Iain Banks: Dead Air

I can’t believe this. My head feels like it’s revolving and somersaulting and vibrating, like it’s a fairground waltzer and my brain’s the single hapless, helpless passenger. When I’m quite secure and unable to move much beyond a twitch – my head is the only part of me I can really control at all – the driver’s door of the Bentley opens and John Merrial gets out. He’s dressed in a black three-piece suit with a high-necked waistcoat. Black gloves. The two guys, one to each side of me, straighten fractionally.

So there goes my last hope. It is him and not Mark Southorne. I am here because of yesterday, because of the message, because of Ceel, and not because of some idiotic points-dodging scam.

Mr Merrial looks small and dark and regretful, as though he isn’t going to enjoy any of this either.

I lose control of my bowels and shit myself. I really can’t help it. I’m a passenger in my own body now and I just sit there and listen and feel and then smell it all happen and I’m astonished how quickly and easily it takes place. Mr Merrial wrinkles his nose. The shit fills my underpants.

Nothing, I think. I’m to be spared nothing.

The guy who hasn’t hit me goes to Merrial and offers him the stuff they’ve taken off me. Merrial takes a large pair of latex gloves from one pocket, puts them on over his black leather gloves and then accepts the big Breitling, hefting it. He smiles. ‘Nice watch.’ He hands it back to the guy. He tries to turn my phone on but of course it’s dead. Then he looks in my wallet, taking out my various credit cards and bits and pieces and inspecting them. He pauses at his own white calling card, the one I’d written on.

From here, because I’m sitting down and so looking from a lower perspective, I can see the back of the card, where I wrote down the code Celia told me over the phone, the code that turns off the burglar alarm in the Merrials’ house. I’ve been sitting here desperately trying to work out what to say and I do have an idea, but it all depends on the fucker not looking at the back of that little white card. If he does, there’s nothing I can think of that might save Celia, let alone me. If he doesn’t, then the slenderest of chances remains.

The moment seems to freeze. In that instant I’m suddenly with Ceel and her absurd entanglement theory. In one universe, Merrial flips the card over in his fingers and sees the alarm code written there. In the other, he just looks at the one already printed side and that’s all.

Maybe I deserve what might happen here. I know I’m not a particularly good person; I’ve lied and I’ve cheated and it’s no consolation that little of it was illegal. It’s not illegal to lie to your best friend, to fuck his wife, to lie to your partner, to cheat on her. Smashing car windows, hitting somebody in the face, smoking dope, burglary; that sort of thing’s illegal and I’ve done all that too, but none of that means very much compared to betraying the people you’re closest to; that’s the stuff really to be ashamed of. So maybe I’d have no real cause to complain if I’m made to suffer here.

But nothing I’ve done deserves the death penalty, or even having my legs broken, does it? I’ve told lies on a small scale but I’ve tried to tell the truth on a larger scale. I’ve tried to be true to what I believe in rather than make as much money as I could have. Doesn’t that count for something? And who the fuck are these people to judge me anyway? I’m a liar and I’m weak and I’m certainly no hero because I’ve filled my fucking pants, but – even sitting here in my own stench, in greasy, sweat-stained two-hard-days’-living clothes – I’m a fucking better man than these vindictive shitheads, for all their crisply ironed shirts.

If only deserving something was all there was to it.

Actually it doesn’t matter a damn. I am in the realm of pure luck here, even if Ceel’s crazy ideas are true (which they just damn well aren’t). So roll the dice; let the universe do the fucking maths.

Merrial slips the card back into my wallet, without looking at the other side. He hands everything back to the man in the overalls, then slowly removes his latex gloves and gives those to the guy, who comes and stands behind my shoulder again.

Merrial says, ‘Take the tape off his mouth, would you, Alex?’

The guy who’s hit me twice so far does that, tearing it off casually. It hurts a bit. I swallow. Cold sweat trickles down my face and into my mouth.

‘Good evening, Kenneth,’ Merrial says.

For a while I just breathe, unwilling to trust myself to come out with anything coherent.

Merrial hoists himself a little and sits on the wing of the Bentley. ‘Well,’ he says with a hint of a smile. ‘Thank you for coming. I expect you’re wondering why I’ve invited you here this evening.’

This is probably meant to be funny. I keep on breathing, not willing to say anything. I stare into his eyes, dark under his brows and the shadows of the small overhead lights. I keep swallowing, trying to get some saliva into my mouth. I look about the place, squint into the Bentley. At least there’s no sign of Celia. Maybe she got away in time. Maybe she’s not been linked to this. Oh, Lord, a straw to grasp at; a still-floating one.

‘Do you like being underground, Kenneth?’ Merrial asks. I don’t think he really wants an answer so I don’t give him one. ‘I do,’ he says, smiling, looking around at the darkness. ‘I don’t know… just makes me feel…’ He stares up. ‘Safe, I suppose.’

I’m a single nerve-firing away from hysterical laughter at this point, at that particular word, but I don’t think that laughing in Mr Merrial’s face right now would be a very good idea at all, and sense prevails. A series of small, horrible, bubbly farts announce my bowels have completed their evolutionary duty and prepared me for fight or flight by getting rid of the excess matter they’d been holding inside my body. Very helpful, I think, sat here, immobile and helpless.

‘Yes,’ Merrial says, looking round too. ‘I like it here. Useful old place, this.’ He gestures down at the floor, where the water has already stopped rippling and gone back to its impression of pure blackness again. ‘Flooding, now.’ He shakes his head, lips pursed. ‘Won’t be able to use it in a year or two.’ He looks at me. ‘Water table, you see, Kenneth. Water table of the whole of London is rising again. It was going down for years; centuries, apparently, while they were taking water out for industry; tanning, breweries, that sort of thing. Now it’s rising again. They have to keep pumps going all the time in the deep tube lines and some multi-storey underground car parks.’ He smiles thinly. ‘You’d think they could use some of it as drinking water instead of flooding nice valleys in the Home Counties, but apparently it’s too polluted. Shame, really, don’t you think?’

‘Mr Merrial,’ I say, voice quivering, ‘I honestly don’t know why-’

Merrial raises one hand to me and looks towards the ramp I was brought down. Lights, and the sound of a big car engine. A Range Rover trundles down the slope. It edges between the opened V of the wire mesh gates and into the water. It comes hissing slowly towards us on small, inky bow-waves, then loops away into the darkness and curves back in again, stopping on the other side of the little pallet-island from the Bentley, a series of miniature wakes rippling and gurgling against the wood beneath us. The Range Rover kills its lights. The air smells of exhaust.

On the far side, the driver’s door opens and Kaj gets out. He comes splashing round, steps up onto the pallets and puts one hand to the passenger door’s handle.

I know it might be her. I know who’s probably going to be there behind the smoked glass. Merrial is watching me intently; I can feel it. I stare at the Range Rover’s door. For as long as I can, I’m going to do what I can to protect her. That might not be very long, but it’s all I can do, the only control over anything I have here. When the door opens and I see it’s Celia, I look surprised, no more. I stare at her, then look round briefly at Merrial.