And When I Die Page 4

  Catch sight of myself in the pub window. A pale reflection. Washed out. Almost unreal. I have this expression on my face, a kind of sneering, hate-filled twisting of my features. My lips pulled back in a snarl, my eyes lit up with the kind of adrenaline-rush I recognise from dealing with Anthony Scobie.

  It’s like looking at the ghost of a stranger. I take two steps back, suddenly breathless.

  Who am I? The cop or the criminal? Right now I’m stuck in limbo between the two. Need to figure out who I am, what I do next.

  Time is running out, after all.

  KAT

  As we leave, they play a Johnny Cash spiritual over the speakers. Hardly orthodox, but we’re modern Catholics. Besides, Ray liked Johnny. Listened to him a lot. Wore down his father’s old records he listened to them so often.

  But it was the young, rebellious Johnny, or the old, broken-down one that got Ray going. Not the middle-aged, middle-of-the-road, religious sap infused stuff they’re piping out just now.

  Could be worse, I suppose. They could be playing Fat Elvis.

  Maybe he’d have cracked a smile at that.

  If he ever smiled.

  Out the back of the church, we do the line-up. I hug Anthony briefly. Get this urgent sensation down my spine that makes me break the embrace too quick.

  Looking into his eyes, I see he’s high.

  Not a surprise. It’s his coping mechanism. With life in general. The day Tony’s not high or thinking about getting high is the day you know there’s something seriously wrong with the world.

  When I embrace Uncle Derek, he squeezes me tight, whispers in my ear, ‘I’m sorry, love,’ like the loss is mine, somehow.

  And that’s when I lose it.

  * * *

  Seventeen years old.

  In my bedroom, hating all men.

  At least, all boys.

  The first betrayal is always the worst. Colours your view of relationships forever. Sets a patter for the way that you react to all the inevitable betrayals that will follow it.

  His name was Andy Cook. A year above me, with an arse that looked great in jeans. And the kind of smile that suggested the very safe kind of naughtiness you need when you’re seventeen.

  He had been my first, too. The first to make me wonder what all the fuss was about. But I figured you probably got better with practice.

  It was easy to fool yourself into believing in love at that age. Thinking that you probably can’t do better, that the first reasonably good-looking boy who comes along with a wink and a smile is probably the one. When all you’ve found is someone who’ll look at you for more than two minutes without nodding off or leering at a girl with breasts like Emily Hendricks’.

  Emily Hendricks. The wee trollop. That was who he’d gone with. He made sure he didn’t leer at her breasts when I was around, but all the same…

  He admitted it when I confronted him. Bold as brass, my grandmother would say.

  He told me down the chippy. So what I did was drop my poke, turn and walk away. No screaming. No shouting. I walked back home – over a mile – thinking about nothing, walking on autopilot. When I got in the door, Mum was in the kitchen, stuck her head out to ask me how the evening was. ‘You’re back awfy early.’

  I didn’t answer, went up to my room. Started crying when the door was shut. And didn’t stop. Even when Mum knocked, I didn’t stop except to tell her to go away.

  Only made things worse.

  It was maybe two hours before there was another knock at the door. Again, I yelled at whoever it was to just leave me alone.

  But Ray walked right in.

  Five years since he saved me from Jenny Hanson. Things were different, but still felt the same.

  When Ray came in and sat down on the bed, I hugged him. He stiffened, but then returned the hug. Awkward. His hugs always were. Like he didn‘t understand them.

  We stayed that way a long time. I liked the smell of his aftershave. Made me feel safe, for some reason.

  Finally, he let go. ‘Your mum’s worried.’

  I told him what happened.

  When I was done, he nodded. Stood up. For all the moments when he could be so nice, there were other times I suspected Ray wasn’t much more than a robot mimicking human behaviour. Sometimes I wondered if he understood other people beyond learning the rules for reacting to them.

  ‘That’s it?’ I asked.

  He nodded, left the room. I waited a few minutes before sheepishly going downstairs to talk to Mum. In the kitchen, she offered me a glass of wine. I refused, and she laughed. So I took the wine, and she led me into the living room. It’s the first time I remember her treating me like an adult. An equal

  Mum sat on the couch, legs curled up beneath her. We talked about a lot of things. I think maybe that evening was the one where me and Mum finally became close again, shared experiences of shitty boyfriends making bad mistakes, laughed about men in general. And finally accepted each other as real human beings.

  She would be dead two years later.

  Looking back, I think maybe that was the night we both knew something was wrong. She got drunk quicker than I’d ever seen her before, and when she tried to go to bed, she seemed too silly, as though her wine had been stronger than mine. She practically fell over the banister when she tried to go to bed, and would have gone right the way over if I hadn’t caught her. I would later see a lot more behaviour like that, even when she hadn’t been drinking, that cancer slowly destroying her from the inside out, manifesting itself in ways none of us ever expected.

  But for that night, she was the mother I wanted. The mother I needed. I’m glad we had some time like that.

  ‘Why’d you keep me out, but let Ray in?’

  I tried to pretend I hadn’t heard the question. It was that point in the evening where I was pleasantly drunk, but not willing to over-share. But it felt good to be curled up in the big armchair with the telly on in the background, one empty and one open bottle of red on the table.

  ‘Kat? Honey, you listening to me?’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  ‘Well?’

  I shrugged, resorted to the monosyllabic responses that had been typical of my mid-teenage years. They hadn’t quite left me. I still used them in moments of extreme stress or discomfort.

  ‘I’m your mother, Katherine,’ she said. But the use of my full name didn’t quite seem to hold the power it once did. Even if she’d gone full-on Katherine-Jane Scobie, I don’t think it would have felt quite so much the skelp on the bum that it used to. ‘I want you to be able to...’ she stopped, then, and laughed. It wasn’t a public laugh, sounded weirdly sad. ‘I want to be your friend too. But...I know I was never... My mother and I, we were never really that close. She wanted to be, but I... Oh, honey, you’ll know one day.’

  ‘I let Ray in,’ I said, choosing my words carefully, like Princess Diana treading through minefields in front of cameras, ‘because I thought he could....because he made me feel better before. A long time ago. He helped me, you know?’

  ‘Did he help you now?’ Mum sounded sceptical, but I wasn’t sure why.

  ‘It was nothing,’ I said, remembering now how she used to ask why Jenny Hanson didn’t come round for tea any more, as though we had been the best of friends at primary school and not just two oddballs thrown together because there wasn’t really anyone else to talk to. ‘Just.... I thought maybe he could...’

  ‘Honey, you don’t want him to help with this.’ Then, she seemed to think about something. ‘You didn’t ask him to do something, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Good. Fine. It’s just, a man like Ray, he has his own way of doing things. He’s not...he’s never been like you or me.’

  ‘A girl?’

  She hesitated, and then laughed like a drain before starting to fill up our glasses again. I wondered if we’d get into a third bottle. And if I could handle it. I was still sober enough to know that I didn’t want my own mum seeing me wrecked.

/>   There are some lines that should never be crossed.

  ‘No, no, that’s not what.... Christ, Kat, you’re a royal pain in the arse, sometimes. No, I mean...’ I worried that she was about to turn serious again. ‘I mean that a man like Ray, he’s not like… He’s... You must have noticed that he’s not, I mean in the way he speaks and all, so quiet and serious. He was born with something of a…he’s…he’s got a…condition. And the way it affected him was he didn’t quite feel the world in the same way as other people. He was pretty sick when he was young.’

  ‘Ray?’ Hard to believe, the kind of man he was.

  ‘I know, I know! True, though. Had to look out for him constantly, until he was old enough to take care of himself. Gave him something of a violent streak. He didn’t always know when he was really hurting people. He didn’t understand how they felt.’

  It didn’t make sense to me at the time, although I knew she wasn’t trying to mess with me or anything. She was trying to tell me the truth. But only by hinting around it.

  ‘I’m just saying, the way he helps people isn’t the way most of us would. That’s all.’ She shook her head. ‘But we’ve got more wine, and you say you told him you didn’t need his help. So let’s drink.’

  At her funeral, my uncle Derek would tell me that was her way of changing the subject: ‘If she didn’t like what you were saying,’ he told, smiling at the memories, ‘she’d say, ‘let’s drink.’ You never really had a choice.’

  It was two days after my little bonding session with Mum when I saw the morning news and inhaled air that sliced through my throat like the wrong side of a Ginsu knife.

  I wasn’t really listening when the report started, but was dimly aware that a body that had found near Glasgow Green. I glanced at the screen, saw Andy’s face. That was when the knife tried to slice me open from the inside out. When I had to gasp for a clean, natural breath.

  That was when I realised the truth about Ray; who he was, what he was capable of. The kind of work he really did for my uncle.

  * * *

  In the bathroom, I look at my face, wonder if anyone will know that I had a little breakdown. It’s a funeral, and people don’t mind if girls cry, but it matters to me a great deal. I don’t like to show weakness.

  Where the hell is John? He should be here. His clients shouldn’t be more important than this.

  I lean forward, check my face the same way I used to for spots. Take a deep breath and straighten up. I look okay.

  No. No, I look better than okay. I look stunning. Check the red hair, pale skin and black dress. Classic. The bloodshot eyes only add to the melodramatic beauty.

  Could have come straight from central casting: mysterious mourner at the funeral.

  It’s a sad day when you can’t even believe your own delusion.

  As I turn to go, someone else comes in.

  Jenny Hanson looks worse than me. Says, ‘I need to clean up.’ All mascara smudge and spot-stress breakout.

  ‘You okay?’ I ask her, not really caring, thinking that because this is a funeral I can set aside my personal feelings and reach out to another human in need.

  She scowls. ‘Get fucked, Lesbo.’ Bustles into a cubicle. I turn back to the mirror. Hear snorting noises, know she’s not sniffing back the tears.

  I’m a failure as a Scobie.

  All my mum’s fault, of course. She was the black sheep who refused to get involved with any of my uncle’s business. He’d been the one who did well for himself, brought the family back from the brink of poverty. But Mum always said that there were other ways of doing what he had done. That he took the easy way.

  Didn’t stop her from taking gifts, though, from letting him help her. I guess that was when it started, when I realised her hypocrisy.

  John was supposed to be my escape. I’d thought he was different from the parade of boys who wanted to get closer to my family rather than just me. I’d thought here’s someone who lives a normal life. I’d had visions of children and a house in the country. A normal life. A new name. A family forgotten. Sooner or later, my intention had been to use him as an excuse, a means of escape.

  ‘Oh, it’s not my fault, but John and I need the space, or he’s the one uncomfortable with how you live your lives.’

  And then it happened. Of course it did. He told me he was just being polite, reaching out to my relatives. Then I found he was doing work for them. Just little favours, he said. But with my uncle, there’s no such thing as little favours.

  I could have been like my mother. Turned a blind eye. Accepted my lot in life. She was the one had the excuse, of course. I knew my dad had wanted out. Before he died, I remember hearing him have strong talks about getting away from my uncle and everything he stood for. But Mum was entrenched in the family, even if she paid lip service to escape. I sometimes wonder if that’s what really killed dad – the exhaustion of dealing with the Scobies.

  Them that asks no questions…

  My dad read me that poem when I was a girl.

  It’s my only truly solid memory of him, really. This presence. This voice: deep, sonorous. Intoning the words as we watch shadows on the wall…

  Watch the wall, my darling, as the gentlemen go by.

  I don’t miss him because I never really knew him. Other than half-remembered, maybe even imagined arguments heard through walls and the sense that here was a man who would give his life to protect his daughter. He died in a traffic accident when I was five. I don’t know that I even cried because I didn’t understand what his death meant.

  Was he as dirty as my uncle? As complicit as my mother?

  I look at myself in the bathroom mirror.

  Thinking, what am I doing here? I escaped. John’s betrayal giving me that shove I finally needed, the confidence to cut all ties.

  Jenny, in the stall, lets loose a long sigh. I find myself wondering if what she has is from Tony’s stash. I think about how she looked when she came in here.

  I run the taps, splash my face again and re-apply my makeup.

  The mirror. I look better. More human. There’s something, at least.

  I turn and glance at the locked stall where Jenny’s floating away on her little cloud. Consider asking for some. I’ve never done drugs before, but there’s always a first time.

  And then I shake my head.

  Stupid idea. Best to face the world wide-eyed and sober. More painful. But maybe pain’s what you need, sometimes.

  JOHN

  I still have her picture in my wallet. Passport sized. These days, it’s behind my driver’s licence, but it’s still there.

  Stupid, really. Sentimental.

  The problem with telling lies is that if you repeat them often enough you start to believe them.

  I don’t know whether I really did love her or just convinced myself that it was the truth.

  When they take me in – and they’re going to, one way or the other – I figure the psychiatrist is going to have a field day during debrief.

  I’m in the hotel room I booked after covering up Ray’s survival. Not a difficult matter to book under a stolen card and assumed ID.

  It’s a small room, the most basic I could find. The window looks out onto an alley, and while it’s central enough, it hardly matches the opulence of the refurbished Central Hotel itself, just a few streets away.

  At least there’s a TV. Cheap flatscreen with a wonky remote you have hold at a very particular angle before anything happens. I tune in to STV, get crowd shots of the funeral.

  ‘…The Scobie family’s solicitors have issued a statement denying that Raymond Scobie’s death was connected to any criminal wrongdoing…’

  Aye, of course they have. I sit down on the edge of the bed and watch.

  I don’t listen to what the reporter has to say. She’s talking about the family’s history of legal difficulties and their ties to some of the city’s more colourful history. It’s torturous, the way she can’t come out and directly say they’re the biggest cri
me family since the Krays. Legal issues and all that.

  I look at the assembled. They couldn’t get inside the church, of course, but they managed to get some nice angles from across the street.

  And then I see her. She’s got her back to the camera, but it’s her. I’d know her anywhere.

  And my heart, clichéd as hearts can be, skips a beat.

  * * *

  ‘You’re confident, then?’

  She looked at the drink, then at me. Impressed but wary. Who could blame her? Impressed because I knew she drinks Prosecco to the exclusion of almost anything else, wary because why would a stranger know that?

  Thing is, I knew almost everything there was to know about Katherine ‘Kat’ Scobie, including the fact that she always excluded her middle name from official forms and that she’d been considering changing her family name by deed poll.

  She hated them that much.

  But they loved her.

  Go figure.

  Some ways, I was jealous. Given my own family. Or lack thereof. But that didn’t matter. None of it mattered. All that mattered was that I needed to make her feel she’d found someone she could trust.

  ‘I don’t take drinks from strange men.’

  I offered my hand. ‘John.’

  ‘Just because you have a name doesn’t make you not a stranger.’

  ‘We’re all strangers,’ I said, ‘until we’re not.’

  It made her smile at least.

  ‘And what do you do?’

  ‘It’s not going to be a terrifically sexy answer.’

  ‘Truth can be sexy.’

  ‘An accountant.’

  ‘Then again.’ But I still got a smile.

  And it was enough.

  * * *

  I still have her number stored on my phone’s memory. I think of her when I wake up in the morning. I have that photo hidden under my driver’s license.

  She was supposed to be a means to an end. But now?

  God only knows.

  Six months since she left. I figured that the end of our relationship would also be the end of my operation: after all, she was the reason that Derek Scobie trusted me. But the odd thing was that once she announced her intention to cut all family ties, I was brought in deeper than I ever expected. Filling a void, maybe? I was their last connection to her, perhaps.