Provender Gleed (15 page)

To which Is, amused, replied, 'Lucky we have a casualty unit here, isn't it? Chances are he might give himself a nasty cut.'

It felt naughty, a little bit seditious. Each of them sensed immediately that here was someone who didn't kowtow to the Families the way almost everyone else did. Each of them recognised a kindred spirit.

And it had been so great to begin with, Damien thought as he left his flat and took the lift down to Block 26's mid-level. So perfect. Him and Is. He had taken it upon himself to educate her. He had shared with her the benefit of his years of reading about the Families, learning about them, going on anti-Family rallies, joining various anti-Family discussion groups. Having fostered and nurtured his own resentment of the Families, he had been given the opportunity to foster and nurture someone else's, and he made the most of it. Where Is was sometimes unclear on Family history, he enlightened her. Where her take on anti-Family ideology was perhaps somewhat wonky, he had straightened her out. Pygmalion to her Galatea, he had taken the raw material of her opinions and fashioned it into a fine and focused credo.

And then - ungratefully? - she had dumped him.

It still rankled. After all he had done for her. All he had given her.

She had come out with some guff about two different perspectives on life, two strong personalities not always meeting each other halfway. She had said she still wanted to be friends even if they couldn't be lovers any more. She had tried, he had to admit, to let him down gently. But it had hurt. Still did.

One thing he could console himself with, though. When he had come to her with his proposal for kidnapping Provender Gleed, she had needed little persuasion to join in. And the credit for that, he liked to think, lay with him. His patient indoctrination of her. He had changed her for the better, and the change was permanent. Pat on the back for Damien 'Disgrace' Scrase.

The lift bump-buffeted to a halt, and Damien stepped out into a murkily-lit shopping arcade. All of Needle Grove's indoor communal areas were bathed in the same low-wattage level of neon bulb, filtered through green plastic casings to cast everything in shades of that hue. The shopping arcade was no exception. The floors here were also green - lawn-coloured linoleum - and the walls, though not wholly green, sported a mural depicting a fir forest, the foliage of which was, of course, dark green. The mural was intended as a tribute to the expanse of coniferous woodland that had been present on this site prior to the estate being built. The name of the estate had been chosen with the same purpose in mind. But in the event, it all conspired to depress rather than uplift. It emphasised the kind of natural landscape that Needle Grove had erased and that its residents were unlikely ever to know.

Today being a Sunday, the majority of the arcade's shops were closed and had their protective shutters and grilles firmly up over their windows and doors, and even the premises that were open for business looked as if they were ready to shut at a moment's notice. Few shopkeepers put items of value on public display, for fear of smash-and-grab raids, so the windows were all but empty. Inside, likewise, care was taken not to offer too much in the way of temptation. Cash tills, for instance, were hidden away inside reinforced-glass kiosks, and shopkeepers more often than not served their customers from behind bars. Even with all these precautions, to work in retail in Needle Grove was to expose yourself to a certain level of risk, both fiscal and personal. Shrinkage ran at roughly thirty per cent. The mortality rate wasn't much lower.

Mr Ho's All-Day Emporium occupied a prime corner site and attracted, consequently, a higher than average share of theft and strife. Its proprietor nonetheless retained an almost touching level of faith in humanity, and that was partly why Damien was a regular customer. Optimists were few and far between on the estate and should be supported. The convenience of the shop's location was also a factor.

Loitering outside the All-Day Emporium now, as Damien approached, was a clutch of rag-clad kids who hunkered in various slovenly postures, each one apparently trying to out-slouch the rest. Damien recognised them as one of the more recent gang-tribes to emerge from Needle Grove's petri dish of youth culture, the Orphans. Their chosen theme was rejection of family in all its forms, including Family. They pretended their parents were dead. They squatted in vacant flats. They wore only what they could beg, borrow or steal. They considered themselves the absolute antithesis of everything to do with heredity, ancestry, consanguinity.

Damien, in that respect, could almost admire them.

In every other respect he abhorred them.

The Orphans bad-eyed him as he entered the shop. Damien didn't avert his gaze, neither did he stare back. He gave them a level, measured look that said they had nothing to fear from him as long as he had nothing to fear from them.

Mr Ho, behind his unbarred counter, greeted Damien with an ebullient wave.

'Mr Scrase.'

'Mr Ho.'

'How can I help you this fine day?'

'Just some cigarettes.'

'You've given up.'

'Not that I recall.'

'I could swear, last month you told me never to sell you another packet. You made me vow.'

'Well, I've changed my mind.'

'Don't tell me. You've failed to get back together with that lady of yours.'

'You can read me like a book.'

Mr Ho shrugged. 'She was the reason you took up smoking again the last time. You said the other day you had hopes of a reunion. Now you're buying cigarettes. It doesn't take a genius to work it out.'

'It's a tense time for me generally, Mr Ho,' Damien said, with a meaningful emphasis.

Mr Ho took the hint. 'Fair enough. Say no more. It's Pedigree Milds, isn't it?'

'Ho ho, Mr Ho.'

'No, of course not. Only Family-independent brands for you. Which narrows it down a bit.' Mr Ho reached round and took a pack off the shelf behind him. The carton was festooned with Cantonese ideograms. 'A twenty-pack of Parent Nation. China's finest. I'm afraid import duty has gone up again.'

Damien took the cigarettes off him. 'Can't be helped. Anyway, I don't mind. All in a good cause.'

'Yes, China,' said Mr Ho, with a sardonic glint in his eye. 'The only real democracy in the world. Family-free for over half a century. A true paradise. I can't wait to return there.'

'Oh come on, it's not that bad.'

'Take it from me, Mr Scrase, China is a shit-hole. I know it offends you principles, but it's true. I couldn't wait to get out of there. Nothing works. Nothing gets done. Political corruption is off the scale.'

'And this country's better?'

'It's not worse.'

Damien remained resolutely unconvinced. He knew China wasn't perfect but it was trying its hardest. A decade after ousting its Families, it was a country still struggling to find its feet. He was sure that, in time, it would succeed. China was an experiment. It was setting the pattern which, one day, the rest of the world would follow.

'Let's agree to differ,' he said.

'Fair enough,' said Mr Ho. 'Anything else I can get you?'

'Box of matches. Oh, and would you have latex gloves?'

'Latex gloves?' Mr Ho raised an insinuating eyebrow.

'Don't ask.'

'It just so happens that the All-Day Emporium does stock latex gloves. You mean the disposable type, I take it. They're down the household aisle. If you want, I can get them for you...'

'No, I can do it.'

'That's it. That's the aisle. A little bit further down. Yes, there you are, on your left. No, your other left. Look up now. Yes, there. Directly in front of your nose.'

On his way back to the counter with the box of gloves Damien heard the chime of the electric bell over the shop door. A moment later he saw Mr Ho's welcoming-shopkeeper expression curdle into distaste. He turned in the direction Mr Ho was looking.

Three of the Orphans had come in and were standing slumped, hands in pockets, each pretending to examine a different display of groceries. They could not have looked more like three would-be shoplifters if they had tried.

'Listen, you lot,' said Mr Ho. 'I know you're not here to buy anything. Scram.'

The Orphans peered at him from beneath their lank fringes. They all belonged to that category of teenager who was congenitally incapable of closing his mouth.

'Go on,' Mr Ho said, with a flick of his hand for emphasis. 'I mean it. Only good customers like Mr Scrase are welcome here.'

One of the Orphans grabbed a tin of frankfurters in brine and held it up. 'But I want this,' he said. 'I want to buy it off you. I want you to make a profit off of me with your enormous mark-up.'

'No, you don't. You have no money. Put it back and leave.'

The Orphan glared at Mr Ho. Mr Ho returned the glare.

Reluctantly, sullenly, the Orphan replaced the tin. He thought for a moment, then said, 'Fuckin' Chinkie tampon.'

Damien couldn't help himself. He snorted, half with laughter, half with derision. 'What was that? What did you just say? Was it "Chinkie tampon"?'

The Orphan, puzzled, nodded.

'Do you have any idea how asinine that sounds? "Chinkie tampon". It doesn't even make sense. It doesn't
mean
anything.'

'Yeah, it does,' said the Orphan, defensively.

'Does it? What?'

'It, um ... it means he's a fuckin' slitty-eyed Chinese shit-wanker.'

'That doesn't mean anything either. For God's sake, if you're going to slag somebody off, at least make sure you do it coherently.'

Baffled now, the Orphan groped further into the limited recesses of his vocabulary, found nothing there that was going to be of any use, and so hawked up a wad of phlegm and gobbed it onto the floor. Then he spun on his heel and hunched out of the All-Day Emporium. His two cohorts followed.

'Sorry about that,' Damien said to Mr Ho.

'I'm used to it. I've been called worse. What gets me is that we went on that rent-strike two years ago to badger the Risen London Authority to improve conditions here, and when you see kids like those you have to wonder why we bothered. They don't deserve to have this place made better.'

'Maybe, but the rest of us certainly do. And if this place is made better, perhaps those kids won't behave the way they do.'

'Oh, I think they still will.'

'Yeah, you're right, but perhaps the next generation of gang-tribes won't emerge. If this estate was somewhere they could take pride in...'

'It's a nice dream. Doomed to failure, though, if our last experience was anything to go by.'

'Maybe,' said Damien. 'Maybe not. We'll see.'

Leaving the All-Day Emporium with his cigarettes, matches and box of latex gloves, Damien found the Orphans waiting for him outside. This wasn't exactly a surprise. It would have been naïve of him to think he could openly ridicule one of them and not be made to pay for it.

The Orphans had arranged themselves in a loose semicircle around the shop entrance. There were a dozen of them all told, and they were spaced out in such a way that Damien wouldn't be able to walk between any two of them without brushing at least one shoulder. The physical contact, however slight, would be construed as a shove. The shove, in turn, would be legitimate grounds for combat.

Damien halted in the shop doorway. He swivelled his head, taking in the Orphans one by one. Fully half of them had the reddened eye-whites and the receding gums of the habitual Tinct-user.

His face broke into a wide, fearsome grin. 'Trust me, lads,' he said. 'I will kill you all. Gladly. One of you so much as lays a finger on me, you're dead, the lot of you. You do not fuck with someone like me. So what do we say you just step out of my way and there's an end of it? Hey?'

The Orphans frowned. He was supposed to be intimidated. Why wasn't he? There were a dozen of them and only one of him. Why was
he
the one making the threats?

'Come on,' Damien said. 'I won't say it again. Do yourselves a favour. Get out of my way.'

All it took was one of the Orphans to shuffle his feet uneasily. Straight away, their pack mentality collapsed and their ranks broke. The semicircle drifted apart and the various Orphans wandered off in twos and threes to regroup further down the arcade, where they began a fierce debate among themselves as to why and how it was that one man had managed to talk them out of kicking his head in. It was a mystery. Downright perplexing.

Meanwhile Damien, sauntering back to the lift, lit himself a Parent Nation. He dragged on the cigarette and felt the nicotine-hit scour through him. He had been on the cancer-stick wagon for far too long. Falling off it was like greeting an old, familiar friend.

Continuing to suck on the cigarette, his thoughts sharpening with every puff, he mused on his standoff with the Orphans. It was a truth not always universally acknowledged that in any confrontation with thugs your best weapon was your brain. Thugs were, almost by definition, thick. They were also, at heart, cowards. All you had to do was act more aggressively than them, state with utter conviction that this was a fight they couldn't win, browbeat them, and invariably they would back down.

Of course, it was crucial that you were prepared to enforce words with deeds if it came to that.

Damien could feel the pommel of his sheath knife pressing into the small of his back. The weight of the whole weapon was dragging down on his trouser belt. Cigarette in mouth, he reached behind him, slipped a hand under the fabric of his shirt and briefly stroked the knife's haft, his fingers tracing the ridged contours of deerhorn like a blind man reading Braille.

He was glad he hadn't been forced to use the knife.

And those Orphans should be thanking their lucky stars he hadn't.

20

Gangs of cheerfully whistling workmen dismantled Venice. With hammer and crowbar they clawed the city apart and loaded it section by section, shattered façade by shattered façade, onto the backs of flatbed lorries. What had taken days to construct was taking hours to deconstruct. The beautiful illusion of
La Serenissima
was being reduced, little by little, to paint-and-plywood reality.