John lay there, winded and gagging, his ears numb, spikes of pain shooting through his skull, looking up in shock at the huge man towering over him. Then, gathering his wits, he pushed down with the palms of his hands on the floor, trying to lever himself up. Klindz kicked him hard underneath his chin, a brutal kick that shattered his jaw and several teeth, and pitched him-violently on to his back.

  Dazed, but numb to the pain, John stared, unfocusing, at Klindz. Slowly he began to gather his thoughts. Who was he? A madman? Burglar? What the hell did he -? Then, as his vision improved, something in his brain connected. The face. In the clinic in California. He looked like the man, the runkey, who had taken him up to Mr. Sarotzini's office that afternoon when he had arrived.

  Klindz stood over John, with his hands in his pockets, and said, "Mr. Carter, I need you to tell me where Susan has gone."

  John tried to speak, but the movement of his jaw hurt so much he cried out in pain. Gripping his chin with his hands, and dribbling blood, he mumbled, "Don't - don't know."

  He was trying to think clearly. Had Sarotzini sent this man?

  The hatred was so strong now as he stared down at John that it was almost tearing Klindz apart. Are you enjoying this, Mr. Carter? he wanted to ask. How does this compare to screwing your wife?

  There were so many things Klindz would like to do to him right now that he was finding it hard to decide where to start. "I'm going to hurt you, Mr. Carter, I'm going to hurt you so very much. You.are aware of the reasons I have?"

  John looked back at him, bewildered. "I don't - she - this afternoon -she went - didn't say -"

  "You are not understanding me very well, Mr. Carter." Klindz smiled at him. He wanted John Carter to relax, to calm down, to listen. He wanted him to know why he was being punished. He wanted John to be grateful. The Thirteenth Truth stated that all true gratitude is borne from punishment. And John would be grateful if he could understand, really understand the importance of this child his wife had given birth to.

  Then, before Klindz knew it, John Carter had his hand around a small, solid table and was swinging it with all his strength into his shin.

  With a cry of shock, Klindz staggered backwards and fell heavily across the arm of the sofa. John Carter was up on his feet, running through the doorway and out into the hall. Even more enraged by pain, Klindz threw himself, hobbling, after him.

  John reached the front door, "and pulled the handle of the Banham latch, but it did not move. Oh, Christ. The lock pin was down. With fingers trembling so much they would barely work he pushed it up, tried again. The door swung open then stopped with a jerk and a loud clank after a few inches, as the safety chain was yanked taut.

  In desperation he slammed the door shut. How the hell had the safety chain got on? How? How? How? He tore at it with his fingers, then he was being yanked back fiercely by his hair, his legs were kicked out from beneath him and he crashed backwards on to the floor with a sob of despair.

  In fury, Klindz stamped on John's right kneecap, with all his force, shattering it.

  The pain and the shock jerked John upright up like a marionette. He bellowed in agony, fell back, writhing, rolling his head, thrashing, pummelling the floor with his fists. He rolled left, right, moaning terribly, white-hot knives of pain shooting out through him in every direction. Oh, God, let me die, he thought. Let me die. Anything, please, just stop this pain, kill me, please kill me. He clutched at the rug with his fingers, bit into a tuff with his teeth, yammering, crying, the pain exploding through his eyes, ears, his scalp.

  Then he was pulled over on to his back and his neck was pinioned to the floor by the man's shoe. John's eyeballs were rolling, sweat was pouring down his face and he was gagging, struggling for breath, choking on his own blood. Klindz smiled at him. "The First Truth, Mr. Carter, states that from pain comes real love. I would like you to think about that. I would like also for you to understand that I am doing this to help Susan. If you knew what I am risking to help her then you would love me, Mr. Carter, you really would. Please think very hard and tell me, where is she?"

  He pressed down hard with his foot. Too hard. There was a crunch of bone, John Carter's eyes bulged and he made a gurgling sound. Klindz released the pressure, a fraction.

  "Sssshon't know," John groaned, "don't know. I shon't know. Pleeassssh believe me."

  Klindz pulled from his pocket a small penknife and opened the blade."

  "I don't like it when you make love to your wife, Mr. Carter. I'm going to make it hard for you to do that in future."

  Still keeping his foot firmly on John's neck, Klindz began to bend his legs, lowering himself down, his left leg hurting badly. Then he gripped the belt of John's trousers, and jerked it open.

  John let out a terrible cry; his body shook, his arms flailing.

  Then Klindz heard a noise behind him.

  He turned. The front door was open, the safety chain pulled tight. A woman called out, "Hello? Mr. Carter? Hello?" It was the nanny, Klindz recognised her voice and clamped his hand over John's mouth.

  "Coming!" Klindz called out. "Close the door so I can take the chain from it."

  The door closed. Klindz, thinking quickly, grabbed John's right wrist and made a deep slash across the vein and in a fraction of a second did the same to the left wrist. Then he hurried through into the kitchen, pausing to rinse his knife under the tap and dry it.

  Then he unbolted the rear door, let himself out into the garden and slipped away, over the fence and into the darkness of the park, and made his way swiftly back to the Mercedes.

  He had parked sufficiently far back that the nanny, whom he could see clearly in the porch light, would barely even have heard him start the car. And, besides, all her concentration was on the front door. He could see her unlocking it again now, and pushing it open, just a few inches until the chain ran out of slack.

  When Klindz arrived home, twenty minutes later, a message awaited him from Mr. Sarotzini: "I have an appointment with Susan at 10 A.M. tomorrow. You will collect me from the club at 9 a.m. This time she will not let me down."

  Chapter Seventy-two

  It was a wet Sunday morning: heavy summer rain was pelting down. Klindz drove the huge Mercedes at a steady 70 m.p. along the fast, undulating road through Buckinghamshire countryside. The stretch they were currently on was three-lane, with a double white line that had alternating breaks for overtaking. The clock on the dashboard showed it was nine fifty.

  There was little traffic going the same way; more was coming from the opposite direction, heading into London. A massive truck blattered past, blinding Klindz with spray and shaking the limousine with its slipstream. He increased the speed of the wipers.

  Mr. Sarotzini had said nothing about last night, and Klindz presumed that this meant that he did not know he'd disobeyed him. All the same he was nervous that Mr. Sarotzini might say something.

  He had woken feeling low this morning; and deeply uneasy. Instead of feeling elated about John Carter, he felt flat. He did not understand why. He felt dirty, as if he needed a bath, except that he had already had a shower. It would be different when he saw Susan again. Then he would feel fine.

  But he was scared of Mr. Sarotzini's mood today. It was bad, far worse than yesterday. He could not ever remember Mr. Sarotzini in such a black mood. He was scared of what Mr. Sarotzini might instruct him to do to Susan.

  "Last night, Stefan," Mr. Sarotzini said.

  Klindz stiffened, saying nothing.

  "Last night, when Susan Carter telephoned me for the second time." Klindz watched him in the mirror, nervous that Mr. Sarotzini was going to question him about John. The banker was looking out of the window, stroking his chin, taking his time before he continued. "She explained to me, Stefan, that she wanted to know she could trust me to come alone. That is why she put me to the test yesterday."

  The ominous tone in Mr. Sarotzini's voice increased Klindz's anxiety.

  "She saw your face, Stefan. As you were driving away the creepy little priest, Doctor Freer. She saw your face."

  Klindz knew this. He had seen hers too, he had seen that flash of recognition. "Yes, it was a mistake," he answered.

  He could deal with it. When he saw Susan, he would be able to explain and she would understand. He was just a shitty little priest, vermin. He was history.

  "Too many mistakes, Stefan. I think your love for this woman is clouding your judgement."

  The harsh, scolding tone of Mr. Sarotzini's voice sent a chill through him. Before he could respond, Mr. Sarotzini continued, "You are making mistakes all the time, Stefan. I am losing count of the number you have made just recently. You allowed Susan Carter to flee to the United States. You allowed the priest, Doctor Freer, to be alone in that room with Verity. " And now you have disobeyed my instructions. You did not go straight home to your flat in Earl's Court last night, you went to the Carters" house."

  Klindz froze. He connected with Mr. Sarotzini's eyes in the mirror, then stared ahead once more at the road. How? How? How?

  Then he realised, and another much deeper chill coursed through him. Of course. The nanny. Mr..Sarotzini had not permitted him to select a nanny himself; he had told him that the choice of the nanny needed to be random. But there was nothing, nothing in Mr. Sarotzini's world that was ever random.

  Mr. Sarotzini had put the nanny there not just to look after Verity. She was there to spy on him.

  "Susan Carter is dangerously unstable, Stefan. She has reminded me over the telephone of the promises I made to her husband that there would be no more killing and that there would be no more bugging. She is making threats to harm the baby, to kill herself and the baby. She says that if she ever sees you again, she will kill Verity."

  "I will explain everything to her," Klindz said, trembling.. "I will calm her down, she will understand."

  "I cannot take this risk, Stefan." There was a terrible finality in Mr. Sarotzini's voice.

  Klindz drove on in silence.

  "You have brought about this situation, Stefan, and I will give you the choice of how you deal with it. Either you will kill Susan Carter or you will have to stay away from her for ever."

  "I cannot kill her," he said quietly.

  They were approaching a slow-moving van Klindz pulled out to overtake, but a stream of cars was coming in the other direction. He pulled back in.

  "Then you will stay away from her for ever."

  "My duty is to teach Verity the Troths," Klindz said.

  "Verity has been born with the knowledge of all the Truths, Stefan. This is what makes her special. This is what makes her unique. She will require no one to teach her these. As she grows older she will simply know them.

  They will be second nature to her. As will many other things."

  "You promised me I could have Susan for ever."

  "The Twenty-seventh Truth states that nothing lasts for ever. It is the law of entropy. Disorder naturally increases with the passage of time. Not even promises last for ever, Stefan."

  Klindz drove on in silence. He tried to imagine killing Susan and he could not. He tried to imagine living without ever seeing her again. He could not.

  Without his protection, what would happen to Susan? She was too freespirited, too strong-willed. One day she would anger Mr. Sarotzini again. And then?

  Claudie's screams echoed inside his head.

  He pulled out again to see beyond the van. In the distance a large truck was approaching. There was time, just time, if he accelerated hard.

  But he swung back in again. Then, looking at Mr. Sarotzini in the mirror, he said, "I have failed you. I am impure. The Fifth Truth states that "The only purification is eradication.""

  Klindz swung the steering wheel hard over to the right. The Mercedes veered out from behind the van straight across the oncoming lane. Straight into the path of the oncoming truck.

  Susan, my love, this is for you, this is how much I love you, so much more than you will ever know.

  Klindz heard Claudie's screams once more. Then, for the first time in his life, he heard Mr. Sarotzini's scream.

  And that was worth everything.

  The massive truck hit the limousine broadside, sheering off its roof then dragging the mangled wreckage along for two hundred yards beneath its wheels, before slithering off the road on to the verge and coming to a halt in a wide ditch.

  Seconds after the driver jumped clear from his cab, the petrol from the Mercedes" tank exploded in a ball of fire, taking the track up in flames with it.

  Epilogue Ting... ting... ting... ting... ting... The noise was driving Susan nuts. She had a copy-edit deadline of the end of the following week for an anthology of Fergus Donleavy's writings, and she had been working all weekend on it. The book had been her idea and she'd persuaded Magellan Lowry to commission a bright science journalist - who, some years back, had coincidentally written a profile on Euan Freer - to put it together.

  It had been a slow process, a five-year labour of love, but she felt she had done Fergus justice with it, and it would be a fitting tribute to the man. Ting... ting... ting... ting... ting... She could hear it through the ceiling. That damned gerbil, Buzzy -they'd bought it for Verity as a fifth birthday present a fortnight ago. It was going round and round on the treadmill in its cage. And she could swear, sometimes, that Verity encouraged it. Every time Susan settled down to work, the gerbil started its goddamn aerobics.

  She was wrestling with a difficult section of the book. One of Fergus's many thoughts on the theories of time. She remembered trying to get her head round this passage once before, when she'd been working on the manuscript of the last book Fergus had written, which had been published posthumously. It had had good reviews, but had not been the brilliant best-seller she'd hoped for. But she was consoled by the knowledge that Fergus would have preferred it that way: good reviews from his peers had always meant more to him than his sales figures.

  Time is a curve, not a straight line. Linear time is an illusion; we exist in a space-time continuum.

  Sometimes she hoped that was true, that time was an illusion, and that people did not simply die and cease to exist; that everyone who had ever existed still did exist. But that hope had its flaws. She wanted Fergus still to exist. And Harvey Addison. But not Mr. Sarotzini.

  She kept the newspaper cutting of Mr. Sarotzini's death in a drawer of her desk: it was a constant reaffirmation to her that he really was dead. It was a small article, just a few column inches, stating that a Swiss banker, Emil Sarotzini, and his chauffeur, Stefan Klindz, had been killed when their Mercedes had collided with an articulated lorry on the A413 in Buckinghamshire.

  She had been a little surprised, but not disappointed, that no obituary of Mr. Sarotzini had appeared in any newspaper.

  Ting... ting... ting... ting... ting... She looked at her watch. Four p.m. John would be back from golf in an hour, and they'd have to get going soon after that. He was playing with Archie Warren, who had now recovered fully from his stroke and was fine, although he'd been advised never to play squash again.

  Ting... ting... ting... ting.. ting... Exasperated she looked up at the ceiling and shouted, "Verity! Shut that bloody thing up!"

  Almost immediately, the noise stopped. Silence! Sweet, precious silence! Not that Verity was a noisy kid: on the contrary, she was almost worryingly quiet at times. A loner, she wasn't good at mixing with other children, preferring her own company sitting up in her room reading voraciously or playing on her computer. The teachers at her school said she was advanced for her age - probably, the head had explained, the advantage of being an only. child with a literary mother.

  She and John had been trying for three years now for another baby, but so far without success. They'd had all kinds of tests and there was nothing wrong. It just hadn't happened. Yet.

  There was something Susan carried in her heart, which was that she wanted, more than anything, to believe that John was Verity's father. Sometimes, although John didn't like to talk about it, she sensed when she saw him talking to Verity, or playing with her, that he, too, believed it himself. And, as she had constantly told herself, it was possible.

  Even though Verity had been born a month premature, she'd been a good-sized baby and had surprised everyone by how strong she was. Maybe she had been conceived a month earlier than everyone had thought, and John really was her father.

  Every few months she had a strange recurring dream, in which Mr. Sarotzini was sitting beside her bed. He would smile sadly at her and say, "Susan, the Twenty-eighth Truth states that sometimes it is better to believe than to know."

  There was something else Susan carried in her heart. It was the memory of a conversation she'd had in her room in the clinic with Mr. Sarotzini soon after Verity had been born. He had said to her, Look at your daughter, look at her, look at Verity. Is she evil? Is she corrupt? Is that how she has been born? Is that how you view her when you look at her, hold her, suckle her? An evil corrupt monster? Is it, Susan?

  She believed, fervently, that Verity was born pure and innocent, the way all babies were. How they grew up and changed was as much due to the moulding they received from their parents as from their genes. If she and John could show Verity enough love and care and warmth and humanity, then they could overcome whatever bad genes Verity might have inherited. They could destroy whatever it was Mr. Sarotzini might have had planned for her.

  That was why she had decided never to have a nanny and only to work freelance from home. She wanted to be there for Verity. She wanted to be the best mother it was possible to be.

  Shortly after five, she heard the sound of the front door opening, the rattle of golf clubs, the thump of the bag being dumped on the hall floor. Then John came limping into her office, looking sunburned and gorgeous, and kissed her on the forehead. "Hi," he said.

  His limp was permanent but, fortunately, his only legacy from the savage attack on him in the house. The doctors had said it was the quick action of the nanny that had saved his life. The police never found the assailant, neither did they ever come up with a motive for the attack. John's memory of the man was hazy but his description was enough for Susan to be pretty certain who he had been. She had told John she thought he was one of Mr. Sarotzini's henchmen, but she never told him about her night in the Westwood Clinic.