Iain Banks - The Crow Road

It contained the car's manual — I'd never seen one bound in leather before — the registration documents, and a cardboard presentation box I recognised as coming from the factory gift shop.

I took it out and opened it. There was a paperweight inside, which was what the box was meant to contain, but the big lump of multi-coloured glass was a little too large for the cardboard insert that went with the box. When I looked at the base it was an old limited edition Perthshire weight, not a Gallanach Glass Works product at all.

I left the paperweight lying on the seat and got out, checked the car's boot — carefully, thinking of the end of Charley Varrick — but that was in concourse condition too.

I went back to the driver's seat and sat there for a while, holding the paperweight and gazing into its convexly complicated depths, wondering why Fergus had left this lump of glass — not even from his own factory — in the car.

Then I weighed the glassy mass in my hand, and clutched it as you might a weapon, and took another, evaluating look at it, and realised. It was spherical, or nearly spherical, and probably pretty well exactly nine centimetres in diameter.

I almost dropped it.

I shivered, and put the paperweight back in the presentation case, put that in the glove-box, and — after the car did not blow up when I turned the ignition — drove its quietly ponderous bulk back to Lochgair.

Fergus's memorial service was held a week later, at the Church of Scotland, on Shore Street in Gallanach, mid-Argyll. Kind of a traumatic location for the McHoans, and I wouldn't have gone myself — it would have felt too much like either hypocrisy or gloating — but mum wanted to attend, and I could hardly not offer to escort her.

We put some flowers on the McDobbies" grave, where dad had died, then went in to the church, each kissing the sombrely beautiful twins.

I stood listening to the pious words, the ill-sung hymns and the plodding reminiscences of the good lawyer Blawke — who must be becoming Gallanach's most sought-after after-death speaker — and felt a furious anger build up in me.

It was all I could do to stand there, moving my mouth when people sang, and looking down at my feet when they prayed, and not shout out some profanity, some blasphemy, or, even worse, the truth. I actually gathered the breath in my lungs at one point, hardly able to bear the pressure of fury inside me any longer. I tensed my belly for the shout: Killer! Fucking MURDERER!

I felt dizzy. I could almost hear the echoes of my scream reflecting back off the high walls and arched ceiling of the church… but the singing went on undisturbed. I relaxed after that, and looked around at the trappings of religion and the gathered suits and worthies of Gallanach and beyond, and — if I felt anything — felt only sorrow for us all.

I looked up towards the tower. All the gods are false, I thought to myself, and smiled without pleasure.

I talked to a red-eyed Mrs McSpadden after the service, walking down through the gravestones towards the road and sea, under a sky of scudding cloud; the wind tasted of salt. "Aye," Mrs McSpadden said, in what was for her almost a whisper. "You never think it's going to happen, do you? We all have our little aches and pains, but when I think about it, if I'd just said something when he mentioned a sore chest that night to go to the doctor…»

"Everybody hurts, Mrs McSpadden," I said. "And he had broken those ribs, in the crash. Anybody would have assumed it was just those."

"Aye, maybe."

I hesitated. "Mum said he'd had a phone call from abroad, the night before?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes. Yes, he did. I thought I… Well, yes."

"You don't know who it was?"

"No," she said slowly, though I saw her frown.

"It's just that a friend of mine from university who's abroad at the moment had been going to call Fergus, to ask permission to visit the factory — he's writing a dissertation on the history of glass making — and I haven't heard from him for a while; I wondered if it might have been him, that's all." (All lies of course, but I'd tried to ring Lachy Watt in Sydney and found that the phone had been disconnected. Ashley's mum didn't know where he was now, and I did still want to know what had finally driven Fergus to do what he had.)

"Oh, I don't know," Mrs McSpadden said, shaking her large, florid head. A big black bead of glass glittered at the end of her hatpin; a stray strand of white hair blew in the gusting wind.

"You didn't hear anything that was said," I prompted.

"Och, just something about putting somebody up. I was on my way out the door."

"Putting somebody up?"

"Aye. He said he hadn't put anybody up, and that was all I heard. I suppose he must have been talking about people who'd stayed at the castle, or hadn't stayed; whatever."

"Yes," I said, nodding thoughtfully. "I suppose so." I shrugged. "Ah well. Perhaps it wasn't who I was thinking of after all."

Or maybe it was. Maybe if Mrs McS had heard one more word before she'd closed that door, it would have been the word "to'.

"Come to think of it," Mrs McSpadden said, "I'd just been talking about you, Prentice, when the phone went."

"Had you?"

"Aye; just mentioning to Mr Urvill what you'd said about remembering more details of when your house was burgled."

"Really?" I nodded, putting my gloved hands behind my back and smiling faintly at the grey and restless sea beyond the low church wall.

"Canada?" I said, aghast.

"I've got an uncle there. He knows somebody working in a firm installing a system I know a bit about; they swung the work permit."

"My God, when do you go?"

"Next Monday."

"Next Monday?"

"I'll be going up to Gallanach tomorrow, to say goodbye to mum."

"Flying?"

"Driving. Leaving the car there. Dean can use it."

"Jesus. How long are you going to Canada for?"

"I don't know. We'll see. Maybe I'll like it."

"You mean you might stay?"

"I don't know, Prentice. I'm not making any plans beyond getting there and seeing what the job's like and what the people are like."

"Shee-it. Well, can I see you? I mean; I'd like to say goodbye."

"Well, you going to Gallanach this weekend?"

"Umm… Would you, believe that this weekend I was intending to drive a Bentley to Ullapool, get a ferry to the island of Lewis, drive to the most north-westerly point on the island I could find and throw a paperweight into the sea? But…»

"Well, don't let me stop you. I've got plenty of family to see, goodness knows."

"But —»

"But I'm flying out from Glasgow on the Monday morning. You can put me up in this palace you're living in, if you like."

"Sunday? Yeah. Let me think; can't get a ferry on a Sunday, but I can get to Ullapool on Friday, travel over; back Saturday. Yeah. Sunday's fine. What time do you think you'll get here?"

"Six all right?"

"Six is perfect. My turn to take you for a curry."

"No it isn't, but I accept anyway. I promise not to throw brandy all over you."

"Okay. I promise not to act like an asshole."

"You have to act?"

"Gosh, you know how to hurt a chap."

"Years of practice. See you Sunday, Prentice."

"Yeah. Then. Drive carefully."

"You too. Bye."

I put the phone down, looked up at the ceiling, and didn't know whether to whoop with joy because I was going to see her, or scream in despair because she was going to Canada. Caught between these two extremes, I experienced an odd calmness, and settled for a low moan.

I was starting to think that maybe the Bentley wasn't really me. People gave me funny looks when I drove it, and I had already been stopped by some traffic cops on Great Western Road the day I drove the beast back from Lochgair to Glasgow. Is this your car, sir? they'd asked.