He looked round the table. Silence and sombre faces told him he was way off the mark.
'Not correct. Oh dear. Oh yes, how obvious. The Poles. Our blood-guzzling chums the Kuczinskis. What's happened? They must have made some serious blunder.'
'You may as well know,' said Fortune, and explained.
The news that Provender had been abducted, possibly by the Kuczinski Family, had Arthur going through paroxysms of incredulity and anguish. He waved his hands about; he shook his head; he gasped 'No!' loud enough to be heard in the back row of the stalls. It was all very histrionic, Gratitude thought, but then with Arthur the boundary between profession and life had long since become blurred. Drama was his natural state of being. Everything was an act.
'My God, and there we were at the party just the other night,' he said, 'me and Provender, having a lovely time. Rubbing along like we always do. And then - somebody nabbed him. Right from under our noses. I can't believe it.'
'None of us can,' said Extravagance.
'I even invited him to the show tonight. All of you, too. I insisted he come. That feels so - so trivial now.'
'So perhaps you will cancel tonight's performance after all,' Gratitude suggested. She said it with just a soupçon of viciousness, hoping Arthur's answer would confirm her low opinion of him.
It did.
'Hell, no.' Arthur bent over his soup and dipped his spoon in. 'Show must go on and all that.' He glanced up. 'I mean, it's what Provender would want, isn't it? Surely?'
38
What Provender would have wanted, right then, was not to have to crawl across an upturned pine table, forty-five storeys up, with no guarantee whether that the table would support his weight or that it would remain securely perched on the two balcony parapets while he was on it. He would have wanted anything but this sickened feeling in the pit of his stomach, this sense that every last drop of moisture in his mouth had somehow transferred itself to the palms of his hands, above all this fear that if fate was going to choose any day for him to meet a messy, spectacular death, why not today, the twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth? Fate had a nasty sense of humour, after all. This was not the day for him to be inviting it to play one of its grim practical jokes.
Then again, he had no desire to remain in Damien Scrase's flat, and the table was his only viable means of escape.
The opportunity for Provender to entertain these thoughts arose because Is had left him alone on the balcony. Saying she had just remembered something, she had ducked back into the flat, and Provender was waiting for her to come out again. He wasn't crossing the table without her holding one end of it down as they had planned. What she was actually doing in the flat, he had no idea. A part of him wished she would get on with it. A part of him didn't.
Finally she emerged. She had with her a hypodermic syringe and a medical ampoule containing some sort of fluid. She showed them to Provender, then bundled them up in a cloth and stuck the bundle in her shoulder-bag.
'Just in case,' she said.
'Not for me, then.'
'Not this time.'
'Funny. I could do with being unconscious right now.'
'Me too.'
Provender gestured at the table and looked plaintive. 'Are you sure you don't want to go first?'
'You're heavier than me. If it can take you, it'll take me.'
'What if it can't take me?'
'It will.'
'You know that for certain?'
'Stop fannying about and get on the table, Provender.'
Is placed her hands close together on the end of the table and pressed down with all her might. Provender, feeling his heart start to pound, slid himself into the gap between her left arm and the table leg nearest the building. He eased himself out across the table's underside, lying flat, braced on his forearms. His feet were still on the balcony floor, taking most of his weight. Cautiously he lifted one leg, then the other. His weight was transferred to his torso.
The table creaked. Provender froze, his legs sticking straight out behind him.
'Can't do this,' he breathed. 'It's going to break.'
'It's not. Keep going.'
Little encouraged, Provender wriggled a few inches further forward.
The table creaked again, a deeper, sadder sound this time - the sound of resignation, almost, as if the table accepted it wasn't going to survive this ordeal.
Provender thought of the drop beneath him. He thought of the thickness of the wood that was keeping him from falling, or rather the thinness of it. An inch at most. Closer on three quarters of an inch.
Three quarters of an inch of cheap pine. It was nothing. Nothing. He might as well be lying on a sheet of balsa.
'Provender.'
Is's voice. Urging.
But what Provender was listening to was the sound of space around him. The faint breeze thrumming through Needle Grove's canyons. Distant shouts that echoed nebulously. The height - and depth - of the world he had now ventured into. Air. Immensity.
He quailed inside. He clenched his eyes shut. He wanted to slide back onto the balcony where Is was, where safety was, but he couldn't. He couldn't move.
A table. A few glued-together planks.
He was going to die.
'Provender, listen to me. You've just got to go forward. There's nothing else you can do. You'll be fine.'
'Is...'
'I mean it. I promise.'
She meant it. She promised.
How could she promise something like that? That he would be fine?
She couldn't.
But what mattered was that she said she could.
Provender took a breath; held it. He clamped his teeth together. Eyes still tight shut, he threw himself fully onto the table. He slithered forward. He did it fast. Knees, elbows, scrambling, and there was a noise coming out of him, a fusion of expelled breath and battle cry, low-pitched, rising. The table flexed beneath him. The table jumped. The table juddered and groaned. He heard a yelp from Is. He fell.
Forward.
A short plunge.
Landed hands first on Mrs Philcox's balcony.
Tumbled.
Rolled.
Fetched up with his head between two plant pots.
He lay dazed, glad, numb, exultant. Alive.
Then he levered himself up onto his elbows and craned his neck to peer over the parapet at Is. He was about to say something blithe and plucky like 'Nothing to it' or 'Hop on over then', until he saw Is's face ... and realised that the table was no longer there, suspended between the two balconies.
At that precise instant, from far below there came a faint but fulsome crash.
39
Merlin Milner had had a busy but so far fruitless morning in Needle Grove. He had crossed off five names on his list of seven. He had not yet found the person he was after.
Still, he refused to be discouraged.
Even when a pine table plunged from the sky and almost killed him.
Shortly before this incident occurred, Milner had decided to take a breather, grab a bite to eat, and assess the state of his investigations. It never hurt to take time out to regroup and retrench - especially after having come across five of the least savoury individuals he had ever had to misfortune to encounter, in surroundings that were not, anyway, conducive to feelings of goodwill toward one's fellow-men. Moreover, Milner wasn't looking forward to tackling the last two names on the list, and certainly didn't want to do it on an empty stomach.
Midway up Block 26 there was a mezzanine area which boasted a shopping arcade, along with a café and various other communal amenities. Milner had glimpsed it a couple of times on his way between different flats, as the lift had a tendency to stop at that floor to let people in or out. At the café he purchased a ham sandwich and a bottle of orange juice. The sandwich was so dry as to be near inedible, the juice so sharp as to be near undrinkable. He persevered with both while sitting at a cigarette-singed plastic table and perusing his list of suspects and the not
es he had appended to the names of the ones he had already approached.
First in line, alphabetically, came Sable di Santis, who lived at Flat 37J. She had opened her door circumspectly - it proved to be a common habit among the denizens of Needle Grove - and had glared at Milner with an unnerving mixture of aggression and dismissal. She was taller than him by nearly a foot and had short spiky hair that matched the short-spiked dog collar she was wearing. The towelling bathrobe she had on revealed a glimpse of leather corsetry. While greeting her and introducing himself, Milner glanced past her and noticed an array of implements mounted on one wall of the main room - whips, manacles, ball-gags, and some large, long, nobbly devices the sight of which, frankly, alarmed him. He was still speaking when a muffled female voice called out from an adjoining room in the flat, asking Sable if she was coming back. Sable snapped a reply: 'Shut your mouth, bitch!' Then, not much more pleasantly, she told Milner she was busy with a client, he should state his business, otherwise fuck off. Milner apologised, said he'd made a mistake, got the wrong flat, sorry for bothering her, goodbye.
So much for SABLE DI SANTIS - LESBIAN SADIST.
Next up was Serena Drummer, down on the fourth floor, flat number 4P. Milner had arrived just in time to find her locking her door, on her way out with a group of snivelling, clamouring children around her legs. 'Miss Drummer?' he had asked, and had been firmly and tartly corrected: 'Mrs.' She wasn't any more warm or agreeable a woman than Sable di Santis, and during her conversation with Milner broke off to scold each of her children at least once. She had dull, grainy skin, lank hair, a chipped front tooth, an all-over air of harassment. She was, however, surprisingly forthcoming. She was just off with the kids to visit her husband, she explained. Went every Tuesday. He was inside, she said. Been banged up for killing someone eight years ago. Brixton Towers jail. He didn't do it, though. Well, he did. But the bastard had it coming. Fiddled with one of the kids, didn't he. 'Anyway,' she said, 'if yer another journalist after me story, I in't talkin' to yer. Not till we've discussed terms.' Milner informed her he wasn't a journalist. 'Why you wastin' my fuckin' time then?' she snorted, and strode off with her brood in tow. Milner couldn't help but wonder if her husband, after all this time in clink, found it curious that at least three of her offspring were under eight years old. Did he ask himself how she kept getting pregnant? Or were conjugal visits less well supervised than Milner had been led to believe?
Not his problem, though. And SERENA DRUMMER, MURDER MAN SEER, wasn't his problem either.
Sherman Dungate, of Flat 19C, answered his door in vest and underpants but appeared fully clothed thanks to the tattoos that covered his torso to the neck, his arms to the wrists and his legs to the ankles. There were skulls, roses, angels and naked women on his body but the majority of the tattoos were non-representational, zigzags and swirls and interlocking knots, like a kind of animal marking, blue-ink camouflage. He was liberally pierced, too, with a dozen earrings, a nose stud, a lip ring, and a nipple ring prominent through the fabric of his vest. He was skeletal-skinny, with rodent eyes, and the moment he caught sight of Milner his expression turned peevish and sullen. 'You're new, aintcha,' he said. 'All right, I'll give you your bung. But tell your Super I can't keep paying off every fucking one of you who turns up at my door. I got a business to run here, you know.' Before Milner could say anything, Dungate disappeared into the flat and returned with a wad of greasy, crumpled banknotes. 'Fifty usually covers it,' he said, licking a finger and peeling off five tenners. 'Cop tax,' he sneered, holding out the money. At last it dawned on Milner what was going on, and he assured Dungate that he wasn't a policeman, at which the other man brightened. 'Oh, you're here for some stuff then, are you?' Milner said no, not that either. Now Dungate became resentful. 'So why you fucking bothering me? There's half a dozen buyers probably been scared off by seeing you here. You're costing me money, man.' Milner tried to apologise but Dungate launched into a volley of invective, using all sorts of unflattering terms to describe Milner, time-waster being the least offensive. Milner beat a retreat.
SHERMAN DUNGATE was many things, including a MEAN DRUGS THANE, but he was not, Milner was quite sure, Provender Gleed's kidnapper.
Fourth on the list came Dudley St Barstow, and although Milner did not actually meet the man face to face, what he heard through the door to Flat 48F was enough to convince him that St Barstow was not holding Provender on the premises. He seemed to have plenty of livestock in there, however, to judge by the clucks and squawks and woofs and oinks that emanated from within, and he seemed to be enjoying an unnatural relationship with several of them. Milner, ear pressed to the door, heard a crooning male voice compliment a bird on its alluring tail feathers, refer admiringly to some mammal's shanks, and entice another mammal to come over and snuffle around for a treat he had hidden somewhere in his lap. St Barstow cracked jokes with the animals. He sounded a lot like an Arab sheik immersed in his harem, doting on his many concubines. Milner did not knock on the door. Nothing on earth would have persuaded him to meet the man inside.
And so DUDLEY ST BARSTOW, exponent of WRY ODD BEAST LUST, was eliminated from Milner's enquiries.
It was with some haste that Milner had moved on to Dennis Sandringham, who proved to be the best of a bad bunch. Sandringham looked, dressed, was coiffed, above all smelled, like the perfect lothario. As the flat door opened, a waft of cologne greeted Milner, then Sandringham did too. Immaculate in blazer and cravat, late-middle-aged but not looking it, he invited Milner in, offered him a nip of sherry, behaved like the most beneficent of hosts, and did not bat an eyelid when Milner asked to use his bathroom, a pretext for taking a sneaky peek around the entire flat. The phone rang while he was doing so, and when he returned to the main room, satisfied that Provender was not here, he found Sandringham cradling the receiver and chatting in such a way that Milner had no doubt the person on the other end of the line was a favoured female. 'One of my ladyfriends,' Sandringham explained after he hung up. 'Wants me to drop round and see her. Can't say no, can I? She'll want me to stick my todger in that dried-up crack of hers, worse luck, but a chap has to earn a living somehow. Speaking of which,' he added, insinuatingly, 'I could fit you in if you like.' Milner made his excuses. 'I do men as well, you know,' said Sandringham. Milner made more excuses, vehement ones this time, and left.
DENNIS SANDRINGHAM, DAMN DASHING SINNER, had not been the likeliest candidate for the role of Provender's kidnapper. Milner had felt obliged to check him out anyway, just to be sure. He rather wished he hadn't.
So, five down, two to go; and the final two were the ones Milner was most hopeful about, and most dreading meeting. Their names had given him the strongest hits out of all the seven. Last in alphabetical order was Demetrius Silver, who lived at the very top of the block in Flat 60M. DEMETRIUS SILVER, the anagrams said, IS DEVIL MUSTERER. Milner envisaged a goateed Satanist in a flat adorned with pentacles and inverted crucifixes, black candles guttering everywhere, the curtains permanently drawn.
It was an unappetising image, but the question was whether or not it was preferable to the impression Milner had built up of the resident of Flat 45L, one Damien Scrase.
From DAMIEN SCRASE Milner had extracted a plethora of anagrams, none of which was exactly a source of great comfort: SCARES MAIDEN, CRANIA MESSED, MEAN CAD RISES, INCREASES MAD, I END MASSACRE... The anagrams spake sooth. This Scrase fellow was not someone to be taken with a pinch of salt. He was, if not unhinged, then close to it. Potentially very dangerous. I END MASSACRE could, Milner supposed, be regarded as a good attribute rather than a bad. Then again, a person who ended a massacre might well be the very same person who started it, and in the light of the other anagrams Milner was more inclined towards the negative interpretation of the phrase rather than the positive.
The Satanist or the madman? It was a tough call, and in order to defer the decision, Milner found an exit from the shopping arcade and went outdoors.
He was on an overpass. The sun, now at its ze
nith, sent a hard white light straight down on his head. He shaded his eyes and basked in the brilliance, thinking that in these slivers of space between buildings the presence of direct sunshine must be a rarity and a blessing. He wondered if areas of Needle Grove ever even saw the sun during winter, when it was low and usually behind cloud.
He decided he would amble the length of the overpass, to the adjacent block, and come back. Idly he mused on Romeo Moore. How was he getting on? How far had he got in his quest to nail Arthur Gleed as the culprit? Not far at all, Milner suspected. Moore was a good anagrammatic detective but not, to be perfectly honest, as good an anagrammatic detective as Milner. Often Milner felt he was carrying Moore, doing a greater than fair share of the work. In any partnership, however much of a meeting of equals it appeared to be, there was inevitably one person who was superior to the other. An unwelcome truth but it had to be acknowledged. And if the current divergence of investigative paths proved anything, it would prove that.
On this uncharitable note, Milner sallied forth along the overpass ... and that was when the table, like a divine judgement, came hurtling down from heaven.
It missed him by inches. It landed slap bang in front of his right toecap. If he had been half a stride further on, if he had started walking a split-second sooner, Milner would have been right under it. He would have been killed instantly.
He watched the table, as if in slow motion, hit the concrete in front of him. It seemed to dismantle itself, shrugging into its component parts, the planks of its top separating, its legs splaying, its bracing timbers splintering in all directions. The impact made an almighty whump but was also somehow soundless, too stunningly loud for Milner's ears to comprehend. Fragments and flinders flew. The bulk of the table collapsed, plank bouncing off plank, shard off shard, slithering, spreading, coming to rest. Milner found himself staring at a heap of firewood at his feet, and he thought, That used to be a table, and then he thought, Was that a table? It seemed inconceivable that the wreckage just seconds ago had had shape, had been functional, had been a Thing and not merely Stuff.
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