Iain Banks: The Business

He stared through the glass with a look of utter fury, then stood up, glanced around and ran behind the car. I watched in the rear-view mirror while he found a couple of large rocks from the side of the road; he ran back quickly and wedged them on either side of the car's offside rear wheel, stamping them into place. I reached over and tested the glove-box; still open. I pulled the keys out, letting the engine die, locked the glove-box on the key, then restarted the engine. Poudenhaut clapped his hands free of dust as he came back to the window. 'You were a bit slow there, Kathryn,' he said, bending to look in at me.

He sat on the car's wing, looking out at the road. I could still hear his voice quite clearly through the hood's layers of fabric. 'I suppose what we have here is a Mexican stand-off, isn't that what they call it?' He swivelled at the hips and looked round at me through the windscreen. 'Come on, Kathryn. If you're upset I put my hand on your knee, if that's what this is all about, we'll forget it ever happened. I don't know what you're talking about with this Silex thing and phone lines and so on, but let's at least discuss it like adults. You're just being childish. Come on, let me back into the car.'

'What was really going on, Adrian? Was it a dealing room? Is that what you had in there? Was that what the hidden room was all about?'

'Kathryn, if you don't stop this nonsense I'm just going to have to…' He patted his breast pocket, but his phone was in the car, connected to a hands-free kit. He smiled and spread his hands. 'Well, I suppose I'll just have to flag down the next car. The Swiss police won't be very happy about this, Kathryn, if they have to get involved.'

'Were you in on what happened to Mike Daniels, Adrian, or was that just Colin Walker on his own? Well, alone apart from the bimbo and the dentist?'

He stared at me, his mouth open. He closed it.

'And the wheeze of sending a number to Mr Shinizagi like that. What was it — a bank sort code? Account number? That must have been Mr Hazleton's idea, right? He's into numbers and puzzles and shit, isn't he? You can count to over a thousand using your fingers; he ever mention that to you? And, of course, if you use somebody's teeth as binary code, you can count to over two billion, or transmit up to a ten-figure number.'

He came rushing around the car and started pulling at the passenger door's handle. 'You just let me in now, you fucking bitch. You fucking smart-assed bitch, let me in now! Let me in or I'll tear this hood off with my own hands.'

'Your Swiss army knife's in the glove-box with the spare keys, Ade. Oh, what were you keeping the revs down to, Ade? Five thousand, wasn't it?' I blipped the accelerator for longer this time. The rev counter's needle swung sharply up: to six, then seven thousand. The rev counter was red-lined at eight and a half thousand, though it went up from there to ten thousand. The engine screamed, making a wonderful metallic, spine-tingling yowl; a noise that must have echoed off nearby mountains and very possibly exceeded the drive-by noise regulations of several Swiss cantons.

'What are you doing?' Poudenhaut shouted. 'Stop that!'

I stepped on the gas again; the engine responded instantly, producing another fabulous pulse of sound. 'Woah, we were up to eight thousand that time, Adrian,' I told him. 'Nearly into the red.'

He'd given up pulling at the door handle, possibly afraid that he'd break it. He was standing a couple of metres away, looking utterly distraught and trembling, whether with fear or rage it was hard to tell.

I stamped on the accelerator, pushing it briefly to the floor this time. The noise was crushing, vast, furious, like a whole pride of lions screaming in your ear at once. The needle on the rev counter flicked briefly into the red area on the dial, then fell away again and clunked back towards the idling zone. 'We hit the red zone there, Adrian. Can't be doing the car any good.'

'Fuck off! Just fuck off! Fuck you! Fuck you, you cunt! It's just fucking metal. Fuck you!' He looked like he was crying. He turned on his heel and stamped off towards the road, shoulders hunched. I let him get to the metalled surface, then floored the gas pedal and held it there for a few seconds. The car quaked, the engine screamed, wailing like something in the utmost extremity of agony. It would have been a hard thing to do for anybody with the slightest amount of mechanical sympathy, and I wasn't enjoying it but, then, it was a means to an end, and in the end our Adrian was right: it was just metal. No matter what it sounded like, the only real suffering was being done by him. Poudenhaut shook as he heard this noise, then he spun round and came charging back. He beat on the hood with his fists. 'Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! My car! Stop it!'

'Can you smell that, Adrian? Smells like burning oil or something, don't you think? Oh, look, there's a red light on in here. Can't imagine that bodes too well.' I blipped the throttle again. The engine caterwauled, metallic and harsh. 'That sound different to you? I thought it sounded different that time. More of a metallic edge, seemed to me. What do you think? Here, have another listen…'

'Stop it! Stop it!'

'You'd better answer my questions, Adrian, or soon I'm going to get bored and then I'll just keep my foot planted pedal to the metal until the fucker seizes.'

'You fucking bitch!'

'Here we go, Adrian.'

'All right! What?'

'Sorry?' I said.

I pressed a finger to the window lift, depressing it slightly so that the window cracked open by about a centimetre. He forced his fingers through the gap and tried to shove the window down further. I hit the button again and the window started to lift, trapping his fingers between the top edge of the glass and the fabric-covered metal frame of the hood. He screamed.

'Shit,' I said, 'I didn't think you could do that with a modern car. I thought they were all supposed to have a sensor or something that stopped that happening.'

Poudenhaut tried to pull his fingers free, but couldn't. 'You fucking bitch! My fingers!'

'What do you reckon, Adrian? Are Ferrari above fitting that sort of namby-pamby safety device, or do you think it's just not working? I don't know. I'm still not convinced that Fiat have all the reliability concerns licked. Never mind. Going into the red again here, Ade.' Another swinging, rasping, screaming bellow of noise.

'All right!'

'What?' I lifted my phone and studied the display.

'All right! Fucking let me go!'

'Pardon, Adrian? What was that?' I punched some numbers, listened, then hit some more.

'I said all right! Can't you fucking hear me? All right!'

'What?' I was still fiddling with the phone, jabbing numbers. I held it up to the window. 'You'll have to repeat that, Adrian.'

'It was a dealing room!'

'In Silex?'

'Yes! So fucking what? We could have fucking lost money too, you know!'

'The value of your investments can go down as well as up,' I agreed.

'It doesn't matter! It's all over. We sent the money to Shinizagi! That's what he wanted! Daniels raped his daughter; the fucker deserved worse! Who fucking cares anyway? Let me go! Ah! My fucking fingers!'

'What's it all for, Adrian?' I asked, still holding the phone up to the window. 'What was the money for? What is Shinizagi supposed to do with it?'

'I don't know!'

'Oh, bad answer, Adrian. Could cost you a brand new engine.' I hit the throttle. The engine zinged monstrously. It really didn't sound right now. I thought I caught a puff of ominously grey-blue smoke in the rear-view mirror.

'I don't fucking know! Something to do with Fenua Ua, maybe, but he wouldn't tell me! You fucking bitch! My fingers are breaking!'

'Hazleton wouldn't tell you?'

'No! I didn't need to know! It's just a guess! I'm just guessing!'