Iain Banks: Complicity

The minister keeps the service short because of the rain, and then it's over and we're queuing at the slip while the little rowing boats ferry us four at a time back to the mainland, and Yvonne's standing on those old, smooth stones of the slanted pier, receiving the condolences of the other guests. I just stand there, watching her. We all look slightly ridiculous because as well as our formal black clothes all of us sport Wellington boots — some black, most green — to deal with the mud-slicked grass of the island. Somehow Yvonne looks dignified and attractive even in those. Though of course maybe that's just me.

It's been a funny few days; getting back to work, trying to pick up the threads there, having a long soul-to-soul with a very sympathetic Eddie, getting embarrassing slaps on the back and we-were-rooting-for-yous from colleagues and finding that Frank had run out of amusing Scottish place-name spell-checks for me. I've been staying with Al and his wife in Leith while the police stake out my flat, but there's been no sign of Andy.

Meanwhile I've been to the doc, and been sent for various tests at the Royal Infirmary. Nobody's mentioned the C-word yet but I feel suddenly vulnerable and mortal and even old . I've given up smoking. (Well, Al and I had a pipe or two of dope the other night, just for old time's sake, but there was no tobacco involved.)

Anyway, I'm still coughing a lot and I get a sick feeling now and again, but there's been no more blood since that afternoon we found William.

I shake Yvonne's hand as I wait for my return trip in the wee rowing boat. The fine black tracery of her veil, scattered with tiny black gathered specks, makes her look at once mysteriously distant and rawly seductive, rain or no rain, wellies or no wellies.

Through the trees on the mainland, I can see and hear the cars reversing and manoeuvring and bumping away back down the track to the village and the hotel. The tradition is that Yvonne, as the widow, is last onto the last boat; sort of like a captain and a sinking ship, I guess.

"You all right?" she asks me, eyes narrowed, her sharp, evaluating gaze flitting over my face.

"Surviving. And you?"

"The same," she says. She looks cold again, and small. I want so much to take her in my arms and hug her. I feel tears prick behind my eyes. "I'm selling the house," she tells me, looking briefly down, long black lashes flickering. "The company's opening a Euro office in Frankfurt; I'm going to be part of the team."

"Ah." I nod, not sure what to say.

"I'll drop you a line with my new address, once I'm settled."

"Right; good, okay." I nod. There's a splashing, swirling sound behind me, and a soft, hollow bumping noise. "Well," I say, "any time you're in Edinburgh…"

She shakes her head and looks away, then smiles gallantly for me and tips her head, indicating. "That's your boat, Cameron."

I just stand there, nodding like an idiot, wanting to say the one right thing that must exist for me to change all of this, make it good, make it all better, make it eventually happen happily for us, but knowing that that thing just doesn't exist and there's no point looking for it, and so just stand there nodding dumbly with my lips trapped compressed between my teeth, looking down, not able to look her in the eyes and knowing that's it, the end, goodbye… until after those moments she puts me out of my misery and puts out her hand and gently says, "Goodbye, Cameron."

And I nod and shake her hand and after a while I get my mouth to work and it says, "Goodbye."

I hold her hand one last time, just for a moment.

The hotel at that end of the loch is full of dead stuffed fish in glass cages and mangy-looking taxidermised otters, wild cats and eagles. I don't know many people and I think Yvonne's avoiding me, so I have a single whisky and a few sandwiches, then I leave.

The rain is still torrential; I have my wipers on quick-time but even so they're hardly coping. The moisture coming off my brolly and coat lying puddling on the back seat is fighting a pretty equal battle with the heater and blower to mist up the glass on the inside.

I get about fifteen miles on the single-track road round the mountains when the engine starts to misfire. I glance at the instruments; half a tank of fuel, no warning lights.

"Oh, no," I groan. "Come on, baby, come on, don't let me down; come on, come on." I tap the car's dashboard gently, encouragingly. "Come on now, come on…"

I'm heading up a slight hill into a stretch of road through a Forestry Commission plantation when the engine does a passable impression of me in the morning, coughing and spluttering and not quite firing on all cylinders. Then it dies completely.

I coast quickly to a stop in a passing place. "Oh, Christ… Shit!" I yell, slamming the dashboard, then feeling stupid.

The rain makes machine-gun noises on the roof.

I try starting the engine but there's just another bout of coughing from under the bonnet.

I release the bonnet-catch, put my coat back on, take up the sopping umbrella and get out.

The engine makes little metallic, creaking, tinking noises. Steam wisps up as raindrops hit the exhaust manifold. I test the plug leads and look for something obvious like a loose wire. It doesn't appear to be anything obvious. (I don't think I've heard of anybody in a situation like this ever finding it was something obvious.) I hear an engine and look round the side of the raised bonnet to see a car heading in the same direction as me. I don't know whether to try and wave them down or not. I settle for just looking pleadingly at the approaching car; it's one guy in a beaten-up Micra.

He flashes his lights and pulls in ahead of me.

"Hi," I say as he opens the door and gets out, pulling on an anorak and shoving a deerstalker hat on. He's red-haired, bearded. "It just stopped." I tell him. "I've got fuel but it just cut out. Could be the rain, I suppose…" My voice trails off as I suddenly think, Christ, it might be him. It might be Andy; this could be him, disguised, come for me.

What am I doing? Why didn't I get round to the boot and get out the fucking tyre-iron the instant the car stopped? Why aren't I carrying a baseball bat, a can of mace, anything? I stare at the guy, thinking, Is it him, is it? He's the right height, the right build. I stare at his cheek and his red beard, trying to see a join, trying to see glue.

"Aye," he says, stuffing his hands in his anorak pockets and glancing down the road. "Ye goat any WD40, pal?" He nods at the engine. "Looks like yon bit there could do with some."

I'm staring at him, my heart pounding. There's a weird roaring noise in my head and I can hardly hear him over it. His voice sounds different but he was always good at accents. My belly feels like a solid chunk of ice and my legs like they're about to buckle and give way. I'm still staring at the guy. Oh Christ, oh Christ, oh Christ. I'd run but my legs won't work and he was always faster than me anyway.

He frowns at me and I feel like I've got tunnel vision; all I can see is his face, his eyes, his eyes, just the right colour, just the right look… Then he changes somehow, seems to straighten and relax, and in a voice I recognise says, "Ah. Very perceptive, Cameron."

I don't see what he hits me with; just his arm swinging round at me, quick and blurring as a striking snake. The blow lands above my right ear and fells me, sends me folding down in a galaxy of flickering stars and a huge growling swell of noise as if I'm falling through the air towards a great waterfall. I twist as I fall and hit the engine, but it doesn't hurt, and I slide off it and down and fall towards the puddles and the road and I hit the road but I don't feel that either.

Oh God help me here on the island of the dead with the cries of the tormented, here with the angel of death and the acrid stench of excrement and carrion taking me back in the darkness and the pale fawn light to the place I never wanted to go back to, the man-made earthly black hell and the human scrapyard kilometres long. Here down amongst the dead men, midst-ways with the torn-souled and their wild, inhuman screams; here with the ferryman, the boatman, my eyes covered and my brains scrambled, here with this prince of death, this prophet of reprisal, this jealous, vengeful, unforgiving son of our bastard commonwealth of greed; help me help me help me…