The Devil You Know

Damjohn was sitting on one of the couches, at his ease, lighting a black cigarette. Behind him stood Gabe McClennan and Weasel-Face Arnold. Arnold’s battered face gave me a moment’s low satisfaction, but under the circumstances, it didn’t do a whole hell of a lot to warm the cockles. Two more bravoes to whom I hadn’t been introduced stood on either side of me, holding me up in the absence of any meaningful efforts from my rubbery legs.

The woman tied to the chair had a gray Parcelforce bag tied around her head.

“Mr. Castor,” said Damjohn with just a hint of paternal sternness. “At one point in this sad, complicated business, I paid you the compliment of trying to bribe you. I honestly wish you’d accepted.”

“Go fuck yourself,” I suggested. “What you tried to do was seduce me, because that’s what you like to do best. Now you’re about ten minutes away from a lobster quadrille with the Vice Squad, so let’s cut a deal. You drop the Blofeld act, and I won’t ask for a martini.” I was chagrined at how quavery my voice sounded. That whack to the top of the spine had knocked a lot of the fight out of me. I was going to need to play for time; a couple of weeks would do nicely, so long as I got bed rest.

Despite appearances, though, Damjohn hadn’t settled down for a nice long chat. He turned to glance over his shoulder at McClennan. “What are you waiting for?” he asked mildly. “A pay rise?”

McClennan jerked to attention as sharply as a West Point graduate. He came around the couch and crossed to stand in front of me.

“You wouldn’t take a fucking hint, would you?” he asked, glowering at me. He pulled my coat open, snapping off a couple of the buttons in the process, then did the same thing with my shirt. He seemed to enjoy it. I wondered for a brief, unsettling moment if I’d misunderstood the situation—if I was going to be raped before I was murdered. But then Weasel-Face handed Gabe a tray full of implements I vaguely recognized, and Gabe got busy.

There was a pot of henna, another half full of water, and a couple of brushes—one fat, one thin. Gabe dipped the bigger of the two brushes in the water, then in the henna, and painted a broad, messy circle on my chest. I gave an involuntary gasp; the water was cold. I began to get an inkling of what was about to happen, but if I let myself think about that and froze up with fear, I’d be dead for sure. In the absence of any better ideas, I continued to play the few paltry cards I had left.

I looked across at Rosa—assuming that it was Rosa trussed up like a parcel over there. The ragged rise and fall of her chest was a hopeful sign, anyway.

“You should quit while you’re ahead,” I told Damjohn, slurring my words only slightly. “If you let her go, all you’re going to get is accessory to murder and wrongful imprisonment. Kill her, and you’ll do life. But not here. They’ll deport you back to Zagreb. You fancy twenty years in a Croatian prison? I reckon the time off for good behavior would arrive at the sharp end of an ice pick.”

Damjohn just smiled, as if I’d made an unfunny joke that he was going to be magnanimously polite about.

“I’m not going to kill Rosa,” he reassured me. “Not while she’s still a saleable asset. Eventually, if drugs and disease and distempered clients don’t get her first, it will be necessary to draw a line under her. For the time being, though, she’s fine. She’s young, she’s healthy, and she’s earning her keep. I’m actually quite fond of her. Don’t worry about Rosa, Castor.”

“Then why have you got her tied to a chair?” I asked. It seemed like a reasonable question, but Damjohn waved it away.

“I needed to make sure she didn’t speak to you. In the short term, I arranged that by keeping her here. But it was only ever an interim measure. You really should have just exorcised the ghost at the archive and taken your pay. Or, conversely, accepted my foolishly generous offer. You’ve got no one to blame for this but yourself.”

“Let me see that she’s all right,” I said, sounding for all the world like someone who still had a bargaining position to maintain.

Damjohn put his head on one side, frowned at me either in puzzlement at the request or in annoyance that I’d presumed to give him an order. Whatever went through his mind, he finally made a gesture to Weasel-Face, who walked over to Rosa and pulled the mail sack off her head. Underneath it she was gagged with a plug of cloth and a few loops of rope, and her right eye was swollen closed. Her other eye was open, though, and her expression as she stared at me, though terrified, was alert. It seemed as though she might get out of this with her life after all. On the other hand, from what Damjohn was saying, that would just be a suspended sentence.