As a girl Cynthia used to love going to Mass: the otherworldly elegance of the Latin catechisms, the fragrant fume trails left in the air by the huge swinging silver censers, and the fact that everyone in the congregation, not least herself, was decked out in their very best clothes - the men in crisp blazers and trousers, the women a froth of underskirts and mantillas, black cloth everywhere, wave upon wave of it in the pews, a sea of dark, solemn self-effacement. She had been Confirmed. She had learned her Ave Maria and was given a jade rosary by her parents on which to toll it, all one hundred and fifty times, to expiate her sins. She had believed everything the Church claimed, implicitly, perfectly. She was so devout, her mother even began to ask her, half jokingly, if she was thinking of becoming a nun.
But Faith had ebbed from her as she reached adulthood. Faith, it seemed, was for children, who were innocent enough to accept it at face value, and for very old people, who had to have something to cling to as the shadow of extinction loomed ever larger. The world was infinitely more complicated than religion could account for. Life had shades and hues that the Church's broad primary-colour statements simply could not match.
Cynthia was not lapsed. A belief, of some sort, persisted, like a high tide mark in her soul. She returned to Faith whenever she needed it, and was always somewhat surprised to find it there where she had left it, more or less intact, a little rusty but still serviceable. The Chapel, which she was just about the only person ever to visit, had become a sanctuary for her when things got difficult - and being married to Prosper Gleed, not to mention being mother to Provender Gleed, meant things often got difficult for Cynthia. She still had her jade rosary too, and to sit for an hour in the Chapel's emptiness, thumbing the beads one by one about their silk thread and murmuring the words of the Ave till they lost all meaning, brought solace in even her darkest moods. The unadorned walls and vacant alcoves were a far cry from the stained-glass splendour and seething iconography she had known in her youth, but such plainness was, in a way, better. It was a closer reflection of how she felt inside.
Perhaps, after all, she should have taken the veil. A part of her still seemed to yearn for a life of nun-like simplicity and contemplation.
As a nun, for instance, Cynthia would not be sitting here this morning in the Chapel, consumed with anger and despair; would not be tolling a very unusual rosary, a substitute for her jade beads; and would not be considering an act of awful, soul-imperilling sinfulness.
She had heard the reports on the radio as she ate her breakfast - the cogs of the machinery of war, starting to turn. She had known, though, when Prosper arrived home in the small hours of last night, what he had done. He had crashed around their bedroom for a while, clumsily undressing in darkness, then headed off to one of the spare rooms to sleep. He had been unwilling to get into bed with her. He had been afraid to talk to her. She, for her part, had pretended to sleep, afraid in her own way to talk to him, not wanting to hear what he had to say. She had known. He had done everything he had threatened to. The news of the radio only confirmed it. Things had gone so far. So badly out of control.
Now, in the middle of the Chapel dais, Cynthia knelt. She was no longer young. It hurt her knees to kneel on bare stone. Nonetheless she did.
She was cold. Even in summer, the Chapel retained the chill of night through to midday at the earliest. The sun took that long to warm it. She had on an ash-coloured vicuña sweater but still she was shivering. Her breath emerged in pale wisps.
Her rosary consisted of little yellow pills - Oneirodam tablets from the bottle by her bedside.
With a trembling fingertip she shifted them across the floor, one by one, left to right.
'Ave Maria, gratia plena; Dominus tecum...'
Another pill was shunted across.
'Ave Maria, gratia plena; Dominus tecum...'
And another pill.
Could she? Should she? Dare she?
'Ave Maria, gratia plena; Dominus tecum...'
And another.
34
Is watched Damien watching the news. She wondered if he was going to make the connection. The war. Provender. She prayed he would. She prayed it would dawn on him that he was the root cause of all this. His conscience would do the rest. He was still, all said and done, a man of conscience.
But, although Damien voiced concern about the situation, which was getting steadily graver, he didn't appear to care that much. He was preoccupied. Once or twice he mentioned getting the ransom demand out, saying it was long past due. He was expecting his Family insider to call soon and give him the go-ahead. That call, too, was long past due. Is could see he was chafing, champing at the bit. Less and less was he liking the fact that he was not in sole charge of the Provender kidnapping and that he had to be accountable to someone else. She still could not fathom his relationship with this unknown Family member. She understood only that in order to get what he was after, the money to renovate Needle Grove, Damien had entered into a pact with a representative of his very worst enemy. He had done a deal with, if not the Devil, then one of the Devil's minions. To Damien, this was not a compromise but an alliance forged by necessity. He remained, however, not best pleased about it.
On the television, the politicians kept talking about a diplomatic resolution, even as the military build-up continued. Whether they were genuinely hopeful of a peaceful outcome or just saying what an alarmed populace needed to hear, Is couldn't tell, but she felt that at the very least they were going to take things right to the brink. Like Damien, they too were at the behest of unseen masters, in this case Stanislaw Kuczinski and Prosper Gleed. Is found it bizarre to think that just two days ago she had been serving drinks to the latter, had stood within a few inches of him, had suffered him to ogle her boobs. A lecherous middle-aged man, similar to countless others she had come across, all too easily captivated by the sight of a generous chest - and yet he had the wherewithal to trigger a continent-wide conflict, almost without effort. Serially unfaithful to his wife, by all accounts, and addicted to gambling - and yet, with just a word, he could set one half of Europe against the other. That was wrong. That should not be. So much responsibility should not reside in the hands of someone so irresponsible.
The phone rang.
Damien snapped the TV off and picked up the receiver.
'Yeah? ... Oh good. About time you got in touch again. I was beginning to think -- ... Right, right. Yes, I've been watching it. Not good ... Uh-huh. Yes ... Really? Jesus! ... You think so? It won't make matters worse? ... So the one I've already written is no good any more ... No, I told you, I don't own a videotyper. Can't afford one. I use the public-use one at the local library ... All right then ... I know, keep it simple, don't say too much ... Fine. And then the drop-off plan as before? ... Well, that's something ... OK. Nice one. 'Bye.'
He replaced the receiver and looked at Is with a broad, almost boyish smirk.
'Remarkable,' he said.
'What is?'
'Well, I had a feeling that all that stuff' - he jerked at thumb at the television - 'might have something to do with him.' The thumb jabbed in the direction of the bathroom. 'It was too much of a coincidence otherwise. But I couldn't think how the one joined up with the other till that person' - now the thumb indicated the telephone - 'said the Gleeds think the Kuczinskis are behind the kidnapping.'
'Oh,' said Is, trying to pretend this was news to her.
'Yeah, so now we've got an even bigger stick to beat the Gleeds with. We can ask for twice as much as we were going to.'
'How do you get that?'
'Because, Is, the Gleeds are desperate. They think their arch-enemies have Provender, and when they find out they don't, they'll be so damn relieved they'll cough up any amount of cash.'
'I hate to say this, but isn't that a bit greedy, Damien? And isn't it wrong to use what's going on to your own advantage? An international crisis --'
'No, Is,' said Damien, very firmly. 'No, it's not wrong. The end justifies the means. The e
nd damn well justifies the means. We were going to ask for five million for Provender, weren't we? We could do a lot for the estate with five million, but think what we could do with ten. Fuck it, with fifteen. Transform this place beyond recognition. Make thousands of lives better.'
'At the risk of making hundreds of thousands of lives worse if this war goes ahead.'
'But it won't go ahead. Once the ransom note's delivered, the Gleeds will know it isn't the Kuczinskis who have their precious boy and they'll call off the dogs.'
'What if it's too late?'
'It won't be too late.'
'You can't know that for sure. If the momentum keeps building the way it is, events could spin out of control. Something could start that just can't be stopped. Whereas all you have to do is phone the Gleeds now, tell them everything's all right, you're the one holding Provender and not the Kuczinskis...'
'The money, Is. More money.'
'At what point, Damien, does blackmail become extortion?'
'At what point, Is, does disagreement become mutiny?'
'That's ridiculous. All I'm doing is telling you --'
Two swift strides took Damien to within arm's reach of Is. She didn't, to her surprise, shrink away from him, though every instinct she had was ordering her to. Somehow her spine stayed straight, her head remained defiantly high.
'All you're doing is telling me you haven't the guts to do this any more,' he spat. 'Telling me Rich Kid has got to you. Telling me you'd rather hand him back for nothing than try and get the most we can out of him. Is that it, Is? Is he more important to you than us?'
'Us?' she replied, more calmly than she could have thought possible. 'You're talking about everyone on the estate, I take it.'
Damien blinked. 'Yes. Exactly. Yes, I am. Is he more important than everyone on the estate?'
'No. I'm just saying I think you've lost sight of what this is supposed to be about. And - and I think this war thing has gone to your head. Suddenly you've got a tremendous amount of power, suddenly you have the capacity to prevent something truly terrible from happening, and what do you do? First thing you think of is 'What can I, Damien Scrase, get out of this? How can I benefit?' Which, in my book, makes you no better than the people you've been fighting against all your adult life. It makes you no better than Family, Damien.'
She wished, as soon as she uttered the last sentence, that she could take it back. To compare Damien to Family was the worst insult imaginable for him. She might as well have called him a vivisectionist or a child-molester.
'Oh, Is,' he said. His tone was deadly smooth. His eyes had gone dull and hard. 'Oh, that's not kind of you at all.'
Is didn't see it coming. She heard it coming, a whirr of displaced air, a sound she had no way of recognising, but she didn't actually see Damien's hand swinging at her, knuckles first. It blindsided her. It came at her too fast.
Then there was lightning.
Then there was the feel of carpet under one side of her face, and a ringing, droning hum in her skull, and her eyes were watering and the floor was pulsing up and down woozily, as though she were at sea, and Damien, from some deep distant cavern, miles away, was lecturing her, telling her she had asked for it, she had deserved it, and he was sorry - he didn't sound sorry but he said he was - and he was heading out in a mo and she could lie there if she wanted to, that was fine by him, but she should remember she had deserved it, and he wasn't that sort of bloke, he hated that sort of bloke, the type that hit women, but she had provoked him, it was her fault, she should think about that, she could think about it while he was gone, all right?
All right?
And then he was gone. Is heard him leave. The door slammed. A key turned in the lock. The floor oozed around her. The entire flat warped and distended, as though testing its own cubic dimensions.
Faintly, from far away, Provender was calling out her name: 'Is? Is? Are you there, Is? Are you OK?'
A car started, stuttering, then belching out a great four-cylinder roar. The driver revved the engine a few times, to get its juices flowing, then shifted out of neutral. The engine note changed from a growl to a purposeful purr.
Romeo Moore heard these sounds, identified them straight away as belonging to a sports-model vehicle, and mused happily on the fact that well-engineered automobiles always had such nice voices. In addition to looking good, a car had to sound good. There was no point in owning a Dagenham Rapier, say, if what lay under its bonnet produced a pathetic little fart of noise. You needed the whole package, aural as well as visual. Otherwise --
A Dagenham Rapier!
Moore's eyes flashed open. He started from the park bench. He was on his feet and running almost before he knew what he was doing.
He reached the park railings just in time to see Arthur Gleed's Rapier pull out from its space, Arthur at the wheel. He watched Arthur ease into the roadway then accelerate. Tyres pained tarmac. With a squeal and a roar and a burst of blue fumes, the Rapier shot away. A moment later, it was at one of the exits from the square. A moment after that, it was gone.
Asleep!
Damn and blast it, he had fallen asleep!
Moore checked his watch. Gone eleven. The last time he remembered looking, it had been nine.
Nodded off. Hadn't hired a taxi as he had planned to.
Stupid. Careless. Unprofessional.
He had lost his suspect's trail. Arthur was doubtless on his way to look in on Provender. Moore, through his own incompetence, had fluffed his chance of following him.
He cast around, hoping against hope to see a taxi cruising by through the square. There was none. It would have been a miracle if there had been.
With a groan, he lowered his head till his brow came to rest on the tip of a railing spike.
It hurt.
That was good.
HULKING CLEF!
35
Provender crawled for the bathroom door. It wasn't easy. He had to move like a caterpillar, sliding his arms forward, following with his torso, then arching his back and bringing his legs in behind. It also wasn't easy because he wasn't sure of the door's precise location. In the end, though, he did find it. Through sheer good luck, he crawled in exactly the right direction. Through sheer bad luck, he didn't know that until after he made one of his torso lunges and banged the door with his head.
When the pain faded, he called out to Is again. As before, there was no answer. He had listened to her arguing with her accomplice. He had heard their voices rise and then that final, climactic thwack, followed by the sound of someone falling. A short while later, a door had slammed shut. He hoped that meant that the man had stormed out of the flat. He hoped that what had gone before signified that Is had been struck but nothing more serious.
But if it was nothing more serious, how come she wasn't answering? And had the man actually stormed out? The door which had slammed might not necessarily be the front one.
Provender decided it didn't matter. He thought his interpretation of the sounds was correct, and if it wasn't, he would simply have to take the consequences.
Hunkering back on his knees, he raised his hands and hooked his thumbs under the blindfold. Lately the urge to do this had become all but unbearable. In spite of Is's warning he had been desperate to take a peek at his surroundings, just to be able to use his eyes again, see something. He had resisted. Now, he put such considerations aside.
Up the blindfold went.
The bathroom was dim. What light there was came in from under the door. Nevertheless Provender, having been sightless for two whole days, was dazzled. He winced. He screwed his eyes shut. After several moments he prised his eyelids apart again. The line of light under the door was a strip of pure supernova. It razored his retinas. He forced himself to keep looking at it, despite the agony. The sooner his vision adjusted, the sooner he could get out there and find out what had become of Is.
Gradually supernova became magnesium flare, which became white-hot metal, which became bright sunlight, then fil
tered sunlight, and finally cloudy sunlight. Provender looked around at the glimmering outlines of the bathroom's fixtures and fittings, shapes he had till now known only by feel. The bathroom was not large but it was bigger than he had thought. In the utter darkness of his captivity, it had seemed tiny and close-confining.
His eyesight was blurry but good enough, he thought, for him to venture out. He reached for the door handle and yanked it down.
Brilliance flooded in, a world of glare and shine. Provender thrust the door wide and groped his way over the threshold. Blinking hard, he tried to take stock of where he was. The main room of a smallish flat. Over there, a galley kitchen. Over there, the door to a bedroom, ajar. That was a relief. It couldn't, then, be the door that had slammed shut. The man was out.
His eyes watered and began to sting. He rubbed them and reopened them.
The flat was shabby, cheaply furnished, low-rent. He saw a couple of plywood bookcases crammed with paperbacks and a pine table with spindly legs and a set of chairs to match. The table was just that bit too large for the place, occupying more than its fair share of floor. A tall window afforded a view of... It was too bright out there. Provender couldn't look directly at the view. He turned his gaze to the TV set and armchairs adjacent to the window. Just past them, poking out, he spied a pair of legs. Woman's legs.
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