Josh couldn’t say anything. His lips were numb, his tongue was swollen, and his teeth felt as if they had been wrenched around in his gums.
“I don’t expect you to talk,” said Edridge. “We don’t expect miracles, after all. But here is a pen and here is a sheet … of good-quality paper. On this paper you will explain exactly why you came here. And you will list the names and addresses of all of those you came to see, and what help you expected from them.”
Josh hesitated for a moment, but then he took the pad and wrote the only word he could think of. No.
“You came here to make contact. With troublemakers. Come on. Admit it.”
No.
“If that wasn’t the reason for your coming through the door, then what was?”
I told you, Josh wrote. I want to know who killed my sister.
“To find out … who killed your sister. That’s brilliant! What a cover. One of the very best that the subversives have ever come up with. It wouldn’t surprise me if you killed your sister … yourself. In order to give yourself a watertight cover.”
You’re sick.
“Sick? You talk to me of sick? I’ll show you a world where people no longer fear God. I’ll show you a world where every one of the ten commandments has been crushed underfoot. I’ll show you a world of such greed and licentiousness and lack of faith that it would take your very breath away. Except that it wouldn’t. Because that is your world, my friend. And that is why we guard our doors, and hunt down subversives with such vigor. To prevent you from infiltrating us, from corrupting us, from undermining our faith and our moral fortitude. For let me tell you, Mr Winward, the world where you come from is the very definition of hell on earth.”
Josh hesitated for a moment. He felt such pain that he could hardly keep the pen steady. Then he wrote, Hell is made by bigots.
Edridge stood up. He circled around the room for a moment, but then he leaned close to Josh and whispered in his ear, “You could have everything you wanted, in this world, if you helped us.”
Josh flicked his eyes toward him. It would have been too painful for him to try to move his head.
“We reward those who help us to track down subversives. We reward them very well. You could find yourself with a very fine house in the country, and substantial money in the bank. Do you know the price on John Farbelow’s head? Three thousand pounds. Think of it! A man could live like a king.”
Josh wrote, Don’t know squat.
“Squat? What’s squat?”
Josh tossed the pen down on to the paper. Edridge suddenly lost his patience. He stepped away from Josh’s chair and beckoned the policeman forward. “Show him how the Harp works. Play him a penitential hymn.”
With a serious, wary look on his face, the policeman approached the Holy Harp and flexed his fingers. Josh stared back at him, sitting rigidly upright, hardly able to bear the idea of the pain that he was going to feel. The policeman hesitated for a moment, but then he dragged the tips of his fingers down the tightly-stretched wires. They made a plangent, harmonic sound, in a minor key, like the beginning of an avant-garde symphony. At the same time they tugged at the naked roots of Josh’s teeth, so that he let out a hoarse, incoherent roar of total agony. They pulled at every ganglion in his shoulders. They dragged at his nipples and made his stomach muscles convulse. His knees shuddered; his thighs tensed in a vicious, vise-like cramp; and his penis felt as if it had been peeled inside out, and every single nerve exposed.
The pain was so intense that it was almost wonderful. Josh felt crucified, sanctified – lifted above his everyday existence into a world where there was nothing but dazzling red light and blinding white pain. He could almost believe that he was close to God.
The strings of the Holy Harp were rippled again, and he closed his eyes tight as the pain made every nerve ending in his body contract and flinch. It was his teeth that hurt him the most, though. His teeth hurt so much that he was far beyond weeping.
The policeman stepped back, and Edridge came up to Josh again.
“What a hymn that was,” he said, softly. “Now do you think you might tell me what I have to know?”
Josh reached out for the pen but his hand was like a helpless claw. Edridge picked it up for him and placed it between his fingers, like a solicitous mother teaching her three-year-old to write. He pushed the paper nearer, and Josh was able to scrawl I know 0.
“Nothing?” said Edridge. “That can’t be right. Young Simon Cutter has already told us that he took you to meet John Farbelow, and that you and he spent the evening discussing acts of sabotage and subversion. Don’t tell me he was lying to us. If he was lying to us, he will have to die for obstructing our investigation – and very unpleasantly, too. The wicked must be permitted to see the evil of their ways before they are allowed to enjoy the comforts of the grave.”
He waited for almost half a minute for Josh to answer. Then he beckoned to the police officer again.
It was then that Josh knew that he wasn’t going to be able to take any more hymns on the Holy Harp. His training in the Marines had given him a high degree of tolerance to physical pain; and his studies of Zen and hypnosis had made him mentally able to detach himself from his immediate surroundings. But the agony of the Holy Harp had penetrated right through to the very root of his soul. It had taken away everything: his pride, his dignity, his endurance – and most of all, it had taken away his humanity. He had been reduced to the level of an insect, writhing in agony on the end of a pointed stick.
He scrabbled for the pen, picked it up, dropped it, and then made another desperate grab for it. As he tried to lean forward, the wires in his mouth tugged at the nerves in his teeth and his eyes filled with tears. Edridge watched him in amusement.
“You want to write something else, perhaps? Don’t tell me that you wish to confess.”
Wincing, Josh managed to scrawl, Yes dont hurt Cutter.
“You’re sure of this? You’re going to tell us everything you know? You won’t change your mind once we release you from the Holy Harp?”
No. Josh didn’t have any idea what he was going to tell them, but he knew that he would rather invent names and addresses and subversive secrets than face any more pain. At least it would give him time; and he knew that Nancy wouldn’t abandon him here.
Edridge nodded to the police officer and the police officer picked up the phone. A few minutes later a thin young man in a white lab coat and wire-rimmed glasses came in, carrying a small leather wallet. He drew up a chair, sat down beside Josh, and opened the wallet to reveal a neat set of shiny little tools.
“Still as you can, please,” he said. His breath smelled of spring onions. With the smallest of wrenches, he unfastened the tiny bolts that had been screwed into Josh’s teeth. Josh breathed in through his mouth, and the cold air was sucked directly on to his nerves.
One by one, the dental wires were released and drawn out of his mouth. Then the thin young man unfastened the wires that went right through his body and were screwed to the back of the chair. He had to slide them right through Josh’s muscles, and through the soft tissue of his abdomen. When he drew the wire out of his penis Josh had to bite his own hand.
He might have fainted. He remembered being helped out of the seat. He remembered somebody wrapping a coarse woolen bathrobe around him. But the next thing he knew, he was crouched up in the fetal position on a thin ticking mattress, on an iron bedstead, in a pale green cell. It must have been morning, because there was wishy-washy light coming in through the high barred window.