Iain Banks - The Crow Road

There wasn't… " Fergus shook his head. He smiled, an expression that looked to be half sympathy and half incomprehension. "Prentice, I'm lost. I don't see… " His voice trailed off. The frown returned. "Now, wait a moment," he said. "You said you thought I might know where Rory is. But if he's dead…?" He stared, looking shocked, into my eyes. I tried hard not to look away, but in the end had to. I looked down at the table-top, biting my lip.

"Prentice," Fergus said softly, putting his glass down on the table. "I've no idea where your uncle is." There was silence for a while. "Rupert is an old school friend of mine. He's a journalist who goes all over the world; he's out in Iraq at this moment, in fact. I haven't seen him for a couple of years, though he used to come and shoot on occasion. He is a bit of a practical joker at times, but… " Fergus looked thoughtful. He shrugged. "Rory did tell me something once about setting fire to a barn on the estate once; accidentally, when he was very young. That might tie in with these match boxes… " He shook his head, inspected the contents of his glass. "But I don't think I ever mentioned that to Rupert."

I felt sick. "Nothing about… some pieces of writing makes any sense, does it?"

"Writing?" Fergus said, tilting his head, one eye narrowing. He shook his head. "No. Whose writing?"

"Rory's. Based on something that you saw here; up in the roof-space of the castle, and which you told Rory when you were in that bothy together. The night you shot the rat."

Fergus had leaned forward again. He looked totally bemused. Finally he jerked upright and laughed. He looked at the glass he held. "Maybe I should lay off this stuff. You're making less and less sense as you go along here, Prentice. Rory and I did spend a night in a bothy once, on the estate. But there wasn't any… rat." He smiled and frowned at the same time. "Or any shooting. I don't think we even had guns with us; we were fishing some of the out-of-the-way lochans and streams." He sighed, giving the impression of patient weariness. "Is this something you've read?"

"Yes," I conceded.

"What, in your father's papers, since his death?" Fergus looked as though he felt pity for me.

I nodded, trying not to look down from his gaze. "Sort of," I breathed.

"And who is meant to have seen what?" He raised one finger to his mouth, bit briefly at a nail and examined it.

"None of that makes any sense to you, does it?" I said. "No… confession, revelation? Nothing to do with Lachy Watt?"

Fergus looked hurt. He swirled the glass, drained it. "That was a very long time ago, Prentice," he said quietly.

He looked at me more sorrowfully than accusatorily. "We were only children. We don't always appreciate the seriousness of what we do… " He glanced at his empty glass… "when we're younger."

He put the glass on the table.

I couldn't match his gaze, and lowered mine again. I felt dizzy.

I heard Fergus take in a breath. "Prentice," he said, eventually. "I was quite close to Kenneth. He was a friend. I don't think we saw eye-to-eye on anything really, but we… we got on, you know? He was a gifted man, and a good friend, and I know I feel the loss. I can imagine how you feel. I… I've had my own… What I mean is, it isn't an easy thing to cope with, when somebody that close dies so suddenly. Everything can look… Well, everything can look very black, you know? Nothing seems right. You even resent other people their happiness, and, well, it just all seems very unfair. It is a terrible strain to be under; don't think I don't appreciate that. And just now, when the world seems… " He took another deep breath. "Look, old son —»

"I'm sorry," I said, stopping him. I smiled shakily. "Uncle Fergus; I'm very sorry I came here. I've been silly. I don't know what I was… " I shook my head, looked briefly down. "I don't know what I was thinking. I've not been getting much sleep recently." I smiled bravely. "Watching too much television, maybe." I waved one hand round a little, as though flailing out for something just beyond reach, then shrugged. "I'm sorry," I concluded.

Fergus looked serious for a moment. Then he gave a small smile. He crossed his arms again. "Oh well. I think everything looks a bit sort of mad, really, at the moment, doesn't it?"

"A bit," I agreed. I sniffed, wiped my nose with a paper hanky.

"Sure you won't have that drink?" Fergus said, nodded, stuffed the hanky back into my jeans. "No thanks, I have to drive. Better be getting back."

"Right you are," Fergus said.

He saw me to the door. He patted me on the shoulder as I stood in the doorway. "Don't worry, Prentice, all right?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Oh, and I don't know if your mother's mentioned it —»

"Opera; Friday." I smiled.

Fergus smiled too, jowls wobbling. "Ah, she has."

"Yes. No problem," I said.

"Jolly good. Well, that's all right then." He offered me his hand.

We shook. "Thanks, uncle," I said. He nodded, and I walked down the steps and across the gravel to the Golf.

He waved goodbye from the steps, looking concerned but encouraging.

I let the Golf trundle down to the bottom of the hill, where the drive levelled out and joined the tarmac single-track which swept round the base of the hill towards the main road between Gallanach and Lochgilphead. At the junction I stopped. I just sat there for a while. I raised my right hand and looked at the palm for a while, then spat on it and rubbed it hard on the side of my thigh. I tore the knife and its sheath out from my jeans and threw them down into the passenger footwell. I looked in the rear-view mirror, where I could just see the reflection of the top of the castle — its battlements and silver observatory dome — through the limbs of the leafless trees.

"Guilty as charged, you bastard," I heard myself say. Then with a quick look either way, I revved up, slipped the clutch and sent the VW screaming along the road away from the castle.

The courtyard was empty and the house storm doors were shut when I got back to Lochgair. I parked the Golf in the yard and got out; my hands were shaking. I felt like getting furiously drunk. I stood there, breathing hard in the calm air, listening to gulls crying above the drive down towards the loch, while crows crackled in the trees around the house like some drunken chorus, scornful. My heart was thudding now and my trembling hands were slick with sweat. I had to rest back against the side of the car. I closed my eyes. The cries of the birds were replaced by a roaring noise in my ears.

Jesus, I thought, if this was how I felt, how must Fergus be reacting, if I was right, and he was guilty? Now would be the time to watch him, study him. But I could barely have walked just then, let alone drive back to the castle, even if I had been able to summon up the courage to return.

Eventually I felt better again, and instead of going into the house, went for a walk through the woods and the forest and up into the hills, and sat on an old ruined wall on the hill topped by the cairn where dad had told us about the mythosaurs, all those years ago. I looked down to the trees and the loch in the pastel light cast by the bright, gauzy overcast, while the mild wind freshened. I replayed that scene in the castle library time after time after time, imagining that I remembered every word, every movement, every nuance of tone and phrasing, every millimetric increment of body language, trying to work out whether I was being terribly sensitive and acute, or just insanely fanciful and paranoid.

Sometimes I thought it was perfectly obvious that Fergus was utterly genuine, and all my ideas, all my suspicions were demonstrably ludicrous. Of course the man was innocent; I was insane. Guilty as charged, indeed; who was I to judge?