“Steady on now.” Pudd’n used a carefully neutral tone. “The main thing is, we’ve got him. That’s what Scouse told us to do, an’ we’ve done it. Zan, why don’t you get him on the phone, sharpish, an’ tell him? You an’ Dixie can’t afford to be fightin’ — we’ve all got work to do.”

Zan looked at him thoughtfully. Her eyes were shielded by heavy lids, and it was hard to know how she reacted to his comments.

“Did you search them?” she said at last.

“Yeah,” said Dixie .

“No,” said Pudd’n. “I mean, all I did was look for weapons. You mean papers an’ other stuff, don’t you, Zan?”

“Naturally.” Again her look at Dixie held only contempt. “If we come seven thousand miles to seek the Belur Package, we ought at least to look for it. I would be surprised if he is carrying it on him, but we cannot rule that out.”

“But we know he doesn’t have it,” objected Dixie , “or he wouldn’t ever have come back here.”

“Logical, but not necessarily true.” Zan stepped forward to Ameera. ” Dixie , you keep them both covered.” She began to search Ameera carefully and unhurriedly, exploring each item of clothing down to skin level, while Pudd’n did the same thing to me.

“Here’s something,” he said after a few minutes. “Look, it’s got the old Belur phone number on it.”

He was holding the paper that Leo had left for me, with its cryptic message. If they could read any more out of it than we could, good luck to them. First Pudd’n puzzled over it, then the other two each had their turn.

“Arabic, is it?” said Dixie . “Can’t Scouse read that for us when he gets here?”

Zan shook her elegant head. Something about her gave me shivers, but I couldn’t be sure whether the feeling was pleasant or unpleasant. All I could say for certain was that when she brushed against me as she was searching Ameera, a tingling wave had run like cold water up my spine.

“Scouse speaks Arabic, but he never learned to read it or write it,” she said.

“We don’t need Scouse.” Dixie nodded his head at me. “Not with ’im here to do the work for us. Give me an hour with him, alone, and I’ll get you a translation.”

“No.” Zan moved to stand in front of him and they stood, eye to eye.

Dixie was the first to flinch. “All right, let’s see what Scouse has to say about that,” he grumbled, and moved away. “When are you going to call him, anyway?”

“Now. He should be able to take an overnight flight and be here by noon tomorrow.” Zan set off purposively towards the door, pausing only to give first me and then Ameera a strange and speculative look. Again I felt the vibration up my spine.

“What about these two?” said Pudd’n.

“They can stay here.” She turned in the doorway and slapped her hand against the jamb. “You checked this place out properly, didn’t you? No way they could break out of it?”

“The door’s metal lined, and the walls are concrete block,” said Pudd’n. “They’re safe enough, but there’s no lavatory. And no food. We didn’t expect two of them — what do we do with her?”

“We’ll worry about that after I’ve called Scouse.” Zan and Dixie left. Their relationship had not improved during the last interchange, and they carefully avoided looking at each other. After an apologetic glance at the narrow bed, and a shrug of his heavy shoulders, Pudd’n followed them out.

The door boomed shut with a clang of finality, and a second later the light went out. The switch must be outside the room.

This time, Scouse’s mob was taking no chances.

The darkness was harder on me than on Ameera. To her, a light haze had simply become darker haze. We groped our way forward for a few seconds until we located the bed, then while I sat uselessly on it Ameera explored the room using her hands, feet, tongue and nose.

She had slipped off her shoes. I heard her padding around quietly, sniffing curiously in one place, rubbing her hand or foot against the floor or wall in another. At last she came back to where I lay and snuggled beside me on the bed.

“No good?” I said. Somehow it seemed right to whisper, even though there was no one to overhear us.

“It is no good.” Ameera moved closer to me. “It is solid, the way that the man said. Lee-yo-nel, what will they do with us?”

“They will let you go — maybe tomorrow.” I tried to sound confident. “But they want to keep me here and ask me questions about Belur.”

“But you do not know about Mr. Belur.”

“They don’t believe that.”

“What will they do to you?”

Burn me with cigarette ends. Beat me to death and then stick me in the river, the way they had handled Valnora Warren. Torture me to learn my secrets, and then fry me to a crisp on a high-voltage wire, the way they had treated Rustum Belur.

“Lee-yo-nel?” Ameera interrupted my gloomy introspection. “Why did the man with the scratchy voice say that you were using the Nymphs with me? That is not true. I am a full-grown-up woman, not a child.”

“Eh? How do you know about Nymphs?”

“Everyone here — every girl in India — knows about them. Lee-yo said that most of the nymph-et-a-mine tablets for the whole world are made near Calcutta . But why do the men here say that you use Nymphs?”

“Ameera, you shouldn’t be thinking about that sort of thing.” I lifted myself higher on the bed. “People who use this drug are sick — sick in their minds. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Lee-yo-nel!” Her body jerked against me. “How can you say that the Nymphs are bad? What is wrong with them?”

“Everything. They make little girls want sex.” I didn’t want to talk about it, but Ameera would not change the subject.

“How can it be right,” I went on, “when men drug children and force them to have sex? It’s wrong, and it must be stopped.”

Ameera was silent against me for a long time, then she sighed. “Lee-yo-nel, you do not understand anything. You think I am blind, but you see less. My sister will marry next year. I will give her a wedding gift of Nymphs.”

“You will do what?” I wondered if the Madrill treatment was making my brains into mush. “Ameera, you are insane even to think of that. What will her husband say?”

“He will never know.” Ameera’s voice was angry now. “You do not understand our ways — Lee-yo was the same. My sister is ten years old. The new laws say she is a child, and she is too young, but my father says she is not too young. He wants a rich husband for her, and she will find one only if she marries soon. So she will marry. Without the Nymphs, she will have soreness, and bad hurt, and bleeding, and bad fear. Her wedding night will be all pain, as it was pain to me. I was married at ten, and widow at twelve. All the nights then were fear and pain.”

She was weeping against my chest. I suspected that the tears were not for herself, they were for all the young girls of India . I stroked her hair gently, and waited. She had never made such a long speech to me before.

“We will not need Nymphs when the men are changed,” she said at last. “Lee-yo-nel, you are not like this, I know it. But four years ago, I would have starved to get those Nymphs you tell me are so bad.”

She was silent for many minutes. At last her regular breathing told me that she had fallen asleep. I lay awake beside her, wondering what tomorrow might bring. No matter what I had told Ameera, I was sure that they would not let her go either. To leave this house alive, we would have to escape from it.

How?

My head was aching again, but I dared not lose time in sleep. The room we lay in was silent as a grave. As the night wore on I reviewed again and again what we had seen of the house, what I knew of Pudd’n, Dixie , Zan and Ameera, and how I might put that knowledge together to free us. It was slim pickings, but after a couple of hours I could see only one hope.

Reluctantly, I woke Ameera. We whispered for many minutes, huddled close in the unrelenting darkness.