Stonemouth
Authors: Iain Banks
THE WASP FACTORY
WALKING ON GLASS
THE BRIDGE
ESPEDAIR STREET
CANAL DREAMS
THE CROW ROAD
COMPLICITY
WHIT
A SONG OF STONE
THE BUSINESS
DEAD AIR
THE STEEP APPROACH TO GARBADALE
TRANSITION
Also by Iain M. Banks
CONSIDER PHLEBAS
THE PLAYER OF GAMES
USE OF WEAPONS
THE STATE OF THE ART
AGAINST A DARK BACKGROUND
FEERSUM ENDJINN
EXCESSION
INVERSIONS
LOOK TO WINDWARD
THE ALGEBRAIST
MATTER
SURFACE DETAIL
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 9780748116539
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 Iain Banks
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
F
OR MY FAMILY
W
ITH THANKS TO
A
DÈLE,
M
IC,
R
ICHARD,
V
ICTORIA,
G
ARY,
U
RSULA AND
L
ES
1
Clarity.
That would have been good.
Instead, a cold, clinging mist. Not even mist; just a chill haze, drifting up the estuary. I’m standing fifty metres above the Firth of Stoun, in the middle of the road bridge, at the summit of the long, shallow trajectory it describes above the waters. Below, wind-stroked lines of breakers track up the firth, ragged creases of thin foam moving east to west under the steady push of the breeze; each wave forming, breaking, widening, then collapsing again before new crests start to rise amongst their pale, streaked remains, the whole doomed army of them vanishing like ghosts into the upriver blur.
Traffic moves on the northbound carriageway behind me; cars tearing, trucks rumbling and thumping over the expansion joints on the road surface. About half the cars and most of the trucks have their lights on as the evening, and the mist, close in.
I look up at the north tower of the suspension bridge, a double H shape rising another hundred metres into the murk, its grey flank stitched with little steady red lights. At the top there’s a single aircraft beacon producing sharp bursts the blue-white of a camera flash. The mist smears each pulse across a whole grey tract of sky.
I’m wondering how well the cameras up there can see through
the haze. I’ve been standing here for a couple of minutes, looking like a prospective jumper for all that time. Usually by now a wee yellow van would have been sent along the cycle track from the control centre at the south end of the bridge to come and make sure I’m not thinking of Doing Something Stupid, which is what people still seem to say when they don’t want to say what they mean, which is Kill Yourself, or Commit Suicide.
Maybe cutbacks mean they’ve turned off the cameras, or there are just fewer staff to check the monitor screens, or they’re sending guys out on foot or on a bike to save fuel. Which, by the time they get to the right place, would probably mean the poor, terrified, hesitant wretch has already gone, to become just another streak of foam on the waves below. There are a lot of exits like that off the bridge but they rarely get reported because every time one is publicised there’s a handful of copycat suicides within the week. Which makes you wonder what these pitiful tribute artists would have done otherwise: taken pills, dived under a train or somehow soldiered on, too mired in their hopeless lives to think of a suitable way out for themselves?
Amongst us kids, growing up here, the story – delivered from the mouths of dads and big brothers who worked either on the bridge or for the coastguards, or just those who claimed to know about such things – was that the fall didn’t kill you; it just smashed all your major bones and knocked you out. If you were lucky, you drowned before you regained consciousness; if not, you got to thrash about as best you could with two broken arms and two broken legs before you drowned, unable to hold your face above water even if you’d changed your mind about dying in the meantime.
Or maybe you’d tied yourself to something heavy. That made it more definite, and you just vanished beneath the waves. We scared and excited each other with this sort of thing, attracted and repelled by anything grisly, like most kids. Though watching somebody getting beheaded on the web sort of had a greater immediacy, you had to admit.
Upriver,
from here, you ought to be able to see the old road crossing and the rail bridge, five kilometres away to the west where the river narrows, and closer still you ought to get a good view of the Toun itself: the old and new docks, the retail and commerce parks, the dark central cluster of church spires and towers, and the peripheral scatter of pale high-rises in the housing estates, but the view dissolves into the mist before any of this is visible.
I look down at the waves again, wondering what Callum’s last thoughts were as he fell towards the water, and whether he died without waking up, or had time to suffer. I suppose every class at every school, every year at every school, has a first person to die – suicide, road crash, whatever – just like there’s a first person to get pregnant or father a child and a first person or a first couple to get married. Callum wasn’t our first death but he was our first suicide.
Our first death was Wee Malky, long ago. Well, not just our first death; something worse, in a way, but … well, it’s complicated.
Our school days felt an age away by the time Callum vaulted the safety railings on the road bridge but we still all knew one another, all kept in some sort of contact, so it had an effect on every one of us. Even me, the exile; even I heard almost immediately and – despite everything, despite the fact he’d been one of those who’d have severely fucked me up if they’d got their hands on me – I felt shocked.
At the time I thought maybe I’d be invited back to that funeral, but I wasn’t. Still too soon. Emotions too raw, my sins, or at least sin, unforgiven, the threats still hanging in the air.
The mist is still thickening, becoming what the locals call haar and threatening to turn into rain. I’m starting to wish I’d brought a thicker jacket with a hood, not this thin fashion item. What
we
call haar, I guess, if I’m being honest; I’m still a local, I suppose, even though it’s been a long five years. And I’m not contemplating suicide, though just coming back here might be a stupid and dangerous thing to do. I’m where I am right now so I can check out exactly how stupid and dangerous it might be.
And
here comes a wee yellow bridge van, orange roof-light flashing and headlights twinkling through the mist as it drives up the grey-pink cycle track beside the grey-green pedestrian path.
I’m here to meet somebody,
I think about telling whoever’s driving the van, as it approaches. I might even know them: an old school friend. The wipers flick once, slowly, clearing the moisture gathering on the van’s screen as it pulls up alongside. Two guys in it. Normally only one, I thought. In my current slightly paranoid state, that seems a little worrying. I get a tiny pulse of apprehension in my guts. The nearest man, the passenger, rolls down his window. A square, smooth, yet hard-looking face above a thick neck and bulky shoulders; bulky shoulders not clad in a high-visibility jacket, unlike the driver of the van. Small, recessed blue eyes, eyebrows darker than the buzz of lion-coloured hair covering his scalp.
It’s Powell Imrie, the man I’m here to meet. I’m still not sure whether to be relieved or terrified.
‘All right, Stu?’
I nod. I hate it when people call me Stu. ‘Powell.’
He looks up, grimaces. ‘Coming on to rain,’ he says, then jerks his head. ‘Jump in the back.’
I hesitate, then go to the rear of the van and open one of the doors. The yellow-painted metal floor has raised corrugations, scuffed a rust brown; I’ll be sharing the back with traffic cones and emergency-light clusters. The haar coats one side of my face with cold droplets and it’s getting chilly. It’s a ten-minute walk back to the viewing area where I parked the car; maybe more.
‘Jump in,’ Powell repeats, from inside. Pleasantly enough.
‘Aye, just shift stuff out the way,’ the van’s driver says. He’s older than me and Powell. I don’t recognise him. Powell was in my year at school, the biggest, toughest boy in the class, partly because he’d been held back a year. He was only ever casually a bully, as though even intimidating other kids was too easy, somewhat beneath him. He never actually hit me, though like everybody else I was certainly quite sufficiently intimidated, and always treated him with at least
as much respect and deference as I did the more formidable teachers. Powell still commands respect and deference now; more, in fact. And he is one person I don’t want to get on the wrong side of, if this visit is either going to happen at all or be safe, be any sort of success.
On the other hand, the floor of the van is kind of grimy-looking and I’m wearing a decent pair of slate-grey Paul Smith jeans and an Armani jacket, plus, after I left this place – after I had to leave this place, after I was pretty much run out of this place – I swore I was done with being manipulated and told what to do.