Iain Banks - Complicity

There is a hacking, spitting noise from behind you. "Look! For Christ's sake! What is this? Stop! I'm rich! I can —»

You go over to him, plant one foot on his head and soak the sanitary towel again.

"Ah! Look, I can get money! Christ! No —!"

You clamp the towel over his face again. He struggles for a while before he goes limp. You put another, bigger strip of tape across his mouth.

It takes a while to get the nozzle set just so on the seat of the easy chair. Then, as you are testing the gas-flow, you hear a whistling, retching noise, and turn in time to see twin streams of vomit spurting from Sir Rufus's nostrils and spattering over the floorboards.

"Shit," you say, and go quickly over to him, tearing the tape off his mouth.

He gasps and splutters, almost choking. More of the vomit comes up, rolling out of his mouth and onto the floor. You smell garlic. He coughs some more, then breathes more easily.

When you are sure he isn't going to drown on his vomit and he's starting to make semi-comprehensible noises again, you hold the wispy hair at the back of his head and wind a length of tape right round his head a couple of times, sealing his mouth again.

You put your stuff away in the day-pack as he lies there, moving weakly then more powerfully, the noises coming down his nose faint, then strong; moans followed by what would be shouts if he could open his mouth.

You squat down by the side of the easy chair, where the rubber hose from the calor-gas bottle loops down and round and up before it ends in the brass nozzle. Sitting on the cushion of the easy chair, looking black and incongruous, is the iron grate from the living-room fire. You have tied the brass nozzle to the grate with wire, pointing it up at the scuffed red wall of the gas cylinder about fifteen centimetres above. Sir Rufus's head is about a metre and a half from the easy chair. He has a good view of it.

"Well, Sir Rufus," you say, tugging a pretend forelock and still imitating the sing-song of a Welsh accent. You tap the wall of the cylinder. "I suppose you know what a blevey is, don't you?"

His eyes look like they're coming out of their sockets. His voice, coming down his nose, sounds strangled.

"Of course you do," you say, smiling behind the mask and nodding. "That ship; that LPG carrier of yours — well, your company's — did just that in the Bombay docks, didn't it?" You nod again; a sort of floating, bobbing nod you somehow associate with the Welsh. "Thousand dead, wasn't it? Mind you, they're only Indians, eh? Still fighting it in the courts, are you? Shame these things always take so long really, isn't it? Of course, altering the corporate structure like that, making the ship the only asset of the company; that makes life a bit easier for you, doesn't it? Not nearly so much compensation to fork out, I suppose?"

He coughs down his nose, then sneezes and seems to be trying to shout something.

"Terrifying things, bleveys, they say," you tell him, shaking your head. "Ever wondered what one looks like close up, have you?" You nod again. "I know I have. Well," — you turn and pat the cold, fat shoulder of the gas cylinder — "here's one I prepared earlier."

You turn the knurled wheel on the valve. The gas hisses gently. You take a cigarette lighter from your pocket and hold it to the mouth of the little brass nozzle tied to the grate. You flick the lighter and the gas ignites, a small flickering yellow and blue flame blowing up towards the gas cylinder.

"Oh," you say. "That looks a bit tentative, wouldn't you say, Sir Rufus? You could be here all night!" You turn the valve wheel slowly until the jet is roaring and the fierce yellow-blue flame licks around the curved cylinder wall. "That's better." Sir Rufus is screaming quite hard now and his face is very red. You hope he doesn't have a heart attack before the blevey. That would be… well, just what you'd expect from a man like Sir Rufus: getting out of something through a loophole. Sadly, you can't hang around to make sure.

You take a quick look from the front door with the night sight, your hands shaking as you listen to the distant roaring sound coming from the living room (even though you know it will take a while yet), and the faint, almost childish screams.

It's still raining. You close the door and lock it and walk quickly off into the night.

Five minutes later, as you're about to start the bike and beginning to worry that it hasn't worked, that he's got free somehow, or the gas jet has blown itself out, or his mistress got here earlier than expected and had a key, or something else has gone wrong, the explosion bursts suddenly, fabulously into the night, lighting up the whole rain-swept valley and the clouds above and producing a small mushroom cloud of incandescent gas, climbing and rolling into the darkness. You start the engine with the noise still rumbling down between the Welsh hills.

"Right, Mr Colley, I'd better tell you what's happening here."

"Suits me," I say, with only slightly more bravado than I feel.

Detective Inspector McDunn and Detective Sergeant Flavell are sitting across the boardroom table from me. The Caley's boardroom is directly above the editor's office, set into the slope of the building's castellated roof. It's an impressively raftered room containing a massive, venerable-looking table and seats that look like smaller versions of the one in the Ed's office. The walls are oak panels; they support dully formal paintings of former editors, stern faces glaring down to remind you this is one of the oldest newspapers in the world. Being a floor higher than the Ed's office, the view is even better but, despite the fact I haven't visited here before, I'm not spending too much time looking out the window.

The DI is a dark, heavy-set man with an accent that sounds half Glaswegian and half English. He wears a dark suit and he's carrying a black coat. Young Sergeant Flavell, who's in charge of a cheap-looking briefcase, looks a little like Richard Gere with a thin moustache but spoils the effect by wearing a blue quilted anorak over his suit. Still, at least he's warm. I left my jacket hanging over the back of my seat in the news room and it's cold up here. Eddie suggested we used the boardroom after I went to his office, was introduced to the two cops and told they wanted a word with me.

The DI looks round the room. "I suppose it's all right to smoke in here?" he asks me.

"I suppose so."

Sergeant Flavell spots an ashtray on a window-ledge and goes to get it. The inspector lights a B&H. "Smoke?" he asks me, seeing me watching him.

I shake my head. "No, thanks."

"Right, Mr Colley," Inspector McDunn says in a getting-down-to-business sort of way. "We're carrying out an investigation into a number of serious assaults and murders, plus related crimes. We think you might be able to help and we'd like to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind."

"Not at all," I say, breathing deeply as the cloud of smoke from McDunn's cigarette rolls over the table towards me. Smells good.

"Sergeant, could you…?" McDunn says.

The sergeant takes an A4 manila envelope from his briefcase and hands it to the inspector, who takes out a single sheet of paper. He hands it over to me. "I assume you recognise this."

It's a photocopy of a piece of TV criticism I did for the paper about fifteen months ago. Not exactly my speciality, but the regular guy had come down with an eye infection and I welcomed the opportunity to editorialise a bit. "Yeah, I wrote this," I say, grinning. Hell, my name's at the top of the piece, beside the headline RADICAL EQUALISER?

Inspector McDunn smiles thinly. I read the piece while the boys in blue — well, black and blue — look on.

As I read, and remember, I feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. This hasn't happened for twenty years or so.