‘It doesn’t need to be this hard, Herr Glockner,’ he said, as persuasively as he could. ‘You don’t need to suffer. You shouldn’t suffer.’
He wandered round the apartment and looked at the etchings on the wall – street scenes of Munich, he saw.
‘Münchner?’
‘You’ll be dead by the end of today,’ Glockner said. ‘They’ll find you and kill you – they know everything that’s going on in this town. I’ve an appointment at 11.00. If I don’t show up they’ll come directly here.’
‘Well, that gives us less than an hour for you to make up your mind and see sense, then.’
Lysander paced about the room. He drew the curtains and switched on the electric side-lights, wondering what to do. What was it Massinger had said? Cut off his fingers, one by one . . . Oh yes, very straightforward. Right, where do we start? Obviously, he wasn’t going to be able to mutilate the man and he felt a useless anger rise in him, directed at Massinger and his brutal complacency. This was exactly the situation he’d posited to Massinger – what if the bribe was not accepted? – and he had been mocked for his scepticism. In a mood of mounting frustration he walked out of the sitting room and went to find the kitchen.
The flat was small – apart from the sitting room there was a bedroom, a bathroom and a small clean kitchen with a stove and a soapstone sink and a meat-safe. He began to open drawers, looking for knives or shears – those kitchen shears for boning chickens – they’d snap a finger off at the joint. He would threaten Glockner – perhaps squeeze a fingertip between two blades of the scissors; perhaps that would work, terrorize him enough. The imagined snip would perhaps be more disturbing than anything real.
The first drawer revealed cleaning equipment – bleach, wire-wool pan scourers, scrubbing brushes of various sizes. In the second drawer he found the knives – no shears – but they were sharp enough. He looked under the sink and found a bucket – a bucket would be a good prop, as if there would be blood to mop up, that might add to the conviction of the whole charade, he thought. He stopped and stood up.
He was thinking. An idea had come to him – from nowhere. He opened the first drawer again and took out the two pan scourers and held them in each hand – a coarse steel mesh shaped into a squashy sphere. He began to think further – no need to shed a drop of blood at all . . . Then he ran them under the tap, shook the water from them, slipped them into his pockets and wandered back into the sitting room.
‘Last chance, Herr Glockner. Give me the key to the code.’
‘I tell you I don’t have it. I pass the letters on to Berlin where they’re decoded.’
‘Last chance.’
‘How do you say it in English? Fuck your mother, fuck your sister, fuck your wife, fuck your baby daughter.’
Lysander stooped over him.
‘You’ve just made a terrible mistake. Terrible.’
He pinched Glockner’s nose shut with two fingers and, as he reflexively opened his mouth to breathe, Lysander rammed the first of the kitchen scourers deep into Glockner’s mouth – and then the second.
Glockner gagged and heaved. The bulk of the two scourers had forced his jaws wide apart, belling his cheeks. He was trying to force them out with his tongue but they were too firmly wedged in behind his teeth.
Lysander strode over to the armchair and unplugged the standard lamp, ripping the flex from its base. The flex was a simple, wound double-cable, covered in a fine gold-coloured thread. With his fingernails he picked the ends clear, exposing the wires and bending them into a rough Y-shape.
He dragged Glockner and his chair closer. Then he plugged the flex back into its socket and held the now live ‘Y’ in front of Glockner’s eyes.
Suddenly the thought came to him that he might not be capable of going through with this. But then he argued with himself – it would be just a touch, after all, no severing or cutting, nothing unseemly, no blades gouging flesh, just something that occurred as a matter of unfortunate consequence on a doubtless daily basis in dentists’ surgeries the world over. Glockner was going to the dentist – no one liked it particularly, no one knew what pain would be associated with the visit. It was a risk.
‘You look like a man who’s taken good care of his teeth. Admirable. Unfortunately all that expensive dental work is now going to cause you intense, unspeakable pain. Every tooth in your head is in contact with the wire mesh of the scourer. Your copious saliva – look, it’s already dripping from the side of your mouth – is a very efficient electrolyte. When I touch this live electric wire to the scourers in your mouth . . .’ he paused. ‘Well, let’s say you’re going to remember this agony for the rest of your life.’
He waved the wire right in front of Glockner’s eyes.
‘Just give me the key to your code, then I’ll be out of here in five minutes. Nod your head if you agree.’
Glockner made some grating sound in his throat but it was clear from the way his forehead buckled and his crazy eyes glared that he was trying to swear at him again.
Without thinking further, Lysander touched the exposed live wires to the scumbled edge of the kitchen scourer visible between Glockner’s bared teeth. Just for a second.
Glockner’s inhuman throat-tearing roar of pain was hugely disturbing, made him flinch and wince in sympathy. It was the aural representation of his awful torment. He whipped the wires away and, in some disarray himself, watched Glockner writhe in his bonds, banging the back of his head against the parquet, his eyes weeping, overflowing. My god. Jesus.
Lysander fetched a pad-cushion from a chair and slipped it under Glockner’s head. He didn’t want anyone coming up from down below to see what the noise was. He held another cushion in his hand to muffle Glockner’s eventual screams.
‘Now, Herr Glockner, that was just a split second. Imagine if I apply the wires and count to ten.’
He didn’t give him time to make any response – get this over with – he jammed the wire into the scourer and slammed the cushion over Glockner’s face. One second, two – no, he couldn’t go on. He pulled the wire away and kept the cushion in place. Glockner’s screams died away to rhythmic sobbing sounds, almost like a kind of animal, panting. He felt himself trembling as he removed the cushion.
Glockner’s face was slumped as if the muscles weren’t working, had gone terminally slack. His eyes were half-closed, blinking frantically.
‘Nod your head if you agree.’
He nodded.
Carefully, quickly, Lysander picked out the scouring pads from his gaping mouth with his fingers. Glockner dry-heaved, turned his head and spat on the parquet. Lysander rose to his feet and carefully placed the live wire on the desk top, securing it with a paperweight.
‘See?’ he said accusingly. ‘If you’d just told me when I asked you first none of this would have happened – and you’d have been a rich man. Where’s the key?’
‘Central bookcase . . .’ Glockner coughed and moaned.
Lysander walked over to the central bookcase and opened it. It was full of German literature – Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Schopenhauer, Liliencron . . .
‘Second shelf from the top. Fifth book along.’
Lysander ran his finger along the spines. The classic book-cipher. The PLWL code, as it was also known, so Munro had told him – page, line, word, letter. Unbreakable unless you had the book.
Fifth book along, there it was. He drew it out.
Andromeda und Perseus.
Andromeda und Perseus. Eine Oper in vier Akten von Gottlieb Toller.