Authors: Iain Banks
People got in the way, and I lost sight of her. I moved to the metal fencing describing the edges of the rink, putting my hands on the cold tube of rail, trying to see her again. Lengths of blue plasticised canvas were tied to the fencing and I could feel one of the plastic ties under my left hand. My mouth felt cold and dry and a swirl of wind made me feel the tears in the corners of my eyes. I saw her once more as the crowds on the ice parted again and her skimming, sinuous course brought her gliding on a metal hiss towards me like a fabulously exotic alien creature fallen into our mundane world from a higher reality.
I suddenly realised two things. The first was that I had never really seen this woman in daylight before. The second was that she was the most beautiful thing I had ever beheld.
She swivelled, poised, jumped and landed, and then swung into a neat spin, perfectly centred, not ten metres away. She brought her arms in and raised them above her head. The spin speeded up and her slim body became a tall blurred pillar of light blue above a spray of white, reflected light strobing off the glittering blades of her boots. She came out of it and pushed away again, edges aslant across the rasping surface. A smattering of applause from people on and off the ice followed her, and she smiled but didn’t otherwise acknowledge the acclaim or look anybody in the eye. She passed only a couple of metres away from me and I swivelled to watch her. Her expression was diffident, almost embarrassed. A blush of rose glowed beneath the light-brown skin of her face.
A body leaned alongside me, rubbing against my side. ‘She’s good,’ Jo said, putting her arm through mine again.
‘Yes,’ was all I could find to say. Celia went with the circulating people for a while, serene and smooth and steady.
‘Huh. Got all the gear, too,’ Jo said. ‘Looks okay on her.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Fancy a glühwein?’
‘Hmm?’ I said. ‘Oh, yeah. Yeah. Good idea.’
‘My round. You going to stay here?’
‘Ah … yeah, okay.’
‘Back in a mo.’
When she came round the next time Celia was looking at the spectators, as if watching out for somebody. She saw me and did a brief double-take, but her expression barely wavered. She skated past me, not looking at me, scanning the crowds further round the boundary, then waved to somebody there and came to a stop at the edge of the ice about twenty metres away round the perimeter.
Mr Merrial was standing there.
The giant blond guy I’d assumed was his bodyguard when I’d seen them leaving Sir Jamie’s party back in April stood at his side. I was amazed I hadn’t noticed him.
Mr Merrial was talking to his wife. He looked right at me for a moment and nodded, though not in a way that meant Hello. I felt like an ice sculpture; frozen, fragile, ultimately doomed. Celia took the briefest of looks in my direction. My mouth had gone very dry, as if the saliva had frozen to my gums and teeth. The ground, the whole huge courtyard, seemed to tip beneath my feet. I gripped the metal rail tighter. In front of me a girl, almost doubled-over on the ice, felt her way past me, laughing, creasing the plastic canvas as she pulled herself along.
Mr Merrial was still looking at me, his pale, pinched face looking very white above the thick black coat he wore. His face was all there was to see; he wore gloves, a thick scarf and a Politburo hat. Celia was shaking her head. The big blond guy was looking at me too, now.
Oh shit. I looked away, trying to appear relaxed. I watched the other skaters. Some other people were quite good, too, doing jumps and spins where they could find the space. I brought my right elbow in, just reassuring myself that my mobile was still on my belt. Had I turned it on this morning? I didn’t always, on a Sunday. I couldn’t remember for sure. I suspected I hadn’t.
I shook my left wrist, feeling the suddenly reassuring weight of the big watch.
I risked a sideways glance. Celia was still shaking her head, looking, from her body language, as if she was arguing or pleading with her husband. He was nodding, then shaking his head. Celia spread her arms in what looked like a gesture of defeat, tipped her head to one side, was greeted with a nod, and then skated quickly away, pushing towards the far side of the rink.
I quickly looked back at the other skaters. Oh fuck, we hadn’t been discovered, had we? He didn’t know, did he? Oh fuck, why did we have to come here? Why couldn’t we have caught a bus or a taxi back home from the Embankment? Why hadn’t I thought that of course Celia skated, so she might be here, I might see her, and of course if she was here she would probably be with her husband? Why hadn’t I just slunk away the instant I’d noticed her? Why did I have to stand like a love-struck adolescent staring at her? Why did she have to see me and do that tiny, fatal double-take? Why did Merrial have to be so fucking observant? Oh shit, why the
fuck
wasn’t life a computer game where you could go back and re-live the last few minutes and make a different choice?
I looked back again. The big blond guy had disappeared. I looked round as frantically as anyone can without actually moving their head. I couldn’t see him anywhere. How the hell could I miss him? Jesus, they wouldn’t try anything here, would they? Too many people. And there were cops around; I’d seen two lots at least. Merrial had gone, too. He—
‘Mr Nott?’ said a voice at my back.
I froze, staring down at the ice. A pale flash of blue, somewhere out there. I turned.
‘John Merrial.’ The man put his hand out. I shook it.
His face was slim, almost delicate, close up. He looked slightly sad and infinitely wise. His eyebrows were thin and very black, lips thin and very pale. Eyes bright blue. Contained by the coat, the scarf and the fur hat, his face looked unreal somehow, like something two-dimensional seen upon a screen.
‘Hello,’ I said. My voice sounded very small.
‘That was my wife there; in blue,’ he said. His voice was quiet. Almost accentless. I saw a massive blond head over the crowds behind him.
‘Very good,’ I said, gulping the words. ‘Isn’t she?’
‘Thank you, yes, she is.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘I think we were both at a party Jamie Werthamley threw, weren’t we? Back in the spring. Limehouse Tower. We were never introduced, but I think I saw you, now you’ve been pointed out to me.’
‘I believe we were,’ I said. I’m fucking your wife, I’m fucking your wife, I’m fucking your wife, I kept thinking, some suicidally insane bit of my brain wanting to blurt it out, to just say it, to get this over with, to make the worst that could happen actually happen and not have to keep imagining it.
‘How is Jamie?’ He smiled.
‘Fine. Last time I saw him.’ Which was at that same party, come to think of it; the party where I met your wife and snogged her and felt her up and agreed to this patently suicidal affair in the first place.
‘Good. Pass on my regards, will you?’
Oh, you mean you’re not going to kill me right now? ‘Ah, happily. Certainly. Yes.’
He looked past me, out to the ice. ‘My wife listens to you on the radio,’ he said.
Yes. And that hand you just shook has been inside her sweet cunt. See this tongue, these lips? Think of her ears, her nipples, her clitoris. ‘Really? I’m, I’m very flattered.’
He gave a thin smile. ‘She doesn’t want me to ask you this, but I know she’d be very happy if you played a request for her sometime.’
‘Well, we don’t really do requests,’ I heard some fuckwit part of my brain say.
What?
‘Oh,’ he said, looking down for a moment.
Was I fucking
crazy
?
His coat looked thick and very dark and glossy.
Did I really want to die that fucking
much
?
He wore narrow, black, highly polished brogues and very fine black leather gloves, though he’d taken off the right one to shake my hand.
‘But,’ I said, clapping my hands together and smiling. ‘For … for …’ For somebody I’m shagging the fucking arse off for hours on end whenever I get the opportunity. ‘For a friend of Sir Jamie’s, and … and for such a beautiful, ah, ice-skater … I think we can make an exception.’ I nodded. Merrial was smiling now. ‘In fact I’m certain we can,’ I told him. Because you see I have absolutely no principles whatsoever, when it comes right down to it, and I’ll do anything - anything at all - to save my miserable, lying, hypocritical hide.
‘That’s very kind, Mr Nott,’ he said evenly. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘Oh, ah, not at all.’ I
love
doing favours for people I hate.
He twisted from the waist about two degrees as he said, ‘Here’s my card.’ And the big blond guy with the metre-wide shoulders was suddenly there at Merrial’s side and presenting me with a plain white business card, which I took quickly so they wouldn’t see my trembling fingers. ‘Call me if I can ever do you a favour.’
‘Ah, right.’ Well, you could die conveniently. How about that? I put the card in a pocket. ‘Thank you.’
Mr Merrial nodded slowly. ‘Well, we have to go now. Good to meet you.’
‘And you.’ You fucking nasty murdering gangster bastard.
Mr Merrial turned to go, then stopped. ‘Oh,’ he said. He smiled his blade-thin smile again. Fucking hell, you crime lord cunt, I was just about getting my jangling nerves back into some sort of order and now you’re giving me a fucking
Colombo
moment? ‘I should tell you her name, shouldn’t I?’ Of course you shouldn’t, you dickhead, there’s no fucking need; it’s Celia. Ceel. Babe babe babe sometimes when I’m coming deep inside her.
‘Oh! Well, yes, it might help.’
‘It’s Celia Jane.’
‘Celia
Jane
?’ I blurted. Well done, Kenneth, put plenty of emphasis in there. Clearly you do still want to die.
He nodded. ‘Celia Jane.’ He reached out and patted my elbow once before turning away.
They moved off through the crowd, the blond dude leaving a spacious wake. Celia - sorry; Celia Jane - left the ice at one of the rink’s access points and they met her there. The blond guy produced a coat and a pair of shoes for her. She didn’t look at me and she held on to her husband’s arm while she changed from the skates to the shoes. I wiped my eyes with my hands. When I opened my eyes again, Mr and Mrs Merrial and their bulky minder had gone.
I was still shivering when Jo arrived back with two little polystyrene cups of steaming mulled wine.
‘Here. Look like you need it, too. You’re very pale. You okay?’
‘Just fine. Thanks.’
‘You fuckin
spoke
to the guy? He shook
hands
wif you?’
‘His wife’s a fan.’
‘What of ? Knee-cappings?’
‘Of mine, you buffoon.’
‘You’re fuckin kiddin me, man!’ Ed’s voice went very high; the speaker in my mobile struggled to cope.
I filled in the details of meeting Mr M at Somerset House.
‘Aow yeah; they used to register stuff there, didn’t they? Burfs and marriages. An defs.’
‘Yeah, well, now it’s got an artificially cold heart and that’s where I bumped into him.’
‘An you’re goin to play his missus a record?’
‘Damn right I am.’
‘Sweet, man! An he says now he owes you a favour?’
‘Well, that’s what he implied, but—’
‘Ask him to find out who’s got it in for you, then. Fuckin ell, dedicate a whole show to his bitch an he’ll fuckin rub them out for you as well.’
‘I think that might be a little excessive.’
‘He’s an excessive geezer, mate.’
‘Yeah, well, I think I’ll keep him well away from whatever messes I’m already in.’
‘Wisdom, Kennif.’
I drummed the fingers of my left hand on my right arm. I was standing on the deck of the
Temple Belle
, looking out at the dark waters. Jo was below, opening some Korean take-away containers just delivered from a restaurant in Chelsea. I’d felt I just had to tell somebody at least something of what had happened that afternoon, and Ed had been the obvious choice. ‘Or do you think maybe I should ask him for help?’ I said. ‘I know he’s a villain but he did seem quite friendly; helpful, almost. I mean, maybe—’
‘Na, I don’t really fink you should. I was kiddin. Just you keep your skinny white ass away from people like that.’
‘You sure?’
‘I’m sure, man.’
‘Yeah, but he didn’t seem
that
bad, I mean—’
‘Listen. I’m gonna tell you sumfink about your Mr Merrial.’
‘What?’
‘It’s a bit orrible, but I fink you need tellin.’
‘What, then?’
‘Right.’ I heard Ed take a deep breath. Or possibly a toke. ‘He’s got this really big fucker works for him, right? Blond geezer built like a fuckin nuclear bunker.’
‘I’ve seen him. He handed me Mr M’s card this afternoon.’
‘Right. Well, this is wot I heard from somebody wot was there when this appened once. When Mr Merrial wants to find sumfink out from somebody wot does not want to tell him, or if he’s upset wif somebody, right, he has them tied to a chair wif their legs straight out an their feet tied to another chair, and then the big blond guy comes an sits on their legs an bounces up and down wif increasin force until either they talk or their knees bend the wrong way and their legs snap.’
‘Oh for fuck’s sake! Oh Jesus Christ, that’s fucking
sick
.’
‘An I eard this from a bruvver who is definitely wot you’d call a usually reliable source, too, mate, an not given to tellin milky whites. He was taken along to see wot would happen to him if he ever crossed Mr Merrial. Actually I fink the bruvver must have tried on sumfink very slightly dodgy himself an Mr M wanted to give him a ever so mild warning. So he got to see. And hear.’
‘I feel ill.’
‘This bruvver’s a big fucker, too. An he can handle himself, but I swear when he was tellin me all this he fuckin went grey. Grey, Kennif.’
‘Green,’ I gulped. ‘Me; now.’
‘Yeah, well, I juss fot you ought to know, before you go gettin any more involved wif people like that.’
‘Ken?’ Jo yelled from below.
‘That’s my tea out, Ed. Though I do seem to have lost my appetite, for some reason. Anyway, thanks for the warning.’
‘No probs.’