by Iain Banks
He struggles, turning round as he sinks deeper, chunks and edges of ice rearing into the air and making little puffs and fountains of snow as he tries to find purchase and push himself out. He's calling out to me now but I can hardly hear him because I'm screaming so hard, wetting my pants as I squeeze the screams out. He's holding his hand out to me, yelling at me, but I'm stuck there, terrified, screaming, and I don't know what to do, can't think what to do, even while he's yelling at me to help him, come out to him, get a branch, but I'm petrified at the thought of setting foot on that white, treacherous surface and I can't imagine finding a branch, can't think what to do as I look one way towards the tall trees above the hidden gorge and the other along the shore of the loch towards the boat-house but there are no branches, there's only snow everywhere, and then Andy stops struggling and slips under the whiteness.
I stand still, quietened and numbed. I wait for him to come back up but he doesn't. I step back, then turn and run, the clinging wetness round my thighs going from warm to cold as I race beneath the snow-shrouded trees towards the house.
I run into the arms of Andy's parents walking with the dogs near the ornamental ponds and it seems like an age before I can tell them what's happened because my voice won't work and I can see the fear in their eyes and they're asking, "Where is Andrew? Where is Andrew?" and eventually I can tell them and Mrs Gould gives a strange little shuddering cry and Mr Gould tells her to get the people in the house and phone for an ambulance and runs away down the path towards the river with the four Golden Labradors barking excitedly behind him.
I run to the house with Mrs Gould and we get everybody — my mum and dad and the other guests — to come down to the river. My father carries me in his arms. At the riverside we can see Mr Gould on his stomach out on the ice, pushing himself back from the hole in the river; people are shouting and running around; we head down the river towards the narrows and the gorge and my father slips and almost drops me and his breath smells of whisky and food. Then somebody calls out and they find Andy, round the bend in the river, down where the water reappears from a crust of ice and snow and swirls, lowered and reduced, round the rocks and wedged tree-trunks before the lip of the falls, which sound muted and distant today, even this close.
Andy's there, caught between a snow-covered tree-trunk and an iced-over rock, his face blue-white and quite still. His father splashes deep into the water and pulls him out.
I start crying and bury my face in my father's shoulder.
The village doctor was one of the house guests; he and Andy's father hold the boy up, letting water drain from his mouth, then lay him down on a coat on the snow. The doctor presses on Andy's chest while his wife breathes into the boy's mouth. They look more surprised than anybody when his heart restarts and then he makes a gurgling noise in his throat. Andy is wrapped in the coat and rushed to the house, submerged to the neck in a warm bath and given oxygen when the ambulance arrives.
He'd been under the ice, under the water, for ten minutes or more. The doctor had heard about children, usually younger than Andy, surviving without air in cold water, but never seen anything like it.
Andy recovered quickly, sucking on the oxygen, coughing and spluttering in the warm bath, then being dried and taken to a warmed bed and watched over by his parents. The doctor was worried about brain damage but Andy seemed just as bright and intelligent afterwards as he'd been before, remembering details from earlier in his childhood and performing above average in the memory tests the doctor gave him and even doing well in school when that started again after the winter break.
It was a miracle, his mother said, and the local newspaper agreed. Andy and I never did get properly told off for what happened, and he hardly ever mentioned that day to me unless he had to. His father didn't like talking about it much either and used to be slightly dismissive and jokey about it all. Mrs Gould gradually talked less about it.
Eventually it seemed it was only I who ever thought about that still, cold morning, recalling in my dreams that cry and that hand held out to me for help I could not, would not give, and the silence that followed Andy disappearing under the ice.
And sometimes I felt he was different, and had changed, even though I knew people changed all the time and people our age changed faster than most. Even so, I thought on occasion there had been a loss; nothing necessarily to do with oxygen starvation but just as a result of the experience, the shock of his cold journey, slipping away beneath the grey lid of ice (and perhaps, I told myself in later years, it was only a loss of ignorance, a loss of folly, and so no bad thing). But I could never again imagine him doing something as spontaneously crazy, as aggressively, contemptuously fate-tempting and unleashed as running out across the frozen ice, arms out, laughing.
You're already wearing your moustache and wig and glasses and you have clip-on sunshades over the lenses because it is quite a bright day. You ring the doorbell, watching down the drive for any cars while you pull on your leather gloves. You're sweating and nervous and you know you're out on a limb here, you're in the process of taking some terrible risks and the luck, the flow that comes from being justified and in tune and not taking too much for granted, not being contemptuous or disrespectful of fate; all that's in danger here because you're pushing the envelope, you're maybe relying on one or two too many things going perfectly. Even getting it all set up to get you this far may have taxed your fortune to the limit already and there's still a long way to go. But if you're going to fail you'll do it full-face on, not flinching, not whining. You've done more than you thought you'd ever get away with and so in a sense it's all gain from here, in fact it's been all gain for some time and so you can't complain and you don't intend to if fate deserts you now.
He comes to the door just like that; no servants, no security phone, and that by itself gives you the green light; you haven't the time for any finessing so you just kick him in the balls and follow him inside as he collapses, foetal on the floor. You close the door, take off your glasses because your vision is so distorted, and kick him in the head; far too softly, then still not hard enough, as he scrabbles round on the floor, one hand at his crotch and the other at his head, making a spitting, wheezing noise. You kick him again.
This time he goes limp. You don't think you've killed him or severed his spine or anything but, if you have, that can't be helped. You make sure he can't be seen from the letter flap, which is covered by a sealed box, then you look round the hall. Golf umbrella. You take that. Still nobody coming. You walk quickly through, see the kitchen and go in there, pulling down the Venetian blinds. You find a breadknife but you keep the umbrella too. You find some tape in a kitchen drawer and go back to the front hall, turning him round so that you're between him and the door. You tie his hands and wrists together. He's wearing expensive-looking slacks and a silk shirt. Crocodile slip-ons and monogrammed socks. Manicure and a scent that you don't recognise. Hair looks slightly damp.
You take off both his shoes and stuff both socks into his mouth; they're silk, too, so they ball up very small. You tape his mouth closed, put the roll of tape in one pocket, then leave him there to search the rest of the house, pulling down the blinds in each room as you go. In the kitchen again, you find the door to the cellar. On the first floor you hear music and the sounds of water.
You creep along to an open doorway. Bedroom; probably the master bedroom. Brass bed; huge, maybe even gold-plated. Disturbed bedclothes, broad sunlit balcony beyond windows and pastel-pink vertical blinds. The sounds are coming from the en-suite bathroom. You go into the bedroom, checking the position of the mirrors; none of them ought to show you to anybody in the bathroom. You're listening as you approach the bathroom door. The music is loud. It's a Eurythmics song called Sweet Dreams are Made of This. A power cable stretches from a socket in the wall into the bathroom. That's interesting.
The voice sings along with the song, then turns into a hum. Your heart sinks. You were hoping he was alone in the house. You look through the c
rack at the door hinge. The bathroom is big. In one corner there is a sunken Jacuzzi with a young person in it, moving sinuously in the bubbling waters. Caucasian, with short black hair. You can't tell whether the person is male or female. The research you did on Mr Azul didn't cover his sexuality.
The ghetto-blaster lies less than a metre away from the lip of the Jacuzzi. There is at least another couple of metres of flex coiled on the floor.
The young man or woman sings along with the song again again, putting their head back as they do so. Probably female; neck smooth, no real Adam's apple.
You look again at that power cable.
Your mouth is dry. What to do? It could be so quick, so easy and it would simplify things so much. It is almost as though fate is saying, Look, I've made it easy for you; just get on with it, do it. Whoever or whatever they are they're associating with this man and if they don't know what he does then they should.
But you're not sure. This violates the code, this goes against what you originally decided were your operational parameters. There have to be rules, laws, for everything; after all, there are even rules for war. Maybe this is fate testing you, offering you a litmus test, an apparently simple way round a problem that will prove you, find you out. If you take the easy way you will have failed, and nothing will save you then, not your skill, not your determination or righteousness, and not your luck because that will have turned against you.
The young person in the tub looks happy enough for now. You go to the bed, put down the umbrella and start looking in the drawers and cupboards built into the wall units surrounding the head of the bed. You keep glancing to the bathroom door. The drawers slide smoothly in and out without a sound; one of the perks of picking on the well-off rather than the chipboard classes.
You find a gun. Smith 8c Wesson.38. Loaded. Box of fifty rounds. You permit yourself an almost inaudible sigh and grin to yourself.
You lay the knife beside the umbrella, heft the gun and put it under the duvet to click the safety off. Peek in the drawer again. No silencer; that would be too much to ask for.
But then in another drawer you find something maybe even more useful. You stare at the gear in the drawer, a glow in your belly spreading through you. You have made the right choice and you are being rewarded. You glance over the thick tubes that make up the emperor-size brass bedstead, and smile.
You take the bondage hood out of the drawer. It zips up the back and its only feature is a nose-shaped crease with a couple of little nostril slits at the base. You take out your penknife and cut a couple of eye-holes, continually glancing at the bathroom door.
You try the hood on, then take it off and slit some more leather off the eye-holes. You put it on again, zipping it up halfway at the back. It smells of sweat and that scent Mr Azul favours. You take one of the pairs of handcuffs from the drawer and go into the bathroom, pointing the gun at the figure in the tub.
"Jem," she says, "what are you —?"
You decide to use your Michael Caine voice. It doesn't sound very much like Michael Caine, but then it doesn't sound like your own voice either and that's all that matters.
"It's not fucking lover-boy, dear, now get out of the fucking bath and do as you're told and you won't get hurt." It's not too bad; the mask helps disguise your voice too.
She stares at you, mouth open. It's a bad time for the doorbell to go, but that's what happens. She looks past you.
"Make a noise, darling," you say quietly, "and you're fucking history, understand?"
The doorbell goes again. The Eurythmics song finishes and you put a foot on the ghetto-blaster's power cable and drag it smartly across the bathroom tiles, pulling the lead from the back of the machine. You half expect the next song to start anyway because there are batteries in it, but, instead: silence.
The girl stares at you.
You watch her. It all feels strangely academic, as though you don't really care what happens next. If she does make a noise you probably won't shoot her, and anyway there's a chance she couldn't make enough of a noise to be heard outside the front door; it's a big house and although there are a lot of hard, sound-reflective surfaces in it, you're not convinced a scream would make it all the way to whoever's outside, either down the stairwell or through the double-glazed balcony windows. Plus, of course, you might have time to get over to her and hit her, knock her out before she could even gather a decent breath, but it's dangerous, edge-working stuff and you'd rather not have to think about that.
The doorbell doesn't go a third time.
You pull a towelling robe from the back of the door and throw it at her. She half catches it as it lands to one side of the Jacuzzi. "Right. Put that on now, come on."
You expect her to crouch and try to put the robe on before she's fully out of the water, or to turn her back to you, but instead there's something like a sneer on her face as she stands up facing you and wraps the robe around herself with a kind of disdain. She has a good body, and that single vertical tuft of pubic hair you need if you're a model or the possessor of a high-cut swimsuit.
She puts her head back with a nervous, resigned sigh when you put the gun to her head but she doesn't try anything as you cuff her hands behind her back. You tape her mouth then you walk her down to the kitchen and down into the cellar. As you pass through the hall you notice that Mr Azul is just where you left him.
The cellar provides lots of rope. You tape her fingers together and then tie her — sitting on the floor — to a stout wooden workbench. You remove anything sharp from the workbench surface and check there's nothing within reach of her legs. You take some of the rope with you. You go back up to Mr Azul, and he's gone.
You go stupid on yourself for a moment, as the luck wobbles, threatens to fly away and leave you; you stare at the place where he was, lying curled up, tied up in front of the door; you stare at the empty stretch of carpet, dumbly, as if staring will help.
Then you turn and run into the main lounge.
He's there, still curled up and still secured by the tape, but he must have wriggled his way through to here while you were down in the cellar; he's knocked over a table with the phone on it and he's just turning the phone the right way up as you enter the lounge and see him.
He wriggles, getting his face over the buttons on the base of the phone. He stabs at the buttons three times, then wriggles over to the handset and makes muffled shouts through the gag until you cock the gun and he hears it and looks round at where you stand, next to the wall, waving the telephone's wall-plug.
You haul him upstairs and throw him on the bed; he struggles and tries to shout. It's getting dark, so you turn the pink pastel vertical blinds closed and pull the curtains before putting on the lights. Mr Azul screams through his silk socks and masking-tape. You hit him. He's only groggy, not out, but you're able to secure him to the bed with the other set of handcuffs and the leather straps from the same drawer the hood came from. You're satisfied he's tightly held; the bed is sturdy and the straps are supple but quite thick. They fit perfectly. He struggles a little.
Then you take the rope you brought from the cellar and measure out four lengths, cutting them with your penknife.
You tie one length round Mr Azul's upper right arm, as close to his armpit as possible, over his silk shirt; you kneel on the bed and haul with all your might and the rope bites deep into the sheen of the pale silk shirt; Mr Azul cries out behind his gag; a strangled, anguished shriek.
You do the same to his other arm.
You tie his legs too, fitting the rope up to his crotch and tying it tight, bunching the fabric of the slacks. Mr Azul bucks up and down on the bed in a bizarre parody of sexual energy. His eyes are popping and sweat stands out on his skin. His face is going red as his heart struggles to pump blood down arteries blocked off by the ropes.
Then you take out the little plastic box from your jacket and show him the syringe needle. He's still bucking up and down and he's shaking his head too now and you're not sure he understands, bu
t it doesn't matter all that much. You prick him once on each arm and leg. This is a refinement you thought of only recently and are quietly proud of. It means that even if he is discovered in time, before necrosis sets in, he will be HIV-positive.
You leave him there and go down to check the woman is all right. Mr Azul's screams sound harsh and hoarse and far away.
It's sunset when you leave, locking the quiet house securely behind you. The sun flames orange and pink behind the trees above the house, the breeze is cool rather than cold, scented with flowers and the sea, and you think what a pleasant if rather bland place this would be to settle down.
I jolt awake with a bad taste in my mouth and my left eyelid stuck down again. It's almost dark. I look at my watch. Where the fuck is this guy? I take another look round the house; no lights. Back in the car, I try to use the mobile but the batteries are flat and the Nova doesn't seem to have a cigarette lighter. I head for St Helier.
"Shit." I've just tried the local newspaper but Frank's pal has gone out and they won't give me a contact number.
I'm standing in a phone box near the harbour. I watch a white Lamborghini Countach trundle past on the street outside and shake my head in disbelief. A Lambo. More than two metres broad and barely one high. Just the car to have on an island full of lots of narrow, high-hedged twisty roads and a 60-miles-per-hour speed limit. I wonder if he ever gets the beast out of second gear.
Maybe I should phone the police: hello hello I've just spotted a cretin recklessly in charge of an obscene amount of money is there a reward? (Tempting.)
Every bastard's out. Frank isn't at home, Azul's unlisted, I try the local paper here but they can't or won't help and the airlines refuse to give out information on passengers. I put the phone down. "Shit!" I shout. It sounds very loud in the phone box. I phone Yvonne and William's house but there's only William's voice on the answer-machine. I remember Yvonne saying something about being away on a job for the next few days. I think about phoning her mobile but she hates me doing that so I don't.