Naked Cruelty (25 page)

“How's Miss Warburton?”

“She's well.” Hank went red. “I see her most evenings—just dinner and a board game or cards. She and Marcia Boyce don't have many friends, which I guess is the fate of single women working every day. It's especially hard for Amanda, working weekends. As Tuesday is the slackest day, we both take it off, and go somewhere.”

“That's good. Have you met the twins?”

“Pah! What poseurs!”

“Interesting word, poseur. If they present as that, what do you think they are underneath?”

“Something creepy, Captain. Or slimy—words like that. Amanda was in two minds about them, but of late she seems to be coming down on their side. They've managed to impress her.”

“Well, they're blood kin after all. Maybe they're late bloomers.” Carmine went to the door. “Keep in touch if you have any worries, Mr. Murray.”

“Any news about the bank robbery?”

Carmine shrugged, “Not a thing,” he said.

And more than that he couldn't do.

Now it was off into Dodo territory. Mark Sugarman would probably be home.

Mark Sugarman was. He looked tired, and not a lot had gone on at the drawing board.

“Searching for Kurt?” Carmine asked.

“Yes, but also walking, Captain. If the Dodo strikes within his usual three weeks, we're running out of time. October 15 means he's due to pounce up to and including the presidential elections. A lot more people vote in presidential years.”

“I'm beginning to realize that.”

“An omen, huh?” Sugarman asked.

“No, not that, Mr. Sugarman. More that there's likely to be increased foot traffic around polling stations.”

“How's Maggie Drummond?”

“Pretty good,” Carmine said. “The Chubb psychiatrist has made a difference to all the Dodo's victims already.”

“Tell me about it!” A look of content came over Sugarman's attractive face. “Leonie trusts me again—she's behaving more like her old self. I wish she'd seen Dr. Meyers earlier.”

“Better late than never, pardon my hackneyed comment.” Carmine walked over to the big windows displaying Spruce Street. “Sir, were you up last Wednesday night about half after ten?”

“I think so,” said the President of the Gentleman Walkers, looking puzzled. “I'd made supper for Leonie, and delivered her back upstairs around ten. Even after the hassle of checking all her locks, I would have been back down here by ten-thirty.”

“Did you hear the noise of a collision at the intersection of Persimmon and Spruce?”

“No, not a collision, Captain. I did hear a screech of brakes and some yelling—it happens all the time at that intersection.”

“Thank you,” said Carmine, looking pleased.

“Will you find Kurt?”

“We're all praying so, sir.”

“Good afternoon, Frau von Fahlendorf,” said Helen at seven on Wednesday morning, October 23. “No, I am afraid not … That is unfair, ma'am! We have tied up huge resources in the search for your brother—as you would have seen for yourself if you or any member of your family had come here … No, I am not rude, I am fed up—indignant, do you understand that word? Good! … At midnight tonight, American Eastern Standard Time, Special Agent Hunter Wyatt of the FBI will telephone you on your home number and give you the details of the Swiss bank and account number, but I entreat you not to pay the ransom early! To do so won't make any difference to his chances of surviving … Special Agent Hunter Wyatt will also forward you a written report on our activities … Thank you, ma'am. Goodbye.”

The receiver went down with a bang. “Bitch!” said Helen. “She has the hide to blame us—
us
! I could cheerfully kill her.”

“She's under great stress, Helen,” Carmine soothed. “We still have two full days of search—well, one full day and a few hours. Time zones are a pain in the ass.”

Corey and Abe came in.

“Corey?” Carmine asked.

“The most suspicious things we've found are a few cow pats, but we still have sheds, barns and bunkers to deal with on the north side of North Rock. Old Ray Howarth has a bomb shelter, or so I'm told.”

“Actually we've found quite a number of bomb shelters,” said Carmine. “I never realized how paranoid some people are about The Bomb. I saw one the day before yesterday that had Persian carpets and air conditioning. It hadn't occurred to the owner that if The Bomb went off, electric power would be cut off. He was expecting to run his shelter on mains.”

“Like my potty papa,” Delia said. “If Richard Nixon gets in, he's moving permanently into his shelter—he's convinced that the first Nixonian presidential action will be to push the button.”

They all rolled their eyes at each other, but the light moment faded fast.

“Abe?” Carmine asked.

“I just have to check around the outskirts of the jail,” Abe said. “Nothing so far.”

“Have you heard what Patrick found in the Porsche, guys?”

“Nothing—it's so clean it might have come from the dealer's showroom,” said Nick, “except that there's some gravel wedged in the tire tracks. Nonspecific, but not the kind of gravel you'd get from a crumbling road base. No asphalt component.”

“Which says they drove the car somewhere off-road, but it could have been anywhere. Holloman is full of gravel, even has three quarries. Does it come from them?”

“Some of the uniforms checked them, but didn't think to take samples,” Corey said. “They asked me, but I couldn't see any virtue in sending them back to do it.”

“What color and size is it, Carmine?” Abe asked.

“Pink granite, so it's not from our quarries. It sounds more like something you'd find in a monument mason's yard.”

“File that in case you see it. Incidentally, Joey Tasco, who had that section to check, told me that none of the quarries had a septic tank. They use chemical toilets, so don't go back there, Corey. Keep on into virgin territory.”

It might have been because Carmine said “septic tank”, but when Abe Goldberg, Liam Connor and Tony Cerutti reached the West Holloman industrial estate, Abe wasted a good hour going back to check that they hadn't left an old, buried septic tank unexplored. They had not; Liam, who understood how Abe's mind worked, did not grudge him the wasted time, but Tony, younger and a more restless type, was inclined to grumble until Liam shut him up by treading heavily on his foot.

They had emerged from the streets and functioning factories into a relatively vast area that had been demolished in the aftermath of the Second World War with the intention of building a prison. Beyond it sat Holloman Jail, which was a jail, not a prison. Short-term, that is, lacking the architecture and facilities necessary for the high security confinement of intractable criminals. These were sent up-state, but from time to time new noises were made in Hartford to go ahead with Holloman Prison, an institution no resident of Holloman wanted. Bad enough to have a jail!

The area did not resemble a war zone, unless that war be an atomic one; there were no shells of buildings, just gigantic heaps of stony detritus that rose and fell like the foothills of a red rectangular mountain range, the jail.

“We need a minidozer with a blade,” Liam said. “A bucket as well, but not attached. If there's anything under the edge of one of these piles, we'd never find it unless we have something to move the crap around, but a bulldozer might be too heavy.”

“Good idea,” said Abe, who was feeling a little dizzy. “I'll radio the Captain, see if he can arrange a miniature dozer.”

Tony Cerutti produced a set of blueprints from the back seat of their car. “These are the plans of the mooted prison as they saw it in 1948,” he said, spreading the huge sheets on the hood and anchoring them with hunks of old brick.

“Did they actually get as far as starting to build?” Abe asked, staring fascinated at several pentagons connected by thick passageways. “Make a good Meccano project.” His sons were avidly into Meccano, and buying it was keeping him poor.

Came a squawk from the radio. When Abe returned to the plans he looked content. “We'll have a little dozer here in about an hour, blade attached, bucket in reserve, backhoe just in case. In the meantime, guys, we walk. Liam, you go toward the east end of the jail. Tony, take the middle. I'm going west.”

Tony laughed. “Yeah, a long time ago!”

Liam and Tony set off; still conscious of an alien dizziness, Abe lingered to take another look at the plans of the west side. He didn't know why he felt so strange, except that in some way it was important. Then the headache hit, and Abe fell to his knees.

Two walls were full, Kurt had moved on to his third wall; he had sharpened ten of his pencils down to stumps, but the last five were the longest and best, deliberately saved. His mouth was utterly dry and his ears rang on an internal sound, but the excitement of putting his life's work on his tomb walls had not faded. Egyptian pharaohs were reduced to pictures of their lazy existence, interspersed with an occasional battle, but not one of them could equal his feat! Not one of them could display a life so filled with intellectual incident and triumph.

The bucket his captors had left him for his bodily functions had not filled, but it stank. Though the room was cold, Kurt had sacrificed his coat to throw over it, blanket the stench. They said a human being got used to smells, but so far he hadn't. At least the chill meant that he lost no moisture through sweat, but Kurt was conscious that it was becoming difficult to stand. His back ached intolerably and he was forced to lie down at increasingly frequent intervals, but the work went on.

Time for a break; he sat gazing around the closely written walls, the smile on his lips spontaneous. Thank God for work! What if he hadn't owned the mentality or the professional training to occupy himself through what he was sure had mounted into days? How would someone who processed copies of the same form for a living manage to survive this imprisonment ending in death without going mad? He believed devoutly in a properly Catholic God, but few people had the kind of mind that could dwell upon God day in and day out, especially with death as its conclusion. That seemed a contradiction, but no man was ever ready for death unless he were a saint, and Kurt knew he was no saint; modern men could never be saints because modern living negated the concept.

But I, thought Kurt, head spinning, have never harmed the world, even by my nuclear research. The damage is done … He lay flat out, his head too heavy to keep aloft, a mist swirling before his eyes. Slowly they closed; he slept, woke with a jerk, saw the third wall almost pristine, got to his feet and picked up the equations where he had left them. His body was failing, yes, but his mind was still capable of seeing mathematical truth.

I wish, he thought, pausing, that I could hear some Bach one last time!

The headache disappeared as suddenly as it had come. The plans, the plans, Abe thought in a quiet frenzy. A number of straight, parallel lines traveled from the prison itself toward a square that said in tiny print that it was a sewage holding tank. Much larger than a septic tank, this thing was the size of a Holloman PD drunks' tank cell.

Suddenly Abe stiffened. His skin began to prickle in a way it never had, and he understood. This is the first time I've looked for a living, fully grown man! The life in him is big enough to affect me! I am staring at a prison—a
real
prison! They built this holding tank, they probably put in some of the inlets, the outlet, the vent—it's there, under a thin layer of rubble. He's there! Kurt von Fahlendorf is there!

Abe had a whistle on a cord around his neck; he put it to his lips and blew a shrill blast. Liam and Tony came at a run, while a guard toting a rifle on his back leaned on the railing of a watchtower atop the jail wall and followed their antics.

“We have to find the sewage holding tank,” Abe said, “and I'm not waiting for machinery. But first we find the gravel—the tank won't be far from the pink gravel.”

A more confused directive than they were used to from Abe, but neither Liam nor Tony misunderstood. All three men went in different westerly directions.

“Here!” Tony shouted, appearing around a huge hillock.

And there it was, an expanse of pink rubble about a hundred feet long and fifty feet wide. Beyond it lay more flat ground, but smothered in ragged pieces of concrete.

“They stopped on the pink because this concrete's sharper,” Liam said. “What happens now, Abe?”

“We look for pipes or vents,” Abe said, the master at this kind of work. “Watch around your feet, you won't see anything from a distance. My vibes say von Fahlendorf is alive, which means the vent is open and you'll see it. You remember that rain storm we had last Monday and cursed? Well, it might have shifted things hereabouts, so look.
Look
!
”

Abe found it, a round four-inch hole that originally had been covered by a concrete slab that had slipped off it in the brief but torrential rain; the signs were unmistakable, for whoever had put the little slab in place was no construction worker. It had probably never done its intended job, to block the ingress of air.