‘Then let’s get started.’
Hands were laid on her once more. She was too weak and sick to resist as she was rolled onto her back again and her arms were pulled up over her head. Something closed on her left wrist with a snap. There was a metallic clanking and scraping, then clack, something bit into her right wrist, hard and sudden enough to make her flinch. When she tried to flex her legs, she discovered that they were already immobilised in some way. She was spread-eagled on the bed, and absolutely defenceless.
‘Ni met venim, ye sichedur.’
‘Nhamim.’
If that language, whatever it was, was what her assailants spoke to one another, Kennedy wondered for a moment why they’d shifted into English. The answer came to her at once: ‘Let’s get started’ was something she was meant to hear and be frightened by. Seeing through the ruse gave her some crumb of comfort.
She opened her eyes now. There didn’t seem to be anything to be gained by faking unconsciousness any longer.
The biggest surprise — although it shouldn’t have been a surprise at all — was that she was in Izzy’s bedroom. She probably hadn’t been out that long and there was very little point in ambushing her at the flat if her assailants then had to take her to someplace else entirely. But still, the familiar surroundings accentuated the weirdness and her terror at what was happening.
There were just the two of them — the ones she’d already differentiated by their voices. Both were young, but one was very young, perhaps still in his teens or early twenties. He was slightly built, handsome, with shoulder-length black hair and a short, neat moustache and beard.
The other was bigger and stockier, with a sullen baby face. Black hair, again, but this man wore it short and in a curiously retro style, with an off-centre parting.
Both were dressed in rough-weave linen suits in a colour that might be called a light tan, and both had the unnatural pallor of the Judas tribe, whose life was lived mostly underground. Both were staring at her with solemn intensity — accompanied in the case of the bigger man by something like disgust.
‘We’re going to ask you some questions, Miss Kennedy,’ the bearded man said gently. Unsurprisingly, he was the one with the attractive, cultured voice. The designated nice cop, Kennedy thought. But she wasn’t about to give him the benefit of any doubts on that account. ‘About the job you were called in to do at the British Museum and about the events of this afternoon.’
Kennedy didn’t answer. She twisted her head to look up and then down, taking in what they’d done to her. Her wrists were cuffed — with a single pair of handcuffs threaded through the bed’s wrought-iron headboard. Pink, furry handcuffs: bondage gear. Her legs were locked in their wide-open position by some sort of hobble bar. But she was fully clothed. They hadn’t even taken off her jacket. The mixed signals were confusing. Why prep her for rape and then stop halfway?
‘Don’t know … what you’re talking … about,’ Kennedy mumbled. Her mouth and lower face were still numb from the drug and it was hard to form the words. But in any case, it seemed like a good idea to let them come to her.
The bigger man uttered an oath she didn’t catch. He reached into his jacket and drew out a knife. Kennedy’s heart hammered as she saw the asymmetrical shape of it, the curved spur where the blade ought to narrow to a point and the blunt, rough tang, the exact same metal as the blade, that served it as a hilt. It was the sica again.
These men were Messengers — the professional assassins of the Judas tribe.
The big man pressed the knife to Kennedy’s cheek. ‘Listen to me, filth,’ he said, between clenched teeth. ‘Every time you lie to us, I will cut you. Every time you don’t answer quickly enough, I will cut you. Every time I don’t like the answer you give, I will cut you. And when I have no more questions, I will cut your throat.’
‘Samal.’ The younger man spoke the word softly, but his partner tensed at once and looked to him, settling for Kennedy the question — which had been open up until then — of the pecking order. He made a gesture and the heavy-set man took the knife away from Kennedy’s face, lowered it to his side. Nice cop outranked nasty cop.
The younger man sat down beside her on the bed, arranging himself almost primly, and stared into her eyes. He smiled — and the smile was a lot more unsettling than the big man’s ferocity. It was the smile of someone so sure of his own rectitude that guilt and shame couldn’t land a punch on him.
‘My name is Abydos,’ he told her. ‘And that man there, with the knife, he is my friend, Samal. Samal is a man who — as you might imagine from his manner — doesn’t flinch from unpleasant work. But despite what he says, it will be I who will question you. And I will only allow Samal to hurt you if you force my hand. By that I mean, if you make me believe that hurting you will bring you to tell us more or keep you from lying. You understand me? If you cooperate, there will be less pain. Perhaps no pain at all. And the end, when it comes, will come more quickly and more easily.’
He paused, as though he expected her to reply. When she didn’t, he resumed. ‘I can, besides, offer you one further consolation. At the moment — with only a little more stage management — your death will seem like a sexual game that escalated out of control. But if you tell us the truth, without prompting, then before we leave here we’ll remove these …’ he gestured, with a tight, uncomfortable smile ‘… accessories from your body and leave it fully clothed. You won’t be dishonoured.’
‘Yeah, I’ll still be dead, though,’ Kennedy said. ‘I hate to sound ungrateful, but … you know.’ It hurt her throat to speak, she discovered, and her voice came out as an unlovely croak.
The young man shrugged. ‘You’re an intelligent woman,’ he said. ‘If I promised to let you live, it would be meaningless. We’d both know it for a lie and then you wouldn’t believe anything else I told you.’
Kennedy licked her dry lips, muttered something low and far back in her throat. When the young man obligingly leaned forward to try to catch her words, she spat in his eye. It was all the defiance she could muster, but she saw from the horror and disgust that flared in his face that it had done the job.
The man took out a handkerchief and wiped his cheek with it. ‘Well, then,’ he said, his mouth twisted, ‘perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps it will be impossible, after all, to conduct this conversation along rational lines.’ He looked to the other man, who still stood ready with the knife in his hand. ‘Samal, take a finger.’
The big man bent over her. Contradictory expressions — eagerness, revulsion, fear, hate — chased themselves across his face.
‘I’ll talk,’ Kennedy said quickly. ‘You don’t need to cut me. I’ll tell you what you want to know.’
Abydos gestured, and Samal paused again. He hadn’t even touched her and he seemed relieved not to have to, even though she saw how easily the knife sat in his hand. She was sure he’d killed before. She was equally sure that torture held no particular terrors for him. There was nothing like mercy in his face, and if anything, he seemed to feel a visceral loathing for her. On an impulse, she struggled against the cuffs and let her forearm, as if by accident, touch the back of Samal’s hand. The man jumped as if he’d been stung.
Women, Kennedy thought. You’re scared of women.
‘Very well,’ Abydos said. ‘Let’s begin with this afternoon. You called a meeting, at Ryegate House. What happened there?’
Kennedy licked her dry lips and tried her hardest to keep her voice steady. ‘I accused a man, Alex Wales, of theft.’