His chart reads John Doe, of course. No-one knows who he really is. I see people walk past the room sometimes, looking in, curious as to why this man is locked away from view.
I wonder how much he remembers. Did he see us that morning? Did he know that we were watching him?
I lean over him.
He forces one eye open. A chaotic mess of broken capillaries. His lips part. The skin cracks. ‘Here to finish the job?’ His voice is low, each word a struggle.
I shake my head.
His words don’t mean he knows anything. Just that he remembers who I am. Of course, if he remembers too much, then I’m as fucked as he is.
I reach inside my jacket and pull out something even I haven’t seen in a long time. My identity and badge number. They’ve been in a storage locker for almost two years now. When I looked at them this morning, I had to convince myself they didn’t belong to someone else.
He breaks into a coughing fit.
I sit patiently and let it pass.
Underneath my shirt, I’m drowning in sweat. My arms and legs are shaking. My heart could be playing the best of Miles Davis, the way it syncopates. My ribcage aches.
I take a deep breath. ‘They think you betrayed them, Ray. I saw the evidence. Big, regular deposits in your personal account. Came through a number of subsidiaries, but I traced it. Came from that pasty fuck, Buchan.’
‘They’re family.’ He coughs again. Then, a deep breath. Both eyes open now. Staring right at me. Not once breaking contact. ‘And….sod…Buchan. Never…paid me nothing. Wouldn’t work for…him. Family. Fucking family.’
‘Think family really means anything to your lot?’
But it does. It means everything. The Scobies are tight. Derek always talks about family loyalty. Bit of a monomaniac that way. Only way the Scobies could be any closer is by inbreeding. Makes me glad the old goat never had any daughters.
Both Ray’s eyes close. His breathing shallows out. Those monitors register slower beats. His whole body relaxes, like he’s drifting into sleep. I reach for the panic button, thinking that everything I’ve done over the past two years has been for nothing.
If he dies, then everything I’ve done becomes little more than the punchline to a bad joke.
‘Tell me,’ Ray says, opening his eyes, twisting his lips into what might be a smile. Suddenly alive. ‘They know? About you?’
The bomb should have killed him. Should have done its job. But it didn’t. And right at this moment, I wish it had.
‘Does…’ and I think he smiles, ‘Kat…know?’
I stand up. Still unable to believe he’s alive, never mind able to talk.
The heart monitor hits overdrive. The cough shakes and rattles Ray’s body. The bed joins in, threatens to break apart under the strain of his gigantic frame entering some kind of seizure.
The expression on his face does not change.
I run out into the hall, flag down a nurse. She takes one look at Ray, thrashing around on that bed, calls for help. Tells me to wait somewhere else.
I slip into a waiting room. Spend some time pacing before finally grabbing a chair. Kill time reading leaflets that tell me how cancer will kill a frightening number of people I know, and that the odds are I’ve got some form of it too. I re-learn how to recognise a stroke. Read advice for family members, for recently diagnosed patients. Begin to think about what hidden dangers lurk in my body. My stomach seizes. For a moment, I imagine it might be a tumour.
After half an hour, the doctor on-call comes in to talk to me. A serious-looking man with thick glasses. Not much more than nineteen or twenty. At his age I probably looked every bit as serious, believed myself king of the world.
In a way, I still do.
‘Your Mister Doe,’ he says, no pre-amble, ‘is a minor miracle.’
Not the way I would describe the cold-blooded bastard. Not the way anyone who’s ever met him – especially in a professional sense – would ever describe him. But the young doctor does, with a sense of awe and what I think might be admiration.
‘He should be dead,’ the doctor says. ‘At the very least in a coma. Massive internal injuries, and those burns... If that was me, I’d be screaming for morphine every two seconds. But he just...he just takes it.’
‘He can actually handle that amount of pain?’ I understand his reaction. There’s stoical, then there’s impressive.
The doctor sits down in one of the chairs just along from me and adjusts his glasses. I lean forward. Old cop instincts coming back. Treating this like an interview. I’m the man in the mirror now. Slipping back into his skin, using him to get what I need. I need to lose the stance and the attitude when I leave. I’ve spent two years building a cover, and I’m not going to blow it. Until I know the precise prognosis and how useful Ray’s going to be to my case, I can’t afford the luxury of relaxation.
Of course, even when this is all over, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to relax again.
KAT
Twelve years old. Face in the mud. Grit on my lips, between my teeth. A weight on my back. Fingers in my hair, pulling, twisting.
And the yells:
Scabies Scobie! Scabies Scobie!
What you get for a family name like ours. And having red hair at twelve. Long red hair that your mother tells you is beautiful, but really just makes you a target for bullies like Jenny Hanson.
Scabies Scobie! Scabies Scobie!
Jenny was the one doing all the pushing, the one sitting on the small of my back, pressing down with all her not inconsiderable weight.
She smelled of rank BO, but no-one told her that. She could beat the boys when it came to a fight, and her gang worshipped her as much they were afraid she would turn on them next. She was that kind of bully, that kind of monster.
‘All bullies,’ Mum told me, would tell me, ‘are afraid.’
Never made me feel better, though. When I thought of bullies I thought of Jenny Hanson. Maybe she was afraid, but it didn’t stop her from beating the tar out of any girl (or boy) she took a dislike to.
I had the stupid name. The stupid hair. And teachers liked me. She was on me like a heat-seeking missile. Making me eat mud. Laughing at my name. Pressing down on the small of my back with her knee. Telling me I was going to be a spinal case. Or dead. And no-one would care. Because I was a ‘filthy fucking ginge!’
Someone shouted, ‘Ginger Minger!’ with the enthusiasm of the scared.
Other voices joined in.
I started choking. Couldn’t breathe. The grit was in the back of my throat. When I swallowed, it scraped against the soft tissue, made me want to scream.
Was I going to die?
That’s what I believed. Truly, honestly.
And then the chanting stopped. Silence struck the playground. The pressure on my back eased momentarily. I forced my head to twist round so I could see what was happening.
Some of the assembled girls were making a break for it. Startled gazelles who just realised there’s a predator bearing down on them.
A voice rumbled, ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’
Jenny Hanson clambered off me. Hurt worse than when she jumped onto my back in the first place. I rolled over, tried to clamber back onto my feet with some degree of dignity. Failed miserably.
Jenny Hanson quaked – wobbled, really – with fear. The man had big shoulders, big hands and a stillness about him that spoke of absolute, terrifying control.
I smiled, even though the taste of grit and the backwash of blood frightened me when I swallowed.
My protector. My saviour. My cousin.
Ray.
Even at the age of twelve, I knew there was something not quite right about my family, the way that some people behaved around them. But I couldn’t quite put my finger on the enormity of what it all meant. It would take me until I was fourteen or fifteen to really figure it out.
Ray had a reputation, I knew that. He was big and strong and sometimes, when you looked at him yo
u thought about monsters and giants from the fairy stories you read as a child.
He was dangerous. And Jenny knew it too.
She looked at him, eyes wide with fear, maybe even a kind of attraction. I was just beginning to notice boys, and if Ray wasn’t my cousin, I might have had a little crush on him, even though I’d never dare to act on it. Because he gave out all the wrong signals. He was dangerous. More dangerous than any boy I’d ever met before or since.
Ray said, ‘She’s my cousin. Family. Leave her alone’
Jenny didn’t say anything. She turned and ran. Maybe she even cried. I certainly hoped so.
Ray came over to me. ‘Go home. Wash up. Tell me if that wee cow ever raises her voice to you again.’
I told him I would. Ray walked away.
‘We look out for own,’ Uncle Derek used to say. For years I saw this as a good thing. Persuaded myself that all the other stuff, all the things I heard were exaggerated or that they had been done for the sake of the family.
The Scobies like to believe in their own myths.
Even when they’re a lie.
* * *
I’ve been thinking about Ray a lot since I got the phone call. Uncle Derek on the other end of the line, telling me his son was dead. His words flat, still in shock.
The local papers have been filled with coverage of the investigation. The TV has broadcast endless footage of Uncle Derek, along with an old photo of Ray that makes him look like the son of Satan. Like he clawed his way up from the pits of Hell.
I know the truth about my family. They’ve done bad things. I know that Uncle Derek’s legitimate businesses shield him from other aspects of his life. I know that Ray wasn’t as unemployed as he looked on paper.
I know all of the dirty laundry.
Sooner or later you need to make a decision: you either walk away or you get involved.
I walked away.
After John. After what they did to my life.
The decision should have been heartbreaking. Instead, it was simple. John did that. By choosing my family over me, by proving that all the Scobies do is corrupt, seduce and ruin everyone who gets involved with them.
That’s not me. Never has been. Never will be.
Nothing like the betrayal of a lover to help you make those all-important decisions, to finally shove you down the road you always knew you should take and were too afraid to.
A new life out near Oban. Just the sea, my work, a quiet little apartment, a chance to finally become someone else.
And now I’m back.
I can’t help it. It’s in the blood. For everything that’s happened, I can’t not come back for Ray.
Death can bring any family back together.
Around me, people eat their breakfasts, talking in mostly hushed tones. Sometimes, the over-excited voice of a child peaks above the drone, but mostly people keep to themselves, conversation low around their own tables, as though afraid everyone else might be listening in.
I pull out my phone, check Facebook, find messages of support mixed with a few spiteful comments about how he had this coming. I unfriend the haters fast. Wonder about when people mistook rudeness for honesty.
My breakfast arrives. I put down the phone, face up on the table, and dig in. Bacon. Sausages. Beans. Potato scones. All in congealed fat, only lukewarm. I eat anyway.
My heart belongs to Glasgow. Where else could it belong, when a breakfast like this appeals more than the healthy continental spread across the other side of the room?
Someone is standing across the table from me. Waiting for me to notice their presence.
I look up from the bacon, swallow what I’ve been chewing.
He’s maybe mid-thirties in a blue shirt, black waistcoat and dark jeans. Not quite heavyset, and I get the impression he’s maybe been trying to lose some weight and succeeding.
‘Can I help?’
‘Kathryn Scobie?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Jay Stringer, Glasgow Evening News.’
‘Go away.’
‘I want to talk to you about your cousin.’
‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘No-one does.’
‘Are you surprised?’
‘Please, I want to put a human face on this loss of life. Everyone’s talking like Ray Scobie’s a monster. I want to show that there were ordinary people out there who cared for him. You’re not like the rest of your family, Ms Scobie. You work a normal job. Keep yourself to yourself. Work for the health service. You’ll be able to put across a side of your cousin that our readers will –’
‘If you know anything about me, Mister Stringer, you’ll know that I no longer have anything to do with my family.’
‘You left. And now you’re back.’
There’s a silence between us for a moment. I look at him. He looks back. On the plus side, he’s not sitting down. He’s not that presumptuous. I choose to believe that’s because he has some decency in him.
‘How did you find me?’
‘It’s what I do. I’m a reporter’
‘That’s not an answer. Besides, I thought modern reporters did all their work behind a computer screen.’
Now he sits down. Probably thinks he’s established rapport. Maybe to him this is flirting. I swallow one last mouthful of sausage. The plate’s only half-finished, but I’m suddenly not hungry any more.
I stand up.
‘Why’d you leave, Kathryn?’
Make for the lifts.
‘Why’d you come back?’
Try to pretend I can’t hear him.
JOHN
‘There’s a condition,’ the doctor tells me. ‘It’s rare. But it’s real. An actual thing.’ He’s wide-eyed now. Finding someone with this condition, for him it’s like me banging up one of the Krays.
‘Congenital insensitivity to pain. Never seen it myself. But some people...their pain receptors don’t work properly. They can take punishment like you wouldn’t believe. Because they don’t get all the signals to their brain telling them something’s wrong. So you could...I mean...excuse me, this doesn’t sound exactly textbook, but you need to know...you could kick them in the bollocks. Wearing steel-toes.’ He sounds more than a little excited. Takes off his glasses and puts them back on again. He’s a mass of tics. Makes me glad he’s not a surgeon. ‘And they wouldn’t feel it. I mean, the subject just wouldn’t care. They might notice, feel a dull ache, but it would be like me flicking you in the fleshy part of the arm. It just wouldn’t matter.’
‘You’re telling me that this is Ra– uh, John Doe? He doesn’t feel pain?’
‘Your suspect? Yes.’
Suspect. No wonder he looks excited. Wee lad probably thinks he’s in the midst of some glossy crime drama. CSI Glasgow, some bollocks like that.
‘He’s...a freak?’
The doctor hesitates. ‘He’s just...’
I nod. ‘He’s different.’ Meaning the same thing.
The doctor nods. ‘I’ve read case studies. First time I’ve met someone with his condition. Most of the time people with this family of symptoms don’t live long. Pain is good for us, you know? Pain lets us know that something’s wrong. So, for example, an itch in the eye, it’s a kind of pain. But people like him, they’re less likely to notice an itch. So the grit starts scratching the iris, but the subject doesn’t feel anything...’
I got where he was going. ‘He gets an infection?’
‘And dies.’
‘Sounds melodramatic.’
‘Not really. That’s why our instinct is to scratch, to get that bit of grit out. Like anything, if you leave it long enough, things get bad.’ He smiles at me. ‘Our first year lecturers at university liked to tell horror stories about patients who die from paper cuts and the like.’
I’m only half-listening now. Thinking about what Ray’s condition means. He’s always been distant, but I had assumed it was to do with his particular line of work. When you kill people for a living, yo
u have every right to be paranoid.
But it was more than that; like Ray didn’t quite understand other people. And if he didn’t feel pain, maybe that made him more distanced than anyone could understand.
More of a monster, perhaps.
‘Surely he’d need constant supervision?’
‘When he was young, sure. They need to learn routine. Notice that things are wrong in other ways.’
‘You don’t have records for him?’
‘Given the need for secrecy…you never gave us his name. No name, no medical records.’
Didn’t matter. I knew almost everything there was to know about Raymond Alexander Scobie. There were gaps in his life that this big secret accounted for. When he was a child, he was kept hidden away by his father. Attended school in fits and bursts, never had much of an education. Why? It had always been an unanswered question. His brother, Anthony, had been brought up normally. So clearly something about Ray had been very different.
Was this the big secret? His condition?
I could understand why Derek would try to hide it. The Scobies were strong, and an illness like the one the Doctor described could be construed as a weakness by someone with the right kind of mind.
But all I could really think about was the idea of a man unable to feel pain. And wonder what else he couldn’t feel.
* * *
I can see across to the Cathedral from here, out past the ancient structure and onto the Necropolis, what used to be known as Wester Craigs and then Fir Park. Now, the fir trees are gone and all you see are monuments to the departed. The view is marred by rain that streaks down the outside of the glass, same as fucking always.
I used to love this city. The rain was part of its charm. Now it’s all part of the despair and the corruption.
Going undercover changed my perception, made me realise that what I saw was only part of the truth.
I switch Sims in my phone. Three days now I haven’t checked this number. There are missed calls and messages. I don’t need to listen to them. I know what they’re about.
I can imagine the kind of chaos caused by my lack of response.
And When I Die Page 2