Iain Banks - Dead Air

It didn’t matter; I was a fucking radio DJ; I was proud I had a distinctive voice. Even if Merrial didn’t ever listen to the show and had missed my high TV and radio presence over the last few weeks or never heard an ad with my voiceover, somebody he knew would recognise me. And anyway, I didn’t bar my mobile number; his answering machine would have remembered the number, the way they all did, didn’t they? Or maybe his didn’t; maybe Merrial was one of those Early Adopters and he had a really old machine he’d never got round to replacing and it didn’t keep a note of the incoming numbers.

Yeah, right.

But even if he had the number, how would he know it was mine? I hadn’t given him my number, he couldn’t… Yes, and of course as a big crime lord he’d have absolutely no way of finding who a mobile number belonged to. Of course he would.

I know! I thought. He owed me a favour. Merrial; he’d said to call him if there was ever a favour he could do for me. I’d phone and phone and phone until I got an answer, or go over there and slip a note through the door, ask him to just not listen to his messages, as a favour to me; just trust me. Heavens, yes, that was bound to work. And OJ was innocent and al-Megrahi was guilty.

Phone now! I thought. Of course! Phone now and find out if the fucking answering machine was still switched on. Why hadn’t I thought of that first? Because I was still drunk, hung-over and panicking under the influence of the most catastrophically fuckwittish mistake ever made in the long history of catastrophically fuckwittish mistakes.

I reached for the land-line. Oh fuck, what if he answered? What if he said something like, Ah, Kenneth, you again. I received your earlier message. Very interesting. I’ve just sent some of my colleagues round to your place to invite you for a little chat…

Oh fuck, oh fuck.

I took three attempts to press the number into the phone, my hands were shaking so much.

Ceel’s voice, recorded. Her beautiful, clear, calm, perfect voice. Leave a message after the tone… then a series of beeps signifying the message or messages already left – mine! mine was there, that dirty, drunken, rambling shite being spooled past right now! – then the beep. I didn’t leave another message. I put the phone down. So – probably – nobody had listened to the message. The worst had not yet happened. Unless, of course, Merrial was being clever and only pretending that he hadn’t listened… but that was even more paranoid than reality demanded, and fuck knew that was bad enough.

Maybe I could sort of half own up. I could say I’d become obsessed with Celia after seeing her on the ice that day. I was living out this fantasy where we were lovers, stalking her… No. No, he’d still do something horrible to me, just for that, and more likely he’d want to check that nothing had been going on, so he’d still have me tortured to get at the truth. And I had no illusions about my ability to hold out under severe pain, not for Ceel, not for myself, not for anybody.

My palms were very sweaty. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t swallow. I got up unsteadily and went to the kitchen for some bottled water. The land-line phone rang on the second swallow, and I sprayed water over the carpet.

‘Yes?’

‘Kenneth?’ It was her. Thank fuck. Her; still alive, still not screaming in agony, still able to talk; now able to talk. ‘What’s wrong?’

I told her. In all my life – and there might not be much more of it to come – I had never known anybody stay so calm in the face of a disaster as utter and unmitigated. She had every right to scream and cry and bawl, but she just asked a couple of sensible, measured questions to clear up some of the holes I’d left in my semi-hysterical account of what had happened. Then I heard her sigh. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Well, I’m in Scotland, staying with some friends near Inverness. John is caving in the Peak District. He’s due back tonight or tomorrow.’

‘Tonight? Oh, Jesus Christ.’

‘Depends on the weather; if there’s been too much rain the system will be flooded and they won’t be able to do much. It was touch and go, last I heard.’

I ran a hand over my face. ‘Can you access the messages on your answering machine from outside, from a different phone?’

‘No. John specifically did not want one which could do that, in case somebody else found out how to access it.’

‘Okay, okay, well, that gives us until he gets home, at least.’ I closed my eyes and stood there shaking my head. ‘Oh, Ceel, I am so, so sorry. I can’t, I just can’t begin to tell you-’

‘Kenneth, stop. We have to think. Right. Bien. I can claim an emergency and ask to be run straight back to the airport. I’ll get on the next flight. I can get home before him, wipe the tape.’

‘Oh, please, yes; please, please.’

‘I’d better let my hosts know.’ I heard her exhale. ‘This should be interesting. I’ll call you back as soon as I know what’s happening. ’

‘Ceel?’

‘What?’

‘I love you.’

This time it was an in-taken breath. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Well. Talk to you soon.’

And off.

I drank from the bottle of water, hands still shaking. I stared ahead, seeing nothing. Still alive. Both of us still alive. So far so good. So far no torture and painful death. She’d get back. She’d return, in time. Brilliant, calm, resourceful Ceel would clear up the pig’s diarrhoea of a mess her idiot lover had made. She’d make it all well again. Bless that smart, sexy, wonderful, gorgeous, fantastic woman. She might never talk to me again, she might write me out of her life forevermore and curse me ritually every night before she went to sleep for the rest of her hopefully long life for the ignorant scumbag dickhead that I so surely was, but at least she’d be alive to do it, at least we’d both live. We wouldn’t suffer for my stupidity. I drank some more water and told myself that one day I’d see the funny side of all this.

Ceel rang back forty minutes later with the news that Inverness airport was out of action for the day, fog-bound.

‘You have to run,’ I said. My mouth had gone dry again. ‘That’s all we can do. Run. You have to get away. Further away. Oh, God, Ceel-’

‘No-no,’ she said crisply. ‘I’ll find out when there’s a flight next to London from Aberdeen, Edinburgh or Glasgow, then hire a car to whichever one. I’ll charter a plane or helicopter if I can. The timing will be tighter but it ought still to be possible. But there is another possibility.’

‘What?’

‘You could get into the house.’

‘How? Does anybody else have a key? Is there anybody in the house?’

‘No. There shouldn’t be. The staff have the weekend off.’

‘So, how-?’

‘There’s a key in the back garden, inside an artificial stone.’

‘There is?’ This sounded a bit low-rent and risky for such a posh address.

‘Yes. Then once you’re inside you’ll have to switch the alarm off.’

‘Okay, okay, right.’

‘I’ll give you the number for that. However, there is a problem.’

‘Shit. What?’

‘Getting into the back garden from the lane. There’s a high wall.’

‘So what’s the point of-?’

‘There’s a garage off the lane; you’re supposed to be able to get into the garage with the remote control in the car and then use the spare key. Or there’s an ordinary door, but it’s locked too.’

‘Right. Okay.’ I had an idea. ‘How high is the wall exactly? Well, not ex-’

‘Three metres, perhaps three and a half.’

‘Any razor wire or anything?’

‘No.’

‘Not even broken bottles?’

‘No.’

‘Okay, I think I can get into the back garden. I suppose it’s over-looked? By other-?’