Back in the living room, Diedrich hadn’t moved. Bennett walked through into the bedroom and pulled that sock once more out of the laundry. Bringing it back with him, carefully shutting the bedroom door, he knelt before Diedrich and showed him the sock and said, “Do you see what this is?”
Diedrich gave the sock a dull look, then apparently remembered he was supposed to respond to questions, so he said, “Yes.”
“It’s a sock.”
“Yes.”
“I was using it to gag you, so you wouldn’t be shouting for help and like that, such as you did, but when I put it in your mouth, turns out, your nose isn’t working. So I had to take it out again. It was like this.”
Diedrich tried to fight, but Bennett was stronger. He pried his jaws apart and stuffed the sock inside. “And now I’ve got to wash me hands, you see,” he said, and got to his feet, and turned away from the strangling sounds Diedrich made, his legs kicking on the floor.
Bennett went into the bathroom and washed and dried his hands. When he came back out, Diedrich’s eyes were popping, his face was mottled dark red, he was straining every muscle in his body. Bennett casually pulled the sock from his mouth, and Diedrich made horrible sounds, flopping like a captured fish in the bottom of the boat. Breathing seemed to be painful for him, but at least it was possible.
Bennett sat in his chair to wait for Diedrich to be recovered enough to talk. He wasn’t a cruel man, he didn’t do this sort of thing, had never done this sort of thing, but he had no choice, did he? In for a penny, in for a pound. And he’d always believed, if you take on a job, you do it as best you know how.
No self-satisfied smug little poofter like Jerry Diedrich was going to ruin Colin Bennett’s life, and that was that. That was that. No second thoughts about it.
“Feel better, Jerry?”
“It hurts.” The man spoke in barely a whisper, but he spoke.
“I think a hospital would do you a world of good, boyo,” Bennett said. “I’d like to help get you to hospital, you know, just as soon as you answer my questions.”
“What’s—” The hoarse voice stumbled and stopped, rattled, wheezed, then tried again. “What’s the other question?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Bennett said. “One question at a time, I think. So what’s Mark’s last name?”
“No.”
“Ah, Jerry.” Bennett knelt beside him with the sock.
Diedrich stared at him in terror. “You’ll kill me! You’ll kill me before you know!”
“Oh, no, Jerry,” Bennett assured him. “I’ll keep a very close eye on you. I’ll be here to protect and safeguard you. Now, open wide.”
“Mmm! Mmm!”
Once again Bennett forced the jaws open, and Diedrich yelled, “Sansan!”
“What was that?” Bennett released him and leaned back.
Diedrich’s head hung. “Hennessy,” he whispered.
“Well, thank you, Jerry,” Bennett said. “Mark Hennessy, thank you.”
“God forgive me,” Diedrich said, and lowered his forehead to the floor.
“Don’t blame yourself, Jerry,” Bennett told him. “I told you, no one refuses to speak. Eventually, you know, everybody speaks.”
Diedrich lay gasping, eyes closed, forehead pressed to the floor. Bennett doubted he’d need the sock again, but he left it on the floor, too far for Diedrich to kick, but plainly in his sight.
Bennett’s telephone was in this same room. Through thick and thin, he’d kept the telephone, paying for it as best he could, knowing it was his only lifeline, and now at last it was paying off, wasn’t it? The job offer he’d prayed for, he’d kept the phone for, was here, wasn’t it? Came over the phone, as he’d thought it would.
And now the phone was useful again. It stood on the small table beside the sofa. Bennett went over there, sat, and dialed the number Curtis had given him, his home phone, for the evening. A servant of some sort answered, and Bennett said, “Colin Bennett here, for Mr. Curtis, if he’s in.”
Across the way, the gasping Diedrich didn’t react. His forehead was still pressed to the wood floor, possibly because it was cooler there. Bennett was pretty sure the man had told the truth, but he wanted it to be very clear that any of his stories would be checked up on right away.
“Bennett.”
“Good evening, sir. Do you have, sir, by any chance, a fellow working for you called Mark Hennessy?”
Diedrich, on the floor, moaned a little. Curtis was silent, a stunned silence, and then he said, he half-whispered, “My God. I never would have—” Another little pause, and then, “Of course. But how do they even know each other? No, that doesn’t matter. Thank you, Colin, that’s very good.”
“I should have the other answer for you very soon, sir,” Bennett said. He felt elated, he felt his chest swelling, he felt lightheaded, he felt better than he’d felt in years. “And tomorrow, sir, if I may,” he said, “I’d like to come talk to you. About my future, you know.”
Another little pause. Curtis knew what he meant. How would he react? It all depended on this one answer, right now.
“Of course, Colin,” Curtis said, sounding frank and willing. “We should have a discussion. I’ll be here most of the day.”
I’m made, Bennett thought, and couldn’t help smiling as he said, “Thank you, sir.”
He hung up, and except for that one moan when he’d heard Hennessy’s name, Diedrich had done nothing; no reactions, no moves. He still sprawled there, twisted, as Bennett had left him.
Bennett crossed to sit in the chair again, within reach of the man, and waited, and it must have been a good five minutes before a long shuddering breath wracked Diedrich like an internal storm, and he rolled over onto his side, his face slack, eyes dull. “You might as well,” he whispered.
Bennett watched him. “Might as well?”
“Go on.”
“Ah, question number two, you mean.”
Diedrich closed his eyes. He was too weary, perhaps, to respond to a rhetorical question.
Well, that was all right. Bennett could cut the fellow a little slack, now that the resistance was done. He said, “You have a special kind of hate for Mr. Curtis. Not the environment stuff, all that stuff. With you, it’s personal. So that’s the question. What do you have against Richard Curtis in particular?”
Diedrich frowned, eyes still closed. Then his eyes opened and his head turned and he frowned at Bennett for a long time, as though trying to understand a foreign language, one that was now vital to understand. Then, calmly, as though they were merely having a conversation together here, he said, “You already know.”
That was an odd answer. Bennett brushed it aside.
“Jerry Diedrich,” he said, “I wouldn’t ask you a question if I already knew the answer, now, would I? That ain’t sensible, is it? So just tell me, and don’t, you know, prolong it.” (‘Prolong the agony,’ he was going to say, but corrected himself in mid-sentence, because he didn’t want to be unnecessarily cruel.)
Something happened in Diedrich. Out of nowhere, he’d found some shred of his old defiance. Sounding angry again, astonishing Bennett, he said, “Ask Curtis, if that’s what you want to know!”
Mildly, Bennett told him, “It was Mr. Curtis said I should ask you, you know that, no use beating around the bush.”
“He knows, he already knows!”
Bennett sighed. Why this delay, why this complication? “Diedrich,” he said, “look at that sock on the floor there, and pull yourself together. Never mind who knows what, or what you think in that very stupid mistaken head of yours. What do you have against Richard Curtis?”