Iain Banks - Dead Air

Oh fuck. If I shifted now he’d see the movement but if he kept looking at me he’d surely see my pasty white face in the darkness. I kept still but closed my eyes. Then opened them a touch because I could hear him walking towards me across the wooden floor of the gym.

‘No, just the door to the cupboard in the gym. Swung open there. Gave me a… moment,’ he said, putting one hand to the edge of the door and closing it. The light faded again. I took another breath. ‘So were you last out, or what?’ he said, voice muffled again by the closed door. ‘Well, somebody forgot to set the fucking alarm, Celia.’

Oh, just fucking leave her alone, you fuck. It wasn’t her. She’s Ceel; she would never make a mistake like that. She’s the calm, infallible one. Her only fault is a certain weakness for villains and idiots.

Maybe if I rushed the bastard and smacked him over the head with something heavy. Kill the fucker; murder the man. He was a fucking people-smuggling, life-ruining, knee-snapping crime lord, for fuck’s sake; I’d be doing society a favour. Then Ceel and I could run away together.

Or, better still, say, just hide here in the darkness and hope.

‘Well, I’m calling Kaj, get him to have a look at the alarm… Well, he helped install it. I’m going to take a look round, make sure there’s nobody in here… It’s not being paranoid, Celia. I’m not taking a shower thinking there could be some smack-head on the loose in here looking for your jewels or something. These types are unbalanced, capable of anything… Yes, that sort of remark is amusing around the dinner table, Celia. Standing here right now thinking there could be some junkie hiding behind a door with a knife, irony is the last thing on my mind… I’m not suggesting a junkie could defeat the alarm, I’m suggesting that somebody forgot to turn the alarm on and that therefore there could possibly be somebody in the house who got in without the alarm going off as it would have otherwise… I’m not discussing this with you. You seem in a very strange mood… No, I don’t want to know how your weekend is going… Do what you want.’ There was a soft snapping noise, like a phone being closed, perhaps. Then steps, a pause, more steps, a door opening off the room, then closing, then another door, and then silence.

My hand was getting sore. I was still gripping my mobile; it was still, I guessed, connected to the answering machine in the study on the floor below. I closed the phone then opened it again so that the back light would come on. Duration of call: 6:51, 6:52, 6:53… End Call?

That had to cover the message I’d left last night. It must have been recorded over by now. I clicked OK to end the call. The phone vibrated almost immediately, making me panic again. I dropped the phone, grabbed at it while it was still in mid-air and succeeded only in batting it across the dark cupboard, off a wall with a loud thud and against some unidentified piece of metallic equipment with a resounding clang. Then it fell to the floor with another thump.

Fuck! Would he have heard that? And where was the phone? Lying on the floor somewhere. If I was lucky the fucker would have been smashed by the series of impacts, but if I wasn’t then it was about to exhaust the three or four vibrations it went through in the mode I had it in and start ringing normally. I had to get to it before it did. Merrial was probably standing stopped in the hall outside, listening intently and thinking, Did I hear a couple of thuds with a clang in-between there? If he heard the piercing warble of an unfamiliar mobile phone coming from the room he’d just left, he’d be right back in here. Or more likely he’d dash down to his study, grab a gun and then come storming back.

I levered myself forward, feeling along the unseen floor for the little phone. Why did they have to make the damn things so fucking small nowadays? Old mobiles were the size of a brick; I’d have found the thing by now instead of whimpering as my hands fanned out across the wooden floor, banging into bits of gear and failing totally to find the phone, which I couldn’t even hear now. The ringing would start any second. Not that that would matter, because thanks to my panic and subsequent whacking of the phone about the place like it was a fucking squash ball, Merrial had almost certainly realised there was somebody hiding in his gym store and probably already had his shotgun or whatever and was walking calmly upstairs, chambers full and hammers cocked.

Green glow to one side, quietly flicking off. The phone’s screen. I found it, bashing my forehead off something metal as I did so. I closed then opened the phone again. The display looked normal; nothing wrong with the little fucker. So how come it hadn’t gone from vibration to ring? Then I saw the little envelope symbol. Of course; it had registered an incoming text message and so had vibrated once only. I needn’t have panicked; I certainly needn’t have started bouncing it off the walls like a bluebottle in a fucking jam jar.

Still no sounds from outside. Maybe I’d got away with it. I squatted there in the darkness and accessed the message: OK 2 CALL? C.

I looked to the door of the cupboard. There was an old-fashioned keyhole there, halfway up one edge. I swivelled over to it to put my eye to the bright slit. My forehead banged off the door handle. I sat back, blinking through the tears. A door-knob just above a keyhole; who’d have thought that? Fucking, fucking idiot. It had hurt so much I hadn’t really registered how loud the sound had been. Jesus H. For all the stealthiness I was showing here I might just as well march out singing a medley of Slipknot numbers and slide down the fucking banister rail yodelling.

I looked carefully through the keyhole. Most of the gym was visible, including the door to the hall outside. The door was closed. Nobody in the room. I wedged myself against the wall and dialled Celia’s mobile number.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m in the cupboard in the gym,’ I whispered. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes. I just had a call from John.’

‘I know. I heard. Who’s this Kaj?’

‘John’s bodyguard. Swedish. You’ve met him, at Somerset House.’

The big blond guy. ‘Oh, fuck.’

‘Have you cleared the tape on the answering machine?’

‘Thoroughly.’

‘Get out. Quick as you can.’

‘That was my intention.’

‘He said he’d have a look round, and call Kaj to get him over. Also, he might have a shower. If he does shower you should hear it; it’s a power shower and the pump is in a cupboard off the second-floor hall; it makes a fair amount of noise, on that floor at least.’

‘Where will this Kaj person be coming from?’

‘I don’t know. I’m surprised he wasn’t with him. Unless they were together and he gave him the rest of the day off. Wait; Kaj has a girlfriend who lives… somewhere off Regent’s Park. He may be there. John could have dropped him on the way down from Yorkshire. He didn’t say anything about seeing your Land Rover in the mews so he’s probably parked out the front. But you must get out as soon as possible.’

‘I know!’ I hissed, glancing through the keyhole again. Regent’s Park to Belgravia. How long would that take by car? Potentially several hours if you made the journey during a rainy weekday rush hour while there was a tube strike, but this was a sunny Saturday lunchtime. Ten minutes? No; maybe on a Sunday. Twenty minutes? Longer? Always assuming that was where this Kaj guy was in the first place. Maybe the fucker was only five minutes’ walk away, shoulders taking up half the pavement as he searched the King’s Road for a trendy Outsize shop. ‘I’ll give it a couple of minutes more,’ I told Ceel. ‘If he’s searching the place he probably reckons he needn’t look in here because he’s already taken care of it.’