Iain Banks - Dead Air

‘What? I… Ah… I… I don’t know? Should we?’

Mike looked at Cavan, who shrugged. He looked at me.

‘Guys,’ I laughed. ‘I can’t tell you!’ I returned my attention to the telly and said, ‘I think you should find out whether the feds are to be involved. Because, otherwise, I’m about to leave.’

‘Ah… leave?’ said Mike the exec producer.

‘Mm-hmm,’ I said, sipping my drink and watching shots of Camp X-Ray.

‘But, well… we thought we could, maybe, still do the discussion. I mean, if you would agree…’

Cavan crossed his arms and appeared innocently bemused.

I was looking at the two of them, shaking my head. ‘Listen, guys, I have no fucking intention of even beginning to take that nasty little right-wing shithead’s diseased ideas seriously, to debate them, for fuck’s sake.’ I looked back at the TV. ‘Never did,’ I muttered. I looked back at the producer. He was standing with his mouth open. I frowned. ‘You did get it all on tape, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. Of course we did.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Very good.’ I watched the TV a moment longer. ‘So,’ I said to him, when he still hadn’t gone, ‘if you could just find out if the boys in blue are going to be involved or not. Okay? Thanks.’ I nodded at the door and then went back to watching the guys in orange shuffling between the cages in Guantanamo.

He shook his head at me, and left. I smiled at the two attractive awfullies, who grinned back nervously.

Cavan chuckled and got up to leave. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if I’m not mistaken, Ken, you’ve totally fucked us.’ He opened the door. ‘But it was elegantly done.’ He nodded as he left. ‘Look after yourself.’

I just smiled at him.

Actually, at that point I’d quite happily have settled for whacking a fascist and getting away with it, but – in theory, according to the mad, bad plan at least – what had to happen next was that somebody did take the matter further, and the cops did become involved, and I was formally charged with assault.

Because then – despite all the witnesses, despite the cameras and the videotape and the thing being replayable in slow motion from two or three different angles, and certainly despite what I hoped would develop into a splendid black eye for Lawson Brierley – I had every intention, in front of the police, in front of the lawyers, in front of a judge and in front of a jury if it came to that, of denying it had ever happened.

And that was the fucking clever bit.

‘I knew you were up to something.’

‘Fuck off! You did not.’

‘I did! Why do you think I was so nervous earlier in the Pig?’

‘You’re always nervous when I’m doing something you can’t control.’

Phil made a noise you could only call a gasp. ‘Now that’s not true, Ken. That’s unfair.’ He seemed genuinely hurt.

I put a hand on his shoulder. It was still true, mind you, but I said, ‘Sorry.’

‘You didn’t really hit him, did you?’

‘Yup. Biffed the blighter on the phizog.’

‘A proper punch?’

‘A proper punch. Look at them bunch a fives.’ I held my right hand out to show him the grazes on the knuckles. My hand still hurt.

‘You’re really proud of this, aren’t you?’

I thought about it. ‘Yes,’ I said.

We were in the Bough. Phil had said he’d hang about Capital Live! until the recording for Breaking News was finished, expecting a debriefing; he’d been suitably surprised when I’d walked into the office barely ninety minutes after I’d left him for the studio in Clerkenwell.

‘You attacked him?’ Kayla had said, sitting back in her chair in her winter camos and chewing on a pen. I’d nodded, and she’d got up and kissed me. ‘Brilliant, Ken.’

Phil and his assistant Andi had looked aghast at each other. Andi had said, ‘Pub, now, I’d suggest.’

‘But they didn’t call the police.’

‘Not so far. They spent most of their time trying to persuade me to stay and continue with the debate. I don’t know what put them off eventually, me stonewalling or the make-up girls running out of foundation to cover up Lawson’s black eye. Eventually I just walked out and got a taxi.’

‘Do you think Brierley will press charges?’

‘No idea.’ I drank my London Pride and smiled widely at Phil. ‘Don’t fucking care.’

‘You’ve been planning this for weeks, haven’t you?’

‘Months, actually. Since it was first brought up in Debbie’s office, back in September. I had that classic dilemma thing going where you don’t want to give these people a platform, but on the other hand you want to get them in public and grind the grisly fuckers into the dust – and I actually really thought I could do it, because I’m a fucking militant liberal, not the wishy-washy sort that would try to understand the bastard or just be appalled – but then I thought, na, just give the piece of shit a taste of his own medicine.’

Phil was silent for a while, so I looked at him; he was sitting side-on, looking at me.

‘What?’

‘Maybe I don’t know you as well as I thought I did.’

‘Yeah.’ I grinned. ‘Good, eh?’

‘If he does press charges, though, you could be in serious trouble.’

‘First offence? No weapon involved? I don’t think I’ll be going to prison. I did have a doomsday scenario going on in my head about getting carried away once I got my hands on the fuck and beating him to a pulp, leaving him paralysed or dead or something or with a Telefunken UB47 rammed up his arse, but in the end it played out pretty well. I can stand a fine and being bound over to keep the peace, or whatever.’

‘I was thinking more about your job.’

I glanced at him. ‘Yeah. In theory.’

‘Not just in theory.’

‘I thought I was pretty safe there. We haven’t had a dressing down for, shit, weeks.’

‘Ken, for goodness’ sake; we exist on a knife-edge all the time whether or not we get a formal warning or even just a quiet word. I’ve had the ads department on to me about cancellations from American Airlines, the Israeli Tourist Board… and one or two others I’ve managed to repress, obviously. They’re hurting. There are few enough big campaigns going as it is at the moment; losing those that are on offer is giving them sleepless nights, and I’m pretty sure news of the pain is being passed up the corporate structure.’

I frowned. ‘Well, maybe the Israeli Tourist Board will come back now I’ve beaten up a horrible Holocaust denier.’ I glanced at Phil.

He wore a suitably sceptical expression. ‘Or maybe,’ he said, ‘this could be the bale of hay that breaks the camel’s back. I’d check your contract. Never mind vague stuff about bringing the station into disrepute, I’ll bet any criminal proceedings, even pending, threatened ones, means they can pull you off air without pay.’

‘Shit.’ I had a horrible feeling he was right. ‘I’d better phone my agent.’

‘So, Mr McNutt. Would you like to describe what happened in the studio of Winsome Productions, in Clerkenwell, London, on the afternoon of Monday the fourteenth of January, 2002, in your own words?’

Oh shit, it was the same DS who’d interviewed me about the East End trip, when I’d broken the taxi’s windscreen and punched ‘Raine’ in the face. I’d had the choice of coming to my local nick to give a statement, and I’d stupidly taken it. The DS was a young white guy, sharp-faced but a little jowly, with brown hair starting to recede at the temples. He smiled. ‘In your own time, Mr McNutt.’ He patted the big, clunky wooden cassette recorder sitting on the desk in the interview room.