Iain Banks - The Crow Road

"Went to see Fergus?"

"Yes." I looked over at her. "And Fergus killed him."

"What? And Fergus killed him?" Ash said, voice high. "Why, Prentice?" She opened the window a crack and threw the roach out.

"I'll come to that," I said, holding up one finger. We were passing Loch Restil now; I was still watching out for stags.

Ashley shook her head. "Prentice, have you been reading crime novels instead of your history books?"

I gave a small laugh. "No. The worst crimes are always in the history books, anyway."

Ash undid her hair, reached into her bag and started to brush her hair with a long-tooth comb. "Hmm," she said. "Okay. So keep going."

"Right," I said. "That guy Paxton-Marr. He'd been sending dad those match-book covers… I mean match-book covers, right?"

"Yeah, so?"

"So he knows Fergus; Fergus was getting the guy to send them, making dad think Rory was still alive, farting around all over the world. Why should Fergus want to do that?"

"I don't know, but what's so special about match-book covers?"

I looked over for a moment; her face was pale in the lights of an on-coming car. "That bit in the bothy," I told her. "Rory tells Fergus he accidentally set fire to a barn on the estate when he was a kid. I think the only other person Rory'd ever told about that was dad, who thought that nobody else knew. So when these match-book covers came from all over the world, he thought it was a secret sign from Rory."

Ashley was silent for a while, then sighed. "What fertile imaginations you have in your family."

"Yeah," I said. "I'm afraid so."

We rounded the long left-hander into Glen Kinglas, where Verity had almost lost the back-end of the Beemer a year earlier. The long straight disappeared into the darkness. A few tiny red sparks in the distance were tail lights. I had another shivery feeling of déjà vu.

Ashley tapped her fingers on the dashboard, then ran them through her hair. After a while she said, "And what did Rory suspect?"

"Murder. His sister's murder."

Ash took her time before answering. "You think Fergus killed your Aunt Fiona as well?"

I nodded. "You guessed it."

"She was already dead when they had the crash?"

"Hmm, I hadn't thought of that," I admitted. I came off the power. I checked the mirror; there was nothing following us, and no headlights in front. "No, I believe Rory got it right in that bit he wrote, and she was alive when they crashed; I was thinking of something else."

"What?" Ash said.

braked smoothly as though we were approaching a sharp corner, not on a long straight. From the corner of my eye, I could see Ash looking at me. I changed down to second gear, let the engine brake the car. I reached over and hit the little red release button on Ashley's seat belt, then I slammed the brakes on. The Golf skidded briefly along the road on locked wheels. I heard Ashley shout something. Her hands went out in front of her. She shot forward, harder than I'd intended and went "Oof!" against the dashboard, blonde hair flying. Her head hit the screen.

The car juddered to a stop.

I stared in horror.

Ash sat rubbing her forehead. She glared at me. She was holding her chest just underneath her breasts with her other hand. She glared at me. "What the fucking hell was that for, Prentice?"

"Oh shit," I said, hand to mouth. "Oh God, are you all right?" I checked the mirror, put both hands to my mouth. "I didn't mean to actually hurt you."

"Well you actually did, you idiot." She looked down at her seat-belt anchorage, then at the buckle. One side of the belt was still wrapped round her. I sat staring at her, my back against the driver's door, my heart pounding. Ashley patted her forehead, studied her fingers, then scowled at me and sat back in her seat, re-fixing her seatbelt. She waggled her shoulders, sticking her chest out a little and grimacing through the screen at the dark grey length of road exposed to the headlights. "You complete fool, Prentice; I may never dance the rhumba again." She looked at me, then pointed forwards. "Drive."

"God, I'm sorry," I said. I got the car moving again.

Ash patted her chest and inspected her forehead in the mirror on the back of the sun-visor, using the torch she'd been reading with. "No lasting damage done, I think," she said, snapping the torch off and the visor shut.

"I'm really sorry," I said. I rubbed my hands on my trousers, one at a time. "I didn't mean —»

"Enough," Ash said. "I promise I won't sue, okay?"

"Yeah," I said, shaking my head. "But I'm really —»

"You think," Ash interrupted, "that your Uncle Fergus killed his wife by driving off the road and undoing her seat belt just before they hit?"

I took a deep breath. "Yes."

"Slow down, will you?" Ash said.

"Eh?" I said, slowing. We hadn't been going particularly fast.

Then I realised. "Oh. Yeah," I said, feeling even worse. "I pick my places, don't I?"

Ash didn't reply; we both watched, silent, as the Golf dawdled Past the parking place at the Cowal road junction where Darren Watt had died.

"Shit," I said. "Oh God, I'm doing an awful lot of apol —»

"Forget it," Ash said. "Let's get home."

I shook my head. "Oh shit," I said miserably.

The lights of Inveraray were off to our right, steady across the dark waters of Loch Shira as we rounded Strone Point, when Ash spoke again. "Bit of a risky way to top your wife, isn't it?"

"Convincing, though. And maybe… Don't laugh," I said, glancing over at her. "Maybe the perfect crime."

Ash looked at me dubiously. "Oh dear, Prentice. Really."

"I'm serious," I said. "He banged his head; he doesn't remember the last few miles of the drive. He even asked to be hypnotised, though they never did. Short-term memory gone, see? Hell, if he did it just on the spur of the moment, maybe even he isn't sure he meant it. He told me himself that he thought Fiona had been wearing a seat belt. I saw him just after the crash, while I was in hospital too, getting my appendix out. So nobody — maybe not even him — will ever know. It's fucking perfect. Risky but perfect, if it does work."

We stopped at traffic lights by the ornate, hump-backed bridge that took the road over the Aray. I sat staring at the red light; Inveraray sat ahead, round the side of the little bay, white buildings glowing in the sodium twilight of the street lights.

"But if he doesn't know he did it," Ash said, putting the sun visor down again and checking her forehead in the mirror in the lights of the on-coming stream of traffic, "why would he kill Rory anyway?"

I shrugged. "Maybe he does know he did it; but even if he doesn't, he might guess that he did. Maybe he was afraid Rory would publish something too close to the truth, maybe Rory was threatening to tell people about his theory; the police, for a start. Maybe neither murder was premeditated; maybe Fergus just reacted, both times. I don't know."

"Hmm," Ash said. She sat looking baffled for a bit, then shook her head. The lights changed and we crossed the bridge.

"If I'm right," I said, "Fergus probably had thought about killing her before he did. Maybe he only actually decided then and there, on the road that night; but he must have thought about it. Like I say; even if he isn't sure he did it himself, he knows he might have. I mean how hard do you have to think about something, how seriously, before it becomes something you could do, in the heat of the moment?"

"I give in," said Ash. "You tell me."

"Jeez," I said. "When I was feeling really bad last year I used to lie awake at night thinking that if there was some way of killing Lewis, quickly, painlessly, with no way of being found out, I might just do it, especially if I knew somehow that Verity would turn to me afterwards —»