The Paper Factory (Michael Berg Book 1) (13 page)

Chapter 4
1

  After their long, late lunch, István and Michael stayed put, relaxing in the sun, finished off a second bottle of wine. Tereza had gone for a walk.

  “
What about Tereza, her family? Brothers? Sisters? She must have someone.”

  “
No, no one. Her father was an only child. Her mother had a sister, Edit, but she never married. Died a long time ago.” He paused. “Tereza did have a brother. Gusztav. She has no real memory of him. She was six when he died.”

  “
That’s awful. It sounds like her family’s cursed. How did he die?”

  “Car accident. Y
ou English call it a hit and run.”

  Ist
van’s shoulders slouched and his face took on a careworn expression. His hands dropped to his lap. He looked up at Michael.

  “
When the boy died, part of the family died with him. Tereza was the only thing that kept her parents together. That and Vass Holdings. After Gusztav’s death, Attila rarely spent less than sixteen hours a day working. He and Zsuzsa, Tereza’s mother, rarely had time to argue. The spare time he did find he spent with Tereza. They never found the driver of the car. That, at least, would have been something.” István leant forward and placed his hand on Michael’s wrist, grasped it firmly.

  “You’re both in great danger.
Tereza thinks that by keeping things from me she’s making it easier. I beg of you, please don’t encourage her to pursue this man Rivello. She’s the only person I care about. If she gets close to him again, he’ll kill her. The keys to my car are on the table in the kitchen. If you care for her at all, take it. Now. Leave.”

  He
was taken aback by the old man’s request. A voice rang out behind him.

  “
Hey Pisti, why so sad? What has Michael been telling you?”

  “Nothing, my dear girl.”
He removed his hand from Michael’s wrist. “Your presence is the only thing we’ve missed. As soon as you left we had no choice but to start drowning our sorrows.” He held the second bottle upside down, empty, for effect. “In any case, for a man of my age, I’ve had more than enough wine. To bed I go. I’ll leave you young people to talk.”

 
István stood, a little unsteadily, drained the last drop from his glass, lifted some of the dishes from the table, swayed more than once as he made his way to the kitchen.

 
The sun was dropping behind the mountains, casting an orange glow across the well-tended garden. Still warm, the air was stirred by a light breeze. The scent of the grass, trees and the multitude of flowers allowed him to drift back to a moment many years before. A time in his childhood. A brief snapshot in time that he’d spent with his parents before they died. He knew they were there too, in that snapshot. Somewhere, but he couldn’t visualize them. A family photograph, without the family.

  “
You look tired, Michael,” she said, sitting opposite him now, smiling.

 
The breeze gently tossed her hair, eyes bright and playful, challenging him to contradict her.

  “Not tired. T
houghtful. Your uncle wants me to leave. To steal away in the early hours of the morning and save you from a fate worse than death,” he said, allowing a hint of drama to creep into his voice.

  “
Which, of course, you’re not going to do.”

  “
No. I wouldn’t have told you if I was. We’re both wrapped up in this together. The way I see it, neither of us has very much to lose.”
  “What do you mean?” said Tereza.

  “István filled in
the gaps. Your family. I don’t think either of us has a choice. We need to nail this guy. He needs to pay for what he’s done. If we don’t work together, he’ll get away with it and God knows what else. We’ll be left with nothing. Or worse. I don’t think Rivello’s the type to leave loose ends lying around.”

  “
And I thought you blonds weren’t meant to have too much up top.” She laughed. “Come on, let’s go, I’m tired as well. I’ll show you to your room.”

 
As she stood and gathered the dishes, he couldn’t help but notice that, without the bulky leather jacket, Tereza had an incredibly shapely figure. Below her long dark hair, her back gently arched downwards to a slim waist. He had already noticed the long attractive legs, but it was only now in the fading light of day that he noticed the well-formed outline of her breasts pushing against her white blouse as she leant forward to lift up the dishes. He rose and reached out towards her arm, laid his hand on her wrist and waited for her to turn towards him. When she did, there was no hesitation in her eyes.

  “
Michael, I really need to get these inside,” gesturing with her other hand towards the tray of crockery on the table. She pulled her wrist away, lifted the tray, and moved off in the direction of the kitchen.

 
She showed him to a room on the first floor. Tereza pushed open the wooden door, reached around, hit the light switch.
Just as he said good night and tossed his backpack onto the bed, he heard her behind him. Standing in the doorway. Any playfulness had disappeared from her voice.

  “
Michael, thank you for staying. I mean it. You’re right, we need to do this together. No more using you as bait. Besides, you look better with your arms and legs attached to your body. Sleep well.” She turned and went. A few seconds later he heard a door close a few meters down the corridor.

Chapter 42

 
The room was not exactly what you would call spacious. As far as he was concerned, this made the whole experience exquisitely more enjoyable. One of the best things about Moscow real estate was that it took very little in the way of renovation to create the right effect. Atmosphere was crucial, he had discovered a long time ago. It made the difference between having a truly memorable experience and merely going through the motions. Particularly if the girl was claustrophobic. The level of her angst would perceptibly increase.

 
Augustus wiped himself down and threw the towel to the cobbled floor. He reached for the hook on the door and swung the dressing gown over his shoulders. The girl hung from the rope, looped through the swivel embedded in the ceiling. Her hands were bound tightly, a leather strap under the rope taking some of the pressure from her wrists. The balls of her feet were touching the floor, the heels poised tantalisingly in the air. She had been positioned in this way for two hours.
Punishment enough
.

 
At intervals, Augustus had loosened the other end of the rope, fixed through a steel ring in the brick wall, and on four occasions allowed her feet to fully touch the ground and the girl to recover herself. Two hours was long enough.

 
The girl moaned, her body now completely slumped forward, her hands and arms no longer having the strength to hold her body upright. Augustus walked over to her, not yet ready to release her from discomfort. The girl’s eyes were closed, her face unblemished. He never touched the face. Some did, if they paid enough for it. But those people he thought of as no more than animals.

 
He stroked her head as he swept his hand down her back, across the bright red lesions he had created. Augustus felt himself going hard again as he slipped the other hand from her hair and slid it up along the inside of her thigh. Now he was thinking back to the moment when he had punished her there and the high pitched sound of the delighted squeals that she had emitted.

  “
My gorgeous darling,” he whispered in her ear, “that was most beautiful. Sadly I need to leave you now, but first something to reward you for being such a wonderful girl.”

 
Augustus moved across the floor, took a chair from beside the sink and placed it underneath her. He fetched the water, the tablets. He placed them on the floor and then crossed to the wall where he untied the rope and gently lowered the girl onto the chair. She slumped down into it, moaning.

  He enjoyed
the ritual, liked to reward the girls afterwards by giving them painkillers, usually a medium dose of morphine. He enjoyed seeing the look on their faces slip from taught, painful exhaustion to blissful contentedness. Augustus would never admit it to himself, but it helped to remove a soupcon of guilt that he tended, even if only fleetingly, to carry with him after occasions such as this. He lifted her head gently, cradling it, sweeping the long dark hair away from the front of her face.

  “
Water,” he said, pushing the girl’s lips apart with the rim of the glass and letting her taste the liquid. Her eyes opened, not seeing him, dazed from her experience at the end of the rope. He took each tablet, one after the other, and fed them to the girl from between his index finger and thumb, giving her a final sip of water with which to wash them down. Augustus smiled down at her, and gently let her head drop again to the side.

 
He walked over to the wooden bench between the sink and the door, took off his dressing gown and lifted his trousers. He seated himself. It had been many years since he was able to put his trousers on while standing, and as he did so, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror that covered the entirety of the opposite wall. The pale, blue veined, flabby legs, the overly distended stomach, rolls of fat hanging from his middle and his chest. Although he rarely chose to look in a mirror, his own image had long ceased to bother him. Augustus was at an age where, even if he didn’t feel comfortable with himself, he had long ago accepted who, or rather, what he was.

 
Gagging noises from the girl pulled him from his thoughts. She abruptly rose, vomited violently, gagged, vomited once more and collapsed to the ground. She spasmed on the floor, naked, writhing in agony, convulsing, vomiting until she could only gag and gasp for air, limbs writhing frantically.
  Augustus froze with the horror of what was happening in front of his eyes.

  “
Dmitri,” he screamed, “help me!”

  The door slammed inwards,
Dmitri barged through, stood for a split second surveying the scene, ran towards the girl.

  “
Get out, upstairs and wait. Now,” he shouted to Augustus.

Faster than he had moved in some time
, Augustus snatched up his remaining clothes and bolted for the door.

---

 
He sat in the changing room slumped on a high-backed wooden bench, the steam from the banya curling its way across the ceiling. Men, most accompanied by young women, entered the traditional Russian sauna, liniment soaked birch twigs in hand. Augustus wanted to get out of there, disappear onto the first plane out of Sheremetyevo and find his way back to London. He knew, though, despite the feelings of panic and fear racing through his system, that his only way out of this was to do exactly what Dmitri said. It would be expensive, but he knew these people had a way of doing things.

 
He’d been waiting for fifteen minutes. It felt like a lot longer. Augustus, not immune to sweating at the best of times, was soaking, clothes sticking to his body, sweat and steam combining to create a clawing, clammy wetness. Aided by his physical discomfort, Augustus’s fear addled brain was now racing to the conclusion that perhaps he should in fact get out of the bordello as soon as possible. He was about to lever himself out of the bench when Dmitri appeared.

 
Dmitri was not a small man, at least six feet four inches tall. One could easily mistake his bulk as that of a man who had grown too fond of pelmeni and beer. It was a mistake many people had made. Generally only once. In the bright light of the changing room, the white dome of his large round head contrasted comically with his all black attire. Augustus wasn’t laughing.

  “This way
.”

 
Augustus stood, unable to look the man in the eyes. They turned away from the changing room entrance, went through a small door and climbed a narrow wooden staircase. While ascending the stairs, Augustus noticed the index finger of Dmitri’s left hand was missing, an off-white bandage wrapped around his wrist and threaded through his middle finger and thumb, the finger severed just above the first joint. Better not to ask.
  Dmitri opened the door to a near empty room, a few chairs stacked in one corner, and motioned Augustus over to the window.

Dmitri pulled out two chairs and placed them facing each other in the middle of the room.

  He sat.

 
Augustus looked from the window down into an empty courtyard surrounded by a rusting steel fence. A car was parked close to the gate.

  “
What am I looking at?” said Augustus, confused.
  “You’ll see.”

 
He was completely at the mercy of these people. They could kill him and within one hour there wouldn’t be a body part to identify him by. They wouldn’t turn him over to the police, who would either close the place down or more probably increase the establishment’s monthly operating “tax.”

 
A door opened two floors below, at the same level as the basement, and a dull light flooded the courtyard. Two men appeared, one walking behind the other, carrying an object between them. They walked into the middle of the courtyard, the man at the front of the bundle turning his face towards the window. He cradled what looked like a carpet or tarpaulin under one arm and lifted the corner. The girl’s lifeless eyes bore straight into his, set in a rigid, sheet white face that would never again laugh at the joke of a friend or feel stroked by the warmth of the sun.

 
Augustus reeled backwards and felt the bile rise in his throat. He vomited onto the floor by the base of the window. Suddenly light-headed, the shock of looking into those dead, soulless eyes causing him to lose all feeling in his legs and crumple to the floor. He lay, wrapped in the fetal position, crying like a small child.

 
The sharp pain in his left side momentarily halted his breathing. Again and again he felt Dmitri’s boot sear against his ribs, layers of fat doing nothing to shield him from the metal caps sewn into the tough leather army boots.

  “
You are a fat piece of shit. A fucking pig. What did you do to her? She was one of the best. Do you know how much money you have cost me? Now I pay the police. I pay to get rid of the body. I pay her parents. You are a worthless fucking pig.” Another kick to the ribs.

  “
I should just kill you here, have you filleted and thrown into the Moskva.”

  “
Anything, I’ll do anything. Money, anything you want,” Augustus whimpered, the left side of his body on fire. “Just please get me away from here. I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened to her. I didn’t do anything to her. It was the drugs.”

  “
You didn’t do anything to her. You beat her black and blue for two hours, hanging from a rope. You fucking pervert. You didn’t do anything to her?”

 
No kick this time. As distressed as Augustus was, he knew it was deal making time. He drew himself up painfully against the slat board wall.

  “How much do you want?”
the rasping noise coming from his mouth he barely recognized as his own voice.