The Holy Thief

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In the still air of the sacristy the only sounds were the slow dripping of her blood onto the marble floor and the faint whisper of her breathing. In, out, in, out-then a lengthy pause before the ragged rhythm began again. She was nearly gone.

It had been a messy business. She’d bled a lot, which was to be expected, although it still made him uncomfortable. But what else could he have done? When there wasn’t time to unpick a person mentally, to grind them down-then you had to use pain and terror. Even if it wasn’t necessarily the most professional, or even the most effective, approach. He’d hoped he could shock her into submission, but, in the end, she’d simply outlasted the time he’d had available. It was a shame. Sometimes he only had to put on one of the gauntlets, slowly, perhaps making a fist so that the stiff leather creaked as it stretched across his knuckles, and that would be enough. They’d start gabbling so fast the only problem was having a typist quick enough to keep up with them. He preferred it that way, of course-they were more pleasant, the straightforward interrogations. But for every gabbling goose there was a rock-and the girl had been of the granite variety.

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