Authors: Iain Banks
‘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.
My hand was getting sore. I was still gripping my mobile; it was still, I guessed, connected to the answering machine in the study on the floor below. I closed the phone then opened it again so that the back light would come on. Duration of call: 6:51, 6:52, 6:53 … End Call?
That had to cover the message I’d left last night. It must have been recorded over by now. I clicked OK to end the call. The phone vibrated almost immediately, making me panic again. I dropped the phone, grabbed at it while it was still in mid-air and succeeded only in batting it across the dark cupboard, off a wall with a loud thud and against some unidentified piece of metallic equipment with a resounding clang. Then it fell to the floor with another thump.
Fuck! Would he have heard that? And where was the phone? Lying on the floor somewhere. If I was lucky the fucker would have been smashed by the series of impacts, but if I wasn’t then it was about to exhaust the three or four vibrations it went through in the mode I had it in and start ringing normally. I had to get to it before it did. Merrial was probably standing stopped in the hall outside, listening intently and thinking, Did I hear a couple of thuds with a clang in-between there? If he heard the piercing warble of an unfamiliar mobile phone coming from the room he’d just left, he’d be right back in here. Or more likely he’d dash down to his study, grab a gun and then come storming back.
I levered myself forward, feeling along the unseen floor for the little phone. Why did they have to make the damn things so fucking small nowadays? Old mobiles were the size of a brick; I’d have found the thing by now instead of whimpering as my hands fanned out across the wooden floor, banging into bits of gear and failing totally to find the phone, which I couldn’t even hear now. The ringing would start any second. Not that that would matter, because thanks to my panic and subsequent whacking of the phone about the place like it was a fucking squash ball, Merrial had almost certainly realised there was somebody hiding in his gym store and probably already had his shotgun or whatever and was walking calmly upstairs, chambers full and hammers cocked.
Green glow to one side, quietly flicking off. The phone’s screen. I found it, bashing my forehead off something metal as I did so. I closed then opened the phone again. The display looked normal; nothing wrong with the little fucker. So how come it hadn’t gone from vibration to ring? Then I saw the little envelope symbol. Of course; it had registered an incoming text message and so had vibrated once only. I needn’t have panicked; I certainly needn’t have started bouncing it off the walls like a bluebottle in a fucking jam jar.
Still no sounds from outside. Maybe I’d got away with it. I squatted there in the darkness and accessed the message: OK 2 CALL? C.
I looked to the door of the cupboard. There was an old-fashioned keyhole there, halfway up one edge. I swivelled over to it to put my eye to the bright slit. My forehead banged off the door handle. I sat back, blinking through the tears. A door-knob just above a keyhole; who’d have thought that? Fucking, fucking idiot. It had hurt so much I hadn’t really registered how loud the sound had been. Jesus H. For all the stealthiness I was showing here I might just as well march out singing a medley of Slipknot numbers and slide down the fucking banister rail yodelling.
I looked carefully through the keyhole. Most of the gym was visible, including the door to the hall outside. The door was closed. Nobody in the room. I wedged myself against the wall and dialled Celia’s mobile number.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m in the cupboard in the gym,’ I whispered. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Yes. I just had a call from John.’
‘I know. I heard. Who’s this Kaj?’
‘John’s bodyguard. Swedish. You’ve met him, at Somerset House.’
The big blond guy. ‘Oh, fuck.’
‘Have you cleared the tape on the answering machine?’
‘Thoroughly.’
‘Get out. Quick as you can.’
‘That was my intention.’
‘He said he’d have a look round, and call Kaj to get him over. Also, he might have a shower. If he does shower you should hear it; it’s a power shower and the pump is in a cupboard off the second-floor hall; it makes a fair amount of noise, on that floor at least.’
‘Where will this Kaj person be coming from?’
‘I don’t know. I’m surprised he wasn’t with him. Unless they were together and he gave him the rest of the day off. Wait; Kaj has a girlfriend who lives … somewhere off Regent’s Park. He may be there. John could have dropped him on the way down from Yorkshire. He didn’t say anything about seeing your Land Rover in the mews so he’s probably parked out the front. But you must get out as soon as possible.’
‘I
know
!’ I hissed, glancing through the keyhole again. Regent’s Park to Belgravia. How long would that take by car? Potentially several hours if you made the journey during a rainy weekday rush hour while there was a tube strike, but this was a sunny Saturday lunchtime. Ten minutes? No; maybe on a Sunday. Twenty minutes? Longer? Always assuming that was where this Kaj guy was in the first place. Maybe the fucker was only five minutes’ walk away, shoulders taking up half the pavement as he searched the King’s Road for a trendy Outsize shop. ‘I’ll give it a couple of minutes more,’ I told Ceel. ‘If he’s searching the place he probably reckons he needn’t look in here because he’s already taken care of it.’