Iain Banks - Whit

I will confess to feeling a little awkward, surrounded by all this luxury, but reckoned that it merely balanced out the effects of my night sleeping rough and my night in the cells, not to mention my unseemly treatment at the hands of the police.

Yolanda had flown into Glasgow on the Friday, hired a car and driven straight to High Easter Offerance on her way to Gleneagles. She had been told I was staying with Brother Zebediah in London and so drove to Edinburgh and flew from there to Heathrow and hired another car, been unable to work out where the squat was so flagged down a taxi and followed it to the address in Kilburn, where Zeb told her I had left for Dudgeon Magna. Yesterday she had taken a train from London to Bath and hired yet another car - 'Scorpion or something; looks more like a dead cod. Why can't you people build cars? Supposed to be big but it feels more like a sub-compact to me…' - and driven to Dudgeon Magna.

I now silently cursed myself for not telling Zeb exactly where I'd been heading; whatever instinct had led me not to mention Clissold's Health Farm and Country Club to him had obviously been a product of Unsaved contamination polluting my soul. Anyway, Yolanda had turned up no sign of me in Dudgeon Magna, and so had returned to her hotel to work out what to do next when she'd seen me being unjustly apprehended on the local television news; it had taken until this morning to find out where I was and to hire some lawyers with whom to browbeat the police.

After dismissing the lawyers and lambasting them for not accepting payment by American Express card on the spot, she'd spent the blurringly fast drive from Bristol to Bath regaling me with what she'd been up to since I'd seen her last. An athletic young swimming pool cleaner from Los Angeles called Gerald seemed to figure rather prominently, as did a running battle with whatever authority supervises the waiting list for rafting expeditions down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon; Grandmother seemed to find the idea of a five-year queue for anything in the United States to be not just criminally obscene but tantamount to treason to the American Dream; a hanging matter ('I mean, are these people communists , for God's sakes?'). With that out of her system she was then free to concentrate on giving me her itinerary over the last few days with particular attention to detailed critical notes on the various institutional inefficiencies and organisational absurdities she had encountered along the way while trying to catch up with me ('You can't even make a right - well, a left - on a red light here; I did it this morning and the goddamn attorneys nearly bailed out on me. What's wrong with you people?').

While my grandmother held forth I checked my kit-bag to make sure everything was there ('My vials have been interfered with!' I'd wailed. 'Great. We'll sue their asses!' Yolanda had said, flinging the car into another distinctly adventurous overtaking manoeuvre).

'Are you in a rush, then, Granny?' I asked, wiping the plate with a pancake.

'Child,' Yolanda said throatily, putting one hand heavy with precious metals and stones onto my towellinged shoulder, 'never call me your " Granny ".'

'Sorry, Grandmother,' I said, twisting my head to grin cheekily up at her. This is something of a ritual with us, each time we meet. I went back to my pancakes and syrup.

'As it happens, yes, I am,' Yolanda said, crossing her legs and resting her alligator-hide boots on the coffee table. 'Leaving for Prague on Wednesday to look at a red diamond. Heard there's one there might be for sale.'

'A red diamond,' I said, in a pause that seemed to require some response.

'Yep; ordinary diamonds are common as cow-shit, just DeBeers keeps the prices artificially high; anybody who buys an ordinary diamond is a damned fool, but red diamonds are scarcer than honest politicians; only about six in the whole damn world and I want at least to see one of them and hold it in my hand, just once, even if I don't get to buy it.'

'Blimey,' I said. 'Prague.'

'Prague, Chekland, or whatever the hell they call it these days. You wanna come?'

'I can't; I have to look for my cousin Morag.'

'Yeah, what is all this shit about her? Your grandaddy gone soft on her or somethin'? What's goin' on up there anyway? They seemed real frosty to me when I was there. You done something wrong? They angry with you?'

'What? Eh?' I said, turning to frown up at her.

'No shittin', honey,' she said. 'I didn't get to see the Dear Leader but I talked to your brother Allan and Erin; they acted like Salvador was angry with you or somethin'.'

' Angry with me?' I gasped, wiping my fingers on a starched white napkin and sitting up on the couch with my grandmother. I was so shocked it was some minutes before I realised I hadn't used my Sitting Board. I think the carpet had been so soft there was little sensation of change. 'What are they angry about?'

'Beats me,' Yolanda said. 'I asked but I wasn't told.'

'There must be some mistake,' I said, feeling funny in my insides all of a sudden. 'I haven't done anything wrong. My mission was going fine until yesterday; I was very pleased with it…'

'Well, hey, maybe I picked them up wrong,' Yolanda said, drawing her feet up underneath her, turning to me and starting to towel my hair again. 'Don't you listen to your crazy old grandma.'

I stared towards the window. 'But what can have happened?' I could hear my own voice faltering.

'Maybe nuthin'. Don't worry about it. Hey, come on; what's happenin' with Morag?'

I explained about my cousin's importance to the Community's missionary work and her letter informing us she was leaving our Faith and would not be returning to us for the Festival.

'Okay, so you haven't been able to find her,' Yolanda said. 'We'll hire a detective.'

'I'm not sure that would really be appropriate, Grandmother,' I said, sighing. 'I was personally charged with the task.'

'Does it matter, as long as you find her?'

'I suspect so, yes.'

Yolanda shook her head. 'Boy, you people,' she breathed.

'There is another problem,' I said.

'Yeah?'

I explained about the video and my discovery Morag worked under the name Fusillada DeBauch as a pornographic film artiste.

' What ?' Yolanda yelled. 'You're shittin' me!' She slapped both her designer-jeaned thighs at once. I think that had she been wearing a Stetson or a ten-gallon hat or something she'd have thrown it in the air. 'Whoo; that girl! Oh boy.' She laughed towards the ceiling.

'You don't think Salvador could have found out about Morag being Fusillada from Zeb or somebody, do you?' I asked, wondering if that might account for his displeasure.

'No,' Yolanda said. 'It didn't seem like it was anything to do with her.'

'Hmm. Oh dear,' I said, frowning and putting my hands to my lips.

'Don't worry about it, honey,' my grandmother said. 'You going to keep looking for Morag?'

'Yes, of course,' I said.

'Okay. So, am I allowed to help you?'

'Oh, I'd think so,' I said.

'Good. We'll see what we can do together. Maybe Morag will turn up yet.' She sat forward, reaching for the telephone on the coffee table. 'Let's have a margarita.'

'Yes,' I said absently, still troubled by what might be wrong at High Easter Offerance. 'God has a way of providing when one most needs.'

'Yeah, hi; I need a pitcher of margarita and two glasses. And don't forget the salt, okay? In a saucer, or whatever. That's right. And a fresh, repeat, fresh lime and a sharp knife. That's all. Thank you.' She put down the telephone.

'You really didn't get any idea what might be wrong at the Community?' I asked my grandmother.

'None at all, honey. I just thought they seemed a bit pissed at you.' She held my hand. 'But I could have been wrong.'