My Brother's Keeper (10 page)

She went without speaking, but at the door she turned and gave me a long, unfathomable look. I could tell that she didn't want to go, but she would not argue with Scouse. As soon as she was gone, he took a black case from his pocket. He removed from it a small phial and a hypodermic, and laid them on the top of the piano stool.

"That was crude with the cigarette, eh? I know." He leaned forward to look again into my eyes. "An' it left marks, an' that's never a good idea. I keep telling Dixie when he wants to have a go with the knife, there's better ways. Let me tell you what we'll be doin' instead."

He picked up the hypodermic, plunged the needle through the rubber stopper of the phial, and drew about one c.c. of clear liquid into the syringe.

"This won't leave a mark—only the needle point. What it will do is set up a stimulation to the nerves round about where we make the injection. The pain nerves, mainly. Would yer like to negotiate with me for where we make the first puncture? Yer might not believe me, but I don't get my kicks out of hurting people, not like some people here—providing I can get what I want some other way."

He had brought the needle forward to within an inch of my right thumb. I was rigid with fear. It was a scene from a nightmare, to be tortured to give up information that you didn't have. Blood from a stone. The cigarette burn on my shoulder pulsed with pain, like a promise of worse to come.

"I'm Lionel," I said desperately. "Lionel, not Leo."

"I hear you." Scouse was nodding agreeably. "An' if you
were
Lionel, an' not Leo, why there'd be no point puttin' a hard squeeze on you, would there? But how am I to know that? All I can do is make you a little proposition. You find a way to
prove
that you're Lionel Salkind, an' not Leo Foss, an' I'll stop—for the moment. I'll go away an' think things over a bit more." He turned to Pudd'n, who had come back into the room. "Do we have the report in yet on Valnora Warren?"

"Got it this morning. She didn't know anything useful."

"Mm." Scouse looked at Dixie, "She was probed right?"

"All the way to the end. Nothing."

"Right." Scouse turned back to me. "So it's up to you. If you are Leo, you know where the Belur Package is. An' I want to know. An' if you're Lionel, you'd better prove it—right now."

Prove I was Lionel
. My brain was refusing to function.
We
had always known the differences, known them exactly. But everybody else said we were the same—even people who knew us well. I'd never persuade Scouse with talk of a half-inch height difference, or a pound or two in weight.

My skin felt chilled, and I had broken out into a fine, all-over sweat. I thought desperately, closing my eyes to concentrate. And I saw, like a ghost image on the inner darkness, the regular lines of green marching beetles, as I had first seen them in the hospital basement. I gasped.

"How much do you know about Leo?" I burst out, straining forward in my chair.

"A fair bit—a lot less than we'd like to, obviously."

"You know his background?"

"Most of it." Scouse was frowning.

"Then I can prove to you that I'm Lionel."

"How?"

I laughed, high-pitched and nervous. "I'm a concert pianist. There's no way that Leo could fake that. Let me play that piano, and you'll see."

Scouse was frowning harder. "Foss never played the piano according to my file on him. But it could be wrong. He may have had lessons."

"Look, lessons wouldn't be enough. You have to understand the enormous difference between a good professional and an amateur. It's
huge
." Even as I spoke I worried about my own lack of recent practice. The restricted circulation in my hands for the past hour would make things worse. But I was itching to get at that piano more than I had ever wanted anything.

Scouse was shaking his head. "I don't know. I don't think I could tell the difference between a good pianist and an average one."

"Maybe you can't. But
he
can." I jerked my head towards Pudd'n, who had been standing there scowling.

"Nobody told me you were a concert pianist," he said accusingly. "You were just 'avin' me on when you said I was good, wasn't yer?"

"No, I wasn't—you are good, and you could be a lot better. You should take it more seriously."

"Never mind that," said Scouse. "Could you, Pudd'n? Could you
really
tell if he's a professional or an amateur?"

Pudd'n was nodding his head reluctantly, "Yeah. If he's that good, I'll know it. There's things he'll not be able to fake. Nobody could."

"But if he tries faking . . ." said Dixie. He made a little upwards motion with his cigarette.

"He'll wish he hadn't," Scouse said. He nodded to Pudd'n. "All right, untie him. An' keep an eye on 'im—don't forget what happened to Des an' Jack."

When the ropes were off I lurched to my feet, hardly able to stand. I had pins and needles in my forearms, and cramps in my calves and feet. The piano stool was the right height but I fussed with it anyway, chafing at my hands and trying to relax them to get some feeling into my fingertips. I was too cold, and I put my jacket on over the sweaty, ruined shirt.

"All right, no stallin'," said Scouse.

"I'm not. My hands don't feel right yet—I was tied too tight."

"Tough. Just get on with it."

I looked at Pudd'n, who was standing impassively beside the piano. Dixie was behind me, his sheath knife out and ready to be used if I made a wrong move.

So what should I play? It wouldn't do to handle a delicate piece that Pudd'n might play better than I would (I still suspected that all the emotion had gone from my playing). It had to be something where I could pull out all the stops and hit him with pyrotechnics. If the technical difficulties were hair-raising enough, he'd never notice that the playing was cold.

"Get going," breathed Scouse warningly. "Time's up."

I sighed, prayed that my fingers and memory wouldn't betray me, and got going. I began to play "Badinage," one of Godowsky's paraphrases of the Chopin études. All his material is horrendously difficult (the Apostle of the Left Hand, he was called a hundred years ago) and I had never dared to tackle one of his Chopin paraphrases in a public concert. But now I had to go for broke. My main worry was to get to the end without making a total hash of it. I drove along, all my attention in my fingertips.

After the final chords I took a deep breath and looked up at Pudd'n. His face was a picture.

"Well?" said Scouse. I could tell from his voice that he was impressed but not convinced. Pudd'n just stood there shaking his head. "Christ!" he said. "What was that?"

"A combination of two Chopin studies—the two in G Flat. Godowsky. He wrote fifty-three like that."

"Christ! I never heard anything like it." He shook his head again and turned to Scouse and Dixie. "There's no way he could play like that an' be just anybody. He's a
pianist
."

"Yeah. I thought so too." Scouse looked annoyed, but not with me. I breathed a little bit easier, even though my fate was anything but clear.

"That gives me somethin' to think about," went on Scouse. He was frowning. "Damn it." He turned abruptly and began to walk towards the door. "Look after him tonight," he said over his shoulder. "I'll be back in the morning. An' don't forget to tie him, unless you want to finish up like Jack and Des."

"What about the Nymphs?" called Dixie.

Scouse turned in the doorway. "They're not Nymphs, you daft bugger. Are you deaf? They're some kind of medicine. Let him have 'em if he needs 'em. I'm going to get Zan. We've some thinking to do."

I was still sitting on the piano stool. Dixie laid the tip of his knife on the nape of my neck, pricking it just a little to add to his point. "Come on," he said.

Pudd'n was standing back warily, out of my reach. I walked meekly back to the chair and sat down.

"Not so tight this time," I said, as Pudd'n began to tighten the ropes around my forearms and legs. He nodded, but he was too experienced to allow me to create any slack as he worked.

"There," he said, and stood back. "What are we goin' to do about food for 'im, Dix? He'll be 'ere all night."

"Let him bloody well starve," said Dixie. He looked disappointed, as though he had been hoping for some attempt at resistance. That knife of his looked well used, and not just on inanimate objects. He would like to have a go at more than my shirt.

"We can't starve 'im," said Pudd'n. "He's not Foss, he's 'is brother."

"He still did for Jack and Des, didn't he?"

"Well, yeah—but they'd have done for 'im if he 'adn't." Pudd'n looked at me. I had risen in his eyes since I sat down at the keyboard. "I could do yer eggs an' bacon. All right?"

I salivated at the thought. I was starving, and I nodded.

"Well, I'm not having anything to do with it," said Dixie. "Fuck him. He's all yours."

He strode out of the room, rapidly and light on his feet. Pudd'n hesitated, and I could see his problem. If he left me to get food, I'd be unguarded, and I had no doubt that Dixie would tell that to Scouse when he came back. I jerked my head down towards my wrists. "I can't get away, you know. You could leave me here."

He shook his head. "Not allowed to do that. If Dixie would come back . . ." He looked at the door for a second, then shrugged. "Well, only one thing for it. Hold tight."

He moved behind me, and the chair began to skate backwards over the polished floor. We went on past the room where I had awakened, and on to a long landing with deep carpeting. I heard a little grunt of effort, then I was carried, chair and all, on down the stairs. I made a mental note never to argue with Pudd'n. He was even stronger than his height and build suggested.

On the way downstairs and into the kitchen I was still trying to register everything that I saw. It seemed impossible to get away, but I couldn't afford to give up. Maybe it was Leo's influence, but my pulse was steady, my head was clear, and I have never felt more alert and sensitive.

There was little enough to see. We were in an old house, with eleven or twelve foot ceilings, thick and solid doors, and deep skirting-boards. I guessed it was late Victorian, and when we came to it the kitchen was enormous, with a great range all along one wall. The range had been converted from coal to gas, and Pudd'n set my chair next to it while he cooked about a pound of bacon and eight eggs.

"Bread an' tea?" he said. "I'm going to feed both of us. I don't want you untied."

He gave me food skillfully and quickly, cutting up everything into the right bite-sized pieces. I shook my head after the third egg and he went on to finish everything and then washed up the pans and dishes. I had some vague hope that I might reach a knife and hold it under my forearm, but I couldn't stretch my hand that far and anyway Pudd'n was watching every move I made.

"Right," he said when he was finished. "Now back upstairs. That'll be the hard bit."

He didn't call on Dixie for assistance. I could guess what the answer to that request would have been, and anyway the less I saw of Dixie, the better.

"Why not leave me down here?" I asked.

He considered it for a moment. "Don't think so," he said at last. "There's a lock on the music room, and none on the kitchen 'ere. We'll get yer back up there in a couple of minutes. Sit still."

We retraced our steps to the stairs and on up, Pudd'n huffing a bit but not under any apparent strain. We were at the top when Dixie appeared. He was scowling.

"Scouse called while you were feeding your face down there," he said. "He wants you to go over there tonight."

"What for? An' what about
'im
?" Pudd'n laid one big hand on the top of my head.

"Don't worry about that." Dixie smiled so wide I could see the top of his dentures. "You can leave him to me."

Pudd'n shrugged. "All right. I'll leave in an hour, an' I'll hand over to you when I go."

He dragged me back along the landing and on through into the music room. All the way there I looked for a sign of anything that might be useful later. There was nothing.

"It's a big house," I said to Pudd'n, after he had moved me over near the piano and seated himself on the stool. He grunted noncommittally.

"How many bedrooms?" I went on.

He swiveled round to face me. "Look here, mate, I'm younger than you but I wasn't born yesterday. Don't try an' pump me, all right? If you're relyin' on me to tell you, you already know all about this house that you're goin' to know. Talk about something else."

I shrugged and leaned back in the chair. "All right. I was just interested, that's all. I'm surprised that you don't take piano playing more seriously. I could tell that you didn't have any trouble playing for Dixie—it didn't stretch you at all."

"Ah, he just wants easy stuff—dance tunes, mostly." He sniffed. "Fancies himself as Fred Astaire, silly old fart. He's past it. I play anythin' he asks me to, but it's not
real
music."

"So why not play real music? How are you in sight-reading and improvising?"

"I'm good—'specially improvising." His expression was interested, and he was getting into the conversation more. I didn't see how it could lead anywhere useful, but I had nothing better to do.

"I'd like to hear you," I said.

"Pick a tune." He looked positively eager. So was I. It was one thing to meet a musical thug, but natural talent is hard to find anywhere and it's intriguing when you meet it.

"How about a contemporary work?" I said. "How many late twentieth century piano pieces do you know?"

"Damn few—an' that includes
early
twentieth century as well." He struck a few sparse and dissonant chords that sounded like an extract from Webern, but not one I could place. "Hear that?" he said. "That's not music."

"So what
is
music?"

He thought for a moment. "This is." He began to play a beautifully balanced piano transcription of the first movement of the Schubert String Quintet, nodding his head with the rhythm.

After about a minute he stopped.

"Go on," I said. I was ready to hear more. "Who did the piano arrangement?"