The Good Son

by Russel D. McLean

  Daniel nodded. He looked at the money. “It’s yours if you want it,” he said. “It can’t make up for what I’ve done, but… It’s not just that. I came back because I realised that I had to take responsibility sometime.”

  Except Robertson could see something else in his brother’s eyes. “For all you’ve done,” he said, the viciousness in his voice surprising him, “you might as well just kill yourself.”

  Daniel pushed aside his jacket, took the knife from his waistband. A big blade, serrated edge. Wood-effect handle. The same weapon Robertson would finally bring with him to the graveyard. The one he would use to attack Liman and Ayer.

  Robertson said, “Are you going to kill me?” His chest ached, like his heart had just stopped.

  Daniel held out the knife, gripping the blade between his thumb and forefinger. “No,” he said.

  Robertson almost burst out laughing when he realised what his brother was asking.

  “If you don’t kill me, I’m dead. You don’t just walk out on a life like mine. They won’t let you do it. The kind of sadistic bastards who work for Mister Egg.”

  “Bastards like you?”

  Daniel looked shaken by the accusation.

  Robertson turned away from the offered blade. “No,” he said. “If you have to do it, you’re going to do it yourself. But you’re going to understand, Daniel, why our father was disappointed in you. You’re going to understand why he took his own life. The shame he felt because of you.”

  Robertson told me the story slowly. As he spoke, his stance became less confrontational. His shoulders dropped. His legs buckled. His skin paled. I thought he was ready to pass out.

  I said, “He went with you, just like that?”

  “We were still brothers,” he said. “And I think despite everything, underneath all of that London hard man shite, he knew he’d done wrong.”

  I’d only known Daniel Robertson as nothing more than some abstract personality built from second hand stories and official reports. But I believed every word his brother told me. There was a haunted, melancholy sincerity to Robertson’s voice that no man could fake. If nothing else, Robertson believed utterly in what he was telling me.

  Robertson made his brother drive. Barely a word passed between them except when Robertson gave directions.

  Finally they came to a small kirk, hidden on a hillside behind a curtain of trees. Cold and alone, the stone building sat hidden in the shadows as though ashamed of itself.

  It appeared alien in the dark. Their memories were of a warm and welcoming building bathed in the sunshine of childhood Sundays. It should have evoked thoughts of love, family and stability. And instead it reached into their hearts and squeezed hard.

  When he had grown up, and formed his own family, Robertson found religion again. Making sure his wife and son attended church every week even though they were hardly enthusiastic, and he himself had stopped truly believing long ago. It wasn’t belief that mattered, but the ritual. What church represented was a family life lost long ago.

  They parked outside. Sat in the car, looking at the building before them and recalling a childhood together that seemed so dim and distant it was hard to think of it as any kind of solid reality.

  “I’m glad he’s not around,” said Daniel, finally, speaking about their father. “To see me like this.”

  His voice was quiet, the Scots accent harder, as though just being here had brought back something of who he used to be.

  “You understand, then?”

  “I think so.”

  “I could kill you,” he said. “I should kill you. My own brother.” Trying not to cry. But he was ashamed of the man Daniel had become. And he knew Daniel was ashamed, too.

  “But you won’t,” said Daniel.

  Robertson shook his head.

  Tears leaked from the corners of Daniel’s eyes. The moonlight reflected in the liquid streaks. Robertson thought his brother had never grown up at all. He saw Daniel still as the teenager unable to communicate with his family and unable to give expression to anything but rage and frustration.

  Robertson looked to the blasted tree. Shuddered as the anger and the guilt welled up inside him. He hadn’t killed his brother. At least, he hadn’t acted in any physical sense. But he had been complicit in the man’s death.

  What kind of a person could watch their own brother die, no matter the kind of judgements they had made on him?

  He turned back to me. “I’m the same,” he said. “A killer. A murderer. If I’d left instead of him, nothing would have changed. Except he’d be the one standing here.” He spoke slowly. His voice was hollow and his eyes were wide with revelation.

  I took a step forward.

  “No,” I said. “We all make choices and…”

  I understood the difference between us, then. He was ruled absolutely by what he had done. There was no choice for James Robertson. Like he said, if he and Daniel had swapped places, nothing would have changed except the name of the man in front of me.

  I had chosen to be ruled by my anger. Because it was easier. Because it was there and urgent and important and…

  Because I’d always thought of Elaine as the calming influence in my life. And without her, I’d convinced myself that it was easier to give in to the anger and frustration and guilt than to actually carry on living.

  What does an investigator do? He involves himself in other people’s affairs. Slips into their lives and loses himself in them. Becomes obsessed with the case and when it is done he is nothing. This is why each client is important.

  Even the ones like Robertson.

  He had watched his brother climb the tree. In his mind he saw Daniel as a young boy, climbing in sunlight, laughing at some childhood joke that would fade with the onset of adulthood. He tried to tell himself that this was how he would remember Daniel. The revelations of who that boy had become would fade with time and soon all Robertson would be left with would be memories of laughter and a time when the sun shone every day.

  It was a lie, and even then he knew it.

  At church, when they were young, the minister had talked about character and strength and responsibility. This was something that had been instilled in James Robertson. Maybe he was predisposed to accept it. He would never know. He wasn’t sure that he’d ever care to know, either. It wouldn’t help him to understand why his brother had never taken the same lessons on board.

  Daniel said, “I’m sorry,” the soft words carried by the evening breeze.

  There was no crack.

  Daniel’s neck should have snapped. Robertson had been expecting it. But the sound never came. When Robertson opened his eyes, he saw his brother twisting in the breeze. Daniel’s legs kicked out, searching for a purchase they would never find. His hands reached up to grab the noose, tried to loosen its grip around his neck.

  Robertson fell to his knees and closed his eyes so tight he thought blood would squeeze from between the lids. His brother made guttural, primal noises.

  After what felt like hours, there was silence. Robertson couldn’t say how long it really was. Could have been fifteen seconds. Could have been as many minutes.

  Robertson stood up, kept his eyes on the dead leaves beneath his feet. He left the clearing, taking slow, deliberate steps.

  In his mind he played and replayed the events as he would later report them. He even convinced himself that his version was the truth. He had played no part in his brother’s death.

  I could have collapsed and joined Robertson on the ground among the dead leaves and the dirt. But when I thought about him as he watched his brother die, the empathy within me vanished.

  I turned to walk away.

  “Wait.”

  I kept my back to Robertson, but I stopped walking.

  “You have to understand. For what I did, for… for all of that… oh, Christ… I’m asking you…”

  He didn’t have to. I understood.

  But I didn’t care.

  “Please!” />
  “Aye,” I said. “You’re right. You deserve to die.”

  But I thought it was a better punishment for him to live with what he had done.

  Chapter 43

  After I refused to help him die, Robertson tried it himself.

  Tied a rope to the branch that had held his brother’s corpse. Let himself fall.

  But it didn’t work. The tree refused to support him. The branch snapped before he was strangled. He landed wrong, damaged his spine. Might even have got his wish and died out there if he hadn’t been found by a young couple walking their dog.

  It still didn’t feel like justice to me.

  Susan kept me updated on Ayer’s arrest. She came to the flat and we drank coffee together. The first time, she sat on the sofa the same way Elaine used to, with her legs curled up underneath her.

  “Please,” I said, nodding to an armchair opposite. “Sit over there.”

  She seemed to understand.

  I should have taken time off. I was no use for physical work. I started using the crutches again, claiming a tear in my hamstring. Maybe I was right about that. My hand was useless for weeks. I attended physiotherapy and was given too many stern lectures.

  I tried to lose myself in those cases I could still pursue.

  The arrest incident at the Balgay Cemetery made the papers. Some mention was made of my involvement although the details were vague. It brought me a few new clients.

  I took on enough to see me through.

  Susan stopped by every second day. Sometimes at the flat, sometimes at the office. All we did was talk. Sometimes about what happened. Most of the time just about whatever was on our minds.

  “It’s nice,” she said.

  “What?”

  “This. Hearing you talk. Like a human being.”

  I felt myself blush, although I wasn’t sure why. “Sure.”

  “Aye, I mean it’s nice that you’re not turning away. Like you always do.”

  I thought about the morning after we slept together.

  And then about when I confronted Elaine’s father in the interview room.

  Andy in the A&E.

  Bill in the hospital ward.

  Each time, I’d expected them to understand. And each time, I’d failed to speak, the words drying up before they even reached my lips.

  If I’d just said my piece, maybe things would have been easier.

  Bill’s recovery was protracted and painful. The odds were in his favour, perhaps, but every day was a new struggle. Physically and mentally.

  During my visits we talked about everything except what had happened. What was there either of us could say?

  I went back to Elaine’s grave. Stood there for ten minutes and found I couldn’t say a word.

  I had so many things I wanted to tell her, but they could wait.

  I had thought about asking Rachel to accompany me. But she had done more than enough. Some things, you have to do alone.

  Ayer was stabbed in Perth prison. Left to bleed out in the showers. Medical staff couldn’t get to him in time and he died that same day.

  The killer was caught and said he didn’t like the way Ayer spoke. Hell of a thing to be killed for, having an English accent.

  But everyone knew that was only half the story.

  The killer was a recidivist dealer who got caught too many times trying to sell pills to punters outside a Perth nightclub. He had no history of unprovoked violence and staff at the prison expressed their surprise at what he did.

  What the papers didn’t say was that the man had ties to David Burns.

  Chapter 44

  Susan had to drive me. My hand wasn’t healing well. It wasn’t safe for me to go out on the roads.

  She said, if I did, she’d arrest me herself.

  When we got close, I said, “Here,” and she pulled over to the side of the road. I got out the car and she joined me as I clambered onto the stone wall. I struggled, trying not to use my fucked hand. Susan reached out to help me, but I pulled back.

  We swung our legs over, faced away from the road. In the distance the gently rolling Lomond Hills rose to meet the horizon.

  Susan said, “Why here?”

  “This was where she died.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I was selfish,” I said. “I wanted to hang on to whatever I had left of her. This place gave me something like that.”

  “It sounds morbid.”

  “It was,” I said.

  “And now,” she said, “why come back?”

  “I guess I needed to say goodbye to all this in some way.”

  “So why am I here?”

  I hesitated, watched the hills for a moment. “Maybe I felt I couldn’t do it alone.”

  Her lips turned upward in a gentle smile.

  Gently she reached out, placed her hand on top of mine. Her fingertips brushed the bandages. She stayed like that for a moment before pulling back, swinging her legs over the wall.

  “I’ll be nearby.”

  I sat alone for a few minutes as she walked further down the road, looking at the hills in the distance.

  I looked at the field which seemed so peaceful in the daylight.

  I thought about what Rachel had said in the graveyard about moving on. I turned to look at Susan, who was lost in her own thoughts.

  I took out my mobile. Dialled in a number I hadn’t called for over a year.

  When Martin Barrow answered the phone, I tried to speak, but all that came out was a croak.

  “Who is this?” he asked.

  Finally I said, “I didn’t kill your daughter. I know you need someone to blame, but it’s not me. And I know we should have said all this a long time ago, but… we need to talk.”

  And then I waited.

  Acknowledgements

  The quotation on Elaine’s gravestone comes from Pascal’s Pensees. Blame six years of studying philosophy at the University of Dundee.

  Any errors in fact, procedure or history are mine. Most of them were made in the name of that old fiction writer’s standby, dramatic necessity. Or at least that’s the story I’m sticking to. Anything that’s accurate, chalk it up to contributions from any one of the following:

  Dot and Martin McLean: My parents. If I listed all the reasons why, we’d have to publish a whole other book.

  Allan Guthrie: Who stepped in when everything was looking hopeless. Agent, friend, and demented genius.

  Ross Bradshaw: For taking a chance on a debut crime novel and offering those final suggestions that helped smooth it all out: thank you.

  Linda Landrigan; Jen Jordan; Gerald So; Kevin Burton Smith; Sarah Weinman; Jon Jordan; Ruth Jordan; Sandra Ruttan; Bryon Quertermous: All helped me develop my work in print and on the web.

  Charlie Stella; Ray Banks; Adam Roberts; Martin McLean (again!): All took the time to read early drafts and point out the flaws, the idiocy and even the bits that worked.

  Robert Simon MacDuff-Duncan; Steven Wicks; Jim Smith; Peter Heims: All answered questions over the last four years (some of them probably won’t even remember) regarding police work, the differences between Scots and English law, and the life of the PI.

  Rebecca Simpson; Gary and Kim Smith; Tim Stephen; Donna Moore; Dave White; Lesley Nimmo; Kevin Wignall; Steven Torres; Sean Chercover; The Gone-but-not-forgotten Blue and Red Shirts from the Bookworld days; my friends from Ottakars… and now Waterstones; anyone who feels I missed them out (there will be a few; I’ve got the memory of a goldfish): for moral support, the occasional kick in the arse, and many, many drinks to see me through long evenings. Thanks, guys.

  And in memory of:

  Issy Rose, 1953-2008

 

 

 
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