Jani and the Greater Game (The Multiplicity Series Book 1) (16 page)

He replaced the receiver and flipped through Littlebody’s file again.

Two minutes later a tap at the door announced Smethers’ arrival.

“Take a seat, Colonel. Won’t keep you long. I’ve sent the ferret after the rabbit.”

Smethers, a lean man in his forties, with intelligent eyes and a cruel lop-sided mouth, smiled like a hungry wolf.

Cartwright went on, “I’m not at all sure about young Littlebody. He might turn out to be top notch, but then again... Word in the mess is that he’s a bit of a native lover.”

“Nationalist leanings?”

“Hard to tell. My inclination is to think not, but I might be wrong.” He stroked his jaw. “Anyway, I want you to tail him. Either make yourself known to him, or not – I’ll leave that up to your discretion. I think he’ll do a good job with the gel – just up his street, if his past record is anything to go by. And then, when he finds her...”

“You’d like me to take over?”

“Exactly.”

“And...?”

“And try to find out if she was lying when she claimed not to have met the Morn, and if they did meet, what passed between ’em.”

“Force, sir?”

Cartwright sighed. “Only if
absolutely
necessary, Smethers.”

The colonel smiled. “Yes, sir.”

“Oh – one other thing while you’re here. I’ve had unconfirmed reports that that Russian pair, Volovich and Yezhov, have slipped into the country. Last bloody thing we want is that double-act stirring things up. Pair of psychopaths, so I’ve heard.”

“I’ve read about what they did to the opposition in Warsaw, sir. Skinned them alive and tortured them for days. They used rather a lot of acid, so I’m informed.”

Cartwright raised a hand. “Not before me morning tiffin, Smethers. Now there’s a good chap.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Liaise with Grey over at Intelligence, hm? See if there’s any substance to the rumours.” He nodded curtly. “That will be all.”

Smethers rose, saluted, and quick-marched from the room.

Cartwright sat for a long time, frowning to himself and staring down at Lieutenant Littlebody’s file.

Then he closed the folder, slipped it into a drawer, and turned his attention to other matters.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

In the taxidermist’s warehouse –

A Russian threat – A visit from Jelch –

“I just don’t understand any of this...”

J
ANI RECALLED ENTERING
Roopa’s Tea Rooms, ordering breakfast, and talking to the German about her father, and then... Then the German had sprayed some kind of anaesthetic into her face, and she had passed out.

She opened her eyes in panic.

She was in a vast chamber like the interior of a warehouse, imprisoned in a small cage; she could feel ice-cold stone through the straw beneath her. The chamber was dimly lit, but even so she could make out that she was not alone in her incarceration.

A veritable menagerie of animals occupied the floor: horses and donkeys and buffaloes and even a baby elephant – all of them examples of the hideous art of taxidermy. Racked upon shelves on the far wall were smaller stuffed animals: various birds – peacocks and macaws and parrots – as well as dogs, cats, rabbits, monkeys and snakes.

There must have been over a hundred specimens in the chamber, which was filled with the musty stench of old fur and the eye-watering reek of preserving fluid. On the lower shelves Jani made out large jars containing animal embryos, etiolated and malformed, either with congenital defects or from being squashed up against the glass. Sickened, she averted her gaze – and wished she hadn’t.

More alarming even than the preserved embryos was what she looked upon then: the tools of the taxidermist’s trade. In the centre of the room was a long bench laid out with various saws, knives, hooks and hammers, alongside a dozen bottles and jars of coloured fluids. The skin of a mandrill, removed from its flesh and skeleton, was laid out like a rug on the bench, its head facing Jani and its sightless, eyeless orbits staring at her.

Beyond the taxidermist’s bench was another table. It reminded her very much of the autopsy gurney she had seen in the first week of her medical studies at Cambridge, all ivory and shining aluminium. A pipe led from its fluted underside to a large plastic container filled with some dark fluid like port wine.

She should have been more wary of Herr Kaspar, she told herself; the coincidence of his commenting upon the death of her father, his invitation to take tea with him... And his story of being a German arms dealer? A cover, obviously.

But what might he want with her?

The cage was tall enough for her to stand without having to stoop. She gripped the bars and peered right and left, taking in the extremities of the room. On the far wall to the left was a timber door. She looked up. A number of small skylights in the sloping ceiling allowed in meagre daylight. She saw a shadow through one of them – the fleet shape of a monkey passing high above its more unfortunate brethren.

She looked at her watch. It was still only ten-thirty; she had been in the cage for a couple of hours.

She shook the bars, or rather tried to. They were set solidly in the stone flags at her feet.

She entertained the terrifying notion that she was destined to be killed, laid out on the autopsy table, her skin flensed from her flesh and mounted on a frame, to take its place among the chamber’s other exhibits. A complete collection: the fauna of the sub-continent, plus a native human.

She had led a safe, sedate life to date, the only small calamity of her existence being her relocation to England and the occasional name-calling at school. Now, in a matter of days, she had survived an airship crash, witnessed the death of her father, and been kidnapped by a lunatic taxidermist.

Was Herr Kaspar – though she was sure that that was a
nom de guerre
– the taxidermist in question, or had he been employed as the middle-man on the taxidermist’s behalf?

She had an urge to call for help, but guessed it would be futile. And anyway she was averse to alerting her captors to the fact that she was awake; they would come in due course, and she feared that moment more than anything else.

She stepped forward and, taking a breath, turned sideways and eased her left shoulder between the bars, then smiled to herself at her futile optimism. She was slim, but not slim enough to force herself between the ungiving iron bars.

The door at the far end of the chamber creaked open, making her jump, and two men appeared.

Jani recognised the corpulent form of Herr Kaspar. The other man was younger and Slavic-looking, with a shock of dark hair and a broad brow. His dark, staring eyes struck her as cruel. The pair crossed the chamber, paused beside the autopsy table, and regarded her impassively.

They spoke to each other as they stared, but in tones too low for Jani to catch. There was something different about Herr Kaspar, aside from the fact he no longer wore a suit. Both men were garbed, she saw with heart-stopping alarm, in white knee-length surgeon’s gowns.

The other difference was that Kaspar no longer sported that ridiculous walrus moustache.

She had the urge to ask what they wanted with her, but she stopped herself. To do so, she thought, would be to show her fear, to give the pair the upper hand... not that they didn’t have it anyway. But she would remain defiant to the last, and take whatever opportunity arose to attack them.

The young man’s broad face was almost simian, his brown eyes penetrating. The pair showed not the slightest trace of emotion as they stood discussing her as if she were a specimen in a zoo. The young man held his chin, nodding occasionally at what the older man said. It came to Jani that Kaspar could be relaying instructions: “
A cut here, an incision there... and finally mounted just so, do you agree?
”

She stopped that macabre line of thought in its tracks, gripped the bars and stared at them with all the defiance she could muster.

At last, breaking the tableau, they approached her. Kaspar plucked a wooden dining chair from behind the taxidermy bench, reversed it and placed it before the cage. He sat down carefully, straddling the chair back, and rested his arms along the curved rattan, watching her.

The younger man remained standing; he was so small that, even seated, Kaspar was the same height.

Jani gripped the bars, her heart thudding.

It was the young man who spoke first, and as soon as he did so Jani recognised the harsh, gutturally accented English: he was Russian.

“We will ask you a few questions, yes? The veracity of your answers will determine how we treat you.”

She found her voice, “What do you want?”

“Simply the answers to a few questions,” said the Russian. He looked at Kaspar, who nodded. Clearly the older man was in charge.

“We know you had contact with the... the prisoner aboard the
Rudyard Kipling
,” the young man said. “Our intelligence informs us that you spoke with the creature.”

She stared at him. “Then your intelligence is wrong. I spoke with no prisoner aboard the airship.” But at the same time she wondered from what source they might have gleaned this information. She had told only her father, and no one else.

The old man whispered to his partner, who smiled slightly and said, “Then allow me to rephrase the question: we know that you spoke to the creature
after
the airship came down. What did you say?”

She shook her head. “I said nothing. I spoke to no prisoner.” She licked her lips. “Who are you? You do realise, I hope, that I am a dual Indian-British citizen? What is more, as the daughter of a high-ranking government minister, I... I am under constant surveillance. My abduction will have been noted, and at this very minute the authorities will be working to rescue me. If I were you I’d release me now and run, before the police apprehend you.”

Kaspar spoke to her for the first time since entering the chamber. He made no pretence, now, to affect a German accent: he was as Russian as the young man. “Miss Chatterjee,” he said, “will you please cease your childish prattle? You are no more under surveillance than I am. I advise you to answer the questions, or suffer the consequences.”

The young man smiled, with malice, and said, “What did the creature known as Jelch tell you?”

She swallowed. “What creature?”

“We know you spoke with it.”

“You are mistaken.”

“You will tell the truth or suffer the consequences.”

“I am telling the truth, and it will be the pair of you who will ultimately suffer.” She was shaking as she spoke, and her legs felt as weak as water, but she hoped she presented a brave face to her captors.

The young man said, “We know you discovered the creature amid the debris of the airship. You helped it, offered it medication. Later, you were found by Russian soldiers – and the creature appeared and saved your life, before going on to murder the remaining platoon.”

She felt a sudden flare of anger. Maintaining her poise, she said, “Murder? I rather think he executed criminals in recompense for the crime they committed: the cold-blooded killing of a thousand innocent men, women and children.”