The Truth

by Peter James

  Dr Mediterranean Tan Ross had been reluctant to let her go home, wanting her to spend a further night in the clinic, but it was vital she was in the office tomorrow. The directors of Magellan Lowry were now keen for the firm to acquire the Dr Julian DeWytts book, and tomorrow was the deadline for upping their bid in the auction.

  As she unlocked the front door and stepped into the hallway, she felt a sense of relief that she had made the right decision. She could see straight through to the French windows in the living room, and the garden beyond. Even in the gloomy rain, it was looking gorgeous. It was a beautiful welcoming sensation, this whole house felt just so good. How could they ever have let it go?

  She walked slowly around; she’d only been away one night, but it felt like a month. Everything was unchanged, although she noticed that some of the plants needed watering. Harry the painter had finished the dining room and was starting on the first of the spare bedrooms upstairs, the one that John had chosen for his den, and she was eager to see how that was shaping.

  She stood by the marble fireplace in the living room, first looking out at the garden, then at the walls of the room, thinking for the hundredth time how pleased she was with the colour scheme she had chosen. Some white colours were bland, or too pink, or too stark and cold. But this colour was both fresh and airy and, even on this dark day, warm at the same time.

  Soon need to start looking at colours for the baby’s room, she pondered, wondering which of the three spare ones upstairs would be best for a nursery. And then with a start, she remembered: What the hell am I thinking about?

  Susan didn’t know how she had been expecting John to react when he came home, but it was none of the ways that she’d imagined. He said nothing at all.

  Susan was in the kitchen; in spite of her tiredness she was trying to make a nice meal for them out of pasta and a piece of monkfish she had in the freezer. She heard the front door open and shut, and the sound of John’s briefcase thunking down on the bare oak boards of the hallway, and waited for him to come into the kitchen. He must know she was here – onions, chopped garlic and tomatoes were frying on the stove, and the radio was on.

  But he didn’t come in.

  John had never been a creature of habit. He was unpredictable, enigmatic, spontaneous, but in seven years of marriage he had one invariable routine: the moment he arrived home, he came into the kitchen and poured himself two fingers of Macallan whisky, with three cubes of ice and a splash of water, except on Tuesdays, after squash, when he had a Budweiser instead.

  Susan waited, turned down the radio and, to her surprise, heard the sound of the television. She went through into the living room. John was sitting on the sofa, still with his jacket on, channel-surfing.

  ‘Hi,’ she said meekly.

  He continued to stare at the television, punching the remote every couple of seconds, before locking his attention on truck-racing on the Sky Sports channel.

  For the first time ever Susan did not know what to say to her husband. Was he angry because she hadn’t returned his call earlier? She suspected it was more complicated than that.

  She turned away, and walked back to the kitchen, a tear rolling down her cheek. She dabbed it with a strip of kitchen towel, and the next one, stirred the mixture in the frying pan, then leant on the edge of the sink and stared out of the window.

  The kettle barbecue, the wooden picnic table and benches were all glossy from the rain. A thrush, the one that was often there, was twitching around in the grass, which needed cutting. It dipped its head and began to pull a worm out of the ground. It was having a struggle, a tug-of-war, as if something out of sight beneath the earth was holding the other end of the worm and pulling just as hard. Finally the thrush won and the worm dangled briefly, shrank in short jerks, and disappeared into its beak. The food chain, Susan thought.

  Rain pricked the puddles on the patio. We think we’re so smart because we’re human, because we’re at the top of the food chain. A robin hopped around on the lawn, another regular visitor. Susan watched it, catching little splashes of the orange colouring on its chest as it hopped around. It was a pretty bird, she thought, but it was probably savage. Robins were tough and mean; if you were a small bird you didn’t want to mess with a robin.

  Everything was deceptive. Nothing was what it seemed. She blotted up another tear, taking a deep breath, thinking suddenly: Oh, Christ, what have I done?

  And then, a short while later, she was laying the table and John was still watching truck-racing, and she was thinking, hoping, that this thing she’d done, this in vitro fertilisation, maybe it wouldn’t work.

  Suddenly she hoped, desperately, that it wouldn’t.

  The next morning, all she wanted to do was to stay in bed. She forced herself up, though, because she had to go to the meeting at work today.

  She showered and went downstairs. John was about to dash out of the front door. ‘Made you some coffee, hon,’ he said. ‘On the table.’

  She kissed him. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

  ‘Tired.’

  ‘Do you really have to go to the office today?’

  ‘I’ll come home early.’

  She kissed him goodbye, went into the kitchen, sat down and picked up the newspaper. As she was reading the main front-page story, she picked up her mug and sipped the coffee.

  It had a slightly different flavour from usual. Not unpleasant, but it left a faintly metallic aftertaste. She wondered if John had opened a different packet.

  In the board meeting at Magellan Lowry, coffee had just been brought. Susan was reporting that there was a bid on the table, she didn’t know who it was from, it could be HarperCollins, she suspected, but she knew Transworld were interested, so were Random House and maybe Little, Brown as well. She’d heard from a friend at Simon and Schuster that they’d dropped out and, from what little she’d managed to glean from DeWytts’ agent, she reckoned that so had Viking Penguin. But this latest bid was £175,000 for UK and Commonwealth rights, and that was big money.

  She didn’t think the book was that special, she told the board. It wasn’t accessible, in her view, it was too technical and wouldn’t grab the broad, popular readership it was intended for. ‘I don’t think this book is going to be big at all,’ Susan said. ‘I think we should pass.’

  She reached out for the cup that had been passed to her, and took a sip. It was perfectly drinkable, but seemed to have the same metallic aftertaste as the coffee John had left her. She wondered if she was imagining it.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  John brought up the papers and breakfast on a tray. This was Susan’s weekly Sunday-morning treat. Only once in seven years – when he’d had a truly terrible hangover – had he forgotten it.

  She was feeling fine today, and she was relieved that their relationship was getting back to some semblance of normality. John looked sexy in his towelling dressing gown, and she felt aroused and had to restrain herself from slipping her hands inside the robe. Instead, freeing herself with only a tinge of reluctance from the last snug remnants of sleep, she hauled herself up in bed.

  The curtains were open and brilliant morning sunshine belted in through the huge east window of the turret. She loved this room – it felt like waking in a castle and they’d decorated it as much like a castle as they could. The floor had been kept as bare wood boards, which they’d had sanded and polished and then thrown with rugs; there was a copper chandelier, with rather suspect modern wiring, which she’d bought in the Bermondsey market, and a minimal amount of furniture, all antique.

  When they could afford it, they were going to buy a four-poster bed or, even better, have one made to measure, but that was going to have to wait a while, although John had said it wouldn’t be long. Already, in the short time since they’d accepted Mr Sarotzini’s deal, DigiTrak was booming. Susan told John it was because he was confident, now that he didn’t have his financial worries, and that confidence was infectious.


  And he was feeling confident, so much so that he hadn’t even bothered with the lottery or the horses recently.

  He kissed her. ‘Morning, sleepyhead.’

  ‘Morning. Thanks, that looks great,’ she said, taking hold of the tray. The past few days since she had come home from the clinic had been horrendous. They had barely talked, and last night John had exploded because she wouldn’t make love to him. Miles Van Rhoe had told her strictly that she and John must not make love for a fortnight after the fertilisation attempt, not even with a condom. She wasn’t to risk any kind of sexual contact with him.

  She met his eyes fleetingly now, and thought she detected in them a glimmer of understanding. Maybe today, she thought, would be the start of the thaw. They were going to have to deal with this problem. They couldn’t go on not talking, letting it fester and, besides, this hadn’t been only her decision. John couldn’t keep on walking around the house looking at her as if she was a leper or a whore. Surely their love for each other was strong enough to get them through this.

  ‘How did you sleep?’ she asked.

  ‘OK.’ His voice was tepid, suddenly, imbued with the unsaid ‘I’d have slept better after a bonk.’ ‘You?’

  ‘I woke a few times.’

  There was a strange smell in the room that seemed to have accompanied John’s entrance, a faint stench of burnt rubber. Maybe the old couple next door were having a bonfire. The woman was a pyromaniac; she had a bonfire almost every week, chucked all kinds of rubbish on it while the old boy sat in front of it. Susan had seen him from the west window, which looked right across their neighbours’ garden, sitting in his chair, in his Panama hat, watching the bonfire as if it was a great movie, and shouting out when it needed stoking.

  John poured her coffee, set it down beside her, then climbed back into bed and turned straight to the Innovations section of the Sunday Times. Susan picked up the main section, glanced at the headlines, then took a sip of her coffee.

  She spat it straight out.

  John looked at her in alarm. ‘What’s the matter?’

  The taste in her mouth was something else. She didn’t want to tell him, didn’t want to risk upsetting him just when he was in a good mood, but this coffee was seriously nasty. It tasted like rusty metal. And the stench of burning rubber – she knew now where it was coming from. It was the coffee.

  ‘Susan? Darling? What is it? What’s the matter?’

  It must be her imagination she thought, and tasted it again. This time it was even worse and the smell was making her feel distinctly queasy. Either he was going to have to take the coffee out of the room, or she was going to have to leave the room herself.

  ‘Hon,’ she said, ‘is this a different brand? The coffee?’

  ‘It’s the same we always have, the medium roast, the one you like. Why?’

  She wondered, wildly, if something from Harry the painter had got into the percolator, some paint stripper or something. Surely not. ‘It tastes – different.’

  John sipped his coffee, then hers, frowning. ‘It’s fine.’ Then he put down his cup and raised a hand. ‘Uh-oh. I’ve read about this. You know why it tastes strange? You’re pregnant.’

  She sat in silence. She’d been suspecting it since Friday. But that had been so soon – too soon, surely.

  Oh, God, please let it be something else.

  ‘It’s too soon,’ she told him. But she had to get away from this stench. ‘I need some air. Why don’t we have breakfast out in the garden?’

  John shrugged. ‘Sure, why not?’

  Susan took Pregnancy – The Myths and the Reality and sat in a chair outside, sipped some orange juice and nibbled a dry biscuit, which was all she fancied.

  The first chapter of the book dealt with the time immediately following conception. Susan read that morning sickness occasionally came on within twenty-four hours. Revulsion to foods, drinks, smells might occur almost as quickly.

  Then she put down the book and peered inside her nightdress at the ugly red weal in her abdomen, and the stitches, which were already beginning to dissolve. Miles Van Rhoe had promised there would be no scar.

  She thought back to the weird dream she had had when she was under the anaesthetic, and in spite of the warm sunlight, she shivered.

  It had been just a dream. Or a hallucination. She thought about the strange man from Telecom, trying to work out why he had been in the dream. She knew that everything in dreams was significant and that any people you saw were there for a reason. Maybe the man from Telecom represented work being done on the house. Maybe she had dreamed about him because part of the point of her having the operation was to save the house, and he represented progress with it. But why him and not Harry the painter too? Or any of the other tradesmen who had come and gone over the past two months.

  There had been a time when she and John had discussed their dreams, and she toyed with mentioning this one, then dismissed the idea: it was too personal and she did not want to raise the subject of sex.

  Abandoning her dream, she returned to the Sunday Times. When she’d finished the main section, she picked up the Mail on Sunday and began to read it. When she came to an article on page seven, she stopped, read it carefully, then read it again.

  Hon?’ she said.

  John was buried in a supplement. ‘Uh?’

  ‘This composer you’ve been having the problems with – it was Zak Danziger, right?’

  John did not look up. ‘Snivelling little turd.’

  She handed him the paper, tapping the top of the page with her finger. ‘Look, here.’

  John looked, reluctantly, irritated at being disturbed in the middle of an article he was reading about a new BMW sports coupé; it was a model he fancied buying, and he was wondering if Mr Sarotzini would have any objections if he splashed out. Although, of course, he could lease it, and then the figures wouldn’t look bad.

  And then he saw the small photograph, the name Zak Danziger, followed by the word dead.

  Gripping the paper tightly he read straight through the article. It was short and did not go into detail. It simply said that British composer and former rock singer Zak Danziger had been found dead of an apparent drugs overdose in his suite at the Plaza hotel in New York yesterday morning. Danziger had written the lyrics for three hit musicals that had played in over twenty languages around the world and the scores for over thirty films. He had been married three times and was estranged from his current wife. He left a son and two daughters by previous marriages.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ he said.

  ‘What does this mean?’ Susan asked quietly.

  ‘It means the lawsuit is brown bread – dead.’ John smiled. ‘I should feel sorry for the poor bastard, but I don’t, not after the way he behaved. It’s very good news for us. Mr Sarotzini’s going to be delighted.’ He read through the piece again, and said, ‘God, why couldn’t it have happened a month ago? We’d have been out of the woods, wouldn’t have had to go through any of –’

  He stopped in mid-sentence, having seen the troubled expression on Susan’s face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t be feeling like this – I know I shouldn’t be happy at news of a tragedy, but I am, with this bastard I really am.’

  ‘It’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it?’ she said, quietly.

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘His dying – so soon.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s nothing, I’m being silly.’

  John gave her a sideways look, then read the report again. He remembered the old dictums about not speaking ill of the dead, but he still couldn’t prevent the smile spreading across his face each time he looked at Danziger’s photograph and remembered the composer that afternoon in his lawyer’s office, with his studded denims, lavatory brush hair and arrogant scowl.

  Susan looked at the sky: there wasn’t a cloud in it, and she wondered what was draining all the heat out of the sun today.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Coffee was causing Susan real problems. Even the f
aintest scent of it right now made her stomach feel like she was on a bad funfair ride, and Fergus Donleavy was due any minute – he ran on caffeine. She sometimes thought Fergus had Colombian dark blend double roast rather than blood in his veins.

  It was Tuesday. Last Wednesday night she had been in the clinic. In one week’s time her period was due, and she was thinking, maybe this coffee thing was just coincidence. Except it wasn’t just coffee, it was the smell of alcohol now too, and cigarettes, and the only thing she wanted to eat was dry biscuits.

  It could be flu, she tried to convince herself.

  Sure, Susan Carter, it could be flu. And that would be a real coincidence to catch a flu that gave you the same symptoms as pregnancy, just a few days after you’d been in a clinic having artificial insemination.

  Artificial?

  That question had taken up residence in the first compartment she reached each time she took a walk around the inside of her head. The man from Telecom was always in there, smiling at her, stepping out of the darkness towards her, and however much she tried to shut him out, she couldn’t. Only this man knew for sure whether it had been a hallucination.

  In one week’s time, she would know if she was pregnant or not. She had to ride this week out and pray hard for her period to come.

  Tony Weir experienced a similar reaction to John when he heard of Zak Danziger’s death. The solicitor’s voice down the phone was filled with good humour, even though he’d just lost out on Lord-only-knows-how-much loot from defending DigiTrak against the composer.

  Tony Weir was the only person who knew the truth about John’s arrangement with Mr Sarotzini: he’d gone through the Vörn Bank’s documentation with John before he had signed. A quiet, hard-working man, Weir had a wise head and lived modestly, although he was a partner in a major London law firm, pulling in upwards of £350,000 in a bad year. He had been John’s solicitor from the early days of DigiTrak.

  ‘I’m getting the impression,’ John said, ‘that Susan thinks there’s some agenda behind this guy’s death connected to our deal with the Vörn. She’s in a strange mood – a bit paranoid about things.’