She worked with methodical care, her breathing shallow and rapid. The fear was a dry, silent roaring in Lom’s head. He wanted to speak now, to tell her everything, but his mouth had no moisture in it and he could not.
‘You were a promising policeman, Investigator,’ she was saying as she worked. ‘Krogh thought he’d been clever, spotting you, but it was my doing, actually. Didn’t you guess? I keep track of all Savinkov’s experiments. You’d never have been able to get at Laurits if I hadn’t let you. We fed you the evidence, of course. Laurits was lazy, and brazen with it. I thought it would be a good idea to let you take him down, if you could. Keep the others on their toes. I had it in mind to bring you to Mirgorod myself, if you succeeded. A career open to talent, that’s what the Vlast should be. But Krogh got you first, and it has come to this. A pity.’
Lom tried to focus on her, but his vision was blurry. What was she saying? He wasn’t sure. His gaze was drawn back to the line of implements ready on the desk.
‘Oh no,’ said Chazia. ‘It won’t be like that. Excruciation has many uses, but collecting information quickly isn’t one of them. Torture is good for encouraging demoralisation and fear — for every one person put to pain, a thousand fear it — and it binds the torturers closer to us. But none of that is relevant in your case. Such methods were ineffective on your friend Vishnik, and I doubt they would be more so with you. On this occasion I require the truth quickly, and there is a better way. You may find the method professionally interesting.’
She took a piece of some dark stuff from her bag and pulled it onto her right hand. It was a long, loose-fitting glove made of a heavy substance something like rubber, but it wasn’t rubber. She held it out for him to see. It had a slightly reddish lustrous sleekness like wet seal fur.
‘Angel skin,’ she said, though he knew that already. He had read of such things. This was a Worm. Chazia took a flask out of her bag and held it up to Lom’s face. He jerked his head aside.
‘It’s only water,’ she said. ‘Drink a little if you like.’
He nodded, and she unscrewed the cap and held the flask to his dry lips, tipping it up to let him take a sip. He sluiced the water around carefully in his mouth and let it trickle down his throat as slowly as he could. Without warning, she tipped the rest of it over his head. It was ice-cold. Lom shouted at the shock of it.
‘It helps,’ said Chazia. ‘I don’t know why.’
She brought her chair round from the other side of the desk and sat beside him, placing her angel-gloved hand on his face. He flinched. His skin crawled.
‘Ask him, Josef,’ she said quietly, with suppressed excitement. ‘Ask him.’
Kantor came and stood by him. His eyes were hard and dispassionately curious. The smouldering earth flickered deep inside them.
‘Where is my wife’s bastard daughter, Vissarion? Maroussia Shaumian? Where is she now?’
Lom felt something disgusting slithering about on the surface of his mind, and pushed it instinctively away. He closed his thoughts against it and concentrated on Kantor’s face. He imagined himself drawing it, like a draughtsman, meticulously. He examined its lines, contours and shadows.
See it as an object. See the surface only.
Chazia grunted in surprise, and Lom felt her push the Worm harder against the defences he had built. Her hand inside the obscene glove tightened, gripping his face where before she had only touched. He shut his mind more firmly against her. Kantor asked the question again.
Fall back to the second line of defence. Tell them something they already know. Let them believe they are making progress.
He ignored Chazia and looked into Kantor’s eyes.
I can do this.
‘I saw Miss Shaumian this morning, for the first and last time. Or perhaps it was yesterday, I’ve lost track of time. I saw her on the occasion of the summary execution in the street of her mother, Feiga-Ita Shaumian, wife of Josef Kantor, by Major Safran of the Mirgorod Militia. Miss Shaumian also observed this execution, and afterwards she walked away. I do not know where she went. I have not seen her since.’
Kantor returned his gaze impassively. If the words meant anything to him he did not show it. Lom felt Chazia remove her hand from his face.
‘Nothing,’ she said to Kantor. ‘Hold his head please.’
Kantor walked around the desk to stand behind him and put his arm across Lom’s throat, under his chin, pulling him backwards until he was choking, and all he could see was the recessed light in the ceiling. Kantor’s other hand gripped his hair so that his head was held firmly.
Chazia’s face came into his line of view. He saw the fine blade in her hand, but it was only when she placed it against the skin of his forehead that he realised what she was going to do.
Repel! Repel!
He drove his mind against her with all his strength, trying to ball up the air in the room and throw it at her.
Nothing happened.
‘The vyrdalak reported that you could do that,’ said Chazia. ‘No wonder Savinkov sealed you up.’ She touched the stone rind in her face and smiled. ‘Quite useless here, of course.’
He felt her begin to cut.
Chazia didn’t find it easy to get the embedded piece of angel stone out of his forehead. She had to dig and gouge and pry with considerable force. She tried several different implements. The pain went on for ever. Lom choked and fought for breath and closed his eyes against the blood that pooled in their sockets and seeped under the lids. He might have screamed. He wasn’t sure.
At last it stopped. Kantor released his hold on Lom’s head and let it fall forward. Lom was gasping for breath. His eyes were blinded with blood and his nose was filled with it, but his hands were bound at his sides and he could do nothing about that. He hadn’t fainted while it was happening, and he didn’t faint afterwards. Fainting would have been easier, but it didn’t come.
Kantor was leaning over him.
‘Is that the brain in there?’ he said to Chazia.
Kantor’s finger probed the hole in his forehead.
‘It’s firmer than I would have thought.’
He jabbed harder. Lom felt no pain, only a deep, woozy sickness.
‘Don’t, Josef,’ said Chazia. ‘Don’t damage it yet.’
Then Lom fainted.
62
‘Now we must try again,’ Chazia was saying, somewhere far away. Nothing had changed. It must have been only minutes. Seconds, even. ‘Quickly, before we lose him.’
Still blinded, he felt the glove of angel substance on his face again, and this time there was nothing he could do to defend himself. She came right inside him, roughly. Invading. Violating. He was naked and broken.
He gave Chazia everything.
She was in there, inside his mind, and she knew. Nothing could be hidden from her. She went everywhere, and he gave it all up. Everything that had happened. Everything he had heard. Everything he knew. Krogh. Vishnik. The Archive. The massacre. The whisperers in the square. The Crimson Marmot. Petrov. Safran. The mudjhik. Maroussia. Everything.
‘He desires her, Josef!’ Chazia crowed with genuine wonderment and pleasure. ‘The poor idiot desires her.’
And then — how much later was it? how much time gone? nothing seemed to take very long –
‘He knows nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing. He’s of no use at all. Kill him.’
They left him alone in the interrogation room, still tied to the chair. After an unmeasurable amount of time it seemed that other men came and released him. He might have been sick. One of the men might have been Safran. He might have imagined that.