My Brother's Keeper (21 page)

"Calcutta? Do you want to buy a ticket?"

"I have a ticket already. When is the next train?"

Without the chance of selling me a ticket he showed much less interest. There was a shrug, a turning of the head, and an arm waved casually along the northern line.

"You just missed the last one for tonight—see its lights there? Now it is necessary to wait for the morning service: six o'clock, arrival time nine-thirty. Do you need accommodation to sleep while you wait—or a place for food or entertainment? I can provide you with all."

I shook his hand away from my arm. Nine-thirty in Calcutta. I could do a lot better than that by road. The Toyota had nearly a full tank, and according to Chandra there were good highways all down the east coast of India.

I had stuck the pouch with the car keys in it into my pocket. Now I took it out again. Was I in any condition to drive? My head was pounding, and the station around me was reeling and rolling. Zan seemed like the best of the bunch, but even when I had permitted wild thoughts that she might help us I never considered revealing to her the location of Leo's hideaway. Ameera might think Zan was now on our side. If she followed my instructions and headed straight for home, Zan would be with her.

What should I do now? Wait for the train, or try it by car?

I had no choice at all. I discovered that in the next thirty seconds. The pouch containing the keys held more than I had realized. It also had space for paper money and for a driver's license.

As I opened it Zan's handsome face stared up at me, her expression stern and wooden in a Motor Vehicle Department mug shot.

Xantippe Gerakis
, said the caption. Twenty-nine years old, height 1.7 meters.

It took a few seconds before I could make the connections. Xantippe; like the wife of Socrates, in keeping with her Greek appearance. But I had been following my ears and thinking of her as Zan. She was
Xan
.

Xantippe. Xan-Tippe. Zan-Tippy. Zan-TP
.

The names ran like electric shocks through my brain. I recalled Zan's expression when she talked of torture for me and Ameera if we would not cooperate. And now I could interpret that strange look of excitement on her face when Dixie burned my arm back in London. Scouse had sent her away before they tortured me more—not because she hated inflicting pain, but because she was much too fond of it.

I stood in Cuttack Station and shivered.

Telephone
.

It took me two frantic minutes to locate one, and ten more to battle my way through a sleepy night operator to the Calcutta number I wanted.

Chandra was not home. At one in the morning it could be business or pleasure, and I had no possible way to track him down. I left my message with a sleepy and alarmed servant, who seemed to speak just enough English to misunderstand every other word, and half a minute later I was back in the Toyota and bracing myself for a wild and exhausting drive to Calcutta.

"
Regular hours and lots of sleep. Otherwise, there'll be trouble
." Sir Westcott had driven the message in as I was leaving the hospital.

Yes, sir
.

I didn't disagree with his prescription. Following it was another matter.

Cuttack to Calcutta: 205 miles as the crow flies, 300 by road. The Indian traffic police apparently all went off duty at dusk. On the empty highways I pushed the car up to over a hundred, gritting my teeth at the scream of the over-revved engine. Even then I was passed a couple of times, once by a lunatic in a Ferrari and once by an old Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith that breathed past me like a moonlit ghost.

I reached the suburbs of Calcutta in less than four hours, then was slowed to a crawl by dawn traffic. As the sun came up like a smoky red ball, great lines of carts and bicycles crept out to clog the roads ahead.

Before I reached Howrah I had faint hopes of arriving before the night train. That prospect disappeared as I merged into the sluggish sea of commuters. It was seven o'clock and full light before I jerked the Toyota to a halt by the old double gates of the house and hobbled inside. Running on sharp gravel and six hours of driving without shoes had left my right foot raw and blistered.

No sign of Chandra's car—but perhaps he had received my message and come over by taxi.

And no mustachioed guard in the little sentry box. That was the first oddity. He was always there, unless he was sent on some errand.

I resisted the urge to run straight into the house. Leo's training was at work, as it had been working for me during our escape from Belur's house. At the open front door I forced myself to stand still for several minutes, listening.

Had I beaten Zan and Ameera in the trip from Cuttack? Surely not—the train would make the trip in little more than three hours. So perhaps they had not headed here at all. Maybe Zan had gone to meet Scouse and taken Ameera with her.

Dead silence. In my days there the house had
never
been empty, never silent. It would be quiet like this only if all the servants had been sent away.

I stole inside, shaking with tension and fatigue. The house was peaceful and spotlessly clean in the morning sunlight. Everything normal—except for that unprecedented and uncanny quiet. At the foot of the stairs I paused, uncertain where to go next. The silence was broken for the first time. A soft, spine-chilling noise came faintly from above me. Someone was crying—not crying, it was more like an animal moaning, faint and broken.

Ameera.

I ran up the stairs, forgetting the need for caution. She lay spreadeagled on the big bed in my room, face down and near naked. As I came closer to her I saw that she was tied, hands and feet, and that bandages covered her mouth.

I bent to remove the gag and felt the first moment of relief. She was here, she was alive, and she seemed to be unharmed. The strips of cloth that stretched her arms and legs towards the corners of the bed were tight-knotted and cut deep into her wrists, but her face and body were unmarked. When I struggled to undo the bonds she turned a tear-streaked face towards me.

"Lee-yo-nel?"

"I'm here. It's all right."

I finally had her wrists free, slid my hand reassuringly along her bare back, and moved down to tackle the ankles. Before I could touch her legs and feet she writhed and gave a warning cry.

In my haste to remove the gag I had not bothered to look closely at her legs. The curtains of the room were drawn, and in the dim light she had seemed to be wearing a pair of light slippers, purple-red in color and extending upwards only an inch or so from the bottom of her feet. Now I was seeing them more closely.

No slippers; her feet were bare. The skin had been flayed from the soles in neat half-inch strips. I could see how the first shallow cut had been made on the hard skin of the heel, before a uniform band was peeled off and run across the exquisitely tender area on the ball of the foot, all the way to the delicate toes. The operation had been carried out with diabolical skill. Zan must have taken several hours to do it. By now the bleeding had stopped, but a clear lymph was seeping from the stripped surfaces and oozing onto the bed sheet. As I touched her ankle, Ameera cried out in anticipation.

"Lee-yo-nel! No!"

I put my hand lightly on the back of her head. "It's all right, Ameera. I see it. I won't touch your feet."

As I bent to work on the knots my fatigue was washed away by an enormous and overwhelming rage. Much of it was directed toward myself. My curiosity about Leo's past had led directly to Ameera's torture. If I had been content to lie low in England, there were a dozen places where Scouse would never have found me . . .

A noise downstairs jerked me upright. Leo took over. I spun around, ready to kill without warning if it was Xantippe coming back for Ameera. When soft footsteps came up the stairs I moved silently to the doorway, poised for action.

One hard chop to the side of the neck . . .

A sleek head poked in through the door. I pulled back my hand at the last moment.

"Chandra!"

He turned swiftly to stare at me. "What is all this, Lionel? Messages in the middle of the night, frightening my man out of his negligible wits. What has become of that famous English
sangfroid
? What is happening here?"

As he spoke he turned to stare at Ameera on the bed. She had moved to bring her tortured feet clear of the sheet. Chandra's eyes, quicker than mine, saw at once what had been done to her. He went across to the window and drew back the curtains with one rapid and angry motion.

"Who did this?"

"The same people who have been pursuing me. They were waiting for us in Cuttack."

"And they followed you here?"

"My fault." I nodded my head towards Ameera. "We have to get her to a hospital." At Chandra's voice she had tried to wrap the bedsheet around her, but the pain from her feet was too great to permit the movement. Chandra questioned her briefly in Bengali, his voice calm and reassuring, and she made a brave attempt to smile before she replied. He asked her another question, then nodded at me.

"No hospital. We are agreed on that. The care she would get for this injury is no better there than we can bring to her here, and she would like to be among friends."

"But she must have a doctor." I looked at the raw wounds, and shuddered again.

"Of course. I will arrange for that immediately." Chandra was already moving towards the door, his smooth face determined and angry. "Leave all those arrangements to me. You stay here with Ameera. Do you think that they might come back here?"

Ameera gave a frightened little cry, and I moved to take her hand in both of mine.

"I don't know. If they do, then God help them."

He paused in the doorway. "God is fickle. Sometimes he chooses to help the wrong group. You are not Superman, Lionel. And you are exhausted. I think a little help from the Calcutta police would not be out of place here. I will call them."

He seemed to be taking over, and that felt like a good idea to me. He was right, I was worn out and running on nerves. I went downstairs with him and locked the doors of the house as he left. We wanted fair warning of visitors, welcome or unwelcome.

Ameera was lying flat on the bed when I went back upstairs. She shivered as I came into the room.

"Lee-yo-nel?"

"Try and lie quiet. Chandra will be here soon with the doctor."

"Will she come back?"

"She will not dare. Ameera, I am sorry. I should not have left you alone in the car. It was my fault."

There was no reply for several minutes, and I wondered if after her ordeal a natural emotional exhaustion had taken over. Finally she sighed and turned towards me as I sat on the edge of the bed.

"Lee-yo-nel, it was my fault. All of it. I am afraid to tell you this, but I did not speak the truth to you. About Lee-yo, and where he went."

"You told me he went to Cuttack—that was true." My brain was too dulled to go beyond the obvious. I wriggled my stiff and aching shoulders. "I should not have taken you there with me. Even when you wanted to go, I should have refused."

"Not Cuttack, Lee-yo-nel." Her voice was trembling. "I knew he had been there, and come back safely. It was the other place, the place that he was afraid to go. The place that he did not come back from."

I grunted and sat up straighter. "After Cuttack? You said that you did not know anywhere else that he went."

"I was lying to you." The tears came rolling down the dark cheeks. "I was afraid that you would be hurt, too. If we went to Cuttack, I thought that would be safe. Lee-yo went to see Belur there, and he was all right. But he never came back from Riyadh."

"Riyadh?" A flash of ocher sands and cool green dimness skimmed through my mind, a level below conscious memory. "Ameera, why did he go there? Was that the `R-I' that I saw in his notes?"

"I do not know." The tears were coming faster now. "After he came from Cuttack, he left again at once. I do not know why he went to Riyadh—but I think that she knows. Lee-yo-nel, I did not want to tell her. But the hurt was so much, and she said she would keep hurting until I told. I had to tell. I said he went to Riyadh."

I looked down at her flayed and naked feet. "Ameera, anyone would have told. I am proud of you that you took so much hurt before you spoke."

"But I did not." She rubbed a knuckle at her tearstained eyes and sat up a little on the sheet. "I am not brave. I told her quickly, as soon as the hurt was bad. I thought she would stop then, but she kept on for a long time. Lee-yo-nel, why would she do that to me? I had told her everything."

I knew, but I did not want Ameera to know. Zan had been seeking information; when she had it she should logically have left the house at once. If she stayed, it was only for the pleasure of tormenting a helpless victim. Sadism is not rare, but it is unusual to find it given full leash.

Xantippe had known I might be on the way here, or have telephoned from Cuttack. Only a consuming urge to torture and torment had kept her so long at the house.

And if time had not been short, so that she could linger as long as she chose with Ameera? . . .

I went to the window and stared out. Instead of Calcutta, the city of Riyadh now seemed to spread its towers and minarets before me, the jewel of the Arabian Peninsula, a modern miracle of science that bloomed in the desert. I had been there many times, to play in the pinnacled concert hall and underwater theaters, making music for the idlest rich of the world.

Now I had to go there again; in pursuit of an unknown goal, following a woman who frightened me more than any wicked witch of childhood stories.

For Ameera's sake, I would be on the first airplane that could take me.

A gigantic bookcase, and beyond it the chair of a Titan. I blinked, blinked again, and screwed up my eyes against the sunlight. In the distance, over at the limit of vision, a dark-edged monster crouched forward over a colossal bed. There were sounds, the pizzicato plucking of strings over unresolving harmonies. An automatic filing system in my head identified the
Bhairava
raga, with its symbolism of waking dawn and reverence for the new day. The
vina
played on, its notes clean and soothing. My eyes closed.