Provender Gleed (36 page)

Provender and Is retreated to the tram platform, from where they watched their pursuers succumb to lassitude. Some of the Changelings sagged against the fence and gate while others sank to the ground, looking for all the world like marionettes whose puppeteer had grown bored of conducting the show. It seemed an ignominious finish to such a frantic chase, but Provender and Is weren't complaining. Exhausted themselves, though nowhere near as depleted as the gang-tribe, they settled down on the platform and got comfortable. For a while neither could speak and so they simply looked at the Changelings, who stared stuporously back with eyes that suggested they had forgotten why they were there and who the people on the platform were. During this curious stalemate one of the Changelings even managed to fall asleep, nodding off where he stood, kept upright solely by virtue of his fingers being hooked through the chainlink.

Provender, when his face was no longer such a hectic shade of scarlet, said, 'I never thought we'd manage that. I thought they had us for sure.'

'Tinct crash,' Is replied.

'Oh. What?'

She outlined the pathology of the drug.

'Ah. Still, good for us that we ran so fast, eh?'

'Tell me that when I've stopped feeling so ill. How long till a tram comes?'

Provender glanced both ways along the track. 'Should be soon. The most anyone's ever waited is half an hour. It depends on where the nearest one is when you activate the gate.'

Just as he said this, as if on cue the overhead cables started to crackle and the steel rails began to hum.

53

The tram arrived, coasting to a halt alongside the platform. Accordion doors hissed open, and Provender, with a gentlemanly gesture, invited Is to step aboard, then hopped in after her.

Depressing a brass handle triggered the door-closing mechanism. Provender then ambled to the front of the car where the control console was situated, a sloping bank of switches, levers and lightbulbs. He frowned at it, hesitant.

'Tell me you know how to drive this thing,' Is said.

'To be honest, this is the first time I've travelled in one on my own. Not on my own exactly, but you know. Without another Family member.'

'Don't get out much, do you.'

'Not till lately. However...' Provender toggled a switch and several bulbs lit up on the console. 'It isn't that difficult, I think. If Extravagance can manage it, I can. All you have to do is - yes.' Another switch brought illumination to a display window marked DESTINATION. 'Then you just dial in the place you want to...' He manipulated a pair of knurled knobs, one of which caused the display window above it to scroll through a list of regions throughout the country, the other of which summoned up a sub-list of tram stops located within each of those regions. Finding BERKSHIRE with the first knob led him to find DASHLANDS easily with the second. 'And then,' he said, 'with just a press of this button -
voilà
. We are on our way.'

The tram car gave a lurch and began to roll, pulling away from the platform, the stop and the inert Changelings. It picked up speed and in no time was cruising at a steady 20 m.p.h. through west London. The city trundled by outside; the wires above gave off enthusiastic fizzes and sparks; the wheels drummed. Provender ensconced Is in an armchair, then went to the bar at the rear and fixed them both a whisky, adding ice from an ice-cube maker. They sipped the drinks facing each other, and Provender felt the weight of his recent travails begin, at last, to lift. He was truly out of harm's way now. In little over an hour, he would be back home. The whole horrible escapade was over.

'You, er, you didn't think that was really me back there, did you?' he said.

'What?'

'When I was talking to those kids. Offering them a bribe. Acting like a twit. I was just putting it on.'

'Could have fooled me.'

'No, really, I was - Oh, I see. You're mocking.'

'Frankly, Provender, at the time I wasn't sure what to think. I thought you might have gone mad. I also thought there was no way they were going to fall for it.'

'Neither did I, but I reckoned it was worth a shot. They were going to beat us up anyway, but I thought if I could persuade them to take us out of the estate first, we'd have a better chance of getting away from them before they started. It worked. I'm stunned that it did, but it did.'

'Must be the Family mystique.'

'Must be. Also, there is a kind of magic in behaving like a blithe, posh nincompoop. It protects you like a charm. People are disarmed by it. I don't do it myself as a rule, but I've seen it work for others. My uncle Fort, for instance. He does it all the time. Acts the buffoon and get away with murder. Mind you, with him I'm not sure it's an act.'

Provender drained his whisky tumbler at a gulp, much as his uncle might have done, and asked Is if she wanted hers refreshed. She shook her head, then changed her mind and said yes.

Second whiskies in hand, they gazed out of the tram's windows as the turrets of Acton and then the tenements of Old Ealing passed by.

'I have to ask now,' Provender said. 'I can't not. What was it all about? Why was I kidnapped? What did your friend Damien want with me?'

'Money.'

'That's it? Just the money?'

'Isn't that enough of a reason? He wanted several million from your Family, money he would put to use renovating Needle Grove, to make it a nicer place, not the sort of place that breeds gangs like that lot back there.'

'But ... he wouldn't expect to get away with it, surely. It's hardly subtle or covert. He gets the money, hands me over, next thing we know someone's spending a fortune doing up a slum housing estate. If he wanted to draw attention to himself, if he wanted everyone to know who the kidnap culprit was, he couldn't do much better than that. My Family would be on it like a shot. We'd have him. He'd be in jail faster than you can breathe.'

'Don't think Damien didn't realise that.'

'But he was still prepared to take the risk. D'you know, I'm almost starting to admire him.'

'No, because there was no risk.' Is studied her tumbler, swilling the liquor around inside it and making the ice cubes clink. 'Look, I suppose you ought to know. It's only fair. Damien wasn't acting alone.'

'He had you with him, yes. And if you're worried about that, don't be. My Family will go after him, have no fear, but you are going to be absolutely safe. I'll see to that. You'll have complete protection. No one's going to prosecute you or anything.'

'Do you actually listen to me when I'm talking, Provender? Sometimes I think you only hear what you want to hear. I'm not referring to me when I say he wasn't acting alone. Clearly I was an accomplice. That's pretty bloody obvious.'

'There was someone else? A third party?'

'Genius! And they say Family inbreeding lowers the IQ.'

'Hey!'

He looked genuinely wounded. Isis waved a hand at him in apology. 'You're right, that was uncalled-for. It's just - I don't like to have to be the one to break this to you.'

'Go on.'

'Because you're not going to like it.'

'I'll be the judge of that.'

'He had help. Damien. Inside help.'

'Help.'

'From Family. From someone in your Family.'

'No!'

'And before you ask, I have no idea who. He wouldn't tell me. Said I was safer off not knowing.'

'Oh, but that's preposterous. No one in my Family would do anything like this. He must have been having a joke with you.'

'Believe me, he wasn't. I saw him have phone conversations with this person. He didn't like having to rely on a Family member, it didn't sit well with him at all, but he did it anyway. He - we - couldn't have pulled off your kidnap otherwise. Somebody had to buy off the security guard so that he wouldn't be at his post when we were leaving Dashlands, and Damien didn't have access to those sort of funds. And of course another part of the arrangement was that when Damien got the ransom money, he'd be guaranteed immunity from prosecution and from anything else the Gleeds might have in mind for him. He could spend the money how he wanted and not get caught for it.'

'And this is somebody in my immediate Family?'

'I don't know. I suppose so.'

Provender wagged his head wonderingly. 'It can't be. I mean, who? My mother? Never. My father? Unlikely. Gratitude or Extravagance? It wouldn't be Grat, no way, and 'Strav, she and I don't get on but she'd hardly stoop to something like this, not even as a practical joke. Far too much like effort. Then there's Great, but he wouldn't. He
couldn't
. And Uncle Fort... He's a troublemaker, a piss-head, fond of himself, no question, but not - it's just isn't him. What would he gain from it? What would any of them gain from it? No, I don't accept this. I refuse to.'

'Provender, you have to. It's the truth.'

'It's someone in my Family?'

Impatiently: 'Yes.'

'My immediate Family?'

'I told you, I don't know. How immediate is immediate?'

'Well, a cousin... Oh.'

'What?'

Provender rubbed his temples, his brain churning. 'A cousin. Oh
mierda
, yes. Arthur. That little
pendejo
rat-bastard.'

'This obviously sounds like one of your favourite relatives.'

'Hmm? Arthur? Oh no, far from it.'

'Sarcasm, Provender.'

But even Is's admission of sarcasm was wasted on him. He was pondering too hard, too deep in concentration.

'Arthur,' he said, 'Arthur doesn't like me, and that's fine, no problem, the feeling's reciprocated, but would he go so far as to...? He might. He definitely might. Just to fuck up my life. And maybe, maybe... To annoy my father? To get him to resent me for costing him a chunk of money? That's like Arthur. And then, while I'm off the scene, tucked away in a Family-hater's bathroom, Arthur could always swan over to Dashlands and pretend to be all concerned, show sympathy, come across as the perfect cousin. Jockeying for position. Reminding everyone who he is, how wonderful he is, isn't he better than Provender?'

'I'll just join in the conversation when you're ready.'

'And then at the party... Good God yes. That tirade of his about actors. His attempt at the world record for the most uses of the word "bloody" in a single sentence. And, no, before that, when he was talking about his play. Offering me tickets. He said - he said I should come if I wasn't doing anything else.'

'Any time you want some input, you only have to ask.'

'No, he didn't say that, it was more specific than that. What the hell was it? If I'm not ... otherwise detained!
Detained
. Christ, that cocky little
cabrón
, he was telling me, he was just about giving it away. This was what was going to happen to me. I wouldn't be going to his
Hamlet
first night because I'd be fucking being held hostage!'

'I'll sit here quietly minding my own busi--'

Provender sprang to his feet and hurried over to the control console.

'What are you doing?' Is asked.

'What's it look like?' He grabbed one of the destination knobs. 'I'm diverting us.'

'We're not going to Dashlands?'

'Nope.'

'But we have to.'

'No, we don't.'

'Yes, we do. Your father. If your father sees you, if he knows you're safe, he can get the politicians to back down. There won't be a war.'

'It can wait.'

'It damn well can't.' Is stormed up to the front of the car and seized Provender's arm. 'What's more important, Provender? Going after your cousin or pulling a continent back from the brink of conflict?'

'Going after Arthur.'

'You don't mean that.'

'I do. I want to catch him unawares. I want to see his face when I turn up on his doorstep, free. I want to watch him gape and gulp like a stranded goldfish.'

'Fine, then do that, but leave it till after we've been to Dashlands.'

'No way. If all of a sudden everyone starts suing for peace, Arthur will know the game's up. Whereas if everything remains as it is, just for now, I can walk right up to him and he won't be expecting it. It's the only way I'll ever know if he's involved in the kidnapping.'

'No, it isn't. Damien could rat him out. To the police. If he was arrested and being interrogated.'

'Arthur would deny it. There's no proof of a connection between them, I bet. No physical evidence. Just phone calls. Just Damien's word against a Gleed's. Guess who everyone'll believe. Especially,' he added, with an ironic leer, 'when one of them's a much-loved star of stage and screen.'

'But what if everything goes wrong? What if war is declared? For all we know it could already have been. We haven't exactly been keeping up with current events this past couple of hours.'

'There's an entertainment system somewhere in the tram, with a radio. You could turn it on and listen.'

'That isn't the point.'

'An hour, Is. All I need. One measly hour.'

54

Romeo Moore - now, although he was as yet blissfully unaware of the fact, the world's only remaining Anagrammatic Detective - was at his post outside Arthur Gleed's house. He couldn't think of anywhere else to be. The shame of letting Arthur slip through his fingers that morning had abated, but he still couldn't think about what he had done without feeling a smart of self-recrimination. Determined not to repeat the mistake, he had contacted the cab firm whose owner he and Milner had once helped - the TAXIMETER/EXTRA TIME case - and had hired the exclusive use of one of his cars for the entire day. The year-long free-travel offer had expired a while ago but the owner still held Moore in enough esteem that he was able to negotiate a decent rate. The taxi was now sitting at a corner of the square, engine running. Moore would have been in the back, in a far more comfortable seat than the park bench he was on, but for the fact that the driver was one of those garrulous types who not only couldn't stop talking but couldn't seem to take the hint that his passenger was in no mood for trivial chitchat. After half an hour of listening to the driver bang on about any subject that crossed his mind, a torrent-of-consciousness rant, apparently unstoppable, Moore had excused himself, saying the park was the better vantage point, with a more direct view of the house. The driver had carried on talking even as Moore exited the taxi. For all Moore knew, he was still talking now.