J.

by David Brining

  xxvij

  VEDA sat still and listened.

  Silence.

  Except for the wind.

  Darkness.

  Except for the grey light timidly filtering through the bars of the window.

  She was cramped, stiff and uncomfortable. The ropes chafed her skin, and the bruises were swelling. She touched the corner of her lower lip with the tip of her tongue and tasted blood.

  A key grated in the rusty old lock.

  Veda glared through the frayed, salt-caked, sand-crusted strands of her hair as Jargo, aka Tom Tarboy stepped through the doorway. He was bearing another bowl of Tantivy's "leek" soup. This time they had allowed her half a soft white bread bun.

  Jargo set the bowl on the floor and watched as Veda struggled to gather it up in her bound hands. The soup was hot and she spilled some of it on her knee.

  "Jesus," she said. Then, looking at Jargo bitterly "What the hell are you doing here? I thought you liked me."

  He poked a shower of crumbling plaster from the wall with his toe, his cheeks scarlet with embarrassment. "I do,'' he said. ''But they were already watching you, already trailing you. I had to keep you safe. Trust me, Veda. Just…"

  "What am I doing here?" Veda interrupted roughly.

  "You're bait," said Jargo, "In a trap. They hope JASOn will try to rescue you."

  "And if this... lure succeeds … if … the Jay comes … here, to Jura … what happens then?"

  Jargo said nothing. He didn't need to.

  Veda looked at him over the rim of the bowl. "What the hell are you doing with them, Jargo? You're only a kid."

  "I can't go. They won't let me. I tried to escape once, swim across the Sound, but they caught me and brought me back. Tulchan… unh. He whips me." He tugged his shirt from his trousers and showed her his back. Four, five red weals, marks of a whip or a cane. "Tantivy is worse." His voice died to a whisper. "He's a devil." He let the shirt fall back into place. "He makes me do things with him."

  Veda felt the bowl of soup fall away from her lips. "They hurt you badly." The words sounded wholly inadequate. "You're just as much a prisoner as I."

  ''They found out about my hobby,'' said Jargo, ''My knicker-nicking, and they're blackmailing me to work for them.''

  "But who are they?" Veda said. "The boss. Wheelchair Man. What's his name?"

  "Zutphen Avermann."

  She ransacked her memory, but could find nothing. She shook her head.

  "He's from an old Amsterdam family," Jargo said. "His great uncle worked at the Rijksmuseum, cleaning canvasses, whilst his grandfather, a Calvinist preacher from Velsen, burned immoral pictures and books in the market square of Zaandam. His father was a policeman, a Nazi collaborator who rounded up and interrogated suspected terrorists. Rather like Avermann himself, I guess. He doesn't say much about himself."

  I'm not entirely surprised, Veda thought. "What's the wheelchair story?"

  Jargo chewed thoughtfully. "I heard that it happened in Velsen after the war. Velsen's a port in Northern Holland at the mouth of the canal connecting Amsterdam with the North Sea. It is a fishing and industrial centre, population around 59,779. Anyway, Avermann's father was captured by a band of Dutch nationalists, people who hated the Germans, people whose friends and relatives had been bundled off to the gas chambers and ovens on Herr Avermann's say-so, although nothing could ever be proven. They tied him to a chair in one of the squares, slit his tongue and cut off his hair with a pair of sheep shearing scissors. Then they dragged him, still on the chair, to the Zuyder Zee and threw him in. He drowned. Avermann was eight years old. He didn't understand what the mob was doing and tried to stop them. Two of the Dutchmen held him while another stabbed the scissors into his back." Jargo touched the base of his spine. "Just here. They severed the spinal cord. Crippled for life. He just lay there while they dragged his father off to be drowned."

  Veda could almost feel sorry for the man. "Tell me about the others, Tulchan, Tantivy, the woman."

  "The woman's called Themis. She's Avermann's housekeeper. Tulchan, well, he's just a thug. He spent six months during the miners' strike pretending to be a colliery worker, stirring up trouble, starting fights, kicking policemen. The Consistory wanted to discredit the miners and their union, and through them, the entire labour movement, and they decided that violence on the picket lines would harden the hearts of the public. So up went Tulchan, under cover, with a handful of agents, and created the violence."

  "They bashed their own side?"

  "Sure. Violence Justified. Ends and means." Jargo shrugged. "The British public couldn't support them, not with all the violence. Miners lost. Consistory won."

  Veda could scarcely believe that anyone had that kind of power. She asked about Pug-Face, or Tantivy.

  "Tantivy..." Jargo shuddered. "Tantivy's one sick puppy. He... performs tricks with his body... for Avermann. And he eats small birds whole, feathers, beak and all. Mostly jays or jackdaws." The boy seemed quite nauseous. "He just... crunches them up. Tulchan's afraid of him but Avermann likes him. Someone told me he's Avermann's son. But Avermann's impotent, isn't he?"

  Tantivy, it seemed, had been discovered living alone and wild in the vast Kielder Forest which covers much of Northumbria. He had lived on squirrels and small birds and when they had stumbled across his home, a rough tangle of branches and creepers, they had found him crouching naked, his mouth full of feathers and pigeon blood smeared on his chin and chest. After his meal, they had watched him caper crazily round his small camp fire, a squirrel tail hanging from a twine round his head, working himself into a frenzy then inserting his pecker into a hole in a tree and giving it a good seeing-to. He had communicated in grunts and gurgles and the researchers had handed him over to the Consistory. No-one knew where he had come from. But they knew he would make a terrifyingly inventive torturer.

  Veda wiped her chunk of bread around the inside of the soup-smeared bowl. The next question was make or break. Having established a rapport, and some sympathy, she could make Jargo either an ally or an enemy.

  "Would you like to get out of here?" she asked quietly, not daring to hope. There was a long pause. "Take those bars out." She gestured to the window. "I reckon we could both squeeze through that opening. What's on the other side?"

  "The beach," said Jargo, "And the sea."

  "There must be boats."

  "I guess."

  "Guards?"

  Jargo looked blank. "Dunno. It's pretty dark." Suddenly he slumped. "The path round the front of the house is lit by a searchlight, phased, you know?"

  "We could wait for the beam to go past then run for it." Veda was trying to keep her rising excitement under control. If she failed to construct a feasible plan, she would lose his trust and thus his complicity.

  "I'll try and get out for a recce," he said. And grinned. "I'll do the bars when they take you up." Then his face dulled again. "You won't go without me, will you? They'd kill me..."

  "No," said Veda. "I won't go without you."

  The door scraped across the concrete floor. Tulchan was framed in the light.