Dead Air

by Iain Banks

  I listened to the siren get closer and closer.

  Doppler, you fuck, I thought. Fucking Doppler your fucking woop-wooping arse on past. Don’t stop. Don’t pull up here, in the mews or in the square outside. Keep on going. Let it be an emergency somewhere else. Let it be a cop car en route to a robbery on the King’s Road or an ambulance heading for a boating accident on the river or a fire engine attending a false alarm at a shop; let it be anything at all but not a patrol car coming to check on a suspected break-in at the rear of Ascot Square.

  I stood there, staring at the answering machine, knowing that I should keep going, knowing that the sensible, per cent-ages-wise course of action was to keep doing what I was doing, get at the tape, wipe the fucker, wipe the fucker twice, make sure it was clean and I and Celia were in the clear… but I couldn’t. I had to hear what was going to happen with that damn siren. There would still be time to wipe the tape even if the sound did stop right outside anyway, but I just couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything until I knew. Closer, closer. Did they use a siren in such a situation? Would that not be like the stupidest thing to do if you were hoping to catch the crims in the act? Give the fuckers plenty of warning. Give them time to scarper with their bags of swag and their stripy jumpers and their eye masks, before the rozzers caught them bang to rights and they went to chokey so fast their feet didn’t touch…

  My own phone went, vibrating against my hip. I jumped as though zapped with a cattle prod then pulled my right-hand glove off and held it in my mouth while I withdrew the mobile from its holster. I was whimpering again. I was getting good at whimpering. My hands were shaking so much I almost dropped the phone. I flipped it open. Phil. I clicked, No, don’t answer and put it away again, trembling fingers missing the holster three or four times. The siren was still coming closer. I put my glove back on.

  Go past, go past. Oh, just fucking go past… Saint Doppler, I appeal to thee to intercede on my behalf… Oh, fuck off; what a load of fucking shite. Next I’d be appealing to the patron saint of atheists.

  The siren’s note started to deepen. I let out a breath I must have been holding for a minute or more. A roaring noise in my ears began to fade and the room took on more colour and stopped looking like the view down a pipe. Jeez, I must have been close to blacking out there.

  Never mind. A candle would be lit at the shrine of Saint Doppler after all. Red shifted, of course.

  I walked over to the skinny table and the answering machine. It had a little black-on-green LCD display which was in message counter mode at the moment. Five messages. I was still staring at the machine when it rang.

  I jumped. ‘Fuck!’ I screamed. Then, ‘You fucking bastarding little cunt!’ At the time, this seemed only reasonable.

  The machine clicked after four rings. ‘There’s nobody here right now,’ Ceel’s calm, beautiful voice said.

  ‘Yes there fucking is!’ I screamed hoarsely, shaking my fists in front of my chest.

  ‘Please leave a message after the tone.’

  ‘No!’ I yelled. ‘Don’t fucking bother! Whoever the fuck you are, just fucking fuck off!’

  Another click, and a hum as the machine’s tape wound itself forward. Then, ‘Aow hullo yes my name is Sam I’m calling on behalf of BT we would just like to check that you know of our latest offers for domestic customers I’ll call again at a later time and hope to discuss these offers with you thank you goodbye.’

  ‘Fuck off!’ I screamed as the phone clicked again and the tape started to wind itself back to Ceel’s announcement at the beginning. Fucking typical, I thought. Go ex-directory because you’re fed up getting junk calls from fucking double-glazing salespeople and what happens? You get fucking junk calls from B fucking T. At least I ought to find it reassuring that even metropolitan crime lords weren’t immune from that sort of shit.

  When the machine had gone quiet again, I carefully identified the Function and Clear buttons. They were big enough to use with the heavy gloves still on. I pressed one – the black and green display asked Clear All Messages? – followed by the second button. Nothing happened.

  I’d been stooping. Now I stood up.

  Actually something had happened; the display now read No Messages. But there was no more clicking, no humming, no other sounds at all.

  Was that it? It didn’t seem right. Was that all there was to it? Shouldn’t it wind forwards and wipe the tape after Ceel’s introduction?

  I guessed not. It would just forget about the messages sitting there already recorded and record over them when there was another incoming call.

  Was that good enough? It should be. That was the way the machine worked. As far as it was concerned, there had been no messages. If you tried to play the tape, you’d get nothing, just No Messages.

  But the message I’d left was still there. The words were still printed there in patterns of magnetised stripes on the little brown ribbon of oxide-coated plastic. If you took the micro-cassette out of the answering machine and put it in an ordinary dictation machine you’d still hear what I’d said.

  I pressed Function again. Re-record Message? No. I pressed Function again a few times until I got to the No Messages screen again. I was sweating now. I couldn’t decide what to do. In theory, it was all fixed now; mission accomplished. Definitely time to Get To Fuck.

  But the message was still there. Was it worth the risk of leaving it there, even though it wasn’t likely that anybody would take the necessary steps to access it? What if Merrial had called his own phone for some reason, and knew there was a message or messages there? Or somebody said they’d left a message? What would happen in that case if he came home and saw it said No Messages? Wouldn’t he investigate, take the cassette out, try it in another machine?

  Maybe Ceel would still beat him back and be able to say there was nothing on the tape, or only junk calls, but what if he was first back?

  Jesus, what was I thinking of? I took off my glove again, got out my mobile and started walking to the door. I’d call the fucking answering machine myself and just leave a soundless call that would last long enough to overwrite my incriminating message from last night. Maybe not soundless; maybe the machine would sense that and switch off. I’d rub my hand over the microphone on the mobile so it would pick up some sound and lay that down on the tape.

  First, though, I had to set up my mobile to ban its caller ID on the next outgoing call. I pressed Menu as I opened the door to the first-floor hall. I walked towards the stairs to the ground floor. Phone Book. OK. I got to the top of the stairs.

  Oh, Jesus, I hadn’t locked the fucking study. I turned back from the stairs. No, wait a minute; the study’s Yale had locked itself; I didn’t need to actively lock the damn thing. I got to the top of the stairs again. Call Related Features. OK.

  Oh, fuck, I had to put the key back in Ceel’s bathroom; I was going the wrong way. I turned round to head for the stairs leading up. Show Battery Meter. No; next. Restrict My Phone Number. OK. I walked upstairs.

  This was stupid; I was trying to do two things at once when I was barely capable of doing one with any degree of competence. Restrict ID On Next Call.

  At last! OK.

  Crossing Ceel’s bedroom, I clicked back until I could make a call then rang the number here. I still jumped when the land-line extension in the bedroom rang. The study key went back in the box of tampons and I listened to Ceel’s voice inviting me to leave a message after the tone. There were no beeps in between, just the tone, immediately. I held the mobile clumsily in my gloved left hand and rubbed it with my thumb while I closed the cabinet and wiped it with the paper hanky again.

  I was closing Ceel’s bedroom door and still enthusiastically rubbing the phone’s mike with the glove fabric (and thinking, Hey, this must sound a bit like when I got that unmeant call from Jo’s mobile) when, distantly, down the stairwell, two storeys below, I heard the sound of the front door opening.

  I froze. No. Not happen. Not to happen. No happening of such like thing.
Just fucking, like, no.

  Maybe I’d mistaken the sound. It went quiet. Was that a very quiet clicking I could hear from down there? Then a tiny beeping noise. Of course; the alarm that should have been on when somebody came into the house, the alarm they’d be expecting to be on but then discovered was not. Oh fuck.

  ‘Celia?’ said a voice. My bowels suddenly felt like they were up to their old tricks again, like there was unfinished business needing attention in there. Oh my God, it was him, back even earlier than we’d been expecting. Oh fucking hell, now what was I supposed to do? I looked down at the mobile phone in my gloved hand. My thumb was over the microphone. Shit, it wouldn’t be picking all this up, would it? Re-transmitting it back to the answering machine in the study?

  ‘Celia?’ again. Louder. ‘Maria?’

  I took a couple of steps back, to Celia’s bedroom door. I’d take sanctuary there. It was right. The natural place, the slim straw it was proper to clutch at, that of my love’s inner sanctum… well, that was a load of bollocks. Assuming that was him, and he was looking for her, where would be the first place he’d try? Well, yes, Kenneth.

  I stepped further back, to another door. I could hear footsteps down below. The door led to a shallow cupboard. Not enough room to hide in. That was it. There was his room, hers, and to access any others I’d have to walk past the stairwell and be visible from below for a certain amount of time. The footsteps were hard to make out. Was that somebody walking up the stairs to the floor below, the first floor? Or somebody walking along the hall on the ground floor?

  I was quaking. I gripped the mobile so hard I was in danger of breaking it. My jaw was grinding like I’d taken twenty E an hour earlier. It felt like I was right slap bang on the verge of a heart attack. Sweat was trickling from my brows; I could taste it on my upper lip. Jesus Christ; I’d been on the piss from mid-afternoon yesterday, slept in my clothes, got up without changing or washing, suffered at least one full-on panic attack per hour since I woke up and now I was sweating like a paedophile in Mothercare; even if I found the perfect hiding place the fucker was going to smell me.

  I walked as fast as possible past the stairwell towards the rooms at the front of the house. I did that walk where you step quickly but put each foot down very gently, trying not to cause any creaks or other noises. I stared wide-eyed down the stairwell. No obvious signs of anybody coming up to this floor or the one below. ‘Maria?’ More distantly this time. He must be through in the kitchen or thereabouts.

  Three doors ahead. One to the side. That one led to another, narrower staircase heading steeply for what would have been the servants’ or the children’s rooms when the house was designed. I closed it. So far no comedy door-creaking noises from the well-maintained hinges. Thank fuck. Central door. Another cupboard. Not as shallow as the one along the landing, but nowhere to hide if he did look in.

  Right-hand door. Jesus; was this his bedroom? Big enough. Grand enough. Masculine-looking enough (I thought). I’d vaguely assumed they both had their bedrooms at the rear because it would be quieter, but maybe the one opposite hers was somebody else’s – the bodyguard, the big blond guy? – and this was Merrial’s. It looked lived-in, somehow. I closed it. Maybe a little too quickly; there was a distinct click.

  The third door revealed a gym. A very well-equipped gym with a polished blond-wood floor and lots of machines, some of which I recognised, a couple I didn’t. Two more tall windows and translucent vertical blinds.

  There were footsteps coming up the stairs. I was starting to hyperventilate. What did it feel like when you had a heart attack? Heart thrashing? Pains in chest? Headache? Sore arms? That would be (E) All of the above, then.

  I slipped into the gym. Heck, the smell of stale sweat might even be less conspicuous in here. I still needed somewhere to hide. Two more doors; the first led to another en suite. The second belonged to a large, deep cupboard.

  Oh shit; I could hear somebody on this floor now, out on the landing. The cupboard held old bits of fitness equipment plus various items of sports gear, including some scuba apparatus. This would have to do. I closed the door and made my way through the darkness as rapidly as I could, banging one shin and barking a hand on something hard and metallic. When I hit the rear wall I got into a corner and squatted down. The place smelled musty. I decided that was good.

  A door opened. Was it the door to the gym?

  Oh fuck. What the hell had I been thinking? If Merrial had just come back from caving, what was he likely to do? Put the gear away. Where was he likely to put it? Where would he come straight to? Right here. This cupboard, this door. Right here where mister fuckwit was hiding, squatting like a frightened schoolboy at the back of a hidey-hole.

  Well done, Kenneth. Top fucking marks, son. Take a good feel of your knees while they still fold the same way as everybody else’s.

  Steps; a tread coming closer, shoes on polished wood. Oh, fucking hell. I wanted to cry. I was going to cry. I put my head down, bowing to the darkness. Hide your face, don’t let the whites of the eyes show. Maybe the footsteps weren’t coming this way. You couldn’t always tell in unfamiliar houses. Maybe he was walking upstairs. Maybe – the door to the cupboard opened. Light sensed through the eyelids. I stopped breathing.

  How long? What would happen? Would he smell me? Would he see me? How long? How long before I knew? Would he say something? Would he just look, squint, then shout, or take out a gun? Or go for a gun from his gun safe in the study? Or call the big blond guy? Light! There had to be a light fixture in a cupboard this size! I hadn’t thought to look or feel for one, but there must be a switch. He’d turn on the light and see me hunched here. Fucking imbecile!

  No light clicked on. Maybe he could see me without it. Anyway the smell was sure to do it. Animals could smell fear and we’re all just animals, especially in situations like this. The oldest, basest, most deeply wired sense was going to betray me, and the more I panicked about it the more fear pheromones I’d be giving out and so the more likely it was to happen. Oh fuck, I was going to lose control of my bowels again. Something clattered, making the floor under my backside thump. I came very close to both jumping and yelping.

  Then the door closed and the light went.

  Steps sounded going away again.

  I breathed again. Of course, Merrial might still have seen me but thought the best thing to do was to pretend he hadn’t, so he could go and get a gun, or call the cops, or the blond guy.

  ‘Yes, Celia?’ I heard him say. ‘I’m home… Yes, there was too much rain. But listen. The alarm wasn’t on when I got in.’ I heard a rhythmic metallic tapping noise as he spoke. Then, as I looked at the thin frame of light around the closed door, one edge of that glowing boundary started slowly to widen and enlarge. The fucking door was opening! ‘The house alarm. It wasn’t switched on.’ The door opened silently and very slowly. Bits of gleaming fitness equipment came gradually into view. Then Merrial himself was revealed, standing by one of the polished chrome machines, looking out through the opened blinds of one tall window. He was dressed in jeans and a dark leather bomber jacket. ‘Of course I’m sure,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask stupid questions.’ He was resting one hand on the fitness machine, tapping one of the wire-hung weights against the chrome metal support; that was the tapping noise I’d heard. He hadn’t noticed the cupboard door still slowly opening. ‘I don’t even have Kaj here with me. I-’ Now he must have noticed the door from the corner of his eye; he started and his head shot round as he jumped and made a small involuntary noise. ‘Fucking door,’ he said quietly. He was staring, it seemed, straight at me.

  Oh fuck. If I shifted now he’d see the movement but if he kept looking at me he’d surely see my pasty white face in the darkness. I kept still but closed my eyes. Then opened them a touch because I could hear him walking towards me across the wooden floor of the gym.

  ‘No, just the door to the cupboard in the gym. Swung open there. Gave me a… moment,’ he said, putting one hand to the edge of the
door and closing it. The light faded again. I took another breath. ‘So were you last out, or what?’ he said, voice muffled again by the closed door. ‘Well, somebody forgot to set the fucking alarm, Celia.’

  Oh, just fucking leave her alone, you fuck. It wasn’t her. She’s Ceel; she would never make a mistake like that. She’s the calm, infallible one. Her only fault is a certain weakness for villains and idiots.

  Maybe if I rushed the bastard and smacked him over the head with something heavy. Kill the fucker; murder the man. He was a fucking people-smuggling, life-ruining, knee-snapping crime lord, for fuck’s sake; I’d be doing society a favour. Then Ceel and I could run away together.

  Or, better still, say, just hide here in the darkness and hope.

  ‘Well, I’m calling Kaj, get him to have a look at the alarm… Well, he helped install it. I’m going to take a look round, make sure there’s nobody in here… It’s not being paranoid, Celia. I’m not taking a shower thinking there could be some smack-head on the loose in here looking for your jewels or something. These types are unbalanced, capable of anything… Yes, that sort of remark is amusing around the dinner table, Celia. Standing here right now thinking there could be some junkie hiding behind a door with a knife, irony is the last thing on my mind… I’m not suggesting a junkie could defeat the alarm, I’m suggesting that somebody forgot to turn the alarm on and that therefore there could possibly be somebody in the house who got in without the alarm going off as it would have otherwise… I’m not discussing this with you. You seem in a very strange mood… No, I don’t want to know how your weekend is going… Do what you want.’ There was a soft snapping noise, like a phone being closed, perhaps. Then steps, a pause, more steps, a door opening off the room, then closing, then another door, and then silence.