Iain Banks - Dead Air

‘That was quick,’ Phil agreed.

‘He’s probably already trussed into a head-to-toe strait-kilt and being bundled into an unmarked Irn Bru van even as we speak.’

‘Ayee,’ Phil said, in what was already recognisable as his incurably atrocious Scots accent. ‘He’ll be languishing in a pibrock on the Isle of Ocktermuckty before the day is oot, Ken.’

‘Och, Phil,’ I sighed happily, ‘when you speak, it’s like being home again.’

‘Shplendid. Sho, who’sh our nexsht caller?’

‘Well, we’re obviously shunted onto a deeply Scottish vibe here, Phil, as that spookily accurate Sean Pertwee impression of yours so powerfully testifies. Let’s have…’ I scanned the call-monitoring screen, paging down to where the new calls were still appearing. ‘Ah; Angus. Now there’s a fine choochter name.’ I clicked on his line. ‘Angus. Are you Scottish? Say yes.’

‘Aye, man, ah am. Hullo. How’re ye doin?’

‘Fine and dandy. Yourself?’

‘Magic, aye.’

‘And what have you and your magic eye been looking at, then?’

‘Aye, ah was jus listenin to what yur man there was saying about us an the English, an ah jus thought he wiz talkin a lod a shite.’

Beep. ‘Shite’ was a beepable word; Phil did the business this time, though we all had a button. Beepable words were: cunt, fuck (and variations thereof), shit (and variations thereof), shite (but not crap), bastard (but not, apparently, the Scotified versions I kept getting away with), prick (in context) and cock (in context). We could do this because the show went out with a three-second delay. This meant that, in theory, Phil could beep me if I said anything slanderous or likely to bring Capital Live! into disrepute, or court. Ha, ha.

‘So cogently put, Angus,’ I said.

‘Aw, sorry, man.’

I looked across the desk. ‘Beep count today, Phil?’

‘That’s the first.’

‘Thought it was. Seventy minutes in. Dear me. Standards are slipping. So, Angus, is that all you want to say? We do allegedly have a national reputation for cogent intellectual discourse we ought to be maintaining here, Angy, and frankly you’re not coming up to the mark. Or pound, or groat.’

‘Na, but it’s just, if the English don’t want to be part of Europe, fine. But why should we have to no be a part of it too, like? Let them go their own way. We’ll go ours. We don’t need them. Man, they’re just an embarrassment sometimes.’

This made me laugh. Phil took umbrage. ‘From the nation that gave us the Krankies?’ he said, voice rising indignantly. ‘And the deep-fried Mars bar? We embarrass you?’

I was still laughing. ‘Yeah, well, Angus,’ I said. ‘I know what you’re saying, but then we’ve always wanted it both ways, haven’t we? Us Scots, I mean. When the Empire was still commonly held something to be proud of we were like, Aye, an dinny forget who really built it fur ye; we wur yer best sodjers an engineers an aw sorts, and we built yer ships fur ye too, an mined the coal tae make them go. Aye, when ye were takin civilisation tae the fuzzy-wuzzies it might a been the Inglish general an is foppish chums on their horses on the ridge sayin charge an tally-ho chaps, but it wiz the bams wi the kilts an the bagpipes that stormed in tae dae the real bayonet work. Oh, an did we mention we inventit the steam engine an the telly?

‘Right? But then, like, soon as imperialism became a dirty word we were giving it, Aye, solidarity there, black brother; ken exactly whit ye’ve went through by the way; those Inglish bastirts invaded our country before anybody else’s, so they did; under the imperialist yoke fur three hunner years, us. Totally exploited. Stole that steam engine an the telly frae us, too, by the way.’

Angus’s mobile feed had crackled, broken up and gone back to the dial tone about halfway through this.

Phil said, ‘Angus has left the airwaves.’

‘Indeed he has,’ I said, glancing at the studio clock and using my pencil to cross off another segment on the running order. ‘Well, that’s the end of the Looney Tunes section of the show, where all you brave, brave people ring up to be insulted by a professional. We’ve got some vitally important information about stuff you didn’t know you wanted coming up right here, and then, after that, talking about insults, it’ll be Shaggy. Take it away, Shaggy. Take it very, very, far, away…’

‘What on earth are you doing?’

‘I’ve changed me mind. I want a gin and juice.’

‘So you’re phoning Craig to change your order.’

‘Yep.’

‘He’s about eight fucking metres away,’ I protested, pointing into the bar. ‘I can see his slap-headed cranium.’ We were sitting on some aluminium chairs on the pavement outside a bar on Frith Street. This was back in August, I think. It was a Saturday evening, one of those warm summer nights in Soho when the whole place feels like it’s inside, like it’s a vast, warren-like room, when the people throng the streets between the low-rise buildings and turn it all into a single space, and the cars, edging slowly, slowly up the narrow streets, often slower than the people walking, seem to bloom to the same size they look in a showroom; big, ungainly things, all that hot, fast metal trapped by the press of soft, summer-stripped bodies. Music came whumping out of the bar’s open doors and windows, seeped from a club down some steps across the road, and pulsed from the vehicles crawling their way up the street, sounding dull if the windows were closed and sharp if the windows were open. I smelled cigars, blow, exhaust, perfume, curry, kebabs, beer, sweat and tar. Plus, every now and again, there came the faint, almost subliminal smell of drains, of sewage, like something decaying and noxious seeping up from underneath.

Ed twisted briefly in his seat, glancing back towards the crowded, noisy bar, where Craig had, it seemed, finally got to the counter. ‘Yeah, maybe he is,’ he said, thumbing the phone. ‘But you try gettin froo to im or attractin is attention.’

It occurred to me that Ed had a point. It also occurred to me that a well-aimed ice cube might do the trick, but I looked at my bottle of Budvar and Ed’s bottle of Beck’s, and thought, No. Even with a reliable ice cube supply (which we didn’t have), and my fabulous lobbing abilities (which it was highly unlikely had been in any way compromised by the three or four hours of drinking accomplished until this point), such behaviour could, just conceivably, result in a miss, a misunderstanding and a fracas. Even a mêlée.

‘Ullo, Craig? Yeah. Hee hee hee. Best way, mate. Na, a gin and juice. You know; wif orange. Yeah, cheers, mate.’

‘Make it a double!’ I yelled at the phone. Some passing people looked at me.

‘Yeah, that was im,’ Ed said into the mobile. ‘See you.’

‘You’re so decadent,’ I told him.

‘I’m so pissed off.’

‘Don’t take it personally.’

Ed should not have been here. He’d been just about to start a gig in Luton when it had been cancelled due to a series of bomb alerts. With nothing to do, he’d joined Craig and me on our Night Out. This was supposed to end up with Craig and I going clubbing but somehow we’d kind of side-tracked ourselves down a Serious Drinking route. Loved-up dancing on the prowl for luvverly laydeez was now almost certainly out of the question. Of course we might convince ourselves otherwise in the interim, but in that case the night would almost certainly end in abject humiliation.

‘Why would somebody bomb a club, anyway?’ I asked Ed. ‘Or threaten to.’

‘Turf war, mate. Settin these fings up, doin the security, providin the pills; lot a dosh involved.’ Ed finished his Beck’s. ‘Course it usually all runs nice an smoov cos that’s in everybody’s inarest so that the money keeps comin slidin froo, but every now an again there’ll be some sort a disagreement where neevir side’ll back down an some cunt feels the need to make a point. This evenin patently being one of them.’ He nodded at me. ‘Sorta fing that Merrial guy might be involved in.’