Iain Banks - Dead Air

‘Ya, it is, isn’t it.’

‘Getting a taxi that quickly on a rainy Friday?’ I said. ‘You’re a miracle worker. Or, as a combination, we’re just blessed.’

‘Right, ya.’

The cab pulled out into the traffic, heading north-east. I finally got my seat belt on. Raine hadn’t bothered with hers. I started lecturing her on the extreme inadvisability of this, given what had happened to Princess Di, but she just looked at me strangely and I realised that as well as preventing you from being flung forward, limbs flailing, in a bad crash, seat belts also stopped you from snogging. They made you Safe In Taxis. I was appalled with myself. I was sure I’d known this before but I seemed to have forgotten.

‘You’re right,’ I said, though she hadn’t said anything. I undid my belt. ‘Solidarity, sister.’ I slid along the seat towards her. I caught the driver glancing up at us in his mirror. Raine let me slip my arms round her, pressed up against the seat corner. I covered her mouth with mine. She opened up a little more this time. I fumbled to get my hands inside the Afghan coat.

‘Maybe you should put your seat belts on, eh?’ the driver said. It was an oldish cab so he had to talk through the gap in the perspex screen between us, rather than use the intercom set-up the more modern cabs have.

Raine pushed me away. ‘Ya, I suppose we should, ya,’ she said, with what I took to be obvious reluctance.

‘Ha. See?’ I said, wagging a finger at her. I felt for my belt again. She watched me, then put hers on.

‘Here,’ she said, helping me with one end.

‘Thanks.’ I sat back, closing my eyes.

‘Have a snooze, why not?’ Raine said.

I opened my eyes, looked at her. ‘I’m not tired,’ I told her. ‘Is it far?’

‘Ya, fair bit to go yet.’ She glanced at the driver, then leaned over to me and said quietly, ‘Get some rest. You’re going to need it.’ She gave me one of those heavy-lidded looks again and stroked my hand in a manner I decided was distinctly carnal.

I grinned in what I hoped was not too lecherous a fashion and sat back, closing my eyes. ‘If I start snoring, I’m only pretending in a sorta post-modern ironic way, okay?’

‘Ya, right, sure.’

The taxi drove on, grumbling and clattering through the late-night traffic. It sounded a lot like my old Landy. Very relaxing. The rain swishing beneath the tyres and against the wheel wells sounded calming and soothing. It was quite warm here in the back. It made me think of darkened hotel suites. I took a deep breath and let it out. A little while to rest the eyes. Why not? A snooze would do no harm. On the other hand, I didn’t really want to drop off and start snoring or drooling or looking gross, so maybe it wasn’t such a great idea.

Some time passed. A male voice said quietly, ‘Is that him gone?’

‘Yeah, I think so,’ said Raine. At least I thought it was her. Her voice sounded different. ‘We nearly there yet then?’

‘Nuvver five minutes.’

That was weird, I thought, behind my closed eyes, with my chin somewhere near my chest. Had I dropped off? Just a little. But why was Raine asking the driver if they were nearly there yet? Didn’t she know the way home? Maybe she’d just moved in.

But what did the driver mean when he asked her, Is that him gone?

‘Just check he’s out, will ya, doll?’

Check he’s out? What the fuck was that about? I felt a hand stroke mine, then pinch the skin. I didn’t react. ‘Ken? Ken?’ Raine said, quite loud. I stayed just as I was. My heart had started to speed up. Then she said, ‘Yeah, he’s gone.’

‘Roight.’

What was going on here? What the fuck was going on? Where were we going, anyway? Had she given the driver an address as we got in? I’d kind of assumed she’d told him her home address while I was getting in and smacking my head off the top of the door frame, but had there been time? Wouldn’t I have heard something? I couldn’t remember. Shit, I was drunk; of course I wasn’t going to remember stuff like that. But then the taxi had appeared really fortuitously, too. Just rolled up, in the damp midst of a wet Friday some time between theatre and bar chucking out time. On Shaftesbury Avenue. Just appeared, its yellow For Hire light already off, if my hazy memory served me right, ready and waiting at the kerb, just like that. And it had seemed as if she’d been looking for it. But then she would have been; looking for a taxi, any taxi. But then we came back to this Check he’s out/Yeah, he’s gone shit. What the fuck was all that about? He’d expected me to be out, to be gone, to be unconscious…

Sweet Jesus H. Christ; the whisky. There had been something in the whisky. What was that date-rape drug? I couldn’t remember. But something like that. The drink she’d insisted she’d get, then watched me drink, or thought that was what she was watching while I suppressed a giggle and played my silly game and anointed Phil’s jacket with the stuff instead, distracting her, making my Adam’s apple go up and down, smacking my lips and doing everything but wipe my mouth on my sleeve; look, I’m drinking it! See? It’s gone! She’d put something in it. She must have. What was that date-rape stuff? Euthymol? No, that was a toothpaste, wasn’t it? A fucking Micky fucking Finn in this fucking day and fucking age and I’d fucking fallen for it! Or would have, if I hadn’t been determined to salvage some dregs of sobriety from my drunken stupor for the purposes of, hopefully, fucking.

Oh shit.

I’d sniffed it. The whisky with the date-rape drug or whatever it was; I’d breathed it in. How powerful was that stuff? Some must have stuck to my lips when I pretended to drink it. Was I falling into a drugged sleep now? No. No definitely not me, no-how, no-way. Very awake and horribly, edgily, tensely sober with my heart hammering so hard I’m astonished that Raine, if that’s really her name, can’t hear it, that she can’t see my entire body shaking with each thudding, crashing, flailing tremor of it.

‘You aw-wight?’ the driver asks. For one idiotic moment I think he’s talking to me, and for a totally deranged micro-moment I’m actually about to answer him.

Then the girl says, ‘Yeah,’ quite casually, as though she’s bored.

I open one eye very slightly, the left one, away from her. Where are we? I have a vague feeling we’re somewhere in the East End but I don’t know. My head is down and I can’t see much without raising it. How long did the driver say? Five minutes? Yes, it was five minutes. But how long ago was that? One minute ago? Two? Four?

I can see the little red tell-tale light on the door at my side, near the handle. Of course; cab doors lock while the vehicle is in motion. Safety device, allegedly. Stop you doing a runner, more like. Doesn’t matter. I can’t just make a break for it when we slow down. Have to wait for a complete stop. Shit. We slow down here, and I start to get sweaty palms, thinking about grabbing the door handle and sprinting off… but then we speed up again.

I use the acceleration as a plausible excuse to let my head fall back, my neck over the back of the seat now and my view through my half-closed eye a bit better. I sense Raine looking at me. I start snoring. Through the trembling blur of eyelashes, I can see a lightly trafficked road and low-rise buildings. I must really have dropped off. We’re well away from the West End here. We take a left into a darker, quieter road. What look like low warehouses and light industrial units line the road. I see plentiful graffiti and billboards with old, torn, rain-sodden posters flapping in the cold wind. We go under a bridge, engine echoing off the rivet-studded undersides of massive black girders.

‘Nearly there,’ the driver says.