When he had finished his meal, the door opened to admit a woman of about fifty, with short, greying blonde hair, wearing a long white coat. She was carrying some kind of toolbox, which she set down on the table, and although her air was that of a schoolmistress rather than of a torturer, Joseph found himself backing self-protectively into the corner, his eyes fixed upon the box as she undid its clasps.
“You need have no fear,” she declared, revealing herself to be the source of the stern, patronising loudspeaker voice, “unless you give me any trouble, of course, then I shall take measures. For example...” She took a silver medallion from the box and showed it to him. A few lines were carved upon it in some elegant, cursive script, possibly Middle Eastern but unknown to him. Whatever it wa
