Authors: Iain Banks
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?
So I couldn’t risk it. But meanwhile I’d sat here slugging water and thinking about it and wasted a few minutes. Well done, Kenneth. Ten past eleven. Get going.
Traffic was relatively light. It was a pleasantly mild winter morning; high cloud and a watery sun. Breezy. Why the fuck couldn’t it be breezy in fucking Inverness? And dry in the Peak fucking District? I could have gone faster, but I stuck to between thirty and thirty-five. This would be no time to be caught speeding, especially with God knew how much alcohol still sloshing about in my system.
Ascot Square was quiet. Bunches of silver balloons tied to railings indicated there’d been a party in one of the grand town-houses on the other side of the square from the Merrials’. Maybe a twenty-fifth anniversary or something. Lots of Mercs, Jags and BMWs, plus Range Rovers and a brace of Rollers or Bentleys; Audi A2s and a couple of Smarts, too. The Merrials lived in number eleven, near the centre of the imposing, four-storeys-plus-basement terrace. No obvious signs of life at number eleven.
Tall limes and beeches in the private gardens in the centre of the square. I drove on through into Eccleston Street then into Chester Square. I parked in a residents only space for a couple of minutes, climbing into the back of the Landy and pulling on my overalls. Brand new, basically; I’d got them when I bought the Landy, thinking I’d do my own repairs. And a size too small; my shirt sleeves and the bottom of my 501s protruded from the green overalls by a good two or three centimetres. Great; so now I looked stupid as well as villainous. I had an old Sony Music Awards baseball cap; I put that on too. Bit of a giveaway industry-wise, but what else was I supposed to do? Sunglasses from the cubby box between the front seats.
Gloves! Of course I needed gloves. I was going to break into a house, or make an illegal entry or whatever the legally nice definition was. I didn’t want to go leaving fingerprints all over the fucking place. Gloves. I had some somewhere. I rummaged behind the bench seats on either side, feeling down between the seat cushions and the back rests. Blimey, you could hide a complete fucking tool kit along here … gloves. Got them. They were thick, padded things for pulling out bramble bushes or hauling on winch wires or some such manly shit as that, not at all the sort of fine, thin things you’d want for the delicate business of letting yourself into somebody else’s house, but, shit, they’d just have to do.
I jumped back into the front and set off again, back past Ascot Square proper and round into the mews behind it on the south side. Lots of close-packed but very expensive mews properties with differing treatments of the old architecture; a jumbled variety of windows large and small, balconies, awnings and outside steps. Lots of plants, too; hanging baskets, big pot plants and trailing vines. Oh shit; and a family loading up their Landy Discovery. Young couple and three kids getting their cool boxes and child seats sorted for a day out. Shit! What sort of time was this to be setting out for the day? It was practically noon! Best bit of the day gone, dammit! Couldn’t the miserable fucking curs have got their shit together a bit closer to breakfast?
The man looked up when he saw my battered Short-Wheelbase approaching down the cobbles. Took a good look at me. Hmm, don’t recognise that beaten-up old wreck, or the shifty looking weirdo with the sunglasses driving it. Not a resident I’ve ever seen before. And that’s not a Power or Gas company van. You could practically see the thought bubbles.
I wound the window down and stopped by the Disco. ‘Scuse me, mite. Zis Ascot Mews Norf?’
‘Ah, na,’ said the man. ‘This is Siythe, actually.’
‘
Sarf ?
’ I said. ‘Ah, roight.’ I looked over at the other seat, as though there was something there I was consulting. ‘Roight. Ta, mite,’ I said, and reversed out again.
I parked up near the corner of Eccleston Street and Eaton Square, pretending to study an
A to Z
. The Disco swung out into the traffic and headed for the river ten long, long minutes later. I pulled back into Ascot Mews South, drove on past the mews cottages into the last part of the lane where the garages and tall garden walls began. I counted my way along to number eleven, but I needn’t have bothered; there was a number eleven on the gleaming green pedestrian door that gave out onto the lane beside the equally freshly painted garage doors.
I’d rehearsed this in my mind already. Best done quickly given it had to be done at all. Ignore the rear windows of the houses on the other side of the lane and those next door to number eleven. I killed the engine, got out, locked the door, climbed onto the roof via the front bumper and bonnet - the aluminium roof flexed under my feet, which I actually had the reserve brain power to feel slightly disappointed by - then I jumped up onto the rounded top of the tall stone wall.
Japanese garden; raked gravel forming dry round lakelets with big smooth boulders forming islands in the frozen ripples of greyness. Small, tidily clipped bushes and shrubs; a still pool with another big boulder. Decking under green awnings. Something about its calm organisation told me this was Celia’s garden more than her husband’s. I looked down. I was going to have to drop the whole way, into more gravel. It was easily three and a half metres.
I swung one leg over, then the other, and let myself dangle as far to the ground as I could. In Scotland, as kids, we’d called this dreeping. I had no idea what it was called down here. I couldn’t get any real hand-hold on the smooth round top of the wall so just had to keep as much friction as I could on my forearms and gloved hands until gravity took over and I dropped to the gravel bed. It was mercifully deep. I hit and rolled and didn’t break anything. I’d have to do some remedial work on the gravel bed-work with a rake, though. I looked up at the wall. I’d worry about getting out again later. I smoothed the gravel out a bit now, while I thought of it, just in case I forgot later. It didn’t look perfect but it might pass as the result of a cat coming into the garden. I checked the door in the garden wall. The lock was some sort of ruggedised outdoor Chubb; I tried to open it but it looked like you needed a key even from the inside.
My phone went as I was walking up the path towards the stone with the key inside. There was a sort of slit on each side of the overalls so you could get at the pockets of whatever you were wearing underneath. I hauled the Motorola out through one of those. Ceel.
‘I’m in the back garden,’ I said.
‘Good. I’ve just had a thought. John should have the car. Use the keys just to the right of the back door, once you’ve got in, to open the garage and put your car in. It might look less suspicious.’
I hadn’t paid much attention to the garage doors. I had the impression they were pretty tall, but I might have been wrong. ‘It’s a Land Rover,’ I said. ‘Two metres tall at least. Might not fit.’
‘No, it should. It’s an old coach house.’
‘Okay, then. Good idea.’ I stopped opposite the third lantern and looked down at a neat arrangement of smooth, varied stones. ‘Hold on. What if he comes back? Seeing a Land Rover parked outside your back wall might be a little puzzling; finding the thing sitting inside his own garage …’
‘Hmm, you’re right. Also, I phoned the Weather Centre. The Peak District has had more rain than expected overnight. I think it’s very likely he will be back later today.’
‘Oh, shit. What about you? How are the flights looking?’
‘Aberdeen is out. It’s a three- or four-hour drive to Edinburgh or Glasgow. I’m trying to arrange a charter from a smaller airport closer to here but it’s not proving easy.’
‘Well, I’m in here already anyway. Hold on.’ I stooped to the stones. The thick gloves meant I took a couple of attempts, but after a few seconds and some muttered curses I was able to announce, ‘I’ve got the key.’
‘You have the alarm number?’
‘Memorised and written down. The door in the garden wall, back into the mews, into the lane; where would I find the key for that?’
‘To the left of the back door in the utility room, looking out. It has a green plastic tag.’
‘Can I lock the door without it? I’m trying to get out without having to climb the wall.’
‘Let me think.’ Ceel was silent for a couple of seconds. ‘Yes. Use the key, open the door, put the key back, put the little button down on the lock and then close the door from outside. That will do it. Don’t forget to put the house back-door key back inside the stone first.’
‘Christ,’ I said, putting one hand over my eyes. ‘Do I so not need all this with a serious fucking hangover.’ I took a deep breath, straightened up. ‘Okay. Never mind. Right. I’ve got all that. Thanks.’
‘Good luck, Kenneth.’
‘You too, kid.’
The back door swung closed and re-locked. I walked quickly through the utility room, the kitchen and along the hall; an insistent beeping noise was sounding from the far end, near the front door. I punched the code into the alarm unit but the thick gloves meant I must have pressed the wrong buttons. I felt sweat prick on my brow as I started again. The beeping went on. I was going to run out of time. I whipped my right glove off and entered the code properly. The noise stopped. My heart was thudding, my hands still shaking. I took a few deep breaths. I used a paper handkerchief to polish the keys I’d touched, then I put the glove back on. God, I was hot. I took off the stupid baseball cap and shoved it into a pocket. Something made me think that I should keep doing things while I thought of them, so I went to the back door, left it unlocked on the catch and wedged with a welly boot while I went out to the garden and replaced the key inside the artificial stone.
I closed the back door again. As I walked along to the foot of the stairs near the main door I realised I seriously needed to visit the toilet. This was ridiculous - for all I knew a suspicious neighbour was already on the phone to the local nick telling them she’d just seen a guy in badly fitting overalls jumping into a back garden - but I really was going to have to get to a loo in the next minute or so or basically I was going to soil myself. Partly, I guessed, it was the result of my colossal alcohol intake from the previous night, but partly it was simple fear. I recalled reading something about this, how burglars who left crap in the middle of their victim’s carpets weren’t necessarily just being shits themselves. They just couldn’t help themselves. Breaking into somebody else’s house was a scary thing to do; most people would be scared shitless. And - as a rule -
they
weren’t invading the privacy of fucking London crime lords.
I ran up the stairs and started looking for a toilet, opening doors into a sitting-room, a library, a small cinema, another sitting-room, and a walk-in cupboard before finding one that wouldn’t open, which must be the study where the answering machine was.
Oh my God, I was going to shit my pants. I could feel my bowels loosening, a muscle down there starting to spasm as I tried to hold things in. No loo here that I could see. Upstairs; I knew there was a toilet up there; that was where Celia’s bedroom was with its en suite bathroom. I did a weird, knee-knocking sort of walk to the stairs leading up to the next storey, then minced up the steps, sucking in my belly as though this would stop the disaster I was expecting any second. Even as I got to the next floor I was thinking, What was I doing? Running up here had been stupid; there must be a loo downstairs, on the ground floor, where the kitchen and dining-room would be.
Too late now. I ran along to a door whose room probably looked to the rear of the house, overlooking the Japanese garden. I was sucking my cheeks in - I mean my cheeks on my face as well as the cheeks of my bum - as though in sympathy. My whole body was trembling now; I nearly fell as I stumbled through the door and into the room. Bedroom. Big. Dark behind dark-grey vertical blinds shielding two tall windows.
There was a door to each side of the wide, black and white bed. I pulled the left one open; a fucking
dressing
-room. Jesus fucking Christ, what
was
it with these rich fuckers? Couldn’t they just have fucking wardrobes like fucking normal people, the self-indulgent sons of bitches? I hobbled round the bed, trying to keep my legs together and yet still walk, and actually putting my right hand to my backside, trying to press upwards, help keep things in. Oh Christ, oh Christ; if this door didn’t lead to a loo, I was going to shit my fucking pants.
The door swung open and I was looking straight at a beautiful white china loo with a rich dark wooden seat and lid. I quickly pulled both gloves off.
My whimper of relief turned to a terrible keening of frustrated rage and despair as I had to waste a few seconds I hadn’t been accounting for - and which I might not have to spare - as I had to tear at my stupid fucking under-size overalls before I could even get to my jeans and pants. I only just remembered to lift the lid of the loo before I turned round.
I started shitting even before my backside hit the wooden rim of the toilet. It was a ghastly, splattery and appallingly malodorous experience, but I believed I’d - just - succeeded in keeping within the bounds of social shitting behaviour.