Iain Banks - Dead Air

‘No problem, Mrs C. Actually I knew he was away; I just wanted an excuse to hear your voice.’

‘There see now, you bein terrible again.’

‘I just can’t help myself. It’s the power you have over me.’

‘Terrible man, terrible, terrible rogue of a man.’

‘Okay, Mrs C. I’ll try Ed’s mobile. It was good talking to you. Oh… I did want to have a word with a friend of his, too. Ah… Robe? Yeah; Robe. Would you have his number there at all?’

‘Robe? What you want to talk to him for, hon?’

‘… Sorry, just blowing my nose there, Mrs C. Excuse me.’

‘You excused, hon. So, what’s this you wantin to talk to Robe for?’

‘Ah, yeah; I was talking to somebody. In a record company. Ice House? They’re pretty big. Apparently the company, the record label, it’s looking for security people; bodyguards, that sort of thing. For artists, rap artists, when they come over from the States. I just thought Robe could do that, maybe. I mean, these are often pretty serious people themselves, ex-gangsta, a lot of them; they wouldn’t have any respect for the average white kid with broad shoulders who’s used to turning people away from clubs because they’ve got the wrong footwear. Robe, however, they’d relate to. But it’s straight work, and well paid. I know he could do it. Could lead to, well, who knows?’

‘Be a lot more respectable than what he usually gets up to, what I hear. Robe is Yardie, Kennit. He dangerous. Too many guns. He’s not welcome in this house no more. Ed don’t see him that I know of.’

‘I realise that. Ed and I were talking about him, not long ago. That’s why I thought maybe this could be a way to get him out of that sort of life. I thought maybe if I could have a word with him…’

‘Well, I don’t tink I got his number here, but I can get it, I suppose.’

‘It’d be great if you could, Mrs C. Of course, I’d understand if you didn’t want to say anything to Ed. Nothing might come of this, we have to accept that. But, you know; nothing ventured, and all that.’

‘Well, you probably on a wild goose chase here, honey, but bless you for tinkin of it. I call you back, that okay?’

‘You are a saint and sexy. I adore you.’

‘Ah! Stop it now!’

I’d decided I might be developing a crush on my dentist. Of course I wasn’t and I knew I wasn’t, but the idea seemed nice; there was something oddly relaxing and carefree about it. Maybe it was some very mixed up Freudian thing, given that my dad was a dentist, maybe it was because Mary Fairley, BDS, was Scottish, from Nairn, and had the most wonderfully soft, burring accent I’d heard since I’d moved to London, maybe it was the whole thing about lying almost flat with my mouth open, entirely at this woman’s mercy while some gentle music played and she and her almost as attractive assistant spoke quietly, professionally to each other, but whatever it was, I had almost convinced myself I felt something for her. Mary was chunky of build but delicate of movement and touch; she had sandy hair, grey-green eyes, a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, and breasts that got ever so slightly in her way sometimes, necessitating a quick, twisting movement – the bodily equivalent of a hair-flick – while she was leaning over me.

I gazed up into her eyes, wishing we didn’t have to put these safety visor things on these days. Although, given that I seemed to have picked up Nikki’s cold, that was probably no bad thing; I had to raise my hand and stop the dental work a couple of times to have a good sneeze.

Amazing how safe I felt in a dentist’s surgery; always a little on edge, waiting for a twinge, but very safe. Mary was polite but not chatty, despite our Caledonian connection. Very professional. Having a crush on a disinterested dentist might appear frustrating and sad, but it also struck me as being innocent and pure, and even healthy. Certainly a lot healthier than falling hopelessly in love with a gangster’s wife and planning to go tooled up into a telly studio.

Mary drilled through an old filling into decay, and the air in my mouth filled with a smell like death.

‘Our client maintains strongly that he was not using his mobile at the time of the accident.’

‘Then your client is lying.’

‘Mr, ah, McNutt, with respect, you could only have gained the most fleeting of glimpses of our client’s car when-’

‘Tell you what… excuse… ah-choo!’

‘Bless you.’

‘Thank you. Excuse me. Yes, as I was saying; the young lady I was taking home made a phone call to report the accident to the police. That was about five, ten seconds, max, after the crash happened. Why don’t we talk to her mobile network and your client’s and compare the times when his call ended and hers began? Because, now I think about it, he was still holding the phone when he got out of the car, and I suspect he hadn’t hung up. Let’s see if that call and Ms Verrin’s overlap, shall we?’

The lawyer and her articled clerk looked at each other.

‘You lucky, lucky people. Not only has my cold gone into my throat so that I sound even huskier and sexier than ever, but we just played you the Hives, the White Stripes and the Strokes; three in a row with nary a syllable of nonsense to dilute the fun. Damn, we spoil you! Now then, Phil.’

‘Yeah; you can’t just leave an accusation hanging like that.’

‘You mean my broad hint that a fully functioning brain might be a liability in a footballer?’

‘Yes. So what are you saying; all football club changing rooms should have a sign saying, You don’t have to be stupid to work here but it helps?’

‘And how witty that would be if they did, Philip. But no.’

‘But you’re saying that footballers have to be stupid.’

‘No, I’m just saying that it might help.’

‘Why?’

‘Think about it. You’re playing tennis; what’s the one shot that looks easy that people get wrong all the time? The one that even the professionals make an embarrassing mess of every now and again. Happened at least once that I saw this Wimbledon.’

‘We may,’ Phil said, ‘have located the source of the footballer’s seeming stupidity, if they think they’re playing football but you’ve apparently changed sports to tennis.’

‘You can see how having a single net in the middle instead of one at each end would be confusing, but that’s not what I mean. Just stick with me here, Phil. In tennis, what looks like the easiest shot there could be, but people still get hopelessly wrong? Come on. Think. The good people of radio listener-land are depending on you.’

‘Ah,’ Phil said. ‘The overhead smash when the ball’s gone way up in the sky and you seem to spend about half an hour at the net waiting for it to come down.’

‘Correct. Now why do people get that shot so wrong when it looks so easy?’

‘They’re crap?’

‘We’ve already established that even the best players in the world do this, so, no, not that.’

Phil shrugged. I was making a one-handed waving motion at him across the desk, as though trying to waft the aroma of a dish towards my nose. Sometimes we sort of half rehearsed these things, sometimes we didn’t and I just landed stuff like this on him and trusted to luck and the fact we knew each other pretty well by now. Phil nodded. ‘They have too much time to think.’

‘Pre-flipping-cisely, Phil. Like most sports, tennis is a game of rapid movement, fast reactions, skilful hand-eye coordination – well, foot-eye coordination in the case of football, but you get the idea – and people often play their best when they’ve got no time to think. Think service returns against somebody like Sampras or Rusedski. Same in cricket; scientists reckon it shouldn’t be possible for a batsman to hit the ball because there just isn’t enough time between the ball leaving the hand of a good fast bowler and it getting to the bat. Of course, a decent batsman will have read the bowler’s body language. Same applies to a tennis player who’s good at returning against a big hitter; they can tell where the ball’s going before the server hits it. The point is that it all happens too quick for the cerebral bit of the brain to get involved; there’s no time to think, there’s only time to react. Right?’