Faust Among Equals (25 page)

The phone rang. Ronnie Bosch, his eyes riveted to an outsize polystyrene eggshell just starting to work free from its anchor points on the side of the Ferris Wheel, groped with his left hand and picked it up.

‘Bosch here,' he said.

‘Ronnie.'

Bosch closed his eyes. ‘You
again
,' he hissed. ‘For crying out loud, George, this really isn't the best time for me right now . . .'

‘Won't keep you a moment, old son. Just a little job I need some help with. Basically, all I need is . . .'

With fervour, Hieronymus Bosch told Lucky George what, in his opinion, Lucky George really needed. It was pretty far-fetched, anatomically speaking, but compared with some of the feats of engineering he'd pulled off in the last few months, it would probably have been a piece of cake.

‘The project getting you down, huh?'

‘You could say that, George. Like, how the hell am I supposed to suspend a seven-hundred-ton plywood and fibreglass mandolin with worms crawling out of the soundbox forty feet in the air without using an overhead crane because the planners say it'd be seven feet too high for the surrounding environment?'

George laughed. ‘Easy,' he said. ‘Look, all I really need from you for this little job of mine is—'

‘
Easy?
'

‘Sure. I thought you were joking when you said you were having a problem. You built the mandolin yet?'

Bosch laughed mirthlessly. ‘Not much point, really, until I've sussed out how to fly the bastard thing.'

‘Great. You don't make it out of plywood, Ron, you make it out of rubber. Aluminium tube frame, reinforced rubber skin, fill the bugger with helium and you're well away. Just make sure it's securely tethered with a few steel hawsers to stop it wandering off. As I was saying . . .'

Bosch nearly dropped the phone. ‘George,' he said, ‘that's bloody brilliant. Hang about, though, what about the volume-to-weight ratio on the worms, because . . .'

There followed a few minutes of technical discussion; after which, Bosch drew a deep breath and said, ‘What was it you said you wanted?'

‘Got a pencil?'

‘Yes.'

‘Right, then listen. First, I want you to drill me a hole in the bottom of the Marianas Trench.'

Bosch broke the pencil lead. ‘Fine,' he said. ‘I just stroll out on my day off with a snorkel and a bradawl, do I? Or shall I get the YTS lad to do it?'

‘Next,' George went on, ‘I'll need some nice, tough, hydraulic hose.' He specified how much. ‘And a steam turbine, Ron; nothing fancy, just a good, old-fashioned piece of kit to work the pump. I expect you've got something of the sort lying about in one of the engine sheds down at your place. I seem to remember there being all sorts of useful bits and pieces quietly rusting away down there. Get some of the men to give it a rub over with a wire brush, she'll be as right as rain.'

‘I'm not listening, George. I mean, thanks a lot for the tip with the balloon, I definitely owe you one, but this is—'

‘I think that's about it,' George said, checking the list he'd scribbled on the back of a beer mat. ‘No, sorry, I tell a lie, there's just one more major bit I need. Can you rustle me up a hydraulic ram? Hold on, I'll just give you the specifications.'

‘George . . .' Bosch was just about to give notice of putting the phone down when his professional curiosity got the better of him. ‘George,' he asked cautiously, ‘what the hell are you planning to do with all this gear?'

George told him.

Engineers are a bit like mountain-climbers; not in the sense of having bushy beards and no toes because of frostbite, but because the one thing they really can't resist is a challenge. Ask an engineer to change the washer on a leaking tap and he'll tell you to get lost. Show him a design for making water roll uphill without pressure and drive a flywheel and ask him if he thinks it might work, and before you know it he's reaching for his Vernier calipers and his slide rule, and all you've got to do is decide whether you want the flywheel in pale fawn or avocado.

‘You're kidding.'

‘No I'm not,' George replied. ‘It's basically a very simple design. Big but simple. Do you think you can do it?'

Hieronymus Bosch hesitated, his mind a Cemetary Ridge of conflicting emotions. On the one hand, his rational sense was telling him, No way, stay well clear of this, if they ever caught you at it then bird-headed demons would be Beatrix Potter compared with what they'd do to you. Louder and more insistent was the clamour in the genes, Man the Toolmaker whispering, Yes, and come to think of it there's that old molybdenum steel acroprop left over from the second day of the Creation, all you'd have to do is stone a couple of thou. off the edge, mill it square on the top and there's your basic material . . . The temptation pounded against the sides of his better judgement; as if Eve had come sidling up to Adam with a plate of apple charlotte with double whipped cream and a glacé cherry.

‘I dunno,' he said. ‘I'd need to see drawings.'

‘I'll fax them through now.'

‘Somebody's bound to notice.'

‘Just tell 'em it's for the project. Say it'll save them money.'

‘You do realise it's going to be touch and go with the wall thicknesses, what with all that internal pressure.'

‘Don't make me laugh, Ron. Listen . . .'

And that, of course, was that. As soon as the detailed specifications started flowing up and down the telephone lines, it was all a foregone conclusion.

‘Thanks, Ron,' said Lucky George. ‘Oh, one last thing, we've got a forty-eight-hour deadline. A bit tight, but you can do it.'

‘George . . .'

‘Anybody else, I'd be worried, Ron. Absolute confidence in you, though. I'll get those plans off to you this minute.'

‘George . . .'

‘Ciao.'

 

Having replaced the receiver, George wandered out on to the balcony and sat for a few minutes, watching the gondolas go by.

‘Well?' asked Helen, joining him with the coffee. ‘Any luck?'

George nodded. ‘No problem,' he said. ‘Ronnie's a good lad, very suggestible. Mind you,' he added, dipping his top lip in the froth, ‘his end of the job's the easy bit.'

Helen frowned. ‘By easy,' she said, after a moment's thought, ‘you mean extremely difficult, don't you?'

‘Difficult?' George shook his head. ‘Piece of cake to a man with the facilities at his disposal that Ronnie's got.' He sighed. ‘Good lord, if I could lay my hands on all the plant and machinery he's got to play about with, I could . . .'

Helen smiled indulgently and removed the sugar bowl, from which George had been absent-mindedly saturating his coffee for the last fifteen seconds. ‘When we get married and settle down,' she said, ‘I think I'll let you have a little shed, down at the bottom of the garden. You can keep all your bits and pieces in that, and then we won't have them cluttering up the house.'

Below their balcony, the olive-drab waters of the Canal Grande rubbed catlike against the piles on which the house rested. Like most houses in Venice, more or less the only thing keeping it from slithering into the lagoon was force of habit, with just a soupçon of artistic licence. George had bought it as a pied-à-eau some four hundred and sixteen years ago, and one of the many things he was looking forward to doing once this dratted Lundqvist business was out of the way was chasing up the descendants of twelve generations of tenants for quite substantial arrears of rent.

‘This house you keep on about,' he said. ‘It's going to be terribly inconvenient, you realise.'

‘What is?'

‘Having to step over my dead body every time you go through the front door.'

‘Nonsense,' Helen replied. ‘I'll have a little bridge built over you.'

‘All right,' George said, stifling a yawn. ‘If you're so dead set on having a house, what's wrong with this one?'

‘What, this place?'

‘Why not? It works. It does the job. It's got four walls, and I'm pretty sure I saw a roof lying about somewhere, the last time I looked.'

‘Don't be silly.'

‘Oh.' George shrugged. ‘Anyway, that's a bit academic, really, just at the moment, what with Lundqvist still on the loose and everything. Strictly between you and me, that chap's beginning to get on my nerves.'

‘You don't say.'

George nodded. ‘All right, at the moment he's not posing any direct threat. Actually, I'm not particularly bothered when he is. So long as he's out in the open where I can see him, bless his little heart, I can generally deal with him without too much bother.' He frowned, and rubbed his lips with his knuckles. ‘But this business of hassling my friends really isn't on. Something's got to be done about it.'

‘True.' Helen gazed out over the canal, watching a pair of slightly larger than average seagulls hovering over a gondolaful of German tourists. Every few minutes, they would suddenly dive like Stukas, come up on the gondola's blind side and pass uncalled-for remarks in German directly behind the head of a member of the party. During the diversion thereby occasioned, one of them would then bite a further chunk out of the little girl's ice-cream cone. ‘Easier said than done, though, don't you think? I mean, if there was a simple way of stopping the wretched man from bothering us, we'd probably have thought of it by now. It's not exactly a new problem, is it?'

‘Not a simple way, no. On the other hand, simplicity isn't everything. I'd settle for fiendishly complicated like a shot, if only I could think of something.' He lifted his cup, found it empty, smiled into it and burnt his tongue on the result, thereby conclusively demonstrating that his mind wasn't on the job. ‘Anyway, in the meantime we've got to do something about this Columbus thing.'

‘The difficult bit.'

George grinned. ‘Comparatively difficult,' he said. ‘All we really need to wrap it all up is a good, dirty presidential election.'

 

‘Turning to item five on the agenda,' said the Finance Director, ‘can we start with you, please, Steve? Any new marketing initiatives in the pipeline?'

The Sales Director picked up his pencil and revolved it slowly between his claws. ‘One or two balls in the air right now,' he replied. ‘Something we're very keen on at the moment is the Damn-A-Friend promotion.' He turned to face the projector screen, and picked up the remote control. ‘Just to remind you of the basic thinking on this one, the idea is that if you the punter can bring about the damnation of a fellow human being between the first of February and the end of May, you win a recurring dream holiday for two in the guilt complex of your choice. This one works particularly well as we've got very substantial stockpiles of guilt at the moment, and we don't seem to be getting through the stuff nearly as quickly as we used to.'

‘I blame the psychiatrists,' interrupted the Personnel Director, waking from a light doze. ‘Damn interfering little sods, always mucking up perfectly good personality disorders and stopping people murdering their fathers. Heaven's too good for 'em, if you ask me.'

‘Thank you, Dennis. Anything else, Steve? Got anything lined up for the winter season?'

‘Ants.'

The Finance Director looked at his colleague over the rim of his spectacles. ‘Ants, Steve?'

The Sales Director nodded eagerly. ‘That's it,' he said. ‘It's like a sort of sequel, really, or maybe spin-off's the word I'm looking for.'

There was a brief moment of puzzled silence, broken by the Company Secretary.

‘Oh I
see
, you mean as in “Lord of the”. Nice idea.'

The Sales Director nodded his head in acknowledgement. ‘Yeah,' he said. ‘I mean, flies, all a bit passé for the Nineties. What I had in mind was, every time you break a commandment, you get a voucher thing. So many points, depending on which commandment and the level of breach. Then, when you've collected enough vouchers, you can cash them in for ants. And when you've got
x
amount of ants, you write in for your badge and become a Deputy Lord. Pretty neat scheme, I thought.'

‘Sorry to interrupt,' broke in the Finance Director, ‘but why ants particularly?'

‘We've got a lot of 'em,' the Sales Director replied. ‘Anyway, when you've collected enough vouchers, you automatically go through to the prize draw. Pretty straightforward really.'

‘Gimmicky.'

‘Yes, thank you, Harry.' The Sales Director glowered at his colleague from Production. ‘Actually, I don't accept that it
is
gimmicky. Good, solid marketing ploy, year's duration to start with and we'll see how we go from there. And best of all, the raw materials aren't going to cost us a penny. Look, I'll run a few projected figures up on the screen and you can see for yourselves.'

When the slide-show finally ground to a halt, the Finance Director thanked his colleague and drew the attention of the meeting to the final scheduled item.

‘Any suggestions?' he asked.

There was a silence as deep and awkward as a badly-flooded gutter. At last, the Personnel Director raised his hand.

‘I've been thinking,' he said. ‘Why don't we just parole the bastard?'

The Finance Director looked at him. ‘Go on,' he said.

‘Well,' continued Personnel, ‘I think it's the obvious answer. There's no chance I can see of getting him back. Security's made no headway at all, Lundqvist's been a complete washout, and every time we even try anything, the bugger makes us all look like complete idiots. That holiday stunt . . .'