And When I Die Read online

  “Chillingly plausible… a wonderfully dark and disturbing tale of misplaced loyalty and betrayal; a beautifully paced, action-packed thriller of a book.” James Oswald

  “An uncompromising work of Glasgow noir, brutal and driven, And When I Die drills hard into dark territory. But at its heart is Kat Scobie, a woman torn between loyalty to her criminal family and a desire for a better life. Complicated and conflicted but achingly real, you’ll be rooting for her all the way.” Eva Dolan

  Praise for Russel D McLean’s previous novels:

  “The most exciting, and gripping, Scottish crime fiction debut of recent years.” John Connolly

  “Carving out a place for himself in the blossoming world of Scottish crime writing, McLean writes with bite and casts Dundee in a light that suits this type of thriller, in which trust and loyalty are very slippery concepts.” The Herald

  McLean immediately ratchets up the tension in his gritty fifth J. McNee mystery. Will appeal to fans of Denise Mina and Ian Rankin.” Publishers Weekly

  “Scottish crime fiction is entering a new era and Russel McLean is in the vanguard.” Tony Black

  “A superbly well told and compelling book that grabs you by the throat within the first few pages, and doesn’t let you go until you’ve reached the climax.” Undiscovered Scotland

  “Well-wrought scenes with plenty of action.” Booklist

  Russel D McLean is the author of five previous

  crime novels, all in his J McNee series:

  The Good Son

  The Lost Sister

  Father Confessor

  Mothers of the Disappeared

  Cry Uncle

  AND WHEN I DIE

  Contents

  AND WHEN I DIE

  One

  Pay to the Piper

  Two

  Home Is Where the Hatred Is

  Three

  And When I Die

  Four

  Backstabbers

  Five

  By All Means

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  This one’s for

  Jay Stringer

  and

  Dave White

  In honour of their infamous procrastination-inducing emails

  (without which, I’d have finished this one months earlier).

  (I don’t know where they get the time to finish their own books, either.)

  The Other Side of Town

  Glasgow

  2011

  A suburban street in the Southside. Tenements all around. Middle-income workers, migrant communities. Shops shifting groceries at markdowns and takeaways selling kebabs and chips with gravy.

  The man walks out of his one-bedroom flat. He’s big, and walks leading with his shoulders, head held high. Posture perfect. Dressed in dark jeans and a red shirt that he wears un-tucked. On his feet, heavy boots that are scuffed from use. Hard to tell what he does for a living, if anything.

  Looking the way he does, you figure he has money, but he’s not a lawyer or a doctor, not living round here. He’s not in sales. Doesn’t have the smarm or the cheap polyester suit. He’s not a shop worker or a labourer. Doesn’t have the right look or the right walk.

  What he is, is dangerous.

  You know that by looking at him. The walk tells you that this is a man you do not mess with.

  He’s big. Not fat. Just big. The kind of chest that makes you think of Superman, deflecting bullets. Hands big enough that they could dig a grave. No real expression on his face; not happy, not sad, not angry. Maybe he’s waiting to see how he feels today.

  On the street, he looks up at the sky, as though expecting rain. But the sun is out. Most people would smile when they realise this. A sunny day in Glasgow – anywhere in Scotland, really – is something to be celebrated. But he merely looks up and then back down again with no change in his mood. He walks to a black Skoda: one of the newer models, not the old rust-buckets. He looks around again, but it’s merely habit. The big man has clearly learned to be cautious over the years. A doctor or lawyer or salesman or manual labourer would not be cautious.

  But despite all the precautions, he doesn’t see the people in the grey Megane further down the street. They’ve been watching him since he came out of the building. Both of them coked up. One is trying hard not to vomit, while the other barely notices the drugs in his system. Truth is, the second man needs a regular hit just to keep himself stable. The first is only high under duress.

  What he’s doing is barely keeping himself together.

  This is the last time, he thinks. After today, it’s over.

  They wait. They watch.

  The big man gets into the car. Closes the door. Turns the key in the ignition.

  There’s a moment when he seems to realise that something’s wrong. He twists in his seat, reaches for the door.

  When the explosion comes, it’s bigger than either of the two coked up men expect. It pushes at the cars to the front and rear, and blows out the windows of the nearest building. Twisted scraps of metal arc into the air, trailing flames and sparks.

  The two men in the car don’t bother to see if the big man’s dead.

  They just drive off. One of them vomiting violently into his own lap.

  One

  Pay to the Piper

  Two days after the car bomb

  JOHN

  I take a look in the rear view. Remind myself who I am.

  ‘Your name is John Grogan. You are a police detective. You no longer have to pretend.’

  Like slipping off a mask you’ve been wearing for too long, you’re no longer sure what the real you looks like. So, which one of us is me? The undercover cop? The would-be-crooked financial advisor?

  The murderer?

  Three distinct people, really. That’s the problem. At first, it was like playing a part. Now, some days, it comes so natural it’s hard to remember who I really am.

  If I ever knew.

  Maybe I was always a murderer. Or… No. He was a mistake. He was…he wasn’t me. He was the coke. He was something outside my control. That’s what he was.

  The face in the mirror looks back, eyes wide with panic. Pale, red rings under the eyes from lack of sleep. There was an incident two days ago No matter who I think I am, I can’t figure a way to deal with the fallout. All I can do is ride this one out. Hope that I come through in one piece.

  The face in the mirror hardens. The man looking back at me has been in hiding for over two years now. He’s disgusted with some of what he knows, some of what he’s seen. And more, he’s disgusted that he can’t talk about it. That there were things that had to be done in order to maintain my…our…cover. Am I losing my grip on sanity? Who could blame me if I was?

  Over two years now I’ve lived with the idea that one day everything I’ve worked for will come crashing down. Maybe I’ll say something out of turn. Maybe I’ll forget who I’m supposed to be. Maybe some lag I arrested donkey’s years ago when I was doing the uniform beat will put two and two together, realise where he’s seen my face.

  Here’s what I know after two years deep undercover:

  Derek Scobie is a psychopath. The kind of psychopath Hannibal Lecter has nightmares about. The good doctor ate people’s liver, but at least he was cultured and witty. Derek doesn’t even have that going for him. Only person worse than him is his youngest son, Anthony.

  Anthony Scobie makes his old man look like a kids’ TV presenter – a cuddly, benign uncle.

  And let’s not even talk about Raymond. Not yet.

  Because Raymond’s still alive.

  Raymond’s still alive.

  The words are a chant, a mantra, a reassurance.

  Raymond’s still alive.

  Alive is a matter o
f degrees, and after what happened to him two days ago, alive could be a very loose term indeed.

  Whatever, I have to see him. Understand the condition he’s in. Try and figure out how I’m going to explain all of this. I’m so far off the reservation, not even Google Maps can find me now.

  This is uncharted territory. Nothing in the manuals about what to do when you fake a man’s death and then fail to inform the detective in charge.

  Not like I don’t have my reasons. All I need to do is get Ray to speak. Spill his guts. Metaphorically, of course. Although the state he’s in after the explosion, we could be talking literally as well.

  If he talks, then I figure I can call in my superiors, admit to my mistakes. Take a slap on the wrist and hope to hell that they don’t believe a word Derek and Anthony tell them.

  Aye. Right.

  I take a look in the rear view again, see those stranger’s eyes staring back at me. Cold, unforgiving.

  He knows the truth. There’s no way out of what I’ve done. That whatever happens next, I’m the one who has to deal with the consequences. And I can’t blame it on my cover. Because here’s the thing – when you’re undercover, you’re still the one in the driving seat. Your cover isn’t independent. He’s an extension of you.

  Maybe that was my problem all along. Me and my cover, we found the places where we merged, became the same person.

  The question is begged: which one was the cover? The cop or the crook?

  I open the car door, climb out. The cold air hits hard. Ice shards in my lungs. I look at the A&E building just a few hundred yards away.

  Think about running.

  Figure I’ve been doing that most of my life. Maybe now’s when I finally face up to what I’ve done.

  KAT

  The BBC are talking about Raymond. Of course they are.

  ‘Raymond Scobie’s death is believed to be connected to gang violence in the city of Glasgow. His murder is just the latest in a series of escalating…’

  I switch channels. Undercover Boss USA. Fine.

  I don’t have to think about Raymond. Just watch some rich, out-of-touch guy with 1980s hair throw his workers a few meaningless platitudes after pretending he’s worked as one of them for an hour of telly.

  By the end, I’m crying. Can feel the tears on my face. Didn’t even realise it was happening. They’re not tears of empathy, either.

  I swing my legs over the edge of the king-size bed and stand up. Traffic noises outside the window. I go over, look out at the city.

  Glasgow.

  Six months I’ve been gone, figuring that’s it, I’m done. And now I’m back. Once a Scobie, always a Scobie.

  I shower. The water is on full, smacking my skin, pummelling out all the tears and the sadness. The heat cocoons me, and, for a while, it’s like I’ve escaped the world.

  Something about hotel showers: they always feel cocooned from reality.

  When I come out, there’s a curdling in my stomach. Heavier than butterflies. A reminder of reality.

  I fire up the laptop. It’s old and clunky, takes its time booting. When I finally log onto Gmail, I catch a number of messages from work telling me to take my time before coming back. One from Lesley saying, Call me if you need to talk. I smile. A little guilty. It’s been a few weeks since we talked. Somehow, I always feel that makes me a bad friend.

  Lesley and I came through nursing college together. She stayed on the wards, while I went into admin. She was better able to cope with the horrors of ward work. Maybe that was surprising to some people. They figured I should have been used to blood. It’s in the Scobie family, after all.

  JOHN

  First time I met Raymond, he looked at me the same way you might look at a dog who just took a dump on your rug. Ray wore a cheap suit, no tie, shirt just the right side of ironed. He chewed his lower lip every so often. I took him for an ex-smoker looking for a new bad habit.

  I’d later realise he hated wearing suits. His brother and his father insisted, however, so he pulled the same one out time and again for social occasions.

  It didn’t fit him. Few clothes did. His frame was too large in all the wrong places. He wasn’t designed to fit in to the world. He wasn’t built to be normal. He would never fade into the background.

  He was big. Features hacked out of the side of a mountain. He couldn’t crack a smile. Or any expression, really. Just looking at him made something tickle at the base of my neck, made me want to turn and run. There were all kinds of rumours about Ray. It was my job to sort out what little of the truth there was about him. He was the gangster’s bogeyman. The kind of person who kept grown men lying awake at night with their bedside lamps on.

  The oldest son of Derek Scobie, Ray had a rep for death. Known colloquially as the Ghost. Hard to imagine, given his size, that he could kill people and simply disappear like so much mist, but however he got the reputation, you believed it the moment you met him. The very sight of him touched something primal.

  The SCDEA have a large file of unsolved gangland murders they like Ray for, but they’ve never been able to place him at the scene or find a single piece of corroborating evidence. Never been a hair left behind, a fingerprint smudged, a flake of skin beneath a fingernail.

  If he has a signature, it’s that he prefers to kill from a distance. The weapons and the calibres of the bullets vary from case to case. He might have a stash, but no-one knows where it is. Raids on Ray’s one bedroom in Govanhill always turned up less than nothing, leading to red faces all round and mumbled, insincere apologies from the local constabulary.

  But he’s a killer. No doubt. You look at him and you know. One third of what Crawford had refers as the Scobie’s own Holy Trinity:

  The Father.

  The Son.

  The Holy Terror.

  I forced my hand out, offered it to him like a dentist reaching into a lion’s mouth to pull out a rotten molar. His shake was lighter than expected. As though he didn’t really want to touch me. But social convention had him cornered.

  He was a tough man to work out. Didn’t really talk, barely made eye contact with anyone. Carried a glass, but barely took a sip from it. Didn’t like social convention. Didn’t really like people. Probably what made it so easy for him to kill.

  The first words I said to him were, ‘How’re you?’ A quick and easy greeting, not giving too much away. He didn’t say anything. We were in a bar, which was maybe why he felt he had to keep holding onto that glass. Our introduction wasn’t going well. I was there as Kat’s plus one, had been doing the introductory rounds, feeling like finally this operation was getting ready to pay off. But unlike everyone else in the room, it seemed Ray wasn’t willing to take me at face value. And with Kat off to the bathroom, I was on my own trying to make small talk with the most dangerous man in Glasgow, maybe even Scotland as a whole.

  Ray looked at me and said, ‘Think you could do it? A stretch like White’s?’ The question surprised me. Not just because it wasn’t the kind of question you ask your cousin’s boyfriend first time you meet him. But because he was assuming I understood his world.

  Dave White had been ‘away’. Someone told me, as the newcomer, that he’d been ‘touring the world’. They laughed when they said it. I acted innocent, the way I was supposed to, still not feeling the truth behind my cover, still waiting for the moment when they spotted the copper behind my eyes. But I knew what they meant. White had been away a long time. But all he’d seen of the world was what he might have read in books or seen on a communal telly.

  I said, ‘I’d try not to get caught in the first place.’

  Ray just nodded, not saying anything. He’d asked his question. Got his answer.

  I tried not to shrink inside my skin.

  * * *

  The thing in ward 45’s isolation room doesn’t look like the man I met two years earlier. Barely looks like a man at all.

  His skin has been burned, near enough melted. What hair is left appears in wispy patch
es across his skull. He’s hooked up to pipes and feeds, like a medical experiment gone badly wrong. Or Frankenstein’s monster. Brought back to life only to suffer.

  I did this to him. Coked up, whatever, I don’t have any excuses. I lit the blue touch paper and walked away. Figured he was dead.

  Criminals always return to the scene of the crime. In the end, I’m no different.

  Soon as I could dump Anthony, I did. Doubled back to see what was happening. Dropped character, became the cop I used to be. Slipping into a way of walking and talking I’d figured I might have forgotten.

  Helped that I knew the officer in charge on the scene. Asked him to me a favour. Told him it was in the name of a sting operation. He fudged the paperwork, told me I owed him. That it was his balls on the line.

  ‘It’ll be sorted out in the end,’ I said.

  He trusted me, too.

  Never trust an undercover. We’ll lie to anyone. It’s in our nature.

  Thing is, I was still high. Anthony Scobie’s condition for me helping plant the device. His way of making sure I could be trusted.

  Hitting coke, I always felt like I was standing two or three steps behind my body, watching it as though it was controlled by someone else.

  When this all hits the fan, I think I could lose a friend or two.

  More than that.

  The heart monitor beeps steady. There are footsteps outside the door. Hushed voices echo from elsewhere in the ward.

  But we’re alone.

  Just me and Ray.

  The ghost. The man who should be dead.