Provender Gleed (41 page)

Provender jerked a thumb towards the auditorium and lowered his voice. 'I don't think it's appropriate to talk like this in front of strangers.'

'Precisely!' said Arthur, shrill with triumph. 'Precisely! Don't talk. Don't mention anything. Keep it in the Family, or not even there if possible. Hide. Bury. Disguise. Deny.'

'Arthur...'

Arthur, who had puffed himself up like a bantam cock, deflated, relenting. 'All right. Fine. But I've made my point, haven't I?'

'Amply.'

'And you now know I didn't have anything to do with the kidnapping.'

Provender pondered, making it look as if he was only just coming to that conclusion. 'Probably you didn't. On balance, no. You can understand, though. I mean, the evidence was pretty incriminating.'

'Not me,' Arthur said, arms spread out. 'I'm guilty of machinations but not those ones.'

'Right then,' Is said, jumping to her feet. 'Now that that's all been established, it's time you kept your promise, Provender.'

'Promise?'

'To speak to your father and tell him you're OK.'

'I didn't promise that.'

'Yes, you did. You asked for an hour to confront Arthur here and then you'd call home. You've confronted Arthur, so...'

'It wasn't a promise as such.'

'As good as.'

'But we still don't know who the insider is.'

'Well, what are we going to do? Ask Damien?'

'When he wakes up, yes. Good idea.'

'You'll never get a straight answer out of him.'

'Maybe I won't, but the cops will, I'm sure, when they come.'

'It could take a while. He'll be groggy when he comes round. Remember how you were? Could barely string a sentence together.'

'So we just leave it, is that what you're saying?'

'One phone call, Provender.'

Arthur had been following the conversation like a spectator at a tennis match, eyes flicking back and forth. Now, with a wry grin, he said, 'Provender, have you managed to pick yourself up a girlfriend by any chance?'

Provender blushed, flushed, blustered, was flustered. 'No. I don't... We just... She...'

'Because she's talking to you a lot like a girlfriend would.'

'We've been through a lot together, that's all.'

'Well, whatever. But she has a point. I've been to Dashlands. I was there today. The place is a volcano, ready to erupt. Your dad is sitting like God on the eve of Judgement Day. Your mum is at her wits' end. War's brewing out there, and we all know why. You need to get in touch and defuse the situation. I'm amazed you haven't done already.'

'There've been other... Oh, all right. Have it your way. The theatre manager's office. There'll be a phone there, right?'

'I imagine so.'

Provender strode offstage; Is, though not invited to, went with him; and Arthur was left alone, in the full glare of the house and stage lights. Like someone waking from a dream, he blinked, remembering himself - what he was, where he was. Out there in the auditorium was an audience. A small one, to be sure, and made up entirely of people he knew, fellow-thespians, but an audience all the same, and he could see them, they weren't lost in amorphous darkness beyond footlight dazzle, they were visible, each and every one, scattered among the raked, red-velvet tiers of seats, faces upturned and expectant, ready for the dénouement.

He could think of only one thing to say:

I cannot live to hear the news from England,

But I do prophesy th' election lights

On Fortinbras, he has my dying voice.

So tell him, with th' occurrents more and less

Which have solicited - the rest is silence.

His voice cracked in the middle of the final line, as rehearsed, as it should. Then he flopped forward from the waist in a classic curtain-call bow, arms limp, head down, and the thirty-odd occupants of the auditorium set up such a tumult of clapping and cheering you would have thought them a full house. The applause echoed to the theatre's gilded ceiling, and Arthur remembered, as he always did when he heard this sound, why he loved his job.

61

Moore was just replacing the phone receiver when the theatre manager ushered Provender and Is in.

'Police are on their way,' he said, stepping back from the desk. 'I took the liberty of dropping the Gleed name, just to speed things along.'

Provender seated himself at the desk, and Is took up position at his elbow. He twisted round in the chair, frowning up at her. 'I'm going to do it, all right? You don't have to stand guard over me.'

Is, relenting, moved one pace back.

Provender
tsk
ed, picked up the receiver, and dialled the main private number for Dashlands House. As he listened to the ring tone, he surveyed the manager's office: a small room painted tobacco-brown, with framed posters, playbills and review cuttings on the walls and a pair of ungenerously-proportioned windows whose panes were browned with decades of London air-grime. The manager himself was hovering in the doorway, uncertain whether he should stay or leave. Provender invited him in with an inclusive gesture.

Then there was a click on the line and a deep, threnodic bass-baritone voice said, 'Dashlands House.'

'Carver? It's me.'

'Master Provender.'

'Yes.'

'Master Provender, what a relief. How good to hear you. Where are you? How are you?'

'I'm as well as can be expected, and I'm at the Shortborn Theatre on New Aldwych, of all places.'

'May I enquire how you came to be there?'

'Long story. Another time.'

'But you're not being held hostage.'

'Not any longer.'

'That's news indeed. You're safe. Out of danger.'

'Completely.'

'I shall alert the household.'

'Do that. My father specifically. Tell him the Kuczinskis aren't to blame. They've had nothing to do with this. Tell him to call off the dogs. I'm OK, everything's OK, let's not have a war. Is that clear?'

'Uncontestably.'

'I'm heading home right now. Should be there in an hour or so if the trams behave.'

'Your arrival will be eagerly awaited.'

'And Carver? That detective you hired to find me. Excellent choice. He did some brilliant work.'

'He found you? I am most impressed.'

'I'll tell him you said that. It'll make his day.'

Provender replaced the receiver and looked at Is, then Moore. 'Right, who's coming back to my place with me?'

Is looked doubtful, Moore flabbergasted.

'My Family'll be breaking out the champagne. I really think we all deserve a celebration. And it is still, officially, my birthday. More than one good excuse for a party, wouldn't you say?'

Is shook her head, while Moore was too astonished to do what he wanted, which was nod.

'Oh go on, Is. What harm will it do? Please?'

'We should stay till the police get here,' Is said. 'Someone should.'

'What for? It's open-and-shut. There's the bad guy lying on the floor, dead to the world. We've got eyewitnesses galore who'll say that he attacked me. And you can bet, with Mr Moore having mentioned my name to the cops, there'll be reporters and photographers on their way here too. This'll go berserk, and I'd rather not be around when it does. Look, soon as I get home I'll send Carver back here to deal with everything. In the meantime, I'm sure our friend' - he indicated the theatre manager - 'can handle the situation.'

The theatre manager professed himself only too happy to do so.

'There we are,' Provender said. 'I need to get back to Dashlands. I need to see everyone. I've had three days of hell and I just want to go home, and I want you two to come with me. What do you say?'

If he had spoken an ounce more commandingly, a smidgeon less imploringly, Is would have dug her heels in and refused. As it was, he gauged his appeal just right. To judge by her expression she had reservations but, with effort, she managed to set them aside. 'OK,' she said.

As for Moore, what else could he do but splutter out
yes
?

62

And so Romeo Moore, Anagrammatic Detective, wound up aboard a Family tram, sipping at a nip of Family brandy, on the afternoon of a day which without question was the most remarkable of his life.

They took the taxi to the tram stop, Moore tipped the driver, and soon they were trundling westward in a tram and Moore was urging himself to take this all in, remember it, savour it, record every detail in his memory because surely nothing like this would ever happen to him again. Dashlands! He was going to Dashlands House, for heaven's sake!

If there was a fleck on the lens of this moment, a wart besmirching its beauty, it was that Milner wasn't there to share it with him. Now that the case was solved, Moore felt somewhat guilty that he had won their bet and Milner hadn't. Milner did not like losing and would like it even less because the bet had been his idea. It would have been nice, too, for Milner to be here with him right now so that Moore could be magnanimous in victory. If the roles were reversed, Moore had no doubt his partner would have crowed and preened and taken every opportunity to rub his nose in his defeat. This would have been Moore's chance to set an example, show how a winner ought to behave: with dignity and quiet satisfaction. Well, that would come later.

Or would it? Within Moore there was a nagging, wormy sense of concern that would not go away. Where
was
Milner anyway? Having contacted the police from the theatre manager's office, Moore had then phoned work to see if his partner was there. This was the call he had been finishing when Provender, Is and the theatre manager walked in. No one had picked up, so he could only assume his partner was still out in the field pursuing his investigations. Which was all well and fine, but Moore now knew, from things gleaned over the past hour, all about Damien Scrase, the knife-wielding thug who had held Provender captive in Needle Grove and who would have killed him at the theatre if not for Is's timely intervention with the syringe full of sedative; and the unsettling thought that hunkered at the back of his mind was that Milner might have encountered the selfsame individual in the course of his enquiries and fallen foul of him. Nothing anyone had said had given Moore cause to believe his supposition had any grounding in fact, but the anxiety nonetheless remained. Had Milner gone to Needle Grove? If only he hadn't been so cagey and had revealed
something
about his line of approach to the case. Then Moore would have genuine reason to be fretful, or alternatively no reason at all, either of which would have been better than the nameless, nebulous unease he was feeling.

Thus, Moore's joy was not entirely unalloyed. It was sufficient, still, to fill him with a warm glow inside, which he nurtured and stoked with the brandy. As the tram raced on he thought of the money that would now, thanks to him, be coming the detective agency's way, and soon he was daydreaming again about the secretary he and Milner were going to employ. She would have to love words, of course. In fact she would, perforce, require a vocabulary far more extensive than most people's if she was going to cope with
their
paperwork. She would be pretty, presentable, demure, with nice legs - Moore liked a well-turned lady's leg as much as he liked a well-turned phrase - and with, perhaps, a soft spot for a softly-spoken man who would happily compose flattering anagrams of her name, pen pangrams for her filled with bouquet-bursts of consonants such as
waltz
and
nymph
, offer her acrostics that capitally expressed his liking of verbal engagement and his laudably orderly esteem for her...

...and while at one end of the tram car a quiet, reflective Moore entertained this fantasy of the future, at the other end Provender and Is found themselves all too uncomfortably in the present moment, neither talking when both felt they ought to. The tram was almost at Heathrow before one of them spoke, and then it was only Provender saying, banally, 'I'm starving. I just realised. When we get to Dashlands, first thing I'm going to do is get someone to rustle me up a huge sandwich. Roast beef with pickle and horseradish. How about you? Sound good?'

Is nodded noncommittally. 'It's a nice world where you can say the word sandwich and a moment later one appears.'

'It's not the only world, I realise that, Is. God, I realise that more than ever now.'

'Doesn't it worry you?'

'Does what worry me? The unfairness of life? You know the answer to that.'

'No, does it worry you that there's still a snake in this paradise of yours? That somebody in your household wanted you gone for some reason?'

Provender thought about it. 'Right now, no. Right now simply getting back there is all I'm concerned about. The rest I'll take care of in due course. Whoever it is will become clear pretty quickly, I reckon. I'm keen to know why they did it, what they've got against me, and when the time's right I'll find out and I'll respond accordingly. There will be payback. There will be. I just don't know at the moment what form it'll take. What I do know is that I'm not going to be intimidated. I feel, now, that I can face anything. I feel that there's nothing so bad it can't be tackled head-on. Rather like I tackled Damien.'

Is laughed. 'After I'd pumped him full of sedative.'

'Well, yeah, but when he turned on you and attacked you...'

'Full of sedative. With about five seconds of consciousness left in him.'

'But he still attacked you, and I barrelled into him and he went down...'

Is understood what he was after from her and, feeling generous, gave it to him. 'Thank you, Provender. And thank you, too, for when we were on the balcony and you got me to make the jump. And for when we were surrounded by the Changelings and you got us out of there.'

He was pleased. 'It was nothing. Thank
you
for all you did for me.'

There was a brief, genial lull, then Is said, 'And now you're taking me to meet the Family.'