And When I Die

by Russel D. McLean

  Check out McFreud here. Like I have any special understanding of the motivations of the criminal mind. I barely understand why I do anything, or at least I try not to think too deeply about it. This was one of the reasons Crawford picked me for the job: ‘Undercover work means believing everything you do. You analyse whether your behaviour is correct, they’ll catch you out.’

  Crawford had been happy with my appointment. I’d been uncertain.

  And then things went to hell.

  When the report on the TV finishes, I look at her number. I’ve considered calling her a number of times since she left, but I don’t even know that she kept the number. The idea was that she just cut all ties with her family, with what she called the ‘cancer’ of Derek Scobie’s influence.

  She just wanted to be normal.

  Who could blame her?

  My finger hovers over the ‘call’ button. But I back out of the menu, put the phone away.

  She’s back for her cousin’s funeral. She deserves the chance to mourn like a normal person.

  Chances are that Ray Scobie’s actually dead, anyway. This is a real funeral. The cadaver isn’t his, of course – took me a while to arrange that particular bit of subterfuge – but he’s been missing since his escape from hospital for almost a week now. His injuries, he has to be dead. He’s tough, but he’s not immortal.

  Besides, he would have made a play. I’m sure of it.

  My phone buzzes.

  Anthony:

  Come 2 the Crow.

  I hesitate and then reply: Don’t want 2 upset her.

  Takes less than thirty seconds for the reply to crack back: Pussy.

  I smile and shake my head. Figure I’m in this deep. I want to redeem myself, I need to give Crawford something when he finally hauls my arse in. Maybe the wake’s the place to do it. Find the cracks. Expose the truth.

  Redeem myself.

  At least in part.

  KAT

  ‘Tell me the truth, he cheat on, your boyfriend?’

  ‘Fiancé.’ Before correcting myself, quickly: ‘Ex-fiancé.’

  Neil, in the driver’s seat, smirks. Caresses the gearstick. The innuendo makes Carry On films look subtle. It’s hard to tell if he really is trying it on. Acting like a filthy bugger is simply a habit. He suffers from Tourette’s of the letch.

  My family have always had such good taste in friends.

  ‘Your ex-fiancé,’ he says, with uncomfortable emphasis, and again that smirk. ‘But you didn’t answer the question.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘He didn’t cheat on me.’

  I think about slapping him. Would feel good. When he talks to me, he talks to my chest and legs, never to my face. Pretty much standard behaviour for him around any woman below thirty.

  But Neil is family. Not blood. But he’s been around forever. Adopted, if you like.

  Like Fat Dunc. And Pete and Wayne.

  The Scobies welcome you. They understand about being judged. Accept you as you are. Unless you’re a copper. Or a narc. Over the years, others were welcomed in. Family by association, not blood. Some were by marriage, like my dad. Others simply by the good grace of Uncle Derek.

  And despite everything I said when I left, all of them act like I never even left. There’s something admirable in that, I suppose. I understand the seduction, maybe, the way that they can make you feel like you belong.

  I watch the old roads go past. We drive deeper into the city, into Scobie family history and legend. Slipping away from the opulence of the Newlands and back to a reminder of who we were and where we came from. The real Southside, I suppose.

  I think about Ray. The man I knew. The rumours I heard. I try to work out the reasons someone would plant a bomb in his car.

  I think about the rumours. The veiled warnings Mum made when I confided in him what my bastard of an ex had done to me. About the look that Ray would get sometimes in other people’s company, like he was trying so hard to fit in with everyone.

  He was at once a lost child and a dangerous animal. I’d always liked him, and even knowing what he did for my uncle, there’s something in me wants to believe he had another side; a human side.

  Oh, Ray, what did you do?

  Who were you?

  Really?

  JOHN

  Like a teenage boy habitually texting his crush, Anthony sends me continuous updates of the day’s proceedings and his father’s growing anger at me.

  Big bacon gathering outside the church – fuck tha police!

  I keep telling Dad you’re missing this bcoz of Kat. He’s still pissed off.

  Of course Derek Scobie’s hacked off. He ordered the death of his eldest son and he’s still not sure he did the right thing.

  The evidence was there, though. Told a story anyone would find hard to deny. And Christ knows I tried.

  They’d called me in as a third party. Not that I knew it when Tony picked me up, not saying a word about what was happening, got me high in the car on the way over. That was his way of checking that he could trust me, nothing to do with his dad, who simply asked for Tony to pick me up.

  Still don’t know if Scobie Senior knew about this wee quirk of his son’s, or if it was something he just had to overlook. Derek had to know that Tony was off his trolley, but I was different. He still looked at me as a citizen, someone easing his way into their world, not born to it. One of the reasons Derek trusted – trusts – me is because I know to stay clean, or at least give the appearance of it.

  The meeting had been a strained and terrifying affair. Made worse by my own paranoia and the fact that no-one present wanted to admit what they were really thinking.

  * * *

  My first thought, walking into the garage near the Arches on Midland Road, was that I was a dead man. This was it. I had reached the end. There were only two ways my assignment would end. Either the bosses pulled me, or the Scobies emptied out the inside of my skull.

  I’d been asked to pull the operation three hours earlier. Said I just needed more time. Of course, I should have known things would go straight to shit.

  I figured my time was due. Just hoped they’d make it fast.

  The one thing I couldn’t figure: how they worked me out. Which was why I wasn’t begging on my knees or spilling the whole story, just keeping quiet as possible, remaining in character, hoping against hope I could find a way to stay alive, wriggle my way out from under their suspicion.

  One of the reasons I’d been chosen for the operation was that there would be no-one to miss me if things went sour. No kids. No wife. No siblings. No parents. No real friends, either. I wasn’t the type to go down the boozer on a Saturday afternoon and catch up with the lads. And any girls I knew didn’t hang around for long, often sensing something in me they didn’t want to know.

  So, aye, if things went wrong, then I’d be the only one who really suffered.

  Cynical? Maybe.

  Just outside the garage, my heart slapped out its own disjointed beat; a cocaine-fuelled jazz-nut who’d lost any sense of the music and was finding his own time, his own rhythm.

  ‘You know what we do.’

  Derek Scobie spoke with the kind of gravitas that sends shivers down your spine. Way I felt, I figured it was the same sensation that someone about to be inducted into the Masons experiences.

  ‘You know what we do.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘You chose me over my niece.’

  ‘I think she’s the one who made the choice,’ I said. The words out of my mouth before I even thought about them. The cocaine talking, I figured. It was a little odd, this feeling like I was watching myself, unable to really control my actions.

  My heart quit the crazy beat. Quit any kind of beat. I thought I might just pitch forward there and then, save them the trouble of killing me.

  I should have found a way to refuse the drugs, but Anthony Scobie doesn’t let you say no.

  Derek Scobie quit pacing. Regarded me for a second with the kind of
eyes I imagined were the last thing a mouse might see before it its belly got ripped open. ‘You’re a good man, John. A good man. Had to be, for my niece to even look at you. I mean, before…’ He let that one hang in the air.’ But you’re no idiot. You know what I do. You’ve helped me. You’ve helped,’ gesturing around the room, taking in everyone present, ‘us.’

  Us meaning the old man himself, his youngest son, the slimy fuck Neil and Fat Dunc. The inner circle. The criminal equivalent of King Arthur’s round table.

  ‘Where’s Ray?’

  ‘Ray’s the reason we’re here,’ said Neil. ‘The reason we need to talk to you.’

  I got this lump in my throat. Big enough I could have choked. I knew what Ray did. He dealt with unwanted problems. And he wasn’t in the room.

  Meaning he was…where?

  ‘Just sodding well tell him,’ Tony said. ‘Put the bollocks out of his misery. To shite with all this clock and dagger, aye?’

  No-one bothered to correct him. No-one ever really bothered to correct him about anything.

  Derek turned those predator eyes on his youngest son. The old man had come up as an enforcer for bigger, more powerful men. Feared across the city. Although you looked at him now, all you saw was skin and bones. But he had this look, the one that made you stop whatever you were doing, start looking over your shoulder for the Grim Reaper. That was how he looked at me when I came in, and he looked at Tony now. Giving the cocky little bastard no choice but to back down.

  The situation defused, Derek turned to look at me again. ‘Family is everything. You know that already, son. We’ve taken you in. Helped you make something of yourself.’

  True enough. I’d been a pretty poor pretend accountant. Now I was a pretty poor pretend accountant making thousands through money-laundering for this prick. Kicking back any personal profits to the evidence locker, of course.

  Not skimming any off the top for my personal compensation.

  No, no, not at all.

  In the silence, I wondered if I’d spoken out loud. My thoughts were as distinct as speech. I thought I could hear them echoing around the room. I couldn’t keep them in my head. They were escaping.

  The drugs.

  That cool little observer chuckled to himself while my body went into overhyped fight or flight. The paranoia ramping. The sweat breaking cold on my forehead.

  Derek Scobie placed his hands on my shoulders. I thought of Jack Palance in the Michael Keaton Batman movie telling Jack Nicholson he’s Palance’s number one guy.

  ‘Are you in, John? All the way?’

  ‘Family,’ I said. ‘I didn’t have much of one. I look at what Kat walked away from, what you have… She made the wrong decision. Why I stayed, aye? You’ve… Aye, sure, whatever you need.’

  My stomach threatened to escape whichever route was fastest. My skull started to press tight against my brain.

  Derek Scobie didn’t notice: ‘Dunc over there once told me that family wasn’t about blood. Maybe he was right. Because it’s the blood that betrays you. In the end.’

  Anthony stood up, then. Shaking, skin pale, eyes wide. ‘Fuck sakes, Dad! Just get to the point!’

  ‘My niece hurt me by walking away, by treating me like I was some kind of monster. That was bad enough. The things she said, about who I was, what I did…to her…to you, even…’ He shakes his head. I act like I don’t understand, trying not to remember the piercing stab wounds that had been Kat’s final conversation with me.

  Derek Scobie takes a deep breath. He looks at me. Right in the eyes. ‘But then, you see, my son – my own son – turned out to be a fucking traitor.’

  Not Anthony.

  No, not him. Not the drugged-up fuckbag. Not the one you would have expected to try and sell out his father for his own personal gain.

  No, he was talking about the quiet, dependable killer. The number-one son. The giant who did whatever he was told. Who had never shown any signs of dissent, whose own motives were always hidden.

  Ray. The implacable bastard had sold out. Sided with Buchan. Betrayed his family.

  The worst sin. At least in the eyes of Derek Scobie.

  You can screw over a friend. You can cheat a lover. But you don’t betray blood.

  Not if you’re a Scobie.

  Those were the rules. And Ray, so Derek believed, was the one who finally broke them. Broke the family.

  KAT

  We’re barely inside the Crow and Claw when it starts.

  The headache of family reunions. The false bonhomie, the enforced sense that Uncle Derek’s dictates about the closeness of family were just built into us by virtue of our genes.

  I remember when I was a kid, Mean Jean getting ‘tired and emotional’ at a cousin’s wedding, walking from group to group, chanting, ‘the family’s all together!’ like it was the most miraculous thing in the world. To her, maybe it was. To me, it seemed like the family was always together. The Scobies were like the Alcatraz of relations: there was no escape.

  The Scobie clan is a sprawling mass, held together by blood and mostly common interests. Not all of us are crooks. But most of us skirt a fine line. Figuring it worked for Derek, and anything we do will never be half as risky.

  But here’s the important thing: we never ever rat on our own.

  That’s the rule. The particular, golden one. You can be straight-up as you like, but you can’t talk to the police. Family is more important than anything else. Uncle Derek says so, and Uncle Derek is God.

  It felt good to escape all that nonsense. Up in Oban, looking out at the harbour from my flat, it was so easy to pretend that my family were dead, that they never existed, that they had no hold.

  I stick by the car for a while, nauseous and trembling. Watching the bar across the road, and all the people milling on the pavement and in the door.

  The Crow and Claw.

  Where it all began. Uncle Derek’s first legitimate business, still his in all but title deed. A crappy little bar near Govanhill, what you’d call spit and sawdust, although that might seem a little pretentious. It’s the kind of bar where you drink only if you know someone else who drinks there.

  I haven’t been here in years. But it’s like a magnet for the family. Every funeral, christening, wedding, whatever, we wind up back here getting pissed and being watched by the local coppers, who have a station just two streets away.

  I’m willing people not to come near me. If someone tries to hug me, then I don’t know what I’ll do.

  Vomit, probably.

  Had an old boyfriend did that first time he met Uncle Derek. Shook the old man’s hand, vomited on his shoes.

  Mean Jean’s making a beeline. Stumbling across the road, nearly collapsing on those heels she insisted on wearing. I don’t get how they support her well-compacted weight.

  I plaster a smile. My cheeks ache from the effort.

  She says, ‘Oh, it’s a terrible shame, love.’

  ‘Aye, Jean, it is.’

  She doesn’t hug me, but does the air kiss instead, still thinking that I’m some kind of big city sophisticate because I lived in the West End for a few years. The strength of her perfume nearly knocks me down. She must have doused herself in it. Light a match, she’d go right up.

  Like Ray.

  Oh, aye. This is the perfect time to think of jokes like that.

  ‘Should get a swally down you,’ Jean says. ‘Make you feel better.’ Because it works so well for her.

  I nod, and say, ‘In a minute. I… The fresh air, you know?’

  ‘Of course. I know, love.’ She looks round. Her eyes are wide, and her mascara is smudged just right so you know she’s been crying. ‘Oh, it was such a beautiful. And he’s… Oh, the choices these lads make. It’s…oh, it’s death after death after death…’

  She’s heading for a public meltdown. Anyone else, I’d stay and offer them some support. Mean Jean, I just want to get as far away as possible.

  No time for excuses, I just walk right up to the front
door of the club. Inside, I can hear glasses clinking and people talking.

  Deep breath.

  I wonder if John’s here. I hope he’s the man I remember, at least. That man would have the decency to make his excuses. Because I know Tony’s told him I’m here. My cousin would delight in the potential drama.

  John, please, I think, just stay away. Don’t make today any harder than it has to be.

  Someone bumps into me. I apologise. They hug me, sobbing. I don’t even know their name, just try and figure out if they’re a man or woman and who they might be related to.

  The Crow and Claw swallows me. Calling me home. With the rest of the family.

  JOHN

  I pull up outside the Crow and Claw. Turn off the engine. There are a few people I recognise smoking outside. The wake is in full swing. Can’t fault a Catholic family when they remember the dead. They do it in style.

  Absolution covers many sins.

  I get out of the car, put on my face, walk inside. A few of the guys nod. Looking uncomfortable.

  Old joke:

  What do you a call a Scobie in a suit?

  The defendant.

  I’d rather be walking in with Kat, here as her fiancé, not as the bloody cuckoo in the nest. But that ship sailed long ago.

  Now I have to keep my eye on the prize.

  Retain some measure of dignity.

  I’m looking for redemption here. Maybe all that Catholic guilt has rubbed off on me after all.

  One of those puffing away out front is a big, Polish lad named Piotr. Second generation, thick accent inherited from his parents and shot through with a nasal Glaswegian twang. No-one pronounces his name correctly, so they just call him Pete. He doesn’t seem to mind. He’s a chain smoker, wears ill-fitting shell suits in migraine-inducing neon. But today he’s all trussed in up in a black suit that’s just a little too tight around that barrel chest. A thin black tie threatens to choke him, a noose around his neck.