Confused, they neither nodded nor shook their heads. Perhaps their tears flowed a little more freely, and the clear mucus from their snivelling noses. Lubricant!
How he ached for the game to progress.
‘Lovely, lolly-loving, luscious little girls. My lolly-licking lovelies. Doesn’t it look tasty?’
This time both girls shook their heads.
Magnus roared out delighted laughter.
‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘You must both be bad girls in that case.’ He paused to light a cheroot. There was plenty of time. ‘And you know what happens to bad girls in this house, don’t you?’
They didn’t move. They didn’t want to know.
They were right not to. He loved each moment of their terror.
The cheroot twitched between his fingers but he didn’t even notice any more. His head vibrated as though he was repeatedly shaking it – ‘no’ – in the tiniest movements.
Their little solar plexuses quivered as they tried not to let out their sobs. Their lips were sucked in and out by their hitched breathing.
‘In this house,’ he said. ‘I eat bad girls. I chop them up while they’re still begging me to stop and then I eat them. Raw. By the handful.’ He made the motions of chopping and picking up and chewing and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘Mmm. Delicious. Lovely, luscious, tender little girls. My… FAVOURITE!’
At his shout they started back against the glass of the window. It rattled in its old frame. And then the sobs came out loud and long and he pressed home the advantage.
‘SHUT UP THE PAIR OF YOU. Shut your nasty little gobs or I’ll cut you up and eat you right now.’
They clasped their hands over each other’s mouths to stifle the sobs.
‘Now then, who wants a lolly?’
Like wan Siamese twins they approached him. Like calves.
He licked his lips.
Luck, or rather misfortune, brought them to the opening Shanti had told them about. Reluctantly, they’d pressed on past the tower blocks and out further than any of them had been before. In the distance they saw the giant outline of structures built into the air. All of them, even Bruno, were belittled by the vastness of the ruination. They could see no end to it. By comparison the town behind them seemed small.
They reached a place where the rubble sloped down away from them. Fanning out along the ridge, they picked careful steps downward. Several of the men lost their footing and slid despite the extra care. One of them fell a lot further than the rest.
Someone shouted, ‘Shit!’
Bruno looked in the man’s direction.
‘What is it?’
‘Andrews disappeared.’
Bruno clambered across the slope towards him. The hysterical outburst annoyed him. It was a sign the men were on edge. Not thinking right.
‘He hasn’t disappeared, you idiot. He’s probably fallen down.’ Bruno neared the spot. ‘Where was he?’
The man pointed.
‘Just over there. He—’
At that moment Bruno found the place. The rubble was so uniform it hid the contours from casual glances. Even scanning the ground, he’d missed it. And there it was: a dirty great hole in the slope the size of five doorways. He missed his footing and slid towards it. A piece of rusted steel reinforcement saved him from following Andrews down. He grasped it and pulled himself to a safer position.
‘Take me as your marker,’ he shouted. ‘And get to the bottom of the slope. There’s a way in right here.’
Once the men were moving he called out to Andrews several times. Andrews didn’t answer. Losing a man before the action began was bad but he was glad that they weren’t going to have to go in via the bullring. This way would lead them straight to their objective.
At the bottom of the slope he joined his men; all of them dustier than ever and many with torn coats and trouser legs. The landscape did not yield. Before them was the entrance to the tunnels. Steps led down into darkness but they’d come prepared. Several of the men carried gas lanterns, items soon to be a thing of the past.
He split his men into seven groups of ten, each with three lanterns. Every man let a short-bladed machete slip down from inside his sleeve. Thongs kept the knives attached to their wrists in case a handle slipped in a sweaty palm. Each knife was a foot in length and ended flat, as though cleanly snapped. This was the Meat Baron’s enforcers’ weapon, a blade for slashing, cutting and chopping.
Two or three groups at a time, they descended into the darkness.
The first thing they found was Andrews. His eyes were still open but it was no wonder he hadn’t called back. He’d fallen headlong and landed on his neck. The impact had snapped it and he lay like a discarded toy, legs and arms at ridiculous angles.
‘Straighten him up, will you?’
Bruno said a few words over Andrews and they all continued downward.
The spaces below the earth were enormous. The bullring was nothing by comparison. Light from their lanterns didn’t penetrate to the highest ceilings. Then they’d find themselves in long tunnels with the tubed ceilings only a few feet overhead. Similar tunnels with shiny metal steps led them down at steep angles further into the ground.
Bruno sensed panic in some of them. He could smell their sweat and its soured edge of fear. Without looking he could sense the tightness in the tendons of their machete-holding wrists. Down here in the bowels of an unknown part of Abyrne, a blade was all they had for comfort and for strength. He knew because his own tendons were just as taut.
The air was stale but not as still as it should have been. Someone had been down there before them or was still there. The air was stirred up somehow – there was dust in it. What should have been undisturbed was not.
On descending to the third level, with some of the men beginning to reach their limit, Bruno began to see signs of habitation; blankets arranged into seats and bedding; symbols drawn on to walls in charcoal; footsteps in the dust. He wanted to give the men more orders now that they were there. At least give them encouragement, tell them to keep their nerve just a little longer because they almost had their man. He dared not raise his voice to speak though – the less they did to give away their approach the better.
How long had Collins and his people lived down here? What had they eaten and how had they survived? There was no sign of anything other than their drawings and makeshift cots.
In the whole place they found only one gas lantern. It was in a dead-ended room where many blankets had been arranged as seats in rows. At the far end there was a space and then room for a single floor-level seat. A preacher and his followers. This was where they had been. This really was Collins’s hideout.
Bruno turned swiftly and exited the chapel-like room expecting an attack from behind them. Nothing came. There was no one else down there with them.
‘We’ve missed them,’ he said to the shadowed circle of faces around him. ‘Time to go and look elsewhere.’
He felt the relief wash through the group. None of them wanted to fight down here, to risk dying in the dark. Like hunched crows, they followed him back to the light.
They stood in front of him, hesitating, their faces the purest misery.
His cock jutted, blunt and stupid. A silvery bead appeared at its tip and they took a step back.
‘Sweet lolly juice, just for little girls.’
They were almost his now, at the beginning of a journey in which he’d be their guide and tormentor. They would become his favourite maids, these two. He could already tell he wanted to keep them around for a long time to come. Train them, educate them, twist them to his will.
Hema reached out her hand and he smiled, his heart missing a single blessed beat.
Outside there was noise. Footsteps running in the downstairs hall and then thumping on the stairs. He heard the shouts of men and a struggle. Someone fell down the stairs yelling. The yell was cut short. The struggle continued and the voices came nearer. He recognised the voice of one of his men and another voice that should not have been in the house.