Dead Air

by Iain Banks

  So there goes my last hope. It is him and not Mark Southorne. I am here because of yesterday, because of the message, because of Ceel, and not because of some idiotic points-dodging scam.

  Mr Merrial looks small and dark and regretful, as though he isn’t going to enjoy any of this either.

  I lose control of my bowels and shit myself. I really can’t help it. I’m a passenger in my own body now and I just sit there and listen and feel and then smell it all happen and I’m astonished how quickly and easily it takes place. Mr Merrial wrinkles his nose. The shit fills my underpants.

  Nothing, I think. I’m to be spared nothing.

  The guy who hasn’t hit me goes to Merrial and offers him the stuff they’ve taken off me. Merrial takes a large pair of latex gloves from one pocket, puts them on over his black leather gloves and then accepts the big Breitling, hefting it. He smiles. ‘Nice watch.’ He hands it back to the guy. He tries to turn my phone on but of course it’s dead. Then he looks in my wallet, taking out my various credit cards and bits and pieces and inspecting them. He pauses at his own white calling card, the one I’d written on.

  From here, because I’m sitting down and so looking from a lower perspective, I can see the back of the card, where I wrote down the code Celia told me over the phone, the code that turns off the burglar alarm in the Merrials’ house. I’ve been sitting here desperately trying to work out what to say and I do have an idea, but it all depends on the fucker not looking at the back of that little white card. If he does, there’s nothing I can think of that might save Celia, let alone me. If he doesn’t, then the slenderest of chances remains.

  The moment seems to freeze. In that instant I’m suddenly with Ceel and her absurd entanglement theory. In one universe, Merrial flips the card over in his fingers and sees the alarm code written there. In the other, he just looks at the one already printed side and that’s all.

  Maybe I deserve what might happen here. I know I’m not a particularly good person; I’ve lied and I’ve cheated and it’s no consolation that little of it was illegal. It’s not illegal to lie to your best friend, to fuck his wife, to lie to your partner, to cheat on her. Smashing car windows, hitting somebody in the face, smoking dope, burglary; that sort of thing’s illegal and I’ve done all that too, but none of that means very much compared to betraying the people you’re closest to; that’s the stuff really to be ashamed of. So maybe I’d have no real cause to complain if I’m made to suffer here.

  But nothing I’ve done deserves the death penalty, or even having my legs broken, does it? I’ve told lies on a small scale but I’ve tried to tell the truth on a larger scale. I’ve tried to be true to what I believe in rather than make as much money as I could have. Doesn’t that count for something? And who the fuck are these people to judge me anyway? I’m a liar and I’m weak and I’m certainly no hero because I’ve filled my fucking pants, but – even sitting here in my own stench, in greasy, sweat-stained two-hard-days’-living clothes – I’m a fucking better man than these vindictive shitheads, for all their crisply ironed shirts.

  If only deserving something was all there was to it.

  Actually it doesn’t matter a damn. I am in the realm of pure luck here, even if Ceel’s crazy ideas are true (which they just damn well aren’t). So roll the dice; let the universe do the fucking maths.

  Merrial slips the card back into my wallet, without looking at the other side. He hands everything back to the man in the overalls, then slowly removes his latex gloves and gives those to the guy, who comes and stands behind my shoulder again.

  Merrial says, ‘Take the tape off his mouth, would you, Alex?’

  The guy who’s hit me twice so far does that, tearing it off casually. It hurts a bit. I swallow. Cold sweat trickles down my face and into my mouth.

  ‘Good evening, Kenneth,’ Merrial says.

  For a while I just breathe, unwilling to trust myself to come out with anything coherent.

  Merrial hoists himself a little and sits on the wing of the Bentley. ‘Well,’ he says with a hint of a smile. ‘Thank you for coming. I expect you’re wondering why I’ve invited you here this evening.’

  This is probably meant to be funny. I keep on breathing, not willing to say anything. I stare into his eyes, dark under his brows and the shadows of the small overhead lights. I keep swallowing, trying to get some saliva into my mouth. I look about the place, squint into the Bentley. At least there’s no sign of Celia. Maybe she got away in time. Maybe she’s not been linked to this. Oh, Lord, a straw to grasp at; a still-floating one.

  ‘Do you like being underground, Kenneth?’ Merrial asks. I don’t think he really wants an answer so I don’t give him one. ‘I do,’ he says, smiling, looking around at the darkness. ‘I don’t know… just makes me feel…’ He stares up. ‘Safe, I suppose.’

  I’m a single nerve-firing away from hysterical laughter at this point, at that particular word, but I don’t think that laughing in Mr Merrial’s face right now would be a very good idea at all, and sense prevails. A series of small, horrible, bubbly farts announce my bowels have completed their evolutionary duty and prepared me for fight or flight by getting rid of the excess matter they’d been holding inside my body. Very helpful, I think, sat here, immobile and helpless.

  ‘Yes,’ Merrial says, looking round too. ‘I like it here. Useful old place, this.’ He gestures down at the floor, where the water has already stopped rippling and gone back to its impression of pure blackness again. ‘Flooding, now.’ He shakes his head, lips pursed. ‘Won’t be able to use it in a year or two.’ He looks at me. ‘Water table, you see, Kenneth. Water table of the whole of London is rising again. It was going down for years; centuries, apparently, while they were taking water out for industry; tanning, breweries, that sort of thing. Now it’s rising again. They have to keep pumps going all the time in the deep tube lines and some multi-storey underground car parks.’ He smiles thinly. ‘You’d think they could use some of it as drinking water instead of flooding nice valleys in the Home Counties, but apparently it’s too polluted. Shame, really, don’t you think?’

  ‘Mr Merrial,’ I say, voice quivering, ‘I honestly don’t know why-’

  Merrial raises one hand to me and looks towards the ramp I was brought down. Lights, and the sound of a big car engine. A Range Rover trundles down the slope. It edges between the opened V of the wire mesh gates and into the water. It comes hissing slowly towards us on small, inky bow-waves, then loops away into the darkness and curves back in again, stopping on the other side of the little pallet-island from the Bentley, a series of miniature wakes rippling and gurgling against the wood beneath us. The Range Rover kills its lights. The air smells of exhaust.

  On the far side, the driver’s door opens and Kaj gets out. He comes splashing round, steps up onto the pallets and puts one hand to the passenger door’s handle.

  I know it might be her. I know who’s probably going to be there behind the smoked glass. Merrial is watching me intently; I can feel it. I stare at the Range Rover’s door. For as long as I can, I’m going to do what I can to protect her. That might not be very long, but it’s all I can do, the only control over anything I have here. When the door opens and I see it’s Celia, I look surprised, no more. I stare at her, then look round briefly at Merrial.

  Ceel appears uninjured. She looks at Merrial, then Kaj, still holding the door open for her. She steps out, wrinkling her nose at the smell. She’s dressed in blue jeans, a thick red shirt and a yellow and black hiking jacket. Hair down, spread. Hiking boots. She looks calmly angry.

  ‘What do you think-?’ she starts to ask Merrial, then she seems to see me properly for the first time. Oh, Jesus, don’t blow it so soon, kid. She frowns at me. ‘That’s… that’s Ken Nott. The DJ.’ She glares accusingly at Merrial. ‘What the hell’s he supposed to have done?’ The question ends on what is almost a laugh.

  Merrial stays where he is, sitting on the wing of the Bentley. Kaj quietly closes the door of the Range Rover
and stands beside Celia with his hands folded over his crotch, bouncer style, eyes flicking about the scene. The two guys who kidnapped me stand still, one at each of my shoulders.

  ‘Let’s ask him, shall we?’ Merrial said pleasantly. He looks at me. ‘So, Ken, why do you think you’re here?’

  ‘Mr Merrial,’ I say, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but-’

  Merrial shakes his head. ‘Ah, no, Ken. You see you’ve started lying already now, haven’t you?’ He looks genuinely disappointed in me. ‘I thought you were always saying on your show how people had to be truthful, how they had to be truthful even when it hurt, but there you go, you see, the first proper answer we’ve had from you so far and it’s a flat lie, isn’t it?’

  ‘If, if, if,’ I stammer, for the first time since I was four. I suck in a deep breath. ‘If I’ve done something you don’t like, I’m sorry, Mr Merrial. I really am.’

  Merrial shrugs, raising his eyebrows and making a pouting motion with his lower lip. ‘Well, everybody’s sorry when they get caught, Kenneth,’ he says reasonably. ‘But I think you do know why you’re here.’ His voice is quite soft.

  Nothing useful I can say at this point, I suspect. I stick to swallowing. The shit is starting to go cold around my backside on the front of the seat I’m tied to. Jesus, I stink. Oh, Celia, I wish you didn’t have to see, smell, experience all this. I wish you’d run, got away, just kept on heading north or anywhere as long as it was away from this man.

  ‘Kaj?’ Merrial says. ‘You have exhibit A, do you?’

  Kaj nods and opens the Range Rover’s rear door.

  ‘John,’ Celia says. ‘I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t want to be part of it. I want to go home. Now.’ She sounds composed, unflustered, but still distinctly pissed off.

  ‘I’d like you to stay a while yet, Celia,’ Merrial says.

  ‘I don’t want to stay,’ she says through clenched teeth.

  ‘I’m sure you don’t,’ Merrial tells her. He swings one foot a couple of times, gently tapping the flank of the Bentley with his heel. ‘But I insist.’

  Kaj is holding an opened laptop computer.

  Celia narrows her eyes. She takes a breath. ‘There had better,’ she says slowly, ‘be a very good reason for this, John.’ She looks about the place, sparing me a brief, pitying, slightly disgusted look. ‘You’ve kept me away from… this sort of thing until now. I always assumed that was because you knew how I might react if I was brought into contact with it.’ Her gaze snaps back to Merrial. ‘This changes things between us, John,’ she tells him. ‘You can’t go back from this. I hope you realise what you’re doing.’

  Merrial just smiles. ‘Show Kenneth the evidence, would you, Kaj?’

  The big blond guy holds the laptop open a metre away from me. From this angle, Celia can see the screen too. Kaj presses Return and a big grey-blue window already open on the desktop flickers into life.

  Oh shit. If I hadn’t already crapped myself, I would now.

  It’s the interior of the Merrials’ house; one of the landings. Daylight. First floor; I can see down the stairwell to the front door and the loo I hid in later. Only the first quarter metre of each door is visible. The alarm controls aren’t visible. There’s me, coming up the stairs in jerky every-few-seconds lo-fi slomo, the sort of thing you see on TV real-life crime programmes when they’re showing a recording of a raid on a bank or building society or a sub-post office. No sound. Looks like the shot is taken from the ceiling.

  ‘The cameras are inside smoke sensors,’ Merrial tells me casually. ‘In case you were wondering.’ He glances at his wife. Celia takes in a deep breath, puffing herself up. ‘I had, ah,’ Merrial says quickly, ‘one or two suspicions about things; this was a way of-’

  ‘You put surveillance in my home?’ Celia says, rage overflowing. ‘You didn’t even think to ask me, tell me?’

  Merrial looks almost awkward. ‘Security is my concern, Celia, not yours,’ he says, not looking at her but at me. ‘It’s only in the hall and landings, not anywhere else.’

  ‘Have you lost your senses, man?’ Celia breathes, almost more to herself than to her husband. ‘How could you? How could you?’

  Merrial doesn’t answer.

  Meanwhile, on screen, in living grainy Rubbish Colour, I try various doors then disappear upstairs. The clip switches to the next floor up, and me ascending the stairs. I go into the bedroom across from Celia’s. Not exactly good portrait-quality pictures, but good enough; easily sufficient to convince a jury that that was me, all right. Especially as I’m still wearing the same fucking clothes now as I was then.

  ‘Okay, Kaj,’ Merrial says softly. Kaj closes the laptop and puts it back in the Range Rover. ‘So, Kenneth,’ Merrial says. ‘What were you doing in my house?’

  I look at him. Swallow. I say, ‘I was wiping the tape on your answering machine.’

  He tips his head. He looks mildly surprised. ‘Were you, now? And why would you want to do that?’

  ‘Because I left a message on it that I regretted the instant I woke up the next morning, a message I thought would get me into trouble if you heard it.’ I look around at the two gleaming cars, the pallet island, the black, unseen waters. I gulp. ‘This sort of trouble.’

  Merrial nods for a moment. ‘What did the message say, Kenneth?’

  ‘It was insulting to you, Mr Merrial.’

  ‘What exactly did it say, Kenneth?’

  ‘I honestly can’t remember the exact words,’ I say, closing my eyes for a few seconds. ‘I swear I can’t. I was… I was very drunk when I made the call. Very drunk indeed. I’d had a bit of an emotional sort of day, to be honest.’ I attempt a hopefully infectious smile, but it seems Mr M’s empathic immune system is proof against this. ‘A friend found out that I’d been, ah, seeing his estranged wife,’ I tell him, struggling manfully on. ‘But I also discovered I’d just got out of a court case I hadn’t exactly been looking forward to. So there was, ah, a sorrow to be drowned and something to be celebrated as well. I did both, and got very drunk indeed. Obviously I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to have made the call if I hadn’t been extremely drunk. But I was, ah…’ I lick my cold, dry lips. I clear my throat. ‘Listen,’ I say, trying to look appealing. ‘I don’t suppose I could have some water, could I?’

  Mr Merrial nods his head. ‘You suppose correctly, Kenneth. Go on.’

  I swallow on my dry throat, grimacing. ‘What happened was that I’d found out from another of my friends what you… what you were involved in,’ I tell Merrial. ‘What your, ah, profession was, what it involved.’ I shrug, look away. ‘I felt angry that I’d played you, your wife a record. I felt, um, complicit, dirtied up, you might say. I called you to tell you this and got, ah, a little carried away, you might say. I called you things I would not call you to your face now, Mr Merrial. I, ah, I’m sure you can fill in the blanks yourself.’

  Mr Merrial nods slowly. ‘And my wife?’

  I let my brows tremble. I glance at Celia, who is looking aghast at her husband. In a small voice I say, ‘I, ah, may have referred to her as… a gangster’s moll, or something.’

  I have half a hope this might get a laugh, or at least a smile, but Merrial looks quite serious. ‘And so you thought you’d burgle my house?’ he says, not sounding completely convinced. Not sounding at all convinced, in fact.

  ‘I realised what I’d done when I woke up,’ I tell him. ‘So I called your house again. The answering machine was still on so I guessed you were away for the weekend. I drove to your place, climbed into the garden from the roof of my Land Rover, found a key to the back door in one of those artificial stone things, realised the alarm wasn’t switched on and thought, Hey, the Gods are with me here.’ I shift in my seat. This is a mistake. The shit feels like some disgusting jelly inside my pants and jeans, and is already seeping through to my overalls. ‘Then I really, really needed to take a dump, so I started looking for a toilet. I finally found on
e. Then I went back down to the study, wiped the tape and-’

  ‘You’re leaving my wife’s bedroom out of all this,’ Merrial said. He glanced at Celia, then smiled. ‘I can’t help noticing.’

  Celia glared at me and crossed her arms.

  ‘I’d thought earlier that if there was any sign I’d – anybody had – been in then I should try to make it look like a robbery,’ I tell him. ‘So I took a couple of rings from Mrs Merrial’s dressing table. Then, after I’d got the tape cleared, I realised taking the rings would just draw attention to the fact that somebody had been in the house, so I went back to her room and put them back where I’d found them.’ I look at Merrial. He looks sceptical. I shrug as best I can. ‘I’d never done this sort of thing before, Mr Merrial. I’d talked to people; I knew about artificial stones and fake Campbell ’s Soup tins and pretend mains sockets for hiding valuables in and stuff like that, but I didn’t think I’d get in and out without an alarm going. But it didn’t matter. I was going to get in no matter what it took; smash a window, break down a door; anything, because even if I was caught by the cops, whatever sentence I got, whatever fine I was hit with or time I had to serve, it had to be less… less unpleasant than what would happen to me if you heard that answering machine tape.’

  ‘And if my friends in the Met had caught you, what were you going to claim was your purpose in breaking into my house?’

  I shrug again. ‘My, ah, first thought was to claim that I’d become obsessed with your wife, but then I thought you’d probably be pretty upset about that, too, so I decided I’d claim that I’d become a… vigilante or something, that I was looking for evidence of your criminality, or just wanted to give you a taste of your own medicine, subjecting you to crime. It didn’t matter how stupid it sounded, how lame, as long as I got that tape wiped.’

  ‘But the study was locked, Kenneth,’ Merrial says reasonably. ‘How did you get in there?’