The Doll’s House (18 page)

‘Thank you,' Rosa said. ‘I will.'

It was a charming room. A generous single bed, with a corona that matched the curtains and the armchair. The colour scheme was a soft yellow with touches of pale blue. Fresh flowers were arranged on the table and a dish with grapes, apples and peaches was near by.

She tipped the young Italian; he grinned broadly at her.

‘Thank you, lady. Everything OK?'

He was very young, a student, she supposed, learning the hotel business from the bottom rung. He made her feel better.

‘Yes, thank you.'

When the door closed she looked around the room. New magazines were laid out and a card by the fruit bowl said it came with the manager's compliments. Fine soap in the bathroom, high-quality towels. A menu for snacks by the telephone, with instructions how to reach the housekeeper, reception, the restaurant and to get an outside line. There was also a tariff. As she knew, it was very expensive.

She went to the window and looked out. The roses in the garden below were past their first blooming, but the aspect was very pleasing. She unpacked her clothes, hung them up, settled herself in.

Mr Oakham goes round every evening, talking to the guests. He hadn't wanted to spend time talking to her. He had clients from Ireland to look after. But surely there was nothing sinister in that?

She kicked off her shoes and curled up in the armchair. She lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly. Something was coming to the surface. An incident recalled after many years.

A dinner party in London where a rich Anglo-Irish victim of an IRA kidnapping described the female ringleader. The most frightening thing was the naked hatred in her captor's eyes. She'd never said a word, just looked at her. As she spoke, the elderly aristocrat had given a slight shiver. It was impossible to explain the depth of hatred the woman conveyed. Far, far worse than the men who were manhandling her at the time. The woman and the gang had been arrested and jailed. She was now dead or forgotten. But she had heirs and successors and Rosa had an instinct she might have just seen one of them in the reception hall of the hotel. Part of her equipment was a small, but highly sophisticated camera with a powerful zoom lens. They were only here for one day and a night. Somehow she had to get that girl, and the men with her, on film.

6

Hermann Rilke said, ‘Now we will start with the theory of interrogation. And I am talking about sophisticated methods. Any fool can crush a man's balls. A skilled operator can crush his will and distort his mind. In that way, if he is released or exchanged at any time, he will be useless.'

The Irishman with the moustache broke in abruptly.

‘We don't release suspects, or exchange them. What we want is to get information. And quick.'

He lit a cigarette. Rilke scowled. They were impatient, ignorant foot soldiers. His special talents would be wasted on them. To his surprise it was the girl in the group who contradicted her leader.

‘Sean, we're not talking about informers. You kick them hard enough and they'd turn in their own mothers. But the Brits are specially trained to work under cover. We've never got anything out of the bastards by beating them. I think we could learn a lot from Mr Rilke here.'

She was young, not much past twenty-four. A quiet-spoken Dundalk girl from a respectable background. Her father was a doctor, she had a brother studying to be a priest at Maynooth.

Rilke knew all about her. She had decoyed soldiers at eighteen, leading them into ambushes, where they were gunned down without mercy. She had planted explosives in shops, and carried out reconnaissance for other bombers. She had been present at summary trials and executions of police informers.

She had served a brief prison sentence in the Maze for driving a car for the Provisionals during an attack on a police station. During her time in prison she had dominated and terrorized the other women prisoners.

The man called Sean scowled at her. Maeve O'Callaghan was the girlfriend of a top Provo political figure. When she heard about this special training course, she was determined to go on it.

And she got her way.

‘I'd like to hear about these other methods,' she said to Rilke.

‘Then you'd better come with me,' he said, and they filed out after him. ‘Up here,' he said, climbing a short stair to the upper floor.

He unlocked a door, switched on a light. They followed him inside.

The man called Sean said under his breath, ‘What the fuck?'

The room was bare and whitewashed; there were no windows. In the middle of it was something that looked like a dentist's chair. It was fitted with leather straps.

‘Now,' Hermann Rilke began like a lecturer before a class of students. ‘When you bring your subject into a room like this, his training will come to the forefront. He will experience fear, but he's been taught how to cope with it. He will have been provided with some information he can disclose after a certain amount of pain becomes intolerable. He knows that will buy him relief. But you don't speak to him,' Rilke instructed. ‘Not a word is spoken to him from the moment he comes up for interrogation.'

‘Is he hooded?' the man with glasses asked.

Rilke smiled at the idiocy of the question.

‘If he was, he couldn't see the room or the chair where he expects to be tied in and tortured.
You
are hooded, all of you. Everyone he sees is faceless and voiceless. So. You place your subject in the chair; you strap him in. He is tense, waiting for his ordeal. Relying on his training to survive the first part of it. But nothing happens.

Nothing. He waits. One by one you leave the room, and the last one turns off the light and leaves the subject in complete darkness. Time passes.'

‘Supposing we don't have a lot of time?' Sean demanded. He was still hostile to the whole setup.

‘Then,' Rilke said quietly, ‘you advance the programme and begin immediately. You switch on.'

He pressed a switch by the door. The chair started revolving. He pressed again and the speed increased. The chair began to spin.

‘The subject will vomit as his balance becomes affected,' the rasping voice went on. ‘After some time he will lose control of bladder and bowels.'

‘How much time?' Maeve O'Callaghan asked.

‘An hour, maybe less. Some people react to the disorientation more slowly than others. When the interrogator judges that the subject is sufficiently softened, he stops the chair and asks the first questions.

‘He is likely to get the permitted bits of information that might have come after days of physical assault. The subject has bought himself a little time. Or so he thinks. But before he's finished answering, the chair goes into motion again. Faster and for longer. Then it stops. No questions are asked this time. No-one comes into the room. It is dark and silent. The process begins again. I can guarantee you that, depending upon the subject, you will get everything out of them within twenty-four hours at the most. After which you can dispose of them. Or even let them go. They will have suffered permanent damage to the balancing mechanism of the brain. They'll be useless to anyone.'

He turned and gestured them to follow him out.

The short-sighted one took off his glasses and wiped them, put them back on and muttered, ‘Jesus, I feel sick just lookin' at the thing.'

‘Not as sick as if you were in it,' Rilke remarked. ‘We can have some coffee and a general discussion. I'll be happy to answer questions.'

The man, Sean, squared up to him instead of sitting down in the pleasant sitting room. A tall, handsome blonde had brought in a tray of coffee and biscuits; she didn't speak and Rilke didn't acknowledge her.

‘We're wasting time. We don't need all this sophisticated garbage! Where the hell are we going to get the props for this sort of thing?'

‘You'll find it in a dentist's surgery,' Rilke said coldly. ‘Any skilled electrician can adapt it. All you need is somewhere isolated. I'm sure your organization can manage that.'

Maeve O'Callaghan swung away from Sean. She was flushed with anger at the stupid yob with his brains in his fists. Men like that would never win their kind of war. And he was a very senior area commander.

She said to Rilke, ‘Of course we can use it! And a woman could operate it just as well as a man. Thank you, it's so simple it's brilliant.'

She glared at Sean. Rilke couldn't resist praise. His ego swelled and he smiled at her. She was a deadly bitch.

‘Good,' he responded. ‘You'll have coffee? Please help yourselves. Then I shall give a lecture on interrogation techniques accompanied by complementary drugs. Then a question-and-answer session. I will lead it with each of you in turn. Lunch is provided here. When you feel you have enough information then you can return to the hotel.'

He licked his lips, and watching him, Maeve O'Callaghan was reminded of a reptile catching flies.

He addressed himself to her. ‘It's a pity your time is so short. I feel there's a lot I could teach you—'

‘We can't hang around here,' Sean interrupted. ‘We've got other business on the mainland.'

He swallowed his coffee, spilling some into the saucer. The bitch made him want to spit. He thought angrily, she could do with a good larraping. Making him look a fool in front of that fucking queen. He had lived by the gun and the bomb. Rilke turned his stomach.

The Irish weren't in the dining room at lunch. Or at the bar. Rosa took her camera and set off to walk round the grounds. She might just spot them. The sun was high and there was no cooling breeze. As she crossed the smooth parkland, the whole idea seemed far-fetched. She must have imagined the look. Her nerves were strung up. She was spooking herself.

She saw the sign,
ADVENTURE TRAIL
, with an arrow pointing towards a wooded area some three hundred yards to her left, and a red skull and cross-bones that made her shudder. She changed direction. She was near enough to see some fencing and another sign when she heard the run-about chugging up behind her. She turned quickly and a man in sweat shirt and baseball cap waved to her to stop. He came level, bringing the little four-wheel-drive buggy to a halt along-side her.

She looked at him. ‘Yes? Is anything the matter?'

He was young and he looked very fit; a load of gardening implements was piled up behind him.

‘Afternoon, miss. You want a lift anywhere?'

‘No, thank you,' Rosa frowned. ‘I was just going to look at the Adventure Trail.'

‘It's closed,' he said. He had watchful eyes under the shadow of the cap brim. The three Micks were having a quick tour with Stevenson. His orders were to keep the legitimate punters from getting too close.

‘Hot today,' he said. ‘We keep an eye out if we see a lady walking around on her own; there're lots of underground springs here and the grounds get marshy. We had someone sink down and sprain her ankle; she was missing for hours till we found her. Better you let me run you back.'

Rosa hesitated for a moment. She didn't want to go with him. But most hotel guests would have complied.
Whatever you do
,
don't arouse suspicion
.

She smiled and said, ‘All right then, it
is
hot, and it's quite a long way. Thank you.'

He leaned down and offered a hand.

‘Hop in, then.'

He helped her up into the seat beside him.

‘What can you do about the ground?' she asked.

‘Drain it. Spend my life digging ditches.'

‘Have you worked here long?'

‘Since the new management took over.'

He had a West Country burr in his speech. She caught a whiff of sweat as he moved; it was acrid and she tried not to inch away.

‘It must need a lot of gardeners to keep it properly,' she went on. ‘There's so much of it.'

‘'Bout three hundred acres, I reckon. It's a big old place all right.'

She was a nice-looking bird, pretty tits bouncing up and down as they drove. He wished she'd shut her trap though. He didn't want to answer questions. Not that he talked much anyway. His mate was the one who loved sounding off. They were close enough to the main building; he judged he could stop and let her off.

‘Have to drop you here, miss. All right?'

‘Yes, that's fine, thank you.'

He let the clutch out and the buggy bombed off in the direction they'd come from. He was going too fast with all the tools rattling in the back.

Slowly Rosa walked round the gardens. Several guests were strolling round, a couple were reading in the shade. She sat down herself in a seat with a view of the main entrance.

She wasn't imagining things. There was something spine-chilling about that girl she'd seen with Oakham. And the young bruiser in the buggy hadn't wanted her to go near the so-called Adventure Trail.

I've got to get a photograph, she insisted. They're leaving tomorrow morning. The girl at reception was friendly; if she's on duty I'll try and find out exactly when they're leaving.

She went back up to her room to shower and change. There was a message to say Commander Lucas had telephoned and would call again later.

There was a different girl on the desk; Rosa tried to talk to her. ‘I'm Mrs Bennet,' she said. ‘I arrived this morning. Did you reserve a table for dinner for me?' The girl looked down at her list and then up at Rosa.

‘Yes, it's here, Mrs Bennet. Eight o'clock? And did you get your telephone message?'

‘Yes I did, thank you. You seem very full,' Rosa lingered.

‘We are. Weekends are very busy.' The smile was polite but at that moment the switchboard buzzed and she said, ‘Excuse me,' and went to answer it. Rosa put through a call in her room before she came down. She used the contact name Jim Parker had given her.

‘Marian? Hello, it's me. Yes, lovely, terribly spoiling …' She carried on the conversation for a few minutes, and then added, ‘I must go, but I'll give Jim a ring sometime tomorrow. I've got those photographs I meant to give him. Sorry I forgot. Bye.'