Jon Grimwood - End of the World Blues

“Empty,” said Petro, looking at the ships. “No one has this many servitors.”

“No,” Nico said. “I’ve checked. The major domo says the vessels are full.”

Petro laughed.

“Multiple life signs,” insisted Nico. “On all of the ships.”

“Animals then. To make them look occupied.”

“Maybe not,” said Antonio. “It could be ground dwellers.”

“Same thing.”

“But they’d die,” said Neku. Everyone knew ground dwellers grew sick if moved out of their sphere. “The d’Alamberts wouldn’t do that.”

“Who the fuck knows what they’d do?” said Petro, then shut his mouth at a very pointed stare from his mother.

“Look straight ahead,” Lady Katchatka told her daughter. “And for heaven’s sake start smiling.” Lady Neku did as she was ordered.

The first ship was the biggest. It was red and yellow, although the yellow had faded. The ship behind looked newer, being bright red with no contrasting colour, and the ships beyond that were shades of violet, pink, and blue. Despite herself, Lady Neku was impressed. She’d never seen a ship that wasn’t black.

“Family colours,” said Nico, wrapping his arm about his sister.

She edged away.

“Provincials,” said Petro. “What can one expect?”

Lady Katchatka shook her head. “You’re wrong,” she said. “They just like to appear that way. Always remember, looking weak can sometimes be a strength.”

An army poured from the first ship. A hundred men streamed down the ramp. They wore gold and red, carried hand weapons, and gazed intently at the family and servitors gathered to meet them. It was only when Lady Neku looked closely that she realised the group included old men and those who were little more than children.

“And this is meant to impress us?” asked Nico.

The hundred men gathered into two lines and turned to face the door of the second ship. “Lord d’Alambert,” muttered Nico before the door had even begun to open.

“No,” said his mother. “Luc…”

“How did you know?” asked Lady Neku, when a thin figure hesitated in the doorway, only to flinch at a command from someone out of sight. Raising his chin, Luc d’Alambert put one foot on the ramp and forced himself to take another step. His subsequent steps came more easily.

“If we let the boy live then the old man will follow.”

Lady Neku looked at her mother in case she was joking. From the look on Lady Katchatka’s face, her daughter guessed not. “Is that how you’d do it?”

“Probably,” said her mother. “But then I have three sons. Lord d’Alambert has only one.”

The boy in the red jacket walked slowly towards the foot of the ramp, only too aware that all eyes in the hangar were on him. He hesitated slightly at the bottom, before stepping onto the deck.

“What does he think?” said Antonio. “That we’ve electrified that exact patch of ground?”

Nico looked interested. “Is that possible?”

Antonio ruffled his brother’s hair. “Anything’s possible,” he said, “given sufficient will.”

Glancing up, Luc d’Alambert caught the entire Katchatka family watching him and looked away. He was shaking, Lady Neku realised. For a second she considered walking out to meet him. Her mother might be furious. On the other hand, her mother might be impressed. The problem with Lady Katchatka was that it was never possible to work out which it would be in advance, and besides there were her brothers’ opinions to consider.

Lady Neku decided to stay where she was.

“God,” said Petro, watching the boy walk slowly towards them. “I’m surprised they didn’t drown the little shit at birth.”

Luc d’Alambert was short of stature. Scrawny, with a narrow face and deep set eyes. And his skin…it was pale enough to be almost transparent. A paper cut-out of a real person.

“Lady Katchatka, my Lords, Lady Neku…”

Neku liked that she and her mother got name checks while her brothers were lumped in together, although she could tell from the stiffening of Nico’s shoulders that he’d already taken offence.

“My Lord Luc…” Somehow, while Lady Neku had been watching Nico, Petro, and Antonio and wondering which was going to sneer first, her mother had moved forward to meet the boy.

Shit, thought Lady Neku.

“Go on,” hissed Nico.

She shook her head. Waiting until she was summoned now seemed the safest option. What did he see? Lady Neku wondered. What did the boy see when he looked at her mother? A small woman in a black dress who walked with a stick, or a monster rumoured to have strangled her husband the moment she tired of him? Harsh times produced harsh people and few came harsher than Isabeau Katchatka, who joined the family as the fourteen-year-old bride of a man thirty years her senior and still ruled endless decades later.

There was another rumour. One that said Nico, Petro, and Antonio shared no DNA with the father who died before they were born. If this was true, then the heirs to High Strange had no link to the original family other than name. It also threw an interesting light on an even darker rumour. That Lady Katchatka shared her bed with all three of her sons.

If they came from her body alone, then Lady Katchatka was, if rumour be believed, effectively sleeping with herself. Personally Lady Neku doubted it. According to Nico, the only times he’d shared a bed with his mother, the woman had done nothing but fall asleep and snore.

A house phone started ringing half way through breakfast. Until then neither Kit nor Neku had realised the flat in Hogarth Mews possessed one. It was Neku who found the thing in an alcove behind a Warhol print near the front door.

A joke, Kit decided, given the endless repetition of silk-screened ears on the print itself.

The phone was ivory white, and so old it teetered on the edge of being fashionably retro. Although what Kit noticed was a row of keys hanging from hooks on the wall above. It looked like the police hadn’t needed to break the locks on Mary’s cupboard after all.

“Kit Nouveau,” he said, picking up the receiver.

The laugh at the other end was mocking. “How much longer are you going to keep calling yourself that?” demanded Kate, sounding herself now she was back on home ground.

“Until I can be bothered to change it back.”

“Which will be when?”

“Probably never,” said Kit. “Maybe sooner. What do you want…?” He hadn’t intended to be so blunt, but with Kate it was probably the best way to be.

“You saw Pat?”

“Yes, of course. I told you I would.”

“And how was he?”

“Dying,” said Kit.

When Kate spoke again, even Neku, who hovered at Kit’s shoulder, could tell the woman was fighting to hold her temper. “He gave you Mary’s original letter?”

“Yes,” admitted Kit. “He did.”

“I knew he would,” she said. “Pat always wanted to send that letter on. Unfortunately, by the time he argued me into it you’d vanished. Anyway, I was more worried about tracking down my daughter.”

“Who came back,” said Kit.

“Eventually…So what have you found out so far?”

“Kate!”

“Just asking.”

Kit considered what he knew. Wondered what the underlying tidiness of the flat said about Mary’s state of mind in the hours before she’d locked the door for the last time, leaving a bag of rubbish forgotten inside. The chaos was superficial, upturned drawers and emptied cases. The carpets had been clean and the floor tiles in the shower room wiped down. Even the wastepaper bin in the bedroom had been emptied.

“She cancelled her milk, gas, and electricity,” said Kit. “But not her telephone. The washing up was done, her washing basket was empty, ditto the fridge, and her cooker’s been cleaned.”