Provender Gleed (19 page)

Carver butted in on his little reverie. 'And naturally, should you succeed in bringing about a satisfactory resolution to the situation, the financial rewards will be great indeed.'

A fiftieth-floor office
, Milner thought,
with commanding views of the city
.

Not just one but
two
receptionist-cum-secretaries
, thought Moore,
so there's one for each of us and no squabbling over which of us she likes better
.

'But.' Carver clamped a hand over the money, as if about to scoop it away. 'Just to make matters absolutely clear, gentlemen.' He looked at Milner, then at Moore. 'No one else is to know about this. You are to do what you do in absolute isolation. Your lips are to stay hermetically sealed. For the duration of your investigation, you are to avoid mentioning to anyone what you are up to and why. The consequences of failing to comply with this stipulation... Well, I don't need to paint you a picture, do I?'

Milner and Moore both shook their heads.

'Though if I did,' Carver continued, 'it would be a picture not unlike the wilder imaginings of Bosch or Breughel. A canvas filled from corner to corner with suffering and hellfire and brimstone. Do I make myself clear?'

Milner and Moore both nodded.

'Crystal,' said Milner, in a faint voice.

'Very well then.' Carver let go of the money. 'I look forward to hearing from you as and when you have made any progress. The very best of luck to you, gentlemen. Let us hope your endeavours bear fruit, and quickly.'

25

For several minutes after Carver left, a thunderstruck silence hung over the Anagrammatic Detectives' office. The money sat on Milner's desk, note stacked on note to an impressive, almost inconceivable height. Neither man dared touch it in case, like a conjuror's illusion, it vanished. Both just stared.

Finally Milner said, 'I don't know which I'm more intimidated by - what he's asked us to do, or him himself.'

'He didn't scare you, did he?' said Moore.

'Me? Oh no. You?'

'Not a bit.'

Each looked the other in the eye and gave a shuddery laugh.

'Just out of curiosity,' said Milner, 'what's his first name?'

'Carver's? How should I know?'

'Oh come on. You're into the Families. You know.'

'I am
not
into the Families. I just ... I like to keep up with current affairs, that's all. It's important in our line of work to have a healthy interest in everything that goes on in the world. And the Families definitely count as current affairs.'

'So?'

'Neal. I'm pretty sure his first name is Neal.'

'En, ee, eye, el?'

'En, ee,
a
, el.'

'NEAL CARVER.' Milner tapped his lip contemplatively.

'LEAN CRAVER,' Moore offered.

'I think we can do better than a simple metallege,' his partner said.

'LANCE RAVER.'

'Doesn't feel right. No, I've got it.' Milner clapped his hands together. 'CLAN REAVER. Quod erat demonstrandum.'

Moore half-smiled. 'CLAN REAVER. Yes, he's certainly the Gleeds' enforcer, isn't he. Their tame thug. Even at eighty-something years old.'

'He's that old?'

'And a veteran of the last war.'

'Really? God, no wonder we won.'

'That's where this came from.' Moore mimed a scar on his cheek. 'He got it during the Siege of Prague. Bayonet in the face. Carried on fighting anyway.'

'And you say you're not into the Families.'

Moore blushed. 'I have a retentive memory. Anyway, don't mock. We wouldn't have this case it all if it wasn't for me and my ... interest.'

'Actually, true,' said Milner, nodding. 'Full credit to you, Romeo.'

Moore accepted the compliment magnanimously.

'And with that in mind,' Milner said, 'perhaps we should get cracking. Time, after all, as Mr Carver indicated, is of the essence.'

Both men opened drawers in their desks. Milner took out a ringbound pad of unruled paper and a pen, while Moore produced a green felt bag tied with a drawstring. The bag contained dozens of square plastic tiles, each with a capital letter on it, taken from a well-known boardgame. He poured them onto the desktop, spread them out and began flipping the ones that were face-down face-up.

This was perhaps the most significant dissimilarity between the two men: the technique by which each generated anagrams. Milner preferred what he called 'the old-fashioned method', the crossword solver's tried-and-trusted trick of writing the letters out in a jumble. Moore, on the other hand, found it easier and more convenient to use Scrabble tiles. All you had to do was keep swapping them around and swapping them around in various combinations. No wasting paper. No having to jot the letters down all over again if one jumble failed to yield a result. Milner thought Moore's technique noisy and untraditional. Moore thought Milner's crude and labour-intensive. Each had long since given up trying to persuade the other of the rightness of
his
system.

And here was where the art began. Here was where Milner and Moore showed that there was more to being an Anagrammatic Detective than simply the ability to muck around with letters.

Because it wasn't just about making new words from old. Instinct was involved. A certain name or phrase could be rearranged into dozens of possible permutations. Knowing which was the correct permutation, which of all of them was the one you were looking for - that took a special talent. It was almost preternatural. Neither Milner nor Moore could easily explain it. Certain results just felt right. You saw them and you knew. Couldn't be put any more precisely than that. A tingle in the belly. A prickling at the back of the neck. The answer leapt out at you. You knew.

The sheer enormity of the case - a Family member, kidnapped - seemed to fall away as they set to work. Quickly it became a matter of words. The words were what counted. The words would reveal the truth. Milner scribbled, pondered, tore off a sheet, scribbled again. Moore lined up tiles, frowned, slid them around with his fingertips, lined them up afresh. An hour passed. Each man looked at names. People's names, the names of places. Every relevant reference he could think of. At one point Moore went scurrying off to retrieve Friday's newspaper from the waste-paper basket. He leafed through it, located the article he was looking for, and returned to the Scrabble tiles with renewed vigour. Milner, meanwhile, consulted a local London telephone directory and noted down with keenness what he found there.

They broke for coffee at eleven o'clock and briefly compared notes. To their surprise, they discovered they were at odds with their conclusions. Moore was becoming convinced that the kidnapping was an inside job, while Milner was of the view that some outside agency must be responsible. They seldom, if ever, disagreed over a case, and so they were perturbed. Each decided to follow up the other's line of approach to see if it had merit. Pen scratched. Tiles click-clacked. Another hour passed, and still neither man could descry how the other could possibly be correct.

'Look,' said Moore, 'it's obvious. Provender and his cousin Arthur - they don't get on. I've read about it. Arthur's this upstart from the wrong side of the bed. He's never made any secret of the fact that he thinks he'd be a better heir than Provender. Big chip on his shoulder about that.'

'Big enough for him to kidnap his own cousin?'

'Why ever not? And for God's sake, his name screams it out. REGALED HURT. REAL RED THUG. RED LAUGHTER. HATRED GRUEL. 'E GLARED RUTH.'

'Bit of a reach, that last one.'

'I know, but still. For me, Arthur Gleed's your man. His name is a guilty party's name ten times over.'

'Wasn't he at the ball when Provender was taken?'

'Yes, he was. I checked the invitee-acceptance list in the paper. But that doesn't mean he couldn't have masterminded the whole thing. Perfect alibi. He was there all along, in plain sight, partying away, while henchmen carried out the dirty deed. And look. Here's the clincher. He's an actor, right, and he's appearing in a play. There's a preview tonight and the premiere's tomorrow night. Guess where it's on at?'

Milner shrugged.

'The Shortborn Theatre.'

'OK. SHORTBORN THEATRE. Let me think.'

'I'll save you the trouble. BROTHER SON THREAT. Arthur is the son of Prosper Gleed's black-sheep brother Acquire. It all hangs together.'

'Tenuously,' said Milner. 'I don't buy it. I don't buy the whole "inside" angle at all. I've gone through the Gleeds, all of Provender's immediate kin, and they've all come up innocent. I've not got a "hit" off any of them. Like his dad. PROSPER GLEED. GREED PROPELS. Now, no question, greed and Family go together. You can't have one without the other.'

'And you're always likely to get GREED if there's GLEED involved.'

'Quite. Practically an open goal. But greed, if you're Family, is hardly a motive to commit crime. It's more a way of life with them. Then there's Provender's mother. CYNTHIA GLEED. THE NICE G LADY. I even threw her maiden name into the mix. CYNTHIA LAMAS GLEED. Know what I got? CHEATING MALE'S LADY. Straightforward enough. Nothing sinister there. Her husband's famed for his extramarital affairs. Even I know about that. And THE LADY'S ANGELIC MA, that was my other one. Again, that would seem to sum her up, wouldn't it? And exonerate her.'

Moore conceded the point, reluctantly.

'As for the oldest member of the Family,' Milner went on, 'GREAT GLEED got me AGED GELTER. He's certainly aged, I think you'd agree. And "gelter"? Gelt is what a Family's all about. But as before, hardly a motive. I mean, if Provender's been kidnapped in order to be held to ransom, it
can't
be an inside job. The Gleeds are filthy rich. They don't need to make money, and more to the point why would they try and hold
themselves
to ransom?'

'Carver said there hadn't been a ransom note yet.'

'Yet.'

'But if Arthur's the culprit, maybe ransom isn't what he's after. Maybe it's recognition, or to get rid of his rival.'

'You think this might be murder?'

'If it isn't already, it could become. Provender could just, you know,
disappear
. For ever.'

Milner looked doubtful. 'Somewhat extreme.'

'We're talking about Families. Nothing's too extreme where they're concerned. With Provender out of the picture, Arthur stands to become the next head of the Family. Admittedly he'll have a hard task ahead of him. The chain of descendancy will have been broken. The Gleeds'll plummet in the Family ratings. But he'll be head all the same. And if the only thing that stands between him and that is Provender... Well, in his shoes, wouldn't you be tempted?'

'To kill my own cousin?'

'Arrange to have him killed. Keeping your own hands as clean as possible.'

'I don't know. I'd like to think not.' Milner tapped his ring-bound pad. 'I still think you're barking up the wrong tree, though. I'm getting a definite reading from Provender himself. His name --'

'His name,' Moore interjected, 'doesn't ring any of
my
bells. Look at it. PROVEN GREED-LED. You yourself said it. Greed and Family - virtually synonymous. And even with his middle name, Oregano, thrown into the mix...'

'Hold on, his middle name is Oregano?'

'It's something of a tradition with the Gleeds. They had their origins in the spice trade.'

'I know that, but
Oregano
?'

Moore shrugged. 'Provender itself isn't exactly normal, is it? Anyway, as I was saying, you throw Oregano into the mix...'

'For added flavour.'

'Thank you. And you get GREEN ROAD DEVELOPER, with the letters G, O and N left over. Which sprang out at me, but I have so say, what the hell does it mean? I can't think of a context in which it would apply.'

'And those left-over letters.'

'Yes. Messy.'

'Well, Romeo, to get back to what
I
was saying - his name by itself isn't terribly productive, as you have just shown, but splice it together with his predicament...'

'As in?'

'As in PROVENDER GLEED STOLEN.'

'And?'

Milner sucked on the cap of his pen. 'And you get confirmation that this was an outside job. You even get where he's being held and a clue to the identity of the person holding him.'

'Elucidate, please.'

'You don't believe me.'

'I'm a little sceptical.'

'Then let me propose this, Romeo. As we each appear to have our own theory about the case, why don't we pursue our leads separately?'

'What?'

'I know. A radical departure for us but, as things stand, a sensible one. Clearly we're not going to see eye-to-eye over this, so let's make it a competition. Not unlike our morning crossword.'

'Winner takes the dosh? Is that what you're saying?'

'Christ no. I'd never be that mercenary.'

'Glad to hear it.'

'No, just a gentlemanly challenge between friends. Your investigative skills against mine. We'll split this' - he pointed to the money - 'so neither of us will be out of pocket. By the way - cash. We're not telling the accountant. Agreed?'

'Agreed.'

'Good. So we split it, we go our separate ways, we work independently. It is a major case, after all.'

'It's not just major, Merlin. It's the biggest case we've ever had. It's the one that'll make us.'

'All the more reason, then, that we divide our forces. We can cover twice as much ground that way and double our chances of finding Provender. What d'you say?'

Moore couldn't fault his partner's logic. 'And whichever of us cracks the case, we both share the fee? Equally?'

'Of course. Like I said, this isn't about the money. It's about intellectual satisfaction.'

'And bragging rights.'

'They might come into it.'

Moore sat back in his chair. Milner, on the other side of the room, mirrored the action.

'All right,' Moore said. 'You're on.'