by Iain Banks
‘Yeah,’ I say, looking around, talking to the whole group now though still glancing mostly towards Murdo. ‘He said that conservatives – right-wing people in general – tend to think everybody’s as nasty – well, as selfish – deep down, as they are. Only they’re wrong. And liberals, socialists and so on think everybody else is as nice, basically, as they themselves are. They’re wrong too. The truth is messier.’ I shrug. ‘Usually is.’ I spread my arms a little, and smile in what I hope is a self-deprecating manner. ‘Sorry; not as good a story as Murdo’s there.’ I sort of raise my glass towards Murdo, hating myself for it.
There’s a gentle breeze of sympathetic laughter around the group.
‘What was that story about them in that cesspit at the farm that time?’ Norrie says, and I’m able to slip away as people refocus on the three brothers again.
‘Aw, aye,’ Murdo says as the crowd clusters back around him once more, and he launches into another story.
‘Katy, isn’t it?’
‘Hiya.’
‘Hi. I’m Stewart.’
‘Hi…Oh. Yeah, of course. Hi. How you doing?’
‘I’m fine. Can I refresh that for you?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘The white, aye?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Lucky I happen to have a bottle right here, then.’
‘That’s very prepared.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Stewart,’ Jel says.
I’m back at the buffet tables, looking at the puddings and trying to decide if I’m remotely hungry or just being greedy. My organs differ in their opinions; however, I think I’m going to go with whatever one’s telling me I’m already completely full up.
‘We’re going,’ she tells me, putting one hand on my forearm, ‘but there’s a few people been invited back to the house later. Feel free, okay?’
‘Thanks. I might. How…how exclusive we talking – all invited?’
‘Well, no randoms, but otherwise bring who you like.’ She looks back into the room. ‘Saw you with Katy Linton there,’ she says, one eyebrow raised. ‘Little young for you, isn’t she?’
‘Young, but she knows things.’
‘Does she now?’
‘You’d be amazed.’
‘You think? Takes a lot to amaze me these days.’
‘Anyway, she’s twenty, twenty-one. But I wasn’t thinking of her when I was asking who I could bring.’
‘Ellie?’ Jel says, and her voice drops a little even as she tries to look unconcerned.
‘I was thinking more of Ferg.’
‘Okay. I’ll make sure the more valuable booze has been padlocked.’
‘I’ll call if we’re coming.’
‘Do. You back down south tomorrow?’
‘Yep.’
‘Let’s try meet up, like, anyway? Before you go? See you.’ She dives in with a small cheek kiss, turns and goes.
I’m at the bar, getting a pint for myself, plus one for Ferg and a large whisky too – he’s been keeping an eye on the bar over the last hour and he’s worried the thousand-pound float might be about to run out.
‘Stewart,’ Ellie says, slipping in beside me at the bar. She puts some empty glasses down, instantly catches the barman’s eye and adds a mineral water to my order.
‘Hey, Ellie.’ She’s looking at the three drinks. ‘Two are for Ferg,’ I explain.
‘Of course. Let me give you a hand.’
I smile at her, trying – out of the corners of my eyes – to see where Donald might be, or any of the Murston brothers. ‘We okay to be seen together?’ I ask.
‘I’m making it okay,’ she says, and lifts the whisky glass.
We wind our way through the press round the bar, heading for Ferg, back in prime position in the centre of the giant bay window.
‘So. How did it go for you guys?’ I ask Ellie.
‘Bearable,’ she tells me. She glances at a slim black watch on her wrist. ‘I’m taking Mum back home in a minute. Let me get out of these sepulchral threads.’
‘You look great. Black suits you.’
‘Yeah? Well, I feel like one of those sack-of-potatoes Greek grannies you see on the islands who look like they were born widowed.’
‘I guess comfort trumps being drop-dead gorgeous at a funeral.’
‘Steady.’
‘What are your plans after?’
‘Ha!’ Ellie says, and gives a sort of shoulders-in shudder. ‘Supposed to be a private party at the house for the rellies but I’m going to absent myself; bound to turn into a giant piss-up for Don and the boys and I’ve had enough of those.’ She looks round as we approach Ferg, who’s talking to a girl I half recognise. ‘Might come back here,’ she says. ‘Could even have a drink; leave the car. If there’s people still going to be around.’
‘That might depend on the life expectancy of the “free” component of the phrase “free bar”.’
‘I asked five minutes ago; barely over the halfway point.’
‘Blimey. I can tell Ferg to slow down.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Really, only halfway?’
‘Less than six hundred. People never drink as much as they think they do at these things, even at the Mearnside’s prices. Though Don gets a discount, naturally.’
‘Give it time. Hey, Ferg.’ I hand him his pint; Ellie presents his whisky.
‘Thank you, Stewart. And Ellie. Well, gosh, this is like old times.’
‘And how are you, Ferg?’ Ellie asks.
‘Oh, radiant. You know Alicia?’ Ferg indicates the girl he’s been talking to, a compact lass with a rather round face but fabulous long wavy red hair. Alicia is the daughter of one of the town councillors in attendance. I think Ferg is trying to flirt with her, but he’s just coming across as smarmy.
‘Don’t you have a hair appointment later?’ I ask him.
Ferg looks confused in what I decide is an insolent, What-are-you-talking-about-you-idiot? way, so I choose not to pursue the point. There’s some very so-whattish chat for a couple of minutes, then Ellie says she better be going; a mum to drop at the house.
‘You be here later?’ she says as she passes.
‘Yup.’
I watch for them going and it’s a good ten minutes before she and Mrs M make it to the doors and out, delayed by people wanting to say thanks for the do and how sorry they are.
A couple of minutes after that, as more people come to join us and the talk gets a little louder, I leave my half-finished pint on the window ledge and announce to no one in particular that I’m off for a pee.
There’s something I want to do before I get too pissed. And before Ellie gets back, though my reasons for feeling that way are opaque even to me.
Having already established that the lifts no longer ascend as far as the fifth floor, I take what might look like an honest-mistake-stylee wrong turn out of the loos, check the corridor for emptiness – it is satisfactorily full of it – then barge through double doors and, chortling at my own cleverness, head smartly up a service stairwell to the fifth floor.
Where I encounter a set of locked doors. Extraordinarily, even purposeful shaking doesn’t open them.
I go down to the fourth floor and the main stairs, prepared to be as brazen as you like regarding the dispensation of nods, hellos and so ons, but there’s nobody to be seen. More locked doors at the fifth; the lack of lit stairwell above the fourth floor might well have been a sign.
I head back downstairs a second time, mooch inconspicuously all the way along to the furthest service stairwell, ascend that, only to find more locked doors, then go down to the fourth floor – again; we’re becoming old friends, this fourth-floor corridor and me – take the exterior fire exit (bright outside, sea breeze; air’s bracing) and head up the fire escape towards the fifth, only to be stopped by the locked grille of a door halfway up. I look round, as though appealing to the white scraps that are circling gulls and the wispy remains of clouds.
&n
bsp; ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ I mutter.
I button up my jacket and jump nimbly onto the hand railing, trusting to my childhood superpowers of Having a Head for Heights and Being Quite Good at Climbing.
I ignore the twenty-metre drop to the concrete at the back of the hotel, checking only to make sure there isn’t anybody looking. There isn’t; in the winter you’d be hung out to dry up here, easily visible by anyone watching from the exclusive new development of villas and timeshares that is Mearnside Heights, but, as it’s barely autumn, the gently rustling mass of foliage on the trees, spreading across the slope above the hotel – and Spa, shields me from any prying gaze. Oh, look; there’s the new Spa wing. Uh-huh. Undistinguished, frankly.
I swing round the obstructing wing of metalwork and jump neatly onto the little landing beyond. I shake my head at the lock securing the door. Is it even legal to lock a fire escape, no matter that the floor it serves is never occupied? What if people need to get to the roof ? Anyway.
Still no entry to be gained from the exterior fire-escape doors at the end of the fifth-floor corridor. Well, pooh-ee to that.
I give in and do what I should have done at the start. I make my way back down to the ground floor and Reception, sweet-talk one of the receptionists and then the junior manager – possibly leaving the latter with the impression that I just want to revisit the site of an old conquest, mw-ah-ha-ha – then take the middle service stair to the fifth floor and let myself in.
The lights don’t work. They might have mentioned this.
I use the torch function on the rubbish phone: not as good as the iPhone’s. The wan, ghostly, white-screen light guides me along through the darkness of the deserted fifth-floor corridor to the offending toilet.
The place feels cold and gloomy, lit only by the phone and the watery light filtering through the etched glass of the single window. The green floral curtains that preserved the modesty of the undersink plumbing have gone, as have any towels and toilet rolls. The cubicles stand empty, doors open. I gently close the door of the middle one as far as it’ll go, which is about seven-eighths to fully.
I wait patiently while the rubbish phone sorts itself out to upload email, then I negotiate the clunky interface to find the attachment I sent myself from Al’s computer. I open up the photo of the red gloves. I take out the copy I printed earlier this morning too, comparing images. I reluctantly concede the phone’s image is the more useful even though it’s smaller, and put the print away.
So I stand there, looking up at the top of the middle cubicle’s door and holding the phone up and out and then closer to and further in, trying to get everything aligned.
There’s no problem with the photos taken from under the sinks, from beneath the curtain. Any kid could have taken them; so could any adult, prepared to stoop so low.
It’s this one, the one featuring the pair of red satin gloves hoisted ecstatically (if I may make so immodest) above the cubicle door, that poses credibility problems.
I squat on my heels, shoulders resting against the surface supporting the three sinks, but that doesn’t work. Nothing fits until I’m standing upright, the image – and, by implication, the camera that took it – at about adult head height. I turn and look down at the formica surface I’m resting against. I suppose a kid could have jumped up onto this and got the angle that way. Though in that case…they’d be even higher than I can plausibly hold the camera here. They might even have stayed standing on the floor but held the camera as high as they could, and trusted to luck…Maybe even that, plus jump and snap at the same time.
Except you wouldn’t expect a kid to do that. And Jel’s arms/hands were raised like they are in the photo only for a few seconds, max. (I remember; they came down to grasp me, hard, at the nape of my neck, immediately afterwards.) So not much time for a wee person to spot the gesture and scramble up here to take the relevant shot. Though of course some of the kids with cameras weren’t so small; a few were maybe ten or eleven: straw-thin beanpoles who looked like they’d fall over if you sneezed too close to them, but already maybe eighty per cent as tall as they’d be as adults. Maybe one of them could have stretched to the required height…
Oh well. I take a few photos with the rubbish phone; it insists on using flash. In my head these count as evidence somehow, though probably only in my head.
Altogether, nothing that would stand up in court, Your Honour, but pretty flipping suspicious if you ask me, and it’s me that’s doing the asking, so I ask myself and sure enough my self says, Yeah, pretty fucking suspicious, right enough, matey boy.
I pocket the phone, take a last, sad, nostalgic, slightly despairing look at the relevant toilet-bowl seat, then exit, pad along the gloomy corridor and walk slowly, thoughtfully back down to Reception, returning the keys with a smiling, borderline-unctuous Thank you.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Ferg asks.
‘I could tell you,’ I tell him, ‘but then I’d have to cut you dead.’
‘Hnn. Needs work.’
I go to walk past a table where Phelpie is sitting playing on a Gameboy while a couple of intense-looking boys spectate. The boys are maybe just pre-teenage and look uncomfortable in their slightly too-big suits. Phelpie finishes whatever level he’s playing on – it’s some dark, monstery, shooty game I don’t recognise – with a series of deft twists and a flurry of control taps, then hands the device back to one of the kids, who is obviously, if reluctantly, impressed. Phelpie stands up, saying, ‘There you go. Easy, really.’
‘Aye, ta,’ the first boy says, sitting down, while the other kid draws up another seat and they both hunch over.
‘Aw, hi, Stu,’ Phelpie says with a grin when he sees me.
‘That was quite neat,’ I tell him.
‘Aye, well,’ Phelpie says, grinning. He looks a little drunk for once, which makes such reaction-time-critical gameplay even more impressive.
‘How come you don’t play cards that fast?’ Phelpie shrugs. ‘No money involved. Just a game.’
‘Phelpie, come on; it’s just a few quid. You never bet big, and you’re not short of a bob or two.’
Phelpie stretches, interlaces his splayed fingers, then cracks his knuckles. He has an even bigger grin on his face. ‘Truth is, Stu,’ he says, ‘I just like listening to the guys talk.’
‘What?’ My first thought is that Phelpie means he wants to get people talking off-guard so they’ll spill some beans that might be useful for Mike Mac’s business dealings.
‘Aye,’ he says, slowly, as though this is only just occurring to him as he speaks. ‘We play too fast sometimes, d’you no think? I mean, we’re there to play the game, right enough, but…it’s no why we’re really there, is it? I mean, you could just play on-line sitting in yer underpants, know what I mean? We’re there to have a chat, have a laugh, just be with our pals an that, eh? But I just think the guys can get a bit too intense with the betting and the money and that, sometimes, so I just sort of like to slow things up a wee bit. The craic improves. I’m no razor wit maself, like, but I love listening to the likes of Ferg an that, know what I mean?’
‘Kinda,’ I say, looking on Phelpie with a degree of respect – albeit slightly grudging and even still a little suspicious – I wouldn’t have expected to be exhibiting five minutes ago.
‘Ye’ve no tae tell the rest, though, eh?’ he says, winking at me.
‘Dinnae want them gettin self-conscious or that, eh no?’
‘Aye, cannae be having that,’ I agree. I make a mental note to be very careful indeed if I ever end up in a head-to-head with Phelpie over serious money.
‘See you later, Stu,’ Phelpie says, and wanders off.
I try to get a word with Grier a couple of times, but at the same time I don’t want to just rock up to the Murston table, not with the Surly Brothers using it as their base for expeditions to the bar and with the disapproving relations in attendance.
The third time, in the corridor just outside the function room, Grie
r looks like she’s going to walk right past me again, ignoring me, even after a perfectly audible, ‘Grier?’
I wonder if she saw me talking to Katy Linton?
I step in front of her; she almost collides with me. She frowns, makes to go past. ‘Stu, do you mind?’
I block her again. ‘Grier—’
She tries to get past me again. ‘Get out the—’
‘Grier, can we—’
‘No, we can’t. Will you stop—’ She stands still, hands on hips for a moment, glaring at me, then tries to slip past to my right. I grab her wrist, already knowing this is a mistake.
‘Fuck off !’ she hisses, shaking my grip off.
‘What do you think you’re doing, Gilmour?’
Shit; it’s Fraser, right behind me, hand on my shoulder, turning me around. I’m half expecting his other hand to ball into a fist and come round-housing up into my face, or sweep in towards my belly. My head cranes back on my neck and my stomach muscles tense without me even consciously willing such desperate preparations.
However, Fraser isn’t quite at that stage yet. He looks close to it, though; his face is redder than his beard, he’s a bit sweaty and he has a slightly crouched, boxerish stance, like he’s just ready for a fight. Grier gets past me, looks like she’s about to continue on her way down the corridor, then stops, stands, arms folded, glaring at both of us.
‘Eh?’ Fraser asks, when I don’t reply immediately. ‘What the fuck’s goin on, eh?’
‘Nothing, Frase,’ I tell him.
‘You okay, Gree?’ he asks her.
‘Fine,’ she says.
‘This arsehole givin you grief ?’
‘I wasn’t—’ I start.
‘No. Let’s just—’
‘Cos I’m just the boy to give him some back.’ Fraser rubs a meaty hand through his thin auburn beard like he’s trying to work out how best to start dismantling me.