Dead Air

by Iain Banks

  We were drawing to a stop in the Mall, pulling in to the side near the ICA.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.

  The driver glanced in the mirror, pressed the hazard warning lights, killed the engine and turned round, handing the keys to me. I looked at them lying in my hand, wondering what the hell was going on. ‘I’d like a word, Mr Nott,’ he said (this was itself enough to have me tense up and check that the door-lock buttons were in the unlocked position), ‘but I don’t want to alarm you.’ He nodded at the keys in my hand. ‘That’s why I’ve given you them. If you want to get out, you can.’

  He was about fifty; a balding, slightly overweight guy with the sort of large-framed glasses last fashionable in the early nineties and a pinched, concerned-looking face; sad-looking eyes. Otherwise fairly nondescript. His accent sounded vaguely Midlands, like a Brummie born and raised who’d lived in London most of his life. He was neatly dressed in a light-grey suit that only now was starting to look a little too well cut to be that of your standard limo driver.

  ‘Uh-huh?’ I said. ‘I’ll just test the door, right?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  The door opened easily enough and the sound of traffic and the chatter of a passing gaggle of Japanese tourists entered the cabin. I closed it again. ‘I’ll just keep my phone open here, too,’ I said warily. The driver nodded.

  He offered his hand. ‘Chris. Chris Glatz.’ We shook hands.

  ‘So what’s going on, Chris?’ I asked him.

  ‘Like I say, Mr Nott, I’d like a word.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘A matter that has, umm, fallen to me to try to resolve.’

  I screwed up my eyes. ‘I’m kind of looking for specifics, here.’

  He looked around. On the broad pavement under trees in front of the colonnaded white splendour of the ICA, a couple of cops were walking slowly along, eyeing us. ‘Here isn’t perfect, frankly,’ he said apologetically. ‘You suggest somewhere.’

  I looked at my watch. An hour and ten before the last possible time I could get to the studio for the start of the show. ‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘I’ll drive.’

  If he’d taken too long, or said no, I’d have walked, but he just looked a little surprised, nodded and opened his door. I made sure the two cops got a really good look at us, waving at them and saying, ‘Morning, officers!’ They nodded, professionally.

  I rang the office en route but the lines were busy. Instead I left a message with Debbie’s secretary to say I’d be late.

  I parked the Lexus behind the Imperial War Museum. We got some coffees from a mobile stall and walked round to the front, under the barrels of two colossal Naval guns. Mr Glatz pulled some gloves from his coat pocket and put them on. The air had an easterly tang to it and the clouds were grey as the paint on the giant artillery pieces above us.

  ‘Nice car,’ I said. ‘Yours?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Thanks.’

  ‘Should have known I wouldn’t rate a Lexus from the radio station.’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  ‘So, Mr Glatz; Chris.’

  ‘Well, Mr Nott-’

  ‘Call me Ken, please.’

  ‘Right. Ken. Well, I’ll come straight to the point. Oh; well, first, I’d better say, this is all off the record, right?’

  ‘I’m not a journalist, Mr Glatz, but yes, all right.’

  ‘Right. Good. Now then. You’ll remember you witnessed a road traffic accident a few months back.’

  ‘Mm-hmm. Guy in a blue Beemer Compact, talking on his mobile, came out-’

  ‘That’s the one, that’s the one.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘See,’ he said, ‘Mark – the gentleman involved, Mr Southorne – is a, an occasional business partner of mine.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You haven’t heard of him?’

  ‘No, should I have?’

  Glatz teeter-tottered one hand. ‘He’s fairly well known in the City. One of these flamboyant types, you know?’

  Well, no, I thought, but I could imagine. He hadn’t looked very fucking flamboyant standing holding his mobile in the rain looking down at a still stunned biker lying in the gutter, but maybe that had just been shock.

  ‘Thing is, you see,’ Glatz said, looking pained. ‘He’s sitting on ten points. On his licence.’

  I nodded. ‘The poor soul.’

  ‘Twelve, and he’s banned. Sure you know how it is.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And, well, the thing is, Mark really needs his car. He loves his car; loves his cars. But he does a lot of driving, which he enjoys, and-’

  I’d held up one hand. ‘Hold on, Chris. That was a bog-standard two-year-old Compact he was driving. If he loves cars so much-’

  ‘Yeah, that was just a courtesy car. His M5 was being serviced. ’

  ‘Ah-hah,’ I said. Ah-hah, indeed. Served me right, I thought. There I’d gone, making assumptions about the man just because he’d been driving the sort of car people bought because they wanted to say they’d got a BMW rather than because of what it actually did. In fact he had an M5. That was different. I’d test driven an M5 about a year ago; a sleek brute with four hundred horse-power. A brilliant motor, but wasted in London.

  ‘Look, ah, Ken,’ Glatz said, smiling awkwardly at me. ‘Frankly, I think this has been mishandled. I think that the whole way this has been approached was pretty fucking stupid.’ Another stilted smile. ‘Excuse my vernacular.’

  ‘Well, obviously I am shocked, but all right.’

  He smiled. ‘I’m going to level with you, Ken. Thing is, you see, we’d like you to retract your witness statement, especially the bit about Mark using the mobile at the time of the accident. ’

  ‘Oh?’ I said. I sipped my coffee. Actually I hated this new coffee culture; people wandering around with these pint-sized cartons full of a mild, warm, watery drug it takes about twenty words and five questions just to fucking order, turning some streets in London into nothing but a procession of Starbuck’s, Aromas, Coffee Republics, Costas and… but enough. Mr Glatz was making his point. ‘We’ll get a good brief, we’ll suggest that the biker guy was going too fast, and with a bit of luck and a following wind, like they say, we’ll get Mark off. But we do need you to retract that statement, you see, Ken, because that’s the really damning bit. Without that there we might be able to swing it; with it the prosecution can walk all over us.’

  I nodded. ‘Right,’ I said. A very strange, disturbing but oddly relieving idea had occurred to me. It seemed grotesquely unlikely, but then when had that ever proved a problem for reality when it was determined to serve up a squid in your custard? ‘This occasional business relationship you have with this guy Mark…’

  ‘Yes, Ken?’

  ‘In terms of above-boardness, whereabouts would we be talking here?’

  Chris Glatz chuckled. ‘You’re catching on here, Ken. Frankly, pretty well below the waterline.’

  ‘Right, and when you say,’ I started slowly, ‘that this has been mishandled, what exactly are you referring too?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Well. When – and I hasten to add here, Ken, that I was not personally involved at this point,’ he said, holding up one hand. ‘When it was decided that my colleagues might be able to help Mark with this problem, a – how’s best to put this? – a rather extreme plan was formulated to, well, to attempt to impress upon you the fact we were serious in our commitment to aid our friend and colleague.’

  We’d been strolling round the big circular path in front of the museum. Now I stepped round and stopped in front of him and said, ‘Is this about my trip to the East End in a certain taxi, to fucking Haggersley Street?’ I almost shouted the last bit.

  My new pal Chris looked around and patted the air with one hand. ‘Now, I can see why you might be upset about that, Ken, but-’

  ‘You fuckers were trying to drug me and kidnap me because of a fucking traffic violation?’ Again, I had trouble keeping my voice modulated for maximum mellifluousness.<
br />
  Glatz did the air-patting thing again. He sighed and put a hand to one side of his face, then nodded forward and we set off again, walking slowly round the big circle. ‘Ken, I’m not going to lie to you,’ he said in a tired voice. ‘That was an overreaction. But,’ he said, holding up one hand, before I could respond to this, ‘the need was felt to impress on you that we are serious people, and that we have the necessary resources, and the will, to follow through with any – what’s the best way to put this? – incentivisation framework we might wish to implement.’

  ‘You can back up threats because you’re crims.’

  Chris actually laughed quite loudly at this. ‘Well, basically, yes, if we’re being frank with each other.’

  ‘I see. And the threatening phone call? And the tyres on my Land Rover? And the headlights?’

  He nodded. ‘All a bit messy, a bit unrequired, frankly, Ken. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m approaching you as one reasonable man to another.’

  I gave a small laugh. ‘You obviously don’t listen to my show.’

  He smiled, sipped some more coffee. ‘Ken, we’d like to compensate you for the damage and distress you’ve suffered.’

  ‘I see. You mean bribe me.’

  ‘Frankly, yes.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Two grand. And we’ll settle the bill with the garage.’

  ‘And what if I say no?’

  He looked round at me. ‘Frankly?’

  ‘Frankly.’

  ‘Then I go back to Mark and say that we’ve done our best; gone out on a limb for him, even, and it hasn’t worked. We’ve tried money and that hasn’t worked either, and unless he wants to raise the offer to something you’d accept-’

  ‘I’m not poor, or greedy enough, Chris. And I am easily proud enough not to.’ I smiled.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said, dumping his coffee in a bin. I’d have followed his example except I’d remained just worried enough to be keeping the still-just-about-scaldingly-hot coffee to use as a weapon if things suddenly turned nasty again. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I’d tell Mark that maybe he should just take his punishment like a man and take more care driving in future, and get a chauffeur for however long his ban lasts. And unless he does something very stupid, which I shall try to persuade him not to do, that’ll be the end of the matter.’

  ‘Really?’ I looked into the man’s eyes. I formed the distinct impression that actually Mr Glatz wouldn’t be at all averse to his business associate having to swallow his pride and accept his punishment.

  He shrugged. ‘You have to have a sense of proportion about these things, Ken,’ he said reasonably, ‘otherwise people end up getting hurt. Which is messy. And messy, generally, is not good for business.’

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘If I say I’m not going to retract my witness statement, that’ll be that.’

  ‘It should be.’

  ‘I know it should be, but will it?’

  ‘Ken,’ Glatz sighed heavily. ‘I am not here to threaten you. I am here to make you an offer, which I’ve done. You seem to be rejecting it. That’s the end of the matter as far as I’m concerned and as far as my colleagues are concerned, in so far as you’re concerned… if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I think so. Go on.’

  ‘I can’t speak for Mark, who may wish to approach you himself. ’

  ‘And what the fuck does that mean?’

  ‘Ken, Ken,’ he said, holding up both hands. ‘Don’t get upset. It means just what it says. It’s not a threat.’ He gave what was probably meant to be an encouraging smile. ‘Mark is not… he’s not the physical sort, know what I mean? That’s why we make a good team. He’s very good with money, and contacts, and charm, and… Well. But with us washing our hands of the case, the direct action side of things is pretty much off the agenda.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. I thought. I pointed a finger at Glatz. ‘Just in case he does get any ideas, you tell him there’s a man called John Merrial who owes me a favour, all right?’

  Glatz looked very surprised for a vanishingly brief interval of time. Then he looked slightly surprised. ‘Mr Merrial?’ he asked. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ I said. ‘And if he doesn’t know who John is, I think maybe you ought to enlighten him. Don’t you?’

  Glatz was looking away from me, nodding. We were back almost under the big guns again, which felt like a shiveringly appropriate place to be when invoking the name of Mr M to another, palpably lesser, villain. ‘I see, Ken,’ he said, still nodding, glancing at me. ‘Well, that is interesting. I’d no idea. A favour, eh?’

  ‘That’s what he said, last time I saw him,’ I told Glatz.

  He looked at me and nodded. ‘I can rely on your discretion here, can’t I, Ken? Off the record, as we agreed. Obviously all of this is strictly between you and me.’

  ‘Obviously. Providing your friend Mark doesn’t do anything stupid.’

  ‘I’ll have a word.’

  ‘That’d be nice.’

  He smiled. ‘Right. Well, I think we’re finished here, Ken, would you agree?’

  I grinned. ‘I think I would, Chris.’

  ‘Okay.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Let’s get you back to your radio station. Do you want to drive, or shall I?’

  ‘Allow me,’ I said. We started walking back to the car.

  Mr Glatz nodded at my left wrist. ‘By the way; nice watch.’

  ‘Mm-hmm.’

  Oh, the sheer bliss of it; when we arrived at Capital Live! I got to do the old Ronnie Reagan thing, cupping my hand to my ear, pretending I couldn’t make out what the press were saying. Of course, rather than doing this across the White House lawn on the way to my helicopter with the press fifty metres away behind a rope, guarded by marines, I was about ten centimetres away from the journos, separated from them only by the thickness of a window I could have lowered with a single click of a button. This made it all the more fun.

  ‘Ken! Ken! Is it true you kicked this guy?’

  ‘Ken! What’s the truth? Tell us what happened.’

  ‘Ken, is it true he hit you first?’

  ‘Ken! These pliers; did you throw them intending to hit him?’

  It was great seeing so many journos here; I’d expected one or two, but this was real celeb stuff. Must be a quiet news day in the capital. I did the hand-ear thing, shook my head, smiled broadly and mouthed, I-can’t-hear-you as I nudged the car slowly forward and angled it towards the car park ramp. They were trying the door handles but I’d locked all the doors somewhere round Trafalgar Square. Two snappers were standing right in front of the car, aiming straight through the windscreen; I let the car trickle forward in Drive, brakes creaking, slowly forcing the photographers backwards.

  In the passenger seat, Mr Glatz had looked puzzled when he’d seen the small crowd of reporters gathered round the office entrance. When they’d spotted me driving the car through the traffic towards the underground car park, and come running over to hammer on the windows, tape recorders aimed, flashes flashing – heck, there was even a TV crew there – he’d been horrified, but by then it was too late. He’d picked up his newspaper and hid behind it. This was, of course, entirely the wrong thing to do, because now the ladies and gents of the press were starting to think, Hold on, who’s Mr Shy in the passenger seat? A couple of the snapperistas took photos of Mr G’s hands and the Torygraph they were clutching.

  ‘Sorry about this, Chris,’ I said.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘What the fuck’s all this about?’

  ‘Oh, I was on a telly programme with this guy who deserved a good slap, so I duly whacked him one. Bit of a fuss about it for some reason.’

  ‘Did I not need this,’ Glatz breathed as I nodded at the security guy in the booth at the top of the ramp; the striped pole rose and we roared away down the slope. I stamped on the brakes and got a very satisfying squeal out of the tyres at the bottom.

  Mr Glatz left looking unhappy, resigned to facing down the crowd of muttering rotte
rs still milling at the top of the car park ramp.

  I bumped into Timmy Mann in the lift.

  ‘Timmy,’ I said cheerfully. ‘You’re in early.’

  ‘Uh, yeah, ah, hi, ah, Ken,’ Timmy said, displaying the incisive wit that has made him such a hit on the lunchtime show. He looked down as the lift doors closed. Timmy was something of a throwback; older than me, an ex-Radio One Breakfast Show presenter, dark hair worn in a style dangerously close to being a mullet. He was short, even for a radio DJ.

  I felt my good mood evaporate as the lift whined into action and my stomach seemed to drop. ‘Oh, yeah, of course,’ I said. ‘You’re here to do my show, aren’t you?’

  ‘Ah, just half,’ he said. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Well, don’t forget to apply for overtime.’

  ‘Um, yeah.’

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’

  ‘Talking to a man about a fucking death threat,’ I told Station Manager Debbie, throwing myself into a couch. The couch was on the far side of Debbie’s redecorated office, a pale mauve oval carpet away from her new ash and chrome desk, where Producer Phil and Guy Boulen, Mouth Corp’s legal geezer, were sitting. ‘Hi, Phil, Guy.’

  ‘I didn’t say you could sit over there.’

  ‘Good, Debbie, because I didn’t fucking ask to.’ The sofa was big and plump and cerise without actually looking like a pair of lips. It smelled very new.

  ‘What’s this about a death threat?’ Phil asked quickly, while Debbie was still opening her mouth to say something.

  ‘It’s been resolved. It was all a hideous mistake; an overreaction. I know what it was all about and it’s almost certainly been taken care of.’

  Phil and Boulen looked at each other. Boulen cleared his throat. ‘You met whoever it was who’s been behind all this?’