by Iain Banks
'I'd love a shot,' I said between corners. 'Would you let me drive? Just for a bit.'
'Well, I don't know. There's the insurance…' It was the most worried he'd sounded so far. 'I'd love to let you, Kathryn, but —'
'I'm insured.'
'But, Kathryn, this is a Ferrari.'
'I've driven Ferraris. Uncle Freddy used to lend me the Daytona when I was staying at Blysecrag sometimes.'
'Oh? Well, yes, but that's front-engined, you see, quite different handling characteristics. The 355 is mid-engined. Much trickier on the limit.'
'He let me loose in the F40, too. And, of course, I wouldn't be going anywhere near the limit.'
He glanced at me. 'He let you drive the F40?'
'A couple of times.'
'I never drove the F40.' He sounded like a disappointed schoolboy. 'What's it like?'
'Brutal.'
'Brutal?'
'Brutal.'
We stopped at a semi-circular gravel terrace on a wide corner near the summit of a pass, just above the tree-line.
He pulled the car up and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, then turned to me with a grin and let his gaze fall to my knees. I was wearing a skirt and jacket, silk blouse; just business-like, nothing provocative. 'If I let you have a shot of the car, what do I get in return?' He reached out and put his hand on my knee. It was warm and slightly damp.
I think I made my mind up then. I lifted his hand off and put it back on his own thigh, smiled and said, 'We'll see.'
He smiled. 'She's all yours.' He got out; he held the driver's door open for me. I slipped in. The engine was still running, idling quietly. The door closed with a thunk. I felt in my bag, pulled out my phone and checked the display. We had signal. I clicked the central locking while Poudenhaut was moving round the front of the car.
He hesitated when he heard the locks click, then tried the passenger's door. He bent down, knocking at the window glass with one crooked finger. 'Hello? May I come in?' He was still. smiling.
I fastened my seat-belt. 'I think you've been lying to me, Adrian,' I told him. I tested the accelerator, blipping the engine up towards the four thousand revs mark and letting it fall back again.
'Kathryn?' he said, as though he hadn't heard me properly.
'I said, I think you've been lying to me, Adrian. I'm not convinced you don't know more about this Silex thing than you're letting on.'
'What the hell are you talking about?'
'I think you know exactly what I'm talking about, Adrian. And I'd like to ask you a few more questions about what was really in there.' I reached into my bag and waved a piece of plastic and metal at him. 'And needed lots of heavy-duty phone connectors like this.'
He stared through the glass with a look of utter fury, then stood up, glanced around and ran behind the car. I watched in the rear-view mirror while he found a couple of large rocks from the side of the road; he ran back quickly and wedged them on either side of the car's offside rear wheel, stamping them into place. I reached over and tested the glove-box; still open. I pulled the keys out, letting the engine die, locked the glove-box on the key, then restarted the engine. Poudenhaut clapped his hands free of dust as he came back to the window. 'You were a bit slow there, Kathryn,' he said, bending to look in at me.
He sat on the car's wing, looking out at the road. I could still hear his voice quite clearly through the hood's layers of fabric. 'I suppose what we have here is a Mexican stand-off, isn't that what they call it?' He swivelled at the hips and looked round at me through the windscreen. 'Come on, Kathryn. If you're upset I put my hand on your knee, if that's what this is all about, we'll forget it ever happened. I don't know what you're talking about with this Silex thing and phone lines and so on, but let's at least discuss it like adults. You're just being childish. Come on, let me back into the car.'
'What was really going on, Adrian? Was it a dealing room? Is that what you had in there? Was that what the hidden room was all about?'
'Kathryn, if you don't stop this nonsense I'm just going to have to…' He patted his breast pocket, but his phone was in the car, connected to a hands-free kit. He smiled and spread his hands. 'Well, I suppose I'll just have to flag down the next car. The Swiss police won't be very happy about this, Kathryn, if they have to get involved.'
'Were you in on what happened to Mike Daniels, Adrian, or was that just Colin Walker on his own? Well, alone apart from the bimbo and the dentist?'
He stared at me, his mouth open. He closed it.
'And the wheeze of sending a number to Mr Shinizagi like that. What was it — a bank sort code? Account number? That must have been Mr Hazleton's idea, right? He's into numbers and puzzles and shit, isn't he? You can count to over a thousand using your fingers; he ever mention that to you? And, of course, if you use somebody's teeth as binary code, you can count to over two billion, or transmit up to a ten-figure number.'
He came rushing around the car and started pulling at the passenger door's handle. 'You just let me in now, you fucking bitch. You fucking smart-assed bitch, let me in now! Let me in or I'll tear this hood off with my own hands.'
'Your Swiss army knife's in the glove-box with the spare keys, Ade. Oh, what were you keeping the revs down to, Ade? Five thousand, wasn't it?' I blipped the accelerator for longer this time. The rev counter's needle swung sharply up: to six, then seven thousand. The rev counter was red-lined at eight and a half thousand, though it went up from there to ten thousand. The engine screamed, making a wonderful metallic, spine-tingling yowl; a noise that must have echoed off nearby mountains and very possibly exceeded the drive-by noise regulations of several Swiss cantons.
'What are you doing?' Poudenhaut shouted. 'Stop that!'
I stepped on the gas again; the engine responded instantly, producing another fabulous pulse of sound. 'Woah, we were up to eight thousand that time, Adrian,' I told him. 'Nearly into the red.'
He'd given up pulling at the door handle, possibly afraid that he'd break it. He was standing a couple of metres away, looking utterly distraught and trembling, whether with fear or rage it was hard to tell.
I stamped on the accelerator, pushing it briefly to the floor this time. The noise was crushing, vast, furious, like a whole pride of lions screaming in your ear at once. The needle on the rev counter flicked briefly into the red area on the dial, then fell away again and clunked back towards the idling zone. 'We hit the red zone there, Adrian. Can't be doing the car any good.'
'Fuck off! Just fuck off! Fuck you! Fuck you, you cunt! It's just fucking metal. Fuck you!' He looked like he was crying. He turned on his heel and stamped off towards the road, shoulders hunched. I let him get to the metalled surface, then floored the gas pedal and held it there for a few seconds. The car quaked, the engine screamed, wailing like something in the utmost extremity of agony. It would have been a hard thing to do for anybody with the slightest amount of mechanical sympathy, and I wasn't enjoying it but, then, it was a means to an end, and in the end our Adrian was right: it was just metal. No matter what it sounded like, the only real suffering was being done by him. Poudenhaut shook as he heard this noise, then he spun round and came charging back. He beat on the hood with his fists. 'Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! My car! Stop it!'
'Can you smell that, Adrian? Smells like burning oil or something, don't you think? Oh, look, there's a red light on in here. Can't imagine that bodes too well.' I blipped the throttle again. The engine caterwauled, metallic and harsh. 'That sound different to you? I thought it sounded different that time. More of a metallic edge, seemed to me. What do you think? Here, have another listen…'
'Stop it! Stop it!'
'You'd better answer my questions, Adrian, or soon I'm going to get bored and then I'll just keep my foot planted pedal to the metal until the fucker seizes.'
'You fucking bitch!'
'Here we go, Adrian.'
'All right! What?'
'Sorry?' I said.
I pressed a finger to the window lift, de
pressing it slightly so that the window cracked open by about a centimetre. He forced his fingers through the gap and tried to shove the window down further. I hit the button again and the window started to lift, trapping his fingers between the top edge of the glass and the fabric-covered metal frame of the hood. He screamed.
'Shit,' I said, 'I didn't think you could do that with a modern car. I thought they were all supposed to have a sensor or something that stopped that happening.'
Poudenhaut tried to pull his fingers free, but couldn't. 'You fucking bitch! My fingers!'
'What do you reckon, Adrian? Are Ferrari above fitting that sort of namby-pamby safety device, or do you think it's just not working? I don't know. I'm still not convinced that Fiat have all the reliability concerns licked. Never mind. Going into the red again here, Ade.' Another swinging, rasping, screaming bellow of noise.
'All right!'
'What?' I lifted my phone and studied the display.
'All right! Fucking let me go!'
'Pardon, Adrian? What was that?' I punched some numbers, listened, then hit some more.
'I said all right! Can't you fucking hear me? All right!'
'What?' I was still fiddling with the phone, jabbing numbers. I held it up to the window. 'You'll have to repeat that, Adrian.'
'It was a dealing room!'
'In Silex?'
'Yes! So fucking what? We could have fucking lost money too, you know!'
'The value of your investments can go down as well as up,' I agreed.
'It doesn't matter! It's all over. We sent the money to Shinizagi! That's what he wanted! Daniels raped his daughter; the fucker deserved worse! Who fucking cares anyway? Let me go! Ah! My fucking fingers!'
'What's it all for, Adrian?' I asked, still holding the phone up to the window. 'What was the money for? What is Shinizagi supposed to do with it?'
'I don't know!'
'Oh, bad answer, Adrian. Could cost you a brand new engine.' I hit the throttle. The engine zinged monstrously. It really didn't sound right now. I thought I caught a puff of ominously grey-blue smoke in the rear-view mirror.
'I don't fucking know! Something to do with Fenua Ua, maybe, but he wouldn't tell me! You fucking bitch! My fingers are breaking!'
'Hazleton wouldn't tell you?'
'No! I didn't need to know! It's just a guess! I'm just guessing!'
'Hmm,' I said. I let the window down a fraction.
'You cunt,' he hissed, and tried to shove his hands in towards my throat. I leant back and pressed the window up again, trapping him by the wrists. He gurgled, his fingers waving near my face like pink anemones.
I felt in my bag and brought out an aerosol can. 'Not wise, Adrian. This is Mace. Very bad for your eyes and mucous membranes. Could ruin your whole day. I think you ought to back off. I've already called the police. If you behave yourself they may accept it was all a terrible mistake, otherwise I'm going to get very tearful and upset and claim you've been trying to assault me. Put yourself in their place: who would you believe?'
'You fucking bitch,' he sobbed. 'I'll fucking get you for this.'
'No, Adrian. You won't. Because if you try to, I'll do much worse things to you than this. Now, lean back. Lean back on your heels. Let your arms take your weight. That's it.' I pressed the window lift button again; down, then up. His hands pulled free as he staggered back. He stood on the gravel, rubbing his wrists and tenderly massaging his fingers, his face streaked with tears. I held the phone up so he could see it and hit the off button, then dialled Happy Hans and told him where we were.
'What about the police?' Poudenhaut asked, glancing warily up the switchback road.
'Don't worry,' I said. I hadn't called the police, just somebody's answerphone. The Mace wasn't Mace, either; it was a can of Armani. I nodded at the low wall at the edge of the gravel semi-circle. 'Why don't you go and sit down, Adrian?'
I turned the car's engine off. It sputtered down to silence, then started to tick and click behind me.
Poudenhaut kneaded his fingers and looked at me with an expression full of rage and hate, but he went and sat down on the wall.
Hans brought the 7 -series crunching on to the gravel about ten minutes later. He parked opposite, between me and Poudenhaut, then got out and held the door open for me. I waved Adrian goodbye, and got in. I looked back as we drove off. When we were about a hundred metres up the road, while Poudenhaut was staring through the open door at the Ferrari's steering column and turning to look towards us, I lowered my window and threw the 355's keys out.
'Kathryn?'
'Mr Hazleton.'
'I've spoken with Adrian Poudenhaut. He's very upset.'
'Yes, I think I'd be upset in his situation too, Mr Hazleton.'
'Apparently you made some rather wild allegations about me. Which he might have seemed to confirm, though of course it was done under considerable duress. Not the sort of thing that would stand up in court. In fact, the sort of behaviour that could very easily land you in court, Kathryn. I'm not sure what you did to poor Adrian isn't against the Geneva Convention.'
'Where are you, Mr Hazleton?'
'Where am I, Kathryn?'
'Yes, Mr Hazleton. We have these conversations on the phone and you quite often know where I am, whether it's in the middle of the Himalayas or on an obsolete cruise liner, but you're always just this placeless, disembodied voice floating in from the airwaves for me. I keep wondering where you are. Boston? That's where you live in the States, isn't it? Or Egham, on the Thames. That's your UK home, isn't it? Maybe you're here in Switzerland: I've no idea. I'd just like to know for once.'
'Well, Kathryn, I'm on a fishing boat off the island of St Kitts, in the Caribbean.'
'Weather nice?'
'A little hot. Whereabouts in Switzerland are you?'
'I'm walking in the grounds of the château,' I lied. I was nearby, but not in the compound itself. I was in a neat but damp little park in the town of Château d'Oex; I could see the château through the trees on the other side of the valley. If things were going according to plan, Hans the chauffeur would be there now, picking up my things from the rather swish two-balcony room. I walked across springy black rubber tiles and sat on a child's swing. I looked warily around, not so much for Hazleton-controlled Business heavies like Colin Walker as for ordinary Swiss citizens, who'd probably shout at me for sitting on a swing meant for persons of less than a certain height and/or age. Nobody about. I was probably safe. I lifted my feet up and swung gently back and forth.
'There,' Hazleton said. 'Now we each know where the other is perhaps we can discuss more serious matters.'
'Ah, yes. Like your Couffabling antics.'
'Kathryn, you are probably already in deep trouble. I wouldn't make it any worse for yourself.'
'No, Mr Hazleton, I think you're the one in trouble. You're way up ordure inlet with no means of non-manual hydro-kinetic propulsion, and the sooner you drop this patronising now-look-here-young-lady bullshit the better.'
'What a colourful turn of phrase you employ, Kathryn.'
'Thank you. Yes, I'm firing on all cylinders, Mr H, which is probably more than can be said for Adrian's Ferrari.'
'Indeed. As I said, he is very upset.'
'Tough. So, let me run this past you, Mr H: a senior executive in a venerable but still vital business organisation specialising in long-term investment sets up an unofficial and cleverly sited dealing room in a factory which the very people he's cheating on are keeping secure. He makes, oh, I don't know how much money, stashes it in several accounts, probably here in the land of the oversize Toblerone bar, and then sends one of the account numbers to the chief executive officer of a Japanese corporation via an unorthodox route involving somebody's mouth. Oh, and this CEO — according to my latest research — has just resigned and bought himself his own golf course outside Kyoto. Now that must have cost a pretty penny, don't you think? However, most of the money will be used to buy a small and very low-lying piece of oceanic la
nd, a personal pocket state for our enterprising exec. It's all a double-bluff, maybe even three-cup trick. The Business is fooled once, by its own decoy in the Pacific, while the Seats are fooled twice, once in the —'
'Kathryn, if I can just stop you there.'
'Yes, Mr Hazleton?'
'I'd just like to point out that the CIA and other US agencies regularly monitor cellphone transmissions in the Caribbean area. They're usually looking for drug-dealers, but I'm sure anything else of interest they happened to hear would be passed on to the relevant governmental department.'
'Such as the State Department?'
'Exactly. Let's just say I understand what you're getting at without you having to go into any more detail. It's all very interesting indeed, in a hypothetical sort of way, but where exactly does this leave us?'
'It leaves you with a choice, Mr Hazleton.'
'And what would you suggest that is? I suspect you're dying to tell me.'
'Beyond a confession extracted — and recorded, I might add — under some duress, a few specialised land-line connectors and some circumstantial stuff, I don't really have that much evidence.'
'Yes. And? But?'
'But the evidence must be there. I'm sure the Essex kids could be traced easily enough, for example, with the right resources.'
'The Essex kids?'
'That's what the regular people at Silex called the eager beavers wheeling and dealing for you in the secret room.'