Iain Banks - Dead Air

‘Mm-hmm,’ says Raine.

We slow. There’s a brighter, noisier road ahead. And traffic lights.

‘Just over these lights.’

Turning amber.

‘Right.’

Thank fuck.

‘Yeah, I fink that’s Danny there I can see.’

Turning red.

‘Uh-huh.’

Oh yes. Oh yes, just stop right here on the far side of the busy traffic from wherever it is we’re going, from whoever the fuck Danny is.

The cab stops, engine idling noisily. The little red light by the door handle should click and go off now. Now. There’s a click. I wait for the little red light to go off. It doesn’t.

Something in my bowels makes a terrible trembling course through me, squeezing cold sweat from every pore. The driver; taxi drivers can override the door-locks’ stationary off-switch, keeping it on. He’s locked us in.

I’m fucked. These people can do whatever they want to me. I may be about to die. The lights are still red but the traffic crossing our path has just stopped. The driver is reaching for the gear stick.

I sit up suddenly. Raine looks at me and her mouth starts to open as her eyes finish widening. I click my seat belt unlocked and swing my right leg as hard as I can at the window to my left. It shatters first time. It feels like my leg does too, but the window’s gone in an almighty bang, falling spraying to the street outside and the rubber-matted floor of the cab in a thousand square-edged little jewels glinting sodium in the street-light.

The driver’s shocked face turns towards me. Raine grabs my arm and I do something I’ve never done before, ever; I hit a woman. Punch her square in the nose and send her head whacking back against the door window on her side.

Then I’m out of the smashed window on my side so fucking fast John Woo would be proud of me, turning on my back, hands to the top of the frame and levering myself out with just some kicking, flailing footwork to spoil the balletic beauty of it.

I land with a wind-expelling whumpf on the road, just as the taxi jerks forward and then screeches to a stop again, nose dipping. I’m rolling on the broken glass and bouncing to my feet, starting to run. There’s shouting behind me and a door slamming. More shouting from further away. These both male. Female screaming now. The road ahead is broad and almost deserted. Some parked cars, one or two Transits and Lutons. I angle for the pavement, to put some of the parked stuff between me and them. More shouting and screaming.

The wind roars in my ears as I run. Engine noise back there now. I’m near the end of the street. The engine behind me whines, caught in the low gear of reverse, then the engine seems to cut out, there’s a squeal of tyres, a moment of silence, and the engine screams. Handbrake turn.

I run out onto the street ahead at right-angles and pelt across a sudden burst of traffic, horns blaring right and left as I leap a traffic island in one stride and spot a chip shop with a queue of people outside, a hundred metres away. I make the pavement, just dodging a Royal Mail van, which skids to a stop so close I have my arm stuck out and the grille nudges the flesh of my palm. I run for the chip shop queue, dodging between a few slowly walking people like gates on a downhill slalom course. The Royal Mail van races past to my left, the driver leaning out of the window, shouting that I’m a fucking wanker and backing this up with a gesture. There are two cars at the kerb just beyond the queue at the chip shop. I splash through a puddle. The rain is off, I notice. The cars beyond the chip shop are parked outside a little lit doorway and window with a cheap-looking sign above, glaring yellow-white above the pitted brickwork and spelling out the two most beautiful words in the most beautiful language in the universe: Mini-Cabs.

I slow and look back just as I get to the queue but there’s no taxi anywhere to be seen, and nobody running. I straighten my jacket, run fingers through my hair and by the time I get to the first cab in the rank, nodding first to the guy in the doorway and then at the car, I’m actually whistling.

‘Well, do you ever look at the number of a cab when you get into one?’

‘Na,’ Craig admitted. ‘Who does?’

‘Phil, probably,’ I said. I’d called him on his mobile and home number but only got answer machines.

‘I still think,’ Craig said, ‘you should have gone to the police.’

‘Christ, man, I just wanted to get away.’

‘Yeah, but.’

‘Yeah but what? It was half eleven on a Friday night. The cops are going to be busy enough with fights and brawls and the usual weekend nonsense. And what exactly would I be ringing up to report, anyway? I think I was being kidnapped, I think somebody tried to spike my drink, but if you want any proof you’ll have to get another guy’s jacket and test it for the drug, if it’s still detectable. I think some violence was planned for me but I don’t know. I’m fairly sure I was chased but that’s not even illegal. Fucking hell, the only definitely criminal things that actually happened were the things I did; I smashed a cab window and I punched a woman in the face. I fucking hit a woman, man! Jesus Christ, that was something I had hoped to get through my whole life without doing, like breaking a major bone or changing a nappy.’ I sucked very hard on the J. I’d wanted a brandy or something but Craig had reckoned what I needed was a nice, mellow smoke.

My very first thought, once I’d got into the cab and told the guy to head for Basildon (this had to be east of wherever we were, so it meant we didn’t need to chuck a U-ey and go past the end of the road I’d been chased down), was to call Amy. She lived in Greenwich, which was feasibly in the area, and turning to her – and up on her doorstep – in an hour of need, on the run from heavies, might be just the sort of romantic ice-breaker required to shift our relationship onto whatever next phase might be on the cards (the last time I’d seen her had been on 11 September, when we’d all sat together in Kulwinder and Faye’s loft, watching the unbelievable unfold, until she’d been called away by her boss).

Then I thought of Celia. Christ; Merrial. Maybe he was behind whatever had almost happened back there.

I don’t know who I’d imagined might want to have me kidnapped and whisked off to the East End for… whatever, but of course Celia’s husband had to be a prime suspect. Why the hell hadn’t that been the first thing I’d thought of? Could this be anything to do with Celia and me? Had we been discovered? We thought we’d been so careful, but who really knew?

Oh shit. Should I use the mobile number she didn’t know I had, try to warn her?

But if it wasn’t anything to do with her, with us, and she discovered I’d taken her number without asking, without telling her…

Yeah, but if all this was about us then it was entirely possible a phone call could save her life.

‘I’m Ken, by the way,’ I said to the guy driving the mini-cab. He was a strapping white lad with a shock of red-dyed hair. I’d sat beside him rather than in the back. We shook hands.

‘Dive.’

‘Dave, I’ve a bit of a funny request.’

‘Yeah? Wossat?’

‘Can I use your mobile? I’ve got one of my own but I need to use a different one. Please? Add a fiver to the fare. It’s important. ’

‘Here you go.’

‘You are a saint, sir.’ I pulled out my own mobile, cursored through to Ceel’s entered but never used number, and clicked it into Dave’s Sony.

‘The mobile phone you are calling is switched off…’

Another couple of tries got the same response. No voice mail or message service available. ‘Thanks,’ I said to Dave the driver, handing him back his phone. ‘Never got through.’ I hesitated. ‘Listen, Dave; what I said about a fiver? Call it a tenner, but in the unlikely event a woman… anybody ever phones about a call made, like, now, just say you dialled the same wrong number or something.’