Iain Banks - Dead Air

Merrial cleared his throat and lifted his head up to her again. ‘Actually, I want a divorce, Celia.’

She tilted her head a little. ‘You do, do you?’ Her voice was neutral now, but sounded ready to slip into menace or accusation at any moment.

‘Yes, I need a divorce.’ Merrial gave an unhealthy looking little smile. ‘I don’t like the term “widower”, Celia, so I hope you’ll be as accommodating as I require you to be.’

She laughed a quick, convulsive laugh. ‘And what does that mean?’

Merrial looked just plain nasty now. ‘It means don’t expect any money.’

She gasped. Really gasped, genuinely astonished. ‘I don’t want your money, John,’ she told him. There was a hint in her tone as though she had just realised she had been dealing with a child all along. ‘I didn’t marry you for money. I didn’t want it then and I don’t now. Keep the money. Have your divorce.’ She was breathing hard now, shoulders rising and falling in the yellow and black jacket. Her voice had quivered over the last few sentences, barely under control. ‘So,’ she said, shaking her head once, regaining command. ‘Has one of them insisted you make an honest woman of her?’

‘You might say that,’ Merrial said. You could see he was having to force himself to keep looking at her, battling against the pressure of that remorselessly self-possessed gaze.

‘The one in Amsterdam?’ she asked evenly.

‘The one in Amsterdam.’ There was a strange sort of defiance in his tone.

‘And is she younger than I am, John?’ Celia asked quietly. ‘Is she more beautiful? Is she as young as I was when you met me? Or younger? Is she as exotic, is she as foreign? Is she better connected? Has she a famous name? Has she money? Is she fertile?’

Merrial’s gaze might have flickered a little.

Ceel relaxed her stance. She stood back, her weight went more on one foot than the other as she nodded. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘She is pregnant, is she?’

Merrial’s eyes went wide just for a moment, then he gave a small laugh. ‘You always were good like that, weren’t you, Celia?’ He looked past his wife to the big blond guy. ‘Isn’t she, Kaj?’

Kaj just looked awkward, and nodded.

‘Well, congratulations,’ Celia said bitterly.

She seemed suddenly to collapse inside then, looking quickly away and putting one hand up to her eyes. Silently, her shoulders – wide inside the thick yellow and black hiking jacket – shook; spasming once, twice, three times. Merrial looked even more awkward and uncertain. He seemed to be about to go to her and hug her, but he didn’t. He tried to find something to do with his hands and then folded his arms and looked at Kaj and did a sort of pathetic, Women, eh? look and gesture at the bigger man. Kaj sort of twitched, which was probably as close as he was going to come to waxing eloquent on the matter.

You beautiful, brave, intelligent, fabulous woman, I thought, staring at her with tears in my eyes. I had to look away, in case Merrial saw the way I was gazing at his wife. I was still having to remind myself that the extraordinary, exquisite, immaculately righteous ire she was displaying here was all in fact a complete fake, that she was lying through her perfect, delicious teeth when she told Merrial she’d been a faithful wife, but she had successfully, so far, anyway, shifted the focus of all that was going on here away from me and onto herself, onto her marriage. She’d gone nuclear with the big D word and duly been nuked in return, but it looked like she was actually getting away with it.

This was a woman fighting for her own life and that of her lover, but she wasn’t settling for just the result, she seemed determined to accomplish the task with audacity, bravura and style. I didn’t think I’d seen a more resourceful and courageous piece of acting in all my life, in person, on stage or on screen. Even if it still all went horribly, painfully, lethally wrong from here on in, at least I could suffer and die knowing I had been in the presence of genius.

Celia dried her eyes with one hand, then fetched a handkerchief from one of the pockets in her jeans and dabbed at her nose and cheeks. She sniffed and put the hanky away again. She drew herself up. ‘I don’t want any money. And I won’t say anything, to the press, the police, to anybody. I never have, I never will. But I want to be left alone, afterwards. I want to live my own life. You live yours. I live mine. And nothing must happen to any of my family, any of my loved ones.’ She raised her chin to him after she said this, as though defying him to object to any of it.

Merrial nodded, then said softly, ‘Fair enough.’ He made a small gesture with his hands. ‘I’m sorry it had to end like this, Celia.’

‘I’m sorry it had to be so bloody undignified, in front of Kaj and these guys and -’ she gestured vaguely in my direction ‘- this poor clown.’

Merrial looked at me like he’d forgotten I was there. He sighed. ‘I thought…’ he began. Then he shrugged. He fixed me with a stare I shrank back from. ‘One word on your show about this, Mr Nott, one word to anybody at all; friends or family or police or public, and I’ll make sure you die slowly, do you understand?’

I swallowed, nodded. I didn’t trust myself to say anything sensible. The fuckwit bit of me with its thumb seemingly super-glued to my personal Self-Destruct button wanted to say something like, Yeah yeah yeah, fucking omertà or I die in drawn-out agony, yada yada yada big man, but your wife’s just worked you over and we both fucking know it and this compensatory macho threat stuff isn’t convincing anybody… Eventually, though, under that gaze, I had to give way and croak, ‘Yeah. Yes, I understand. Nothing. Nobody.’

Merrial kept looking at me for a moment longer, then nodded to the two guys standing at my shoulders. ‘Give him back his stuff and take him back to where you found him.’

‘In the box, Mr M?’ said the guy who’d hit me.

Merrial looked upset. ‘No, not in the fucking box. In the back of the van; put some tape over his eyes, that’ll do.’

I thought, Yes!… but just a tad too soon. Kaj stepped past Celia, lowered his mouth to his boss’s ear and muttered something. Merrial smiled that thin, thin smile of his and quietly said, ‘All right. One little one.’ Then, as I thought, No, no, no! We got away with it! This isn’t supposed to happen! Please, no! Merrial looked at Celia and sighed and said, ‘Maybe you’d best look away.’ Celia rolled her eyes and did so.

Kaj stood in front of me.

‘This is for crapping in my loo,’ he said.

I had just enough time to think, Now the cunt sounds vaguely Swedish, then he punched me so hard across the face I didn’t wake up until I was in the back of the Astramax again, eyes taped over and hands tied together but otherwise unrestricted. My head and my balls hurt like fuck, blood was bubbling from my nose, my pants were full of chilled shit and I was very cold indeed; a bitter winter breeze was whipping through the van from the open front windows.

I didn’t blame the guys; it was reeking in here.

‘What the fucking hell happened to you?’

‘I walked into a door.’

‘… Right. Would some stairs be involved at any point?’

‘That’s right; then I fell down some stairs.’

‘And after that?’

‘Then somebody beat the shit out of me, Craig.’

‘That must have taken a while. Were they working shifts?’

‘… Now that has got to smart.’

‘Philip, if I live for a thousand years, “smart” is not a word I will ever choose to associate with how I came to acquire this little lot.’