The King in Yellow Chapter Five

IMPALEMENT

“Good morning”. Dmitri was amused to see a younger woman briskly enter the interrogation room and plant herself in the seat opposite him and was also struck by her beauty; her ash-blonde hair was cropped like a boy’s and her lithe, small-breasted form modestly sheathed in a charcoal grey trouser suit and high-necked blouse.

Dana had insisted that she was ready for the challenge and Katya could find no reason to deny her. Nonetheless, she was studying them through the two-way mirror and was ready to intervene if her protégé showed any sign of losing her composure. Crossing her long legs, Dana began by asking a series of routine questions – going by the book – which Dmitri answered compliantly enough but without the intense engagement he had brought to his sessions with Katya. As she watched, Katya’s mind wandered to the vision which had disturbed her thoughts since their first encounter, the unbidden image of herself kneeling naked in front of Dmitri alone in the cell. With a start, she realised that she was now picturing Dana’s young, willowy body offered in the same pose of abject surrender. She took a deep breath and brushed a stray lock of hair away from her forehead, focusing afresh on the interview.

“And then there were the designs discovered in the possession of your co-accused, Pierre” Dana was saying. “We will find him, and he will tell us how this machine was used, but it would be interesting to hear from you, now, what role it had in your activities.” She was being unduly harsh, Katya thought, deliberately maintaining a distance between herself and her subject. She wondered why.

“We all enjoyed impalements” Dmitri replied “but it was Pierre’s particular favourite, of our various methods of slaughtering victims. It demands complete submission and great courage from the meat”. His deep, musical voice wove its spell again. “Many faced the challenge; one particularly eager victim stands out in my memory, although I probably never knew her name. She was the second of four we were to kill that afternoon, and she caught my eye more than once while Pierre disposed of the woman ahead of her in line. She wanted it so badly”.

In the derelict coach-house Pierre had built what looked like a stage for theatrical or musical performances.