Iain Banks - Dead Air

‘Oh! Well, yes, it might help.’

‘It’s Celia Jane.’

‘Celia Jane?’ I blurted. Well done, Kenneth, put plenty of emphasis in there. Clearly you do still want to die.

He nodded. ‘Celia Jane.’ He reached out and patted my elbow once before turning away.

They moved off through the crowd, the blond dude leaving a spacious wake. Celia – sorry; Celia Jane – left the ice at one of the rink’s access points and they met her there. The blond guy produced a coat and a pair of shoes for her. She didn’t look at me and she held on to her husband’s arm while she changed from the skates to the shoes. I wiped my eyes with my hands. When I opened my eyes again, Mr and Mrs Merrial and their bulky minder had gone.

I was still shivering when Jo arrived back with two little polystyrene cups of steaming mulled wine.

‘Here. Look like you need it, too. You’re very pale. You okay?’

‘Just fine. Thanks.’

‘You fuckin spoke to the guy? He shook hands wif you?’

‘His wife’s a fan.’

‘What of? Knee-cappings?’

‘Of mine, you buffoon.’

‘You’re fuckin kiddin me, man!’ Ed’s voice went very high; the speaker in my mobile struggled to cope.

I filled in the details of meeting Mr M at Somerset House.

‘Aow yeah; they used to register stuff there, didn’t they? Burfs and marriages. An defs.’

‘Yeah, well, now it’s got an artificially cold heart and that’s where I bumped into him.’

‘An you’re goin to play his missus a record?’

‘Damn right I am.’

‘Sweet, man! An he says now he owes you a favour?’

‘Well, that’s what he implied, but-’

‘Ask him to find out who’s got it in for you, then. Fuckin ell, dedicate a whole show to his bitch an he’ll fuckin rub them out for you as well.’

‘I think that might be a little excessive.’

‘He’s an excessive geezer, mate.’

‘Yeah, well, I think I’ll keep him well away from whatever messes I’m already in.’

‘Wisdom, Kennif.’

I drummed the fingers of my left hand on my right arm. I was standing on the deck of the Temple Belle, looking out at the dark waters. Jo was below, opening some Korean take-away containers just delivered from a restaurant in Chelsea. I’d felt I just had to tell somebody at least something of what had happened that afternoon, and Ed had been the obvious choice. ‘Or do you think maybe I should ask him for help?’ I said. ‘I know he’s a villain but he did seem quite friendly; helpful, almost. I mean, maybe-’

‘Na, I don’t really fink you should. I was kiddin. Just you keep your skinny white ass away from people like that.’

‘You sure?’

‘I’m sure, man.’

‘Yeah, but he didn’t seem that bad, I mean-’

‘Listen. I’m gonna tell you sumfink about your Mr Merrial.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a bit orrible, but I fink you need tellin.’

‘What, then?’

‘Right.’ I heard Ed take a deep breath. Or possibly a toke. ‘He’s got this really big fucker works for him, right? Blond geezer built like a fuckin nuclear bunker.’

‘I’ve seen him. He handed me Mr M’s card this afternoon.’

‘Right. Well, this is wot I heard from somebody wot was there when this appened once. When Mr Merrial wants to find sumfink out from somebody wot does not want to tell him, or if he’s upset wif somebody, right, he has them tied to a chair wif their legs straight out an their feet tied to another chair, and then the big blond guy comes an sits on their legs an bounces up and down wif increasin force until either they talk or their knees bend the wrong way and their legs snap.’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake! Oh Jesus Christ, that’s fucking sick.’

‘An I eard this from a bruvver who is definitely wot you’d call a usually reliable source, too, mate, an not given to tellin milky whites. He was taken along to see wot would happen to him if he ever crossed Mr Merrial. Actually I fink the bruvver must have tried on sumfink very slightly dodgy himself an Mr M wanted to give him a ever so mild warning. So he got to see. And hear.’

‘I feel ill.’

‘This bruvver’s a big fucker, too. An he can handle himself, but I swear when he was tellin me all this he fuckin went grey. Grey, Kennif.’

‘Green,’ I gulped. ‘Me; now.’

‘Yeah, well, I juss fot you ought to know, before you go gettin any more involved wif people like that.’

‘Ken?’ Jo yelled from below.

‘That’s my tea out, Ed. Though I do seem to have lost my appetite, for some reason. Anyway, thanks for the warning.’

‘No probs.’

‘I’ll see you.’

‘Yeah; you take care. Strenf, bruvver. Bye.’

I didn’t look properly at Mr Merrial’s card until the following morning, just before doing my under-vehicle bomb-check and heading for work. The Merrials lived in Ascot Square, Belgravia. I stopped at the side of the Landy and wondered about putting their home number into my phone, then decided I ought to. I placed it in Location 96, overwriting Celia’s mobile number. I never had got round to removing it – I still liked scrolling through to look at it sometimes – but entering her home phone there seemed fitting somehow.

I’d barely finished doing this when the phone buzzed in my hand; Phil, at the office. It was another dull December day and the rain had just started. I de-alarmed and unlocked the Landy and climbed in out of the rain as I said, ‘Yup?’

‘Breaking News.’

I put the keys in the ignition. ‘What about it?’

‘It’s starting on Jan fourteenth.’

‘What, next year? Kind of rushing things a bit, aren’t they?’

‘It’s a month away. But it’s definite, this time.’

‘Of course it is, Philip.’

‘No, it’s firmly scheduled. And you’re in it.’

‘Not the world’s most reassuring phraseology.’

‘They’ve started doing publicity and everything.’

‘Everything. Well.’

‘The PR people are mentioning your name. There’s a buzz.’

‘A sound so often associated with dead, decaying things, don’t you find?’

‘Will you stop being so sodding cynical?’

‘Probably shortly after I stop being so damn alive.’

‘I thought you’d want to know.’

‘You’re right. It was the uncertainty that was killing me.’

‘If all you can do is be sarcastic-’

‘Then it should be a good show today.’

I heard him laugh. I went to start the Landy, then sat back again and waved my hands even though Phil couldn’t see me. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ I said. ‘Why do TV people have to make such a big deal about everything? It’s one fucking item on a minority interest telly show, not an unknown play by Shakespeare written on the back of the missing bit from the “Unfinished Symphony”.’ I put my hand on the keys again.

Phil said, ‘You on your way in?’

‘Better than being on the way out.’

‘Save it for the show. Safe journey.’

‘It’s Chelsea to Soho, Phil, not the Paris-Dakar rally.’

‘So we’ll see you soon. Take care.’

‘Yeah, bye.’

I put the phone away. I looked at my hand, resting on the Landy’s keys, dangling from the ignition. People kept telling me to take care. I looked out across the Landy’s battered bonnet, still not twisting the key in the ignition. It was raining quite hard now. I sighed, then got out and did the checking-for-bombs-under-the-vehicle bit. Nothing there.

‘I’m all for globalism. I mean, if you’re talking about the sort of globalisation that says, Stuff whatever you people voted for, you’ll let us privatise your water and hike the prices five hundred per cent or else, then, no. Exclude me in. What I’m for is the globalism of the United Nations, imperfect though it may be, the globalism of arms treaties, the globalism of the Geneva Convention – possibly the next suspect piece of internationalism Dubya and his chums will want to withdraw from – the globalism of the International Court of Justice the US refuses to sign up for, the globalism of anti-pollution measures, and d’you know why, Phil? Because the winds know no boundaries. The globalism of the-’