by Iain Banks
"What do you actually use these things for?" I asked.
"What, Jet Skis?" Yvonne said, leaning on the sea wall and clinking ice around in her fruit juice. "Fun." She watched William bank into a turn, narrowly miss another Jet Ski and plough into the wash of a water-ski boat, sending William — in a new variation on his repertoire of falls — somersaulting over the handlebars of the Jet Ski and flopping on his back into the water in a cloud of spray. His laughter whooped above the revving motors. He waved to show he was all right, then swam back to the floating machine, still laughing. Yvonne put her sunglasses on. "They're for fun; that's what they're for."
"Fun," I said, nodding. William was still laughing. I watched Yvonne watching him. He waved again as he got onto the Jet Ski. She waved back. Listlessly, I thought.
Yvonne was slim and muscled in shorts and T-shirt. Her breasts were pushed up by the wall she was leaning against. We had been lovers for a year or so. She shook her head gently as William gunned the machine's engine again. I leant on the wall beside her.
"Do you ever think about leaving him?" I asked her quietly.
She paused, turned to me, put her sunglasses down her nose and looked at me over them. "No?" she said.
And there was a question in her voice; it was asking me why I'd asked such a thing.
I shrugged. "I just wondered."
She waited for a family to pass by, eating ice-creams, then she said, "Cameron, I've no intention of leaving William."
I shrugged again, sorry I'd asked now. "Like I say, it just occurred to me."
"Well, un-occur it." She glanced at where William was bumping enthusiastically across the waves, miraculously still upright. She put a hand out and briefly touched my arm. "Cameron," she said, and her voice was tender, "you're the excitement in my life; you do things for me William couldn't even imagine. But he's my husband, and even if we do stray now and again, we'll always be an item." She narrowed her eyes then added. "… probably." She looked at him again as he executed a slower turn, wobbling but upright. "I mean, if he ever gave me AIDS I'd give him a Colombian necktie —»
"Eugh," I said. I'd seen a photograph of one of those; they cut your throat and pull your tongue out through the slit. Surprisingly big, the human tongue. "You told him that?"
She laughed once. "Yeah. He said if I left him he'd demand custody of the Merc."
I turned and looked at the subtly tarted, much breathed-upon 300 sitting at the kerb, then made a show of sizing up Yvonne.
I shrugged. "Fair enough," I said, turning to look out across the water and drinking my pint. She kicked me on the knee.
Later, when we were helping William take the Jet Ski out of the water, some very loud people — all wearing black leather jackets with BMW logos — arrived with a gleaming black Range Rover and a big black ski boat. They demanded that everybody get out of their way so they could launch their boat, while people who'd been there for the best of the tide were already bringing their craft out. Their triple-engined ski boat had blocked the exit to the road and when people asked them to move it the BMW people started arguing. I even heard one of them claiming to have booked the slipway.
There was impasse for about ten minutes. We got the Jet Ski onto its trailer but William's Merc was one of the cars trapped on the slip; he tried to reason with the BMW people, then sat in the car and sulked. Yvonne seemed silently furious, then announced she was going up to the lifeboat shed to buy some souvenir crap or whatever.
"When in doubt, shop," she told us, slamming the car door.
William sat tight-lipped, looking in his rear-view mirror at the argument continuing further up the slip. "Bastards," he said. "People are so fucking inconsiderate."
"Shoot the lot of them," I said, thinking about getting out and having a cigarette (no smoking on the champagne-hued leather of the Merc).
"Yeah," William said, hands kneading the steering wheel. "People might be a bit more polite if everybody carried guns."
I looked at him.
It was all sorted out after some confusion and a lot of ill-feeling; the BMW people moved their boat forward so cars and trailers could get past it to the road. We picked Yvonne up at the top of the slip by the RNLI shed where they sold stuff to help pay for the lifeboat.
She didn't seem to have bought much; she tossed me a box of matches as she got into the car. "Here," she said.
I studied the matchbox. "Wo. Hey, you sure about this?"
I looked back as we powered away up the hill through the trees, heading for Edinburgh. There was another commotion going on down on the slip; the BMW people were gesticulating wildly and pointing at the tyres on one side of the trailer holding the big ski boat, which appeared to be listing slightly in that direction now. It looked like it was all getting rather heated again down there; then the leaves got in the way and we couldn't see any more. I was sure I'd seen a punch thrown.
I turned back to find Yvonne's grinning face looking past me in the same direction. She looked suddenly innocent and sat back in her seat, humming. I remembered the time Andy and I had let down all the wheels of his dad's car, folding matches in half and sticking them into the tyre valves. I opened the box of matches Yvonne had given me, but you couldn't have told whether there were a couple of them missing or not.
"Looks like they had some sort of problem with their trailer there," I said.
"Good," William said.
"Probably a puncture," Yvonne sighed. She glanced at William. "We do have lockable tyre valves on this thing, don't we?"
William in the woods, outskirts of Edinburgh, almost within sight of the estate where his and Yvonne's new house is, toting a paint gun on another of these stupid but grudgingly-sometimes-fun-in-a-terribly-boyish-sort-of-way paint-ball games (his computer-company boys and girls versus the crack troops of the Caledonian news room). My gun jammed and William recognised me and came forward laughing and firing shot after shot at me while I waved and tried to duck and these yellow paint balls went splat, splat, thunking into my hired camouflage trousers and combat jacket and smacking into my visored helmet while I waved at him and tried to get the damn gun to work and he just walked forward slowly shooting me; bastard had his own paint gun and he'd probably had it souped up; knowing William, that was almost inevitable. Splat! Splat! Splat! He was getting closer and I was thinking, Christ does he know about me and Yvonne? Has he guessed, has somebody told him, is that what all this is about?
It was pretty fucking annoying even if it wasn't; I really wanted to get the bastard because we'd been having this stupid argument before we'd started about how greed really was good and how William had been so disappointed at how poorly the argument was put across by the Gekko character in Wall Street.
"But it is good," William protested, waving his gun around. "That's how we measure fitness to survive these days." We were being shown round the paint-ball site, having flagpoles and log barricades and that sort of stuff pointed out to us. "It's natural," William insisted. "It's evolution; when we still lived in caves we used to go out and hunt and whoever brought back the mammoth or whatever ate the best meat and got to fuck the women, and all that was good for the human race. Now it's got a bit more abstract and we use money instead of animals but the principle's the same."
"But it wasn't just individuals who hunted animals; that's exactly the point," I told him. "It was all about cooperation; people worked together and got results and shared the spoils."
"I agree," William agreed. "Cooperation is great. If people didn't cooperate you couldn't lead them so easily."
"But —»
"And you'll always need leaders."
"But greed and selfishness —»
"— have produced everything you see around you," William said, waving the paint-ball gun around again.
"Exactly!" I exclaimed, throwing my arms out wide. "Capitalism!"
"Yes! Exactly!" William echoed, also gesturing with his hands. And we stood there, me with a great big frown on my face, quite mystified that Wi
lliam couldn't see what I was getting at… and William smiling but looking equally puzzled that I appeared to be incapable of understanding what he meant.
I shook my head, exasperated, and brandished my paint-ball gun. "Let's fight," I said.
William grinned. "I rest my case."
So I really wanted to nail the bastard — preferably with the cooperation of my team-mates just to prove the point — but the fucking technology let me down and the gun jammed and he had me pinned, firing shot after shot at me, and finally I gave up trying to un-jam the gun and made to throw it at him though I could hardly see because there was yellow paint all over my visor, but he ducked and tripped and sat down on a trunk, holding his stomach, and the bastard was laughing his socks off because I looked like a giant dripping banana, only I'd just realised the gun wasn't jammed after all, the safety catch was on. I must have knocked it or something and I'd a couple of shots left and I ought to have shot the swine but I couldn't, not while he was sitting there killing himself laughing.
"Bastard!" I yelled at him.
He twirled his paint gun around one gloved ringer. "Evolution!" he shouted. "You learn a lot when you live with a liquidator!" He started laughing again.
Later at the buffet lunch in the marquee he barged to the front of the queue saying, "Oh, I don't believe in queuing!" and when somebody behind him objected, convinced her with a sort of apologetic bashfulness that actually he has diabetes, you see, and so needs to eat right now. I cringed, blushed, and looked away.
Still thinking; thinking about all the times I've seen people I know do something for revenge, or do anything vindictive or sneaky or smart or even threaten to. Hell, everybody I know's done something like that at some time or another but that doesn't make them a murderer; I think McDunn's crazy but I can't tell him that because, if he's wrong about that and I'm wrong about it being something to do with those guys who died in the Lake District a few years ago, then there's only one suspect left and that's me. The trouble is my theory's looking shakier all the time because McDunn's convinced me it really was all just a smoke-screen: there is no Ares project, never was any Ares project, and Smout in his prison in Baghdad isn't connected to the guys that died; it was just somebody coming up with a clever conspiracy theory, just a way of getting me to go to remote places and wait for phone calls and deprive me of an alibi while gorilla man did something horrible to somebody else somewhere else. Of course McDunn points out that I could still be the murderer; this could all be a story I've made up. I could have recorded the mysterious Mr Archer's phone calls and had them directed to the office while I was there. They found most of the equipment to do just that in my flat when they searched it: an answer-machine, my PC and its modem; another lead or two and it would have been easy to set it up if you knew what you were doing, or just used trial and error and were patient.
McDunn really wants to help, I can see that, but he's under pressure, too; the circumstantial evidence against me is so strong people who don't know the details of the case are getting impatient over the lack of progress. Apart from that fucking business card they have no forensic evidence; no weapons, bloodstained clothes or even minutiae like hairs or fibres to link me with any of the attacks. I suspect they don't think I'd be identified by any of the witnesses or I'd have been on an identity parade by now, but it just all looks so obvious: it must be me. Lefty journalist goes loco, wastes right-wingers. Apparently I've missed some good headlines while I've been in here. Actually, I missed some good ones in the couple of days" holiday I took; if I'd just bothered to look at a single fucking news-stand after I left Stromeferry I'd have seen this story starting to break about this guy — "The Red Panther" the tabloids decided on eventually — murdering these right-leaning pillars of the community.
McDunn doesn't want to charge me with any of the other murders but they're going to have to make a decision before too long because my initial time under the PTA is nearly up and the Home Secretary isn't going to grant an extension; I'll have to appear in court soon. Hell, I might even get a lawyer.
I'm still terrified, even though McDunn's on my side, because I can see he's not so hopeful any more and if they take him off this I might get the bad cops, the ones that just want a confession and Christ I'm in England, not Scotland, and despite the McGuire Seven and the Guildford Four they still haven't changed the law: down here you can still be convicted on an uncorroborated confession even if you try to retract it later.
I'm getting paranoid about that, determined not to sign anything, worried that maybe I already have when they first brought me here and said it was just a receipt for personal effects or a legal-aid application or whatever, and I worry about them getting me to sign something when I'm tired and they've been interviewing me in shifts and all I want to do is go to bed and sleep and they say oh do us all a favour and sign this and you can sleep, come on now; it's just a formality you can always deny it later, change your mind, but you can't you can't of course, they're lying and you can't; I even worry about signing something in my sleep, or them hypnotising me and getting me to do it that way; hell, I don't know what they get up to.
"Cameron," McDunn says. It's day five; the morning. They want to charge you with all the murders and assaults and take you to court, day after tomorrow."
"Oh, Jesus." I accept a fag; McDunn lights it for me.
"You sure you can't think of anything?" McDunn asks. "Anything at all?" He makes that sucking noise with his teeth again. It's starting to annoy me.
I shake my head, rubbing my face in my hands, not caring that the smoke from the fag goes in my eyes and my hair. I cough a bit. "Sorry. No. No, I can't. I mean, I've thought of lots of stuff, but nothing —»
"But you're not telling me about it, are you, Cameron?" the DI says, sounding regretful. "You're keeping it all locked up inside you; you won't share it with me." He shakes his head. "Cameron, for God's sake, I'm the only one who can help you. If you have any suspicions, any doubts, you have to let me know about them; you have to name names."
I cough again, looking down at the tile floor of the room.
"This might be your last chance, Cameron," McDunn tells me softly.
I take a deep breath.
"If there's anybody you can think of, Cameron, just give me their name," McDunn says. "It'll probably be easy to eliminate them from the enquiry; we aren't going to frame anybody or hassle anybody or pull anything heavy."
I stare at him, still uncertain. My hands are still splayed over my lower face. I take another drag on the fag. Fingers shaking again. McDunn continues. "There are, or were, people on this case who are very good, dedicated, and enthusiastic officers, but the only thing they're enthusiastic about nowadays is getting you charged with the rest of the attacks and getting you into the dock. I've persuaded the people who matter that I'm the best man to work with you to help us clear this up, but I'm like a football manager, Cameron; I can be replaced at a moment's notice and I'm only as good as the results I get. At the moment I'm not getting any results, and I could go at any time. And believe me, Cameron, I'm the only friend you've got in here."
I shake my head, frightened to speak in case I break down.
"Names; a name; anything that might save you, Cameron," McDunn says patiently. "Is there anyone you've thought of?"
I feel like a worker in Stalinist Russia denouncing his comrades but I say, "Well, I thought of a couple of friends of mine…" I look at McDunn to see how I'm doing. There's a concerned-looking frown on his dark, heavy face.
"Yes?"
"William Sorrell, and… well, it sounds daft, but… his wife, umm, Yvo —»
"Yvonne," McDunn says, nodding slowly and sitting back. He lights a fag. He looks sad. He taps the cigarette packet round and round on the table surface.
I don't know what to think or feel. Yes, I do: I feel sick.
"Are you having an affair with Yvonne Sorrell?" McDunn asks.
I stare at him. I really don't know what to say now.
He waves
his hand. "Well, maybe it doesn't matter. But we've looked into Mr and Mrs Sorrel's movements. Discreetly, once we knew they were friends of yours." He smiles. "Always have to be alive to the possibility it's more than one person, Cameron, especially with a group of crimes spread out over so much territory, and fairly complicated ones at that."
I nod. Looked into. Movements looked into. I wonder how discreet is discreet. I want to cry very much now because I think I'm admitting to myself that, no matter what happens, life is never going to be the same again.
"As it turns out," McDunn says, while the fag packet goes tap, tap, "although they are both away from home a lot, their movements are very well documented; we know pretty well what they were doing during all the attacks."
I nod again, feeling like my guts have been ripped out. So I've denounced them and there wasn't even any point to it.
"I thought of Andy," I tell the floor, looking down there, avoiding McDunn's eyes. "Andy Gould," I say, because — apart from everything else — Andy stayed with me during the summer, round about the time the card with my writing on it went missing. "I thought it might be him, but he's dead."
"Funeral's tomorrow," McDunn says, flicking ash and then inspecting the glowing end of his cigarette. He scrapes it round the edge of the light metal ashtray until the tip of the fag is a perfect cone, then smokes it carefully. My ash falls on the floor. I sweep it to nothing with my foot, guiltily.
God, I could use some dope; I need to mellow out, I need to calm down. I'm almost looking forward to prison; plenty of dope in there, if I'm allowed to mix with other inmates. Christ, it's going to happen. I'm accepting it, I'm coming to terms with it. Christ.
"Tomorrow?" I say, swallowing. I'm trying not to cry and I'm trying not to cough, either, because that might make me cry. "Yes," McDunn says, tapping ash carefully off his cigarette again. "Burying him tomorrow, at the family estate. What's it called again?"
"Strathspeld," I tell him. I look at him but can't tell if he really forgot the name or not.