The Whip Hand

by Victor Canning

  The whip in his hand, thong gathered neatly into the right palm against the butt, was held out towards Katerina.

  “You. Give him the first dozen.”

  I saw Katerina hesitate for the merest fraction of a second, so slight that it was like the flick of a swallow passing. Then she took the whip. Whatever she thought, she was still under trial with him. She knew it, too.

  She came round behind me and I lost sight of her, but I heard her speak to one of the guards.

  “Das Hemd!”

  A hand went to the back of my neck and my shirt was ripped away from my back in two pieces. I was bitter and bloody-minded. If I ever walked out of this place, I told myself, and she was around, I’d get her. No matter how much I loved her, I would get her.... All I wanted for her was some great humiliation. I longed for it so much that I scarcely felt the bite of the first lash across my back.

  But I felt the second and the third. I couldn’t stop my body jerking, and had to bite at my lower lip to keep back sound. She didn’t hurry, and, by God, she could handle a whip. Alois couldn’t fault her on that.

  I yelled at the seventh stroke. There was now a sweaty haze across my eyes, through which I could see Manston watching me, monocle still in place, face untouched by any emotion. Beside him the man with the tin leg sat in a chair, his eyes on me.

  After the eighth stroke, Alois said:

  “Enough.” He came up to me, put out a hand and jerked my face up by the chin. “You wish to speak?”

  I took a deep breath and nodded.

  “Good. Speak.”

  I said, “I thought you’d like to know, I shan’t need the aspirin. My headache has gone.”

  He stepped back, ignored me, and nodded to Katerina. The lash bit into me. She was a strong girl. I didn’t yell. I twisted my head back as far as I could get it and she was just in my sights. I could see the flush on her face, the shine in her eyes, and the rise and fall of her shoulders as she breathed hard, and I shouted, “Go on, you beautiful blonde bastard! Go on – enjoy yourself!”

  Her arm swung back and the lash caught me across the neck and the side of my face. She gave me the round dozen and the marrow had gone from my legs. I was slumped down the pillar, most of my weight on my wrists, and I could feel my head lolling like a puppet’s on half slack strings.

  Katerina came round past me and handed the whip to Alois. He gave her a little pat on the arm. They were going to make a fine pair. Both of them would enjoy setting a match to the Munich powder keg. But I didn’t have much time to worry about them. My mind wasn’t functioning too smoothly from the remains of dope and this treatment, and I had difficulty in focusing. I could see old tin leg standing up now, supporting himself on his stick. In his free hand, he was holding his artificial leg which he must have unstrapped while the beating was going on. No one seemed to be taking any notice of him. I thought that damned odd, because his boot was still fixed to the end of the leg, and it looked so ludicrous that I wanted them all to see him. After all, if ever there was a moment for a good giggle it was now.

  Alois came up alongside me, flicked the thong to loosen up his muscles, and then started to go by me to get into position for his first strike. Katerina’s efforts would seem like love caresses compared with his, and I knew that two or three smacks from him would have me talking.

  Fortunately it never came to it. As he was level with me, a voice said, “I don’t think it will be necessary to torture this man any longer.”

  It was tin leg. He had moved behind the group of men and was standing on the first step of the dais, leaning heavily on his stick, the length of an empty trouser leg swinging grotesquely against the glass case.

  “Come down from there!”

  It was Madame Vadarci and there was anger in her voice, anger, I supposed, for the sacrilege he was committing of leaning against the Führer’s show case. But that was nothing. On top of the case he had carefully placed his tin leg.

  From somewhere close behind me, Alois said, “Why?”

  “Because I am one of the men you want.” He said it as calmly as though he were announcing himself as the local gas man come to read the meter.

  Alois came by me then. I pulled myself up a little and tried some real weight on my legs. I could feel the whole of my back wet and burning like hell.

  Alois said, “Please come down from there and remove that object from the top of the case.”

  Tin leg shook his head. “No. It stays there. And I advise you all to vacate this hallway immediately. This very useful artificial leg of mine is filled with high explosive which I have now timed to explode within about sixty seconds.” He looked straight at Alois, the sad, leonine face lined now with a dignity and nobility I wondered I’d never noticed before. Then he said, “You can order your guards to shoot me, of course. But it won’t help. The timing mechanism in the leg is such that any attempt now to pick it up will cause it to detonate.” He smiled then, a thin, wasted, bitter smile. “We are not going to allow a myth and a legend to be re-created. We suffered enough while this monster lived. Too many people suffered. Now the myth and the legend are to be destroyed. Without this,” he put a hand on the glass case, “you are nothing. Here is the power and here is the true evil. I advise you to move quickly. Your time is running out.”

  Alois moved. It was like lightning. One moment he was standing watching the man, the next a hand flashed and the large dagger was whipped from his belt, and it seared through the air. He’d certainly been well trained in all the arts. The knife point took the man in the throat. He went down without a sound, except the clatter of his stick as it rolled across the steps of the dais.

  Alois turned round and shouted, “Back, everyone! Back to the door.”

  They moved, like a panic-struck flock of sheep, crashing and pushing through the chairs, heading for the doorway and the cover of the cloistered walk. I couldn’t move. I had a stall seat again, and was tied to it, and no one cared a damn for me. Not even Manston, cold-blooded, professional, cerebrating right up to the last moment, knowing that if he came to release me it would mark him as the other man and, who knew ...? that could still be dangerous if success should come out of the mad risk that was being taken now by Alois. It was clear what he intended to do. He was moving towards the glass case quickly. I heard the big hall doors open away to my right and the rush of feet, but I kept my eyes on Alois, waiting for the moment when I would jerk my head back behind the pillar and pray.

  Alois moved quickly through the scattered chairs. But when he was free of them, and the catafalque only a couple of yards away from him – there was a shot.

  I saw his body jerk and his left arm fly upwards. He spun half round, swayed, recovered himself and then kept moving on. Far up under the blue dome the shot echoes rolled and wickered like thunder. There was another shot and it must mave taken Alois in the side. He spun round like a top and dropped full length on the marble steps. Blood ran out through his fingers as he clutched at his side. The shots were coming from the grille high up in the dome. I remembered Howard Johnson leaning over me, his face wavering like running water in my doped dreams, and saying, “Bad luck, lover-boy – you really bought it. King-sized and gift-wrapped.” He was up there now, Hesseltod’s ladder hoisted from the lower roof for the final climb, to give him, first, a ringside seat at my doping, then to leave him free, when I had been carried away, to take the ·404; his orders as clear as Manston’s, and the other’s – trust no one, but destroy the myth for ever.

  Alois crawled forward, reached blindly for the sides of the case and began to haul himself up.

  Another shot came from the grille and this time Alois’s body jumped, spun and fell sideways down across the marble steps. For a moment I had a glimpse of a smashed face, of blond hair red with blood, and then I saw no more because the time was up.

  The sixtieth second dropped from now into the past, and there was a roar like the heavens opening. The blue-lit cavern was sheeted with orange flame, and the shock wave bea
t at me and slammed me away and then back against the pillar and I went out, listening to the whistling, crackling, exploding fall of glass from the dome.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  AND ALL THAT’S LEFT FOR ME

  What did I learn from it? What did I lose? What did I gain? It’s not a long list.

  A broken arm, right. The shock wave did that when it slammed me away from the pillar and then back again.

  Some scars on my back which will always be partly there. Some other scars, too; around the heart, I suppose you could say, if you cared for whimsy. I don’t know what happened to Katerina. She went through the hall door and disappeared. All the people I’ve questioned since know nothing about her. The Vadarci pair went into the blue, too, with Katerina. But it could be that Manston and Sutcliffe have tabs on them and aren’t saying. A girl like Katerina will pop up again somewhere. My guess is that they know where she is and what she’s doing, but they’re giving nothing away – just as nothing was given away, to Press or public, about the whole affair in the Schloss. So, that leaves you free to call me a liar.

  Of course, I got some money. A handsome cheque from Malacod and – after a struggle – my full fee from Sutcliffe. He handed it over with the biggest dressing down I’ve ever had and I had to listen just to get the fee. That was all right by me. I just went into a trance until he had finished.

  I got hell from Wilkins, of course, but I expected that. After all she had to have some way of showing her relief that I was safely back.

  Oh, and a whip. I got that about a month afterwards. I keep it on my desk now just in case Wilkins gets difficult.

  Manston brought it in. He was very pleasant.

  “I picked it up after the big bang. I thought you’d like it. You should keep it handy for dealing with girls like Katerina. Stebelson had more sense than you. He knew when to write her off – the moment she saw Alois. That’s why he sold out fast to Howard Johnson. Big money, too. Everything he knew. But he never collected. Frau Spiegel drove him to Lake Zafersee for a picnic and he was fished out some weeks later.”

  “And Howard Johnson?”

  “Posted to Moscow. Staff training job.”

  I put my hand round the whip.

  “And the white-haired number with the artificial leg. He’s going to be missed in some synagogue.”

  “Not only there. Didn’t you know you were working for Bonn? They really want a new Germany, you know. Not the Alois kind. There’s no racial discrimination these days. Just co-operation. Malacod was their man, and so was our friend with the white hair. Well, see you some time.”

  He went, leaving me with the whip. No question of any apology for not raising a finger to help me in the Schloss. We both knew the rules. But he had been helpful for the month’s convalescence I had taken to get over the scars and a broken arm.

  He lent me a little cottage he had on Lake Annecy, near Talloires. It was a good spot and, because I was in funds, I could afford to eat now and then at Père Bise. But mostly Vérité and I did our own cooking and ate on the little terrace overlooking the lake. It was a perfect month, even with a broken arm and having to sleep mostly on my side.

  And what did I learn? That you get used to anything, even to the fact that perfection is only a month long, and then there’s the office waiting, clients being clever with you, and two roads running away north and south, and that you’ve got to be honest and take your own road because somewhere at the end of it – with luck – there might be the thing you really want. Or am I just kidding myself? Probably.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born in Plymouth in 1911, Victor Canning was a prolific writer throughout his career, which began young: he had sold several short stories by the age of nineteen and his first novel, Mr Finchley Discovers His England (1934), was published when he was twenty-three.

  Canning was primarily a writer of thrillers, and wrote his many books under the pseudonyms Julian Forest and Alan Gould. The Whip Hand (1965) was the first of his four Rex Carver books, which were written, unusually for Canning, in the first person. These were his most successful in sales terms. Interestingly, Canning’s fiction is well-represented in the Oxford English Dictionary, with 37 citations from the Carver books alone.

  Canning’s later thrillers were darker and more complex than his earlier work. In 1973 he was awarded the CWA Silver Dagger for The Rainbird Pattern and in 1974 was nominated for an Edgar award. Canning also wrote for children: his The Runaways trilogy was adapted for a US children’s television.

  Canning died in Gloucestershire in 1986.

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  Design copyright © 2011 Arcturus Publishing Limited

  Text copyright © Charles Collingwood, The Estate of Victor Canning 1965

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  Cover artwork by Duncan Smith