Complicity

by Iain Banks

  Oh, bugger this. If I was some fucking private eye or something I'd head back out to Mr Azul's big house and break in somehow and find something really interesting or a body or a beautiful woman (or just get slugged on the back of the head and wake up wise-cracking). But I'm tired, I've still got a headache, I feel beat and out of ideas and I feel embarrassed dammit. What in the fuck am I doing here? What was I thinking of? Hell, this seemed like such a good idea this morning.

  I can still make a flight back to Blighty which will connect with the last plane to Inverness. Forget covering the story. Sometimes a tactical retreat is the only course to follow. Even Saint Hunter would agree. If I feel the need to do something I can always exercise my creative abilities trying to think of a story that'll appease Eddie. Fat chance. I take the Noya back to the airport.

  An hour to kill. Time to hit the bar. I start off with a Bloody Mary as this is breakfast in a sense, then cleanse the palate with a bottle of Pils. I buy a packet of Silk Cut and carefully smoke a cigarette — making sure that I'm actually enjoying it, not just doing it out of habit — while managing to fit in a couple of large and very refreshing G&Ts before the flight's called and there's just time for a single knocked-back whisky to provide a bit of nominal support for the Scottish export drive.

  I board the plane feeling no pain, eat the evening meal and continue with the G&T theme, land in Gatwick and make the connection via the smoking area of the bar and another gulped Gordon's, then pass on the second offered dinner but not the accompanying booze and quietly pass out somewhere over the West Midlands, to be woken by a dishy blonde with an impudent, dimpled smile and we're here we've landed we've arrived, we're on the stand at the airport and I'd ask her what she's doing later because I'm drunk enough to not care when she says «No» as she probably will, but I know I'm too tired and besides my left eyelid's stuck again and I suspect it makes me look a bit like Quasimodo, so I don't say anything except, "Uh, thanks," which is cool or sad, I'm not sure which.

  I walk into the terminal thinking, Well, at least there isn't that smell of sewage around you sometimes get when you arrive in dear old Embra; I'm not sure I could handle that right now. I walk through the lounge thinking something looks wrong somehow, then stop and stand still where the lounge opens out into the main terminal building, suddenly filled with horror and confusion; it's all too small and not shaped right! This isn't Edinburgh! Those amiable but blatantly incompetent buffoons have brought me to the wrong fucking airport! Dickheads! Can't they even navigate, for fuck's sake? Christ, I bet there isn't even a flight back from… Where the hell am I?

  I see the sign saying Welcome to Inverness just as I remember where I left the car and where I left from this morning and just before I turn and stamp to the nearest desk and demand in my highest dudgeon to be taken to Edinburgh on a charted Lear if necessary or limoed immediately to the highest-starred hotel within a reasonable radius for a free overnight dinner, bed and breakfast and unlimited bar tab.

  Narrow escape from Terminal Embarrassment.

  People are walking past looking at me oddly. I shake my head and set a course for the car park.

  It's kind of late now and I'm in no condition to drive so when I get the 205 I only take it as far as the outskirts of Inverness where I stop at the first lit Bed and Breakfast sign I see and talk politely and slowly to the pleasant middle-aged couple from Glasgow who run the place and then say goodnight, close the door of my room and fall fast asleep on the bed without even taking off my jacket.

  CHAPTER 8 — FRIENDLY FIRE

  I head south after what I think's called a hearty breakfast and an even heartier cough. I fuel up at a wee petrol station just before the A9 and phone Fettes while the tank's filling. Sergeant Flavell sounds a little odd when I talk to him and tell him I've been to Jersey for the day but I'm on my way back to Edinburgh. I ask him if I can have my new lap-top back and he says he isn't sure. He suggests I come straight to Fettes; they want to talk to me. I say okay.

  South on the A9, sound track Michelle Shocked, The Pixies, Carter and Shakespear's Sister. I catch a bit of radio while I'm changing cassettes just north of Perth and hear something called I'll Sleep When I'm Dead by Bon Jovi which isn't a patch on Uncle Warren's song of the same name and makes me more than reasonably annoyed. Into Edinburgh by late lunch-time, past the signs trumpeting the up-coming Euro-summit. I don't know how they've done it but the typography on the signs makes me want to pronounce the word Edin-burg, and I live in the place, for God's sake.

  Christ in a bucket: independent bastarding deterrent, The Genuine Shit Article, cold fucking filtering, Edin-burg, Edin-borow, Sleep when I'm a de-rigueurly long-haired white-skinned head-banging high-pitched middle-aged sub-grunge light-metal Zep-clone. What a pile of shit everything is!

  On Ferry Road, within sight of Fettes School's preposterous spire and only minutes from the police HQ, I have the first cigarette of the day, not because I really want it, just to feel bad. (Uncle Warren knows a thing or two.)

  This turns out to be smart thinking in a way because when I get to Cop Central they promptly arrest me.

  The hotel is dark and very quiet. The cellars are full of junk, most of which might have been useful once but all of which is now covered in water or mud or fungus. Some of the timbers under the floor are white with fuzzy rot. On the lower ground floor you pass through the snooker room, the ballroom and a store room. The table in the snooker room is waterlogged, its baize stained and its wooden sides cracked. The old motorbikes, tables, chairs and carpets in the ballroom look like forlorn toys in some long-neglected doll's house. Rain beats softly against the windows: the only sound. Outside, it is black dark.

  The stairs from here to the top floor stretch upwards around the dilapidated grandeur of the stairwell. On the next floor up the reception area is dusty and bare, the bar smells of sour booze and stale cigarette smoke and the empty dining room is redolent of dampness and decay. The kitchen is cold and hollow and echoing. There is one old domestic stove, powered by bottled gas, and one sink. There's an apron hanging on a nail.

  You take the apron and put it on.

  The next two floors hold bedrooms. There is dampness here too, and in some of the rooms the ceiling has fallen in, the plaster and lath lying draped over the heavy, old-fashioned furniture like some clumsy travesty of a dust-sheet. The rain is hitting the windows harder now, and the wind is getting up, whistling through cracks in the panes and the window-frames.

  The top floor feels a little less damp, a little more warm, though the wind and rain still sound loud outside and above.

  At one end of the dark corridor, past the wedged-open fire door, a door lies ajar. The living room inside is lit by the remains of a log fire, collapsing now into ashes. A couple of logs lie on the hearth, drying, and the air smells of their pine scent and cigarette smoke. An old coal scuttle to the side of the fireplace holds a can of paraffin, almost full.

  In the corner of the room the dumb waiter contains a selection of logs of various sizes, most of them still damp. You take the biggest of the logs, which is about the size of a man's arm, and walk softly across the room to the bedroom door. You go through and stand listening to the rain and the wind, and — just audible — the noise of a man breathing slowly and rhythmically in the bed. You hold the log out in front of you as you walk towards the bed.

  He moves in the darkness, something you hear more than see. You stop and stand still. Then the man in the bed starts to snore.

  Rain drums on the window. You smell whisky and old tobacco smoke.

  You get to the bedside and raise the log over your head.

  You hold it there.

  This is different, somehow. This is somebody you know. But you can't think about that because that isn't the point; although you know it does matter, you can't allow it to matter, you can't let something like that stop you. You bring the log down with all your might. It hits his head and you don't hear the noise it makes because you cry out at the same time, as thou
gh it's you in the bed, you being attacked, you being killed. There's a terrible, sucking, bubbling noise from the figure in the bed. You raise the log and bring it down again, calling out once more. The man in the bed doesn't move or make a sound.

  You turn on the torch. There is a lot of blood; it looks red where it seeps into the white sheets, black where it quietly pools. You take the apron off and cover his shoulders and head with it. Then you go downstairs to get the gas bottle out of the old stove in the kitchen.

  The twice-soaked bed linen lights quickly, paraffin overcoming blood. You leave the gas bottle on the floor at the foot of the bed and walk quickly away along the shorter length of corridor and step through the emergency exit out into the loud darkness of the night. You run down the metal fire escape on the gable end of the building.

  You stop at the top of the road and look back, to see the flames just starting to become visible over the edge of the hotel roof, dancing orange into the night.

  Maybe you hear the gas bottle explode a couple of minutes and a couple of miles later, when you're on the loch-side road heading away, but it's blowing quite hard by then and you're not sure.

  It's been three days now I'm not sure though I could be wrong because I haven't slept very well I have nightmares of a man and they think it's me but it isn't, is it? Is it? I'm starting to wonder. He has a gorilla mask on and he talks with the voice of a baby and he has a huge syringe and I'm tied to the seat screaming. I can't take it. They keep questioning me, always asking where I was what I did why I did it, did all of them where I was who I was with who am I trying to kid why don't I just admit I did it well if I didn't do all these things, who did? I'm in London I'm in the nick I'm in fucking Paddington Green for Christ's sake, the high-security station they use for the Proves and they think I'm so dangerous so much a security risk they've got me here and even holding me under the Prevention of Terrorism Act Jesus God because some of them still aren't convinced they aren't dealing with some unholy alliance of the IRA, Welsh Nationalists and uppity jocks. They brought me down that day from Edinburgh, bundled me into a transit van with seats but no windows, handcuffed to a big quiet London lad who wouldn't talk to me at all and didn't even say much to the other two cops in the back of the transit just sat staring ahead and we seemed to drive all night just stopping once at some service station on the Ml, took a while to arrange everything, then they came in with a selection of cans of soft drinks and sandwiches and pasties and pork pies and chocolate and we all sat there munching then they asked me did I need the toilet and I said yes and they opened the door and it was straight over the grass into the gents" toilets, two cops guarding the door and some men, looked like truckers, standing watching me, waiting for their turn after I'd had my private visit; only wanted a pee but I couldn't do it even though the big lad wasn't actually watching just having him standing there handcuffed to me was enough so they checked the stalls and then took the cuffs off me and I had to leave the door open a crack while I went, then back out and I see the other cop cars Christ a Range Rover and a Senator too I'm a fucking VIP, then it's into the van and on with the journey to London where the questioning starts; they're concentrating on Sir Rufus's murder, for now, because they found a card a fucking business card in the woods near the burned cottage; not mine that would have been too obvious but a card from a guy I know on Jane's Defence Weekly with some scribbled notes on the back:

  Ctrl + Alt 0 = PoV chnge

  Shft + Alt = Chn of Cmnd zoom (bounces)

  Milk Cheez Bred Shavng Foam

  They ask me, Is that your writing? and it is of course it is those are Despot control codes from when the computer's mouse was misbehaving and that's the way I always spell when I do a shopping list. I vaguely recall writing down the codes months ago and losing whatever it was I wrote them on. I stare at the muddied, warped little card sealed in a deal-sized plastic bag, recognising my own writing and feeling my mouth go even drier than it already is and I can only gibber something about, Well, it looks like my writing but, I mean, and anyway, somebody, anybody could have taken that, I mean… but they just look quietly pleased and the questions go on.

  And all I can think is Don't confess, don't confess, don't confess. There are detectives and DCIs and Chief Supers and Commanders every fucking where; more tecs and CID guys and Anti-Terrorism Squad chaps and regional guys than you can shake a nightstick at, all asking questions, all asking the same fucking questions and me trying to give the same fucking answers; seeing DI McDunn, sucking saliva through his teeth and letting me share his B&Hs, is like meeting an old pal even though he's got all his questions too. It's a relief when the Terrorist Squad boys seem to lose interest but that still leaves all the rest and I can't think I can't think straight I can't sleep.

  It's bad enough at first but then it gets worse even as they keep me because they found more, they found two more and that was while I was here for Christ's sake while they held me while things were still happening more stuff came in while they were questioning me and they looked at me with disbelief horror disgust and I was going What? What is it? Now what? What am I supposed to have done now? And they told me about Azul, in Jersey, and before that I think it was before that they showed me the forensic photographs of all of them: Bissett skewered on the railings, grotesque and spread and limp; the blood-smeared vibrator used on the retired judge, Jamieson; the drained shapeless white body of Persimmon, tied to his grid above a pool of blood, then nothing when there should have been something; then what was left of Sir Rufus Carter, blackened bones, distorted and bent, the black skull's jaw hinged down in a blind scream but the flesh all gone very much a dental-records job and it was all black, the nails, the wood and the bones too but it's their mouths their jaws I remember, their silent screams, hanging slack or jammed open and it gets worse because they show me the fucking video they show me the video they think I made or that I think they think I made but I didn't; they make me watch it and it's horrific; there's a man and he's dressed in black or dark blue and he has a gorilla mask on and he keeps sucking on this little bottle he's carrying which must be helium because it gives him that baby voice disguising his own voice and he has this fat little guy strapped to a chrome seat, his mouth taped, one arm tied down onto the arm of the chair, shirt rolled up and the little guy's shrieking as hard as he can but it sounds quiet because the noise is having to come down his nose while the man in the gorilla mask looks from the camera to the guy in the seat and holds up this huge fucking syringe like something from a nightmare from an old movie from a horror film and I can feel my heart beating wildly because that's what this is. This is a horror movie a fucking horror movie this lunatic is making his own horror film and you can't even tell yourself Hell it's only a story aren't the special effects good it isn't real because that's exactly what it is and the gorilla man is explaining in that hideous high-pitched baby's voice what he has in this bottle and in this syringe and I throw up halfway through but they pause the video for me.

  After it's over we cut to another scene and there's somebody who might be the little guy again and he's still strapped to a chair but this time it's a tall hospital chair with wheels and a little fold-away table in front of him and the straps holding his torso would be easy to undo but his hands are limp. There's some sort of board behind his head and a towel or something round his forehead holding his head upright but the eyes Christ the eyes there's nothing there and McDunn says Persistent Vegetative State they call it apparently; Persistent Vegetative State and it looks it man it looks it.

  And then of course there are the other two. First it's Azul and his girlfriend. She's traumatised and dehydrated but otherwise unharmed but he's got soul brother's limbs where his own ought to be; necrosis like frostbite, blood-death at the extremities but the extremities start at shoulder and groin; he's alive but if you were him you'd rather not be. Arms salesman; okay the Avenger the Equaliser the Total Fucking Nutter went for the legs too but still, and the editor spiked, and the rapist — lenient judge rap
ed and the pornographer poisoned and stroked and the man who was so callous about the bloodshed in the Iran/Iraq war forced to watch his penned animals die like cattle like soldiers like cattle and then bled to death in his own private fountains of blood and the businessman who put profits before safety and not only helped kill a thousand people but then tried to get out of paying the survivors and dependants any compensation gets his own gas explosion — blevey is the technical term apparently — and fuck me whoever he is (assuming he is a he), he's got a sense of humour or at least irony why he's produced what's almost a snuff video effectively a snuff video if you mean brain-death anyway it's the closest anyone will admit to ever having seen or found one even the Obscene Pubs Squad who've been looking for years but although everybody assumes they exist nobody's ever seen one until old gorilla man comes along and just makes his own, specifically to warn off any other porn merchants thinking of dealing in snuff! It's hilarious, it's really ironic and you explain all this to McDunn and you laugh because it actually isn't the fault of the police you're not sleeping it's the nightmares where you're stalked by a gorilla with the voice of a baby and a huge syringe and he wants to fuck you with it, isn't that hilarious? You can't sleep you're actually providing your own sleep deprivation and you say hey, next thing you know I really will be falling down the stairs! but he doesn't seem to get the joke and then it's back to the cell and then the interview room with the barred, opaqued windows so you can't see out and they switch on the tape-machine recording everything as usual and it's getting more bizarre; they get me to do a Michael Caine voice! They ask me to impersonate Michael fucking Caine, can you believe that? And then there's this technician or something here and they ask me to breathe in helium from a mask and make me repeat some of the things gorilla man said on the video so I feel like I'm becoming him they're trying to make me him; I don't think I sound the same as the guy on the brain-snuff video but fuck knows what they think there are too many to know what the fuck they think; loads of them, officers from all over the fucking place with different accents, London, Midlands, Welsh, Scottish, elsewhere, God knows, it's not just Flavell and McDunn though I still see them now and again especially McDunn who looks at me kind of weird most of the time like he can't really believe it was me did all these things and I get this bizarre feeling that he thinks I'm kind of pathetic I mean that in a grudging, still-determined-to-bust-the-fucker way he actually has more respect for gorilla man than he does for me because I've just gone to pieces under the questions and the things they put in my head with those photographs and that video (ha which means gorilla man has already put stuff into my head, already has fucked my brains, filling my head with the idea of that, the vision, the meme of that) and I thought I was some tough cookie but I was wrong I'm just a dunked digestive baby I'm soft I'm flopping I'm disintegrating and that's why unless I'm the best fucking actor he's ever seen McDunn can't accept I was capable of the things gorilla man did, yet so much of the evidence, especially the dates and times that sort of stuff, points at me not to mention that piece of TV-crit I did that reads like a hit-list now.