Barry Maitland - The verge practice

‘How did you get in here, lady?’ Sigfried murmured in her ear.

She nodded towards the curtain. ‘The window, over there.’

Lizancos scurried over to draw back the curtain and examine the missing windowpane, then started examining the contents of Kathy’s backpack, hauling out the housebreaking tools wrapped in a towel.

‘How did you come to the house?’ Sigfried asked.

‘Taxi.’

Lizancos dropped the tools and came over to empty her pockets. He examined the contents of her wallet, her passport, then held up the Hertz key ring. He glared at her accusingly and the steel fingers squeezed so hard that she thought they must surely snap something.

She gasped. ‘Ah… In the street outside… a block to the left. Red Seat.’ The grip eased.

The lizard doctor slithered out of the room, and she heard his feet on the stairs. Sigfried said nothing as they waited, effortlessly maintaining his paralysing grip.

A little later Lizancos returned with a roll of surgical tape and a pair of scissors. He said something and she was pushed backwards into the chair, her arms stretched behind her. Lizancos cut a length of tape and strapped one wrist to the tubular frame, then repeated the process with the other wrist and both ankles. Then Lizancos gave Sigfried instructions and the bodybuilder nodded and left, turning his torso sideways to get the broad shoulders through the narrow doorway at the head of the stairs. Lizancos knelt in front of the broken cupboards to check the damage and their contents, tutting and muttering under his breath.

Sigfried was gone for ten minutes, and when he returned he was holding the copy of The Complete Works of Luis Domenech i Montaner that Kathy had left in the car. He spoke softly to Lizancos and handed him the book, and the old man raised his eyebrow and glanced at Kathy, with a hint of something like respect, she thought. Trying to seize the moment, she said, ‘Look, I’m sorry for the intrusion, but you should be grateful I was so discreet. I need to know what Charles Verge looks like now, and where we can find him. Tell me that and you won’t hear from us again. It’s that simple.’

It was hard to tell if the doctor had understood her words, and she began to speak again, but he ignored her and said something to Sigfried, then turned and left.

There had been a look of resolution on the leathery old face, and Kathy had the feeling that she was running out of time. Sigfried was regarding her impassively, leaning casually against the bench, huge arms folded. She thought she should try to provoke him. Trying to sound unconcerned she said, ‘You don’t look the type to be into genital mutilation, Sigfried. Are you sure you know what Dr Frankenstein is getting you into?’

He gave a ghost of a smile and raised his index finger to his lips, indicating to her to shut up. A few minutes later Lizancos wheezed up the stairs again, carrying an old leather doctor’s bag. He opened it on the bench in front of Kathy, while Sigfried positioned himself at her back. From the bag Lizancos began to extract a variety of things: disposable gloves, swabs, cotton wool, a stethoscope, and-Kathy stopped breathing-a metal box of what looked like surgical instruments. He fished around some more and produced a syringe in a sterile packet, and a small brown bottle. For some reason Kathy thought of the brown stain on the English tourist’s shirt, and thought how fortunate he had been in his assault.

‘You know I’m a police officer, don’t you?’ she tried. ‘Captain Alvarez will be very angry if anything happens to me.’

They ignored her, Lizancos unpeeling the syringe and filling it from the brown bottle. He came to her side, bending to wipe her arm with cotton wool, and as he did so he hissed in her ear, ‘I don’t think so.’ Then he jabbed the needle in.

Kathy began to protest. ‘That is the most stupid…’ But no more words came.

A gust of cool air on her left cheek. She didn’t want to get out of bed and tried to turn over, but found she couldn’t. Something was holding her down. There was a roar of noise, then silence. She opened her eyes, saw pale light and immediately felt a wave of nausea swell inside her. She closed her eyes quickly and it gradually subsided.

Someone was speaking, a man, insistent. Something touched her shoulder and she tried opening her eyes again. This time she made out a circle. She realised she was sitting, not lying, and simultaneously registered a steering wheel in front of her face. Struggling to free herself, whatever was holding her released abruptly, and she found herself rolling to her left. The nausea lurched in her stomach again, and she saw a polished black boot looming in front of her face. It began to move, but not fast enough. She vomited over it and a man cursed. Her vision blurred and she fell forward onto the ground.

After a while, she opened her eyes and saw that she was lying on bare earth by the side of a highway. Occasional cars and trucks were passing, engines roaring, headlights ablaze under a sky the pale grey of dawn or dusk. She sat up slowly and took in the flashing blue light on the car parked behind her Seat. One cop was crouching over his shoes, wiping them with a piece of newspaper, while the other looked inside her car. She noticed with a groan that the front of the Seat was caved in against a concrete post.

The cop straightened out of the car and replaced his cap. He said something to the other man and held up her passport in one hand; in the other was an empty bottle. Brandy, Kathy guessed. They both looked down at her with disgust on their faces.

It was late morning before Captain Alvarez and Lieutenant Mozas made an appearance at the district police station where she had been taken. By that stage she had been given a breath test, a blood test, a medical examination, water, coffee and a bread roll. The young doctor had offered to pump out her stomach, but she had declined, although she still felt dazed and horribly sick. This wasn’t surprising, he had suggested, with a blood alcohol reading of that magnitude. A woman officer had taken her to a washroom, where Kathy had tried clumsily to clean up her clothes. She had examined the arm where Lizancos had injected her and found only a faint red mark. Apart from that and the hangover, she seemed to be untouched.

Alvarez looked stiff and proper in a black double-breasted suit, hair brushed hard against his skull, as if he’d come straight from mass. Mozas, in jeans and sweater, might have been taking the family on a Sunday outing. Neither man seemed pleased to be there. Alvarez sat opposite her across the table, Mozas, disconcertingly out of her cone of vision, somewhere to her right.

‘Why are you here, Sergeant Kolla?’ Alvarez asked. He had the same look of distaste on his face as the highway patrol officers, and Kathy wondered if there was some particular taboo in Spain against drunk women. She thought they must have had enough British tourists pass through to get used to the idea by now. Probably the whole building despised her.

‘I…’ Her throat felt dry and clogged, and her first attempt to speak ended in a coughing fit that brought back the nausea. They waited with exaggerated patience while she took a sip of water and tried again. ‘I had a free weekend,’ she said hoarsely, ‘so I thought I’d come back to Barcelona, as a tourist.’

‘Are the drinks in London so expensive?’ Alvarez sneered.

‘It was a very cheap flight.’

‘Who did you come with?’

‘I came alone.’

‘Where is your luggage?’

‘In the car?’

The policeman lifted her backpack onto the table and emptied it in front of her. Towel, wash bag, sunglasses, change of shirt and underwear, and The Complete Works of Luis Domenech i Montaner. There was no sign of her tools.