Iain Banks Complicity

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

sucking noise with his saliva and moves towards me and I have to lean to one
side to make way for him. He reaches past me, flicking some ash into the
ashtray, then steps back to the window. 'That's right, Mr Colley. We did think
of a policeman, serving or not.' The DI looks like he is thinking. 'Or a
telephone operator, I suppose,' he says, as though surprising himself.
'Or a journalist?' I suggest, raising my eyebrows.
'Or a journalist,' the inspector agrees blandly, leaning back against the
window-frame, silhouetted by the bright gleam of rushing cloud outside. 'You
Page 58
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
wouldn't happen to know those codes, would you, Mr
Colley?'
'Not off the top of my head, no,' I say. 'They're kept on the paper's computer
system these days, protected by a password. But I do write on defence and
security matters, amongst other things, and I do know the password, so I have
got access to the codes. I can't prove I don't know what they are, if that's
what you're getting at.'
file:///F|/rah/Iain%20Banks/Banks,_Iain_-_Complicity_(v2).html (77 of 213)
[1/19/03 9:57:00 PM]
Complicity
'Not really getting at anything, Mr Colley. It's just ... interesting.'
'Look, Detective Inspector,' I say, sighing and putting out my cigarette, 'I'm
a single man, I live alone, I do a lot of work from home and from ... all over
Scotland; I phone it into the paper. I'll be honest with you; I
really have no idea whether I've got alibis for all those dates or not. Quite
possibly I do; I have a lot of professional lunches and dinners and just
general meetings, keeping in contact with people; people whose word I think
you'd take, like police top brass and lawyers and advocates.' It never does
any harm to remind an inquisitive cop you know people like those. 'But, come
on.' I laugh lightly, holding my arms out. 'I mean, anyway; do I
look like a murderer?'
The detective inspector laughs too. 'No, you don't, Mr Colley.' He draws on
the cigarette. 'No,' he says. He brings the cigarette carefully over to the
table, leans past me to fold the stub into the ashtray and says, 'I
helped interview Dennis Nilsen; remember him, Mr Colley? Guy that killed all
those blokes?'
I nod as the DI returns to the window. I don't like the way we're going here.
'Young men, lots of young men; under his floorboards, buried in the garden ...
bloody football team of stiffs, he had.' He looks out the window again, away
from me. He shakes his head. 'He didn't look like a murderer, either.'
The door opens and Sergeant Flavell comes in with my new lap-top. Suddenly I
have a bad feeling about all this.
*
I'm in the bar of the Caf� Royal, through the wall from the restaurant where I
had lunch with Y and
William last week. Above the noise of the bar's chattering patrons I can hear
the distant clanking and clattering of cutlery and crockery coming over the
tall partition wall and echoing off the place's high, ornate ceiling. I'm
staring at the gallery of the island bar while my pal Al is away having a pee
and I'm experiencing an optical illusion or something because things are not
right
; I can see those bottles on the gallery ahead of me, and I can see their
reflections behind them, but
I can't see me I can't see my own
!
reflection
!.
Al comes back through the throng, politely elbows his way between a couple of
people, lifts his coat off his bar stool and leans on the bar beside me,
drinking his pint.
'Help me Al,' I say. 'I'm going crazy or I've become a fucking vampire or
something.'
Al looks at me. He's older than me - forty-two, I think - mousy hair,
teacup-sized bald patch, a couple of fetching parallel scars above his nose
that make him look like he's frowning all the time but usually he's
file:///F|/rah/Iain%20Banks/Banks,_Iain_-_Complicity_(v2).html (78 of 213)
[1/19/03 9:57:00 PM]
Page 59
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Complicity laughing, actually. Bit smaller than me. Engineering consultant;
met him at one of these stupid paint-ball-
guns-in-the-woods boys' games that management tend to think are such a
team-spirit-building hoot.
'What are you talking about, you incredible cretin, Colley?'
I nod at the gallery ahead of me. I can see people there, behind the bottles,
just as I can see people behind me. I swear they're the same people and I
ought to be between them and the mirror behind the bottles but I
still can't see myself. I nod again, hoping that the movement will show up in
the mirror but it doesn't.
'Look!' I say. 'Look: in the mirror!'
It a mirror, isn't it? I stare. Glass shelves. Brass supports. Bottle of
Stoly Red facing me and its back is visible in the mirror; likewise a bottle
of blue Smirnoff, label facing me and the plain white back of the label
visible through the bottle and the vodka inside. Same with the bottle of
Bacardi alongside. I can see the little label on the back of the bottle in the
mirror, and see it through the bottle from the front. Of course it's a mirror!
Al moves his head so that his chin is on my shoulder. He peers forwards. He
takes a pair of glasses I know he's a little sensitive about from his jacket
pocket and puts them on.
'What?' he says, sounding exasperated. A bar person gets in the way, pulling a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Tematy