Iain Banks: Dead Air

The girl looked uncertain, then she laughed. ‘That’s insane.’

I clinked her glass. ‘That’s the point. And besides, I said, what sort of chicken-shit Neo-Nazis are these people anyway? They should be saying, “Sure we killed six million; wish it had been more”, not splitting hairs about whether it was one million or two million and whining about the fucking Führer being misunderstood.’

‘You don’t actually believe any of this, do you, though?’

‘Are you mad?’ I cackled. ‘Of course not! I’m taking the piss out of fascist fuckwits!’

‘So is this what this TV thing’s about?’

‘Yeah. They’re going to get one of these nutters for me to “debate” with.’

‘Should people like that really be allowed to say that sort of stuff on national TV, though?’

‘Ask Channel Four that, not me,’ I said, drinking up. ‘But, yes, I think they should. You can’t hide that poisonous shit away for ever; it’ll come out somewhere. Better to face it and squash it. I want it out in the open. I want to know who these people are, I want to know where they live.’ I finished my drink. ‘That’s why these cowardly little shits love the Internet. They can post any sort of hate-filled drivel they want with no comeback because on-line they can hide. It’s the perfect medium for bullies, liars and cowards.’

We were in the Golden Bough, our usual after-show drinking hole, in Hollen Street. The Bough was a basic central London pub; one of those places neither flattered nor insulted to be called a boozer. Not fashionable, rarely crowded to the point of standing-room only (save on a Friday evening and Saturday night), reasonable juke box, basic, unpretentious food, only one gaming machine – tucked out of the way under the stairs to the small first-floor function bar – and a solid, unadventurous choice of drink.

There was no particular crowd associated with the place. Instead you got a smattering of all sorts in the Bough: workmen in dusty boots and paint-specked overalls, advertising creatives, theatre types, tourists, office workers, music people, film people, homeless guys nursing a half and keeping warm, waiting staff from restaurants and posher bars, one or two girls from the sex shows, and us. There was one dealer who used the place, though for a quiet drink, not for dealing. A couple of cops stuck their heads round the door about once a month or so.

The manageress was Clara, a brusquely rotund, no-nonsense, half-Portuguese grandmother with a dry, wheezy laugh and sixty-a-day habit. Nobody we know has ever seen her without one of two turban-like things on her head – one green, one yellow – and there was a long-standing, variable-odds pot-bet, which has allegedly been running with a rolling roster of regulars for over twenty years concerning whether she was bald underneath there or not. Last time I’d checked it had been 65/35 for slap-headedness and I’d stood to make a fiver if it turned out she wasn’t.

‘Can I get you a drink? What’ll it be?’

‘Oh, thanks. WKD blue. Cheers.’

‘I haven’t asked you your name,’ I said to the girl as I signalled to Clara.

‘Tanya.’ She stuck her hand out.

‘Ken. Pleased to meet you, Tanya.’

Tanya had overheard Phil and me talking about the Breaking News thing earlier. I’d seen her staring, brows pinched, at us and she hadn’t looked away when I’d stared back. I’d guessed she’d picked up an alarming selection of race-hate-associated buzzwords and was thinking about either walking out or throwing her drink at us and then running.

‘It’s okay,’ I’d said to her, past Phil’s shoulder. ‘We’re both nice liberals really and this is genuinely one of those rare occasions when it honestly isn’t as bad as it sounds.’

Tanya was quarter Jewish, which was one reason she had been taking offence at what she’d thought she’d been overhearing. She worked for a film company in Wardour Street. I could be pretty sure of this because Phil had grilled her about the film industry, albeit subtly, for a few minutes. Phil had this paranoid theory that unscrupulous tabloid journalists had realised we drank in the Bough, that they thought we were worth exposing in some way and were likely to send somebody here to coax me into saying something I might regret, thinking I was talking off the record to a civilian when in fact it was an undercover journo and I was very much on the record.

Given what I say when I know I’m on record and on air, this seems a fairly bizarre fear, but there you are.

Anyway, Tanya seemed to pass Phil’s hostile-journo filter and he lost interest in her when our production team and assistant gaggle walked in.

Tanya was short and slim and dark and always moving; sort of half dancing, swaying to and fro, seemingly without really knowing she was doing it, rhythmic and slow like an underwater plant in a meandering river’s languorous undercurrent. I’d seen girls doing this before in situations like this and it often meant they were loved up, but I didn’t think she was. She had wide grey-green eyes and hair in little black spikes.

We ended up with the others from our show and a couple of people from Timmy Mann’s, the one after ours, though not the boy Mann himself. It turned into a moderately serious drinking session, all sat round our favourite circular table in one end corner of the Bough. I was getting on, I thought, awfully well with Tanya, who laughed at all my jokes and touched me on the forearm a couple of times.

I’d been supposed to meet up with Jo that night and take in a film but Jo had to cancel – yet another Addicta crisis – and I’d started thinking that maybe I should see how things progressed with Tanya instead.

Tanya was drinking her blue WKDs very slowly and I had moved on to whiskies after a couple of pints of Fuller’s, but for the past two Scotches I’d been cheating. When nobody was looking I’d lower the short glass towards the floor and upend it, letting the drink fall onto the ancient and already pretty tacky carpet underneath. Jeez; they were single twenty-five mill measures with no water; probably evaporated before they made it to the floor, but the point was they weren’t getting me drunk. If anything did develop with the lovely Tanya, I’d be in a fit state to appreciate it.

All in vain; Tanya had to go at six to meet some friends, and would not be dissuaded. I even followed her to the door of the pub and out onto the street. She gave me her mobile number and disappeared into the twilight, heading for Tottenham Court Road Underground station. I sighed as I watched her go, looking at the display on my Motorola where her number still glowed.

The phone’s screen went dark and I went back inside.

Our drinking party started to break up as people went off to catch trains, tubes and buses. Phil and I decided on takeaways from the Taj, our local curry house round the corner from the Bough, then went our separate ways. I felt sober enough to drive, but I knew I wasn’t, so I left the Landy in the Mouth Corp car park and got a mini-cab home, suffering a lecture on the superior qualities of wholesome Caribbean soul food compared to this highly suspect Indo-Pakistani fare from Geoff, the Jamaican driver I always seemed to end up with whenever I was clutching a carrier bag full of curry or a leaking parcel stuffed with doner kebab.

‘Me car gonna stink now, mon!’

‘Here’s an extra fiver, my good fellow; wave it around and it should help disperse the ghastly sub-continental pong.’

Geoff thought this was so funny he lit a big spliff as he drove off down Lots Road, cackling and trailing clouds of ganja smoke.

Sometimes I told people I lived in a tied cottage. The houseboat at Chelsea Wharf used to be one of Sir Jamie’s pads in the city, back when he was basically trying to be Richard Branson (Sir Jamie even had a supposedly trademark beard back then, too, though he switched to a pony-tail and earring shortly afterwards, surrendering the high ground of facial fuzz to the Bearded One). The Temple Belle was an old and much-converted coaster. It still belonged to Mouth Corp but it was rented to me at an extremely reasonable rate. I was on a pretty good contract since I’d shifted to the late-morning show and I could probably have afforded the rent or mortgage if I’d had to pay the market rate for the tub, but getting it cheap certainly made an appreciable and very pleasant difference, though it did, as Phil had been the first to point out, give Sir Jamie an extra hold over me; if I lost the day job I lost the cool houseboat and Chelsea address too.