Brandon Schumder shuffled into view at the top of the stairs. He was taller than Lolo, and so thin Ollie thought he might be ill. But then Mensi, his wife, was standing behind him, and she was almost as tall and equally thin. Ollie never could get over the way rich people lived. Cosmetics and anti-ageing procedures, sure – who wouldn’t if you had the money? – but shit like this was just creepy.
‘Get down here,’ he ordered.
‘Yes, yes,’ Schumder said anxiously. He put a foot on the first step as if he expected it to electrocute him. ‘Take anything you want. Anything. We’ll open the safe for you.’
‘Keep coming.’
Schumder was four steps from the bottom when Ollie shot Mensi with the nerve-block pistol. She juddered helplessly, a forced gagging sound coming from her throat, and started to collapse.
‘No!’ Schumder cried and struggled to catch her. He made it to the hall floor, the two of them going down in a tangle as Mensi’s weight drove him to his knees. Ollie shot him, too.
Five minutes later, he’d used the duct tape to secure Mensi to a heavy dining-room chair, while Brandon was taped spread-eagled on the table. Ollie had run out of duct tape before the last leg was secured, so he had to cut off a curtain cord and use that. He waited until the nerve block had faded and they’d started to recover. Mensi began a miserable wailing until he went and stood in front of her, pressing the pistol to her temple.
‘This is a nerve blocker. It’s meant to incapacitate your body if I shoot you from a distance,’ he explained. ‘If I fire it now, at zero range, I might just as well be dropping your brain into a food blender. It will turn you into a zombie, and not the good kind. So be quiet. Understand?’
She gave him a petrified look, the tears streaming down her face. But she clenched her jaw tight shut.
Ollie went back to the table and looked down at Brandon.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ Brandon said. ‘I told you to take anything you want. Just please don’t hurt us.’
‘Okay,’ Ollie said. ‘You sound like a reasonable man. We both want to get this over as quickly as possible, with minimal pain, so this should be easy. You know, if my friend Lars was here, he’d enjoy beating seven types of crap out of you.’
Brandon tensed up, a whimper escaping from his lips.
‘But Lars is dead.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why?’ Ollie taunted. ‘You didn’t know him. Or did you?’
‘I don’t think so. No.’
‘No. But I’m trying to find the person I hold responsible, so you’ll understand why I’m anxious to get the right information.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re in banking, right? To be exact, the Reindal Commerzebank?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good, then I’ve got the right person.’ Ollie leant over, putting his face centimetres from Brandon’s. ‘Where does Karno Larson live?’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, shit. Wrong answer.’
‘But I don’t know . . .’
Ollie stuffed a napkin into Brandon’s mouth, forcing a lot of the linen down. Brandon strained against it, making muffled gasps.
‘Remember,’ Ollie told Mensi. ‘One word from you and—’ He made a pistol with two fingers, and shot her with it.
She whimpered in terror.
This was the part Ollie had kept telling himself – promising himself – he could do.
Right from the start he’d known that Brandon would be difficult. This was the kind of man who would’ve been given security counter-training by the bank, and there’d be fear, too – fear of giving up Karno, and what would happen to him if he did. Making him talk needed a whole new approach – and attitude. Ollie had never done that before.
The Legion had concentrated on scams and raids. No one had got hurt – well, apart from the ones Lars had beaten to a pulp. But even Lars didn’t do this kind of thing. Tronde could have done it without hesitation, him with that unnervingly cold streak, and maybe Piotr, too. But they were dead, so it was all down to Ollie.
He put the case he’d got from Rebecca The-L on the table next to Brandon and opened the lid. Brandon stopped moaning and tried to get a look at what was inside. Ollie slipped on the protective gloves and picked up the first synth slug. Its strange grainy coating sparkled in the weak light filtering through the windows.
‘Do you know what this is?’ Ollie asked.
Brandon shook his head, his muted voice trying to protest.
‘It’s a synth slug.’ Ollie held it up as if seeing it for the first time. ‘And that sparkle is the artificial diamond bristles it grows, the same as we grow hair. You know what they say about diamonds, apart from being a girl’s best friend? The hardest natural substance there is. Cuts through anything. Really. Cuts.’
Brandon froze, his chest heaving as he tried to yell in protest.
‘The slug doesn’t have a brain,’ Ollie said, ‘but it does have a bioprocessor cluster which allows me to control it.’ He pressed it against the sole of Brandon’s foot.
This was it – the point where he’d either chicken out, or . . . He closed his eyes. Instead of Tye’s splash in his tarsus lens, all he could see were two cocoons: his brother Bik, and Gran.
For a long moment he stood perfectly still. Then he activated the synth slug’s control icon. It started to wriggle against Brandon’s foot. The tiny diamond fibres gnawed through the skin, and blood began to seep out. Brandon was desperately trying to scream, the cords on his neck standing proud as he struggled against the tape holding him down.
Ollie took out the second synth slug and pressed it to Brandon’s other foot. It squirmed about, chewing its way into the flesh.
‘The best thing about them is they can grind their way up through you very precisely,’ Ollie explained to a frantic, tormented Brandon. ‘To start with, I’ll get them to stay inside the bone, munching their way up the marrow. After all, I don’t want them to cut an artery or something critical; that way you’d bleed out and die before you told me what I want to know. And I really want to know where Karno Larson lives. But you’re a big, strong, determined bloke, ain’t you? Not some pussy who’ll squeal and give it up. So it’s going to take a while. After they’ve chewed all the leg marrow into soup, I’ll steer them into your ribcage. Don’t worry; I’ll keep them out of your spine. Gotta leave all those nerves intact, so you can feel what’s happening, yeah?’
On the table, Brandon looked as if he was having a heart attack, writhing around so badly the tape was cutting into his wrists. Ollie ordered the slugs to pause. They were barely a centimetre inside Bandon’s feet, with blood and pulverized bone running out of the holes they’d gouged. He leant over, staring down at his captive.
‘Did you wanna say something?’
Brandon was shouting so hard he even managed to dislodge the napkin slightly.
Ollie put his finger to his lips. ‘Before I take the napkin out, I’m going to repeat the question: Where does Karno Larson live? If you say anything other than that – if you start swearing or threatening me – I won’t let you speak again until the slugs have reached your hip bones via your balls. Understand?’