Provender Gleed (20 page)

Milner grinned. He would not have thrown down the gauntlet if he hadn't been so confident that he was on the right track and his colleague on completely the wrong one. By the same token, Moore would not have picked the gauntlet up if he hadn't thought his take on the case was correct and Milner's hopelessly misguided.

The main thing was, personal rivalry aside, they were going to crack the case. Both of them were confident that, one way or another, the Anagrammatic Detective Agency was going to win the day.

They were forgetting that in such SELF-ASSURANCE lay the potential for A CARELESS SNAFU.

26

Massimiliano Borgia de'Medici, dapper little gent, comfortable with the weight of history and precedent that resided in his slender frame, a Family man to the marrow, called the Congress to order.

'
Signori, signore
.' His voice, though slight, was clear and carried far thanks to the Congress Chamber's impressive acoustics - the domed ceiling and the suspended disc-shaped baffles that bounced sound around. 'Gentlemen, ladies. I bid you all good afternoon and pray your attention.'

Gradually conversation dwindled around the concentric hoop-shaped tables, silence spreading from innermost to outermost, from premier Family to lowest-ranked. The hundred-or-so Family representatives at the edge of the room, in the proverbial cheap seats, were the last to go quiet. They seldom did as they were told straight away. They liked to remind everyone else they were there.

'Thank you,' said Borgia de'Medici. 'You will see that we have a number of absentees. The missing Family heads have all tendered formal regrets. They have prior commitments. However, we exceed the three-quarters quorum, so business may be conducted.'

He took care to keep his sentences short and leave gaps between them, for the benefit of the translators who accompanied several of the Family heads. A kind of massed whisper attended his statements, a Babel echo, as the translators did their job, leaning forward and murmuring in their employers' ears. Those Family heads who were conversant in English, the great majority, were allowed to bring along a companion in place of a translator, as moral support. By the rules of Congress, the companions were forbidden from speaking while the Congress was in session.

Fortune, who habitually fulfilled this function for his brother, found the no-speaking constraint almost unendurable. To compensate, he had devised a simple system of coughs and throat-clearings by which he could let Prosper know if he agreed or disagreed with the line Prosper was taking, and how vehemently. In extreme instances, when the system failed, he had been known to kick his brother in the leg, which usually achieved the desired effect.

He hoped that, today, no such drastic measures would be called for. He feared they would, though.

'An Extraordinary Congress is not lightly invoked,' said Borgia de'Medici. 'To ask the heads of Families to drop everything and come running is no mean thing. I say so not to undermine the reason for this meeting but to under
line
it. We are here to give audience to an accusation of the utmost gravity. We must devote our fullest attention to it and discuss it as honestly and frankly as we can. I have no need to remind you that anything said in the Chamber goes no further than the Chamber. You may speak your minds freely.'

Borgia de'Medici turned toward Prosper, who was three seats away from him on the central table.

'Signor Gleed,' he said. 'It is you who have summoned us here. Permit me to ask you to air your grievance.'

'Of course.' Prosper took a sip of water from the glass in front of him and stood up. Fortune, in the chair just behind him, reached forward to the table and grabbed his own glass, which contained a clear liquid which was not water. He took a sip and softly smacked his lips. Who said you had to be Russian to enjoy neat vodka?

Prosper ran his gaze around the central table till it came to rest on Stanislaw Kuczinski. For the space of several seconds he simply looked at his rival Family head, and Kuczinski simply looked back, red eyes fixed unwaveringly on Prosper's. Kuczinski was dressed in nothing but black, which set off the pallor of his skin and hair to extraordinary effect. Were it not for his eyes, and his rose-blush lips, he would have been devoid of all colour. He could have stepped straight out of a monochrome movie.

His companion, his twin sister Stanislawa, was similarly two-tone. Her outfit consisted of a black worsted two-piece with a sable tippet around her shoulders and, on her head, a black velvet Robin Hood cap topped with a raven's feather. Stanislawa shared with her brother the same sharp cheekbones, the same pointed chin, the same soft economy of gesture which in her was feline, in him effete. She also, if the rumours were to be believed, shared his bed. With the Kuczinskis, it wasn't just albinism that ran in the Family. There was a tradition of incest which earlier generations of Kuczinski had definitely indulged in - there was documentary proof - and which Stanislaw and Stanislawa at least
appeared
to be perpetuating, if the gloved hand with which Stanislawa was stroking her brother's neck right now was anything to go by.

Of course, it could merely have been for show. This was a Family, after all, which wished the world to believe they were vampires. They drank human blood (two glass goblets of the stuff sat before them now). They shunned sunlight. If they were prepared to go to those lengths to maintain a reputation, then incest, or even the feigning of incest, was nothing.

It was Prosper who broke the eye contact between him and Stanislaw Kuczinski. He would have gladly carried on staring, but his distaste for Kuczinski, for the man's very appearance, was too great. It threatened to overwhelm him and make him incoherent with loathing. When he looked at Kuczinski he thought of all the times the Kuczinski Family had outsmarted the Gleeds - snatched away some juicy business proposition from under their noses, bankrupted a corporation they knew the Gleeds were eyeing up, triggered a stock-market plunge that always somehow left the Gleeds out of pocket, generally indulged in sharp practices with no other goal than to inconvenience their age-old enemies. Prosper invariably struck back, but he rarely seemed to give as good as he got. Stanislaw Kuczinski had a far better business brain than he did. That, although Prosper hated to admit it, was another reason he despised him.

'My fellow Family heads,' Prosper said, and now it was his turn to be dogged by the susurrant translator echo. 'I stand before you today, not as a Family head myself, nor as a Gleed, but simply as a father. A worried father. A frightened father.'

So far so good
, thought Fortune. Appealing to a common bond. There were more than a few fathers in the room.

'My son Provender has been...'

Prosper faltered. Theatrically, in Fortune's view - but whatever got the point across.

'My son has been kidnapped.'

Shock rippled out across the Chamber. The consternation was loudest around the outermost table, from where cries of outrage and sympathy resounded up to the sonic baffles.

'Please, please, everyone,' said Massimiliano Borgia de'Medici. 'Please,
silenzio
! Let Signor Gleed continue.'

Prosper waited for the ruckus to die down, meanwhile gauging Stanislaw Kuczinski's reaction to his announcement. The white face did not perceptibly alter. The eyes perhaps widened a little, but that was all.

Which implied nothing. In the event that Kuczinski was innocent, he wouldn't know that he was about to be accused of the kidnapping. If he was guilty, he would register no surprise at what Prosper had just said. Either way, he was going to maintain that impassive expression. Why, before a quorum of assembled Family heads, was he going to show that he cared what had happened to his enemy's son?

'He was taken the night before last,' Prosper continued, 'during our annual ball. Provender, as you all well know, is the next Family head in line, and my only male offspring.'

There were nods around the tables, and murmurs of concern.

'And,' Prosper said, 'I am convinced that the individual responsible for his abduction is in this very room.'

That had the Family heads in ferment again. The Congress Chamber churned with shouts, demands, accusations, denials. Arms waved. Fists thumped tables. Prosper savoured the medley of uproar, and also the scowls that had manifested on the faces of both Kuczinski and his sister. They seemed well aware, the pair of them, what was coming next.

'
Prego! Prego! Silenzio!
Silence!' Borgia de'Medici had to yell at the top of his voice to be heard. 'Signor Gleed, you had better explain yourself. Such comments are highly inflammatory in this company.'

'Oh, I'm going to explain myself all right, Massimiliano,' said Prosper.

Fortune coughed gently, in a way which very clearly meant
Watch your step now, brother
.

'But,' Prosper said, 'I suspect most of you here have already guessed who I'm referring to.'

Heads began to turn.

'In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the guilty party were to stand up right now and say --'

Stanislaw Kuczinski was rising to his feet even as Prosper spoke. Halfway, he hesitated, realising he had been caught out. But it was too late. He straightened, drawing himself to his full height. His eyes flashed a baleful red glare at Prosper.

'Gleed,' he said.

Uttering the name meant his lips pulled back, and his lips pulling back meant his teeth were revealed in all their jagged, filed-to-points hideousness.

'How dare you. How
dare
you.' Kuczinski turned to Massimiliano Borgia de'Medici. 'This man is a liar. His accusation is groundless. Where is the proof? Let him show us his proof!'

'The proof,' said Prosper, also addressing Borgia de'Medici, 'is right in front of us. Kuczinski knew I was talking about him. By standing up, he was all but confessing his guilt.'

'Nonsense! Gleed was making insinuations. Obvious insinuations. I knew I had to refute them.'

'Do you deny you have my son?'

'I do. Emphatically. What would I have to gain by kidnapping him?'

'Oh, everything. Blackmail. Leverage over me. The humbling of my Family. An escalation in the longstanding feud between the Gleeds and the Kuczinskis. You name it.'

'But there are certain codes of behaviour. You know what I am talking about. Among the Families. Certain lines one does not cross.'

'Oh really?' said Prosper. 'How interesting that you, of all people, should mention codes of behaviour, Kuczinski. Standing there with a glass of blood in front of you and your sister next to you. "Sister", of course, being the least part of the intimate role she plays in your life.'

'
Kurwy syn
!' Stanislawa snarled, while, behind Prosper, Fortune let loose another of those cautionary coughs.

'Mr Borgia de'Medici!' Kuczinski said, with a beseeching gesture. 'Are you going to let him get away with this? First he falsely accuses me of a heinous deed, now he insults my Family and draws attention to our condition.'

Prosper leapt in before Borgia de'Medici could say anything. 'Your "condition"? Well, I suppose you could call it that, in that it's a psychological delusion you all share. Vampires! You really get off on it, don't you? Makes you feel dangerous and different. Why not just admit it? You're not "creatures of the night". You don't drink blood to survive, it's simply an affectation. And sunlight will give you a nasty burn, what with that lack of skin pigmentation of yours, but it won't make you explode into flames. Oh, but if you didn't play at being vampires, you'd have nothing going for you, would you? You'd just be an ordinary Family with an unfortunate hereditary complaint. Call yourselves vampires and we won't all look at you and think, "Now there's a perfect example of what inbreeding can - inbreeding can do to people."'

The break and repetition in that last sentence was the result of Prosper being kicked in the calf by his brother, once, sharply. As soon as Fortune heard the word
inbreeding
he knew Prosper had overstepped the mark. It was the one real taboo among Families, the one subject you did not raise under any circumstances. It was too close to home, too near the knuckle. In every Family represented in the Chamber there was at least one branch that had petered out into insanity, impotence, physical deformity, or any combination of the three. It was the risk you inevitably ran with a carefully cultivated bloodline. No one wished to be reminded of that fact.

Stanislaw and Stanislawa Kuczinski least of all.

Stanislawa bristled. Her hands became claws. As for her brother, he shot Prosper a look that would have curdled milk.

'Prosper Gleed.' His voice was a feral hiss. 'Is there nothing you will not stoop to?'

'I'm not the one who goes around abducting other people's sons.'

'For the last time, I do not have your son. I do not know where your son is. Why say these things?'

'I don't believe you. I look at you and see a man acting very much like someone with something to hide. If you were truly innocent, you wouldn't be protesting your innocence so strongly.'

'What chance does that give me, then? I might as well be guilty, if you're telling me I cannot even claim I am innocent.'

'Don't claim your innocent. Prove it. Prove it by returning Provender to me.'

'How can I? I don't
have
him.'

This exchange was conducted to the backdrop of a rumble of voices, which grew louder with each back-and-forth of the argument, becoming a thunder. It was the sort of noise you might hear from the audience at a boxing match as the two fighters slugged their way toward the knockout blow. The Family heads on the outermost table were almost baying in their excitement. A climax was looming. One or other of the combatants, Prosper Gleed or Stanislaw Kuczinski, was about to deliver some sort of devastating killer punch. The Family heads partly didn't want to see it land; partly they did. This dispute had been a long time brewing. The Gleed-Kuczinski antagonism, a constant of Family life, was particularly heartfelt between the representatives of the current generation, and yet before now had never exploded in quite such a manner. For everyone, not just the two men directly involved, there was a sense of release. That which had been pent-up was now in the open. The years of continual sniping and needling across the centre of the Congress Chamber were at last giving way to something more forthright and fierce. A long-swollen pustule was being lanced.