The Truth Read online

  Also by Peter James:

  Dead Letter Drop

  Atom Bomb Angel

  Billionaire

  Possession

  Dreamer

  Sweet Heart

  Twilight

  Prophecy

  Host

  Alchemist

  THE TRUTH

  PETER JAMES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Robert Beard, FRCS, Felicity Beard, Andy Holyer, Bruce Katz and Sue Ansell, who never flagged or ceased to respond vigorously and with warm goodwill to my ceaseless barrage of questions in the researching of this novel.

  And also to Richard Howorth, Dr Duncan Stewart, Barbara Haywood, Peter Rawlings and Dr A. M. Anton for their help.

  Writing is only in part a solitary task, and as ever I owe a huge thank you to the invaluable creative input and tireless support of my UK agent, Jon Thurley and his brilliant right hand, Patricia Preece, as well as the very considerable creative contributions made by my new editor, Simon Spanton, my new copy editor, Hazel Orme, and my US agent, Brian Siberell at CAA.

  And as always the book could not have happened without the forbearance of my wife, Georgina, and the tolerance of Bertie who only sometimes barked during my deepest moments of thought …

  Peter James

  [email protected]

  for Jon Thurley, who gave me the guidance,

  the will, the hope, and above all else,

  the belief.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Dedication

  Also by Elizabeth Haydon

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery, Los Angeles, 1996

  Permaglow from the city lights makes it brighter than the three men like. They were hoping for darkness but all they get is a neon twilight.

  One holds a briefcase and a photocopy of a fax, one a flashlight, one two shovels taped neatly together. They should not be here, and they are nervous; this is not at all how they imagined it would be, but that’s the way it is. The one with the briefcase is smarter than his colleagues, and he understands: nothing is ever quite as we imagine it.

  They have travelled a long way; being here scares them; the thought of what they are about to do scares them even more. But neither of these things scares them as much as the man who has hired them to do this job.

  Two of them have never met this man, they have only heard stories about him; they are not the kind of stories they would want to tell their kids. The stories work on their minds even now as they search, fuelling them with a determination they have never felt before. They are riding emotional rapids on a flimsy raft, and the raft has a name: it is called Fear of Failure.

  The beam of the flashlight strikes a gravestone, sweeps away the darkness as if it is a layer of ancient dust. Engraved words appear. A loved one, long dead; it’s the wrong one. They move on across the flat ground, past a clump of trees and a small, landscaped mound.

  Another headstone; also the wrong one. They stop, consult the blurred fax. They look around them, see marble obelisks, onyx cherubs, granite slabs, porphyry urns, chiselled endearments, quotations, poems. But these men are not readers of poetry, the words do not reach out through the darkness to them.

  ‘We’re in the wrong line, you assholes. Next line along. Look, it shows you clearly, you have to count three lines. We only counted two.’

  They find the right line. Find the right gravestone.

  Hannah Katherine Rosewell. 1892–1993.

  Dearly beloved wife and mother.

  The man checks the fax, reading the fuzzy words with difficulty, then studies the inscription on the headstone once more. He is being methodical. Finally he nods assent.

  Carefully the other two cut the turf and roll it back as if it were a carpet. Then they start digging; the man with the fax watches, listens to the crunch of the blades, the traffic on Sunset beyond the locked wrought iron gates, watches for shadows that move, for a shape that was not there last time he looked. It is a warm night and the soil is dry, it has the texture of calcium, of old bones that have gone beyond brittle and crumbled.

  A shovel pings as it strikes a stone, and an oath hisses through the humid darkness. After a while the men pause to drink from a canteen of water.

  They work for almost three hours before the lid of the coffin is fully exposed. It’s in good shape, there’s still a gleam from the varnish, rosewood; this is a deluxe, a tree in a rainforest has given its life for this coffin.

  The two men standing on the lid lay their shovels on the ground, then stretch their backs. Each is handed a nylon cord with a shackle, which they clip to the end handles, then they haul themselves up out of the grave, and stretch their backs again, gratefully. One licks a blister on his hand, then binds a handkerchief around his palm.

  Even with all three working, it takes several minutes of clumsy, painful effort to haul the coffin up and onto the ground, but finally they succeed, and the one with the bandaged hand sits on it, momentarily exhausted by the effort. They drink more water, all three peering anxiously into the night around them. A small rodent scurries past and is absorbed by the darkness.

  Now they have the coffin out, the urgency with which they have been working has deserted them. They stand back from it for some moments, looking
at the brass handles, looking at each other, each thinking their own private thoughts about how a corpse might look after three years underground.

  They go to work on the screws, remove each of them and pocket them carefully. Then they hesitate. The two who have dug the grave grip the lid and try to free it, but it’s stuck tight. They try a little harder and there’s a crack like a gunshot as the seal gives and the lid raises a few inches at one end.

  Instantly they drop it again and stagger away.

  ‘Yech, Jesus!’ says the one with the bandaged hand.

  The smell.

  Nothing has prepared them for this smell. It’s as if a septic tank has been vented beneath them.

  They move further away, but the smell is everywhere, the whole night is thick with it. The one with the torch gags, then swallows back down a throatful of vomit. They shuffle further away still.

  Finally the smell recedes enough for them to be able to move back towards the coffin. This time they prepare themselves, taking deep breaths before they heave that lid up and off.

  Inside there is fine quilted satin, white, the colour of death. The old lady’s hair is white also; it is thin and wispy, the same hue as the satin, but its sheen has gone; her face is brown, like scuffed leather, patches of bone show through: her teeth forming a rictus smile look like they have been freshly brushed. Her state of preservation owes as much to the quality of her coffin as it does to the dry Californian climate; in a more humid soil, in a cheaper coffin, she would look less good.

  The smell isn’t so bad now, it’s being diluted by the fresh air that the corpse hasn’t seen for three years. The one with the fax looks at his watch and knows they have a little under three hours of darkness remaining to them. He reads the instructions at the bottom of the fax although he has already memorised them, has been thinking about them day and night for the past week.

  He opens the briefcase he has brought, removes scissors, a scalpel, a boning knife and a small cool-box. Working swiftly he snips a tuft of hair, excises a square of flesh from her chest, then amputates the index finger of the woman’s right hand; no fluid leaks from the cut; the finger is dry, leathery, like an antique peg. He places each of his prizes into a separate compartment that has already been prepared in the cool-box, then checks the instructions on the fax once more, before mentally ticking them off.

  They screw the lid back onto the coffin and begin the task of shovelling back the soil. It goes back in faster than it came out. But not that fast.

  In the morning one of the security guards passes by; he notices nothing amiss; he has no reason to.

  Chapter One

  ‘It doesn’t have a garage,’ John said.

  ‘I can live with that. How many houses in London do have garages?’

  John nodded. She had a point, maybe it was no big deal.

  ‘I love it, don’t you?’

  John looked absently at the For Sale sign, deep in thought, studied the particulars he had in his hand, looked up at the columned porch that was almost absurdly grand for the house, then at the red-brick walls clad in ivy and clematis, and back at the turret. It was the turret that was really getting to him, hooking him.

  In his teens he’d dreamed of being an architect, and had he lived in the previous century, this was the kind of house he might have designed. It was individual, on three storeys, the only detached one in the street, beyond the end of the Victorian red-brick terrace, and it was the turret that made it, set if off, gave it an air both of importance and of eccentricity.

  The estate agent, Darren Morris, whom John placed at a mental age of about twelve, jigged around at the edge of his peripheral vision, chewing a wad of gum with his mouth open which, combined with his forward-combed fringe, his stooped back and gangly limbs, made him appear almost Neanderthal; he looked like he wanted to be somewhere else – needed to be somewhere else – in a hurry, gave out the vibes that they’d been keeping him from a far more pressing engagement. John man-oeuvred himself behind him, then, holding the particulars in his teeth, began mimicking a gorilla scratching its armpits.

  Susan looked away quickly, but was unable to mask her grin. The estate agent turned round, but all he saw was John studying the house with intense concentration.

  ‘South-facing garden,’ Darren Morris said. This was the third, or maybe fourth time he had parted with this nugget of information. John ignored it, he was still gazing at the house, trying to keep the interior alive in his mind.

  The sunlight through the bay window in the drawing room, that gorgeous combination of both airiness and warmth, and of space. Those wonderful high-ceilinged rooms. The deep hall that gave such a great welcoming feeling as you walked in. The dining room that could seat twelve, no problem (not that they had ever entertained that many at once, but who knows?). The small room next to it overlooking the garden that Susan had already bagged for her study. The cellar that he could one day rack out and fill with wine.

  He looked up at the turret again. That room up there, with its views all around, would make the most sensational bedroom. And there were four more rooms on the first and second floors that would make a den for him and spare bedrooms, plus a loft they hadn’t even gone up to.

  ‘I really like the garden,’ Susan said. ‘It’s a huge garden for London.’

  John liked it too, the privacy of it, and the fact that on the other side of the fence was a beautiful park with tennis courts, and a pond, and acres of grass that were sparkling with frost this morning. The house needed money spent on it, that was the one serious consideration. The roof did not look good, or the wiring or plumbing, and God knows what other kinds of old-house problems lurked in here. He’d be hard pushed to find the asking price, without even beginning to think about repairs and renovation.

  The turret got to him again – he couldn’t stop looking at it, he was filled with a sudden deep urge to live in a house with a turret. But it wasn’t just the turret. This was the first time he had walked into a house and thought, yes, I could spend the rest of my life here. It had grandeur, but it was Bohemian also, funky, elegant, it had style. This would be a great place to bring clients, he thought. This was a place that announced: John Carter has arrived!

  But it had no garage.

  Suddenly John, who had always wanted a house with a garage, saw no need for a garage. There was a small concreted area, enough for one car. Plenty of spaces in the tree-lined street. It was peaceful here, tranquil, there was no noise of London traffic. An oasis.

  He thought about making love to Susan in the bedroom in the turret; he thought about making love to her outside in the private garden, in the sunshine, in the summer that was not far off. It was the last week of February, they could be in by then.

  ‘I love it,’ he said.

  ‘And I love you,’ Susan said, putting her arms around him, hugging him hard. ‘I love you more than anything in the world.’ Then she looked longingly beyond him at the house, hugging him even harder. She was staring at a piece of the England of her dreams. The house was conjuring up for her all kinds of images from books she had read: Austen, Hardy, Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray, Forster, Greene. One after another, descriptions of elegant London houses and country houses came into her mind.

  She had often, in a Californian childhood largely buried in books, imagined herself in England, living the lives of the characters she read about, maybe hosting an elegant, witty dinner party, or calling on someone and being received by a butler, or just hurrying through London in the rain.

  ‘And I love you too,’ John replied.

  The estate agent moved away and hovered by his car, then looked at his watch again and dug his hands in his pockets. Everyone went nuts over this house, everyone who saw it wanted to buy it but they never did, because of the horrific twenty-nine-page survey they would get listing all the problems. That combined with the asking price, which was much too high – and from which the vendors would not budge – made this place a sticker.

  He looked at this
couple, trying to size them up. Susan Carter was American, he guessed from her accent, late twenties, shoulder-length red hair cut modern, long camel coat over jeans and boots. She reminded him of an actress and he was trying to think who, Gorillas in the Mist was the film. Then he remembered: Sigourney Weaver. Yes, she seemed to have that same mixture of good looks and ballsiness. And maybe a hint of Scully in The X-Files also. Yup. As he looked at her again he could see even more of Scully coming through.

  John Carter was English, a little older, early to mid thirties, he reckoned. Sharp dresser, tweed trenchcoat, Boss suit, buckled shoes, looked like a media type, advertising probably. Straight black hair, sleek, handsome face, an air of fresh-faced boyishness about him, but tough with it, there was a definite hard streak in this guy. He looked across at the Carter’s black BMW M3. Spotlessly clean, gleaming, went with John Carter’s Mr Immaculate image, he thought, but he was surprised there wasn’t a personalised plate: the one on the car showed it to be four years old. Poser’s car.

  Still holding John and looking at the house, Susan asked, quietly, vapour streaming from her mouth, ‘Can we afford it?’

  ‘No, we can’t possibly afford it.’

  She leaned back, the morning sunlight striking her eyes, turning them lapis-lazuli blue. These were the eyes John fell in love with seven and a half years ago and had been in love with ever since. She grinned. ‘So?’

  They’d been told that the previous owners had moved overseas. The place was empty and must be costing them money – maybe they’d lower the asking price for a quick sale?

  John grinned back. He was tantalising her, he was tantalising himself. It would be reckless to buy this place, but then again, all his life he has been reckless.

  Chapter Two

  The man of whom so many people were afraid presided over his vast office with an air of courtly ease.

  His aristocratic face had become a little gaunt over the years, but his complexion still retained that unique pampered sheen of the well-born. His grey eyes, clear, sharp, full of observation and humour, required no glasses or contact lenses. His dark hair, elegantly streaked with grey, was swept with élan back from his temples.