she set on the table and began to unpack. Lom watched as she unrolled a chamois containing an array of small tools: blades, pliers, a steel-headed hammer.
Kantor picked up his hat and cigarettes and withdrew to a chair at the edge of the room. He laid the hat on his lap and folded his arms across it. It seemed like an instinctive act of self-protection. It wasn’t deference. It might have been distaste.
‘There is only one subject of interest to us, Investigator,’ said Chazia. ‘The whereabouts of Maroussia Shaumian, the daughter of Josef’s late wife. That is all. There is nothing else. The sooner we have exhausted that topic, the sooner we can leave this unpleasant room.’
His flimsy constructions of hope and defence crumbled. He said nothing.
‘Major Safran saw you talk to her, and now we can’t find her. I think you know where she has gone.’
‘He won’t speak,’ said Kantor. ‘He’s playing dumb.’
Chazia came round to Lom’s side of the table and knelt beside him. She began to bind him with leather straps like the collars of dogs. She fixed his hands to the legs of the chair, so that his arms hung down at his sides, and then she bound his ankles to the chair legs as well. Her face was close to his lap. Her breasts were pressing against the rough material of her uniform blouson. The patches on her skin didn’t look like stone, they were stone. Angel stone.
She worked with methodical care, her breathing shallow and rapid. The fear was a dry, silent roaring in Lom’s head. He wanted to speak now, to tell her everything, but his mouth had no moisture in it and he could not.
‘You were a promising policeman, Investigator,’ she was saying as she worked. ‘Krogh thought he’d been clever, spotting you, but it was my doing, actually. Didn’t you guess? I keep track of all Savinkov’s experiments. You’d never have been able to get at Laurits if I hadn’t let you. We fed you the evidence, of course. Laurits was lazy, and brazen with it. I thought it would be a good idea to let you take him down, if you could. Keep the others on their toes. I had it in mind to bring you to Mirgorod myself, if you succeeded. A career open to talent, that’s what the Vlast should be. But Krogh got you first, and it has come to this. A pity.’
Lom tried to focus on her, but his vision was blurry. What was she saying? He wasn’t sure. His gaze was drawn back to the line of implements ready on the desk.
‘Oh no,’ said Chazia. ‘It won’t be like that. Excruciation has many uses, but collecting information quickly isn’t one of them. Torture is good for encouraging demoralisation and fear – for every one person put to pain, a thousand fear it – and it binds the torturers closer to us. But none of that is relevant in your case. Such methods were ineffective on your friend Vishnik, and I doubt they would be more so with you. On this occasion I require the truth quickly, and there is a better way. You may find the method professionally interesting.’
She took a piece of some dark stuff from her bag and pulled it onto her right hand. It was a long, loose-fitting glove made of a heavy substance something like rubber, but it wasn’t rubber. She held it out for him to see. It had a slightly reddish lustrous sleekness like wet seal fur.
‘Angel skin,’ she said, though he knew that already. He had read of such things. This was a Worm. Chazia took a flask out of her bag and held it up to Lom’s face. He jerked his head aside.
‘It’s only water,’ she said. ‘Drink a little if you like.’
He nodded, and she unscrewed the cap and held the flask to his dry lips, tipping it up to let him take a sip. He sluiced the water around carefully in his mouth and let it trickle down his throat as slowly as he could. Without warning, she tipped the rest of it over his head. It was ice-cold. Lom shouted at the shock of it.
‘It helps,’ said Chazia. ‘I don’t know why.’
She brought her chair round from the other side of the desk and sat beside him, placing her angel-gloved hand on his face. He flinched. His skin crawled.
‘Ask him, Josef,’ she said quietly, with suppressed excitement. ‘Ask him.’