drunk perhaps and start insulting your clients?’

  ‘I can assure you I’ve done nothing of the sort. Please tell me what you mean?’

  ‘And telling the whole world at the same time? Our arrangement is terminated. You’ll be hearing from my lawyers on Monday.’

  ‘Charles, please,’ Ollie said, desperately. ‘I’m really sorry – what’s
happened? Please tell me, I’m totally in the dark.’

  ‘In which case you must be suffering short-term memory loss.’

  ‘Memory loss?’

  ‘You’re either mental or you have a very strange sense of humour, Mr Harcourt.’

  Ollie heard the beeping of an incoming call. He ignored it. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I really don’t know what you are talking about, or why you are upset.’

  ‘No? Well try imagining how you might feel if I’d sent you an email like that – and copied it to all your rival companies. Eh?’

  The phone went dead. As Ollie pressed the button to finish the call his end, utterly baffled and reeling, he heard another voice on the line that he recognized. The cultured Indian accent of Anup Bhattacharya.

  ‘Mr Harcourt?’

  ‘Anup, good morning!’ Ollie said, uneasily.

  ‘Just what exactly is the meaning of this?’

  If Cholmondley had sounded incandescent, Bhattacharya’s tone, although reserved, contained even deeper anger.

  ‘I’m sorry – the meaning of what?’

  ‘I’m just calling to let you know that our business relationship is over, Mr Harcourt. Goodbye.’

  The line went dead.

  His head spinning, and now even more bewildered, Ollie knelt down, pulled the towel back round his midriff, then hurried along the corridor and up the stairs to his office. If I’d sent you an email like that . . .

  What the hell was Cholmondley talking about? From time to time his mate Rob Kempson would send him crude or risqué emails containing sexual and sometimes politically incorrect jokes. Occasionally he would forward them on to other friends. Had he forwarded one to Cholmondley and Bhattacharya, by mistake, that had offended them?

  He was certain he hadn’t. He’d not heard from Rob in over a week or so.

  Had he been hacked?

  He sat down in front of his computer and logged on. He went straight to his mail box, and then to Sent Mail.

  And could not believe his eyes.

  There was an email from him, dated today, timed at 3.50 a.m., to Cholmondley. It was also openly copied to each of the other classic car dealers whom he had met at the Goodwood Revival last Sunday, whose business cards he had brought back and entered into the computer.

  Dear Charles,

  Forgive the directness of this email, but I’m a man who has always maintained strict moral principles in all of my business dealings. When you commissioned me to create a new website for your business, I knew you were a bit of a wanker, but not a fraudster as well.

  I’ve now learned that most of the cars that you are advertising on this site do not have the provenance you are claiming. You specialize in cloning exotic cars, providing them with a fraudulent history, and trying to get away with it through your veneer of respectability. What has prompted this email is that you have now asked me to put up an advertisement for the sister car of a 1965 Ferrari GTO that was sold in the USA recently for $35m. You told me this ‘sister’ car has impeccable provenance. If ‘provenance’ comes from cannibalizing a couple of written-off Ferraris and manufacturing new ‘old’ parts in a workshop in Coventry, faking a newspaper article on how this vehicle had been found in a barn, where it had been under a dust sheet for 35 years, and faking its serial numbers and logbook, then fine, this car does indeed have ‘provenance’. The provenance of a master shyster who should long ago have been drummed out of the motor trade and put behind bars.

  Ollie could not believe his eyes. Who the hell had written this? A disgruntled former employee of Cholmondley? Someone with computer skills who had hacked his computer here? And this person had somehow found a way in through the website?

  He looked again at the Sent box, and saw another email, this one to Bhattacharya.

  He clicked to open it.

  Hey, Anup, you old fraud, you! You put yourself out as a Brahmin in your caste system, but we all know that really you are an Untouchable. From just how many different, honest, hard-working Indians have you stolen the recipes for your restaurants? How many people have bought from your online ‘deli’ – or should that read, ‘Delhi belly’??? – your amazing Prawn Tikka, or Prawn Dhansak, or Prawn Korma, not knowing that those little curly things are not prawns at all, but monkfish cast-offs?

  Oh and you have conveniently omitted that your Nottingham restaurant was shut down for three weeks by the Food Safety Officer and you were fined three thousand pounds after a dead rat was found beneath one of your kitchen fridges.

  Ollie sat back in his chair. These were emails sent from this computer, no question about that. But who the hell had written them?

  His first thought was Jade. But he dismissed that, rapidly. She might have been able to log in – his password, Bombay7, wasn’t that difficult to crack. But she could not possibly have known the technical details about the Ferrari. Neither could she have known stuff about Bhattacharya, true or otherwise.

  He phoned Chris Webb and asked his computer guru if it was technically possible for an outsider to have hacked into his computer and sent these emails.

  ‘Well, yes. Not easily, but it could be done.’

  Webb asked him to fire up the Team Viewer application, then give him the code and password. Moments later Webb had control of his computer and Ollie saw the cursor moving around the screen.

  ‘I could send any email I wanted, as you, right now,’ Webb said. ‘So which are the two emails you wanted me to see?’

  Ollie temporarily took back control and directed him to them.

  For the next few minutes, as he stayed on the phone, Ollie watched the cursor shoot up to the toolbar, then move to System Preferences, and then begin drilling down through the options.

  Finally, Webb said, ‘I can’t find any evidence that you’ve been hacked – but then again someone good enough to do that would know how to hide their tracks. You sure you didn’t get pissed last night and just not remember sending these?’

  Ollie thought back to his weird dream during the night. The one where his laptop went missing. Was it possible he could have sleepwalked and sent these emails, composing them from deep inside his unconscious mind? But why on earth would he have done? That made absolutely no sense.

  ‘Chris,’ he said, ‘why would I want to insult these clients and self-destruct my business?’

  ‘You sure you’re OK at the moment, Ollie? You’ve been seeming pretty stressed these past few weeks.’

  ‘I’m stressed because I’m trying to build my business – and deal with all the work and stuff going on here. But I’m coping with it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, mate, I just don’t have any other explanation.’

  After ending the call, Ollie sat in silence and read through both of the emails again. So who had done this?

  Had the energy here driven him to do it?

  Had stress?

  Without any recollection the next day?

  Had he been hacked by a rival?

  Cholmondley owed him thousands, and the contract for The Chattri House could have been worth thousands more – money he was depending on.

  He had to recover them both.

  Somehow.

  Somehow he had to come up with a credible explanation – and an apology they would accept.

  40

  Saturday, 19 September

  Ollie was surprised to find Jade already up and dressed so early on a Saturday, as he went downstairs, deep in troubled thought, to organize breakfast. The round metal clock, designed to look like it had once adorned the wall of a nineteenth-century Paris cafe, read 10.07. He noticed it was at a slightly wonky angle.

  Looking a little chastened, his daughter asked, ‘Which pod would you like today, Dad?’ She spun the Nespresso capsule dispenser, which she had racked out with a wide variety. Not only was she in charge of making the coffee, she had long taken charge of keeping the dispenser topped up as well.

  ‘The strongest,’ he replied. He went to the front door, collected the newspapers, carried them through i
nto the kitchen and laid them neatly on the refectory table. Then he lugged a chair over to the wall, climbed on to it, and reached to straighten the clock.

  Jade held up a black pod. ‘Kazaar?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Long or short?’

  ‘Short, and could you make it a double?’

  ‘You’ll be flying, Dad!’

  He climbed down from the chair, stood back and studied the clock. It was still not completely straight. He climbed back on to the chair again. ‘Yep, well I need a major shot of something – I didn’t sleep too well last night. Nor did your mum. We had this strange little ghost that came in the room and freaked us out.’

  Jade giggled. ‘I did fool you, did I? Was my costume quite realistic?’

  ‘It was very realistic. And not funny, OK.’

  ‘I thought it was a screeeeaaaaam!!!’

  He shook his head, her impish grin making it hard for him to be angry with her. ‘And how did you sleep?’

  Jade nodded, inserting the pod in the coffee machine, then flipping down the lid. ‘OK. You haven’t forgotten about Phoebe coming for a sleepover, have you, Dad?’

  ‘And your boyfriend coming tomorrow, too. How is Ruari?’

  She shrugged. ‘Yep. Fine.’

  ‘Are you still sweet on him?’

  She blushed and looked away. ‘It’s sort of not really like that, Dad.’

  ‘Sort of not really like what?’

  ‘You know – romantic stuff.’

  Ollie grinned; his daughter was lifting his gloom, however momentarily. ‘So you don’t kiss him?’

  ‘Yuk, snog? Yechhhh!’

  He adjusted the clock again then stepped back down. The Nespresso machine was rumbling and he smelled the delicious aroma of fresh coffee. Caro came into the kitchen in her dressing gown, yawned, then went over to Jade, glaring at her.

  ‘That was seriously not funny, last night, OK?’

  For a moment Jade looked like she was going to answer back. Then, seeing the anger in her mother’s face, she bowed her head and said, meekly, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Scrambled eggs, anyone?’ Ollie asked. It was one of two things he could cook well. French toast, which Jade loved, was the other.