My Brother

I finally had her wrists free, slid my hand reassuringly along her bare back, and moved down to tackle the ankles. Before I could touch her legs and feet she writhed and gave a warning cry.

In my haste to remove the gag I had not bothered to look closely at her legs. The curtains of the room were drawn, and in the dim light she had seemed to be wearing a pair of light slippers, purple-red in color and extending upwards only an inch or so from the bottom of her feet. Now I was seeing them more closely.

No slippers; her feet were bare. The skin had been flayed from the soles in neat half-inch strips. I could see how the first shallow cut had been made on the hard skin of the heel, before a uniform band was peeled off and run across the exquisitely tender area on the ball of the foot, all the way to the delicate toes. The operation had been carried out with diabolical skill. Zan must have taken several hours to do it. By now the bleeding had stopped, but a clear lymph was seeping from the stripped surfaces and oozing onto the bed sheet. As I touched her ankle, Ameera cried out in anticipation.

“Lee-yo-nel! No!”

I put my hand lightly on the back of her head. “It’s all right, Ameera. I see it. I won’t touch your feet.”

As I bent to work on the knots my fatigue was washed away by an enormous and overwhelming rage. Much of it was directed toward myself. My curiosity about Leo’s past had led directly to Ameera’s torture. If I had been content to lie low in England , there were a dozen places where Scouse would never have found me…

A noise downstairs jerked me upright. Leo took over. I spun around, ready to kill without warning if it was Xantippe coming back for Ameera. When soft footsteps came up the stairs I moved silently to the doorway, poised for action.

One hard chop to the side of the neck…

A sleek head poked in through the door. I pulled back my hand at the last moment.

“Chandra!”

He turned swiftly to stare at me. “What is all this, Lionel? Messages in the middle of the night, frightening my man out of his negligible wits. What has become of that famous English sangfroid? What is happening here?”

As he spoke he turned to stare at Ameera on the bed. She had moved to bring her tortured feet clear of the sheet. Chandra’s eyes, quicker than mine, saw at once what had been done to her. He went across to the window and drew back the curtains with one rapid and angry motion.

“Who did this?”

“The same people who have been pursuing me. They were waiting for us in Cuttack .”

“And they followed you here?”

“My fault.” I nodded my head towards Ameera. “We have to get her to a hospital.” At Chandra’s voice she had tried to wrap the bedsheet around her, but the pain from her feet was too great to permit the movement. Chandra questioned her briefly in Bengali, his voice calm and reassuring, and she made a brave attempt to smile before she replied. He asked her another question, then nodded at me.

“No hospital. We are agreed on that. The care she would get for this injury is no better there than we can bring to her here, and she would like to be among friends.”

“But she must have a doctor.” I looked at the raw wounds, and shuddered again.

“Of course. I will arrange for that immediately.” Chandra was already moving towards the door, his smooth face determined and angry. “Leave all those arrangements to me. You stay here with Ameera. Do you think that they might come back here?”

Ameera gave a frightened little cry, and I moved to take her hand in both of mine.

“I don’t know. If they do, then God help them.”

He paused in the doorway. “God is fickle. Sometimes he chooses to help the wrong group. You are not Superman, Lionel. And you are exhausted. I think a little help from the Calcutta police would not be out of place here. I will call them.”

He seemed to be taking over, and that felt like a good idea to me. He was right, I was worn out and ru

Ameera was lying flat on the bed when I went back upstairs. She shivered as I came into the room.

“Lee-yo-nel?”

“Try and lie quiet. Chandra will be here soon with the doctor.”

“Will she come back?”

“She will not dare. Ameera, I am sorry. I should not have left you alone in the car. It was my fault.”

There was no reply for several minutes, and I wondered if after her ordeal a natural emotional exhaustion had taken over. Finally she sighed and turned towards me as I sat on the edge of the bed.

“Lee-yo-nel, it was my fault. All of it. I am afraid to tell you this, but I did not speak the truth to you. About Lee-yo, and where he went.”

“You told me he went to Cuttack — that was true.” My brain was too dulled to go beyond the obvious. I wriggled my stiff and aching shoulders. “I should not have taken you there with me. Even when you wanted to go, I should have refused.”

“Not Cuttack , Lee-yo-nel.” Her voice was trembling. “I knew he had been there, and come back safely. It was the other place, the place that he was afraid to go. The place that he did not come back from.”

I grunted and sat up straighter. “After Cuttack ? You said that you did not know anywhere else that he went.”

“I was lying to you.” The tears came rolling down the dark cheeks. “I was afraid that you would be hurt, too. If we went to Cuttack , I thought that would be safe. Lee-yo went to see Belur there, and he was all right. But he never came back from Riyadh .”

” Riyadh ?” A flash of ocher sands and cool green dimness skimmed through my mind, a level below conscious memory. “Ameera, why did he go there? Was that the ‘R-I’ that I saw in his notes?”

“I do not know.” The tears were coming faster now. “After he came from Cuttack , he left again at once. I do not know why he went to Riyadh — but I think that she knows. Lee-yo-nel, I did not want to tell her. But the hurt was so much, and she said she would keep hurting until I told. I had to tell. I said he went to Riyadh .”

I looked down at her flayed and naked feet. “Ameera, anyone would have told. I am proud of you that you took so much hurt before you spoke.”

“But I did not.” She rubbed a knuckle at her tearstained eyes and sat up a little on the sheet. “I am not brave. I told her quickly, as soon as the hurt was bad. I thought she would stop then, but she kept on for a long time. Lee-yo-nel, why would she do that to me? I had told her everything.”

I knew, but I did not want Ameera to know. Zan had been seeking information; when she had it she should logically have left the house at once. If she stayed, it was only for the pleasure of tormenting a helpless victim. Sadism is not rare, but it is unusual to find it given full leash.

Xantippe had known I might be on the way here, or have telephoned from Cuttack . Only a consuming urge to torture and torment had kept her so long at the house.

And if time had not been short, so that she could linger as long as she chose with Ameera?…

I went to the window and stared out. Instead of Calcutta , the city of Riyadh now seemed to spread its towers and minarets before me, the jewel of the Arabian Peninsula , a modern miracle of science that bloomed in the desert. I had been there many times, to play in the pi

Now I had to go there again; in pursuit of an unknown goal, following a woman who frightened me more than any wicked witch of childhood stories.

For Ameera’s sake, I would be on the first airplane that could take me.

A gigantic bookcase, and beyond it the chair of a Titan. I blinked, blinked again, and screwed up my eyes against the sunlight. In the distance, over at the limit of vision, a dark-edged monster crouched forward over a colossal bed. There were sounds, the pizzicato plucking of strings over unresolving harmonies. An automatic filing system in my head identified the Bhairava raga, with its symbolism of waking dawn and reverence for the new day. The vina played on, its notes clean and soothing. My eyes closed.