The Business

by Iain Banks

  'Consummate it?'

  'Yes. Is he that gruesome?'

  'He's a little plump.'

  'How little?'

  'Maybe an extra twenty, thirty pounds.'

  'How tall is he?'

  'About my height. No, a bit taller.'

  'That is not grotesquely obese. Does his breath smell?'

  'I don't think so.'

  'Does his body smell?'

  'No. Well, only of scent. Well, I mean…Never mind.'

  'Teeth straight?'

  'The teeth are good. The teeth are an asset. And he's a good dancer. Light on his feet. Even graceful. You could say graceful.'

  'Well, that's good.'

  'Yeah, but they're old-fashioned dances; waltzes and shit.'

  'The waltz may be making a come-back. That's a neutral, for now. Could become a plus.'

  'Okay. What else?'

  'Full head of hair?'

  'Yup. Maybe too full; slightly bouffant.'

  'Irrelevant. Hair on a man's head is like the opposite of salt in a dish; you can take it away but you can't add it in.'

  'That is so nearly profound it's painful. Keep going.'

  'Is he slimy, repellent, actually, like, ugly?'

  'None of the above.'

  'Can you imagine fucking him?… Hello? Kathryn? Hello?'

  'I just imagined it.'

  'And?'

  'It wasn't that good for me.'

  'Did you imagine having to fake orgasm?'

  'Yes. Probably. Maybe.'

  'But you don't actually feel sick?'

  'Not sick. Possibly a little soiled.'

  'Why soiled?'

  'I never imagined fucking a guy I didn't actively want to fuck before.'

  'You haven't?'

  'Never.'

  'You're unreal. But anyway, it wasn't that awful, right?'

  'Right. But imagining fucking him isn't the same as actually fucking him, is it?'

  'That's what your imagination is for, you idiot, it's like on-board VR. If it's not that terrible in your imagination it'll probably be even better in reality.'

  'So I marry him, fuck him, but keep my beloved as lover?'

  'Yes.'

  'That may be a little sophisticated. I'm not sure how that'll play someplace where a good wife is worth three yaks.'

  'Be discreet. Anyway, he's a man. He'll want to play away, too. Think reciprocity.'

  'What about children?'

  'What about children?'

  'What if I'm expected to produce? There's a royal line to be continued here.'

  'Well…maybe you're not fertile.'

  'I am.'

  'You checked?'

  'I checked.'

  'So go on the pill. Tell him they're headache tablets. He'll never know.'

  'That is almost plausible.'

  'Anyway, once you're in a stable relationship, in fact once you're in two stable relationships, with the King-prince and your beloved, you may change your mind. You may realise you've wanted children all along.'

  'So you would have me believe.'

  'Hmm. The Prince; his colouring. Is he, ah, dark-complexioned? Compared to the beloved, I mean. Could you…would it be possible…?'

  '…No, I don't think I want to look down that…'

  '…No, you're right, maybe not.'

  'Definitely not. I could get beheaded or something.'

  'They behead people for that sort of thing there?'

  'Actually they don't have the death penalty at all. More civilised than the US in that respect.'

  'Yeah? Well, fuck them. How many aircraft carriers they got?'

  'Not a lot of call for aircraft carriers in landlocked Himalayan states.'

  'Stealth bombers? Cruise missiles? Nukes?'

  'You're right, they're pathetically ill-equipped to enter an escalating correctional-system conflict with Old Glory.'

  'You do realise you could end up with three passports at the end of this?'

  'Dear holy shit! I hadn't thought of that!'

  'Well, you —'

  'Hold on, I got a call waiting. Oh, shit. I got a bad feeling about this, Luce.'

  Miss Heggies was sitting on the parapet at the end of the mile-long reflecting pool, her feet dangling almost in the water, her usually neatly bunned hair hanging down in grey lengths around her undone collar. She didn't look round when I parked the old Lancia on the gravel behind her.

  I went up and sat with her on the stone, my legs drawn up under my chin. A very light rain, what we'd call a smir in Scotland, was falling from the bright grey overcast.

  'I'm very sorry, Miss Heggies.'

  'Yes,' she said dully, still staring at the flat water. 'Sorry.'

  I put my arm out tentatively. She inclined millimetrically towards me. She didn't exactly relax and start sobbing, but. she leant against me and put her arm round my waist, patting me. We sat like that for a while. In Scotland, sometimes crying is called greeting, and it only struck me then that it was odd that something you usually did when you were saying goodbye to somebody, one way or another, should also mean welcoming.

  On the way back to the house I stopped and looked up at the place. So did she, gazing wonderingly at it, as though taking in its baroque confections of stonework for the first time. She sniffed, buttoning the collar of her dress and tucking up her hair.

  'Do you know what's happening to Blysecrag, Ms Telman?'

  'Apparently it's going to the National Trust, but I think only on condition you get to stay.'

  She nodded. I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket. 'And this is my inheritance.'

  She squinted at the note. 'David Rennell? He used to be a gardener here. Nice lad. Mr Ferrindonald found him a job with the company.'

  'Yes, most recently just outside Glasgow. I'm sorry if this isn't a good time, Miss H, but Uncle Freddy obviously thought this was important and I'd like to talk to Mr Rennell as soon as possible. Would you make the introduction?'

  'Of course, Ms Telman.'

  I didn't really need the introduction from Miss H, apart from having my identity confirmed quickly; Uncle F had told David Rennell to answer all my questions if I ever got in touch.

  'You've been in there?'

  'Yes, Ms Telman. There doesn't seem to be any big deal about it any more. People are wandering in and out, clearing up and that sort of thing.' He had a nice Yorkshire accent.

  'Call me Kathryn. I'll call you David, all right?'

  'All right.'

  'So, David, what was there? What did you see?'

  'Just a big empty room. There were containers for etching materials in there, but I talked to one of the guys; they were empty and just put in there the other day, after everything was moved out.'

  'What was moved out?'

  'I don't know. Whatever it was it all disappeared in the middle of the night, on the twentieth. Somebody saw a load of desks being shifted next morning. I think some of them might still be around in the warehouse.'

  'Could you describe the room in more detail?'

  'About ten metres by twenty, ceiling the same height as the rest of the factory, with the usual ducting and so on, carpet tiles on the floor, lots of cables lying around and coming out of opened conduits in the floor.'

  'What sort of cables?'

  'Power cables. Lots of others, like printer cables and that sort of thing. Ah, I picked up a couple of connectors and plugs and so on.'

  'Ah-hah. Well done. Could you possibly do me a favour, David?'

  'Certainly.'

  '…and maybe take some time off?'

  * * *

  I was to meet David Rennell in the car park at Carter Bar, right on the border between England and Scotland. It was a coolish, blustery day. The view from the shallow pass, looking north into the undulating hills, forests and fields of the Scottish lowlands, was moodily dramatic and changing all the time under the clouds that sped and tumbled above. I got a veggie burger from a van at one end of the car park and sat eating it in the car. Very st
ake-out. Meeting on the border; very cold war.

  It had been a good drive. I'd left the phone off for most of it, just driving the Aurelia across the moors on secondary roads, thinking.

  Thinking a lot about Uncle Freddy, about what a laugh he'd been and how much I was going to miss him and the occasional invitation to Blysecrag. Probably next time I wanted to go I'd have to pay, and there would be a National Trust shop, and lots of those carmine-coloured ropes with brass hook-ends attached to brass stands that corral visitors into the accepted circular route in your average English stately home. Ah, well. It would mean more people would get a chance to see the weird old place. For the good, in the end. No grouching about that.

  Uncle Freddy was another matter. Another one dead. My real mother, Mrs Telman last year (her husband — technically my adopted father, according to the legal paperwork — ten years earlier, not that I'd seen him more than once); now Freddy.

  I wondered if my biological father was still alive. Probably not. The truth was I didn't want to know, and if I was honest with myself I'd have to admit that I'd be relieved to discover he was no longer in the land of the living. Guilt about that. Was this the same as actually wishing him dead? I didn't think so. If I'd had the choice, if somehow I could make him alive by thinking him so, I would. But I didn't want to meet him, didn't want some bogus emotional reunion, and anyway it didn't seem fair that he might have survived when the people I'd cared about most, my mother, Mrs Telman and Uncle Freddy, were dead.

  What had been his contribution to my life? One drunken ejaculation. Then he'd slapped my mother around, gone into prison for theft, come out to pursue his career as an alcoholic and turned up at my mum's funeral to shout names at me and Mrs Telman. At least he'd had the decency not to contest the adoption. Or he'd been bought off, which was more likely. And — if he knew I'd become, by his standards, disgustingly rich — he'd never bothered me for cash.

  I supposed I ought to make enquiries, find out if he was still alive or not. One of these days.

  The drive went on; the weather came and went, sending rain and sun and sleet and slush. The high roads across the moors were wild and grey one moment, then sun-bright and fresh with purple heather the next. I stopped at Hexham to put some four-star into the Aurelia's tank and was reminded of the calibratory nature of travelling in a covetable car: if guys in garages start to admire the car more than you, you're getting old. Honours even, then. I drove on into the north.

  David Rennell arrived in a dark blue Mondeo. I bought him a burger and a soda and we sat in the steamed-up Aurelia, for all the world like a married-to-others couple having a clandestine meeting towards the end of the affair. Rain beat on the roof.

  David Rennell was a tall, wiry-looking guy with short auburn hair. Bless him, he'd brought a couple of Polaroids of the desks they'd moved out of the mysterious, no-longer-top-secret room in the middle of the Silex plant. Not ordinary desks. Too many shelves. Lots of holes in the flat surfaces for cables. He'd brought a handful of the connectors and plugs that had been lying around the place.

  'That one looks like a phone jack, except not,' he said.

  'Hmm. Did you come up with anything else?' I'd asked him to have a think while he drove down here. The usual no-matter-how-trivial stuff you see in cop shows.

  'I talked to somebody who saw one of the trucks that took the stuff away.'

  'Any haulier's name?'

  'No, they were just plain. They didn't have any markings, but the person I was talking to thought they looked like Pikefrith trucks, though he wasn't sure why. Means nothing to me, I'm afraid.'

  Pikefrith was a wholly owned subsidiary of ours, one of the few European companies that specialised in shifting delicate scientific instruments and sensitive computer gear. Come to think of it, their trucks did appear slightly different from your average lorry, if you looked carefully enough or were into the subtleties of truck design. Air suspension. I just nodded.

  'Oh, yes, and the Essex kids have all disappeared. They all seemed glad to see the back of them up there.' (He pronounced it 'oop there', which was really rather cute.)

  'Who the hell are the Essex kids?'

  'It's what the Silex people called this lot that have just left. They mostly worked in the room and they kept themselves to themselves. Bit brash, though, so they say. Had a big party on the Friday and then never showed up on the Monday. All transferred.'

  I felt confused. 'Were they really from Essex?'

  'I think they were from down south. Don't know about Essex.'

  'And Freddy said you saw Adrian Poudenhaut there, at the factory?'

  'Yes, just last week.'

  I felt my eyes narrow as I looked at him. 'You're absolutely certain it was him?'

  David Rennell nodded. 'Positive. I've met him a few times; helped him get some of Mr Ferrindonald's cars started, reloaded for him when he was shooting.'

  'Did he see you?'

  'No. But it was him, definitely.'

  Things that make you go, Hmm.

  We went our separate ways. I drove back a different route to Blysecrag, still favouring the picturesque B-roads, even when the sun went and night descended. I had many more miles to think stuff over.

  The Lancia really was a hoot to drive.

  Uncle Freddy's funeral was in three days. I had plenty of time to visit London.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Suzrin House stands in Whitehall in London, the only non-governmental building left on that stretch of the Embankment. It looks out over the river towards the sixties concrete brutalism of the National Theatre complex like an ancient, grizzled gunslinger regarding an upstart cowboy just arrived in town. It is spectacularly ugly in a brooding, noxious sort of way.

  Its main, dark brown rectangular tower-block slopes inward slightly and is set back from the Thames, separated from it by a huge glassed-in section several storeys tall whose roof rises from the Embankment side towards the main block. Enormous ornamental windows stare from the very top of the main tower. I used to wonder why the whole thing looked so familiar from a distance until I realised it was shaped like a giant old-fashioned cash register.

  The place is part office, part apartment block. It was where Adrian George worked. I took the train from York to London the morning after Freddy died, calling AG en route and arranging lunch.

  'I was sorry to hear about old Freddy Ferrindonald.'

  'Yeah, it was a shame.'

  'Do you have anything in particular in mind for lunchtime?'

  'I thought Italian.'

  'I meant agenda-wise.'

  'Not particularly,' I lied.

  We met in a fairly swish French place Adrian George favoured in Covent Garden. He wasn't big on Italian food. He wasn't big on drinking either, citing a heavy workload that afternoon. AG was shortish but trim and dark and handsome. I could remember him when his eyebrows met in the middle, but maybe he'd lost out on too many girls whose mothers had warned them about men with hirsute foreheads, because it looked as if now he shaved that centre line. We conversed pleasantly enough; company gossip, mostly. He was one of those people I got on best with through e-mail, just as Luce was somebody I found it better to talk to on the phone.

  I only mentioned his reported sighting of Colin Walker, Hazleton's security chief, in London a month earlier, right at the end of our meal. He tried not to react, laughing it off as mistaken identity. He insisted on picking up the bill.

  I said I'd go back to Suzrin House with him. The weather was cool, windy and dry and I thought we might walk along the Strand or the Embankment, but he wanted to take a taxi. He chattered. I already knew all I needed to.

  Once we'd gone through Security in the lobby, we went our separate ways, he up to the exec floors, me to the basement to see an old friend.

  'That one's a Bell-K connector.'

  Allan Fleming was, as usual, a mess. He'd been in a wheelchair for twenty years since a climbing accident in his teens, and despite having a very nice wife called Monica, who
was totally devoted to him and turned him out neatly every day, it usually only took him minutes after he arrived at work to look as if he'd spent the last month sleeping rough. Sometimes he accomplished this between the garage — where he parked his converted Mini — and his workshop.

  Allan was Suzrin House's resident computer nerd. His workshop — somewhere deep under the main building and way below the surface of the Thames even at low water — was like a museum of computing, filled to its high ceilings with bewildering amounts of electronic hardware ancient and modern, but mostly ancient (which in computer terms, for the truly, seriously, antediluvian stuff, of course meant about the same age as him or me). We'd known each other since post-grad days, when we'd both been in that year's Security intake, before I'd come to my senses and left to be a proper exec, specialising in hi-tech.

  Allan was in charge of computer and IT security, specifically here in Suzrin and the other outlying London offices, but in effect — along with a few other similarly gifted geek-wizards in the States — also anywhere the Business had modems and computers. He was our insurance against hackers: if he couldn't worm his way into your system, probably nobody else could either. I'd shown him the plugs and other bits and pieces that David Rennell had brought me from Silex.

  'What's a Bell-K connector?' I asked, staring at his cardigan and wondering how he'd managed to get so many buttons done up through the wrong holes. I bet he hadn't left the house like that.

  'It's a specialist phone-line connector,' he said, pulling absently at some of his curly brown hair and twisting it so that it stood out from his head like a tiny horizontal pigtail. 'A dedicated land line, probably; very high capacity, especially for the time. Better than ISDN. Made by Bell Laboratories, as you might expect, in the States. Still copper technology, however; your next step up would be your optical.'

  'What was its "time"?'

  'Oh, just a few years ago.'

  'Sort of thing you might find in a chip-manufacturing plant?'

  'Hmm.' Allan turned the little connector over in his hands, then took off his unfashionably large-framed glasses and blew on each lens in turn, holding them up to the light and blinking. 'Not particularly. You wouldn't want it for telephony purposes, I'd have thought, and your standard Parallel, Serial and SCSI ports would handle most non-specialist applications.'