(1990) Sweet Heart

  Praise for Peter James

  ‘A well-paced thriller that delivers maximum emotional torture’

  Chicago Tribune

  ‘Grippingly intriguing from start to finish’

  James Herbert

  ‘Too many horror stories go over the top into fantasy land, but Dreamer is set in the recognisable world … I guarantee you more than a frisson of fear’

  Daily Express

  ‘A thought-provoking menacer that’s completely technological and genuinely frightening about the power of future communications’

  Time Out

  ‘This compulsive story is a tale of the search for immortality … I cannot remember when I last read a novel I enjoyed so much’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Gripping … plotting is ingenious … in its evocation of how a glossy cocoon of wordly success can be unravelled by one bad decision it reminds me of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities’

  The Times

  ‘Peter James, Britain’s closest equivalent to Stephen King’

  Sunday Times

  ‘The suspense holds on every page, right to the end …’ She

  By Peter James

  Dead Letter Drop

  Atom Bomb Angel

  Billionaire

  Possession

  Dreamer

  Sweet Heart

  Twilight

  Prophecy

  Alchemist

  Host

  The Truth

  Denial

  Faith

  Dead Simple

  Looking Good Dead

  Not Dead Enough

  CHILDREN’S NOVEL

  Getting Wired!

  Peter James was educated at Charterhouse and then at film school. He lived in North America for a number of years, working as a screen writer and film producer (his projects included the award-winning Dead of Night) before returning to England. His previous novels, including the number-one bestseller Possession, have been translated into twenty-six languages. All his novels reflect his deep interest in medicine, science and the paranormal. He has recently produced several films including the BAFTA-nominated The Merchant of Venice, starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes, and The Bridge of San Luis Rey, starring Robert De Niro, Kathy Bates and Harvey Keitel. He also co-created the hit Channel 4 series Bedsitcom, which was nominated for a Rose d’Or. Peter James lives near Brighton in Sussex. Visit his website at www.peterjames.com

  SWEET HEART

  Peter James

  AN ORION EBOOK

  First published in Great Britain in 1990 by Victor Gollancz This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books

  Copyright © The Peter James Partnership 1990

  The moral right of Peter James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 1 409 13346 9

  This ebook produced by Jouve, France

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Praise

  About the Author

  By Peter James

  Acknowledgments

  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

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Research is essential to my novels and there are many people who in the writing of Sweet Heart generously gave me much more of their time and their knowledge than I ever asked of them. They include Eleanor O’Keeffe of the Society for Psychical Research, David and Anne Anderson who so kindly and enthusiastically allowed their beautiful home to be the model for Elmwood Mill, Jan Newton, David Venables and Bill McBryde of the Official Solicitor’s Office, Simon Fraser of Fraser & Fraser, Vicki and Polar Lahaise, Mick Harris of Brighton Police, Ren Harris, Marie Helene Roussel, Linden Hardisty (who improved my tennis too!), Canon Dominic Walker OGS, The Venerable Michael Perry of ‘The Christian Parapsychologist’, Dr Duncan Stewart, Robert and Felicity Beard, Ian Wilson of Dean-Wilson, Sarina LaRive, Sue Ansell, Jill Bremer, Dr S. Domoney who successfully churned my stomach, Veronica Keen, and many more.

  A special mention is due to my unflagging secretary, Peggy Fletcher, and my equally unflagging agent, Jon Thurley, and editor Joanna Goldsworthy. And to my mother, and to my sister, Genevieve for their constant support, and to my wife, Georgina, who redefined the boundaries of patience.

  To Tim and Renée-Jean

  ‘I prithee, sweetheart, canst thou tell me

  Whether thou dost know

  The bailiff’s daughter of Islington?’

  ‘She’s dead, sir, long ago.’

  (Ballad)

  Chapter One

  The dog scampered under the rotting gates.

  ‘Peregrine!’ the woman called. ‘Peregrine! Come back at once!’

  No one ever went in there, except for a few local tradesmen who privately admitted it gave them the creeps. Not even her dog, which was nosy and inquisitive and was always going in places he shouldn’t, had ever gone in there before.

  ‘Good boy! Come back!’

  But her voice was drowned by the weir below. She waited a moment. ‘Come on!’ she called once more. ‘Peregrine!’

  Most of the days of her life she walked the dog down the lane, across the iron footbridge and up into the woods, always speeding her pace a little past the property and rarely even looking down at the derelict mill below, with the garden and house beyond with its strange old recluse.

  She pushed open one of the tall gates and peered down the drive. Her Yorkshire terrier was running up the steps to the house. Without stopping at the top he nosed his way in through the front door, which was ajar.

  ‘Peregrine!’ she bellowed, appalled. ‘Come back here! Peregrine!’ She hurried down the drive.

  The roar of water from the weir made the silence
of the house all the more menacing, and the gravel that scrunched under her feet felt as if it must have been put there to make a silent approach impossible. She stopped at the bottom of the steps, perspiring from the heat of the late summer morning. The house seemed larger from here, rising up the bank above her.

  ‘Peregrine!’ her voice was more conciliatory now. ‘Peregrine!’

  The terrier was barking inside the house, a steady insistent yapping, and she sensed eyes watching her from behind one of the dark mullioned windows; the eyes of the old woman with the hideously burned face.

  She climbed the steps and stopped at the top to catch her breath. The dog yapped away inside. ‘Peregrine!’ she hissed, peering past the oak door into the gloomy hallway.

  Then she noticed the milk stacked on the doorstep — five bottles, and a carton of eggs. Newspapers and letters were scattered over the floor inside the door. The house seemed still, felt still. She pressed the bell, but heard nothing; she tried again but it was dead. She rapped the brass hoop of the tarnished knocker, gently at first then harder, the full thud echoing, the dog’s barking becoming even more insistent.

  She pushed the door open wider with difficulty, the perished draught excluder jamming on the mountain of post, mostly junk mail, that had built up on the oak floor. She stepped in.

  The hallway was small, dark, with a low ceiling and stone walls, and smelled unpleasant, of something that had gone off. There was a staircase ahead with a passageway beside it, and doors to the left and right of her. A sinister winged bust stood on an ornately carved table, and her reflection stared back through the dust on a spangled mirror on the wall. The dog was in the gloom at the end of the passageway; she could hear him barking, but could not see him.

  ‘Hello?’ she called up the stairs. ‘Hello?’

  She glanced around, seeking movement, a shadow, and noticed the framed photographs covering the walls. Photographs of elegant women in fine dresses. Except their faces had been carefully burned away, leaving their elegantly coiffed hair, forties and fifties styles, around charred holes. She looked closer, startled. Horrible; the old woman was even barmier than she’d thought.

  They gaped down at her, the walls of the passageway solid with them, all faceless. The terrier was pawing and scratching at the door at the end.

  ‘Come here, damn you!’ she whispered.

  He turned to her, whined, then pawed again at the door. She knelt, grabbed his collar furiously, then felt a shadow fall over her shoulder. She spun round, but it was just the front door moving restlessly in the breeze. The smell was stronger here, vile. The dog whined again and tugged, as if it were trying to tell her something. She wanted to go, to get out of here, but the dog’s insistence bothered her. She let go of him and knocked on the door with her knuckles. The dog yapped furiously.

  She turned the handle, the door opened and the terrier bolted through. The smell rushed out. Strong, pungently strong. A stench of sour milk, unflushed lavatory and meat that had gone badly off.

  ‘Struth.’ She pinched her nose with her fingers. She heard flies buzzing and saw a whole haze of them as she walked in, and heard another sound, too, a faint rustling like expensive silk.

  The room felt alive, yet at first there did not seem to be anyone in here. An old drying rack hung above the Aga; an ashtray filled with lipsticky butts lay on the table; an open tin of stew with hair growing out of it sat on the draining board. The fridge door was ajar. That explained the smell, she thought, relieved.

  Then she saw the old woman’s legs.

  At first she thought that she was breathing. She was lying face down through the doorway into what looked like a boiler room. The muscles of her legs were moving, and her mouth and left eye, which was the one she could see, were moving too. So were her hands. Her neck rippled like a wheatfield in the wind.

  She staggered backwards in shock and retched, but the horror held her throat so tightly nothing came out. The dog stood in front of the corpse barking excitedly. She slammed into the doorway in her panic, then ran down the passage, out through the front door and down the steps.

  She could feel them on her own flesh, feel them rippling, chewing, as she hurried back up the drive, brushed them off her thighs, off her wrists, millions of imaginery white wriggling maggots tumbling on to the gravel as she hurried home to the telephone, gulping down the air, trying to flush out her lungs, hurrying because she could see in her mind the old woman staggering out through the door after her, maggots writhing, dropping from her eye sockets, her cheeks, her hands, like white rain, and could hear her screeching, ‘Leave me alone! Let them be. Let them eat. It’s only my body, my foul scarred body. My prison. They’re freeing me. Can’t you see, you old cow? They’re freeing me!’

  Chapter Two

  Charley’s bike had fallen over earlier in the day and the pedal now caught the chain guard with an irritating clack … clack … clack as she pedalled in her sodden clothes, head down against the fine June rain that hung like orange gauze over the sodium streetlights. A stream of cars sluiced past, then a lorry, too close, its filthy slipstream shoving her like an unseen hand in towards the kerb; she swerved.

  A thumping beat of music rose up through the rain as a river boat, draped in bunting and lit up like a Christmas tree, churned through the inky water of the Thames and slid out of sight beneath her.

  She rode across the roundabout, then up into the quiet of the Tonsleys and turned left into the Victorian terraced street, past the silent parked cars, smart GTIs and BMWs and a couple of Porsches. When they had first moved here, fifteen years ago, it had been a rundown area with derelict cars and mostly elderly people. As first-time buyers with no capital it had been all they could afford. Now it was Des-Res London, with sandblasted façades and smart front doors and satellite dishes pinned to the rooftops like badges of an exclusive club.

  As she dismounted she saw Tom’s car parked a short way down the street and felt a beat of excitement. She still looked forward to seeing him at the end of each day; looked forward to seeing him as much as she had when they had first met, twenty years before, when she’d been sixteen; more, she thought sometimes. Especially after some of their arguments, increasingly frequent these days, when she was frightened she might come home to find a note on the table and his clothes packed and gone.

  Rain lay on the dark pavement like varnish. She wheeled her bicycle up to the front door, unlocked it and parked the bike on the oak flooring of the hall.

  Ben greeted her with a rubber dummy of Neil Kinnock’s head in his mouth. ‘Hallo, boy!’ she said, kneeling and rubbing the golden retriever’s chest vigorously with both hands. ‘Good to see you boy! Yes it is! No, don’t jump!’ She shut the door. ‘Hi!’ she shouted. ‘Hi!’ Tom called from upstairs.

  Charley shook water out of her hair, pulled off her cape, slung it over the newel post and glanced in the mirror.

  ‘Shit!’ Her streaky blonde hair was partly matted to her head and neck and partly sticking up in spikes, and her mascara had run down her right cheek. She pulled a face at herself, a charging Apache warrior expression, then prodded her hair with her fingers. ‘Not great, huh?’ she said to the retriever.

  A trickle of rainwater ran down inside her pullover as she went upstairs, followed by Ben, and down the corridor into Tom’s den.

  The room was dark, cosy, lit with a single pool of light from the Anglepoise bent over the tidy desk. Tom was studying a sheaf of documents bound together with looped pink ribbon. He looked round. ‘Hi.’

  He was wearing a navy V-neck pullover over his striped shirt and had removed his tie. A tumbler of gin and tonic was by his right hand. He had open, uncluttered good looks with a hint of brooding temper simmering below the surface that rarely flared with other people, only with herself. A temper that could frighten her with its sudden rages, with the distance it put between them, frighten her because it could stay, like unsettled weather, for days. The way it was now.

  ‘Working late?’ she said, walkin
g over and kissing him on the cheek.

  ‘Someone has to earn the money.’

  ‘Hey!’ she said. ‘That’s not fair.’

  He stared back down at the documents.

  She watched him, flattened. ‘Did you play squash?’

  ‘No, had a crisis with a client. Husband’s grabbed the kids — had to get an injunction. How was your day?’

  ‘OK. I went to acupuncture, helped Laura in the shop, then we saw Shirley Valentine.’

  ‘We’ve already seen it.’

  ‘Laura hadn’t. Anyone call?’

  He yawned. ‘No. How was the acupuncture?’

  ‘Unpleasant; as always.’ She sat on his lap and crooked her arm around his neck. ‘Don’t be bad tempered.’

  He put his hand against her stomach. ‘Does your acupuncturist think it’s going to work?’

  She shrugged. ‘Yes, he does.’

  ‘At thirty quid a go he would.’

  She looked at his clean, manicured nails. He had always been meticulous about his appearance; even when they had no money at all he had always managed to turn out looking smart. She stole a glance at her own nails, bitten to the quick, and wished she could find the willpower to stop. He used to chide her about it constantly, now he only did when he was irritated by something else.

  He wriggled. ‘God, you’re sopping!’

  ‘The forecast was wrong.’

  ‘I don’t think you should be biking.’

  ‘That’s daft. Helps keep my figure.’

  ‘Your figure’s fine. Cycling’s not very relaxing in London and you’re meant to be relaxing.’ She felt a twinge of anxiety as he yanked open a drawer, pulled a book out titled Infertility and tapped it. ‘It says here that too much physical exercise worsens infertility problems. It dries everything up inside, or something. I’ll read it out, if you like.’