Faust Among Equals (20 page)

‘Gr.'

‘And, like you said, we might be here for some considerable time before George does the sensible thing and gives himself up.' She smiled warmly, like the sunrise. ‘And you did very sweetly say I could tidy the place up and give it a lick of paint and so on, didn't you?'

Lundqvist nodded sadly. His ‘Yeah, sure, do what you like' in this context clamoured for inclusion in the Library of Congress Index of Incredibly Unfortunate Remarks, along with such classics as ‘Of course it isn't loaded', ‘Let them eat cake' and ‘When I leave school, I want to be a solicitor'. However, even the meanest street punk in the barrios knows that any kidnapper who values his professional credibility doesn't welch on a deal unless he wants the word to get around that he's a two-face who can't be trusted. It was just a pity he'd also told her his AmEx Gold Card number.

‘Well,' Helen said, putting her feet up on a Louis Quinze fauteuil and leafing through the colour charts, ‘this is cosy, don't you think?'

‘Mmm.' Lundqvist nodded as if his head had just been replaced with a large log. ‘You think so?'

‘It's coming along, anyway,' Helen replied. ‘I mean, we're not there yet, but we're beginning to see the light at the end of the . . . Oh.'

She broke off and held the colour chart up against the wall. Inside his chest, Lundqvist's heart stopped and tried to burrow its way into his intestines.

‘Oh
yes
,' Helen said. ‘Yes, I think I'm on to something here. What do you think?' She pointed to a small square in the middle of the page. As far as Lundqvist could tell it was exactly the same colour as the seventy-four other little boxes. ‘For the ballroom, the main hall, the drawing room, the sitting room, the front stairs, the back stairs, the pantry, the scullery, the study, the loft conversion, the annexe, the loggia, the cloister, the fifth spare bedroom and the observatory? Then we can do the rest out in Orchard Haze and have the Golden Wave curtains in the back hall and the conservatory.' She paused. ‘What d'you think?'

Lundqvist considered. It took him a long time.

‘I think,' he said, ‘it'd be very easy to escape from here right now. Very easy indeed.'

Helen raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh no,' she said, ‘I wouldn't
dream
of trying to escape. After all,' she added mercilessly, ‘you told me not to.'

Lundqvist scowled. ‘You don't want to take any notice of all that,' he said. ‘That's just bluster. I mean, all you'd have to do,' he went on, pouring out a cup of coffee and passing it across the table to her, ‘is, say, throw a cup of coffee in my face, run across to that door there, the one that's conveniently ajar right this very minute, and—'

‘Not really,' Helen interrupted.

‘Oh I think you'll find you could.'

Helen shook her head. ‘Because,' she explained, ‘in about thirty seconds the men are going to take that door out and make a start on the French windows.'

‘French windows? In a hideout?'

‘Absolutely,' Helen replied. ‘Then, I thought, you'll be able to keep a good watch out to see if anybody comes up trying to rescue me. And if we put a couple of yards of old Venetian lace curtain across - I saw some in one of the catalogues, it's only ninety dollars a metre - then they couldn't see in. And of course, there's the locks.'

‘Locks?'

Helen nodded. ‘I told them, we want deadlocks
and
mortice locks on all the doors and windows. After all, security's the one thing you've got to have in a place like this, isn't it?'

Lundqvist choked back a whimper, with indeterminate success. Back in the second millennium BC, when the Greeks besieged Troy, things had been a whole lot different. Carpets, for example; the most expensive carpet you could get back then was little more than rush matting with ideas above its station. Velvet curtains were still over a thousand years in the future. Split-level grills and co-ordinated built-in kitchen units were nothing but a troubled oscillation in the subconscious mind of God. It had been, in other words, a very basic and primitive trial run, nothing more.

‘Okay,' Lundqvist said. ‘Sure, if I'm conscious it might be a bit tricky getting out of here. But if I was accidentally to slip on something and knock myself out . . .' He picked up a banana from the fruit bowl and unobtrusively started to peel it.

‘Unlikely,' Helen replied with a smile. ‘That's why I insisted on wall-to-wall fitted carpets.'

Lundqvist abandoned the banana. ‘All right,' he said, ‘point taken. Something might land on my head, though. Have you thought of that?'

Helen frowned. ‘Such as what?'

‘Well,' Lundqvist said, looking round, ‘say a big glass ashtray. Like this one here, for example.' He tested it in his hand for balance. ‘Knock a guy out cold with no trouble at all, something like this.'

‘Do you really think so?'

Lundqvist grinned at her, threw the ashtray up in the air and ducked under it. It landed on his head and broke cleanly in two.

‘Thought not,' Helen said. ‘If I were you, I'd put iodine or something on that cut.'

Muttering something under his breath about goddam cheapskate Taiwanese glassware, Lundqvist stood up and walked to the door.

‘Hey,' he observed, as he reached for the doorhandle, ‘my back's turned. Just thought I'd mention it.'

He went out, found the iodine, applied it liberally, counted up to a thousand, and went back. Helen was still there, her feet up on the sofa, reading a glossy magazine.

‘There's a really good bit in this about ideas for brightening up drab mezzanines,' she said. ‘Have a look.'

Lundqvist stood in the doorway and growled for a moment. Then he cleared his throat.

‘Good lord,' he said. ‘I left my gun right there on the coffee table, just where you could reach out and pick it up. How careless can you—?'

With a quick movement, Helen reached out and grabbed for the gun. Her fingers closed tight around the Pachmayr grips . . .

‘Okay,' Lundqvist started to say, ‘you win, I'll come - what are you
doing
?'

‘Catch.'

The gun flew through the air towards him. It took a considerable effort of will to suppress the instinct to catch it. There was a thud as it hit the door.

‘Butterfingers,' Helen remarked tolerantly. ‘Now that door'll have to be painted again. While we're at it, actually, I thought of having all the woodwork a sort of light Drowned Violet . . .'

Lundqvist closed his mouth, which had frozen open, just as his mother had warned him it would all those years ago. Nevertheless. He was as patient as he was resourceful.

‘Just come wonder,' he said, without moving. ‘Lucky you don't know about the
other
gun, the one hidden under that cushion you're leaning against right now.' To reinforce the statement, he smiled; a pleading, rather endearing little smile, which Helen ignored.

‘Yes,' she said, her head in a pattern book. ‘Isn't it?'

‘
C
ome in,' said the Finance Director, ‘sit down, make yourselves at home. What can I get you to drink?'

The Captain of Spectral Warriors looked round suspiciously, perched on the edge of a chair, and said that he'd quite fancy a small Babycham, if that wasn't too much trouble.

‘Small Babycham coming right up,' replied the Finance Director, bustling. ‘Now then, introductions. This is the Company Secretary, the Head of Security you already know, of course, and this is Harry, he's the Production Director, and Steve, who heads our Sales team. Lads, I'd like you all to meet Vince, Captain of Spectral Warriors.'

The boardroom table bobbed and sparkled with smiles and little waves. Unnerved, the Captain waved back.

‘Right,' said the Finance Director. ‘Here's your small, er, Babycham. Everyone else, then, the usual? Right, fine.' He clattered some bottles and whooshed a soda syphon.

‘Excuse me.'

‘Yes, Vince? What can we do for you? Peanuts, perhaps? Or how about an olive? Steve, get the olives.'

‘Right, coming up, won't be a—'

‘Excuse me,' the Captain repeated, ‘but what's all this in aid of? With respect and all that, but . . .'

The various directors nodded approvingly. Here was a man, they seemed to be saying, who comes straight to the point and no mucking about.

‘Well,' said the Company Secretary, folding his wings on the table in front of him, ‘basically, what we wanted to do was, well, really say thank you for all you've been doing . . .'

‘Greatly appreciated . . .'

‘Sterling stuff, of course, absolutely sterling . . .'

‘. . . And just kind of get to know you better, with possibly a view to asking you if you've ever considered - I mean if you'd
like
to - well, join the, um, board.'

‘As a director,' the Production Director explained.

‘One of us.'

‘Absolutely.'

‘Quite.'

The Captain slowly put his glass down. ‘What,' he said, ‘me?'

The Directors nodded. ‘Why not?' said the Head of Security. ‘Just the sort of bloke we're looking for.'

‘Committed.'

‘Dedicated.'

‘One hundred per cent, twenty-four hours a day, eight days a—'

‘
Seven
days . . .'

‘Oh, they did bring that in after all, did they?'

‘Just a moment,' said the Captain. ‘Let's just get this straight.
You
want
me
to be a Director?'

The Directors nodded.

‘Oh.'

‘Just as soon -' The Finance Director addressed his remarks to the wall behind the Captain's head. ‘- just as soon as we've cleared up this little bit of nonsense we've got on at the minute, of course. Actually, you might be able to help us there, because . . .'

A forty-watt bulb started to glow in the back of the Captain's mind. He asked, ‘What little bit of nonsense?'

‘This whatsisname . . .'

‘Loonquest?'

‘Lunkfish?'

‘Lund-something. Damn, it's on the tip of—'

‘No.'

The Captain stood up, his face white as a soap-ad sheet. ‘Absolutely not,' he went on. ‘Not after last time. Sorry, but—'

‘Sit down.'

‘I really don't think there's much point, because—'

‘
Sit down!
'

The Captain sat down. Someone refilled his glass and the Production Director produced a bowl of cheese straws, some of which had already had the ends nibbled off. This was, after all, Hell; where all the boxes of chocolates come with the coffee creams already removed, and the detective stories in the library all have the last five pages missing.

‘Obviously,' purred the Finance Director smoothly, ‘a little reluctance, let's say, is only to be expected. Quite right too. Absolutely understandable, under the circumstances. We respect you for it, don't we?'

Heads nodded.

‘Nevertheless.' The Finance Director slid a tumblerful of breadsticks and a plate of vol-au-vents down the table towards the Captain. ‘Someone's got to do it. From each according to his abilities, and all that.'

‘Very sound,' murmured the Company Secretary, and he pursed his lips judicially. ‘Absolutely.'

The Captain shook his head. ‘No way,' he replied, trembling slightly. ‘Have you people got even the faintest notion of what it's like, three days in a damn onion? Quite apart from everything else, the smell—'

‘Jolly good idea,' broke in the Production Director. ‘Smashing suggestion of yours. I've ordered five tons of onions for the Adultery Wing, by the way, and we're working on the design right now. Actually, we were thinking of changing the name to the Captain Vincent Schwartzschatte Adultery Wing, just to show our application of—'

‘You're all crazy,' the Captain shouted. ‘There's absolutely nothing you can do that'll make me go back in there after that lunatic, nothing at all. And as for the lads . . .'

The Finance Director held up his hand. ‘Fair enough,' he said. ‘Point taken, say no more, subject closed. And, like we said, we respect you for it, no doubt about it. Don't we, lads?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘No question.'

‘Utmost respect. Utmost.'

‘However.' The Finance Director leant forward on to the boardroom table and fixed the Captain with a selection of his eyes. ‘That does bring us on rather neatly to what we might call -' He paused, and grinned disconcertingly. ‘- the consolation prize. Tell him about it, Steve.'