Provender Gleed (13 page)

'And what if we don't hear from them? What if Provender is halfway to Warsaw by now? You have no idea what the Kuczinskis are like, Cynthia. You don't have to deal with them like I do. You don't have to sit with them at the Annual Family Congress and watch those beady red eyes and those white faces and those ridiculous filed teeth of theirs. You don't have to watch them sip blood from wine goblets and smack their lips with relish. Blood freely donated by East European ClanFans. Ugh! They're disgusting. They're worse than monsters - they're humans playing at being monsters. Real monsters, if such things exist, can't help being what they are. The Kuczinskis can. So don't tell me this isn't something they'd do, because I know them and this is exactly the sort of thing they'd do.'

'Then why not contact them? Get the Phone back in and ring them right now? Speak to Stanislaw Kuczinski and ask him straight out: do you have my son?'

'Because, for one thing, it's mid-morning in Poland. They'll all be fast asleep. And for another thing, he'll almost certainly lie and say he doesn't have a clue what I'm talking about. And for a third thing, I've had a better idea.'

'Which is?'

'All in good time. You know, though, Cynthia, it does upset me a bit.'

'What does?'

'The fact that, here am I, I'm faced with a crisis, our son's been taken, our Family's been attacked in its own homestead, bearded in its lair, and I'm trying to do something about it, and all I get from you is grief. Not support. Not encouragement. My own wife, who's been harping on at me for years not to be such a wastrel and a layabout - and those are just some of the kinder names you've called me - my own wife is unwilling to back me to the hilt when I need her to.'

'I'd back you, Prosper,' Cynthia said. 'Of course I would. If I believed you were doing the right thing. If I didn't feel you were about to take some precipitate course of action that could lead to God knows what.'

'So much for a wife's unconditional love for her husband. So much for man and woman becoming one flesh. Were you asleep during our marriage vows?'

'Oh,
Dios mío
, Prosper! Don't talk to me about "unconditional love". Don't you dare.
¡Hipócrita!
This from a man who'll screw anything in a skirt. A man who'll disappear for days on end and I don't know if he's in a casino in Monte Carlo, at the Kentucky Derby, holed up in some high-class Bangkok brothel, or what! If I've given you anything over the years it's love, patience, tolerance, devotion, way above and beyond the call of duty. I've stood by you while any other woman would have divorced you long ago and made it as public and traumatic as possible. I've put up with your behaviour, I've taken more shit from you than anyone deserves, and damn it, if that doesn't give me the right to tell you when I think you're making a bad decision, I don't know what does. Bah!' She spat. '
¡Hijo de puta!
Sometimes you disgust me.'

'I understand you're upset by all this, Cynthia.' Prosper's hands came up in a placatory gesture. 'It's hardly surprising. We're all under incredible strain right now, and if --'

She hit him, open-handed, intending more to shock than to hurt. The fact that the blow clearly did hurt, however, a lot, was not exactly a source of displeasure to her.

When he had stopped rubbing his cheek and hissing through clenched teeth, Prosper said, 'Well. Hmm. I'll put that down to heat of the moment. Lack of sleep. Time of the month, maybe.'

'Put it down to whatever you like,' she replied, icily. 'You know as well as I do you've had it coming for ages.'

'You won't change my mind, Cynthia. No matter how many times you slap me.'

'A skull as thick as yours, it'd take a sledgehammer to get through to you.'

'I'm convinced the Kuczinskis are behind this. Convinced. And the first thing I'm going to do is get them to confess it. And the next thing I'm going to do is threaten them with dire consequences if they don't give Provender back.'

'You're mad.'

'No, I'm someone who knows what's best for his Family and will do whatever it takes to protect his Family.'

'This isn't just some game, Prosper. This isn't a spin of a roulette wheel or a draw at blackjack. Lives could be at stake here. Thousands, perhaps millions. You'd go to war with the Kuczinskis without even knowing for sure they're guilty?'

'I'll find that out first, and then, if war's what it has to be, then war it is. Phone!'

'Prosper, I'm begging you. Wait.'

'Wait for what? The Kuczinskis to take Gratitude as well? Extravagance?
Phone!
'

The study door open and the Phone poked his head in. 'I'm sorry, sir, did you want me?'

'Dammit, man, are you deaf? I've been shouting for you for hours.'

'Prosper...'

'Come over here,' Prosper said to the Phone. To his wife he said, 'I'm invoking an Extraordinary Family Congress. I'll get word out to Massimiliano Borgia de'Medici. He'll do the rest. I want Stanislaw Kuczinski to look me in the eye across the Congress Chamber and tell me he doesn't have my son. I want everyone to see that shifty vampire wannabe squirm as he lies to my face.'

'Prosper, I can't condone --'

'Not asking you to.' He snatched the receiver handset off the Phone's back. The Phone, meanwhile, reached over his own shoulder and hurriedly raised the retractable aerial on his backpack, then pressed a lever on his chestplate that flipped up the rotary dial.

'Prosper --'

'Borgia de'Medici,' Prosper said to the Phone. 'Come on, get on with it.'

The Phone dialled the number, and Prosper tapped his fingers while waiting for the connection to be made.

Cynthia spoke her husband's name again, in vain.

'Hello! Yes!' Prosper barked into the receiver. 'Signor Massimiliano? Prosper Gleed here.
Buòn giorno
.
Come sta
? No, not so good here, I'm afraid. Now listen...'

18

Damien had asked to be woken at midday. Venturing into his bedroom, Is was struck by the messiness of it. Heaps of clothes cluttered the floor. Drawers were wide open, cupboard doors the same. The rattan window blinds hung at angles. Damien's collection of books, of which he was so proud, had fallen into disarray, filling their shelves haphazardly, most of them canted rather than upright. Worst of all, the whole room reeked. Unwashed laundry. Unkempt male. It had never, Is thought, been this untidy or this malodorous when
she
had been a semi-regular occupant here. Back then, when she and Damien were lovers, he had made a concerted effort to clean and be clean. Six months on, that was no longer the case. When she had let him go, he had let himself go.

She spent a few moments inspecting the books, seeing if any new titles had appeared. This was Damien's ideological library, set apart from the run-of-the-mill hardbacks and paperbacks that could be found elsewhere in the flat. The books in the bedroom were the ones he returned to again and again, the ones he cherished. Academic treatises and works of political philosophy rubbed shoulders with less reasoned but more impassioned tomes. Anthologies of anti-Family writing. Tracts deploring the Families' stranglehold over ordinary people's lives. Angry denunciations of the public's fascination with all things Familial. And of course the famous what-if? novel, penned by Anonymous,
The Meritocrats
, which posited a world where the Borgias and the de'Medicis had not joined forces in the Sixteenth Century and become
de facto
rulers of Italy and therefore had not inspired the rise of Families in other nations. Utopic in outlook, and a dense and immensely dull read,
The Meritocrats
had arrived on the anti-Familial underground scene roughly three years back and swiftly become a sensation. It was reputed to have found a home in more than a million households across the world, despite being available only in blurrily-printed and badly-bound foolscap
samizdat
form, and was a particular favourite among university students, who passed it around like a naughty secret. Is herself did not know anyone other than Damien who owned a copy and thought the 'million' estimate might be something of an exaggeration. She had also, despite several noble attempts, never managed to finish the book. She was somewhat ashamed of that. It was a seminal work. As Damien once said, 'Anyone who hates the Families and hasn't read
The Meritocrats
doesn't truly hate the Families.' And maybe that was so and maybe Is didn't truly hate the Families - but she thought she did, and she thought that hatred wasn't all you needed to get you through to the end of Anonymous's seven-hundred-and-fifty-page doorstop. The patience of a saint and the endurance of a marathon runner were also required. It was a novel in name only. In lieu of plot there was a series of barely connected events. In lieu of characters there were a cast of ciphers who parroted the author's opinions. Each time she had borrowed Damien's copy, Is had vowed to plough all the way through. Each time, usually somewhere around page 50, it had defeated her.

She leaned down and shook Damien by the shoulder, and kept shaking him till he surfaced blearily and bleatingly from sleep. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he sat up and stared at his knees while he sorted his thoughts. Damien was never at his best, newly woken.

'Kettle's on,' Is said.

He grunted approval.

'And Provender's fine,' she added. 'As fine as you'd expect, anyway.'

He half nodded.

'I've fed him, relieved him.' She paused. 'He seems pretty docile. I was wondering...'

'If you're going to say what I think you are,' Damien said thickly, 'forget it.'

'I doubt he'd try to escape.'

'Of course he would.'

'But he looks so uncomfortable.'

'Boo-hoo. My heart bleeds.'

'At least we could untie his ankles. Or if not that, take off the blindfold. He's seen my face already, for heaven's sake, and possibly yours too.'

'That's not what the blindfold's there for. It's there to keep him disorientated. Standard military practice with captives: deprivation of light, to make them acquiescent. Like hooding a falcon.'

'And to dehumanise him as well, maybe? So you don't have to look him in the eye?'

'Is.' Damien fixed her with his gaze. 'No. Let's not have any of this. No compassion for him. He's a Gleed, for fuck's sake.'

'That's not
his
fault.'

'I can't believe you said that.' Damien levered himself up off the bed. He was naked except for underpants, and the act of standing showed off his musculature to full effect. The whole of him tautened or flexed, a massed rippling of lean, fatless flesh. The rippling continued as he pulled on a plain shirt and a pair of cords. He wasn't innately graceful, but everything in his body moved and meshed just as it should and that lent him a kind of fundamental physical harmony.

Buttoning his shirt, he turned to face Is. 'No Family member is innocent. You know that. They can't hide behind "Ooh, it's not my fault, I didn't ask to be born". They're part of the cabal from the moment they're conceived. Because it's genetic. It's in the blood. They go on about it all the time, don't they? Blood, lineage, and so on. It wouldn't matter if it wasn't all-important to them, but it is, and so they can't have it both ways. Either they're Family, every last one of them, or their entire massive con job falls apart. There are no exceptions. Think of it like the Catholics and Original Sin. They're all tainted, and no amount of denial or distancing's ever going to alter that.'

He jabbed a finger at her.

'Are we clear?'

Is said, 'It doesn't mean you and I can't show him a little humaneness.'

'Humaneness,' said Damien, 'is what the Families have never shown towards the millions of people they've exploited, harmed and killed over time. Besides, we're not starving him. We haven't hurt him. If you ask me, he's come off pretty well, all things considered.'

In the main room of the flat, the kettle began whistling. Damien strode out of the bedroom, and minutes later was to be found hunched at the table gulping down slices of toast and the first of several cups of tea. He had the television on, tuned to one of the news channels.

'Nothing about us,' he said to Is, gesturing at the TV. 'The Gleeds have sat on it, just like I thought they would. Keeping it in the Family.' He smirked. 'What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall at Dashlands House right now. I'd be able to watch them all flapping around like arseholes.
And
I'd be able to leave little dots of shit all over their windowsills.' The smirk became a guffaw. 'Oh come on, Is, you have to admit that was pretty funny.'

Is, rather than admit anything, got busy in the kitchen area, preparing a lunchtime sandwich for herself and for Provender.

Damien paid a visit to the bathroom, and she heard him chatting to their prisoner while he took a long and loud piss. Damien's tone was jovial but, she thought, mockingly so. This was confirmed when she looked in on Provender shortly afterwards. He didn't appear in any way happier about his situation. She noticed splash marks on the uppers of his shoes and a few dribbles of urine on the floor by his feet.
Damien
.

She gave Provender his sandwich and sat on the toilet seat to eat hers.

'Thanks,' was all he said, when he had finished.

'Whatever he said to you,' Is said, meaning Damien, 'take it with a pinch of salt.'

'Oh, he was very friendly. I'm your honoured guest, apparently. And if I have any complaints about the living conditions, I'm to take them up with the hotel manager, whose name is Mr Couldn't Give A Toss.'

'That's his idea of a joke.'

'No, really?'

Damien, when Is emerged from the bathroom, was on the phone. 'Yup,' he said, 'all trussed up, nice and tight. He's not going anywhere.'

He listened briefly, then said, 'How long do you think I should leave it, then? I mean, they're expecting a note, aren't they? A phone call at the least.'

More listening.