Hell Is Too Crowded - Jack Higgins [30]
A squat, obese old gentleman with a towel about his waist, passed them, another attractive young woman in white smock assisting him. Each side of the room was lined with cubicles, the interiors masked by plastic curtains.
An atmosphere of brooding quiet hung over the place and then a woman laughed as they passed one of the cubicles. Brady turned his head quickly and noticed that the curtain wasn't properly drawn.
Another fat and aging gentleman lay face down on a couch while a young woman massaged him. She wasn't wearing her white smock. In fact she wasn't wearing anything.
Things were becoming a little clearer. At least it was possible to understand how Soames could have a connexion with a man like Das.
The girl went through another swing door and they entered a quiet white-tiled corridor. There was a door at the end marked private and she opened it and Brady followed her in.
This room was also white-tiled and heavy with steam. There was a shower stall in one corner and a large padded table in the centre.
The man who stood beside it wore only bathing shorts and his body was strong and powerful, muscles standing out like great knots. The face was heavyboned and hard, eyes cold, hair close-eropped to the skull.
"This is Mr. Harlow, Karl," the girl said. "Will you get him ready? The professor will be along in ten minutes."
Karl's English was good, but with a heavy German accent. "You will please take off your bathrobe," he said politely.
Brady obliged and the German led him across to the shower stall and pushed him inside. The heavy glass door closed and a score of needle jets came to life and played upon his body forcefully.
It was not only that the water was ice-cold, the jets themselves were physically painful. He stuck it for two or three minutes and then tried to open the door.
It was locked. He hammered on the glass and Karl frowned his surprise, pointed to his watch and shook his head. The German turned a valve and the jets increased in force until Brady was crouched down on the floor, gasping with breath, fighting against the agony.
When the door opened, he fell on to the floor and the German lifted him and grinned, exposing bad teeth. "How do you feel now, Mr. Harlow?"
"More dead than alive," Brady gasped. "Is that supposed to do me good?"
The German grinned again. "Oh, no, Mr. Brady. It's supposed to soften you up."
Brady was not really conscious of the blow itself, simply of something exploding in the pit of his stomach and then the white tiles lifted to meet him.
He was not unconscious because he could hear voices far away in the distance as the pain swelled in his body to a peak of agony and then retreated like the tide. Slowly the blackness turned to grey and then he was aware of the light directly above his head, set in the ceiling like some baleful eye, its rays diffused by the steam.
There was no longer pain, only a warmth spreading throughout his body as expert hands massaged his stomach muscles. He groaned and tried to get up. A hand pushed him back down and a harsh American voice said, "Take it easy, lover. You're doing fine."
He closed his eyes, breathed deeply for a moment or two, opened them again.
A woman leaned over him, but such a woman as he had never seen before. Long black hair framed a man's face, hard and big-boned with a wide, fleshy mouth.
She was well over six feet in height and the sleeves of her white smock were rolled back to expose biceps a wrestler might have envied.
"Who the hell are you?" Brady said.
"Soames," she said calmly. "I guess you got my sex wrong, lover."
Brady sat up and rubbed his stomach. "I suppose Das telephoned you from Manningham?"
She nodded. "I never thought you'd make it, not with the dragnet the cops have got out for you. You must be quite a man, lover."
Brady hesitated for a moment. "There was a girl. She tried to see you earlier. What happened to her?"
Soames grinned.