Peter James - Perfect People

With the wipers stopped, the windscreen quickly became opaque with rain. Naomi turned towards John and was alarmed by how bleak he looked. ‘Darling, I know I’ve been against having anyone in to look after them, and last week I totally rejected Dr Michaelides’s suggestion that they go to some special school – but after seeing her again now, I feel differently. I think she might be right, that they need specialist care – nurturing – teaching – whatever they want to call it.’

‘You don’t think that’s admitting defeat?’ John said.

‘Us letting ourselves get down about Luke and Phoebe would be admitting defeat. We have to stop feeling we’ve failed in any way. We have to find a way to turn their lives into a positive for them – and for us.’

He sat in silence. Then he touched her cheek with his hand. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I really do love you. I’m sorry for all I’ve put you through.’

‘I love you, too. It was your strength that got me through Halley.’ She smiled tearfully. ‘Now we have two healthy children. We – we’ve-’ She sniffed. ‘We have to count our blessings, don’t you think?’

‘Sure.’ He nodded. ‘You’re right. That’s what we have to do.’

Ducking their heads against the rain, they hurried in through the front door. Peeling off her coat, Naomi called out, ‘Hi! We’re back!’

John could hear voices, American accents. He wrestled himself out of his wet coat, hung it on the stand, then followed Naomi through into the living room.

Her mother was sitting on the sofa, in an Arran sweater way too big for her, working on a tapestry in front of the television. An old black-and-white movie was on, the sound turned up almost deafeningly loud, the way she always had it.

‘How did it go?’ her mother asked them.

‘OK, thanks,’ Naomi replied, turning the volume down a little. ‘Where are they?’

‘Playing on the computer upstairs.’

‘Anybody call?’ she asked.

‘No phone calls,’ she said. ‘The phone’s been very quiet.’ She frowned at something in her tapestry for some moments, then said absently, ‘We had a visitor, though, about an hour after you left.’

‘Oh?’ Naomi said.

‘A very pleasant young man. He was American, I think.’

‘American?’ Naomi echoed, a tad uneasily. ‘What did he want?’

‘Oh, he’d come to the wrong address – he was trying to find something farm – I can’t remember exactly – I’d never heard of it.’

‘What did he look like, this guy?’ John asked.

Her mother took some moments of careful thought, then said, ‘He was nicely dressed, very polite. He wore a shirt and tie, and a dark suit. But there was one thing – he did something your father did often, you know? Your father used to put on his tie, but forget in his hurry to do up some of the buttons on his shirt beneath. This young man had forgotten two buttons on his shirt and I could see, beneath his shirt, he was wearing one of those religious crosses – what are they called – gosh, my memory’s so bad these days, I keep forgetting words! What on earth are they called? Oh yes, of course, how silly of me – a crucifix.’

American. Crucifix.

John sat in his den, his whole damned body shaking.

This man, it didn’t have to mean anything bad. It didn’t have to mean that Except that a bunch of crazed American fanatics, calling themselves Disciples, had been murdering couples who had been to Dr Dettore and had twins, and now an American wearing a cross around his neck had turned up to a remote English house where there just happened to be a couple who had been to Dr Dettore and had twins.

He tried to think what further security measures they could take. They’d had toughened glass put in the windows. Window locks. Security lights. High-quality door locks. An alarm that rang through to a control centre. Panic buttons. Maybe he needed to get Naomi and the children away from here, for a while, at any rate. Go to Sweden, perhaps?

Or check into a hotel? But for how long?

They were looking into getting guard dogs. And there was one other security option they hadn’t yet taken. The firm who had done all their installations had included details and a quote at the time, but it had been quite expensive and they hadn’t seen the point. Now he regretted that decision. He went to the filing cabinet, pulled open the bottom drawer and lifted out the file marked Security Systems.

Then he rang the firm and asked how quickly they could install the security cameras they had quoted on. He was told it would be about ten days. John told them if they could do it tomorrow, he would order it now. After keeping him on hold for a couple of minutes he was told they would be along at nine o’clock the next morning to install them.

When he had hung up, he then typed out an email to Kalle Almtorp at the Swedish embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

Kalle, hope you had a good Christmas and New Year – no snow, I guess??

In December you emailed that your contact at the FBI says they now have a lead in their search for these Disciples of the Third Millennium. I’m asking because a potentially worrying situation has arisen here and I need to know just how concerned I should be about it. Any further information you could let me have, as a matter of great urgency, would be much appreciated.

Love to Anna and the kids.

Halsningar!

John

He sent the email then went upstairs to the box room, where Luke and Phoebe were sitting on the floor in front of their computer. They must have heard him coming, he thought, because he saw the screen flicker as he entered the room, as if they had hurriedly switched from whatever they had been looking at to something innocuous.

‘Hi!’ he said.

Neither of them looked at him.

More loudly now, he said, ‘Luke! Phoebe! Hallo!’

Both turned their heads very slowly, in unison, and said, ‘Hello.’ Then they stared at him, for some moments, smiling, as if they were reacting as they were expected to.

Cold air eddied through his veins. They looked too neat and tidy, too immaculate. Phoebe wore a bottle-green tracksuit and white trainers; Luke wore a navy roll-neck jumper, neatly pressed jeans, spotless trainers. Neither had a hair out of place. For a moment he had the impression he was looking at robots, not at real people, not at his children. It made him want to back out of the room, but instead he persevered, trying to put into practice what Dr Michaelides had just told them they should do.

As nonchalantly and cheerily as he could, he knelt down and presented his cheek first to Luke, then to Phoebe. Both of them drew their faces sharply back, in turn.

‘No kiss for Daddy?’

‘Kissing leads to sex,’ Luke said, dismissively turning back to the screen.

‘What? What did you say, Luke?’ John asked, astonished, all kinds of alarm bells suddenly ringing, wondering, hoping, desperately hoping that he had misheard his son. But moments later, Phoebe confirmed that he hadn’t.

‘We don’t kiss,’ Phoebe said haughtily. ‘We don’t want to be abused.’ Then she, too, turned back to the screen.

‘Hey,’ John said, floundering for a reply. ‘Hey, you listen to me-’ He stared at the shiny casing of the computer, at the keyboard, at the mouse, at the multi-coloured mouse pad, his nostrils filled with the sour reek of plastic. He felt numb.

Beyond numb.

Luke moved the mouse and John saw the cursor sweep up the screen and stop on a square. He double-clicked and the square opened, like a miniature window, to reveal a flashing sequence of numbers.

John stood up, went to the wall, and pulled out the plug. Both children looked up at him without even a hint of surprise on their faces. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘What is this talk about abuse? Where’s this from? The internet?’