by Iain Banks
‘Oh, you’re breaking up, I’m afraid,’ she lied. ‘I’ll call you back when I’ve got a clear… oh, no; gone. Well,’ I heard her say to somebody else, ‘that was unusua-’
And she was gone.
I picked up the mobile, hoping it had recharged sufficiently. No.
I sat down, shaking. Ceel was alive. In Scotland. She’d had a warning of sorts and she was going to call back when she wasn’t with whomever she was with.
If I had done what I feared I had – and I had to accept I probably had because I could remember her voice and something of the words she’d used on the answering machine message – then what could I do? I looked at my watch. The massive Breitling said it was – shit – half ten. Had to give it back, I thought; go back to my more elegant Spoon… what was I thinking of? Fuck the watch, fucking thinking about the watch or anything else apart from the fucking suicidal, murderous position I’d put myself and Celia in. Think; maybe Merrial was with her. Maybe – probably – they were away for the whole weekend. That gave me a day and a half to do something.
What could I do? Burn their house down? Break in? Hope there was a maid or a butler or somebody (but then why the answering machine?) and try to impersonate a… I didn’t know. Gas man? Cop? Jehovah’s fucking Witness?
Could I access the tape or the chip from outside somehow? What if I rang again and just left an immensely long message, would it overwrite the one from last night? No. Of course not. No answering machine I’d ever encountered would do that. Nobody would design one like that. Well, nobody with any sense; a fuckwit like me would, obviously.
Set fire to the fucking place. Heave a petrol bomb through a window, pour lighter fluid through the letter box; when the fire brigade came – ring them first, ring them just beforehand, but not the police – let them break down the door and then go in with them, pretend to be a plain-clothes cop, or from special branch, or find a fancy dress shop and hire a police uniform…
Oh, please let it still not have happened. Please let it be a really vivid false memory syndrome thing. I’d imagined her voice on the answering machine message. It hadn’t been her. I’d put the wrong number in from Merrial’s card, misplaced a digit and it had been there all the time and the first time I used it I got some female who happened to live at the house that had the phone with the one-digit difference from the Merrials’ and so I’d left this filthy, sexually abusive message on the answering machine of a total stranger. Oh, God, it had to be that. It had to be.
But if it wasn’t, if I really had done it, what could I do?
I felt sick. I felt really sick. My head was spinning, I was getting the tunnel vision thing. Roaring in ears. I got up and stumbled to the loo.
Ten minutes later, still getting the occasional dry heave, my throat raw, my mouth vile despite the mouthwash, my teeth with that stripped stickiness that comes from having recently been bathed in stomach acid, I sat back at the living-room desk and tried the mobile again. My face had still been white in the mirror. My hands were shaking uncontrollably. I had to rest the mobile on my lap so that I could hit the right buttons. I started crying with the awkwardness and the hopelessness of it all.
The little phone buzzed awake on my thigh. It only had a single bar of battery capacity showing but that was all I’d need. Just keep going for a minute or two, you little piece of shit; you could have fucking died on me last night before I made the call that might get me tortured and killed and my beloved too, you silvery be-buttoned turd. Yes, I know you’re fucking Searching… Just fucking stop it and get on with it. Menu; Phone Book, OK, Voice Dialling, Personal Numbers, Last Ten Calls. My mouth went dry. OK. Last Calls Made. Select? OK.
Here we go.
I stared at the number. I jumped up and got my wallet, where Merrial’s card still was. I checked one number against the other. I checked again and again, willing one, just one, just one lousy single fucking little digit to be different. For fuck’s sake, it wouldn’t have been difficult to make a mistake; I made mistakes all the time. Even when I’m sober. Constantly. Just this one time let this be a mistake.
Call? said the little bit of script at the bottom of the screen. No. No, I don’t fucking want to call it again, you worthless stupid piece of crap. I want to Undo. I want to press F1 or go to the relevant menu with a mouse arrow and Undo, totally fucking Undo what I did last night, rewind the tape, oh yes, wipe the chip, reformat the disk, rewind that fucking little deadly tape or whatever the hell it was sitting in a house less than a mile away from here, rewind and erase. Better still, take it out and fucking burn it and mash the ashes into a fine paste and flush it all down a waste disposal unit somewhere in Outer fucking Mongolia.
I read the numbers out from the phone’s screen, comparing them to the numbers on Merrial’s card. They were identical. They weren’t going to change now. I closed the phone.
Maybe he wouldn’t guess who it was. I’d said it was Ken, I remembered that – I thought – but maybe he wouldn’t think to link that drunken Ken with the guy he’d met once in the courtyard of Somerset House… Oh, shit, what was I thinking of? I’d said Naughty Ken or something equally pathetic and incriminating, hadn’t I? Or had I?
It didn’t matter; I was a fucking radio DJ; I was proud I had a distinctive voice. Even if Merrial didn’t ever listen to the show and had missed my high TV and radio presence over the last few weeks or never heard an ad with my voiceover, somebody he knew would recognise me. And anyway, I didn’t bar my mobile number; his answering machine would have remembered the number, the way they all did, didn’t they? Or maybe his didn’t; maybe Merrial was one of those Early Adopters and he had a really old machine he’d never got round to replacing and it didn’t keep a note of the incoming numbers.
Yeah, right.
But even if he had the number, how would he know it was mine? I hadn’t given him my number, he couldn’t… Yes, and of course as a big crime lord he’d have absolutely no way of finding who a mobile number belonged to. Of course he would.
I know! I thought. He owed me a favour. Merrial; he’d said to call him if there was ever a favour he could do for me. I’d phone and phone and phone until I got an answer, or go over there and slip a note through the door, ask him to just not listen to his messages, as a favour to me; just trust me. Heavens, yes, that was bound to work. And OJ was innocent and al-Megrahi was guilty.
Phone now! I thought. Of course! Phone now and find out if the fucking answering machine was still switched on. Why hadn’t I thought of that first? Because I was still drunk, hung-over and panicking under the influence of the most catastrophically fuckwittish mistake ever made in the long history of catastrophically fuckwittish mistakes.
I reached for the land-line. Oh fuck, what if he answered? What if he said something like, Ah, Kenneth, you again. I received your earlier message. Very interesting. I’ve just sent some of my colleagues round to your place to invite you for a little chat…
Oh fuck, oh fuck.
I took three attempts to press the number into the phone, my hands were shaking so much.
Ceel’s voice, recorded. Her beautiful, clear, calm, perfect voice. Leave a message after the tone… then a series of beeps signifying the message or messages already left – mine! mine was there, that dirty, drunken, rambling shite being spooled past right now! – then the beep. I didn’t leave another message. I put the phone down. So – probably – nobody had listened to the message. The worst had not yet happened. Unless, of course, Merrial was being clever and only pretending that he hadn’t listened… but that was even more paranoid than reality demanded, and fuck knew that was bad enough.
Maybe I could sort of half own up. I could say I’d become obsessed with Celia after seeing her on the ice that day. I was living out this fantasy where we were lovers, stalking her… No. No, he’d still do something horrible to me, just for that, and more likely he’d want to check that nothing had been going on, so he’d still have me tortured to get at the truth. And I had no illusions about my
ability to hold out under severe pain, not for Ceel, not for myself, not for anybody.
My palms were very sweaty. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t swallow. I got up unsteadily and went to the kitchen for some bottled water. The land-line phone rang on the second swallow, and I sprayed water over the carpet.
‘Yes?’
‘Kenneth?’ It was her. Thank fuck. Her; still alive, still not screaming in agony, still able to talk; now able to talk. ‘What’s wrong?’
I told her. In all my life – and there might not be much more of it to come – I had never known anybody stay so calm in the face of a disaster as utter and unmitigated. She had every right to scream and cry and bawl, but she just asked a couple of sensible, measured questions to clear up some of the holes I’d left in my semi-hysterical account of what had happened. Then I heard her sigh. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Well, I’m in Scotland, staying with some friends near Inverness. John is caving in the Peak District. He’s due back tonight or tomorrow.’
‘Tonight? Oh, Jesus Christ.’
‘Depends on the weather; if there’s been too much rain the system will be flooded and they won’t be able to do much. It was touch and go, last I heard.’
I ran a hand over my face. ‘Can you access the messages on your answering machine from outside, from a different phone?’
‘No. John specifically did not want one which could do that, in case somebody else found out how to access it.’
‘Okay, okay, well, that gives us until he gets home, at least.’ I closed my eyes and stood there shaking my head. ‘Oh, Ceel, I am so, so sorry. I can’t, I just can’t begin to tell you-’
‘Kenneth, stop. We have to think. Right. Bien. I can claim an emergency and ask to be run straight back to the airport. I’ll get on the next flight. I can get home before him, wipe the tape.’
‘Oh, please, yes; please, please.’
‘I’d better let my hosts know.’ I heard her exhale. ‘This should be interesting. I’ll call you back as soon as I know what’s happening. ’
‘Ceel?’
‘What?’
‘I love you.’
This time it was an in-taken breath. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Well. Talk to you soon.’
And off.
I drank from the bottle of water, hands still shaking. I stared ahead, seeing nothing. Still alive. Both of us still alive. So far so good. So far no torture and painful death. She’d get back. She’d return, in time. Brilliant, calm, resourceful Ceel would clear up the pig’s diarrhoea of a mess her idiot lover had made. She’d make it all well again. Bless that smart, sexy, wonderful, gorgeous, fantastic woman. She might never talk to me again, she might write me out of her life forevermore and curse me ritually every night before she went to sleep for the rest of her hopefully long life for the ignorant scumbag dickhead that I so surely was, but at least she’d be alive to do it, at least we’d both live. We wouldn’t suffer for my stupidity. I drank some more water and told myself that one day I’d see the funny side of all this.
Ceel rang back forty minutes later with the news that Inverness airport was out of action for the day, fog-bound.
‘You have to run,’ I said. My mouth had gone dry again. ‘That’s all we can do. Run. You have to get away. Further away. Oh, God, Ceel-’
‘No-no,’ she said crisply. ‘I’ll find out when there’s a flight next to London from Aberdeen, Edinburgh or Glasgow, then hire a car to whichever one. I’ll charter a plane or helicopter if I can. The timing will be tighter but it ought still to be possible. But there is another possibility.’
‘What?’
‘You could get into the house.’
‘How? Does anybody else have a key? Is there anybody in the house?’
‘No. There shouldn’t be. The staff have the weekend off.’
‘So, how-?’
‘There’s a key in the back garden, inside an artificial stone.’
‘There is?’ This sounded a bit low-rent and risky for such a posh address.
‘Yes. Then once you’re inside you’ll have to switch the alarm off.’
‘Okay, okay, right.’
‘I’ll give you the number for that. However, there is a problem.’
‘Shit. What?’
‘Getting into the back garden from the lane. There’s a high wall.’
‘So what’s the point of-?’
‘There’s a garage off the lane; you’re supposed to be able to get into the garage with the remote control in the car and then use the spare key. Or there’s an ordinary door, but it’s locked too.’
‘Right. Okay.’ I had an idea. ‘How high is the wall exactly? Well, not ex-’
‘Three metres, perhaps three and a half.’
‘Any razor wire or anything?’
‘No.’
‘Not even broken bottles?’
‘No.’
‘Okay, I think I can get into the back garden. I suppose it’s over-looked? By other-?’
‘Yes. But it’s usually quiet; it’s a dead-end off the mews further down.’
‘This artificial stone; how do I find it?’
‘Counting from the rear wall of the garage there are two lanterns on the west garden wall, then the third one. The stone with the key inside is directly under the third lantern and two stones out from the wall. Once you see it it looks almost obvious.’
‘West wall, garage rear wall, third lantern, two stones out.’ I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck. All this was just what I needed in the condition I was in. ‘What about the alarm? Is it linked to a security firm HQ or anything?’
‘Yes, and to the local police station.’
‘The local police station? Really?’
‘You might be surprised at the arrangements John has with the Metropolitan Police, Kenneth.’
‘Yeah, I dare say I might,’ I agreed. ‘What about surveillance cameras?’
‘No. Well, none that I know of.’
‘Right.’
‘Here’s the alarm code.’
‘Shoot.’
‘Write it down, will you?’
‘Okay.’ I lifted Merrial’s card. ‘Go.’ I wrote the code down on the back of Merrial’s card, then repeated it. ‘And where is the answering machine?’
‘It’s in John’s study. On the first floor. Oh.’
‘Now what?’
‘The study might be locked.’
‘Locked? But-’
‘It’s a gun room, too; it’s supposed to be locked.’
‘A gun…? Jeez. Right. So if it is, then what?’
‘I have a key in my bedroom. That’s on the second floor. John doesn’t know about it. You’ll have to go there first if the study door is locked.’
You couldn’t just have the damn thing where people usually have answering machines, by the front door, could you? I thought. And, Ceel’s bedroom; I’d fantasised about something like this for months, but not exactly in these circumstances.
‘Okay. Where’s the key?’
‘In my bathroom. There is a cabinet above the sink. Inside the box of tampons.’
Smart thinking, I guessed. ‘Right.’
‘When you get to the answering machine, you wipe the tape by pressing Function and then Clear. Got that?’
‘Function and Clear. I’d rather tear the whole tape out or take a big magnet and wipe it of everything, but that’ll have to do. Maybe I’ll do it twice.’
‘Function and Clear should do it.’
‘Okay.’
‘Keep in touch.’
‘Will do.’
‘Please be careful, Kenneth.’
‘Oh, I will. Best of luck getting a flight.’
‘Thank you. Goodbye.’
‘Bye.’
I put the phone down. I wasn’t shaking so much now. I drank some more water. At least we had a plan of campaign. At least I had something I could do, rather than just wait for Celia to come and fix things. God, what sort of man was I? Of course I should be doing something. I’d got us
both into this grisly mess; it should be me that got both of us out of it. Or even only her. If I could just save Ceel I’d have done something good, something to make up for my gross incompetence. My own miserable behind was patently not worth the saving, attached as it so obviously was to a spine with a lump of barely solidified porridge at the other end where a normal person would have a functioning brain, but hers… her glorious ass was entirely and utterly worth saving, even at the expense of my own.
Think. I’d have to park the Landy in the lane. What if people saw me going over the wall? They’d call the cops, or at the very least they might take the Land Rover’s registration number.
How could I get new numbers for it? You could get rear number plates from any Halfords; people did all the time for trailers and there was no check on whether you really had a vehicle with that number, but you couldn’t get white, front number plates that easily. Maybe I could make false ones using the computer. Print out a couple of sheets of A4 with the relevant sized numerals and then wrap them in cling-film or something and tape them over the real ones. Should fool the casual observer. Wouldn’t even need exactly the right font because people had weird fonts on their plates sometimes; I’d seen them.
Better, I could phone the garage that had repaired the Landy and get some old plates off them. They were bound to have some; it would just be a short-term loan anyway. I had about three hundred quid in an emergency stash at the back of my sock drawer and I could pick up another two-fifty from a cash machine. That should hire a set of plates for an hour. Wouldn’t it? How likely was I to find the only small London garage that would shake their heads at my proposed criminality and promptly phone the cops? Surely not.
On the other hand, it would take time, delay things. Supposing Merrial came back early? Detouring via the garage might make all the difference. And it would introduce another variable into the equation, one more source of potential leaking. Supposing the garage people knew people who knew Merrial? If the Landy was spotted and the false numbers were traced to them, who knew what might happen, what they’d do, what they’d be persuaded to say, how they’d jump?
