The Truth

by Peter James

Genres: Supernatural suspense; High-tech & Sci-fi Thrillers

Synopsis

Susan and John Carter are crazy about each other and life is perfect but for one thing - they are on the brink of financial disaster. Surely being a surrogate mother to another man's child won't harm such a strong relationship? Especially when the mysterious Mr Sarotzini is offering to save their home and business - everything they've worked for.

What seems to be a perfect solution begins to feel like an impossible situation. Susan's pregnancy is disturbingly painful but no-one will tell her why. It becomes apparent that Sarotzini wields immense power and Susan begins to doubt everything she knows. As she realises the terrifying origin of the dark forces Saratzini controls she is in fear for herself and John but most of all for her unborn baby ...

Features a new introduction read by Peter James.

Release date: November 25, 2010

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 544

Sample

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.

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.

‘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.

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.

He was dressed in a Savile Row suit, his tie was elegant, winged horses printed on green silk, his black shoes, out of sight beneath his desk, glinted like mirrors; his long, slender fingers, which were leafing through a computer printout, had been finely manicured. His whole manner exuded confidence. He might only have been in his mid fifties.

His name was Emil Sarotzini.

The name was a legend. People told stories about his fabled life with the post-war set – on the French Riviera, partying on the Dockers’ yacht in Cannes, dining with Bardot in St Tropez, lunching with the Grimaldis in Monaco; and in the US, where he courted stars like Mansfield and Monroe, and where he was himself courted by the aristocratic circle of the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers and the Mellons. It was rumoured that Warhol had painted an entire collection for him, which Mr Sarotzini had forbidden ever to be shown to the public. And in England, it was whispered, he had been shielded by the Astors from the glare of the Profumo scandal.

Other stories about the man were more discomforting, and there were plenty that would chill people to the marrow. Some of these stories no insider ever dared to tell, because, it was rumoured, Mr Sarotzini had ears everywhere and disloyalty was not an option.

Rumours surrounded every aspect of his life, and none more so than his age, which was to some a matter of idle speculation and to others a disturbing enigma.

No one who worked here was innocent of Mr Sarotzini’s reputation. It acted like a magnet: they were repulsed but they were attracted. Positive and negative. Intrigue, mystery and speculation had been Mr Sarotzini’s ever-present shadows throughout his life. And few people he met failed to fall under his spell.

The man who was bringing him the information he was awaiting knew more about Mr Sarotzini than perhaps any other living person. And, for this reason, was even more afraid of him than anyone else.

Kündz opened the panelled double doors and entered the secretary’s ante-room. She was the sentinel who held all the keys to access Mr Sarotzini, and precious few ever even reached this inner sanctum of her office. But she barely gave Kündz a glance.

Mr Sarotzini was visible through the open entrance beyond her, like an Egyptian god in his hypostyle hall. His office was mostly in darkness, one pool of brightness from a gold table lamp illuminating the neat stack of papers beside the leather blotter on his desk. There was a large window but the slats of the blinds were angled and narrowed against the glare of the mid-morning sunlight.

Kündz was six feet, six inches tall, with broad, quarterback shoulders, close-cropped hair and a blunt boxer’s face. He was dressed in one of his habitual plain two-piece suits, today a navy one, his tie carefully adjusted, his shoes scrupulously polished. The suits were made for him by Mr Sarotzini’s tailor, but in spite of the expensive cloth and the careful fittings, he never looked quite at ease in them. To the casual stranger he could have been a night-club bouncer, or perhaps a soldier on leave in borrowed civvies.

Before taking a step forward he swallowed, checked the knot of his tie, shot a glance down at his shoes, buttoned his jacket. He knew that, sartorially, he failed Mr Sarotzini. But in every other respect he prided himself on the way he learned from his mentor and carried out his wishes.

Mr Sarotzini had made him everything that he was, but Kündz was aware that he could just as easily strip it all away from him again, and this was part of the fear that fuelled his slavish devotion to the man.

‘So?’ Mr Sarotzini said, smiling expectantly as Kündz approached his desk. The smile relaxed Kündz and his love for this man was so intense that he wanted to reach across that huge desk and hug him, but this he could not do. Many years ago Mr Sarotzini had forbidden this kind of physical contact. Instead, Kündz handed him the envelope, and stood stiffly to attention.

‘You may sit, Stefan,’ Mr Sarotzini said, shaking out the contents and immediately becoming absorbed in them.

Kündz sat, tensely, on the edge of a chair that had once been owned by an Ottoman prince, whose name he could not remember. Although Mr Sarotzini’s office was filled with treasures and antiquities, there was something about this room that mere money alone could not create, and that was the sense of power it exuded.

Kündz felt like the little girl, Alice, who had stepped into a world where everything was so much bigger. He sat dwarfed by the size of the furniture, by canvases the size of high-rise buildings that hung from the walls, by sculptures and busts and statuettes that leered down at him, by shelves of leather-bound volumes that sneered at anyone of lesser education than their owner. He looked up at Mr Sarotzini.

It was hard to read his expression.

The room smelt of stale cigar smoke, but the only ashtray, a cut-glass one on Mr Sarotzini’s desk, was clean. Kündz knew that Mr Sarotzini, who was a man of habit, would have already smoked his first Montecristo of the day, but would not light his second for another hour.

Mr Sarotzini held the thin document, just six pages long, with fingers that were long and bony, softened by hair. He said nothing until he had finished reading, and then his face tightened with displeasure.

‘What am I to do with this, Stefan?’

This threw Kündz. Yet he knew, from long experience, that the answers Mr Sarotzini required were not always the obvious ones. He took his time, as Mr Sarotzini had long taught him, not rushing into his answer. ‘There are no restrictions,’ he replied, finally.

Mr Sarotzini’s face hardened into a near rage that made Kündz frightened and confused. ‘This is a shopping list, Stefan, a grocery list. Look, it says, “Twelve bagels, two litres of skimmed milk, butter, dried apricots, salami.” What have you given me this for?’

Kündz’s mind swirled. This wasn’t possible, surely, he couldn’t – couldn’t have made a mistake – no. Where could this list have come from? He thought quickly, thought of the man who had given him this document, a very great genetics scientist. Could this fool scientist have given him the wrong thing?

No, it was impossible. He’d checked and rechecked it.

Then the expression on Mr Sarotzini’s face changed from rage into a quiet smile. ‘It’s all right, Stefan, don’t look so worried. Relax. I’m only joking. You must learn to take jokes.’

Kündz stared back at him, bewildered, unsure what was coming next.

‘This is good,’ Mr Sarotzini said, tapping the document. ‘It is very good.’

Kündz tried not to show his relief: he had learnt never to show weakness to Mr Sarotzini. And gratitude was weakness. He was expected to know that the document was good; a reaction was not required. With Mr Sarotzini he was on a learning curve that had no end, and he had lived with this almost all his life.

He looked down at the soft pile of a Persian rug to avoid giving anything away in his eyes, and took in the complex pattern; all Persian rugs told stories, but he did not know what this story was. He turned his thoughts to Claudie, focused on her, wondered if Claudie would let him tie her up tonight and whip her. He decided he would ask her, and if she said no he would do it anyway.

Her smell rose from his skin; he thought of her sprig of black pubic hair and his fear of Mr Sarotzini turned fleetingly into arousal for Claudie. Then the fear returned.

He looked up at the painting on the wall directly behind Mr Sarotzini: modern art, abstract, he did not understand this kind of art, he did not know whether it was a good painting or bad, he knew only that it must be of immense value, of great importance to the world of art, to be in this room. Then Mr Sarotzini skewered his thoughts with his voice. He spoke, as usual, in flawless German, although Kündz knew that German was not Mr Sarotzini’s mother tongue.

‘It has taken thirty years. This is how long we have been looking. Thirty years, Stefan. You understand the importance?’

Kündz understood, but remained silent.

‘You have a weakness, Stefan?’

Kündz was surprised by the question. He stalled, knowing that with this man he could not lie. ‘Everyone has a weakness. That is the Nineteenth Truth,’ he replied.

Mr Sarotzini seemed pleased by this answer. He opened a drawer in his desk, took out an envelope and handed it to Kündz.

Inside it Kündz found photographs of a man and a woman. The man was in his mid thirties, with dark hair and striking, if boyish, good looks. The woman looked a few years younger; she had red hair that stopped just short of the shoulders; a pretty face; modern.

There was another photograph, showing her in a T-shirt with straps, and a short skirt. She had great legs, slender, a touch muscular maybe, and he realised they were arousing him; her breasts looked firm inside her T-shirt and they aroused him also. He wondered if she smelled as good as Claudie; he decided he would like to tie this woman up and whip her. Perhaps with her pretty boy-faced husband trussed up and watching. Mr Sarotzini spoke again, interrupting his thoughts: ‘Mr and Mrs Carter. John Carter and Susan Carter. They live in a house in South London, which they have only recently purchased. He has his own business, in multimedia, she works in publishing. They have no children. You will find me John Carter and Susan Carter’s weak spots. All is clear?’

Kündz looked at the photographs again, his excitement deepening. In particular he looked at the one that showed Susan Carter’s legs and breasts, and wondered if her pubic hair was also red. He hoped so.

Mr Sarotzini had given him Claudie as a gift for being good. Maybe if he continued to please Mr Sarotzini, he would give him this woman as well.

‘All is clear,’ Kündz said.

As John Carter hurried up to the front entrance of the bank, he was suffering a bad attack of butterflies. He was perspiring and he could not remember when he last felt like this – probably not since those terrifying summonses to the headmaster’s study when he was at school.

His shirt clung to his back, and his brain had locked up, hung itself, crashed. He pushed the door, which was clearly labelled PULL, but was too nervous even to feel embarrassed.

He crossed the foyer, feeling even more like a scared schoolboy, glanced at the queues at the tellers’ desks, got his bearings, then walked over to the window marked ENQUIRIES.

Even the woman clerk made him feel uncomfortable as she looked at him through the glass partition, as if his name and description had been circulated to the entire staff here on some secret blacklist. Watch out for this man.

‘I have an appointment with Mr Clake,’ he said, his voice withering like a faltering sales pitch under the clerk’s stony glare, and he worried from her frown of disapproval whether he had incorrectly pronounced the manager’s name. ‘That is how you pronounce it?’

She nodded stonily.

John was wearing his most conservative suit, plain navy lightweight, white cotton shirt, a quiet tie and black lace-up brogues – as well as his red and white polka-dot boxer shorts, which he wore when he needed luck. He’d discussed what to wear with Susan both last night and this morning, and had tried three different ties and four pairs of shoes before she felt that the image was right. He looked smart, she told him, without looking showy.

He thought about Mr Clake, wondering, for the umpteenth time, what kind of a man he was. He had been thinking about him for a full twenty-four hours now, ever since the phone call from Mr Clake’s secretary yesterday. He thought about his car also, which was sitting on a double yellow line down the road from the bank; maybe he’d get lucky and wouldn’t be clamped but it was an anxiety he could do without right now. He’d had no choice – there were no parking spaces and he was already fifteen minutes late.

John thought suddenly of a joke he’d heard. It was about a man who told his friend that his bank manager had a glass eye. His friend asked how he could tell which was the glass eye and which the real eye. ‘That’s easy,’ the man replied. ‘The glass eye is the one that looks warmer.’

The joke didn’t seem funny any more. John pulled out his handkerchief and dabbed the moisture that was running from his forehead like a burst main, silently cursing evolution for sabotaging his body. Adrenaline was the problem. Fifty thousand years ago adrenaline had helped cavemen flee from the sabre-toothed tiger. But John didn’t need it right now. He didn’t need the glands pumping the stuff out, powering his muscles, switching up the rheostat of his heartbeat, dilating his pupils, converting his sweat glands into fire hydrants. He needed calming down, and evolution had not equipped him with anything to do that.

He mopped his forehead again; his neck was sticky, the sweating getting worse. Not sweat, he thought suddenly, no. Horses sweat, ladies glow, men perspire.

John’s brain was swirling; he was finding it hard to hold onto his thoughts. He felt a brief stab of panic about his car. How long could it last on a double yellow line in Piccadilly? Ten minutes? Twenty?

‘Would you like to come this way?’

He stooped to glance at his reflection in the glass, nursed back into place some stray hairs with his finger, straightened his tie, then took a deep breath. Control. All his working life he had been in control. He knew how to charm people: he was a master at manipulation and he had charmed the socks off his previous bank manager, Bill Williams. All he had to do was keep calm, be polite, friendly, show this Mr Clake just how good the future was looking.

He followed the assistant through a door. It was all bland blue carpet, dark wood, the same as it had always been, with just one difference. Mr Clake, instead of Bill Williams.

Bill Williams had been a sucker for technology and for seven years John had juiced him with it. They played virtual golf between their offices on their computers, and occasionally John took him out to his club at Richmond and they played real golf. John taught him how to surf the Net, and where to find the dirty pictures – the totties, Bill called them – and how to stack them up inside a sequence of files on a hard disk protected by a password.

John taught Bill Williams more than he ever needed to know about computers and, in return, Bill gave him all he needed from the bank, and more, far more, than enough rope to hang himself, Bill often joked.

And now Bill Williams was history. He had taken early retirement. Overnight. Bill had rung him just a week ago, sounding like a man bereaved, saying he would explain some time but was not at liberty to do so at the moment. He apologised, he was truly sorry, but everything would be fine, he assured John. They agreed to have a game of golf but made no date. The bank would continue to look after John, he was in good hands. But there was no conviction in Bill’s voice.

And there was not much warmth in Mr Clake’s handshake. Even less in his expression. He was as bald as an egg, his mouth was small and off-centre and he wore square glasses that did not suit him. ‘Mr Carter, it’s good of you to come at such short notice.’

He talked like a ventriloquist, his tiny skewed lips sca