Comes the Dark Stranger - Jack Higgins [9]
Laura Faulkner’s eyes widened. ‘What do you mean - started to work on you?’
He shrugged. ‘I should have thought you would have been reasonably familiar with the mediaeval trappings that go with interrogation of prisoners in this delightfully civilized age we live in.’
Her eyes were shadowed and she nodded soberly. ‘I see. Go on, please, and don’t try to spare my feelings. I’d like to know exactly how it was.’
Shane twisted his mouth into a tight grin. ‘On the first floor of the monastery there was one large room which had previously been the Abbot’s. Colonel Li used it for interrogations. Leading from it was a narrow corridor which contained five cells. The monks used to use them as a penance. He made us strip mother-naked in his office, and then had us locked into the cells. Charles Graham and I shared. The others had one each.’
She seemed to find difficulty in speaking. After a few moments she managed to say, ‘And what happened then?’
He shook his head. ‘We needn’t go into details. He came for us, one by one, that club foot of his sliding along the stone flags of the corridor. He tried for three hours, and nobody would talk. Finally he brought Charles Graham back to my cell and told me he was going to start again, only this time he was laying it on the line. Each man would be asked once to speak. If he refused, he would immediately be taken outside and shot.’
‘He must have been insane,’ she cried in horror.
Shane shook his head and said calmly, ‘No, he wasn’t insane. I don’t even think he derived any conscious pleasure from what he was doing. He was no sadist. That’s what made it worse. He was so unbelievably coldblooded about the whole thing.’
He took out another cigarette and rolled it between his fingers in an abstracted manner, and she said, ‘And this was how Simon died?’
He pushed the cigarette into his mouth and lit it. ‘That’s right. He was the first to go. I heard the shots fired outside, and some time later Colonel Li came into the cell and told me he’d got the information he required. He said he regretted having had to shoot Simon, but war was war. He almost sounded as if he meant it.’
‘And who talked?’ Laura Faulkner said quietly.
There was a moment of complete silence as she waited for his answer, and rain tapped against the window with ghostly fingers. He turned slowly, his face calm and expressionless. ‘That’s what I’ve come to find out,’ he said.
Her eyes widened. ‘You mean you don’t know?’
He shook his head. ‘About two hours later the temple was blasted by American fighter-bombers. That’s when the curtains came down for me.’
She got to her feet and, walking across to the easel, stood looking at the unfinished landscape. After a while she said in a peculiar voice, ‘Tell me something. What happened to your regiment when it attacked?’
Shane leaned down and gently ruffled the dog’s ears with his right hand. ‘I found that out yesterday when I called at the War Office. The attack was a complete failure. There were over two hundred casualties.’
She picked up a brush and palette and started to work on the canvas. ‘Did you tell anyone at the War Office what you’ve just told me?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s been too long. They couldn’t do anything about it now if they wanted to. I discovered the other four had survived and were all living in Burnham. The clerk in charge of the records office was most obliging. For some reason he’d got hold of the idea I was trying to arrange a reunion.’
She frowned, concentrating on a particular corner of the canvas, the brush steady in her hand, and said tonelessly, ‘And are you?’
He walked across the room and stood behind her right shoulder and examined the painting. ‘I want to know who spilled his guts to Colonel Li seven years ago,’ he said, and his voice trembled slightly. ‘I want to know so bad I can taste it. I know it wasn’t me, and it couldn’t have been Graham because he was in the cell with me the whole time. That leaves Crowther,