The Crow Road

by Iain M. Banks

  ‘Fine, thanks, Davey,’ mum smiled. Dressed in jeans and a thick jumper, she looked a little dark around the eyes, but otherwise okay.

  ‘Right you are, then. You look after that heid of yours, okay, Prentice?’

  ‘As though it were my own,’ I breathed, adjusting my towel.

  Mum saw him out.

  The CID were still in the study, looking for fingerprints. They’d be lucky. I looked out of the dining-room window to where a couple of policemen were searching the bushes near the kitchen door.

  My, we were being well looked after. I doubted a roughly equivalent fracas in one of the poorer council estates would have attracted quite such diligent and comprehensive investigation. But maybe that was just me being cynical.

  My head hurt, my feet hurt, my fingers hurt. All the extremities. Well, save one, thankfully. Most of the damage came from the central light fixture in the study ceiling. It was part of that - a large, heavy, brass part of it - which had hit me on the head, and it was the shattered glass of its shades which had cut my feet as I’d stumbled around the study. My fingers hurt from the impact of computer keyboard and steel tyre-iron.

  The desk drawers had been levered open. The back of the desk’s matching chair had taken the full force of a blow with the tyre-iron, the light fixture had been hit accidentally by the same implement and the ceiling rose damaged, the Compaq’s keyboard was wrecked and the kitchen door needed a new lock. I felt I could use a new head.

  Nothing had been stolen, though I’d noticed that all the papers I’d been looking at earlier that night - and which I’d left scattered round the couch - had been neatly gathered together and piled on one end of the desk, under a paperweight. The envelope I’d left in the desk’s top right drawer that morning was still here. The police didn’t open it. Apart from the damage, and that one contrary act of tidiness, it looked like our attacker had taken nothing, and left behind him only the petrol and the tyre-iron.

  I wanted to phone Fergus; ask him how he was. Good night’s sleep? Any aches and pains? But mum had been fussing over me after Doctor Fyfe had said I’d need watching for a day or two and I wasn’t being allowed to do very much. Somehow I lacked the will, anyway.

  They’d asked me if I had any idea who it might have been, and I’d said No. I didn’t say anything to my mother, or anybody else, either.

  What could I say?

  I was certain it had been Fergus - his build had been right, and even though I’d been dazed, I swear he did hesitate when I spoke his name - but how was I supposed to convince anybody else? I shook my head, then grimaced, because it hurt. I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid, not even thinking that he might try and steal or destroy whatever evidence he thought I had. ‘Is this something you’ve read?’ I whispered to myself, remembering what Fergus had asked me. ‘In your father’s papers, after his death?’

  Jeez. I felt myself blush at my naïvety.

  Mum continued to fuss, but I got better through the day.

  After the CID boys finished in the study, I photocopied all Rory’s papers - though I had to drag a chair over to the photocopier and sit down to do it - then, before the police left, and after much pleading, got mum to drive into Gallanach and deposit the parcelled originals in the bank. She came back with a new lock for the kitchen door. I hadn’t been able to persuade her that a little holiday - in Glasgow, maybe - would be a good idea, so while she was away I rang Dean Watt and asked if he and Tank Thomas fancied coming to stay at Lochgair for a few days. Tank was a quiet and normally docile friend of the Watts’, two metres tall and one across; I’d once seen him carry a couple of railway sleepers, one over each shoulder, without even breaking sweat.

  James - who’d earlier been appalled that he’d only missed the first two periods of school while the police interviewed him - arrived back at four, glowing with glory. Apparently his part in the night’s events - which I’d thought consisted largely of sticking his head round his bedroom door and being told to get back in again (and doing as he was told, for once) - had gained something in the translation at school; I suspected the gains involved the single-handed beating-off an attack by an entire gang of ninja assassins while mum and I slept.

  I told mum about Dean and Tank, but she wasn’t having it, and rang Dean up to cancel the protection I’d arranged. The police had promised to keep an eye on the house over the next few nights, after all; a patrol car would check up the drive. This didn’t sound like much good to me, but mum seemed reassured.

  Old Mr Docherty, a leathery-faced octogenarian with wispy white hair who was one of our neighbours in the village, arrived at tea-time and offered to come over with his shot-gun and sit up all night. ‘Ah’ve nuthin tae steal maself, Mrs McHoan, and Ah’d rather make sure you and the bairns were all right. Canny have this sort aw thing going on in Lochgair, ye know. Be Glasgow people, Ah tell ye. Be Glasgow boys.’

  Mum thanked him, but refused. He seemed happy when we asked him to help us fit the new lock on the kitchen door. Lewis was all set to come up from London when we told him what had happened, but mum persuaded him we were fine, really.

  Fretting for something else to do, I rang up Mrs McSpadden at the castle and related all that had happened, and twice told her how I suspected the raider had been after Rory’s papers, which I’d copied and deposited in the bank. ‘In the bank, Prentice,’ she repeated, and I could hear her voice echoing. ‘Good idea.’

  I asked after Fergus and Mrs McSpadden said he was fine. He and his friends had been out fishing that day.

  To my own amazement, I slept soundly that night. James said lights came up to the drive twice. I had to go and see Doctor Fyfe that day, and mum insisted on driving me into Gallanach, despite the fact I felt fine. Doctor Fyfe gave me permission to go back to Glasgow that evening, providing I took the train and stayed with friends.

  I stayed the extra night instead, and left by car in the early hours, taking Rory’s diaries and the copies of his papers with me. I phoned Mrs McSpadden from Glasgow and told her that, too, and discovered that Fergus had gone to Edinburgh for a couple of days. On impulse, I told her I’d remembered something more from the attack, and I’d be going to the police in a day or two, once I’d checked on something.

  Back at university, I attended lectures - hobbling a little on my cut feet - and I studied, though I had headaches on the Monday and the Tuesday night. I made sure Mrs Ippot’s house was securely locked each night, and closed all the shutters. I rang mum three or four times each day. Mum said Fergus had sent a huge bouquet of flowers to the house, when he’d heard what had happened. He’d phoned from Edinburgh and advised getting an alarm system fitted, and knew a firm in Glasgow who’d do it cost price, as a favour to him. Wasn’t that sweet of him? Oh, and I hadn’t forgotten she and Fergus would be coming to Glasgow for the opera at the end of the week, had I?

  I said of course not.

  I put the phone down, numb, my thoughts racing in a kind of aimless short-circuit as I wondered what on earth I was going to do.

  And, naturally, I followed the war like a good little media-consumer.

  The clichés were starting to come out. It was hardly possible to open a newspaper, turn on a television or listen to a radio programme without having rammed down the relevant orifice some witless variation on the facile adage concerning truth being the first casualty of war; a truism that is arguably a neat piece of propaganda itself, implying as it does that the majority of the military, politicians and media have any interest in, respect for or experience with disseminating the truth even in times of profoundest peace.

  I started inventing reasons for not putting mum and Fergus up on the Friday. I would be ill. I would have a bad cold. I would discover that the tenancy agreement specified I couldn’t have anybody else to stay over-night at the Ippot house. The electricity had been cut off due to a computer error. A gas leak. Serious structural deficiencies caused by the weight of mirrors and chandeliers. Anything.

  I stopped watching the
war at Tuesday lunch-time because if I’d carried on the way I had been, the history we were living through was going to stop me getting my degree for the history that had been and gone.

  Ash rang on the Tuesday evening. I told her everything that had happened, at the castle and Lochgair. She didn’t seem to know what to make of it all; she said maybe I ought to go to the police. She sounded low, and said things weren’t too good at work, though she wouldn’t be more specific.

  Meanwhile, the sound of her voice was pulling me apart; it filled me with elation at the same time as it plunged me into despair. I wanted to shout Look, woman, I think I’m falling in love with you! I am! I do! I love you! Honest! I’m sure! Well, almost certain! ... but you couldn’t; I couldn’t. It wasn’t the sort of equivocal thing to shout at any time, and even if I had been completely sure how I felt, I probably couldn’t have told her, not just then. I got the impression it wasn’t the sort of thing she wanted to hear anyway. She sounded like she just wanted to keep her head down for the moment; keep things quiet, uncomplicated; just cool out. Recently banged-on-the-head nutters raving down the phone at her suddenly declaring undying passionate love for no apparent reason was probably the last thing she needed. I was sure about that. Well, fairly certain.

  So it was a desultory kind of phone call. I felt pretty depressed myself at the end of it. I didn’t ask her about her love-life.

  I put the phone down feeling the same way I had a year earlier, the day I’d been travelling from Gallanach to Glasgow after Hogmanay, and I’d pretended to be asleep when the train stopped at Lochgair. Remembering that cowardice and that shame, I almost picked the phone up again to call Ash back, and my hand reached out a couple of times, and I debated with myself, muttering, my face contorting with silly expressions, and I told myself I was acting like a madman, and I really wanted to make that call and I really ought to, but I was terrified to do it as well, even though I knew that I should ... shouldn’t I? Yes; yes I should; yes I definitely ought to, it was obvious, clear definite. I should.

  But in the end I didn’t.

  At least there was always work to be done. I’d submerged myself in my studies with a feeling of almost orgasmic relief. The very fact the past can be taken or left made me want to accept it; the sheer demanding immediacy of the present made it repulsive.

  And so everything returned to a sort of normality, which didn’t last, of course.

  On Wednesday, the 23rd of January 1991, shortly after noon, Fergus Walter Cruden Urvill left Gaineamh Castle in his Range Rover and travelled north through the town of Gallanach and the village of Kilmartin, passing Carnasserie Castle and the cairn and standing stone at Kintraw, crossed the thin flood plain of the Barbreck River above Loch Craignish, travelled inland again to rejoin the shore at the cut-off for the Craobh Haven marina development, and then curved past the village of Arduaine, skirting Loch Melfort before passing through Kilmelford and entering the forest that led to Glen Gallain and then down to the shore of Loch Feochan and the twisting road heading for Oban. The Range Rover passed through the town a little before one o’clock and continued north to Connel, waited for the traffic lights to change at the old bridge over the Falls of Lora, then crossed, negotiated some road-works and finally turned left off the road a little further on, entering the thin strip of level coastal ground that was the Connel airstrip.

  Fergus Urvill parked the Range Rover in the airfield car park. He talked to one Michael Kerr, from the village of Benderloch a couple of kilometres up the road from the field. Kerr was repairing the car-park fence; Mr Urvill said he wanted to use the telephone in the Portakabin that served as the airfield office. Michael Kerr said that Mr Urvill seemed in a good mood, and told him that he would be flying out to one of the Outer Hebrides (‘the Utter HeBrides,’ were his exact words), where an old school friend lived. He was going to surprise this friend and take him a bottle of whisky for a belated Hogmanay. He showed Michael Kerr the bottle of Bowmore whisky he was taking with him, in a small leather suitcase which also contained some clothes and toiletries. The only thing Kerr noticed that was out of the ordinary was that Mr Urvill grimaced a couple of times, and flexed his shoulders oddly. Kerr asked the older man if he was all right, and Fergus said yes, but it felt like a couple of ribs were acting up a little. An old injury; nothing to worry about.

  Mrs Eliza McSpadden, the housekeeper at the castle, had confirmed that Mr Urvill had complained of chest pains the night before, and had taken some Paracetamol painkillers. He had taken a box of the tablets with him that morning, when he drove to Connel. He had said he would be away for a couple of days, and - apparently on impulse as he was about to get into the car - asked Mrs McSpadden to prepare some of her Cullen Skink soup for his lunch on the Friday. He wouldn’t need more as he would be dining with Mrs Mary McHoan in Glasgow that evening, before the opera. The Colonial restaurant in Glasgow later confirmed that they had a booking for two for the Friday evening in Mr Urvill’s name.

  When Mr Urvill came back out of the airfield office, it was about one-thirty. Michael Kerr helped him check the Cessna aircraft. The plane taxied to the end of the runway, faced into a wind and then took off into a five-knot south-westerly breeze, in good visibility under a five-thousand-foot cloud-base of light overcast. The forecast said the breeze would freshen and veer to the south east that evening, and the following few days would be bright and clear with a steady southerly wind of force three or four.

  The Cessna was spotted by the British Army radar base on the island of St Kilda flying into an area that was restricted for missile testing. The light aircraft was flying at an altitude of two thousand feet on a bearing of 320°, which would take it towards Iceland. There was no radio response from the plane, and an RAF Nimrod, on patrol over the North Atlantic, was diverted to intercept.

  The Nimrod rendezvoused with the light aircraft at 1516 GMT. It decreased speed and flew almost alongside, a little above and ahead of the Cessna for twenty-five minutes, attempting to make radio and visual contact. The Nimrod crew reported that the single occupant of the plane seemed to be unconscious, slumped back in his seat.

  At 1541 GMT the Cessna’s engine started to cut out and the plane - presumably out of fuel - began to lose altitude. The engine stopped altogether less than a minute later. The plane pitched forward, causing the pilot’s body to slump over the controls, whereupon the aircraft went into a steep dive and started to spin. It fell into the sea, impacting at 1543.

  The Nimrod circled, dropping a life raft and reporting the position of the wreck to nearby shipping. The plane sank twenty minutes later, as the sun was setting. There was little visible wreckage. An East German trawler picked up the Nimrod’s liferaft during the following morning.

  The crew of the Nimrod reported that at no time had the figure on board the light aircraft shown any sign of consciousness.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Prentice?’

  ‘Speaking. Is -?

  ‘It’s Ashley. I just heard about Fergus.’

  ‘Ashley! Ah ... Yeah. I heard this afternoon. I was going to call; I don’t have your work number.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘Do you know any more than what’s been on the news?’

  ‘Well, mum went up to the castle to see if Mrs McSpadden needed a hand, and she said she seemed kind of shell-shocked; kept talking about soup.’

  ‘Soup?’

  ‘Soup. Cullen Skink, specifically.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah, well, apparently Fergus seemed in good spirits, but he’d had some chest pains, the night before. Anyway, he drove up to Connel to fly out to the Hebrides to see some chum of his out there, and next thing we know he’s dive-bombing the Atlantic and forgetting to pull up. Unconscious, apparently.’

  ‘Hmm ... so what do you think?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Mum said she asked Mrs McSpadden who he was going to see, and she said she didn’t know who it could have been. The police had alre
ady asked her that, apparently; they said they would make enquiries.’

  ‘Right. You think it was a heart attack?’

  ‘I don’t know. Umm ...’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, apparently Mrs McSpadden said Fergus had a phone call the night before. She took it initially, then handed the phone to him.’

  ‘Yeah? And?’

  ‘Whoever it was, they were Scottish, but it was an international phone call; a satellite call. Mrs McSpadden thought she recognised the voice but she wasn’t sure.’

  ‘Hmm. Recognised the voice.’

  ‘Yeah. Did ... I mean, did she know Lachy?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, she did. They both worked behind the bar in the Jac, about ... twenty years ago, maybe.’

  ‘Ah-ha.’

  ‘Ah-ha indeed.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Look, Ash, I’ve been mean -’ I heard a noise in the background.

  ‘Shit, that’s the door. What?’

  The breath sighed out of me. ‘Ah ... nothing. Take care, Ash.’

  ‘Yeah, you too, bye.’

  I put the phone down, put my head back, looked up at the plaster stalactites that formed the ceiling frieze in the study of the Ippot house, and howled like a dog.

  The Strathclyde Police received a telephone tip-off at their head-quarters in Glasgow that a drug ring was using Loch Coille Bharr - just south of the Argyllshire village of Crinan - as a hiding place for cocaine, at 1325 on January the 23rd. The tip-off was quite specific; talking of weighted, water-tight plastic cylinders towed behind yachts coming from the Continent and transferred to the loch to await pick-up by dealers from Glasgow. The loch was cordoned off that day and police divers started searching the south end of the loch the following morning, while policemen in small boats used grappling hooks to drag the rest.