Iain Banks - The Crow Road

"Prentice!"

"… Yeah?"

"Food! Come on, it's getting cold!"

Mum had been calling from the bottom of the stairs. I was sitting at the desk in the study, curtains open to the darkness, just the little desk light on, its brass stalk gleaming, its green shade glowing. I looked back down from my reflection in the dark computer screen, first to my watch — still half an hour before I had to leave to pick up Ashley — and then to the thin, battered-looking pocket diary lying opened on the desk.

Fri F @ Cas, L.Rvr, trak, hills. Bothy;

fire, fd, dnk, js. (F stnd) rt in clng!

guns. F nsg. trs & scrts. F barfd

WELCOME TO ARGYLL!

I saw her hair first, shining tight-tied in a spotlight somewhere down the domestic arrivals concourse. I hadn't seen Ashley Watt for about six weeks, after that night in London when I'd seen but not talked to Rupert Paxton-Marr. Ashley was dressed in the same business-like suit she'd worn that night, and carried a big shoulder bag. Her smile was broad.

"Ash. Great to see you." I hugged her, lifting her off her feet.

"Woo!" she laughed throatily. "How ya doin, Presley?"

I winced, dramatically, but still offered to carry her bag.

"Prentice; you read a couple of things your uncle wrote and suddenly you're accusing people of murder? Come on."

"Haven't you looked at the files Doctor Gonzo sent over?"

"Of course not; not my business, Prentice." Ashley sounded indignant. "Oh; before I forget," she said, reaching for her jacket on the back seat and digging into a pocket. She took out a little three-inch Sony disk and handed it to me. "Present from Colorado. Yours to tinker with."

Thanks," I said, putting the disk in my shirt pocket. "I might, too; the spelling mistakes have been annoying me." I moved my head. "The stuff's in that envelope on the back seat."

"You don't want me to read it now, do you?"

"There's a torch."

"Am I allowed to finish building the spliff first?"

"Okay, but then read."

I'd waited till we were out of Glasgow before I'd told Ashley about the horrible ideas concerning Fergus that I just couldn't get out of my head.

Most of the journey from Lochgair up to Glasgow I'd spent thinking, trying to work out what might be true and what false in the fragments of writing that Rory had left on disk. The rat in the ceiling and the confession of something over-seen; that was what had taken me back to stand amongst the standing stones that afternoon, after I'd left the castle.

And remembering what Rory had said to me there had taken me back to that 1976 diary entry.

rt in clng! F nsg.

trs & scrts

And the 1980 diary with the words JUST USE IT! and the L that had been changed to a C; the L must stand for Lachlan Watt and the F for Fiona. That was the secret Fergus had told Rory, that mght in the bothy; the story of Fergus waking up after being brought home from Hamish and Tone's party and crawling through the castle roof-space to see his wife in bed with Lachy Watt. That was the party that Fiona and Lachlan had left together.

Of course, all I had was Rory's fictionalised word for any of it.

So I'd asked my mum, over dinner.

"Did Fiona… leave a party with somebody else?" she repeated, looking mystified.

"It's just something in one of Rory's poems," I said."… Not earth-shakingly important or anything, but there's an odd sort of note that… well, I just wondered if you knew, or had heard… " I shrugged, sipping my glass of water.

Mum shook her head, helping herself to some more peas. "The only time I ever saw Fiona leave a party with somebody else, Fergus was there too. In body, at least."

"Uh-huh?" I said.

… scrts…

I owed the last, absurdly simple part of the theory to a stag that had suddenly run onto the road while I was zapping down Glen Croe, between the Rest-and-be-Thankful and Ardgartan. One moment the road ahead was clear in the headlights, next second Wha! Something dark brown looking big as a horse with huge antlers like some twisted aerial array came belting out of the forest across the road and leapt the downhill crash barrier. I slammed the brakes on, nearly locking the wheels. The beast disappeared into the darkness and the car swept through the single cloud of steamy breath it had left behind.

I'd come off the brakes and accelerated again almost immediately, shaking my head and muttering curses at all kamikaze deer, and feeling my heart-beat start to slow again after my fright. I'd adjusted my seat belt and looked over at the passenger's seat. Something had moved there, when I'd braked.

I'd left the airmail envelope holding the print-out of Rory's pieces sitting on the passenger seat, because I wanted Ashley to read them. The envelope had slipped forward under the deer-induced sharp braking, plonking down into the passenger footwell. I'd tutted, waited for the straight along the side of Loch Long, checked for traffic, then reached over, retrieved the package from the footwell and put it back on the seat.

And that had set me pondering.

I'd passed through Arrochar in a daze, thinking, of course!

Ashley read the relevant passage while we travelled the new, fast stretch of the Loch Lomond road.

"Yeah," she said slowly. "Mm-hmm." She put the sheaf of papers down, switched off the torch, looked at me, then lit the J. "So this is Rory's idea of what happened just before Fergus and Fiona crashed?"

"Yeah."

"And is this Rory indicating your Aunt Fiona fucked my Uncle Lachy?" she sounded almost amused.

"Right," I said. I glanced at her.

"Kind of fanciful, isn't it?" she said. "Jeez, he was hardly ever here, and they didn't really move in the same social circles."

"Damn," I breathed. "Maybe you should have read the other two bits first."

"Hmm." Ashley drew smoke in, handed the J to me.

I took a small toke. "Yuk; what's this?"

"Herbal mixture," Ash said. "No point giving up fags and then smoking tobacco in Js."

"Hmm," I said, handing the number back.

"So what are you saying, Prentice? Did I miss something?.

Maybe." I shook my head, letting the car slow as we approached Tarbet. "Or maybe I'm reading too much into it… want to read the other two bits?

Ash sighed, accepted the J back and switched the torch back on.

We passed Tarbet, accelerating over the shallow neck of land to Arrochar, pottered through the village at less than forty, then gathered speed again as we curved round the head of Loch Long, passing the place where I'd retrieved the airmail package from the footwell a couple of hours earlier.

"Yeah, but what did Fergus tell Rory?" Ash said, finishing that part.

"Read the next bit," I said. I waved my hand when Ash offered me the joint.

The road started to climb along the dark shoulder of the hillside towards the Rest-and-be-Thankful, leaving the old road still down in the floor of the glen. I kept a careful look out for Mad Stags From Hell crashing across the road, but none appeared.

"Woof," Ash said, closing the last page, "Horny stuff towards the end there." She switched the torch off again. "You think that last bit is what Fergus told Rory in the bothy, if it really happened?"

"Yeah," I said. "There's a diary entry to back it up, and there is a way through the castle's attic from the observatory to the master bedroom, and a loft door. Helen mentioned it just today."

"But Prentice!" Ash laughed, coughing. "All you've got is Rory's… written word for it!"

"It's all circumstantial, I know. Although mum does remember the party at Hamish and Tone's, and Lachy did help Fiona take Fergus home."

"Wow," Ash said, tartly.

"So anyway, what's happened is: Fergus has spilled these beans to Rory, who's spent years trying to come up with some creative ideas for his big project and failed dismally, then decided Just Use It; use the one spectacular piece of real-life drama only he and Fergus know about; he's written this sort of diary piece about the time they were in the bothy together; another, more fictionalised bit about what Fergus actually saw; and then a third passage that… well, that's the point." I glanced over at her. "I was hoping you might see the same thing I did in that last bit, the bit in the car. I think that was what Rory was writing just before he borrowed the bike and went to see Fergus, because of what he had started to suspect, when he was writing that."