Dead Air by Iain Banks Read Free Book Online Page A

doubted it. But taking you back is the least I can do. Rain check on lunch? Some other time? Say yes.’
    ‘Some other time,’ she agreed, sighing.
    ‘Brilliant.’ The little coil-warming lamp on the fascia went out; I started the engine and it settled down into an alarming percussive rattle. ‘Hey,’ I said, heaving on the bus-sized wheel to pull us out of the parking bay, ‘I don’t know if I’ve said, but I think it’s really cool you getting into Oxford.’
    She shrugged, looked almost embarrassed.
    ‘You’re absolutely certain you don’t want to celebrate your ascension to the dreaming spires with some slap-up nosh?’
    She just looked at me.
    I laughed, turning for the exit ramp. ‘Oh well. Come on then; let’s get you home.’ I swung the Land Rover out of the Mouth Corp car park; we went bouncing and rattling and squeaking into Dean Street. I looked over at her. ‘What’s so funny?’
    Nikki laughed to herself for a moment, then glanced over at me through her long red hair. ‘I wasn’t expecting a Land Rover,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d have a Harley Davidson, or a limo, or maybe a Smart or one of those Audis that looks like a bar of soap or something.’
    ‘I was never into Harleys,’ I said. ‘Suzis and Kwaks were my kind of bikes, back in my courier days. But this old thing -’ I slapped the dark grey plastic fascia under the narrow slab of the Landy’s windscreen ‘- despite, I’ll grant, looking like the sort of transport that would be infinitely more at home hauling a brace of sodden sheep from one field to another on a failing hill farm in darkest Wales, is almost the ideal car for London.’
    ‘You reckon?’ Nikki sounded like she was humouring me.
    ‘Think about it,’ I said. ‘It’s old, slow and a bit battered, so nobody’s going to want to nick it. Even the wheels don’t fit anything else. Look; comedy wipers.’ I turned on the windscreen wipers. On a Land Rover of this vintage they’re about seven inches long and just sort of flop about in a disheartened kind of way, looking more like they’re waving at the rain to welcome it onto the glass than undertaking to do anything so strenuous as actually clear the drops off the windscreen. ‘Look at that; pathetic. No self-respecting vandal’s even going to bother bending those. Wouldn’t be sporting.’
    ‘They are a bit pathetic,’ Nikki agreed as I turned them off and let them slump with what looked like exhausted gratitude to the base of the screen again.
    ‘You’re high up - as you may have noticed clambering awkwardly in here with your gammy leg - so you can see over most other traffic, the better to take advantage of what overtaking opportunities do arise in the hurly-burly of metropolitan motoring. Then there is the fact this is a Series Three of the diesel persuasion, so when people hear you coming they think you’re a taxi and often mistakenly treat you with the respect due to your standard Hackney Carriage. The ancient design means that the vehicle is narrow as well as having a short wheel-base for squeezing through gaps and into restricted parking spaces, and, lastly, driving one of these, no kerb in London holds any terror for you whatsoever. If a brief expedition onto the pavement or over a minor traffic island is required to facilitate progress, you just happily bump onto and over it without a second thought. Now, thanks to the appalling noise levels and seats patently constructed from low-grade friable concrete it would, certainly, be utterly hellish on long journeys or at any speed above a brisk jog, but then when the hell do you get to do either of those in London?’ I glanced over at her. ‘So, for an agricultural device only one automotive chromosome removed from a tractor, this is a surprisingly suitable urban runabout. And I commend the vehicle to the house.’
    I waggled my eyebrows at her as we inched along Old Compton Street. I’d been developing this Why-a-Landy’s-great-for-London