And When I Die Read online

  Mum was no crook. But she was a Scobie. By blood. So was I. Enough for certain things to hold true in my life.

  When I let Crawford out, he stopped just before I had the chance to close the door on him. He looked at me with his big grey eyes. They were slightly out of proportion, I noticed, giving him a childlike appearance even though he was in his mid-forties. But when I thought he was about to say something, he suddenly turned away again. And walked.

  I waited until he was out of sight before I closed the door again.

  Slowly. Quietly.

  * * *

  ‘Kat?’

  I open my eyes.

  It’s cold.

  I’m leaning against rough stone. My legs are stretched out in front of me.

  The wind massages my face gently.

  I look around. Make out shapes in the darkness. Headstones. Statues of angels standing guard over the dead.

  Ray stands a little away from me. Looking down. I see the gun in his hands. He’s shaking. You’d only notice you knew what you were looking for.

  I wonder if he realises he’s dying.

  It’s too late for him. It has to be. Maybe too late for both of us.

  God only knows how strong the hate is that keeps him standing. So what’s keeping me alive?

  ‘Kat?’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘I would have…saved your life.’

  ‘I know.’

  JOHN

  I’m out of the bathroom, wiping my hand across the back of my mouth. When I swallow, I taste the acidity of my own vomit.

  I take deep breaths. Force it back.

  Find my equilibrium.

  In the mirror, I see something mocking in the face of the man who looks back at me. Like he knows all of this could have been avoided. Like he’s watching some black comedy, can’t believe just how dumb I’ve been to get into this mess in the first place.

  Leaning against the wall, Tony points two fingers my way with his thumb cocked. Makes a motion like he’s just fired off a shot, says, ‘How you doing, killer?’ Giggles. I figure he’s done another line while my stomach was escaping through my mouth.

  I ignore him best I can.

  This is it, then. The step over the line. No going back. No more lying. I’ve made my choice. Decided once and for all who I am.

  Tony comes over, puts his hands on my shoulders, looks me in the eye and says, ‘Who’s my number-one guy!’ He cracks up after that.

  Laughing at your own jokes. The true sign of a psychopath.

  My phone goes off. I don’t recognise the number.

  ‘You going to answer that?’

  I answer. Uncertain. It’s a mobile number. Pretty sure it’s not a PPI or marketing call. Of course, you never can tell.

  A voice, rasping and broken, says, ‘Put my…brother on.’

  I don’t know what to do. Just stand there, phone pressed to my ear, not moving, not saying a word.

  ‘Hear me? Do it.’ Then, as an afterthought: ‘She’s…alive. If you’re… interested.’

  I pass the phone to Tony. He doesn’t understand, but takes it anyway. Turns his back on me, making it clear he doesn’t want me in the same room.

  ‘Aye?’ He talks soft, like he thinks he might be able to stop me overhearing. ‘Aye, it’s finished, Ray. You’re fucking finished.’

  He doesn’t say much else. Just listens. For a long time. Then hands back the phone, says, ‘End game, then. Tonight. He dies.’

  ‘And Kat?’

  ‘I were you, I’d prepare for the worst.’

  ‘He told me she was alive.’

  ‘And you believe him?’

  I almost say, much as I believe any Scobie. But catch the words before they leave my lips. Tony reads something into my silence. Says, ‘Thought as much.’ Then grins, shows off sharp incisors. ‘Night’s young yet.’

  * * *

  In the car he says, ‘Family’s everything to us. Know why?’

  ‘Because of everything your dad fought for?’ It wasn’t a tough narrative. They talked about it so often that it was a wonder no-one else in the world knew the Edited Edition of the Great Scobie Family History.

  ‘Family’s all you have in the end. Lesson learned a long time ago. Our great-great-great-grandfather, he owned a factory. You believe that? We had money coming out our arses. Shat fucking gold bricks. To be a Scobie was to be fucking king of the world.’

  He speaks with an edge of fanaticism, words running together, pitch rising. There’s a glee in retelling the story, a complete belief in what he’s saying. There’s more than just drugs pumping through his system. More, even, than his own pumped-up ego. This is something inherited. Something fundamental. I imagine he’d been told the story over and over since he was a wee lad.

  ‘And then we lost it all. The factories got fucked. The money vanished. The family lost everything, you know? All we had left was each other. That was what kept us going. By the time Dad was born we were living in this bloody run-down shithole in the Gorbals, with the Russians and the Jews, three kids to one room, that kind of crap. You hear people talk about how times were better despite the hardships, but the truth is, people just remember what they want. Dad’s recollection is how much he hated this life he was born into, how he knew people had more than he did, how he fucking wanted it all.’

  We’re in the Clyde Tunnel now. Warning signs on the walls tell us that in the event of an emergency we have to leave our car behind and walk.

  The strip lights overhead cast a strange hue, unusually harsh in stark contrast to the inky blue darkness out either side of the tunnel. I watch the walls flicker past. Tony either doesn’t notice I’m somewhere else or didn’t care. When he talks, he just expects that you’re listening.

  ‘So he took it. The only way he could. Did it all for his family. His fucking family, you understand that? That’s what it was like for him. And I always got it, you know? What the old man went through, what he had to do to get all of that. I fucking admire him for it.’

  And yet, I think, you killed him. Or at least, you were responsible for his death. You planned to betray him.

  ‘He lived too long, maybe. But you have to admire his balls, doing what he did. And I don’t think everyone understands that. My aunt never did, Kat’s mum. She was born later, ten fucking years later, kind of an accident, but still, she was loved. My dad, after their parents died, he raised her himself. And she had the nerve to turn her back on what he did, call him a criminal to his face. And worse. I saw it once, you know, when she’d got shitfaced on wine. She screamed at him in front of his sons, told him that he was fucking evil, that she should turn him in.’ He shakes his head at the memory.

  We’re out of the tunnel now, heading towards the centre of town. On either side of the dual carriageway, the buildings flick past in a stream of lights.

  I’m tired. My head pounds from the inside, like my brain’s swelling up, desperate to escape the confines of my skull. All I want is to sleep for a little while. The day’s been long. My life is long. The weight of everything I’ve done, all the secrets I’ve kept, is finally too much for me to keep in the air.

  ‘I wanted to kill her. I fucking did. I was ten years old, but I would have throttled her, same as I did with that fat fuck tonight. But the old man, he knew what I’d seen, and he pulled me aside, told me that she was family, that she didn’t really understand, but she was still family, and it was our duty to protect her. Family is everything, he said. Blood really is thicker than water. That was why he’d done everything he’d done. Become someone that certain people would hate. All for his family. No regrets about that, he said. No fucking regrets. In this world, people can only look out for their own.’

  And yet you planned to betray him. And you tried to murder your own brother.

  He’s talking now with a distracted air, divided between memories and concentrating on the road ahead. ‘Both me and Ray understood what he was saying. But I guess I’m the one with the brains, because there’s
times when you can’t let sentiment get in the way of what you do, know what I’m saying?’

  ‘You think your dad should have killed your aunt?’

  ‘Maybe. Don’t know that she ever did go to the coppers, like. But you never know.’

  There’s silence for a moment. I don’t have the energy to figure the contradictions in Tony’s life or inside his head. He’s just a bastard psycho. Believes what he says, jumps through hoops to justify his own hypocrisy. In his head, he is as justified as his father. Maybe more so. He’s a product of his the society he grew up: the perfect image of the self-centred ’80s Greed is Good philosophy. He wanted it all, but unlike his father, his motivations were always self-centred. If it feels good, do it. He can’t think about anyone beyond himself. It’s what stops him from ever forming any kind of human connection, makes him turn to drugs for any sense of reality in the world.

  His talk of family, it’s all lip service.

  Makes me think of my father. A man who talked about God and forgiveness, then beat the shite out of the Catholic lads on a Friday night after downing enough pints to dull the pain of them punching back.

  ‘Ray heard the same speeches,’ Tony says. ‘Think he still believes all the shite my father spun.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Why else would he choose to end it tonight? Out there of all places too.’

  ‘Out where?’ He still hasn’t told me what Ray said on the phone, where we’re going once we meet Pete and Al.

  ‘The Necropolis,’ he says. ‘The old family plot. Christ. Maybe he’s gone poetic. High off the blood loss. Retard. Like it matters. It’s right enough he should die there. A dead man among the fucking dead men.’ He laughs.

  The weight I feel gets worse. Threatens to crush me completely.

  KAT

  It’s cold.

  The sky is an inky shade of blue, and there’s a surprising amount of light once your eyes get used to it.

  I’m trying not to think about Lesley. All she did to get killed was what she had been told to do all her life – call the police. They will come and save you. Except they didn’t.

  And her friends?

  Well, I let her die. Make of that what you will.

  Time and again, my cousins have got away with all the things you’re supposed to be banged up for: dealing drugs, laundering cash, hurting people, even murdering them.

  I forgave them every time. Why? Because I grew up believing that’s what family was all about. You stick by your own. No matter what. You forgive them the greatest sins. Just because you’re supposed to.

  I always wondered where we got that from. Why my mother bought into it. Because it was her brother pulled the family out of the slums? Because she really believed it? Or because she was indoctrinated as much as anyone?

  Family.

  I say, ‘Do you enjoy it?’

  He’s leaning against the crypt walls. This small house that celebrates what used to be our family. Back before we were thrown into poverty, forced to reinvent ourselves. This tomb is all that’s left.

  Doesn’t even really belong to the family any more. No-one cares for it. The weather and the harsh nights have eroded the stonework, turned the monument to a shabby shadow that hides from the world. The angel who sits on top of the roof has his wings clipped. Half his face has eroded, become a featureless lump of granite that only hints at past majesty. Looking at it in the half-light, I think of Ray. Both of them eroding. Slowly. Piece by piece. And like Ray, the angel doesn’t even notice. No pain. No sensation.

  I keep drifting. Into my own thoughts. Slipping deep into my mind, forgetting the world around me. My middle is cold now. My stomach feels like it’s pumped full of the freezing anaesthetic that the dentist uses.

  The wind is sharp, though. Keeps me conscious. Cuts through my blouse. Scratches the skin beneath like ragged fingernails. I wrap my arms around me. A futile effort to keep warm. I wonder if it’s the night air or the shock. Am I too far gone for it to matter?

  Ray says, ‘Came here…with Dad. When we…were kids. Told us this is…what we used to be. His dad…brought him too.’ He takes a deep breath. Even speaking is becoming difficult for him. His lungs aren’t filling up properly. It’s not just the burning of his throat affecting his speech. I wonder if he knows what’s happening inside him.

  ‘Family’s everything…he said.’

  ‘You killed him.’

  ‘He…started it.’ Sounding petulant. Childish. Makes me want to laugh. But I suppress the giggle trying to fight its way out of my chest.

  Just that effort hurts. A lot. Pins and needles shoot through my whole body. How long have I got left?

  He had been prepared to save me. Take me to the hospital. Sacrificing his own need for revenge, ending this night of violence, to save me. And I stopped him.

  Why?

  My feet are wet. My shoes aren’t designed for this weather, for hanging around graveyards at night. The liquid soaks through my socks. I wiggle my toes, for all the good it does. Remember when I was a kid how when I got cold at night, I’d massage the duvet with my feet for warmth. And comfort too.

  I look around. At the headstones, markers and tombs. Think of the grandeur that this was place was designed to convey, how death was something to be proud of. How these people prepared for their deaths. How much things have changed. How we have lost respect for death.

  When I was a student, I shared a flat with a girl called Amy. The kind of girl guys turned their heads to look at. And she didn’t even try. Had this whole Goth thing going on, dyed her blonde hair black, covered herself up, and still remained desirable to guys.

  She called me one night, asked if I could pick her up from the police station. I remember asking her what happened. She said she didn’t want to talk on the phone. Only told me after half a bottle of wine back at the flat that she’d been caught in the Necropolis with a boy she’d picked up at a club. How she had this thing for graveyards. ‘Fucking among the dead,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Nothing like it for feeling alive.’

  Can’t say I ever tried it. Wonder if I should have. Wonder if I should have done a lot of things.

  Ray’s makeshift bandages, torn from his jacket and jersey, aren’t working. The blood’s seeping out of me.

  I’m too cold. Definitely more than just the night air.

  My brain’s slowing down too. I can barely concentrate on any one thought at a time. Jumping in and out memory and the here and now. I concentrate on the present. Just need to keep my brain here, keep it focused on the real world.

  ‘What now?’ I ask Ray. Just to do something. Keep myself from drifting too far.

  ‘We wait,’ he says. Shaking. Shivering. He may not feel much, but his body still reacts when it has no other choice.

  I close my eyes. Just for a moment. One moment. A little rest. Get this picture of Lesley’s face, eyes open wide, lips dropped as though to say something, colour drained from around her cheeks. Eyes are a little wet, like she’s ready to start crying. But she doesn’t get the chance. Because he shoots her. No warning. No final chance. No mercy. No joy, even.

  I might have been able to understand if he was the kind of stone-cold who took pleasure in hurting people. But he’s emotionless. Pragmatic. I’ve seen it more times that I care throughout this one evening.

  Ray checks his gun. He’s been doing this every few minutes. A habit? Ensuring that he’s prepared? Checking the chamber, the clip, slamming it home into the grip.

  I watch him do all this. Disconnected and powerless. Like I’m not really here.

  I never hurt anyone in my life. Not intentionally. Never raised my fists in anger. Never took a weapon with the intention of using it against someone. Of course I’ve raised my voice and said things designed to hurt, but no more than normal people do. I’m no saint, would never claim to be. But I’m no killer either.

  I’m a Scobie. Except I’m not.

  At least that’s what I’ve always thought.

  Li
ke that Detective, Crawford, said, I’m a citizen. Don’t break any laws. Don’t hurt people. Just live my life. Work in a hospital. Make up for everything that my cousins, my uncle, all their bloody cronies, have ever done. Is that enough? Or am I as complicit in their bad deeds as anyone?

  That’s what Crawford thought. I could see it in the way he looked at me, that he was selling me a line, but he thought I was every bit as bad as Uncle Derek, Tony and Ray. Not because of what I had done. Because of what I never did.

  I could blame the code. I grew up with it. Understood it as a fact of life. How can you just turn your back on something like that?

  Never grass.

  Never tell.

  Never betray.

  ‘Kill me,’ I say, and the wind catches my words. I try not to think about what happened the last time I asked him.

  Ray looks at me. His brow knots, eyebrows floating closer together. ‘What?’

  I can’t take it back. ‘If you’re going to kill them, kill me too.’ I’m dying anyway. Can feel it. That bullet’s inside me. I’m cold. Shivering. Just want it over. To close my eyes and go to sleep. Never wake up.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘You can’t feel pain,’ I say.

  He shakes his head.

  Can I make him understand? ‘Can you feel anything?’

  He squats beside me. His eyes are wide. There’s a curiosity there, and I recognise a childlike quality. For all that he’s done, for all that he’s seen, I think maybe he still views the world with wonder. Not really understanding it, but desperate to know things in the way that other people do.

  Our faces are maybe an inch apart. His breath is warm. I can hear his lungs fill and expand. The sound is watery, clogged. We’re close. Very close.

  ‘Not pain,’ I say. ‘But you have to feel other things. I mean, pleasure?’

  His breathing escalates.

  Something in the back of my mind clicks. A moment of revelation.

  He killed my boyfriend for cheating on me. I always tried to believe it was someone else, or that it was an accident, but I’ve always known the truth. Ray killed for me.