by Iain Banks
I don’t know why I do a rugby tackle. I’ve never even fucking played rugby, but I throw myself at his knees, cracking into them with my right shoulder and wrapping both arms round his legs as he falls, both of us shouting, then I realise what a stupid move this was because he still has his hands free with the gun in one hand and the clip in the other, and so I let go and sort of kick forward with one knee to stop myself going flat out and grab at the hand that’s got the gun as Fraser’s shoulders hit the sand.
Something cracks against the side of my head, ringing my head like a bell, but some part of my brain isn’t having this and just takes a tighter and tighter grip of the hand with the gun. There’s a blur of movement and another terrific whack on the side of my head and then a scream and a flash of something pale, just to one side, and suddenly Fraser’s whipping backwards with a cracking sound and he’s gone limp and I’m falling down on top of him, still holding the gun hand, feeling the cold weight of the gun itself through lengths of my fingers while my head sings and the waves roar louder. There’s a phone ringing somewhere near my ear, a dog is whimpering and I think I can hear sirens.
That phone ringing near my head will be Ellie’s phone calling Fraser, probably. That was my cunning plan to distract him: phone him from Ellie’s phone. Well, that really worked, didn’t it?
Jeez, I think, as the roaring noise grows even louder and I get the start of tunnel vision, I might still be about to die and I’m being sarcastic with myself. Clever move, Stewart. Damn, there I go again…
Then things go a bit blurry for a moment or two.
When I’m able to sit up again I’m right beside Fraser, who is trying to roll off his back, and failing. There’s what looks like a lot of fresh blood coming from his mouth, and a couple of teeth, shockingly white, lying on the scuffed sand next to him. Ellie is standing near by, holding the gun and the spare clip. She throws the clip north, the gun south. The empty weapon bounces and somersaults along the sand.
Jel and Ryan are at Phelpie’s side, kneeling. Blood so thick it looks black is seeping out of his head, matting his hair and pooling around his face, half buried in the sand.
Ellie looks pale. She’s trembling. ‘You okay?’ she asks, limping over to me, wincing with each step.
I put my hand to my head. There’s blood. ‘Um, yeah,’ I say. I look over at Ferg, still curled up on his side. ‘He shot Ferg,’ I say.
‘Sit on Fraser,’ Ellie says, limping past me, heading for Ferg. ‘Sit on his chest.’
‘You okay?’ I ask.
I can definitely hear sirens now. I sit on Fraser’s chest. He grunts, tries to fend me off, arms flailing weakly. His nose looks broken too and blood is flowing and spitting from his mouth. His jaw, his whole lower face looks…wrong.
‘Kicked him too hard,’ Ellie mutters, touching the undamaged side of my head with her cold, shaking fingers as she passes.
Fraser starts moaning and making choking, bubbling sounds.
The whimpering sound from one of the dogs stops.
By Phelpie’s body, Jel, on her knees, puts back her head and howls.
TUESDAY MORNING
19
She drives me to the station.
It’s Tuesday morning but it’s not the following day, it’s a week later.
Phelpie was dead almost before he hit the sand; because of the angles involved – him head down, lunging at Fraser – the round went in through the top of his forehead and down into his brainstem, eventually lodging in the top of his spine.
Ferg is alive and getting better. The bullet went through a rib, then hit his liver, which is, apparently, ‘a fucking big enough target’.
Ellie slightly sprained her ankle when she heel-kicked Fraser in the mouth and nose.
Fraser’s got a multiply fractured jaw, a broken nose and missing teeth.
I sustained mild concussion after being whacked twice on the head with a clip of nine-millimetre rounds.
One of the wolfhounds wasn’t quite dead and had to be put down.
They came and took the hire car away. I wouldn’t have been fit to drive the next day anyway. Plus, of course, there was the matter of helping the police with their inquiries.
That’s all done with for now and it’s highly doubtful any of us will have to give evidence; Fraser is being strongly advised to plead guilty by the very best legal brains money can buy in Scotland. They’ll plead mitigating circumstances to try to get the sentence reduced. These might include, but will not necessarily be limited to: grief relating to his grandfather, continuing grief relating to his brother Callum and, perhaps, familial shame regarding my seeming reinstatement in his sister’s affections.
Donald and Murdo needed hospitalisation too; they really did tear lumps out of each other during their fight. Don got a broken nose; Murdo lost an earlobe and broke a finger.
Powell Imrie just got up and went, immediately after the fisticuffs up at Hill House. It all started after a few more drinks with the relations, when Murdo accused Don of being soft and stupid for not just decking me in the function room of the Mearnside a couple of hours earlier, and said they should have stood up to Ellie and just dealt with me their own way, in London or wherever, five years ago, and Don was starting to lose it. They started shouting, some things – a lot of things – were said, and then Don slapped Murdo and off it all kicked.
Fraser decided all this brawling was my fault, disappeared into the garage and got a gun that nobody else even knew he had and said he was off to settle this once and for all. Powell had only just got Don and Murdo to stop fighting each other and breaking the furniture. When he did the Don’t be crazy, give that to me thing to Fraser, Fraser told him to keep out of it, he wasn’t even family anyway, and pointed the gun at him.
Powell had always told the boys if they ever pulled a gun on him, he’d go without a second thought or a parting word, and that’s exactly what happened; he just turned and walked away, got into his Rangie and drove. Nobody even knows where he is now.
Norrie had gone for a wee lie-down earlier and claimed to have slept through all the excitement.
Mrs Murston has gone to stay at her sister’s place in Peterhead for the week, and is under sedation. Donald told the police Fraser must have got the gun somewhere in town, between leaving the house and arriving at the beach, and so far hasn’t had to suffer a proper mob-handed police search-party visit, plus Hill House – kept pretty clean normally anyway – must be totally spotless now. Probably not so much as an illegal download to be found.
Grier tried to leave the country, go back to her photo shoot in the Caribbean. She cleared Dyce but they turned her back at Heathrow. She had to come back, give a statement, stick around.
There’s been what you might call a summit meeting between Don and Mike Mac, and apologies made. Don will be pleased to pay for Phelpie’s funeral and to make a generous donation to his family or a charity of their choice, as well as coughing for another pair of pedigree dogs. Order has been restored in Stonemouth.
So there’s still Phelpie’s funeral to come. That might be a while off yet, while the murder case is squared away, but of course I’ll be coming back for it.
I had to abandon the return half of my air ticket. I’m going to be taking the train back south, stopping off in Dundee with Ferg’s keys to water some plants in his flat, then staying a night in Edinburgh to see some friends, then London the next day and back to work the day after that, though maybe just to hand in my notice.
‘He probably miscounted,’ Ferg said, the first day I visited him in hospital.
‘Who?’
‘Phelpie. Probably counting the rounds Fraser fired and thought he was out. Just got it wrong by one.’
‘Jeez.’
‘He used to get it wrong all the time playing poker. Counting never was his strong suit.’
‘Yeah, but, still.’
Ferg sighed, wincing as he did so, and looked out the window at the day. The doctors have had words with him about the size
of his poor, abused, punctured liver and politely suggested he might want to reconsider the extent of his alcohol intake, not to mention this bizarre and effectively semi-suicidal desire to draw clouds of carcinogenic smoke into his lungs. Ferg, at the moment at least, seems morosely resigned to complying. We’ll see.
‘By the way?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome. What for?’
‘Throwing the phone, having a go at Fraser? Taking a bullet for me, basically.’
Ferg grinned. ‘Well, quite. And you are indeed welcome. But don’t imagine that I’ll ever stop reminding you of it.’
‘As if.’
Ellie invited Grier to come and stay at hers, while she had to stick around, but Grier chose to remain at Hill House. Didn’t want Don to feel all the Murston women were abandoning him, she said.
I still wanted to talk to Grier properly, but she still didn’t want to talk to me, so we haven’t met up.
I spent one night in hospital, being observed, though the concussion, if I actually had any, seemed about as mild as it was possible to get. When I came back home, Mum insisted on putting a baby monitor on my bedside table for the first night. A baby monitor. So she could check I was still breathing. My dad looked embarrassed on behalf of all of us but refused to say he thought it was daft. In the end I indulged this piece of nonsense but it was a close-run thing.
I hadn’t told Al and Morven I was thinking about resigning; it all sort of depended on Ellie and I didn’t want to say anything until she’d made up her mind. And I couldn’t tell Ellie this or I’d be putting pressure on her, so I just had to wait.
I saw Ellie every day. I dropped into the centre where she worked and we went for drives and walks in the country. She came over to Mum and Dad’s, just to watch TV, and, after my first couple of nights at home, invited me to hers for another meal. She limped up the steps to her flat in the tower, refusing any help beyond me carrying the groceries.
We ended up sleeping together, but only sleeping, because she just needed to be held, nothing else.
The next night she said it might be the same, but then it wasn’t.
‘What now?’ she asked me, as we lay together in her bed.
I could just see her in the faint light coming from the hall through the open bedroom door. Her sheets were white, her body – lying there, both of us still too hot for sheets – looked dark, almost black against that paleness. Her hair described a dark fan across the pillow. A sheen of sweat by her collarbone reflected a little of the cool blue light spilling from the iPod dock on her bedside table, trembling with her still-quick pulse.
‘For us?’ I said.
‘Yeah, for us.’
‘What do you want?’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want you and me to be together.’
‘Married?’
‘Not married, unless that really matters to you.’
‘It doesn’t.’
‘Okay. Me neither. But back together. You and me. And I will be faithful. I swear to you, El. No more Jels, no more anybody else. Come and live with me.’
‘And be your love?’
‘And be my love, for ever.’
‘Till death do us part?’
‘Yes. So?’
‘Children?’
‘Eh? Oh, absolutely. Well?’
‘Absolutely yes or absolutely not?’
‘Absolutely whatever you want.’
‘Where would we live?’
‘Anywhere.’
‘London?’
‘If you like.’
‘London wouldn’t be my first choice.’
‘Okay, where would?’
‘I don’t know. Not here either. And not – everywhere; not all over the world, either.’
‘Well, I’m probably going to resign.’ I sighed.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, really. I’m ashamed how easily I gave up the idea of being a struggling artist for the idea of having a proper job. I should at least try making a living from what I love. Or I might become an eco warrior or something. I think I’d be good climbing up trees and that sort of shit. Or I could just do something else that was actually worthwhile.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I’m not stupid. Neither are you. Whatever we do we’ll be okay; we’ll always survive. We’d always be okay just as individuals but together we’ll be brilliant, unbeatable. Come on. You up for all this or not?’
‘Somewhere warm,’ she said, and reached out, stroking my chest, my shoulder. ‘Warm and sunny. Then…maybe.’
‘Only maybe?’
She was silent for a long time, still stroking, kneading my shoulder. Then she said, ‘Still sorting my feelings out. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry.’
And there we’ve kind of left it, over these last few days of recovery and stonewalling journalists and lots of quiet, sympathetic conversations with people and interviews with matter-of-fact police and a visit to a trauma counsellor.
We’ve been to the MacAvetts’, taken tea with Mike and Sue and with Jel, who is still quiet, closed off, hardly speaking. Needs the counselling, I guess. Ryan wasn’t there when we went. Still, it was all a bit awkward, and when Ellie and I left we drove up to Vatton and the forest car park and walked through the trees out onto the wide, stump-punctuated beach there, in a smir of rain carried on a damp, warm, westerly breeze. We both still enjoy walking on a big, wide-open beach. Not that traumatised, then.
Which is just as well, if we’re going to end up somewhere warm and sunny, I guess. I want to ask her again: are we okay? Will she come and live with me? Fuck, I’d come and live with her here, even though this is the last place on earth I want to live, for all its steely coastal beauty and sylvan rolling hills. But I don’t. I don’t ask her again, not while she thinks things through and decides how she feels.
We stay together, sleep together each night, catching up on five years of make-up sex.
Then it’s the night before I have to head south, then it’s that morning, and then she drives me to the station.
‘Few more people around this time,’ I say, hoisting my bag up onto my shoulder.
We walk across the car park towards the main entrance. There are little groups of people, cars and taxis turning up, and people just off the shuttle bus are still sorting out themselves and their baggage.
‘Yeah, and you didn’t need a ticket, either,’ she says.
We enter the station, the information screens and ticket barriers discordant notes amongst the crenellated mid-Victorian fussiness. I take my ticket through the turnstile. Ellie gets through the manned gate with just a smile and we join the scattered, straggled crowd on the platform beneath its curved roof of iron-framed glass, waiting for the eleven-fifteen. A few faces turn towards us.
I choose my spot on the stretch where the first-class carriages will stop, put my bag down.
‘Well,’ she says, standing looking sort of compressed, her heels together, hugging herself, her head down as though she’s staring at my bag. The weather’s turned chillier though the day is bright. She’s in boots, jeans, a blouse and fleece. She glances up and down the platform, perhaps seeing the couple of small groups of people staring at us or just furtively snatching glances then muttering something to the people they’re with. Then she looks up at me and smiles. ‘Still hate goodbyes?’
‘Doesn’t everybody?’
A quick, tight smile. ‘I suppose. I’ll just go. That okay?’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘Okay. Call me from Edinburgh. See you soon.’
‘Okay,’ I tell her.
It’s an awkward goodbye kiss. We both sort of go the same way at the same time, then she almost trips over my bag, then we even seem to get our arms tangled, reaching the wrong way at the wrong time, too high, too low.
Finally, like useless teenagers, we manage a hug and and a slightly rushed kiss
. She squeezes me on the arms with both hands, then turns and walks away.
I watch her go, not seeing anybody else. She strides up the platform, neatly swinging between people and groups of people, her limp almost gone now, and I think, That was a shit goodbye. We can do better than that. I lift up my bag, shoulder it again and start up the platform after her.
The train appears, coming round the tree-lined curve a couple of hundred metres away to the north: banked, slow, segmented, insectile. I see her glance in its direction, then look down again, keep on walking, arms folded.
She’s almost at the entrance into the main building and I’m about five metres behind her when I see her stop. Her shoulders drop a fraction and she seems to look away to one side, then – as if making up her mind about something – she appears to nod to herself. She straightens, becomes centimetres taller, uncrosses her arms and turns round. She takes one stride back the way she’s just come. Then she sees me, and smiles.
She holds both hands out to me. I put my bag down again and take them.
‘Yes? What?’ she says.
‘A proper kiss.’
She laughs. ‘Yeah, that one didn’t really take, did it?’
We kiss properly; slowly and deeply, my hands round her waist, hers round my neck. I think I hear somebody whistle. The platform rumbles beneath us as the front engine unit of the train noses into the station. I feel her laughing. She breaks off, says, ‘Ground’s moving.’
I take a breath, then catch it. I was about to blurt out, Come with me. But that was an idiotic thing to say five years ago, and still a mildly stupid, over-impulsive thing to say now.
She reads my hesitation. ‘What?’ she says, with just a hint of a frown, her gaze flickering over my eyes.
