by Iain Banks
"Strathspeld." He nods.,'Strathspeld." He rolls the word around his mouth, as if savouring a good malt. "Strathspeld on the Carse of Speld." He sucks air through his teeth again. I wish he'd get his teeth seen to; do they have special police dentists or do they have to go to the ones everybody else goes to and hope the dentist doesn't have some… have some grudge… some grudge against…?
Wait a minute.
Wait a fucking minute here…
And I know.
It's like a speck of dust drifts down and goes into my eye and I look up to see where it came from and I'm hit by this tonne of bricks; it hits me that hard. I sit there for a second thinking, No, it can't be… But it is; it won't go away, and I do know, and I know that I know.
I know and I feel sick but it's something just to feel this certain about anything again. I can't prove anything and I still don't understand it all, but I know, and I know that I have to be there, have to get to Strathspeld. I could just tell them to get there, be there, keep watch there, because he's bound to be there, has to be there, there of all places. But I can't let it happen like that, and whether they get him or not — and I doubt they will — I have to be there.
So I clear my throat and look McDunn in the eyes and say, "All right. Two more names." Pause. Swallow, something sticking in my throat. Jesus, am I really going to say this? Yes, yes I am: "And I've got something else for you."
McDunn tips his head to one side. His brows say, "Oh yes?"
I take a deep breath. "I want something from you, though."
McDunn frowns. "What would that be, Cameron?"
"I want to be there tomorrow, at the funeral."
McDunn frowns more deeply. He looks down at the fag packet and taps it round another couple of revolutions on the table. He shakes his head. "I don't think I can do that, Cameron."
"Yes, you can," I tell him. "You can because of what I've got for you." I pause, take another breath, the air catching in my throat. "It's there, too."
McDunn looks puzzled. "And what would that be, Cameron?"
My heart is hammering, my hands are balled into fists. I swallow, throat dry, tears finally coming into my eyes and eventually I squeeze the words out:
"A body."
CHAPTER 10 — CARSE OF SPELD
I run down the hill, into the sunlit glen and then up the far side, with Andy crashing through the bushes, heather and ferns behind me. I shake my hand free of most of his semen and deliberately let my hand brush across the leaves and blades as I dash past, wiping the rest off. I'm laughing. Andy's laughing too, but shouting threats and insults as well.
I run up the hill, seeing movement ahead and assuming it's a bird or a rabbit or something, and almost run straight into a man.
I stop. I can still hear Andy pumping up the hill behind me, tearing through the bushes and yelling curses.
The man is dressed in walking boots, brown cords and a shirt and green hiking jacket. He wears a brown rucksack on his back. He has red hair and he looks furious.
"What do you boys think you were doing?"
"What? Eh? Ah…?" I say, looking back to see Andy coming up the hill behind me, suddenly slowing and looking wary as he sees the man.
"You!" the man shouts at Andy. His voice makes me jump. I hide my sticky hand behind me, as if it's brightly stained. "What were you doing there with this boy, eh? What were you doing?" he shouts, looking around. He puts his thumbs between the shoulder straps of his rucksack and his jacket and sticks his chest and chin out. "Come on! What d'you think you were doing, eh? Answer me, boy!"
"None of your business," Andy says, but his voice is shaky. I can smell something funny. I worry that it's coming from my sticky hand and I'm frightened that the man will smell it.
"Don't you talk to me like that, boy!" the man yells, glancing round again. He spits as he shouts.
"You've got no right being here," Andy says, sounding frightened. "This is private property."
"Oh, is it?" the man says. "Private property, is it? And that gives you the right to do dirty, perverted things, does it?"
"We-"
"Shut it, laddie." The man takes a step forward, looking over my head at Andy. The man's so close I could touch him. I get that smell even stronger. Oh God, he's bound to smell it now. I feel myself trying to shrink, cowering. The man thumps himself in the chest with one finger. "Well, let me tell you something, sonny," he tells Andy. "I'm a policeman." He nods, drawing back and upright again. "Aye," he says, eyes narrowing. "You may well look frightened, boy, because you're in deep bloody trouble."
He looks down at me. "Right; this way, come on!"
He takes a step away. I'm trembling, rooted to the spot. I glance back to see Andy looking uncertain. The man grabs my arm and pulls me. "I said come on, boy!"
He drags me after him through the woods. I start crying and try to break away, struggling weakly.
"Please, mister, we weren't doing anything!" I wail. "We weren't doing anything! Honest! We weren't doing anything, honest we weren't! Please! Please let us go, please; please let us go, we won't do it again, honest; please, please, please…"
I look back through my tears at Andy, who's following, looking desperate and uncertain, biting on one knuckle as he follows us through the bushes.
We're near the summit of the hill, deep in the bushes under the thin cover of trees; the smell is very strong and my knees feel like the bones are gone. If I wasn't being held up by the man's gripping hand hauling me through the ferns I feel like I'd fall down.
"Leave him!" Andy shouts, and I think he's going to burst into tears like me. He seemed so old a few minutes ago and now he's like a little kid again.
The man stops, whirls me round and holds me against his chest. He feels very warm behind me and the smell is even stronger.
Andy comes to within a couple of yards.
"Come here!" the man shouts. I can see spittle arc out from above me as he shouts. Andy looks from him down to me; I can see his jaw trembling.
"Come here!" the man screeches. Andy comes forward a couple of feet. "Take off those trousers!" he hisses at Andy. "Go on; I saw you! I saw what you were doing! Take off those trousers!"
Andy shakes his head, backing off.
I start to sob.
The man shakes me. "Right!" he says. He leans over me, puts his big fingers to the zip of my jeans and starts trying to pull the zip down. I'm struggling and howling but I can't get free. The smell is all around me; it's him; it's his sweat, his smell.
"Leave him, you bastard!" Andy shouts. "You're not a policeman!" I can't see what Andy's doing because the man's body is in the way, but then Andy hits into him, bowling him backwards and he shouts and I wriggle away from them; I scramble off through the ferns on all fours and then stop and look back and the man's got Andy, he's struggling with him, leaning over him, folding him, pressing him down, and Andy's breathing hard, grunting, trying to break free. "Bastard! Leave me alone! You're not a policeman! You're not a policeman!"
The man doesn't say anything; he pushes Andy down into the ferns, and gets a hand free and punches Andy in the face. Andy goes limp but then moves weakly; the man is breathing very hard and when he looks at me his eyes are wide and staring. "You!" he gasps. "You; just stay there! Stay there, d'you hear?"
I'm shaking so hard I can hardly see straight. Tears fill my eyes.
The man pulls Andy's trousers down; I can see Andy looking round groggily. His gaze fastens on me.
"Help," he croaks. "Cameron… help…"
"Cameron, is it?" the man says, glancing at me and pulling down his own trousers. "Well, you just stay there, Cameron; you just stay there, right?"
I shake my head and back off.
"Cameron!" Andy wails; the man is struggling with his underpants as Andy tries to get out from under him. I'm stumbling backwards, almost falling; I have to turn to stop myself tripping and the turn becomes a run and I can't stop myself, I just have to escape; I race away through the woods, tears burning on my fa
ce, sobbing hysterically, the breath whistling and whooping in and out of me, hot and desperate and livid in my throat; ferns whip at my legs and branches lash at my face.
I gave McDunn the two names last night and told him the respective professions of their owners, then clammed up, just refused to say any more about them or about the body. There was a lot of tooth-sucking for a while as he tried to get me to say more and that was almost funny, given that it was the tooth-sucking that made me think of it in the first place, suddenly thinking. The dentist! Recalling going into Kyle, while I was at Stromefirry-nofirry, and remembering that nightmare vision of the burned-black man after the blevey — Sir Rufus with his black bones, black nails, black wood and his black jaw hinged back and very much a dental-records job — and thinking, How did they identify Andy?
The names worked even better than I expected. I can see a way out now. I feel like Judas, but there's a way out; not with any honour, perhaps, but I've looked at myself pretty closely over the last few days and I've had to admit to myself that I'm not quite as wonderful a guy as I liked to think I was.
I've imagined myself in situations like this, made up speeches in my head, speeches about truth and freedom and protection of sources, speeches I imagined delivering from the witness box just before the judge sentenced me to ninety days or six months or whatever for contempt of court, but I was kidding myself. Even if it's true that I would have gone to prison to protect somebody else or make some dubious point about the freedom of the press, I know I'd only have been doing it to make myself look good. I'm just like everybody else: selfish. I can see a way out and I'm taking it, and the fact it's a kind of betrayal doesn't really matter.
Besides, I'm paying for the betrayal by telling them about the body. By itself it doesn't prove a thing, but it's my way of getting them to take me to Strathspeld for the funeral; I can look McDunn in the eye and tell him the truth and he knows it's the truth and he'll take me. I think.
And, perhaps, with this act of treachery I can finally buy my freedom from the burden of buried horror that bound me to Andy twenty years ago, so that — dispossessed of that trespass — I'm left free to betray him again, now.
McDunn's in very early this morning; we're here in the same old interview room. The place is familiar, becoming home, taking on a tinge of spurious cosiness. McDunn's standing behind the table, smoking. He waves me to sit in the chair and I do, yawning. I actually slept fairly well last night, for the first time since I got here.
"They've both disappeared," McDunn says. He's staring at the table. He draws on the B&H. I'd quite like a cigarette, too, even though it's still early and I've barely got over the morning cough but McDunn seems to have forgotten his manners.
"Halziel and Lingary," he says, staring at me, and he looks really concerned, worried and harried and tired for the first time; yes, it's all change here in Paddington Green. "They've both disappeared," the DI tells me, sounding shaken. "Lingary just yesterday, Doctor Halziel three days ago."
He pulls the seat back and sits in it. "Cameron," he says. "What body?"
I shake my head. "Take me there."
McDunn sucks his teeth and looks away.
I just sit there. I feel in control at last. I suppose in theory I could be lying through my teeth and have some other reason for wanting to go to Strathspeld — maybe I'm just getting homesick for Scotland — but I'm certain he knows that I'm not lying and that there is a body; I think he can see it in my eyes.
McDunn breathes hard, then glares at me. "You do know, don't you? You know who it is." He sucks on his teeth. "Is it who I think it is?"
I nod. "Yes, it's Andy."
McDunn nods grimly. He frowns. "So who was it in the hotel? There's been nobody reported missing up there."
There will be," I tell him. "Guy called Howie… I can't remember his second name; begins with a G. He was supposed to leave for Aberdeen the day I left, to start some job on the rigs. Anyway, a few of us had a drink in the hotel that night, and apparently there was a fight; this was after I got drunk and got put to bed. Andy told me Howie and another two locals jumped a couple of travellers who'd been at the party as well. The local cop was called and he was looking for Howie." I hold my hands out. "I mean, this is all stuff that Andy told me, so it could be just a story, but I'd bet that up to that point it's all true. I think Andy offered to let Howie hole up in the hotel while the cops were looking for him, and everybody else up there just assumes Howie's offshore at the moment." I tap my fingers on the table and look at McDunn's cigarette packet, hoping he'll get the hint. "Grissom," I tell McDunn, suddenly remembering. Couldn't think of it all night but now I have, just by talking about it. "That's who it was. Howie Grissom; his second name was Grissom."
There's a terrible sick, empty feeling in my guts. My hands are shaking again and I put them between my legs. I give a small laugh. "I even saw the local cop outside the dentist's, day of the party. I just assumed he was there to get a tooth filled or something, but Andy must have broken in and switched the records then."
"We're checking the dental records of the body from the hotel with the Army's records," McDunn says, nodding. He glances at his watch. "Should have something this morning." He shakes his head. "And why those two? Why Lingary and Doctor Halziel?"
I tell the DI why; I tell him about two more betrayals; about the commanding officer who had let men die to cover up his own inadequacy (or at least Andy believed he had, which was all that mattered), and I tell him about the locum doctor who couldn't be bothered to attend a patient and then, when he eventually did pay a visit, just assumed her pain was something trivial.
McDunn finally offers me a cigarette. Oh, joy. I take it and suck hard, coughing a bit. "I guess," I tell him, "he's getting personal now because his usual targets have become more wary." I shrug. "And maybe he's guessed I'll put you onto him, or that you'll just work it out for yourselves, so he's settling old scores while he can, before they're warned, too."
McDunn is staring at the floor and turning the gold B&H packet over and over on the table. He shakes his head. I get the impression he agrees with what I'm saying and he's just shaking his head at the sheer extent of human deviousness and spite. I think in a strange sort of way I feel sorry for McDunn.
There's a pause while a young constable comes in with some tea; the man at the door gets his cup, and McDunn and I sip ours. "So, Detective Inspector," I say, sitting back in my chair. Hell, I'm almost enjoying this, sick feeling or not. "Are we going there or not?"
McDunn sucks his lips in and looks pained. He nods.
I trip on something in the ferns, twisting in mid-air as my ankle gives underneath me and I slam backwards into the ground, winding myself. I lie there, gulping for air, terrified of the man coming to get me while I lie there helpless; then I hear a scream.
I get to my feet.
I look down at what I tripped over; a fallen branch, about the size of a man's arm. I stare at it, thinking down the depth of years to that frozen day by the river.
Get a branch.
The scream again.
Get a branch.
I'm still staring at the branch; it's like my brain's screaming at me inside my own head and I don't know what else it is that's listening, except it isn't listening; my brain's screaming Run! Run! at me but the message isn't getting through, there's something else in the way, something else pulling me back, back to Andy and back to that frozen river bank; I hear Andy crying out and I can still see him reaching towards me and he's about to slip away from me again and I can't do anything… but I can, this time I can; I can do something and I will.
I take hold of the branch and pull it ripping out of the grass and ferns. I start to run again, back the way I've just come, the branch held out in front of me in both hands. I can hear Andy's muffled shouting; for a moment I think I've lost them and run past them somehow; then I see them, almost straight ahead. The man is moving up and down over Andy, his backside looks large and white against the green of the ferns
; he still has the rucksack on and it looks weird, frightening and comical at the same time. He has one hand over Andy's face, clamped tight; his head is turned away from me, red hair fallen down over one ear. I put the branch two-handed over my right shoulder as I run up to them, jump over a small bush and then as I land at their side bring the branch swinging down. It whacks into the man's head with a dull, hollow sound, jerking his head to one side; he grunts and starts to get up, then goes limp. I stand over him.
Andy is wheezing, struggling for breath; he pulls himself out from underneath the man; there is blood round his backside. He pushes the man away; the man flops onto his side, then rolls forward onto his face again, groaning.
Andy sucks breath, staring at me; he pulls his trousers up, then he puts out his hand and takes the branch from me. He raises it over his head and brings it crashing down on the back of the man's head; once, twice, three times.
"Andy!" I shout. He raises the branch again, then drops it. He stands there, shaking, then hugs himself, chin on his chest, staring down at the man, his head and whole body trembling.
There is blood leaking from the back of the man's head, beneath the red hair.
"Andy?" I ask him. I put my hand out to him but he flinches.
We both stand and stare at the man, and at the blood spreading amongst the red hair.
"I think he's dead," Andy whispers.
I put one shaking hand out and roll the man over. His eyes are half-open. He doesn't seem to be breathing. I hold one of his wrists for a while, trying to find a pulse.
"What are we going to do?" I ask, letting the man roll forward onto his face again. Sunlight dapples the grass and ferns around us. Birds call from the trees above and I can hear the distant sound of traffic on the main road, through the forest.
Andy is silent.
"We'd better tell somebody, don't you think? Andy? We'd better tell somebody, eh? We'd better tell… tell, tell, tell your mum and dad. We'll have to tell the police; even if he is… even if he was… I mean, this was self-defence, they call it, it was self-defence. He, he, he, he was trying to kill us, kill you; it was self-defence, we can say that, people'll believe us, it was self-defence; self-defence — Andy turns to me, face set and pale. "Fucking shut up."