by Peter James
He seemed to chant for longer than the previous two, and when he had finished, instead of turning away, Susan saw him move closer towards her, and lean over the bed, lowering his face until it was inches from her own. She could feel his breath, warm and minty, as if he had recently brushed his teeth, and his skin smelt freshly washed or scrubbed with a bland soap, and she could hear his breathing, which was slow, long, deep sniffs, as if he was inhaling some substance – almost, she thought, as if he were snorting coke straight from her skin.
She stared back at the face she could not see, petrified, trying to shrink away, but the bedding beneath her would not yield. I’m dreaming this, I must be dreaming this. Please, God, let me be dreaming this.
Her whole body was quivering, and the pulse in her wrist was jigging. Was this the start of the sacrifice ritual she’d been reading about? The Great Rite?
Could she take them by surprise, grab Verity and run?
She didn’t even know where her clothes were. Run where? Barefoot and in her hospital gown? Straight back into the arms of the same policeman?
Thankfully the man moved away. He opened the door then lingered, staring at her, giving her a long, strange look. He seemed to be smiling. Then he was gone.
And now the door opened again, and an old man appeared in a wheelchair, being pushed by a nurse she recognised. Nurse Caulk. The man was elderly, his eyes half closed as if he was blind, and he had a rug around his shoulders. The door closed and they were in darkness again.
Susan could hear Nurse Caulk wheeling him over to the cot, and then heard his voice which, although frail and faltering, had a quality that sent slicks of fear down Susan’s spine. There was something about it, hatred, bitterness, spite, malevolence, conceit, all these things underpinning the intonations, and delivered with an authority, a mesmeric, oratorical style in spite of his ailing body that reminded her of the shrill evil in Hitler’s voice at a Nuremberg rally, and penetrated deep into her soul.
She wanted him out of here; she did not want him in this room with her baby, did not want him speaking to Verity, did not want him communing with her. She tried to tell him to go, now, at once, but her mouth would not work, no sound would come out. She just stared at his silhouette, juddering helplessly.
Then the door opened. Someone else was coming in. And in the burst of light she saw to her shock just quite how old this man in the wheelchair really was. A centenarian, at least. His skin, gridded with creases and mottled with liver spots, hung shapelessly from his cheekbones, and his eyes, heavy-lidded, remained closed, like those of a basking reptile. Only his hair retained any vestiges of youth, carefully tended and brushed immaculately in a way that reminded her of Mr Sarotzini.
His gums had shrunk, like a corpse’s, and his lips glistened with spittle. It was like a rotting skull chanting to Verity.
Go, please go, get out, please go, go, GO AWAY!
But the words yammered silently inside her head. He continued on, a litany of evil pouring from his drooling mouth and his crumbling teeth.
Go away, please, go away, please, go away.
Then the man turned towards her. The reptilian lids quivered, as if they were about to open, and Susan shrank back in terror. She did not want to see his eyes, did not want to meet his gaze. And at that moment, the light faded again and the terror surging inside her, erupted into a volcano of fear, and then she was falling, tumbling, being swept helplessly by a breaking roller of molten lava into a searing turmoil of darkness.
Chapter Sixty-two
Verity was crying.
Susan opened her eyes. The curtains were opaque. It was still dark, but not as dark as it had been. The blackness of the night had turned to pre-dawn shades of grey.
Verity was still here, thank God, thank God, thank God.
Fear, formless and indefinable, swirled through her veins. Had she dreamed of the people in her room? She reached out, found the light switch, pressed it, then blinked hard against the glare. Verity’s crying strengthened.
‘It’s OK, hon, darling, Mom’s here.’ Susan sat up, oblivious to the pain in her abdomen and looked lovingly at Verity. The wall clock said four twenty. She reached over and lifted the baby from her cot. ‘It’s OK,’ she whispered, tiredly. ‘You’re just a little hungry, that’s all. It’s OK. You and me, we’re OK.’
When Susan next woke, the room was flooded with daylight. Something was wrong.
She couldn’t hear Verity.
In panic, she sat up, wincing against the pull of her stitches and the stinging pain from the incision in her abdomen, which seemed much worse this morning, and looked anxiously into the cot.
Verity, wide awake, was staring back at her with her beautiful eyes. Round black pupils in orbs of shining lapis-lazuli.
Relief that she was still here burst through Susan. She reached over, ignoring the pain, and kissed her lovingly on the head. Immediately Verity started crying.
‘Hungry again? You are one greedy little baby, you know that? Well, I think you’re greedy, but I don’t have much experience in these matters, you know. I mean, I haven’t been a mother before and I guess you haven’t been a baby before, so we’re both new to this, right?’
Susan glanced at the clock on the wall. Eight ten a.m. ‘Seem to be setting ourselves a regular four-hour pattern.’
Verity responded by crying even more loudly. Holding her breath against the pain of the movement, Susan hauled her out of the cot, hugged her, then rocked her gently. ‘It’s OK, it’s OK! I’m not criticising you,’ she said soothingly. Then, opening the front of her gown, she guided Verity’s mouth to her left nipple.
Verity gripped hard and Susan cried out in surprise. ‘Owww! Hey! Steady as you go, OK? Have a little care here, I’m fragile too!’
Verity settled down, sucking contentedly. Susan watched her. Then suddenly her throat felt tight, constricted with fear. She studied the concentration on Verity’s tiny pink face, loving her and fearing for her more desperately every second.
There’s no way I could ever let you go, not to anyone, she thought.
After Verity had finished feeding, Susan put her back in the cot, and watched her curl up contentedly and go back to sleep.
Then she lay thinking. Although she was able to move a little, every movement hurt like hell, and she was severely restricted right now – she was still catheterised and cannulated and still had the groin drain. She opened the front of her gown wider and examined the stitches. It was a grisly sight, and she wondered, but didn’t care right now, how bad a scar she would have.
She had to phone someone who would believe her. Her parents. She had to find a phone and call them, get them to come over with a lawyer. They needed to get on to the surrogate helpline, get advice, find out where they stood, contact the lawyer she’d been to see in England, Elizabeth Frazer – she’d have an associate over here, she’d be bound to.
A phone.
She looked around the room and could see where it ought to be, but it wasn’t here, it had been removed.
Her eyes watered and she clenched her hands with silent rage. She felt so utterly, utterly helpless.
A while later Nurse Dufors, all smiles as usual, came into Susan’s room with a breakfast tray. She removed the catheter and the cannula and the groin drain, and helped Susan hobble painfully the few steps to the bathroom.
‘Were you here last night?’ Susan asked. ‘All night?’
‘No, I went off duty after your baby’s midnight feed. Did you come up with a name yet?’
Susan hesitated. She didn’t want anyone to know, she decided, not yet, she wanted to share as little as possible of her baby with anyone here. ‘I – haven’t got that far. I was expecting a boy.’
‘That’s very common, you know. A lot of mothers expect a boy and then get surprised.’
‘I can understand that. I don’t know why I was expecting a boy.’
‘Girls are less trouble,’ Nurse Dufors replied, breezily.
As Susan sat down
on the lavatory seat, she said, ‘I don’t have a phone in the room. Could you do me a favour and bring me one?’ Immediately she caught the sudden stiffening in the nurse’s face.
‘No problem,’ she replied.
‘And could we do something else – some time. I’d like – I’d like to show the baby to my sister, Casey. Could you help me up to her room?’
Nurse Dufors turned away. ‘Sure, I – I’ll take you up – when you’re stronger. I don’t think today.’
She helped Susan wash and get back into bed, then went out of the room. Susan reminded her about the phone and she promised she would look into it right away.
Susan forced down a little dry toast, although she wasn’t hungry, and drank some tea and apple juice. Nurse Dufors did not reappear with a phone. Susan rang the bell above her bed then, exhausted, lapsed into a doze.
When she next opened her eyes, her father was sitting beside the bed, watching her, and her mother was standing over the cot, looking at Verity with a strange intensity. Susan smiled, feeling an immense sense of relief. ‘Thank God,’ she said.
‘She has your grandmama’s eyes,’ her mother said, barely glancing at her.
Suddenly her relief at seeing them was tinged with unease. Susan wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but her parents looked awkward, as if they were posing for a Jan van Eyck tableau, and her mother’s voice sounded stilted.
‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ Susan said. The wall clock said ten twenty-five. A while yet before Verity’s next feed. Good. Lowering her voice almost to a whisper, she said, ‘They’re here, the people I told you about, they’ve found me, they’re gonna take the baby, you have to get me – us – out of here.’
Her father stared at her with an expression she could not read, his Adam’s apple bobbing inside his open-necked checked shirt. He was unshaven and, although he always dressed in casual, working men’s clothes, he never normally left the house without shaving. He looked gaunt and haggard, his skin drawn. Once, when she had been a kid, he had seemed so strong; now he looked weak, helpless – and old. Susan wondered, suddenly, whether he was sick.
Then she saw that her mother, too, was looking pale and drained, as if she had been up all night. And frightened.
‘Has your father’s nose,’ her mother said, in that stilted voice again, as if she were trying to change the subject. ‘A real Corrigan nose that one. See the way it turns up at the tip?’ She moved away from Verity and paced up and down the room, wringing her hands and looking at Susan’s father as if for help.
‘We – we have to go. You have to get me out of here,’ Susan said, even more urgently than before. ‘The people I told you about, don’t you remember? The staff here – I think they’re in league with them. You’ve got to get me – us – Verity and me, and I think maybe Casey, too, away from here –’
She stopped as she saw the fleeting eye contact between her parents, and her mind shot back again to the beeping warning signal, Casey’s terrible complexion, the disconnected air line. ‘Is Casey OK?’ she said, suspiciously.
Her father looked at her again and she saw his Adam’s apple bobbing again, the way it always did when he was nervous about something. ‘Casey’s fine,’ he said. ‘She – she’s good.’
Gayle Corrigan walked out of the room and closed the door behind her. Her father sat still in silence. It seemed to Susan that there was something he wanted to say, but he stood up and went over to the window. ‘Grand view,’ he said.
Susan couldn’t believe this. Shaking with terror now, she said, ‘Dad! They’re gonna take Verity! Don’t you believe me?’ She raised her voice, until she was shouting, not caring whether she woke Verity. ‘Dad! For God’s sake you have to get me out of here! Daaaddddddd! Listen! Oh, God, please LISTEN to me!’
The door opened and Nurse Dufors came in, followed by Susan’s mother, who was red-eyed, as if she’d been crying.
Nurse Dufors turned to the Corrigans and said, ‘I’m afraid she’s finding everything rather distressing at the moment. Why don’t you let her get some rest today and come back tomorrow?’
Susan’s father nodded.
‘No!’ Susan pleaded. ‘Dad, Mom! No, don’t leave me, you have to take me away – you –’
She couldn’t believe her eyes. They were just walking obediently out of the room. Her father stopped in the doorway, fixed her with another stare that seemed to be a mixture of bewilderment, pity and reproach, and then they were gone.
Nurse Dufors raised a finger to her lips and said, as brightly as ever, ‘Susan, please, calm down! You’re going to wake your daughter!’
‘Look, you don’t understand, please –’ Susan tried to get out of bed. The nurse placed a firm but gentle restraining hand on her shoulder.
‘You and your daughter both need rest right now.’
Susan stared up at her: a pleasant face, handsome rather than pretty, with dark hair pulled back a tad severely, in her mid-thirties Susan guessed. Could this woman help her? ‘I – I need to talk to you, in confidence.’
The nurse suddenly produced two pills and tiny paper cup of water. ‘Take these, Susan, and you’ll feel much better.’
Susan looked at her warily. ‘What are they?’
‘Mild painkillers.’
Mistrustful, Susan feigned swallowing them, dropping them from one hand into the other. Then she said, ‘I don’t want to stay here, I want to go to another clinic – or hospital – or home.’
The nurse frowned. ‘You are in the best place in the whole of California. Why do you want to move, Susan?’
Susan hesitated. Would she believe her if she told her the whole story? Maybe that’s why her parents were acting so strangely – because they didn’t believe her, because they thought she was nuts. Or had John gotten to them and convinced them she was nuts? ‘So why won’t anyone bring me a phone?’ she asked.
Nurse Dufors smiled again. ‘The phone! I’ll go get it sorted for you right away!’
Susan waited until she was out of the room, then pushed the two pills between the mattress and the covering slip. She looked at Verity again, still sound asleep, then lay back, exhausted, and closed her eyes, listening for the return of Nurse Dufors’ footsteps.
Chapter Sixty-three
To John’s relief the flight took off on time, and landed early, twenty minutes ahead of schedule, at twelve forty-five; but it was another hour and a quarter before he was in a rental car and heading out on the freeway towards Orange County.
Throughout the entire eleven hours of the flight he’d been churning over and over the same territory, trying to work out what best to do when he arrived, a steady fuse of anger burning inside him. Whether he should first try to convince Susan’s parents of the danger Susan was in or go straight to the clinic and deal with the situation as he found it.
Given what Dick Corrigan had told him over the phone about the air line, the police were not an option. Finally he ruled out his parents-in-law, also. He needed to speak to Susan, and hear her version of what had happened with Casey. He just could not believe Susan had harmed her kid sister. Unless …
The thought hung like a vapour trail. Unless … unless in some twisted-up thought spiral Susan figured that by killing Casey she was freeing herself of the financial obligation to support her and that, therefore, keeping the baby and breaking the deal with Mr Sarotzini would be fine.
Breakdown?
He found that hard to accept. He knew Susan too well. She was strong, she was a coper. Yes, she had been deeply upset by Fergus Donleavy and Harvey Addison’s deaths. She had been spooked by what Donleavy had told her about Van Rhoe and Sarotzini’s occult connections. But enough to have pushed her over the brink and sent her to America to kill her sister? He didn’t think so.
It was a fine afternoon, warm enough to turn on the air-conditioning in the car. John slowed as he approached the white Doric pillars at the entrance to the Cypress Palisades Clinic, then deliberately drove on past, checking out the place. The
gates were open and there was no sign that any additional security had been introduced by its new owners. A long line of sprinklers threw spray across the lawns, and a Hispanic gardener was pushing a barrow laden with cuttings along a woodchip path.
Beyond the grounds, the road wound up into a canyon. He pulled up a quarter of a mile on, turned the blue Chevrolet round, then killed the engine and lit a cigarette, gathering his thoughts once more as he smoked it. He felt surprisingly alert after the long flight, the payoff from sticking to soft drinks and eating little.
The Vörn Bank had bought the clinic six months back.
They had told Dick and Gayle Corrigan that Susan had murdered Casey, but they were going to keep it under wraps.
The clinic are being very good about it, John. They – the director had a talk with us. They don’t want a scandal – I guess – I guess any more than we do.
Maybe they didn’t want a scandal. But Sarotzini had been watching them, and listening to them ever since – how long? Since before they had moved in? He would know that Susan was having doubts about handing over the baby. Maybe Sarotzini had decided to frame her, as a precaution. She could hardly fight a custody battle if she had a murder charge hanging over her head.
He wondered if he was being too far-fetched. But he was beginning to realise that, so far as Mr Sarotzini went, nothing was too incredible.
When Susan next opened her eyes, Mr Sarotzini was in the room, sitting beside the bed, staring into the cot in a rather detached way. He looked more like a man admiring an exhibit in a museum, than a father adoring his child. She had no idea how long he’d been there.
‘Good morning, Susan. How are you feeling?’
She took some time to consider this question. Her abdomen felt as if it had just been used as a target in a knife-throwing competition, her backside had gone to sleep, she had pins and needles in her thighs, as well as a raging thirst and a headache. ‘Fine,’ she said, guardedly and unsmiling. Then she remembered, and said, petulantly, ‘I’d be even more fine if someone brought me a telephone.’
