And When I Die Page 8

  I kept my driving calm and under control. Focussed on the road, on the destination. I could almost forget witnessing the murder of two men.

  I pull into a bay on the third level. Kill the engine. Look out the windscreen, see across the street outside to the buildings opposite, shops and offices closing for the day. When I turn the engine off, a strange silence spreads. Oppressive. Unsettling.

  Beside me, Ray stretches, like he’s yawning. As though all this has just been a long day, and now all he wants to do is sleep. But there’s something in the way he moves, the way his face screws up that tells me he’s not tired.

  He’s been through a lot in the last few weeks, and I’m amazed given the degree of burns across his body that he can walk, never mind kill two people in cold blood

  People.

  Like I don’t know who they are.

  But I don’t want to think about it.

  Maybe he senses the unasked question. Or he’s talking to himself. ‘They tried to kill me.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘The fuck…d’you think?’ Like he’s just realised I’m there.

  I can’t say anything. Don’t want to say anything. Because that might somehow make all of this real. And I want it to be a dream. A nightmare. Anything but what it is.

  ‘You know what my dad did? I mean, you have to. You can’t not know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What I did for him?’

  How do I answer that question? ‘I know,’ I say, ‘I knew. Even if I couldn’t put it into words. From the day you threatened fat Jenny.’

  You couldn’t have looked at him and not known. More than mere protectiveness. He’d been angry. He’d been…exactly who he’s always been.

  ‘Why would they want to kill you?’ I ask. ‘You’re family.’

  Family. As in the Addams. The Mansons. He coughs, but it’s a minor thing. An irritant in his throat. When he turns back to look at me, I try to read into those eyes some semblance of an emotion I might understand

  But I get nothing. It’s like looking into a mirror that reflects only shadows, black on black.

  ‘They thought I…betrayed them. What Dad…told me.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did they –?’

  He coughs again. This time, it’s no irritant. He’s actually trying to laugh. Like his speech, it’s a damaged and broken noise, something not quite real about it; a poor imitation of human sound.

  ‘Did they ask me?’ he says, and this time the laugh doesn’t stop him from talking. It comes out like an exclamation mark, a final flourish on the end of a sentence. ‘You never understood…never... Your mother…protected you.’

  ‘If she was still alive...’

  He shakes his head. ‘A Scobie never…strays far. What Dad…told me when I tried to…when I was young. You’re…a Scobie…. Like me.’

  It’s true.

  Glasgow born and bred, every one of us. We never leave the city. Not for long, anyway. Something always pulls us back. More than just the city. Like cats with an instinct for home, we just wind up working our way back to where we started from.

  ‘It’s all…bullshit,’ he says. ‘All…of it. Family. Loyalty…’

  He looks for a moment like he wants to say something else. His lips move, and maybe he’s forming a word, but then he turns away again.

  ‘I’m sorry it had to be you.’ he says.

  ‘Just let me go,’ I say. ‘I won’t –’ The sentence dies on my lips when he brings up the gun and presses it against the side of my head. The metal is warm and presses against my skin.

  ‘I will kill you,’ he says. ‘I will…kill you. If you don’t…do as I say.’ I believe him then, as much as I believed when he said he was sorry.

  I don’t turn my head, but swivel my eyes so I can see him. Suddenly, he’s no longer Cousin Ray, but he’s the monster and the killer I always knew he was. My earlier instincts about the truth of who he is beneath the skin are confirmed. There is no doubt in my mind. He doesn’t want to kill me, but if I get in his way, he won’t hesitate.

  He lets his gun arm drop. Slow. Eyes on me the whole time, sizing me up, working out whether I believe him.

  I do.

  ‘What do you want?’ I ask.

  He doesn’t answer. Instead, he barks out another cough. This one more violent. A clenched fist stifles it. When he’s done, I grab at the hand, pull him towards me. He turns with the motion. I want him to look at me, to not ignore the question.

  There’s blood on his hands.

  ‘Ray?’

  He smiles. Guilty. Pretend-playful. Keeping a naughty secret, but not one that really matters.

  Except it does.

  That cough... That hacking noise that keeps erupting from his lungs.

  He’s been coughing up blood.

  JOHN

  ‘Where in the name of Christ’s holy bicycle have you been?’

  Burke on the other end of the line, blasting me. Barely listening to what I have to say. He’s been waiting for this moment. Finally, he’s in the right.

  Remember the way he looked at me when I first came into his office:

  Like he was thinking, Prick. At the time, he was probably right too.

  Going undercover, you really do need a degree of self-doubt. Can’t be too comfortable in your own skin. Why? You need to slip inside someone else’s. And make everyone else believe it.

  If I didn’t have my own doubt in spades, Burke had always happy to provide it.

  I believed in the force. Wanted to do my part. But truth was I didn’t want to be a copper. Being in uniform, being part of one big machine, that part didn’t appeal. Maybe because I’d watched too many Westerns on the telly when I was a lad. Wanted to be the lone hero, the sheriff come into town to clean things up his own way. Undercover, you could be part of the solution but you didn’t have to obey the same rules everyone else did.

  Idealism? Aye, well maybe it was. You don’t just get cynical overnight.

  Crawford, the SIO on the operation, had seen what I was about, thought it would be an asset, while Burke yelled loud about my commitment to the cause, but not the job, being a liability.

  And now he got to play the smartarse saying, Told you so.

  ‘We were going to pull you out, you utter shiting cockmonkey! Things were too hot, and then you just…you just vanish!’

  I’m several streets away from the Crow now. Getting the fuck out before the police arrive. Could hear the sound of sirens even before I reached the end of the road. Shots fired? On the street? Someone’s calling that in.

  I’m thinking maybe re-establishing contact wasn’t the right move after all.

  ‘I –’

  ‘Something else is going on, right? That’s why you went back? Starting to get a little too used to their company? That it? You need a good bloody shrink, you wanky wee tosspot!’

  Talk about my issues with professionalism? Pretty sure most of those names were on the forbidden list when it came to talking to subordinates.

  Burke’s the kind of boss lets off steam whether you’re comfortable or not. Can only imagine how he is in briefings. Probably lets Crawford do all the talking, holds his tongue until they’re done.

  I’m out on the street while he yells down the line at me. Pacing the pavement, shoulders hunched, voice sotto. Looking around, in case I recognise anyone. Sooner or later someone’s going to wonder where I am.

  The Scobies and their assembled associates will be closing ranks.

  Like the old man said, I’m one of them now. They’ll want me close.

  And this tube on the other end of the line wants me to run to Mummy? Throw myself into the welcoming embrace of the constabulary, forget all the work I’ve put in over the last few years? Admit defeat?

  I say, calmly as I can, ‘This is the perfect opportunity. They’re going to implode without the old man. Let me stick around, get the shite on everyone. I can – ’

  ‘Get your
head around the fact that this operation is over. I don’t care who the shooter was. It’s pretty bloody clear that they’re whoever took out Raymond. And now they’re out to finish the job. Putting you in the firing line.’

  Word hasn’t filtered back, then. About Raymond’s miraculous return from the dead. Aye, there’s the rub. Burke and Crawford still have no idea about the switch I made at the hospital. The young doc’s probably still playing secret agent, thinking he’s doing his civic duty by pretending that my star witness died overnight, thinking he was James Bond, switching corpses with some poor John Doe to protect the man’s identity.

  Oh, to be that young and stupid.

  Instead of this old and stupid.

  ‘This operation should have been over weeks back. You thrust your cock in too deep, and now you can’t pull out...’ He took a deep breath. Making a pantomime of the moment so I’d understand. When he spoke again, his voice was at a lower register, a soothing tone, the kind you use when you want someone to think you’ve just apologised. ‘Listen, I’ve seen this before. Not the first time anyone’s lost it on an undercover. Especially deep as you are. You have to know that what I’m saying’s the right thing to do…’

  I can practically hear the switch going off in his head. He’s lost me with the angry shtick, so he’s changed tacks for the old sympathetic, we’re all in this together shite.

  Sod it.

  I say, ‘Can’t talk,’ hang up. Not without some small satisfaction.

  I can’t pull cover. Not yet.

  This is both sides against the middle I need Burke to believe that all I’m thinking about taking down the Scobie family, that in the end, all I care about is making the biggest bastard bust that the Scottish force has ever known.

  This operation was supposed to provide proof for the new Scottish Government that working together is the best thing for all modern branches of law enforcement. That great things can happen when resources are pooled. When the SCDEA is gone, along with Lothian and Borders, our originally joined-up effort will fall under the purview of the newly formed Scottish police force. A victory here will show the value of co-operation.

  Aye, we’re all in it together.

  Better together, I’d guess you’d say.

  I have to make my decision.

  Turn myself in and let the Scobie family go to hell?

  Sure, if Ray’s out for revenge, blood will run in the city streets before the evening’s out. Maybe it won’t end in a court case, but it will mark the end of the Scobie family, no question. They’ll be scattered, fragmented and screwed.

  Someone will come in and pick up the pieces. Probably Buchan. But that won’t be my problem. I’ll be too busy cooling my heels in cell built for one when they realise just how far off the reservation I’ve gone.

  I switch SIMs once more. Dial a number I know without looking will have been trying to call me.

  Anthony says, ‘Where the fuck’re you?’ with no preamble.

  Listen to his tone, you have to wonder what separates him from Burke. The thin blue line? Has it ever really meant anything?

  ‘Could ask you the same question.’

  ‘He who fights and runs away...’

  …is a bloody coward.

  ‘Right,’ I say, non-committal.

  ‘Saying something?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Good answer, ya prick. You were there, saw what happened?’

  ‘He killed your dad. And then he killed Neil. He wants you next.’

  ‘And Kat?’

  I don’t answer right away. Make like I’m thinking it over. ‘She’s alive. I know it. She’s his insurance. Wrong place at the wrong time. You know how your brother works, Tony. Doesn’t kill anyone unless he has to. Isn’t that what he always says? Unless they’re a target or they’re in his way or they’re a threat. Kat never did anything to him.’

  ‘He’s a fucking psycho, my brother.’

  Pot, meet kettle.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘He’s something else. A psycho...doesn’t kill indiscriminately...’

  Who’s talking, now? John the cop? John the crooked accounts assistant? John the guy who’s in love with the gentle redhead?

  If I look in a mirror, who’s going to look back at me?

  ‘Whatever, man. Hate to be the one to break it to you, but my cousin’s dead. Same as Neil. Same as Dad.’ He sniffs twice. Not with sadness or tears. And I get it, why he doesn’t sound like he’s in mourning Little arse bollock’s high, off his nut with whatever powder he could get his grubby little hands on.

  I say, ‘We need to call the cops. This is this is beyond…’

  ‘What the shit, man? You off your tits?’

  ‘Think you can sweep this under the carpet?’

  ‘Think I’d even waste breath on those bawbags?’

  I can hear the pride in his voice. He thinks he’s upholding a proud Scobie tradition. In his mind, it’s us and them: the family and the enemy.

  Except his dad used to talk to the cops all the time. Long time ago, when the police tried to work with men like Derek Scobie in an attempt to douse the violence on Scotland’s streets. It had been a short-lived truce, but it had happened, proving once and for all that men like Derek Scobie work from a vested self-interest rather than any political or ideological standpoint.

  It was pragmatism of a sort.

  And it had skipped the new generation of criminal. Passing by men like Anthony, who grew up under the auspices of a society fostered by the Thatcher slogan: Greed is good. Looking out for themselves, and every other bugger could go piss up a tree.

  Anthony Scobie would rather die than work with the cops. Not because of some grand statement, but because he was so damn self-centred that he couldn’t do anything to go against his own self-image.

  ‘I’m calling the police,’ I say. ‘Kat’s still alive, and –’

  ‘And fuck you,’ Anthony says. ‘You pathetic pishbag. Think you’re safe? He said he was after me, Fat Dunc, all the ones that killed him. Think he doesn’t know you were there? How you voted that night? Think you’re safe? You’re not a citizen any more, you wee nyaf. You’re as deep in the shite as the rest of us.’

  I hesitate.

  ‘What you’re going to do, pal, is you’re going to help me find my prick of a brother. Finish what we started. Then we’re going to do all the crap my dad never had the stomach for. We’re going make sure everyone knows the name Scobie. And that it makes them shite their breeks.’

  He hangs up.

  I look at the phone in my hand and then put it away. Look around, wonder if anyone’s noticed me, the way I am, thinks maybe I’m some sketchy wee prick dealing drugs in the middle of suburbia.

  But no-one seems to notice. Or care.

  I figure on grabbing a number 4 bus out to Newton Mearns, but I’m a few minutes from the nearest stop. The walk might do me good, of course. But there’s a taxi with its light on heading my way, so I hail him, climb in the back.

  ‘Where to, bud?’ the driver’s voice coming metallic across the intercom.

  I give the address, sit back. Consider hitting the button so that he can’t hear me and gets the idea I don’t want to chat. Not that it really makes too much of a difference. Cabbies come in two particular breeds – those that want to talk and those that are in it for the quiet drive. Lucky for me, mine is the second breed. Gives me a chance to think.

  The original plan is now FUBAR.

  What I’d been thinking: get Burke and Crawford someone willing to testify, then sod off sharpish.

  The whole thing had been planned. The tickets were ready. Two days’ time, one seat booked. Business class, of course. Paid on one of the cloned cards Anthony sometimes dealt in. I’d got the tickets right after figuring Ray was for turning. The idea had been to get the hell out, while the rest of the Scobie family implode, and the cops swoop in like vultures.

  I’d been thinking about changing my mind, maybe doing the right thing. Why I’d shown my face at t
he wake: trying to find another way to give Crawford and Burke what they wanted. Show them I wasn’t such a bad guy after all. Either way, the plan was to find a mark, get them to hand themselves in and then get lost, sharpish.

  Start again. Like a computer game: hit reset, get another chance at life.

  But things have changed.

  Whether it’s working with the cops or working with Anthony Scobie, I have to do something. I have to try and save Kat. Not just because I still love her, if I ever really did. But because she shouldn’t be involved in any of this. It’s my fault she’s in this situation. I can’t just leave it at that.

  There are things I’m done that I’m not proud of, but I can live with them. But this… We all have lines. This, I realise, might just be mine.

  Maybe I’m not such a complete bastard after all.

  KAT

  What my mother hated most was the blood. Coughing up little pieces of herself. Everything that was her falling away, one dark glob at a time.

  It made me sad. It made her angry. But that anger was tempered by exhaustion. The kind that started inside, like the rot. Became all-consuming. She loathed that too. Told me in a moment of weakness that even waking up exhausted her, made her feel like no matter what she did, she was losing battle.

  The blood was a physical reminder of the thing inside her. Something she couldn’t deny or blame on something else. The sight of blood couldn’t be shrugged off or denied.

  The slow, creeping, unstoppable death took residence inside her. Coughed her up piece by piece.

  Cancer.

  The ugliest word I’ve ever known. The closest I’ve ever got to death. The closest I’ve ever wanted to be.

  * * *

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Ray says. ‘Look at…me. Fuck’s sakes… Look…at me.’

  Slowly, I turn around and look at his melted skin, thinned-out hair, ill-fitting clothes. The blood flecking the corners of his mouth. He is a real-life monster, a nightmare given physical presence.

  I think I smell something. Roasted pork, perhaps. It’s faint, tickling the back of my nostrils. I don’t feel hungry. I feel nauseous. Dizzy.