"Brookmyre, Christopher - A Big Boy Did It" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brookmyre Christopher)

The machine spat out a parking ticket and raised its barrier as he pulled the cardboard chit through the open window. He dropped it on to the passenger seat and drove slowly forward, joining the automotive satellites in their outward- spiralling shallow orbit, making wider and wider circuits as they were forced on each pass to seek a space that bit further out from the terminal building. They'd spend five minutes, maybe more, doing that to save themselves an extra twenty seconds' walk. Right enough, most of them probably had a whole briefcase to carry. Or perhaps they thought they were more vulnerable to being picked off by predators if they appeared to be straggling outside the pack.
The parking ticket was the first thing that caught his eye as he killed the engine. 'Do not leave in car,' it said. It was one of many instructions that no longer applied to him. He popped it in his pocket all the same. There was no room
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for decadent gestures. This life had to be lived as normal and by all of its petty little rules right up until his connecting flight took off from Stavanger. The only concession right now was that he was wearing a polo-neck instead of a shirt and tie, necessary to cover up the change of clothes he had on beneath. He didn't want anyone to notice him leave, so when he walked away, he would already be a different person.
He still had the mandatory jacket and trousers too, but had picked something that would plausibly go with the polo-neck, affecting that 'business traveller dressing as casually as he dares but still wanting everyone to know he's a business traveller' look. It had to be one of the great equalising points against the female inequality grievance list that they had an endless variety of business garb to choose from, but guys were stuck with - let's be honest minor variations on the monochrome theme of 'grey suit'. That there could be so much snobbery over the labels, styles and cuts was fucking laughable, but it was perhaps understandable (if pathetic) that any evidence of distinctiveness should be so seized upon. After all, there were probably angler-fish that were considered particularly unattractive by their peers, even though the entire species looked like Anne Widdecombe after a heavy night.
The worst of it was that he seemed to be in a minority in this sense of sartorial frustration. To the SSCs it was like a security blanket. They felt naked and exposed in anything else, and by God, they thought they looked good. The ties around their necks might be partially restricting their respiratory function, but it was also a comforting sensation, the pressure of a paternal hand reassuring them that their status was ratified and visible: they were suit-wearers, they had a suit-wearing career in a suit-wearing profession, and
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nobody, nobody was going to mistake them for faceless nonentities, oh no.
All around the car park, they were marching towards the terminal building as though spiritually drawn, suited to a man, briefcase fitted as standard. If you were travelling on business, on company business, the suit would be compulsory, but for these bastards the compulsion was coming from within. It overrode all other considerations, such as practicality. It wasn't comfortable attire for air travel, where the seat size, leg room and safety belt seemed designed to do roughly the opposite of a Corby Trouser Press, to say nothing of the constant precipitous fear that your in-flight meal, drink and tea or coffee (sir?) would end up in your lap. But still there endured this misguided notion that you had to look your best to fly, something that presumably had its roots in the earlier days when only the rich could do it. He remembered family package holidays as a kid, early Seventies, going to Palma or Malaga out of Abbotsinch. His dad told him you could always spot the wee Glasgow guys on their first-ever flight, because they looked like they were due in court. They'd wised up by the time they flew home, when they remained equally identifiable by their oversize comedy sombreros and near full- thickness bums covering all exposed flesh.
Time, experience and new generations had seen the discount leisure-travel look evolve, but it wasn't any more flattering. He'd always meant to investigate whether Airtours wouldn't actually let you board the plane unless your entire family were wearing matching shellsuits and had a combined kilogram weight in four figures.
He'd increasingly heard it said that cheap air travel was clogging up the skies, with dire accompanying predictions of an escalating incidence of disaster. The skies were indeed
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congested, and more so all the time, but as far as he was concerned, the blame shouldn't be laid at the Reebok-clad feet of the wobbling classes; at least there was some purpose to their trips, even if it was merely the opportunity to devour saturated fats in a warmer climate. The true cause of all these near-misses and twenty-minute holding cycles was all around him right then: pointless, unnecessary business trips.
This was the communications age, the era of videoconferencing, virtual exhibition software, emails, web catalogues, and yet every day, from every airport, suited SSCs were hording on to planes to fly to meetings where nothing would be achieved or agreed that couldn't have been resolved to equal satisfaction through a phone call or even an exchange of letters. They'd say it was about the personal touch, or the value of face-to-face relations, and while these things were to some extent true, the real purpose was to delude the SSC drones into thinking they were valued and important employees. It was certainly cheaper than raising their salaries, and the tax-deductible block bookings probably came with the sweetener of a few first-class long- hauls for the boss and whichever secretary he was banging.
It broke up the monotony if every few weeks you bunged them off somewhere overnight; made them feel they were on some kind of classified mission with which the firm had entrusted them. It made them more than suited professionals, it made them suited professionals who were so important, they had to fly places. No mere tooling around the sales territory in a Ford Mondeo for them. The vast majority of the time, however, the only practical consequence was to clog up the airports.
The check-in area was mobbed and chaotic, as per for Monday morning, with the added joy of a party of Euro-
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teens milling around with that particular gormlessness which only hormone-addled post-pubescent continentals could truly evince. The air was thick with the smells of Clearasil and damp backpacks. He listened apprehensively to their chatter, trying to get a handle on the language, praying it wasn't Norwegian. They sounded Italian, possibly Spanish. It was hard to make out which check-in desk they were queuing for, so sprawling was their mass, but it was soon evident that they were BA's problem today, and therefore not his.
He handed over his tickets at the ScanAir desk, where he was greeted with a smile from the girl behind the counter. The namebadge said Inger, which explained the unAberdonian flash of gnashers. Probably worked her ticket in the cabin crew then opted for a ground staff post as soon as she'd snared a well-heeled oil exec.
They went through the usual formalities of seat allocation and mutual flirtatiousness, before she got to the mandatory security questions: did you pack this bag yourself, has it been out of your sight, did somebody else ask you to carry anything, is that a surface-to-air missile in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me? The purpose of these exchanges escaped him. You'd definitely have to stay behind after class at terrorism school if that little polite query had you spilling your guts. Maybe it was about reassuring the passenger that all protocols were being followed to ensure their safety; if so, it was likely to have roughly the opposite effect, if that was the measure of their counter- terrorist savvy. What did they do if someone actually got through with a gun? Ask him nicely to put it down, crucially remembering to say please?
A more advanced version of the same pointless tokenism awaited at the passenger security check, where you queued
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up to have your hand luggage partially irradiated and your sides lightly patted if you'd forgotten to drop your house- keys in the dish. He'd had more intimate handling being measured for his suit. They were so tentative as to make an appropriate mockery of the whole process: they didn't want to get too fresh in case you took the huff and pointed out what they well knew: that nobody had ever been - nor was ever likely to be - stopped with a gun down their jooks at this Legoland apology for an airport. And if that astronomical improbability ever did come to pass, did they think the gunman, having been asked to stand aside while they patted him down, would wait till they'd found it, give them a bashful grin and say 'Well, you gotta try, aintcha?' Unless, of course, that illuminated ad for the Scottish Tourist Board was concealing a false partition behind which a battery of heavily armed cops waited at all times, their trigger-fingers getting ever itchier through unuse.
'Do you mind if we have a wee look in your briefcase, sir?'
'No, help yourself.'
All these flights down the years and he still couldn't guess what the selection criteria were for them opening your hand luggage. Sometimes they stopped him, sometimes they didn't, with no consistency as to his appearance, destination, whether he was alone or in company, anything. Was it something unusual spotted by the glazed and constipated-looking bastard peering with chronic ennui at the X-ray monitor? Was it utterly random, to meet a percentage quota? Would they at that particular moment rather open your neat, shiny briefcase than the forbiddingly grubby overnight bag of the eye-stingingly sweaty gut- bucket ahead of you, who'd required a shove to squeeze him through the metal-detection arch? Or did they just
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fancy a nosey sometimes? He'd have no respect for them if they didn't.
The bearded security officer gestured to him to open the case himself, an ostensible intimation of courtesy disguising the fact that he didn't want to look like a twat by fumbling cluelessly around the latest needlessly complex latch-trigger system. He simultaneously pushed the buttons on either side, like it was a pinball machine and the ball was rolling lazily between the flippers. Turning the case smartly through one hundred and eighty degrees, he released the lid, its impressively gentle ascent smoothed by the telescoping aluminium supports that had added at least twenty per cent to the price.
There wasn't much to see. A couple of folders, a magazine, a newspaper, mobile phone, hand-fan, Walkman, king-size Mars bar and two cartons of juice. Hard to imagine any of that lot had appeared particularly suspicious going through the conveyor. Nonetheless, the guy had stopped him now, so he had to make it look worthwhile. Beardie started with the mobile, raising and lowering it on his palm to emphasise its weight as he handed it over.
'Would you mind turning it on?'
'Yeah, no problem.'
He pressed the button, eliciting a cursory glance at the LCD window before Beardie took it back.
"That's fine. Bit of a monster, isn't it?'
'Tell me about it. Why d'you think I'm carryin' it in the case? My new one's knackered, so they've got me luggin' this thing around. Surprised they let me take it on as hand luggage. Has to happen when I'm goin' away as well.'
'Sod's law.'
Beardie moved on to the Walkman next, getting nodded
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assent to press Play himself. The tape turned to his satisfaction, though he evidently gave no thought to whether the passenger might have painstakingly cued up his favourite take-off track. He then held up one earphone. A quick tinny burst sufficed, the palpated hiss sounding, unfailingly, like Speed Garage, which presumably was the only musical genre to sound exactly the same whether your cans were on or not.
Beardie resumed his examination, undeterred by the lack of anything much to examine. He gave the fan a whirl; picked up the folders, magazine and newspaper, flicking through each in turn; then either out of admirable thoroughness or mild pique, checked out the Mars bar and finally the juice cartons as well. These last being his final chance to exert some authority, he gave each an inquisitive stare, before following it up with an investigative shake, which was the ultimate proof of the utter uselessness of the entire 'security' charade. If he was worried that the Ribena cartons actually contained nitroglycerine, would the advised procedural protocol be to give them a good shoogle?
'Right, thank you, sir. Enjoy your trip.'
It was only once he was on board the aircraft, and had heard the enduringly futile announcements on what action you could take in the event of the fuel-laden plane plummeting vertically from the skies, that it occurred to him to worry about the implications of these two-dimensional defences. Because let's face it, if this plane was sabotaged and crashed before he made it to Stavanger today, he would be one very unhappy dead person. To say nothing of the colossal fucking irony.
Oh well. Just as long as it didn't mean you spent the afterlife in Aberdeen Hell.
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The plane had touched down at 11:20 local time. Conditions clear and sunny, outside temperature eighteen degrees.
Stavanger. An appropriately inauspicious conduit in his grand scheme. There were no new beginnings to be found here, only transit lounges, flight information and a store selling cuddly gnomes and smoked salmon. Most of the times he had been here, it had been merely to get on another plane and travel somewhere else; somewhere else he didn't particularly want to be either. Other people's jobs took them to Barcelona, Milan, Athens, Paris. His took him to every austere, hypermasculine, over-industrialised fastness in Scandinavia, including - but more often via - Stavanger For once, a flight would take him from here to where he wanted to be, but as ever, it wasn't until he had got on and off one more plane that his journey would be ended, and another one truly begun.
He sat in the departure area, choosing a bench by the window upon his return from the toilets. The plane was sitting on the tarmac, yards away, the livery's colours distorted by the bright sunshine, but the name legible on the fuselage: Freebird. He smiled. Couldn't have named it better himself.
The clock read 11:55. Fifteen minutes to boarding. This was the hardest part: it wasn't long to wait now, but waiting was all there was left to do. Waiting and thinking. There was no avoiding the former, but he sincerely wished he could prevent the latter. Seeing the jet through the window, it was difficult not to contemplate the enormity of what lay so imminently ahead, but he had to tune it out. Throughout these minutes, he knew, it would seem easy to back down, call it all off. Easy to feel the comfort of your chains.
It was the longest quarter of an hour of his life, limping its way through each minute that brought him tantalisingly