Iain Banks - The Crow Road

"Sorry. I believe you," I said. I spun the tape back, to play it again. Ashley put one hand on my arm and rested her chin against the shoulder of my Prince Charlie jacket.

"Turn the sound down," she said. "That guy's voice is like chewing on silver paper."

I turned the sound down. The noise of people laughing and talking in the marquee came through the double glazing and the heavy burgundy of the velvet curtains. I heard an amplified voice outside say, "Testing." It was probably Dean Watt; he and his band had been hired by Lewis and Verity to play during the afternoon (for the evening they'd booked a more traditional wheech-your-partner fiddle and accordion band).

I ran the clip again. "Definitely, officer," Ashley said, tapping the top corner of the TV. "Recognise him anywhere, even with his clothes on."

I switched the TV off and ejected the cassette. I stood for a moment, rubbing my chin.

"Whoops," Ashley said, and delicately rubbed a little of that transferred make-up from the black shoulder of my jacket.

I waited till she'd finished, then went to dad's desk, unlocked a lower drawer and took out a slide tray; one of those plastic things that holds a few hundred transparencies. "So, when you saw this guy, Paxton-Marr," I said, opening the tray and putting the lid on the desk, "in Berlin, in this hotel, in the Jacuzzi… " I looked up at Ashley, standing sceptically by the TV, one elbow resting on it as she watched me. "What was the hotel called again?"

"I told you," she said. "I can't remember. I called June, and neither could she. It's probably the only place she ever stayed and forgot to nick a towel or yet another emergency sewing kit or whatever." Ash shrugged. "Frankly, Prentice, I was stoned out of my brains most of the time I was there. All I can remember is it had a big pool in the basement with a Jacuzzi at one end, and they did really good breakfasts." She sighed. "Excellent hopple-popple." Her eyebrows flicked once.

"Hopple-popple?'I grimaced.

"Scrambled eggs," Ash smiled. "Take me to Berlin and I'll find it for you. It was somewhere near the zoo."

I put the tray down on the desk, went over to Ashley, holding out a little piece of cardboard; it was the front cover off a book of matches, torn off the piece that held the matches.

"Wasn't the Schweizerhof, was it?" I asked her.

She looked steadily into my eyes for a little while, then took the piece of card, looked at it and turned it over.

"Twenty-seven eleven eighty-nine," she muttered. She nodded and handed me the cover back. "Yeah," she said, frowning. "Yeah; it was. That was the place."

I put the little torn bit of cardboard back in the slide tray. It was the second last one, out of about forty of them.

"What's the significance of the date?" Ashley asked, coming over to the desk. Outside, I could hear the sound ot an electric guitar chord and a few drum beats.

"I think that was when dad received it." I picked the latest torn cover out of the tray. "This one arrived just after he died." We both sat on the edge of the desk; Ashley looked at the little piece of glossy cardboard.

"Woo," she whistled. "Amman Hilton. Spooky, or what?"

"Yeah. Spooky " I said, as fuck,tapping the cover with one fingernail. "And I'm sure I recognise that guy Paxton-Marr, too. From Glasgow, or Edinburgh, or here. I've met him. In the flesh, I think."

Ash put her elbow on my shoulder. "And damn firm, tanned flesh it was too, let me tell you," she said.

I looked into those grey eyes, smiling. "But not as firm and tanned as your programmer from Texas."

Ash laughed, skipped off the desk. "Systems Analyst. And you're right; they breed them bigger and better in Texas."

Music started up in the marquee. Kiss The Bride. Ash stood on the Persian rug again, putting one hand to her ear. "Hark; it's young brother and his pals." She frowned. "Doesn't sound like a Mark E Smith or Morrissey track to me." She shook her head. Tsk. How are the mighty fallen." She put her head down so that, if she'd been wearing glasses, she'd have been looking over them at me. "Want my advice?"

"Mm-hmm," I nodded.

"Come on and dance. We can sort — or you can sort — this out later, when you've had time to think." She struck a dramatic, arguably dance-inspired pose and held out one hand. "Hey baby, let's boogie!"

I laughed, shut the match-book covers away and locked the desk drawer.

That's it, laddy," Ashley said, holding my arm as we went to the door. "You put that key in yer sporran."

"At least I know down there it's safe from interference," I told her. She smiled. I locked the study door too.

"By the way, by the way," Ash muttered into my ear as we headed along the landing for the stairs, "got a gramme of the old Bogota talcum powder about my person. Fancy a toot, later?"

"What, the real thing?" I grinned. "I thought speed was your poison."

"Normally," she nodded. "But this is a special occasion; I splashed out."

"You wee tyke," I said. I pulled her closer as we walked, held her tight. "You just stick with me, kid, all right?"

"Whatever you say, ma man."

We did kick-steps down the stairs. Risky, when you're wearing a kilt as it is meant to be worn, but invigorating.

I danced with Ashley, and with Verity, and with Helen Urvill, and with mum, cutting in on Lewis after he'd persuaded her onto the floor. Most of the time though she just sat, surrounded by family and friends, watching us all with an expression that, to me at least, spoke of a kind of stricken joy; a surprise that such pleasure could still exist — and she feel even remotely a part of it — when dad was not here to share in it all.

I am not a natural dancer but I made an exception for Verity's wedding. I grooved and sweated and drank and made a point of doing the old red blood cell impression, circulating; bathing in, soaking up and transmitting onwards the oxygen of family news and gossip from cell to cell…

"Where are you off to next, Aunt Ilsa?" I asked the lady in question, during our waltz. Aunt Ilsa — even larger than I remembered her, and dressed in something which looked like a cross between a Persian rug and a multi-occupancy poncho — moved with the determined grace of an elephant, and a curious stiffness that made the experience a little like dancing with a garden shed.

"Canada, I think, Prentice. Churchill, on Hudson's Bay. To observe the arctic bear."

I confess I had to re-process that sentence a couple of times as we danced, before working out that she did not intend to study the region naked (an image I found rather alarming), but was merely using a more pedantically accurate term for a polar bear.

"Super." I smiled.

Uncle Hamish sat at the table with the rest of the family and got slowly drunk. I danced with Aunt Tone, and asked after her husband's health.

"Oh, he's getting better all the time," Aunt Tone said, glancing at him. "He hasn't had the nightmares for weeks now. I think going back to work helped him. Fergus was very understanding. And he's had a lot of long chats with the minister. People have been very kind, altogether. You haven't talked to him?" Aunt Tone looked at me critically.

"Not for a bit." I gave her a big smile. "I will, though."

Uncle Hamish watched the dancing. He lifted his whisky to his lips, sipped at it, then shook his head with such slow deliberation I caught myself listening for the creak. "No, Prentice. I have been foolish, and even vain. I did not pay sufficient heed to the scriptures. I thought that I knew better." He sipped his whisky, shook his head. "It was vanity; my theories, my beliefs about the hereafter; vanity. I have renounced them."

Oh," I said, disappointed. "No more anti-creates?" He shook, as though a chill had passed through him. "No, that was my mistake." He looked at me straight for the first time. "He Punished both of us, Prentice." Uncle Hamish flicked his gaze towards the roof of the marquee. "Both of us," he repeated. He looked away again. "God knows we are all his children, but he is a strict father, sometimes. Terribly, terribly strict."