Provender Gleed (12 page)

'Don't you?' said her husband, flatly. 'I'm not so sure. Face it, we've waged wars with them in the past. Literal wars. Twice this century we've virtually razed Europe, battling them. Oh, it
looked
like it was about armies invading territory, annexation, occupation, political power blocs colliding -
we
know it wasn't. This Provender situation, it's clearly just an extension of that. A new form of war. A new battlefront opening up.'

'No, you're wrong, Prosper. This is paranoid talk. There's just no way they'd, out of the blue, they'd --'

One of the drawing room's three doors sprang wide open and Fortune came striding through.

'Right!' he said, thrusting the door shut behind him. He was still in his devil get-up, although he had relinquished his horns and pitchfork and, for the sake of warmth and decorum, had donned a smoking jacket borrowed from his brother. He was also still not entirely sobered up, although his drunkenness had been mostly alleviated by a sense of mission, and by several cups of espresso from the kitchen. 'This is the situation out there. Prov's definitely not in the grounds. They've done sweeps of the estate, grid-pattern, military-style. Carver's running the whole shebang and you can take the man out of the army but you can't take the ... and so forth. All the guests have gone. All the catering staff and that lot have been allowed to leave too. The set breakers have been put on hold. All they've been told is that we don't need them yet. The excuse is you lot want a lie-in, don't want to be disturbed by a bunch of blokes hammering away all morning. We'll have to let them come this afternoon at the latest, otherwise it'll look like things have gone awry.'

Fortune pronounced the last word
or-ree
, for reasons unknown even to himself. It was just one of his little verbal tics.

'So,' he went on, 'we've got the rest of the morning to keep searching, though somehow I don't think we'll have any more luck. The main thing is, as far as I'm aware nobody knows a thing about this except us and the security personnel, and we can be pretty sure they won't tell a soul. They're trained to keep schtum and they know that if one of them blabs and we find out who, he or she will never be employed anywhere else again ever. So that's your information blackout right there, Prosp. This isn't going public unless or until we want it to.'

'Or the kidnappers want it to,' said Cynthia. 'Any idea how they got Provender off the estate?'

'Carver's looking into that. Seems there might be some sort of anomaly. Something to do with the catering staff. It may be relevant, it may not, who knows. Carver's on to it, at any rate. Frankly, if I was the chap in charge of catering and I'd made a goof of some sort, I'd be quaking in my boots right now.'

'And has Great been informed?'

'Still asleep, apparently.'

'He'll need to be told, but it should be broken to him gently. Someone in his state of health...'

'I'm sure the man with the scar will know how to handle it.' Fortune eyed avidly the items of breakfast food ranged around the room. 'Blimey, I'm famished. Mind if I tuck in?'

'It's not at its freshest. We could ring for more.'

'Not too fussed about freshness.' Within moments Fortune's cheeks were bulging with buttered and marmaladed roll, which he washed down with slurps of room-temperature coffee. Glancing up from his repast, he noticed that his arrival had done little to raise morale. The faces around him were as glum as when he had entered. This perturbed him. If Fortune Gleed had any particular talent, it was the ability to lift the mood of a room. Usually all he had to do was walk in.

'Oh come on,' he said. 'This is going to turn out fine. Of course it is.' He took another look around. 'Isn't it?'

16

Is spoon-fed Provender the last of the corn flakes and held up the glass of orange juice for him to sip. Some of the juice missed his mouth and dribbled down his chin. She swabbed the drips away with a wad of paper towel.

'I feel like I'm six months old,' he said.

It wasn't much of a joke, and the laugh he chased it up with wasn't much of a laugh either. All the same, Is felt a prickle of admiration. In his position, would she be capable of making wisecracks?

'I wouldn't know about six months old,' she said. 'I've fed sixty-year-olds like this, though.'

'You're a nurse, aren't you?'

She hesitated, cursing herself. Damien had been adamant that they gave away nothing about themselves. No clues to their identities whatsoever. She wasn't sure, however, if this was a practical precaution or if Damien was insisting on it because that was what kidnappers conventionally did: remained anonymous to their victims. When all was said and done, this wasn't a conventional kidnapping.

She decided it didn't matter. After all, she had already given Provender her real name. She hadn't meant to, but he had surprised her by asking for it at the ball, and her mind had gone blank. Instead of mustering up a false name, she had let the real one slip out. There was nothing she could do about that now, and similarly, there was no point trying to deny she was a nurse. Even if it wasn't obvious from the injection and the sphygmomanometer, that remark of hers about sixty-year-olds put it beyond doubt. She resolved, however, to be more careful in future.

'Good guess,' she said. 'Well done.'

Provender nodded. 'The way you are with that blood pressure thing. Very professional. And,' he added, 'you seem like you're used to caring for people.'

'This an attempt to get on my good side? Win me over? Because if so, it's not going to work.'

Had his eyes been visible, she knew she would have seen them wince.

'No, I only... It was an observation, nothing more.'

'Right, then. Fine. Just so's you know. We're not going to be getting into any hostage-hostage-taker bonding here.'

She clacked the empty juice glass into the cereal bowl, with finality, and stood up to go.

'Um, Is?'

'Yes?'

'I'm sorry, I don't want to be a pain or anything, but... I've been holding it off, and I can't any more.'

'Holding what off? Oh. You need to pee.'

'I need to pee. Quite badly, as a matter of fact.'

She set down the glass and bowl. 'All right. Listen, though. You're going to have to do this with my help because I'm not untying your hands or taking off the blindfold.'

'I'm not all that comfortable with --'

'Tough. Now, stand up. I've got your arm. I'm taking your weight. Both feet flat on the floor. I know it's difficult with them tied together. Yes, that's it, there we go...'

She stationed Provender in front of the toilet, lifted the lid, and briskly unzipped his fly. As she delved into his trousers, he tried to bat her hand away.

'I can manage.'

'No, you can't. Men have bad aim at the best of times. God knows what you'd be like blindfold.'

'I could always sit.'

'Don't be such a baby.'

Provender fixed his jaw in an awkward jut as she groped through the flap in his underpants and fished out his penis.

Is had handled more strangers' penises than she cared to remember - all in the line of duty, naturally. Dealing with a male patient's appendage was one of a nurse's less agreeable tasks, although it was far from being the worst (wiping off vomit and cleaning up shit vied for
that
honour). The trick was to think of the penis as just another anatomical part, no more interesting than a toe or a nose. Failing that, you had to try to regard it as just a functional object, a tube that just happened to be made of flesh. Normally, of course, she would be wearing latex gloves, a thin but crucial barrier between clinical and intimate. She made a mental note to buy some. This wasn't going to be the last time she had to help Provender pee.

'Your fingers,' Provender said with a hiss. 'Cold.'

'That's your excuse, is it?'

'What?'

'Nothing. Sorry.'

Provender screwed up his face, then gave a sigh.

'I can't. Nothing's coming.'

'Relax. Try to pretend I'm not here.'

'Difficult.'

'Count yourself lucky. We did think about catheterising you.'

'You wouldn't.'

'But I could.'

Again, Provender concentrated.

'Still nothing?'

'Nope,' he said, pained.

'I'll run a tap.'

Water spattered into the basin.

'I really --'

'Think watery thoughts. And unclench your pelvic floor.'

He turned his head towards her, as though he could see her through the blindfold. 'I don't have a pelvic floor. Do I?'

'Of course you do.'

'I thought only women had...'

'Well, you're wrong.'

The water continued to pour, but it was the only thing that did.

'Can we talk about something maybe?' Provender said. 'You know, as a distraction. Take my mind off the problem at hand.'

'What would you like to talk about?'

'How about the name Is? It's short for something, right? Isabel?'

'No.'

'Isadora?'

'No.'

'Isolde?'

'No.'

'I'm all out of Is-es.'

In spite of her earlier resolution, Is felt that giving him one more tiny nugget of information couldn't do any harm. He had half her name already, and the other half was identical to that half. Effectively, she was giving him nothing new.

'Isis.'

'Isis?'

'Ancient Egyptian goddess. Wife of Osiris. Mother of Horus. Associated with nature and fertility. Symbolised by --'

'I know who Isis is. My parents spent a shit-load of money so that I'd be educated to know things like that.'

'Ooh, well, aren't you the lucky one.'

'No, I didn't mean it like that.'

'How did you mean it, then?'

'I... I don't know. Not like that, though.' He tried an ingratiating smile. 'So it's Isis, is it? It's a nice name.'

'My mum thought so. I don't.'

'What's wrong with it?'

'For one thing, who wants to be named after a goddess? Talk about raising expectations. Also, it looks odd, written down. Repetitive. An 'is' too far. So I shorten it.'

'Why the second syllable, though? Normally people go for the first.'

'Right, I'd really want to be called "Ice". I just prefer Is. Is is sort of ... what it is. It just is.'

'Very "in the moment".'

'Don't mock.'

'Very existential.'

'I'm warning you.'

'Ow! Not so tight!'

'Then don't mock,
Provender
. Hang on, what's this?'

'Oh, thank Christ. Finally.' A smile of something close to bliss crescented Provender's lips.

'That's it. Don't lose it now. Keep going. Stay calm. Don't clench up. Relax.'

'Oh, that is
so
much better...'

17

Prosper Gleed's study was a symphony in wood. Oak-panelled walls, inset with oak bookcases, stood between a parquet floor and a beech-beamed ceiling lined with cork tiles. A mahogany desk and matching chair dominated the centre, with a teak coffee table nearby on which various wooden ornaments rested, including a lacquered-ebony inro box - gift of the Takeshis, Japan's other main Family beside the Omarus - and a carved cherrywood bust of Rufus Gleed, the likeness of the Family's founder copied from the only extant portrait of him, which hung elsewhere in the house. The louvred window shutters, which stood open, were wood. The inkwell and even the fountain pen on the desktop were wood, as was the housing for Prosper's videotyper screen (for the record, dark-stained ash). The lighting sconces, shaped to resemble candelabra, were wood. Anywhere you looked, wherever wood could be used, wood would.

As Cynthia entered, she saw Prosper's Phone was stationed in one corner of the room, looking, it must be said, somewhat wooden himself. There wasn't much to do, when you were a Phone and not in use, except stand and stare into the middle distance, sentry-style. You must never yawn or shuffle your feet. Above all you must never give any sign that the communications unit strapped to you, all sixty pounds of it, was starting to get heavy. To be a Phone was a job only for those with a strong constitution and a high boredom threshold. Others need not apply.

Prosper, at his desk, was absorbed in contemplation of something on his videotyper screen. To judge by the red-highlighted figures in the right-hand margin, he was studying that subset of the Family accounts which related to the Gleeds' boardroom battles with the Kuczinskis, the only field of fiscal conflict in which the Family's losses currently outweighed its gains.

'Prosper?'

He looked up. Blinked.

'Would you send your Phone out for a moment?'

Prosper frowned, then turned to the man in the corner and clicked his fingers. The Phone stepped smartly out of the room.

Cynthia perched on the edge of the desk near her husband and folded her arms.

'Tell me you were showing off back there,' she said, nodding in the direction of the second-largest drawing room. 'Tell me it was just manly breast-beating.'

'I don't know what you're --'

'You know perfectly well what I'm talking about. It was for the girls' benefit. So that you could look more like a father. You don't sincerely believe the Kuczinskis are behind all this.'

'On the contrary, I'm trying to think of reasons why they might
not
be.'

'I gave you reasons. Plenty of them.'

'And none, in my view, holds up against the fact that our two Families have been at loggerheads for two centuries, more or less. They hate us. They'd stop at nothing to undermine us. Won't you at least admit, Cynthia, that if any Family was responsible for kidnapping Provender, it would be the Kuczinskis?'

'I agree, but --'

'There we are, then.'

'Let me finish. I was going to say, I agree, but without any form of proof, all you're doing is making wild and potentially dangerous accusations. Wouldn't it be better to wait till we know more? Till, for instance, we actually hear from the kidnappers?'