Iain Banks - The Crow Road

"Can be," he said.

"Might try it some time. God knows we could do with something to — Look, you absolutely sure you don't mind me talking about your sister this way?"

"Positive."

"Good man — hey! Did you hear that?"

Rory looked up at the ceiling. Fergus was staring at the plasterboard expanse above them. Rory listened. Then, above the crackling of the fire, he did hear something; a quiet, scrabbling noise in the roof-space above them.

"Rats, I'll bet!" Fergus said, and rolled over to his pack.

Rory thought about it. They were here in a deserted old house in the middle of nowhere on a black and starless night in one of the more mysterious bits of Scotland, and there was a scrabbling, clawy sort of noise coming from the ceiling above him and this other drunk, stoned man. He shrugged. Yeah; probably rats. Or mice. Or birds.

Fergus pulled his pack gently to him, scraping over the floorboards. He lifted the rucksack up. The.303 and the shotgun were in a waterproof bag strapped to the side of the pack. Fergus undid the straps. "Ssh," he said to Rory. Rory had started building another joint. He waved. He drank some more whisky.

He was just inserting the roach when Fergus rolled over to him and held the shotgun out to him. "Here!" he whispered urgently.

"Hmm," Rory said, nodding thanks. He heard some clicks.

Fergus held the ancient Lee Enfield at his side. He knelt close by Rory. "Think the little bastard's over there." He pointed. He reached up, touched the gun Rory held. It was hard doing the roach one handed. "Put that down, man!" Fergus hissed. He took the tin from Rory's lap and put all the makings down on the floor. Rory felt peeved.

"There," Fergus said. "Safety's off. When I fire, aim where I do, all right?"

"Yup," Rory said, forgetting about the J. He took the shotgun. Fergus walked on his heels, still hunkered down, across the room, eyes and gun pointed towards the plasterboard ceiling. He stopped. There was a noise like a spider running across a very sensitive microphone.

Bang! went the rifle. Rory almost dropped the shotgun. "There!" yelled Fergus. Plaster was falling from a small hole in the ceiling; there was smoke in the air. Rory aimed at the small hole, pulled the trigger. The gun struck back against his shoulder, sending him falling back off his seat. He clattered to the floor.

"Well, pump it, man, pump it!" he heard Fergus shouting from somewhere.

Awful lot of smoke around. Ears seemed to be ringing. He pumped the gun. (Funny; he'd have thought Fergus would have been a side-by-side man.) There was another sharp crack of sound from the.303. He saw the hole appear in the plaster almost right above him. Great; he could get the little bastard without having to get up from the floor. The floorboards ought to provide extra firing stability, too. He pulled the trigger again. The gun went Blam! with a little less sonic enthusiasm than before, though it hurt his shoulder a little more.

A white waterfall of plaster burst down from the ceiling and slapped and pattered all over him. Rory spat bits out of his mouth, blinked the white dust out of his eyes. He heard Fergus colliding with something in the room. He pumped the gun, looked round. Fergus was lying on the couch, aiming at the centre of the ceiling. He fired the Lee Enfield again; Rory was getting the hang of this now, and aimed the shotgun at the same place and fired it, almost before the noise of Fergus's shot had stopped echoing. The room was getting a bit hazy, and there was probably blood coming from his ears, but what the fuck. Rory readied the gun again.

He tried to follow where Fergus was pointing his rifle. As he did so, still lying there with his legs up on the chair he'd fallen over, he started to over-balance to one side, towards Fergus.

"Aah!" Rory said. He tried to put one hand out to stop himself, but the gun was still in his grip. The long, blue-black barrel arced towards Fergus. Fergus looked, as Rory fell helplessly over, the gun barrel falling like some felled tree, wide muzzle pointed straight towards him.

Rory could tell exactly what was going to happen, and couldn't stop it.

Fergus's eyes widened. He jumped; fell over the back of the couch.

Rory fell onto his side; the shotgun roared and the rear of the couch blew open in a dusty horsehair explosion.

Rory let the gun down to the floor. The noise still rang in his ears. The room stank of smoke and the fire had gone strangely quiet. "Ferg?" he said, tentatively. Couldn't hear himself speak. "Ferg!" he shouted.

He sat upright, leaving the gun on the floorboards. Plaster tumbled off his body in clouds of dust.

"Hello?" Fergus said, appearing over the top of the couch, gunless.

Rory looked at him. They both blinked, eyes watering. "Did we get it?" Rory asked.

"Don't know," Fergus said. He staggered round the rear of the couch, feet crunching in plaster, and sat down. He looked at the still slightly smoking hole in the couch, just beside where he'd sat, then up at the holes in the ceiling.

He stayed looking at the holes in the ceiling for a while. Then he started crying.

Rory watched for a while, befuddled. "What's the matter, man?" he said.

Fergus took no notice; he kept on crying, still staring up at the holes in the ceiling. He took big lungfuls of air and then let them out in great racking sobs that shook his whole body. After a while he put his head in his hands and sat there, rocking back and forward, clutching his hair just above his ears. The tears flowed, trickling off his nose and spotting the white plaster dust on the floorboards at his feet.

"Ferg," Rory said, going over to him. He hesitated, then put his arm on the man's shoulders. "Fergus; for God's sake man, what's wrong?"

Fergus looked up and suddenly Rory felt older than him. Fergus's heavy, ruddy face was puffed and bloated, and tears had streaked through the dust on his cheeks, disappearing in the bristles on his jaw-line and chin. When he spoke it was in the voice of a small, hurt boy.

"Oh God, Rory, I've got to tell somebody, but you must promise; you must give me your word you won't breathe a word to anybody else. On your life."

"Hey, you haven't killed anybody or anything, have you?"

"No," Fergus shook his head, screwed his eyes up. "No! Nothing like that! It's not something I did."

"Okay; my word. All that stuff."

Fergus looked at him and Rory shivered. "You swear?" Fergus said, voice hollow.

Rory nodded. "I swear." He felt dizzy. The smoke-filled room seemed to tip and waver. He wondered if they put something trippy in shotgun or rifle cartridges. And why did I mention killing somebody? That wasn't too sensible, way out here on this moonless night, etc., with a couple of lethal fire-arms lying around.

"All right," Fergus said, sitting back, breathing deeply. He looked almost soberly at Rory. "You sure you don't mind me talking about your sister?" he said slowly, with what might have been some sort of smile on his face.

Oh god, thought Rory, and felt sick.

But it was too late to go back now.

The way he told it, it took maybe five minutes. Fergus Urvill was crying like a baby again at the end of it. Rory cuddled him. And after as many tender words as he could think of, to try and lighten the load, to try and make it seem less of a confession, even to try and compensate for the shared and shaming confidence, he told Fergus that he had been responsible for the fire that had burned down the barn near Port Ann, fifteen years earlier.

They ended up laughing about that, but it was the uneasy laughter of desperation and displacement, and all they could do after that was finish the whisky and have the joint Rory had been working on, and it was almost a relief when Fergus was sick as a dog out of the window, hanging out barfing onto the slates and into the guttering while Rory tried to clean the plaster off the top bunk and stowed the guns out of harm's way.