Iain Banks - The Business

'Ah, well. There we are, then. This has, as you can imagine, all become rather more complicated because of that development. Are you still thinking of the proposition Jebbet and Tommy put to you?'

'Yes.'

'Good. The amount of power invested in whoever takes up the post there would be very considerable. You might have decided not to become Queen of Thulahn, Kathryn, but you could still be something like the President. What do you think? Have you had any thoughts? Or would it now be too awkward with Suvinder there?'

'Oh, I've had thoughts, Mr Hazleton.'

'You're being very cryptic, Kathryn. Is there somebody there with you? Can't you talk?'

'There's nobody here. I can talk. I'm still thinking very seriously about taking up the post in Thulahn.'

'But you haven't come to a decision yet.'

'Not yet.'

'You couldn't give us a balance-of-probabilities assessment, even? Which way you're leaning, as it were?'

'There are very strong reasons for going, and very strong ones for staying where I am. It's too delicately balanced, so, no, I'm afraid I can't. But once I've made my decision, I'll stick with it.'

'And when do you think that will be, Kathryn?'

'I think another few days should do the trick.'

'Well, we shall just have to be patient, shan't we, Kathryn?'

'Yes. Sorry about that.'

'Of course, there is the other matter, isn't there? I don't want to have to push you on that, too, but it has been a couple of weeks now…'

'You mean that B-movie you provided me with?'

'Yes. I was wondering if you'd come to any decision on that, too.'

'Yes. I have.'

Stephen. We need to talk. Call when you can. Voice or this.

Uncle Freddy had a Viking's funeral. His coffin was placed in an old motorboat, one of those polished wooden things with two tandem separate seating compartments and a stern deck that slopes in a curve all the way down to the water. It had been filled with various flammable stuff and moored out in the centre of the lake where we'd fished a few weeks earlier. A crowd of us — a big crowd, too, given that Freddy hadn't had many relatives — looked on.

One of his drinking cronies from the pub in Blysecrag village was an archer; he had one of those elaborate modern bows that looks much more complicated than any gun, with balancing weights sticking out apparently at random and all sorts of other bits and pieces. He loaded up an arrow with a big, bulging head made of bound rags soaked in petrol, another drinking chum lit it, and then he shot it out towards the motorboat. The arrow made a noise I will never forget as it curved up through the clear, cool air. Uncle Freddy's pal was obviously very good or he'd done this before, because that one shot was all he needed. The arrow slammed dramatically into the woodwork, the flames caught and spread and the boat was soon ablaze from end to end.

I stood watching it burn, thinking that there were probably all sorts of terribly British and very sensible rules and regulations about the proper disposal of bodies that were being flouted here. Well, fuck them if they can't take a joke. Freddy: the man who put the fun in funeral.

Uncle F left me a small landscape painting I'd once admired. Not by anybody famous, and not valuable, just nice, and something to remember him by. What do you give the girl who has everything? Your undivided attention, of course. So, having not bequeathed me the entire house and estate of Blysecrag, Freddy did the next best thing and left me something I would be able to pack in a bag and take away with me.

The Charm Monsters — the Business' Conjurations and Interludans division — had been kept at bay by the terms of Uncle Freddy's will. I think Miss Heggies was grateful for that, though there wasn't much she could do about the presence of Maeve Watkins. Still, they seemed to get along politely enough, Miss H serving Mrs W tea in the drawing room with a civility that was one notch up from frosty, and Mrs W seeming slightly embarrassed and modestly grateful.

The company was represented by Madame Tchassot, the other Level One apart from Hazleton who'd been at the weekend party at Blysecrag three weeks earlier. I asked to have a word with her alone. We sat in Blysecrag's toweringly impressive library; she settled her small elegant frame into a seat, carefully smoothing her black skirt under her bony legs.

'What is it that concerns you, Kathryn?' She looked around, then pulled a small container like a powder compact from her handbag. 'Oh. Do you think it is permitted to smoke in here?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't mind if I do?' Her accent was confusing, half-way between French and German.

'No, I don't.'

She offered me a cigarette, which I refused. She lit up. The little container was a closable ashtray; she placed it on the table at her side. 'I understand you might be moving to Thulahn,' she said, tapping the end of the Dunhill gently against the edge of the little ashtray, though the ash wasn't ready to come off yet.

I watched this, trying to judge how much to say, trying to think back to what I knew of Madame Tchassot. How close was she to Hazleton? The fact that she was supposed to have a thing going with Adrian Poudenhaut didn't mean much by itself. If it did mean anything beyond the purely personal, it might even mean that Hazleton was using Poudenhaut to keep an eye on her. Though it might mean something else, too.

'Possibly.'

She blinked behind her small glasses. 'The rumour I have heard is that Prince Suvinder has proposed to you.' She smiled. 'That is very interesting.'

'Yes, it is, isn't it? I wondered at one stage if that had somehow been set up.'

'Set up? How do you mean?'

'I mean that somebody, or some people, at the highest level of the Business, decided that having an agreement with the Prince, legal or otherwise, wasn't good enough to guarantee that Thulahn was really ours, and that having one of our own high-level execs married to the ruler would be a far more satisfactory way of cementing the relationship between us and Thulahn.'

'Ah, yes, I see. But it would be something of a long shot, yes?'

'Not that long, perhaps. The people concerned already knew that the Prince was…keen on me. And I was sounded out, first by Mr Dessous and then by Mr Cholongai. I misinterpreted, at the time: I thought they were really trying to find out how suited I would be to becoming a sort of ambassador to Thulahn, which is the pretext that was used to get me to go there. I thought they were worried that I was insufficiently committed, not so much to the company as to the idea of personal monetary success and, I suppose, laissez-faire capitalism itself. What they were really worried about, I think, is that I was too committed to those things.'

She blinked. 'Can one be?'

'I think so, if you are hoping that the person concerned might find something in a poor, underdeveloped Third World country that she can't find in her very comfortable existence in one of the richest parts of the richest state in the richest country in the world.'

'I have heard that Thulahn is enchanting,' Madame Tchassot said, persuading some ash to drop from her cigarette. 'I have never been there.' She looked over her glasses at me. 'Would you recommend a visit?'

'In a personal or a business capacity?'

She looked surprised. 'I think one may only savour enchantment in a personal capacity, no?'

'Of course. Madame Tchassot, may I ask if what I'm talking about here is all new to you, or did you already know of anything like this before?'

'But, Kathryn, if all that you are speculating about had been spoken about at my level, you would be asking me now to reveal what the Board has discussed. You must know that I cannot do that.' She smiled, and put one hand to her tightly gathered hair. 'However, there are less formal occasions when such subjects arise between Board members, and in that context I can tell you that there was some talk of you being just the right person to represent us in Thulahn, and the point was made that the Prince's high regard for you would be to the good in this respect. I do not think that any of us thought for one moment he would make you a proposal of marriage. For my part, and I mean no disrespect, I would have imagined that he would want to marry, or would be obliged to marry, someone of a certain social class.'