Stonemouth by Iain Banks
We finally whistle past the Kia on a long, dipping straight. It’s a simple, safe, even elegant bit of overtaking, but the wee old guy driving – hunched down, staring forward with an expression of pinched, peering concentration and gripping the steering wheel like a lifebelt in a storm – still flashes his lights at us.
‘And you, sir,’ I murmur, looking in the side mirror.
‘Oh, now,’ Ellie says. ‘Probably just trying to wash his windscreen.’ Then I hear her take a breath. ‘Listen,’ she says.
Here we go. ‘Listening,’ I say, turning in my seat and crossing my arms.
‘I don’t want you to—’ Ellie starts. She sighs. ‘I don’t want you to …’ Her voice trails off. She shakes her head, puffs her cheeks and blows air out, making the kind of noise I associate with exasperated Parisian taxi drivers. She looks at me. I’m looking at her. ‘It is…over,’ she says, turning her attention back to the road. She spares me only occasional glances after this.
‘You mean you and me?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. I’m not…It’s all in the past now, yeah? All done with. Water under the bridge, soap under the wedding ring and all that. That’s how you feel? I mean, it is, isn’t it?’
Fuck. ‘What sort of idiot would I be to feel any other way?’ She’s silent for a while, then she says, ‘Okay, but I need a real answer.’
Fuck and double fuck. ‘Okay. I still…In some ways my feelings haven’t changed. Towards you, I mean. I…I mean I – sorry,’ I say, having to clear my throat. ‘Do you have any water in…?’
‘Here.’ She passes me an opened half-litre bottle of mineral water without looking at me. ‘Not what it says on the label, mind; best Toun watter fra tha tap back hame.’
‘Thanks.’ I drink, taking my time.
‘You were saying,’ she says.
I hand her the bottle back. ‘I don’t expect anything from you, Ellie. I mean, not even forgiveness. I’m certainly not back…I’m not here expecting you to, you know, umm, fall into my arms or anything. Ahm…Too much has happened, we’ve been apart too long, and in the end…well, I did what I did. But I’m still, as our American cousins would say…I still have feelings for you.’ My mouth has gone dry again and I have to clear my throat once more. ‘For whatever that’s worth.’ I take a deep breath. ‘And if it’s worth nothing, then that’s fair enough. I accept that. But I…I just don’t want to lie to you.’
She nods thoughtfully, drives calmly.
‘You asked, so I’m telling you,’ I tell her. But by this point I start to realise I’m talking just to fill the silence, and so I shut up.
‘Okay,’ she says. There’s a pause. ‘Okay.’
There’s a long silence af ter this, but it is – I think – companionable.
‘So,’ I find myself saying eventually, ‘did you come to find me at Al and Morven’s…because the boys roughed me up?’
She looks thoughtful, still concentrating on the road ahead. ‘I suppose I did. They’d made me angry, made me want to get back at them. Told them I was coming over to your mum and dad’s, just to talk to you. Or I’d make a point of seeing you at the funeral tomorrow, and Donald would know all about it if they even thought of threatening you again. So…stupid.’ She shakes her head. ‘And then bragging to me about it.’
‘Unintended consequences.’
She snorts. ‘At least with Murdo and Norrie you know it is unintended. Nothing as sophisticated as reverse psychology ever clouded their motivations. If Grier did something like that, the first thing you’d think would be, What’s she really up to?’
‘Seriously? She’s that Machiavellian?’
‘Oh, you’ve no idea.’ Ellie sucks in a breath. ‘Remember that thing about Grier creeping into Callum’s bed when she was just a kid?’
‘Umm,’ I say. ‘…Yeah.’
The ‘umm’ was a kind of lie, and so was the pause before ‘yeah’: artificial hesitations while I pretended to delve down into my memory. In reality, of course, I remembered instantly because I was talking about this just an hour or two ago, with Ferg. I feel like a complete shit for even this tiny deception.
‘Well, we all kind of accepted nothing happened,’ Ellie says. ‘But a few years later Grier actually talked about having something over Callum, about having power over him. It was the first time – and last time – we ever got drunk together, left alone in the house when she was still under age. She talked about changing her story and claiming that she’d repressed the memory of Callum raping her or sexually assaulting her that night; telling Callum that she’d pull this stunt if he didn’t do something she wanted him to do.’
‘Fuck me.’ I’m staring at Ellie. ‘What? What did she want him to do?’
‘Nothing. She didn’t have anything she wanted him to do. It was just a…a plan. Something to be held in reserve.’ Ellie shakes her head. ‘And she actually ran this past me, to check this was cool. And to show me how clever she was, of course. Little bitch.’
‘You didn’t think it was cool.’
‘I thought it was fucking obscene. I told her if she ever tried anything like that I’d tell Mum, Dad, everybody about what she’d just said.’ Ellie shakes her head again. ‘She was drunk as a skunk and slurring her words, and she’d never been drunk in her life before, far as I know, anyway – threw up spectacularly later – but you could see her change tack almost instantly, even that far gone. Just flicked into this other mode, all jokey and faking laughter and saying, Jeez, I hadn’t been taking her seriously there, had I? Surely not! Oh, what a laugh.’ Ellie looks at me with a basilisk face. ‘But, trust me, she’d meant every fucking word.’ She looks back at the road. ‘Next day, post-hangover? Claimed she couldn’t remember a thing. And never made that mistake again; I’ve never seen her that drunk or anything like it, and she’s never shared a confidence with me since, either.’ Ellie does that sort of single side-nod thing and makes a clicking noise with her mouth. ‘Kid learns her lessons fast. I’ll give her that.’
I shake my head. ‘Your family never ceases to amaze.’
‘But can you see why I hope Dad never retires?’ Ellie says. ‘Never gives up the business? The illegal part, anyway; the haulage, property and building side runs itself: just hire decent managers. The illegal stuff…it doesn’t work that way. Can you imagine the boys running it, seriously? Even Murdo. He’s the smartest of the three, but…by God, that’s a relative compliment.’ She smiles. ‘In more senses, obviously.’
‘Obviously.’
She takes a breath like she’s about to say something, then doesn’t, but digs her mobile out of her fleece pocket, switches it off with some deliberation and puts it back.
‘Mind switching your phone off ?’ she asks.
‘I really am not having much luck with phones around you guys, am I?’ I say, shaking my head but taking the rubbish temporary phone out.
‘Fully off,’ she tells me. ‘Actually, battery out is best.’
‘Don’t know why I bother,’ I say, taking the battery out.
Meanwhile Ellie’s fiddling with the Mini’s information screen, menuing down to the comms set-up and turning Bluetooth off. I want to ask her whether she might be acting a bit paranoid and we’re going a little overboard here, but I can’t think how to put it without it sounding snide or hurtful.
And – and this kind of astounds me too – there’s just a trace of fear jangling inside me. Because how do I know Ellie isn’t somehow back in the familial fold, despite everything? Could I be getting set up here? Could she have changed that much over the last five years? She wouldn’t be going to deliver me into the hands of her insane brothers, would she? I can’t believe she’d do that – and anyway, even if she did wish me harm she surely wouldn’t have picked me up from under the noses of my mum and dad, would she? No, I’m being crazy. She’s Ellie. She wouldn’t, couldn’t. Still, there’s that tiny, nagging sense of danger tingling in my guts.
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Also, I kind of need your word on this, Stewar
‘It’ll go no further, if that’s what you—’
‘Well, it can’t. That’s why—’
‘It’s yours.’
‘Word?’
‘Yup. My word on it.’
She shoots me a frowning look, like she’s really having to think about this. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘You never were a blabber, were you?’
No I wasn’t. Still not. Good with secrets, me. ‘My tongue I could control,’ I agree wearily. ‘My cock, it turned out—’
‘Oh, just…just stop now, okay?’ she says. ‘Honestly. We’re through all that.’
‘I’m sorry, I guess—’
‘Doesn’t lessen what you—’
‘Yeah, sounds like I’m trivialising…Anyway.’
‘Yeah. Anyway.’ She shakes her head. ‘Okay, here it is: Dad – Don – has actually suggested maybe I should take over.’ She looks at me long enough for a mid-straight correction to be required. She shakes her head again. ‘Seriously. The whole business. Everything. In fact, particularly the illegal side.’
‘Fuck.’
Ellie nods. ‘My first thought too.’
‘Jeez, you’re not even thinking of—’
‘Stewart, are you remembering what I do these days?’
‘Oh, yeah: drug counselling, rehab, whatever. Hmm. Some people would think that’d be great…cover.’
‘Yeah, I guess some people would,’ she agrees, eyes narrowing briefly. ‘So, no, not really. I mean, for about an hour after I got over the initial shock, I thought about how I could take over, run the business down, wean everybody off the hard stuff, blah-blah-blah, but…That’s never going to happen. For one thing, I don’t know that Murdo, Fraser and Norrie would have it: taking orders from me, I mean. And even if they did and you tried the whole running-down-the-illegal-side idea – and got them to agree to that, which is probably the least likely…proposition in any of this – and you got Mike Mac onside to do the same thing at the same time – which is probably less unlikely – you’d find demand being met by somebody else, somebody more ruthless, more profit driven. It’d be seen as a sign of weakness, too; you’d be taken over, sidelined at best, more likely found in a ditch one morning with a couple of bullets in your head.’
‘Fucking hell, El.’
‘Like I say: Murdo and the boys would want to keep going anyway, so it’d be kind of academic. What could I do? Murder my three remaining brothers so I have a clear run at a scheme that isn’t going to work anyway? Kill Mum first to spare her the grief ? So of course I’m saying no. But Don’s even more unreconstructed than the boys are; can you imagine how little faith he must have in them as the heirs to the family firm if he’s seriously contemplating turning everything over to me?’ She blows her breath out again. ‘Thing is, I think Dad’s worried Murdo’s getting impatient, wanting him to stand aside, take a back seat; leave him, Fraser and Norrie to run things.’ She shakes her head. ‘Stewart, my family has as good as run this town for nearly a quarter of a century and in a bizarre kind of way we can be proud of how we’ve done, but in the end…it’s still based on nothing more than the threat of violence and the market for drugs. For all his faults it’s been Dad who’s held it all together and exercised the restraint required, but there’s no…no rightful authority, no democratic control, no oversight or checks and balances, no…It’s all…There’s no legitimacy. Violence and a market just mean…nothing. And I can’t see Murdo or the twins acting with any restraint at all, not once it’s all theirs. They think they’re ambitious and they talk about expansion and they use phrases like “grow the market”, but …’ She shakes her head again, lapses into silence.
Shit, what the hell am I supposed to say?
‘Maybe the law’ll change before it comes to any of that,’ I suggest. ‘Maybe it’ll all get legalised and you can turn legit, or just go back to running the property and transport businesses.’
Ellie shakes her head. ‘Maybe. Who knows. Maybe it’ll turn out our politicians aren’t all cowards or on the take.’
‘Aye, well, put like that, I wouldn’t hold your breath.’
She shrugs. ‘Things change, though. People are taking fewer drugs. Dad makes as much money through fake fags these days as he does from the properly banned stuff. Not sure any of us saw that coming, though we should have.’
‘Really?’
‘Ha! A packet of fags costs a pound fifty to make and six-fifty to buy, legit. You could charge half-price and still coin it in, not that Dad or Mike Mac are that generous, or stupid; it’d be like opening a discount warehouse for crims across Scotland.’
‘I had no idea.’
She nods. ‘Half the fags in the Toun – even more of the loose tobacco – never trouble Customs and Excise with the bother of collecting the revenue. It’d be a hundred per cent if the cops could live with it, but at that level even the doziest journo’s going to scratch their heads and think, Wait a minute …’
I do the cheeks-full, breath-blowing-out thing too.
After a while I say, ‘Course, there’s always Grier.’ I look for a reaction but El’s just staring ahead. ‘She might be up for it.’
‘Careful,’ El says, ‘for you tread upon my nightmares.’
I can’t help laughing. ‘She wouldn’t.’ I think about it. ‘Would she?’
El smiles. ‘No, she wouldn’t. And the boys certainly wouldn’t take orders from her. Plus, knowing Grier, this would be too small beer for her anyway. Too local, too limited, too…legacy-ridden. Mostly, though, too not all her own work.’
‘Do you two not get on at all, then?’
‘We get on fine,’ El says, almost indignant. ‘When we meet up.’ She shrugs. ‘We just take some care to make sure we don’t meet up too often.’
A hare darts across the road five metres in front of us and we do the first part of an emergency stop, tyres chirping, then the hare’s gone, missed by a half-metre or so – I catch a glimpse of it in the side mirror, leaping into the heather – and we’re accelerating smartly away again.
‘Fairly easy these days anyway,’ El says. ‘She’s never home. Posing naked on some tropical beach, as a rule. Which is what she’s supposed to be doing at the moment, of course. We did miss that hare, didn’t we?’
‘We did.’
‘Yeah. Good. Didn’t feel a bump.’
‘“Supposed to be”?’
‘Aye, left some shoot in Montserrat or somewhere, just walked out and flew home on no notice, left them short-handed or shorttitted or whatever the phrase is. We’ve had the agency on the phone at the house – much to parental consternation – and something called a Creative Director, and even a lawyer, issuing threats. Very unprofessional of the girl.’
‘You mean, like, just to be here this weekend?’
‘Yup. Never thought she and old Joe were even that close.’ Ellie clicks her mouth again. ‘Grier Shows Familial Emotion shock. Who knew?’ She flicks a glance at me. ‘Assuming that really is her reason. Like I say, with Grier, given it’s the stated one, almost certainly not. Made off with one of their cameras, too, and some incredibly expensive lens, apparently.’
‘Yeah, I bumped into her on the beach at Vatton forest yesterday. She had a camera with a big lens there. Went to see Joe, lying in Geddon’s, then had a coffee.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Ellie sounds like even this chance meeting might have been deeply suspicious, though I can’t see how.
‘So, what?’ I ask her. ‘Grier just upped and left as soon as she heard Joe was dead?’
‘Nope. Day or so after.’
‘Aha.’
‘Yeah. Ah-fucking-ha, as you might say, Stewart.’
When Grier was fourteen she really wanted a horse but her dad wouldn’t buy her one. Ponies had been good enough for Ellie but then she’d kind of outgrown that phase and, besides, Grier wasn’t good with pets. She’d had various animals over the years and each time she’d doted on them for the first few weeks or months and then slo
Dogs especially; she’d play with them and take them for walks when they were still puppies and the weather was good, but then as they aged and the year turned wetter she’d find excuses, and other people in the family, usually Ellie, would have to take them for walks, or they’d just be left free to run around the garden. One Dalmatian, given the freedom of the Hill House grounds after Grier had found the animal too clingy and a bit stupid, had jumped over the wall into the path of a refuse truck and died messily. Grier had been less than distraught and suggested that the way was now clear to get a Samoyed, or maybe a Newfoundland. That kind of solidified Don’s attitude towards the subject of Grier and pets.
Still, she really wanted a horse; perhaps – Ellie reckoned when she told me this story – just because Ellie had only ever had ponies. Don usually indulged Grier in pretty much everything, but there was a feeling that, gradually, over the years, she’d made him look a bit more foolish each time she cajoled and convinced him that this time would be different and she could be trusted with a new pet, and now Don had finally decided enough was enough. There would be no horse.
Grier sulked mightily. There was some heroic door slamming. Don retaliated by having all the house doors fitted with those overhead hydraulic closing gizmos that close doors automatically and softly.
Grier took up golf, which, if it was a reaction to not being allowed a horse, probably wasn’t one that anybody would have anticipated. As was the case with most sports and hobbies that Grier could be bothered to pursue beyond any initially frustrating phase, she proved to be a natural, and got really good at it, about as good as it’s possible to get in the course of a year. She was quickly invited to join the regional youth team but turned them down. She abandoned the game completely and gave away the expensive set of clubs Don had bought her. She’d learned all she needed to know and she’d take the game up again when she was old and couldn’t do proper exercise. Don had taken the game up himself some years earlier and was struggling to get his handicap below twenty-five. How he felt about this casual, cavalier mastering – jeez, she learned so fast it was more like downloading – and abrupt dismissal was not recorded.