The Crow Road

by Iain M. Banks

  ‘Just pipes and tanks,’ Helen shrugged. ‘There was a loft door into mum and dad’s room.’ She smiled. ‘When we started getting interested in sex, we used to pretend we’d get up there one night and see if we could catch them at it, but we were too frightened.’ Helen laughed lightly. ‘Had us giggling ourselves to sleep a few nights, though. And anyway, Ferg had put a bolt on it.’

  The little white Cessna roared overhead, waggling its wings. Lewis and Verity and Helen all waved. I stared up, seeing the single tiny figure waving in the cockpit. The plane banked, circled round the hill the castle stood on and came back over, lower, engine loud and echoing in the woods beneath.

  I made myself wave.

  Oh dear fucking holy shit, I thought.

  The plane waggled its wings again, then straightened out over Dunadd as Fergus took the Cessna - his Christmas present to himself - back north to its home at Connel.

  ‘That it?’ said Verity.

  ‘Yup,’ Helen said.

  ‘What did you expect?’ Lewis asked. ‘A crash?’

  ‘Oh ...’ said Verity, heading for the door to the stairs. ‘Let’s get back in the warm.’

  Blam! Remember, remember. Amman Hilton. Look -! JUST USE IT Kiss the sky, you idiot ...

  ‘Prentice?’ Lewis said, from the little door. I looked over at him. ‘Prentice?’ he said again. ‘Wake up, Prentice.’

  I’d been staring after the departing plane.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yeah.’ On still shaky legs, I followed the others down from the wind-blown battlements and into the warm bulk of the great stone building.

  ‘So the televisions weren’t going wonky at all,’ I said, still struggling to understand.

  ‘That’s right,’ Rory said. ‘It just looked like it, to me only.’ He plucked a long piece of grass from beside one of the standing stones and sucked on the yellow stalk.

  I followed suit. ‘So it was in your head; not real?’

  ‘Well ...’ Rory frowned, turning away a little and leaning back on the great stone. He folded his arms and looked out towards the steep little hill that was Dunadd. I stood to one side, watching him. His eyes looked old.

  ‘Things in your head can be real,’ he said, not looking at me. ‘And even when they aren’t, sometimes they ...’ he looked down at me, and I thought he looked troubled. ‘Somebody told me something once,’ he said. ‘And it sounded like it had really hurt him; he’d seen something that made him feel betrayed and hurt by somebody he was very close to, and I felt really sorry for this person, and I’m sure it’s affected them ever since ... but when I thought about it, he’d been asleep before this thing had happened, and asleep again afterwards, and it occurred to me that maybe he’d dreamed it all, and I still wonder.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell him that?’

  Rory looked at me for a while, his eyes searching mine, making me feel awkward. He spat the blade of grass out. ‘Maybe I should,’ he said. He nodded, looking out across the fields. ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ He shrugged.

  I stood there, back at the same stone my Uncle Rory had rested against, a decade earlier. I’d left the castle and driven here to the stone circle shortly after we’d come down from the battlements. There was still plenty of time to get back to Lochgair for dinner before I had to set off for Glasgow, and Ash.

  I leant against the great stone, the way Rory had when he’d talked about the man betrayed, the man who’d seen - or thought he’d seen - something that had hurt him. I looked ahead, out over the walls and fields and stands of trees. I shivered, though it wasn’t especially cold.

  ‘See?’ I said, quietly, to myself.

  Maybe Rory had been looking at Dunadd that day, as I’d assumed at the time. But beyond Dunadd, just a little to the right on this line of sight, I could see the hill where Gaineamh castle stood, its walls showing blunt and steel grey through the naked trees.

  ‘Prentice!’

  ‘... Yeah?’

  ‘Food! Come on, it’s getting cold!’

  Mum had been calling from the bottom of the stairs. I was sitting at the desk in the study, curtains open to the darkness, just the little desk light on, its brass stalk gleaming, its green shade glowing. I looked back down from my reflection in the dark computer screen, first to my watch - still half an hour before I had to leave to pick up Ashley - and then to the thin, battered-looking pocket diary lying opened on the desk.

  Fri F @ Cas, L.Rvr, trak, hills. Bothy;

  fire, fd, dnk, js. (F stnd) rt in clng!

  guns. F nsg. trs & scrts. F barfd

  WELCOME TO ARGYLL!

  I saw her hair first, shining tight-tied in a spotlight somewhere down the domestic arrivals concourse. I hadn’t seen Ashley Watt for about six weeks, after that night in London when I’d seen but not talked to Rupert Paxton-Marr. Ashley was dressed in the same business-like suit she’d worn that night, and carried a big shoulder bag. Her smile was broad.

  ‘Ash. Great to see you.’ I hugged her, lifting her off her feet.

  ‘Woo!’ she laughed throatily. ‘How ya doin, Presley?’

  I winced, dramatically, but still offered to carry her bag.

  ‘Prentice; you read a couple of things your uncle wrote and suddenly you’re accusing people of murder? Come on.’

  ‘Haven’t you looked at the files Doctor Gonzo sent over?’

  ‘Of course not; not my business, Prentice.’ Ashley sounded indignant. ‘Oh; before I forget,’ she said, reaching for her jacket on the back seat and digging into a pocket. She took out a little three-inch Sony disk and handed it to me. ‘Present from Colorado. Yours to tinker with.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, putting the disk in my shirt pocket. ‘I might, too; the spelling mistakes have been annoying me.’ I moved my head. ‘The stuff’s in that envelope on the back seat.’

  ‘You don’t want me to read it now, do you?’

  ‘There’s a torch.’

  ‘Am I allowed to finish building the spliff first?’

  ‘Okay, but then read.’

  I’d waited till we were out of Glasgow before I’d told Ashley about the horrible ideas concerning Fergus that I just couldn’t get out of my head.

  Most of the journey from Lochgair up to Glasgow I’d spent thinking, trying to work out what might be true and what false in the fragments of writing that Rory had left on disk. The rat in the ceiling and the confession of something over-seen; that was what had taken me back to stand amongst the standing stones that afternoon, after I’d left the castle.

  And remembering what Rory had said to me there had taken me back to that 1976 diary entry.

  rt in clng! F nsg.

  trs & scrts

  And the 1980 diary with the words JUST USE IT!, and the L that had been changed to a C; the L must stand for Lachlan Watt and the F for Fiona. That was the secret Fergus had told Rory, that night in the bothy; the story of Fergus waking up after being brought home from Hamish and Tone’s party and crawling through the castle roof-space to see his wife in bed with Lachy Watt. That was the party that Fiona and Lachlan had left together.

  Of course, all I had was Rory’s fictionalised word for any of it.

  So I’d asked my mum, over dinner.

  ‘Did Fiona ... leave a party with somebody else?’ she repeated, looking mystified.

  ‘It’s just something in one of Rory’s poems,’ I said. ‘... Not earth-shakingly important or anything, but there’s an odd sort of note that ... well, I just wondered if you knew, or had heard ...’ I shrugged, sipping my glass of water.

  Mum shook her head, helping herself to some more peas. ‘The only time I ever saw Fiona leave a party with somebody else, Fergus was there too. In body, at least.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ I said.

  ... scrts ...

  I owed the last, absurdly simple part of the theory to a stag that had suddenly run onto the road while I was zapping down Glen Croe, between the Rest-and-be-Thankful and Ardgartan. One moment the road ahead was clear in the headlights, next sec
ond Wha! Something dark brown looking big as a horse with huge antlers like some twisted aerial array came belting out of the forest across the road and leapt the downhill crash barrier. I slammed the brakes on, nearly locking the wheels. The beast disappeared into the darkness and the car swept through the single cloud of steamy breath it had left behind.

  I’d come off the brakes and accelerated again almost immediately, shaking my head and muttering curses at all kamikaze deer, and feeling my heart-beat start to slow again after my fright. I’d adjusted my seat belt and looked over at the passenger’s seat. Something had moved there, when I’d braked.

  I’d left the airmail envelope holding the print-out of Rory’s pieces sitting on the passenger seat, because I wanted Ashley to read them. The envelope had slipped forward under the deer-induced sharp braking, plonking down into the passenger footwell. I’d tutted, waited for the straight along the side of Loch Long, checked for traffic, then reached over, retrieved the package from the footwell and put it back on the seat.

  And that had set me pondering.

  I’d passed through Arrochar in a daze, thinking, of course!

  Ashley read the relevant passage while we travelled the new, fast stretch of the Loch Lomond road.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said slowly. ‘Mm-hmm.’ She put the sheaf of papers down, switched off the torch, looked at me, then lit the J. ‘So this is Rory’s idea of what happened just before Fergus and Fiona crashed?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And is this Rory indicating your Aunt Fiona fucked my Uncle Lachy?’ she sounded almost amused.

  ‘Right,’ I said. I glanced at her.

  ‘Kind of fanciful, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Jeez, he was hardly ever here, and they didn’t really move in the same social circles.’

  ‘Damn,’ I breathed. ‘Maybe you should have read the other two bits first.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Ashley drew smoke in, handed the J to me.

  I took a small toke. ‘Yuk; what’s this?’

  ‘Herbal mixture,’ Ash said. ‘No point giving up fags and then smoking tobacco in Js.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, handing the number back.

  ‘So what are you saying, Prentice? Did I miss something?’

  ‘Maybe.’ I shook my head, letting the car slow as we approached Tarbet. ‘Or maybe I’m reading too much into it ... want to read the other two bits?

  Ash sighed, accepted the J back and switched the torch back on.

  We passed Tarbet, accelerating over the shallow neck of land to Arrochar, pottered through the village at less than forty, then gathered speed again as we curved round the head of Loch Long, passing the place where I’d retrieved the airmail package from the footwell a couple of hours earlier.

  ‘Yeah, but what did Fergus tell Rory?’ Ash said, finishing that part.

  ‘Read the next bit,’ I said. I waved my hand when Ash offered me the joint.

  The road started to climb along the dark shoulder of the hillside towards the Rest-and-be-Thankful, leaving the old road still down in the floor of the glen. I kept a careful look out for Mad Stags From Hell crashing across the road, but none appeared.

  ‘Woof,’ Ash said, closing the last page. ‘Horny stuff towards the end there.’ She switched the torch off again. ‘You think that last bit is what Fergus told Rory in the bothy, if it really happened?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘There’s a diary entry to back it up, and there is a way through the castle’s attic from the observatory to the master bedroom, and a loft door. Helen mentioned it just today.’

  ‘But Prentice!’ Ash laughed, coughing. ‘All you’ve got is Rory’s ... written word for it!’

  ‘It’s all circumstantial, I know. Although mum does remember the party at Hamish and Tone’s, and Lachy did help Fiona take Fergus home.’

  ‘Wow,’ Ash said, tartly.

  ‘So anyway, what’s happened is: Fergus has spilled these beans to Rory, who’s spent years trying to come up with some creative ideas for his big project and failed dismally, then decided Just Use It; use the one spectacular piece of real-life drama only he and Fergus know about; he’s written this sort of diary piece about the time they were in the bothy together; another, more fictionalised bit about what Fergus actually saw; and then a third passage that ... well, that’s the point.’ I glanced over at her. ‘I was hoping you might see the same thing I did in that last bit, the bit in the car. I think that was what Rory was writing just before he borrowed the bike and went to see Fergus, because of what he had started to suspect, when he was writing that.’

  ‘Went to see Fergus?’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked over at her. ‘And Fergus killed him.’

  ‘What? And Fergus killed him?’ Ash said, voice high. ‘Why, Prentice?’ She opened the window a crack and threw the roach out.

  ‘I’ll come to that,’ I said, holding up one finger. We were passing Loch Restil now; I was still watching out for stags.

  Ashley shook her head. ‘Prentice, have you been reading crime novels instead of your history books?’

  I gave a small laugh. ‘No. The worst crimes are always in the history books, anyway.’

  Ash undid her hair, reached into her bag and started to brush her hair with a long-tooth comb. ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Okay. So keep going.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘That guy Paxton-Marr. He’d been sending dad those match-book covers ... I mean match-book covers, right?’

  ‘Yeah, so?’

  ‘So he knows Fergus; Fergus was getting the guy to send them, making dad think Rory was still alive, farting around all over the world. Why should Fergus want to do that?’

  ‘I don’t know, but what’s so special about match-book covers?’

  I looked over for a moment; her face was pale in the lights of an on-coming car. ‘That bit in the bothy,’ I told her. ‘Rory tells Fergus he accidentally set fire to a barn on the estate when he was a kid. I think the only other person Rory’d ever told about that was dad, who thought that nobody else knew. So when these match-book covers came from all over the world, he thought it was a secret sign from Rory.’

  Ashley was silent for a while, then sighed. ‘What fertile imaginations you have in your family.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  We rounded the long left-hander into Glen Kinglas, where Verity had almost lost the back-end of the Beemer a year earlier. The long straight disappeared into the darkness. A few tiny red sparks in the distance were tail lights. I had another shivery feeling of déjà-vu.

  Ashley tapped her fingers on the dashboard, then ran them through her hair. After a while she said, ‘And what did Rory suspect?’

  ‘Murder. His sister’s murder.’

  Ash took her time before answering. ‘You think Fergus killed your Aunt Fiona as well?”

  I nodded. ‘You guessed it.’

  ‘She was already dead when they had the crash?’

  ‘Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that,’ I admitted. I came off the power. I checked the mirror; there was nothing following us, and no headlights in front. ‘No, I believe Rory got it right in that bit he wrote, and she was alive when they crashed; I was thinking of something else.’

  ‘What?’ Ash said.

  I braked smoothly as though we were approaching a sharp corner, not on a long straight. From the corner of my eye, I could see Ash looking at me. I changed down to second gear, let the engine brake the car. I reached over and hit the little red release button on Ashley’s seat belt, then I slammed the brakes on. The Golf skidded briefly along the road on locked wheels. I heard Ashley shout something. Her hands went out in front of her. She shot forward, harder than I’d intended and went ‘Oof!’ against the dashboard, blonde hair flying. Her head hit the screen.

  The car juddered to a stop.

  I stared in horror.

  Ash sat rubbing her forehead. She glared at me. She was holding her chest just underneath her breasts with her other hand. She glared at me. ‘What the fucking hell was that for, Prentice?’
>
  ‘Oh shit,’ I said, hand to mouth. ‘Oh God, are you all right?’ I checked the mirror, put both hands to my mouth. ‘I didn’t mean to actually hurt you.’

  ‘Well you actually did, you idiot.’ She looked down at her seatbelt anchorage, then at the buckle. One side of the belt was still wrapped round her. I sat staring at her, my back against the driver’s door, my heart pounding. Ashley patted her forehead, studied her fingers, then scowled at me and sat back in her seat, re-fixing her seatbelt. She waggled her shoulders, sticking her chest out a little and grimacing through the screen at the dark grey length of road exposed to the headlights. ‘You complete fool, Prentice; I may never dance the rhumba again.’ She looked at me, then pointed forwards. ‘Drive.’

  ‘God, I’m sorry,’ I said. I got the car moving again.

  Ash patted her chest and inspected her forehead in the mirror on the back of the sun-visor, using the torch she’d been reading with. ‘No lasting damage done, I think,’ she said, snapping the torch off and the visor shut.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ I said. I rubbed my hands on my trousers, one at a time. ‘I didn’t mean -’

  ‘Enough,’ Ash said. ‘I promise I won’t sue, okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘But I’m really -’

  ‘You think,’ Ash interrupted, ‘that your Uncle Fergus killed his wife by driving off the road and undoing her seat belt just before they hit?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Slow down, will you?’ Ash said.

  ‘Eh?’ I said, slowing. We hadn’t been going particularly fast.

  Then I realised. ‘Oh. Yeah,’ I said, feeling even worse. ‘I pick my places, don’t I?’

  Ash didn’t reply; we both watched, silent, as the Golf dawdled past the parking place at the Cowal road junction where Darren Watt had died.

  ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Oh God, I’m doing an awful lot of apol -’

  ‘Forget it,’ Ash said. ‘Let’s get home.’

  I shook my head. ‘Oh shit,’ I said miserably.