The Scottish Banker of Surabaya - By Ian Hamilton Page 0,84

metre long, with a bronze tip and an insulated handle. It could be plugged into a control box with a rheostat, used to raise or reduce voltage, and a transformer connected it to any ordinary electric wall socket. Uncle’s man was quite expert with it. He stripped the scammer and then wet the target to reduce the electrical resistance of his skin. He had Ava adjust the rheostat control while he applied the tip to various parts of the guy’s body. She was worried they might actually kill him, but Uncle’s man explained that although the current was high-voltage, the amperage was low. It took less than fifteen minutes for them to get all the information and cooperation they needed.

Cameron hadn’t moved while she was gone from the room. Perkasa took a disinterested glance at him. “Take his pants down while I hook up the machine,” Ava said.

Cameron squirmed, rocking his body back and forth. “Be still,” she said.

The picana looked new, the current range higher than she remembered. In China the prod had delivered between twelve and sixteen thousand volts. This one promised to go all the way up to thirty thousand. Ava plugged it into the wall socket and turned up the rheostat. When she turned back, Cameron’s shorts and underwear were already dangling around his ankles. She looked at his penis. It was fat and stubby and he hadn’t been circumcised, so flesh hid the head. She thought it was one of the ugliest things she had ever seen. His testicles sat on the chair, spread out by the contact. Ava thought about wetting him but figured he was sweaty enough.

She set the picana at twenty thousand volts and moved closer. “Lift his penis,” she said to Perkasa.

He reached down and grabbed it, averting his eyes. As he raised it, the testicles went along for the ride. Ava moved to one side, slipped the picana underneath, and then placed the tip hard against them.

Cameron’s body contorted so violently that he raised the chair from the floor. Ava kept pressing up. His head was rolling from side to side, screams audible even through the tape. She pressed harder.

Ava wasn’t aware how much time elapsed. Even when he emptied his bowels, the excrement spilling over the chair seat, she kept the prod in place. It wasn’t until Cameron began to convulse that she slid it out from under his testicles.

“Sorry about the mess,” she said to Perkasa.

He grimaced.

“No reason to clean him. He’ll just do it all over again when I zap him again.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to pay Waru a bonus when this is done. I’m sure he wasn’t counting on this.”

“Neither was I,” he said, matter-of-factly. Perkasa looked at Cameron. “Do you think he’ll be more cooperative now?”

“One more time and then we’ll ask,” Ava said.

She wasn’t sure how much damage she had done. He wouldn’t be fit for any sexual activity for a while, but with one more treatment maybe she could make that closer to permanent. She turned the rheostat up to thirty thousand volts. She looked down at the chair and saw that Cameron’s testicles were half hanging over the edge, so she wouldn’t have to ask Perkasa to expose them. She slid the picana tip just under them and then pulled it high.

The chair came off the ground again. Cameron’s body twisted left and right as if he was trying to shake something off. The chair teetered to one side and Ava thought for a second he was going to fall over, but Perkasa reached out and steadied it.

He had screamed when the jolt first hit him, but as she continued to press, the noise lessened until it became not much more than a whimper. His body became less active as well, the contortions becoming twitches, his legs shaking less violently. She knew he was almost unconscious and retracted the picana.

“Let’s give him a few minutes to recover,” she said. “Then I’ll ask my questions again.”

They went outside, the morning sun now high in the sky and the heat bearing down on them. “It might be a good idea to clean him up a bit,” Perkasa said. “It’s going to smell something awful in there in a few minutes.”

Ava nodded. “Take him and the chair out the back door and hose them down. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

( 31 )

Taking the Moleskine notebook and pen from her bag, she reviewed the questions she had written the night before. Most of them had