My Brother

Dixie moved the point horizontally along my eye, then at last drew back. “Just wait ’til Scouse has done with you. Then it’ll be my turn.” He straightened, and I took what felt like my first breath in minutes.

He lurched backwards to the stool, looked confusedly around him, and set off unsteadily for the door. He did not speak again as he went through, but I heard the key turn in the lock. Far gone as he might be, he remembered his orders. I waited a couple of minutes, then moved my head forward. If anything was to be done, now was the time for it. I couldn’t wait too long — Pudd’n might come back. When Dixie was tying me again he must have already been feeling unsteady, and instead of tying the knots on the underside of the chair arm, as Pudd’n had been careful to do, he had taken the easier path of tying them on top, on the upper side of my wrist. And this time he had left the light on. I could get my teeth to work on them.

It seemed to take forever, gnawing and tugging at spit-covered, slippery rope until the knots began to loosen and slide open. My right hand took about ten minutes to free. Then I could work on the unseen knots below the left arm of the chair. I was impatient, and that slowed me down. It was another twenty minutes before I was able to stand up, free of the chair.

I took two slow steps towards the door, then stood shaking. For the first time in my life I had real sympathy for Hans Andersen’s mermaid, the one who felt as though she was walking on sharp knives. My circulation was coming back, and at first I couldn’t bear to walk. Finally I managed to stumble over to look at the door.

It was panelled, heavy oak with an embossed metal facing. The lock was massive, with a big, old-fashioned keyhole. I tried the handle for a moment, as quietly as I could, and confirmed that Dixie had locked it when he left. Unless someone would provide me with a fire axe, that wasn’t a possible way out. I went to the window and pulled back the thick drapes.

I had guessed from the trip down to the kitchen that the music room window would be twelve to fifteen feet above the ground. It was more like twenty — I didn’t know how the ground sloped near the house. The window opened easily enough, to leave me staring down into a dimly-seen patch of bushes and flowers.

Too far to drop? I poised myself on the sill, inched forward slowly, and wondered if my injured leg could take the strain. I leaned out farther, holding the wooden window frame tightly in my left hand.

Too high!

I had just decided that when the traitorous fingers of my left hand relaxed and I was falling outward into the darkness, to land heavily on a rose bush and a bed of spiky flowers.

Then it was up on my feet as fast as I could, hobble around to the front of the house, and pause there to decide how to manage the next step. A Fiat stood out by the front entrance. My wishful thinking of keys in the ignition vanished quickly — I couldn’t even open a car door. But standing by the front of the house in a metal rack was an old bicycle. I was on it in a second and off down the long drive, my knees coming up almost to my chin. The bike was meant for somebody a foot shorter, but I wasn’t going to wait to raise the saddle. The house stood midway on a long hill, and I went swooping down dangerously fast, hugging the curb.

A police station was the logical place to go, but I was past logic. All I wanted to do was find a safe place to hide. That was the instinct to keep me going until I found my way to the Underground (Osterley Station, out near the end of the Piccadilly Line), heading back to my flat. Then I realized that wasn’t a safe place any more. Instead I checked into a hotel in Knightsbridge, signed my name as Jan Dussek, went up to my room, and unravelled.

Some might call it shock — delayed terror sounds more accurate. But when I woke up it was nearly ten-thirty in the morning, and there were energetic sounds of cleaning coming from the corridor. I sat up groggily and took stock.

One jacket covering a cut and tattered shirt. One pair of trousers, smeared with mud and oil from the bicycle chain. Muddy shoes. A wallet containing about a hundred and twenty pounds. And a box of pills. With those assets I carried a strong desire to stay away from my flat. So what next? Only one hope left.

The call to Tess didn’t start out well. I hadn’t called her last night, as she had suggested in her note. Why not? She had stayed in and waited.… Her voice didn’t have the warmth in it that I wanted to hear.

Well, I said…

I talked for at least five minutes, with an increasingly perplexed silence at the other end of the line.

“But where’s the house?” she asked, when I ran out of steam. I could hear the unspoken comment that went with it: Can you prove what you’re saying?

“Near Osterley Tube Station.”

“You could find it again?”

“I think so. But I’m damned if I’m going to try. Tess, those lot are dangerous. If I go back there, I’ll want a police escort. And I’m not sure they’ll believe me — you know what Sir Westcott will say.”

“I can guess.” There was a long silence at the other end of the phone. I could visualize the frown on her forehead and the lower lip pinched between her teeth.

“Don’t go back there,” she said at last. “They know you got away, so they’ll have made sure there are no signs left.” (She believed me! I felt a huge sense of relief.) “And don’t go back to your place, either. They might be watching there.”

“I need clothes — I don’t even have a check book on me.”

“Leave that to me. I’ll go to your place this afternoon.”

“It’s too dangerous.” My hand started to shake when I thought of Dixie getting his hands on Tess. “If they’re watching—”

“I won’t be on my own, you nit. I’ll ask a friendly copper to go in with me — but I’ll need you to call your landlord to let me in.”

“Tess, I can’t let you do it. You’ve no idea what Scouse and his thugs are like. If they get their hands on you—”

“I’ll call you late this afternoon, when I’m all done. You stay there, or go into Central London — that’ll be safe enough. What’s your number at the hotel?”

I argued for another minute, and got nowhere. Tess was using the same ma

“Don’t ask for me,” I said, as she was about to hang up. “I’m registered as Jan Dussek.”

“Who? ”

“Dussek. He was a pianist back in Beethoven’s time. It’s the first name I could think of. Oh, another thing. The pills that Sir Westcott gave me.”

“What about them?”

“Will you ask him if they’re Nymphs?”

“If they’re what?”

“Nymphs. I don’t know what they are either. Ask him, all right?”

“I’ll do it.” But I could tell from her voice that my overall credibility was slumping.

I was left with the rest of the day to kill. For a while I lay on the bed in my room, thinking of Scouse and his louts and doing a slow burn. To get what they wanted, they were quite prepared to torture, kidnap, threaten, and kill. The last one wasn’t a certainty, but I didn’t like the way that Scouse had talked about Valnora Warren — the suggestion of past tense about it. To find out what Leo had been doing (What had Leo been doing?) they would crush Lionel Salkind like a beetle, casually and easily. Well, if they thought they could do that they had better think again. I was still an independent agent, and I had one resource they couldn’t dream of. From now on, I wouldn’t just note any actions that seemed to reflect Leo’s memories or responses — I would seek them out, follow up on them, and do my best to interpret them.

My thoughts had run on haphazardly, but by the time I sat up on my bed my mind was made up. I wouldn’t be totally passive, ru