Free The Crow Road by Iain Banks

on the Docs, which were my usual drinking gear these days). ‘Or was it the seventh legion?’ I pondered, still staring at my Nikes.
    ‘Never mind if it was the fuckin’ foreign legion,’ Droid said, exasperated. ‘You’re no trying to tell us Pontius fucking Pilate was born in Scotland!’
    ‘Well maybe!’ I said, spreading my arms wide and almost spilling Ash’s whisky. ‘His dad was in the legion stationed there! Apparently! I mean, the Romans had a military camp and Pontius Pilate’s pa was stationed there, maybe, and so young Pontius could have been born there! Why not?’
    ‘You’re making this up,’ laughed Ash. ‘You’re just like your dad; I remember those stories on a Sunday afternoon.’
    ‘I am not like ma dad!’ I yelled.
    ‘Hey, shoosh,’ Lizzie said.
    ‘Well, I’m not! I’m telling the truth!’
    ‘Aye, well,’ Ash said. ‘Maybe. People get born in funny places. David Byrne was born in Dumbarton.’
    ‘Anyway; Pontius Pi -’
    ‘Whit?’ Dean grimaced. ‘The guy that wrote Tutti Frutti?’
    ‘Listen; Pontius -’
    ‘Na; that was John Byrne,’ Lizzie said. ‘David Byrne; the guy in Talking Heads, ya heidbanger.’
    ‘Look, anyway, forget Ponti -’
    ‘Anyway, it was Little Richard.’
    ‘Will you shut up? This isn’t about Pon -’
    ‘What? In Talking Heads?’
    ‘Shut up! I’m telling you; Po -’
    ‘Na; that wrote Tutti Frutti.’
    ‘I give in,’ I said, sitting back. I sighed, supped my export.
    ‘Aye, the song; but no the film.’
    ‘It wasnae a fillum; it was a series.’
    ‘Ah know; you knew what ah meant.’
    ‘I hate these drunken, rambling conversations,’ I breathed.
    ‘Aye, but I’ve heard worse.’ Ash nodded.
    ‘Anyway, it wasnae fillum at all; it was video.’
    ‘It was naawwwt!’ Dean drawled scornfully. ‘Ye could see it was fillum! What sort a telly have you got?’
    I crossed my legs, crossed my arms and swivelled to look at Ash. I rubbed my rather greasy face and focused on her. ‘Hi. Come here often?’
    Ashley pursed her lips and studied the ceiling. ‘Just the once,’ she said, frowning at me. ‘In the toilets.’ She gathered my shirt lapels in her fist and pulled me close to her face. ‘So who talked?’
    ‘Fnarr fnarr,’ I breathed over her. Ash’s face wrinkled, quite attractively, actually. But then it was late.
    ‘Hi youse,’ a deep voice said, bending over us. ‘Yer oan.’
    ‘On what?’ I asked the very large fellow with very long hair who had spoken.
    ‘The pool table; PM and AW; that’s youse, is it no?’
    ‘Shit, aye, right enough.’
    Ash and I went to play pool.
    I’d been just about to ask her about the jacuzzi in Berlin, but now didn’t seem like the right time.
     
 
 
Uncle Fergus had the observatory built back in 1974 (when the heavenly Verity was four). The idea was two-fold. First of all - according to my father - Fergus wanted a bigger and better telescope than he had. Dad had a three-inch refractor in a shed in the garden at Lochgair. Fergus ordered a six-inch reflector. Also, it was a business sample. The lenses and mirror were to be made in the new Specialist Glass Division of the Gallanach Glass Works, the Urvill-owned factory which even yet provides the town with a significant proportion of its employment. Not only, therefore, would Uncle Fergus have a fascinating and unique additional feature for his not-long restored castle, it would be both an advertisement for his Glass Works and tax-deductible!
    The fact the telescope was a wee bit close to Gallanach itself, and so possibly prone to light pollution from the town’s sodium vapour lamps, was less of a problem than it might appear; with Uncle Fergus’s connections he could have the offending lamps shaded at the council’s expense. So Uncle Fergus was prepared if necessary - and only selectively, of course - to dim his home town.
    (His niece had already bettered that; when the diminutive, bloody and bawling form of Verity Walker had