The Guardian

by Christopher Kenworthy

  She examined the man on the bed once again until, certain that he was asleep, she felt it safe to go to the window and look out over the silver scene. This time, she stared at the great, busy road to Carcassonne, and as she stared, her cheeks became curiously and beautifully filigreed with streaks of silver light. They were her tears, welling unbidden and uncontrollable from the very depths of her desolation.

  When she eventually came back to the bed and stretched herself beside him again, he had turned in his sleep and she did not see, secret beneath his lids, the tiny sliver of moonlight reflected on slitted eyes.

  Eventually, they both slept.

  When she awakened in the morning, she found him sitting by the window, bundled in his robe, with fresh coffee steaming unnoticed in his cup and warm croissants cooling in a napkin. He was crushing into a ruin between his fingers the fine rose which was always on his breakfast tray, summer or winter, and in which he usually gloried.

  Afraid, she remained in bed until he had risen, distracted, and moved into the bathroom where his bath already be steaming.

  But as soon as she padded out to get her own breakfast, he was there again, moving her to one side to make space for himself on the settee.

  “Did you sleep well?” The fact that he asked was no more surprising than the fact that he had given so much as splinter of a second to thinking about her comfort. She froze, watching him carefully, trying to work out by what miscalculation she had drawn his attention to her.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said, warily.

  He nodded.

  “Good. Have your breakfast and go to your quarters. What are the tasks for today?”

  “The girls are ready. The boys could use perhaps a little more grooming, but not a great deal. In any case there is no time. Lefeu is becoming troublesome again, and needs discipline. He has already ruined one of the girls, and if you do not teach him a truly sharp lesson, there is a real possibility he may ruin another. After that boy last year...”

  He nodded, remembering.

  “A bad one. Which is the girl? How badly is she hurt, and how did it come about?”

  “Number Five. He went to her room and raped her. When she fought him, he beat her and her face was marked. Her nose is broken.”

  “Plastic surgery?”

  “There would still be a scar and our record of unmarked goods would be broken.”

  “Can we keep her here?”

  “We might. She is not one of the most successful girls we have trained. She would have to be watched constantly, and she is undisciplined. A bad example, perhaps.”

  She watched him, detached, professional, a trainer talking of a pedigree with flawed prospects.

  He sighed.

  “We can take no chances. Yet…”

  There was a moment of deep thought. Then: “Come, we will go and see her. Maybe the damage is not as bad as it sounds.”

  Together, they left the solar and went by the spiral stair down past the great study and into the courtyard. The small door by the face of the tower was closed, and as he opened it, Dark looked up at the great white cylinder of the gas tank which bulked against the wall next to it.

  “Think of some way of moving that thing or masking it. It is an eyesore,” he said.

  She nodded. The tank was placed in the angle of the wall and the tower, where the courtyard sloped slightly to the outside wall because it stood in shadow most of the day. The butane gas within benefitted from shade. A shelter would keep it cooler and remove the eyesore. She made a mental note to have some suitable structure drawn for his approval.

  The stairs down started within the tiny landing into which the door opened. Dark was already descending, huge in his robe, and she followed him down.

  Below the level of the courtyard the former dungeons of the old castle, now hugely enlarged and modified, descended on three levels. At the top were the rooms in which the female slaves lived. They were roomy, comfortable to the point of luxury and surprisingly light and airy. In this slave compound, the slaves were given every encouragement to grow to love their fetters.

  The girls slept two to a room. A woman alone does not prattle, and the continuous sound monitoring of the cells from a small control room at the opposite side of the top landing prevented trouble by nipping prospective troublemakers in the bud.

  The next level down was rather more Spartan, and housed the boys. Their rooms were comfortable, and three lads shared each one. The number was carefully chosen. Two together can become lovers or conspirators. A third – and the sets were changed on a random basis – can break up the intimacy for the two.

  The third level much deeper in the mountain was the utility level. Most of it was taken up by a large open space.

  The open space was an exercise room for the slaves. There was a gymnasium, exercise machines and some weights. It was well lit with strip lighting, and a line of oil lamps were suspended from the ceiling as emergency lighting. Down here, daylight never penetrated.

  One side of the space was mostly taken up by two cells, little more than cages against the wall. Squeezed in next to them was a small, glass fronted dispensary with drugs cabinet, oxygen cylinders and an examination couch.

  At one end of the gymnasium there was a heavy oak door with black iron studs; part of the equipment of the original castle. Behind it was a store room and the magazine of the castle, where weapons, ammunition, and the oil and paint were kept.

  Beyond that was the oubliette.

  Every now and again, Sigmund Dark found it necessary to teach his slaves a lesson. It was a business necessity he genuinely regretted, and in which he took no pleasure.

  There were, however, people who did take pleasure in it. Josef Lefeu, from Guernsey, was one of them.

  Sigmund Dark sat in the consulting chair in the small clinic and dispensary, looked out over the exercise floor, and considered the problem of Lefeu.

  The man, like the rest of the staff, was an ex-Legionnaire.

  Though in his case the Legion was not proud of the fact. The chain-smoking Channel Islander might be a fine soldier.

  The trouble was that he was also a psychopath. And he was becoming more and more difficult, as the Kiti had pointed out, to control.

  He thought of the teenage girl he had identified as Number Five with a genuine feeling of compassion. She was lovely girl delicate of feature and finely drawn. On her light, bird-boned face, a broken nose would be an abomination.

  She also had an independence of spirit, which he had watched being formed to its new shape with a warm feeling of achievement. The trainers had told him she was difficult, and undoubtedly she would have been to those charged with her training. But it was this very independence which made her precious.

  He regarded her maiming with the same genuine pain he would have felt had one of his delicate porcelains been chipped or his paintings splashed with paint stripper.

  There was a sound from the doorway and he turned to see the girl being ushered into the room. Even having been prepared for the sight, he was shocked.

  Her nose had been broken, all right. It was a swelled, blackened, shapeless mass. Both eyes were blackened, swollen so much that she could not open them, and peered through aubergine slits. Her breath came as a kind of slobbering snore, and two of her front teeth had been knocked sideways, giving her swollen mouth a sneering touch accentuated by the way she had to twist her lips to get her breath.

  “Oh, my dear girl! Come here and let me have a look at you!”

  He gathered her tenderly close to him and with fingers gentle as a surgeon, examined the ravaged features.

  “Who did this to you, my dear?”

  A tear appeared in one of the blood filled slits, and coursed down her cheek.

  “It was Josef,” she whimpered. “And he...”

  He shushed her gently, his face full of pity and concern.

  “I know, I know. And I blame myself. I should have realised the danger
s and prepared for them long before this. You poor, poor child. Leave this to me. I will make sure the animal never hurts anybody ever again.”

  He soothed her for a few minutes, smoothing her hair and running the fine, spun-glass beauty of it over his fingers, until the young body ceased its sobbing and quivering, and when the ruined face was raised to look into his at last, he smiled reassuringly and put a kiss gentle as a blessing on the bruised forehead. The swollen lips did their best to return his smile.

  “Go now with Kiti, and try to rest until I send for you again. I will call the finest surgeon money can buy from Nice to have a look at your face. Or maybe we will fly you to see him. You would enjoy the outing, little one. Yes? Of course you would.

  “Off you go, and I will tell Kiti to bring you something to help you sleep, my poor darling.”

  He watched her go with eyes filled with concern and compassion. When Kiti came back, he was already locking up one of the medical cabinets.

  “You were right, Kiti,” he said. “Kill her.”

  He gave her a small stainless steel dish in which was a hypodermic syringe, its needle protected by the tiny ampoule from which its contents had already been drawn, and a sachet containing a surgical swab.

  She watched him go, her face expressionless, while her fingers carefully held the syringe in its tiny dish. But in her eyes there was an expression which might have made him very thoughtful, had he noticed it.

  *

  “Can this be merely the work of one insignificant man?”

  Sigmund Dark ranged the bright study, unaware of the glorious morning outside, even while the sunlight streamed into the room and warmed him.

  Luther sat in one of the big leather chairs again, Yasmin beside him on the floor stirring his morning coffee. He was dressed in a pale pink tee shirt with a knitted collar, a little crocodile on the left breast and a white band halfway down the chest. His trousers were white, and he had pink shoes. Dark thought he looked like a drink on a stick.

  The news from Paris that morning had not been good, and coupled with the loss of Number Five and the fifty thousand pounds he had expected as her head price, had put Dark into a sour mood.

  “This man, this Carver. He is a nothing. A private detective, a bungler, a wader in life’s sewers. Two years he spent in stinking cellars in Beirut because of a stupid act of defiance. His employer thought so little of him that he actually tried to cheat him of his fee. A stupid act, mark you, of a stupid man, I could have told him that. Can this man alone and unaided have achieved so much? Of course not! He is helped, supported, pointed and guided. So much damage in so short a time! The London operation imperiled. Years of work and thousands of pounds wasted because the police contacts have been compromised. The French pipeline exposed, almost through its length. Panic in Paris. LeCorbiere in Beziers blue with funk and ready to run. It is ridiculous! One man penetrates two skins of the onion of my empire and my allies are ranged on the battlements ready to jump! While the money rolls in, see them preen! Watch their wet pink mouths working on the end of their Romeo y Julieta cigars. Rolled on the thighs of Cuban virgins, they snigger! Hah! There are no Cuban virgins, and there never were! Only Cuban Communists working Cuban machines and turning Cuban vegetation into cancer!”

  He sniggered himself, and shot a sharp, golden glance at the man sitting by the window.

  “What do you recommend, my young friend?”

  Luther, who had been stroking the head of Yasmin as a man strokes his dog, sipped his coffee noisily. It was weak, milky and sweet, the way he liked it. Two days of Yasmin’s devoted attention was already making him realise how deprived his life had been before she had been given to him.

  “Have him hit, turn him over,” he said simply.

  Dark sighed cavernously.

  “A master stroke! Three times we have tried to hit the man, and three times failed. Your record, it has to be admitted, has not yet been beaten, Luther. But at least try to think of something more inventive.”

  “Do we know where he is now?”

  “At this moment he has gone to see a man who has a shop somewhere to the south of Paris. I presume he is on his way here, since he knows who we are and, now, where we are.”

  Luther reflected that the only name the dogged pursuer actually had was that of Sigmund Dark, but he wisely did not draw his employer’s attention to the fact.

  “What’s he after?”

  Dark shrugged. “Money? Information? Who knows? He says that his daughter has been taken, but I have checked our records most carefully, and there is no Carver on the list. Maybe she has been taken by someone else, though I was not aware of any other organisation working in our area. Not in London at any rate.”

  Luther stood up and walked to the window. He was learning to play conversations like Dark did. Against the light, his face would be in shadow and unreadable.

  “Do you know what he looks like?”

  Dark nodded. “We do now.”

  “Then let him come, right? Guide him. Invite him in to the sale on Saturday. At least we’ll know where he is, right? Once in, he won’t get out.”

  “And he will not he going to the police,” agreed Dark. “You may have something there.

  “Perhaps,” he added thoughtfully, “I will also have one last use for Lefeu. Call Ledermann for me, will you, Yasmin?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Carver watched the door open slowly and silently without doing anything but shift his grip on the carving knife. Now, he held it low and pointing upwards, the cutting edge to the top.

  The corridor was only dimly lit with a rose coloured bulb, and there was no light flooding in from the landing, so somehow, the light bulb out there had been dealt with. On the other hand, there was no light behind him, so he stood behind the door in almost total darkness.

  The door opened until there was room for a small person to slip through it, and then stopped. A small person did slip noiselessly through it and stood looking away from him towards the bedroom door.

  Carver reached over the shoulder, put his hand over the mouth of the intruder and enveloped the arms with his own.

  There was an immediate explosion of activity. A foot kicked him painfully on the bare shin, and his captive tried earnestly to smash the back of her head into his face.

  “For Chrissake, Amy, hold still!” he hissed into her ear and received another painful kick, this time on the other leg.

  He put the girl down, in an effort to keep her feet still, and she instantly tried to throw him over her shoulder.

  Any moment now, one of them was going to be hurt. He put her down, dropped the knife, and stepped away from her. She spun on him, right hand rising in an unmistakable shooter’s pose. He stepped back into the kitchen.

  “Amy!” he said urgently. “Amy, it’s me, Carver!”

  There was a long silence, during which he dropped to the floor and rolled against the wall. His head was within an inch of the door jamb, and his hands poised by his chest. He made up his mind that if she didn’t calm down, he would knock her out first and explain afterwards. It seemed the safest thing to do.

  Outside the kitchen door, a voice said uncertainly “Carver? C’est vous?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and there was a flash and a bang.

  Splinters flew from the door on the opposite side.

  He went round the door jamb at ankle height, caught her advancing leg with his leading hand and her thigh, high above the knee, with the other, his thumb probing deep for the nerve. He felt it, heard her yell, and rolled away again as her leg went dead and she came down on top of him.

  He twisted like a landed salmon, fell across her body and held the gun hand well away from her and himself. She let go of the weapon, grunting with pain and tried to scratch at his face.

  “Well, that’s enough!” he said. He raised his body, let go of her gun hand and hit her alongside the ear with the edge of his hand. She went limp.

  Ca
rver rolled off her and sat up with a curse.

  “There was a time,” he told the unconscious woman, “when I would have given a week’s pay to be half-naked in a Paris flat with a beautiful blonde and a beautiful brunette. Now, it comes true and you’re both trying to kick seven kinds of shit out of me.”

  He pulled on the kitchen light and examined his shins. Both of them were bleeding. There were splinters in his cheek from the shot into the doorframe, and the side of his head hurt where the blonde girl’s last kick had nearly landed.

  “Us raiding Injuns usually do better than this in the movies,” he muttered, and hobbled to the bathroom to find antiseptic and plasters. If he couldn’t get to the medicine man, he thought, he might as well doctor himself.

  He was putting on the last plaster when an insistent calling from the bedroom led him back there. He found a table and put down the very businesslike snub nosed .38 he had taken off Amy, and then examined his first captive.

  She was back in her original mood, now, eyes sparkling with malice and lips almost trembling with her eagerness to talk her way out of trouble.

  He stood and watched her carefully for a moment or two, then started to put his own clothes back on while carefully ignoring hers.

  She had to be held somehow in prison to prevent her warning LeCorbiere. That was certain.

  He finished dressing, and went to bring the knife from the corridor floor, Amy was still out so far as he could tell and he made no attempt to revive her. The blonde girl’s eyes were flat and dull when she saw the knife, but she made no attempt to escape. He cut the scarves holding her hands, and she sat up, wary as a wakened cat.

  “Hands,” he said and she stretched them out in front of her obediently. He looked at the open invitation to put himself within their reach, grinned and shook his head. It throbbed where she had kicked him.

  “Behind the back,” he said, and she slowly put first one and then the other behind her.