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  HK automatic rifles. Body armour. That’s modern air travel for you.

  They’re running with the enthusiasm of the under-used. Have they seen action? Jesus, do they know I’m unarmed? Do they give a toss? I pick up the pace.

  I’m cocooned by the roar of jet engines from planes on runways all around. I run. Blind. If I don’t know where I’m going, neither do they. Every time my feet slap the tarmac, the ice stabs my lungs.

  It would be so easy to give in. But I have to run.

  The scream of engines gets louder. I bow my head and keep going. Is this how I want to go? Butch Cassidy, just without the Sundance Kid?

  ‘Where are you going, John?’ The words burst out jagged and uneven, starting to hurt with each repetition.

  The air around me trembles. A dark shadow comes from nowhere.

  I look up, see the tail of a turning plane just in front of me. Heading away.

  I keep running.

  Don’t look back.

  Keep –

  It’s a solid wall of air, like running into concrete. I slam to a halt, then bounce back. Lifted off my feet. At first there’s no pain, but I’m aware of something in my chest cracking. I look down and see that I’m off the ground. I’m floating. Flying. Free.

  The ground looms. I close my eyes. The roaring intensifies. My eardrums burst. All I hear is the roar. It becomes my world. Blanks out every other experience.

  And there’s no pain.

  No pain. For a moment, that surprises me.

  And then:

  There’s nothing.

  Three weeks later

  KAT

  I watch his belongings burn. The stuff that they left behind.

  The police took John’s possessions.

  Evidence.

  Without his testimony – how can a man talk after he’s been caught in the stream of a jet engine? – they need to piece together what happened.

  What’s left – paltry, meagre, next to nothing – I’m burning.

  I don’t know if it makes me feel better.

  I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have savings, but not much. And Crawford and the solicitors keep telling me I can’t go too far. Back to Oban, maybe. The life I made there. But I know it was never really home, just a place where I could try and gather myself. Now, I think maybe there’s nothing for me there.

  I’m a material witness. They need me to stick around.

  I didn’t tell them about the text message he sent me the night of Ray’s funeral.

  If he had something for me, then I wanted to see it first. Thinking maybe it would help me understand him, whether he really was the man that I thought I loved.

  I still have a key to John’s place. Sentimental? Or just that I didn’t know what to do with it?

  I take a look around the bedroom. It’s bare now. The bed is just a frame with an old mattress. After I left, it seems that he went back to basics. Living like a monk in a cell. Only the essentials. Nothing more than that.

  I look at the walk in cupboard. The doors are open. There’s something wrong at the back wall. Like he said in the message. I step in, tug at the loose board.

  Bending down hurts. Every movement is stiff and painful, still. But I figure I need to do this on my own. It can only hurt for so long.

  The cupboard extends further back than I realised. There’s a whole other storage space in there. Empty except for a battered old sports bag.

  I pull it out. Throw it on the mattress. Watch it bounce. The effort’s nearly too much. I’m short of breath. I sit down and take a moment. Then I undo the zipper. Figure the painkillers are too strong; I’m hallucinating.

  The notes aren’t fake. I’m a Scobie. I’ve seen fake. I’ve seen marked.

  I smile, thinking about when I was sixteen, took some money my uncle had lying around on his kitchen worktop. I was arrested in Woolworths. Jesus, the humiliation. Made worse by my uncle coming down the station to ‘sort everything out’ and by getting away as though the incident had never happened. Even worse, getting a grudging apology from the officer who had responded to the incident and slapped the cuffs on me.

  I look at the money in the bag. Shake my head.

  Does it really make up for everything? Did he think it would matter to me?

  How much? Two hundred thousand? Conservative guess.

  I think about John buying that ticket. Looking to start a new life. Is this his way of apologising?

  There’s a note in the bag too. I know his handwriting. I rip the paper into tiny pieces without bothering to read his scrawl.

  Finally, I allow myself a smile. Sit next to the bag on the bed.

  Plan my own escape. This time, making it real. Oban was almost a pretence, a way of escaping without really leaving. This time, I have the chance to start over again. No family left. No ties, no lingering sentimentality.

  I can leave. Be whoever I want.

  Scabies Scobie?

  Kat Scobie?

  Does it matter? It’s a big world out there. Two hundred thousand isn’t much in the grand scheme of the world.

  But it’s a start.

  Acknowledgements

  Ray’s inability to feel pain is based in part on a real condition (known as HSAN or sometimes Congenital Insensitivity to Pain). I have however taken a number of liberties with the condition in the name of dramatic license. As ever, any errors are my own.

  With thanks to:

  Sara Hunt at Saraband for taking a chance on this new book and being so enthusiastic. I’ve been a fan of the Contraband line for a while, so delighted to now be part of the gang.

  Al Guthrie, as ever, for his support and assistance through the writing of this book, and for helping it to find a home.

  Louise Hutcheson for some of the kindest editorial notes I’ve ever had.

  Jay Stringer and James Oswald, who read early drafts of this work and didn’t tell me to give up right there and then.

  All my friends, associates and fellow miscreants who provide the kind of invisible support without which I wouldn’t be able to keep working. Special shout out to the Long Promised Cameo – you know who you are!

  Booksellers and librarians everywhere.

  You, the reader, especially if you actually got this far and bothered to read all the nattering nonsense in the acknowledgements. That is dedication above and beyond the call of duty.

  Mum and Dad – still no French house, but maybe a bottle of French wine…

  Mycroft, Magwitch and Moriarty – because of course I’m mad enough to thank the cats.

  And, of course, Lesley McDowell – let’s crack open some prosecco!

  Copyright

  Contraband is an imprint of Saraband

  Published by Saraband,

  Suite 202, 98 Woodlands Road

  Glasgow, G3 6HB

  www.saraband.net

  Copyright © Russel D McLean 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without first obtaining the written permission of the copyright owner.

  ISBN: 9781910192573

  ebook: 9781910192580