Iain Banks - Dead Air

I’d been slightly worried that Ed had heard from his mum that I’d been trying to get hold of his Yardie pal Robe, guessed that I was still after a gun, and wanted to shout at me or something, but nothing like this had happened so far; we’d met up in the big main living-room on the ground floor and been suddenly surrounded by a chaotic, laughing crowd of Ed’s aunts, cousins and sisters (several of them pretty damn attractive), and a couple of male relations and boyfriends. His mum hadn’t been there because she was attending some night class, which had saved any potential embarrassment. Ed had made our apologies and we’d got away upstairs but he still hadn’t said anything about Robe.

Ed’s own place within the communal house ran the length of the two lofts. The big dormers just looked out onto other roofs but the views inside were more striking; a long, mostly open space in warm ochres and deep reds with splashes of yellow. Trust me; it was a lot more tasteful than it sounds. It all smelled very new. The only certifiable style-lapse was in Ed’s moderately vast, impressively uncluttered bedroom.

‘Mirrors, Edward?’

‘Yeah! Wicked, eh?’

‘Mirrors? I mean, on both sides-’

‘They’re wardrobes!’

‘But on the ceiling? Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’

‘Wot? Just cos nobody’d want to watch your sorry white ass when you’re bangin some bird. Me, I’m a picture. If I wasn’t straight as a bleedin die, I’d fall in love wif meself.’

I’d folded my arms, taken a step back and looked at him. Eventually I’d just shaken my head.

‘Wot?’

‘No,’ I’d said, ‘you got me; I’m lost for words.’

‘Fuck me. Hold the showbiz page.’

‘Come on; I’m off duty.’

Now we were in Ed’s study/den/studio, and he’d turned on all his music gear. I gazed round the six stacked, angled keyboards, the three man-high, nineteen-inch racks and a mixing desk you’d struggle to touch both ends of even with your arms outstretched and your face jammed against the pots. There was a bunch of other bits and pieces too; much-be-buttoned units lying on desks, a set of drum pads, and at least three pieces the functions of which I could not even begin to guess at. Most of the gear was twinkling in the heavily curtained darkness; hundreds of little LEDs in broad constellations of red, green, yellow and blue, plus dozens of softly glowing pastel screens with dark, blocky writing on them. Two wide-screen monitors bigger than my TV flickered into life as Ed’s Mac powered quietly up. Ed’s monitors were giant Nautilus jobs, thirty grand’s worth of gleaming, shoulder-high, spiked blue ammonites with bright yellow cones sitting on the far side of the room and aimed at the big, black, leather chair poised in the epicentre of all this cool-tech gizmology.

‘What exactly does all this do, Ed?’

‘Makes music, man.’

‘I thought you just played the stuff.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m branching out, inn-I?’

‘You mean you’re actually going to start composing?’ I picked up a dark red A4-sized manual for something called a Virus and flicked through it, squinting in the low ambient light.

‘Yeah. I fot it’d be a laugh. An anyway; just look at this stuff.’

I looked at it again. ‘You know, you’re absolutely right, Ed. It doesn’t have to produce a fucking note to justify its total, glorious gorgeousness-hood-icity. Please don’t tell me all you’re going to produce on it will be N-chih N-chih music.’

‘N-chih N-chih music?’

‘Yeah, you know; the sort of music you hear from some brother’s blacked-out Astra passing you in the street. It always goes N-chih N-chih N-chih.’

‘Na, mate. Well, yeah, some, maybe. But, na; one day I’m gonna write a bleedin symphony.’

‘A symphony?’

‘Yeah. Why not?’

I looked him up and down again. ‘You don’t lack for ambition, do you, Edward?’

‘Certainly fucking not; life’s too short, mate.’

I leafed through the manual for the Virus thing. ‘I mean, do you actually understand all this?’

‘Course not. You don’t need to to get good sounds out of it. But the deep stuff’s there if you need it.’

‘“Extended Panic functionality”!’ I quoted. ‘Ha! How can you not love something with Extended Panic functionality?’

‘Uvverwise known as the All Notes Off command.’

‘Brilliant,’ I said, putting the manual back on its bookshelf with the others. My phone vibrated on my hip. I glanced at the screen. ‘Jo,’ I told Ed. ‘Better answer it; she’s in, I don’t know, Berlin or Budapest or somewhere.’

‘I’ll fire up the software, let you hear some N-chih N-chih tunes.’

‘Hello?’ I said.

And, distantly, I heard, ‘Yes, yes, yes, come on, fuck me, fuck me, do it, do it, there, yes there there there, fuck me, fuck me harder. Fuck me really hard. Right there, right there, yes, yes, yes!’ This was accompanied by what sounded like clothing rubbing on clothing, a series of slaps, and then a man’s voice saying, ‘Oh yeah, oh yeah…’

It didn’t stop, either. Went on for some time.

I stood there and listened for long enough to entirely convince myself that this was not a joke, not any sort of an attempt at humour at all, and also not in any way meant. This was about the time when Ed turned round from the bewilderingly complicated displays on his two giant monitors and looked at me; just a glance at first, then back again, frowning, eyebrows rising. I handed him the phone.

He listened for a while as well. The frown was replaced by a smile, even a leer for a moment or two, but then he must have read something from my face because the smile disappeared and he handed the phone back to me and looked down, clearing his throat and turning back to the screens. ‘Sorry, bruv,’ I heard him say.

I listened a little while longer, then Jo’s phone must have fallen, because there was a loud but soft-sounding thump, and the noises became very muffled, incoherent. I folded the phone off. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I think the choice phrases involve sauces for ganders and geese; and petards, whatever the hell one of those is.’ Ed knew well enough I wasn’t faithful to Jo; blimey, we’d been able to watch each other at it with those two Argentinian girls that night on the beach at Brighton during early May.

Ed looked round, chewing his bottom lip. ‘Fink that was a wind-up?’

‘No.’

‘Deliberate?’

I shook my head. ‘I doubt it; I’ve had Jo’s accidental calls jam my phone for hours at a time before. Usually her and her girlfriends in a bar or a club.’ I released a deep breath. ‘Plus, ah, that is the way she expresses herself, during the act. I don’t think she’s a good enough actress to fake that.’

‘Woh. Right then. So. You two have one of them open relationships then, do ya?’

‘Looks like it,’ I said. ‘Just neither of us ever bothered to tell the other.’

Ed looked concerned. ‘You still want to hear some tunes, man, or would you ravver ave a drink or a smoke or sumfing?’

‘Na, play some tunes, Ed. Bangin tunes, in fact; play some bangin tunes.’ I gave a small, not funny laugh.

Jo said: ‘Listen.’

And I said: ‘Oh-oh.’

‘What?’

‘These days, people our age – okay, my age and also your age – don’t say “listen” like that without it meaning something pretty fucking serious.’

Jo looked down. ‘Yeah, well…’

Here we go, I thought.

We were in the London Aquarium, housed in the old GLC building on the South Bank of the Thames, beside the London Eye. Mouth Corp Records were having a bash and I’d been invited. So had Jo. She’d pretty much just arrived, coming straight from Heathrow off the flight from Budapest.