And When I Die

by Russel D. McLean

  ‘You want to kill him too?’ I ask. ‘John, I mean.’

  ‘He’s not innocent. Not a…civilian. A taxpayer. He’s a…copper. Soldier. Turncoat. He didn’t stop…them. Didn’t…do anything.’ I try to say something, but all I can do is stutter nonsense. ‘Betrayed you. Betrayed me. Guilty as Dad. As…Anthony. No. Worse. More.’

  I shake my head. He says, ‘Need…to move.’ Looks at the clock on the wall. ‘Not long. All over…by tomorrow.’

  ‘What about me?’ Lesley says.

  Ray nods. Takes her by the arm, marches her out of the living room. His gait is increasingly awkward. Hard not to notice. But he’s still strong. Lesley doesn’t resist. Smart girl. I follow them to the bedroom. There’s a wardrobe takes up too much of the far wall. Heavy oak, double doors that pull open. A long-hosed vacuum beside it. Ray pushes her forward. ‘Inside.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I don’t like small spaces –’

  ‘Inside.’ He won’t ask a third time.

  Lesley understands, nods, and pulls the doors open. Steps in among the hangers and the shoes. Ray closes the door. Grabs the vacuum cleaner, uses the long nozzle as a jam through the handles and steps back. Then he nods.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  ‘For?’

  ‘Not hurting her.’

  He grunts, and we walk out, back to the living room. He unplugs the phone, stomps it underfoot. ‘Clean…yourself up.’

  I go to the bathroom, use Lesley’s brush on my teeth. The minty toothpaste is refreshing. I rinse, and have a sudden desire for a long, cool drink of water. I pour from the tap, gulp like I’ve been in the desert for days. Ray, outside, says, ‘Move.’

  We go to the front door. He stops as we’re about to leave. As though he just realised something.

  ‘Ray?’

  I see it. What Lesley saw. That blankness in his expression. The inhuman set to his face. He takes a deep breath, turns and walks back to the bedroom. I follow. Finding it hard to breathe, my chest moving in shallow gulps. I don’t know what’s happening, but that look in his eyes was the same one I saw when he killed his father.

  He takes his gun out, turns to look at me as though daring me to make a sound.

  But I can’t. Even if I want to, I can’t.

  He’s finally lost it. He told me he wouldn’t hurt her. He promised, and then he kept that promise.

  So what’s changed? Why is he holding the gun? Lesley did everything he asked. By the time she gets out to call the police, we’ll be far away and all of this will be over.

  One way or another.

  So why?

  He slides the nozzle from between the handles. Careful. Not making a sound. Then pulls open the door.

  Lesley looks up from where she’s crouched to the rear of the wardrobe. Startled. Eyes wide. Drops the mobile. The one she must have had on her the whole time.

  Ray told her she couldn’t call the police. Warned her what would happen.

  Lesley stares at him. Tries to speak, but what she does is croak. Doesn’t matter anyway. He’s not ready to listen.

  I say, ‘No, Ray, don’t –’

  He raises the gun.

  She says, ‘Fu–’

  He shoots her in the face.

  She falls back.

  I clap my hands to my ears, close my eyes. Like when I was a girl, scared of what might be in the dark.

  The thud of her collapse is muffled. I open my eyes.

  Hangers and clothes fall around Lesley. Her legs spasm out and her body jerks. Then she lies perfectly still for a moment. One final movement, and it’s over. I look away, not wanting to see the blood spread out across the shoes and discarded hangers.

  Ray turns to me. I try not to cry. Feel the sting in my eyes.

  We leave. He holds me by the arm to force the urgency. I wish I could cry. Scream. Say something. Anything. But I let myself be led. Spent. Useless. Unable fight any of this.

  All I can think about is John. What Ray told me. How my fiancé betrayed me. Betrayed my family. How none of us would be in this mess if it weren’t for him.

  If I ever see him again, Ray won’t have to pull the trigger.

  I’ll do it myself.

  Four

  Backstabbers

  2044 - 2322

  JOHN

  ‘Come on, man,’ I say. ‘Don’t be an eejit.’

  Except for the first time in his life, he’s not. First sensible thing I’ve ever known him to do, threaten to kill me. Tony’s the one with the gun. The power.

  And all I can think is,

  Why didn’t I see this coming?

  And,

  How can I put a stop to this?

  Not that there are any easy answers. Had to happen, eventually. Ray’s never been on my side. Never on anyone’s side but his own. The phone call had one purpose only: to distract his brother from what was really going on. Knock him off balance.

  Aye, that was it.

  Whatever made me think I had some kind of special immunity?

  ‘Tell me why I don’t shoot you right now.’

  ‘Because whatever Ray told you, it’s nonsense. Look, he’s trying to get to you. Get to us. Mess with our heads. You know it, right?’

  ‘Aye?’

  He wasn’t convinced. He’d never really been a thinker. He’d always operated on his paranoid instincts.

  Maybe Ray wasn’t as mindless as I used to believe. I tug open my shirt, echoing Crawford earlier. ‘I’m not wired.’ Maybe not the best thing to do, mirror the policeman who dropped round just to mess with our heads.

  ‘Deep undercover, you don’t need to be wired. More dangerous if you are.’

  ‘Want to take a good look at my cock? Make sure they haven’t stuck something up there. Maybe it’s really a microphone’

  ‘Suck on this.’ He waves the gun at me. Big barrel. Black finish. The kind of thing you could imagine Jason Statham using to fuck up some bad guys. In the movie of his life, Tony would want to be played by Statham. Even if he’s got more in common with Joe Pesci.

  I try to calm him down. ‘Hey, man, just think about it. He wants you off balance. Ray’s a smart guy. He’s trying to–’

  ‘Tell me you’re not a fucking pig.’

  ‘I’m not a fucking pig.’

  ‘Not good enough.’

  ‘Okay! Okay!’ I raised my hands in a gesture of defeat. ‘You want to shoot me, Tony? Get it over with. Do it. Shoot me. Kill me. Stick that big gun in my face, pull the trigger. It’ll make you feel better.’

  ‘Think I won’t?’

  ‘Think that even if I’m not police, they won’t be through the door before my body hits the floor? Your dad’s been shot. And they’ve left to your own devices? They’re watching, Tony, waiting for you to slip up. What do you think that guy was over here earlier for?’

  He’s breathing hard. Spittle erupts between his lips. They look too red against the paleness of his skin. ‘You wouldn’t lie?’

  I drop my hands again ‘Jesus Christ! I’ve never seen a man die before. I saw Neil…I saw him… Even when we killed Ray, or thought we did, we didn’t…. I didn’t have to see his bloody face!’

  He hesitates.

  ‘Ray’s trying to make you doubt everything. And he wants me dead too. He knows I’m involved. You said it yourself.’

  ‘You planted the bomb.’

  At Tony’s insistence. Final proof of my loyalty. Like I’d had a choice. ‘I planted the bomb. I let it go off. Think about it. If I’m the police, I might have tried to stop it?’

  He lowers the weapon, puts it on the coffee table. Still hesitant, but it allows me the chance to breathe.

  ‘Dunc,’ Tony says. ‘He mentioned Dunc.’ He grabs the phone from the cradle, walks out the room.

  I look at the gun on the coffee table. Consider taking it. Ending this. Maybe Ray would thank me. Maybe that’s my way out. The endgame. I’ve been trying to use Tony, but this is too close. I’m walking on the edge.

  So what’s th
e plan?

  Kill Tony. Save Kat. Jet off to a new life. Leave Crawford and Burke to pick up the pieces? Not unheard of. There was a cop down in London I heard about, who moonlighted as a hitman, only killing people he felt deserved it. When he was found out, he nicked off to places unknown, was never heard from again.

  Officially, at least.

  Police rumour mill? Myth? Legend? I’d always believed it, myself. Maybe because I wanted to. There was something oddly romantic about the story. An anti-hero doing the wrong things for the right reasons. And getting away with it.

  A good way of justifying yourself. Something I’d been looking for ever since I got deeper in than Crawford and Burke had ever expected. So I could end this here and now, with a bullet. One shot. And I deal with a big part of my problem.

  He isn’t expecting it. Doesn’t think I’m capable of it. But am I a killer? Can I be one? I helped with the bomb, but like I told Tony, that was impersonal. Killing from a distance. Besides, he’d made sure I was nice and high beforehand, and if I hadn’t played my part, I’d be the one dead, now.

  Not that I’m saying I have the moral high ground. I beat the crap out of deadbeats, junkies, jakies all in the name of my cover. But I never killed anyone or went too far. Did just enough that Tony and his dad would trust me.

  Could I kill a man like Anthony Scobie? In my head, it seems easy. Justified.

  I reach for the gun. My fingers skate across the surface of the weapon. A charge runs down my arm.

  I pull back. Change my mind.

  Tony comes back down the stairs. Shaking now. Sniffs something right off the back of his hand. ‘Dunc’s not answering. Fat pillock’s either sleeping something off or…’Tony curls his upper lip. Maybe in disgust. Or uncertainty. He doesn’t finish the thought. Takes the gun from where left it on the table, hefts it. I don’t want to look, but I imagine he’s getting hard beneath his jeans. ‘This ends tonight. That’s how Ray wants it. That’s how it’s going to be.’

  I pull away from Tony. Take a deep breath.

  The panic is gone. The fight or flight reflex dulled. The danger now past. My mind starts to make connections it couldn’t earlier. Telling me there’s something wrong, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It’s been bugging me for a long time, but I haven’t been able to put it into words.

  And now, in the quiet following the danger of discovery, I’m starting to make connections I couldn’t see before.

  The story was that Ray betrayed the family. Sold out to Buchan. Tony had presented the trail to prove it. I’d been there. Derek had asked for me to come along, the idea being that I wasn’t so emotionally involved, that maybe I’d be able to see the truth.

  At the time, I hadn’t been able to come up with anything to disprove what Tony claimed to have discovered. It looked like Ray had betrayed his brother and his father. No doubt in anyone’s mind.

  Yet when I talked to Ray in the hospital, he didn’t confirm what Tony had said. The mention of Buchan had confused him more than anything. At the time, I’d figured that for the after-effects of nearly dying. He’d been confused. His memory had got Swiss-cheesed.

  But now, things are beginning to click into place. Inconsistencies are creating a new narrative.

  I say, ‘Your brother didn’t betray you.’ Tony doesn’t react. Just looks at me, lip still curled. ‘You knew all along. All that so-called evidence, it was nonsense. A paper trail you created. Complete fakery.’

  He licks his lips. No register of emotion. Besides, the only one he knows is anger.

  ‘Why would I do that?’ He speaks slow and cautious, fighting back the rush of speech that usually comes out when he’s high.

  Maybe the shock of my deductions have sobered him up. ‘You said it yourself.’ Hoping he thinks I’m on his side, that I’m playing the part of the dutiful soldier. At least, the would-be soldier.

  ‘Said what?’

  ‘That your dad, the old ways, they’re obsolete. A new world needs a new way and a new plan. And that’s you.’

  ‘So why would I kill my brother?’

  ‘He was the reason you couldn’t step up. Your dad was an old man. If you wanted to, you could take care of him easily. Not kill him, but maybe brush him aside. But your brother was his muscle. Dad’s protection. The source of the old man’s power. Take Ray out of the equation, you could move in. I don’t know, like, maybe influence the old man. Effect a takeover without fear of reprisal.’

  ‘That’s cold, man.’

  ‘Telling me you wouldn’t have the balls?’

  There’s silence for a moment. Have I pushed the wrong way? Hard to tell with men like Anthony when it’s the right time to call them out. He could turn, easy. Like pulling the proverbial tiger’s tail: one minute it’s all a game, then it’s teeth, claws, blood, flesh and pain.

  ‘Dangerous fuckin’ talk, there.’

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘You worked it out by yourself?’

  ‘I notice things.’

  ‘Always thought you were cosying up to the old man.’

  ‘Whoever’s got the power,’ I said. ‘Whoever’s going to assure my future.’

  He smiles. ‘Sooner or later, I’d have to make a choice. About you, man. You just fuckin’ made it for me. My cousin…’ his smile fades. Another mood change. Tony’s like the Glasgow weather: you don’t know what’s coming next, but you can be certain it’s probably not sunshine. ‘My cousin… love her, you know? She’s… Sod it, she’s a Scobie. Not in the life, man, but all the same…she’s saved my shite on more than one occasion. And she loved you. Like, real love. The whole choirs and angel chorus shite. For a while, anyway.’

  ‘I know,’ I say.

  ‘So why’d you let her go? Why choose us and not her? You’re not like us, aye? We didn’t choose this life. You did.’

  I hesitate. He looks at me. ‘I don’t have family,’ I say. ‘Mum and Dad dead. No brothers or sister. No uncles or aunts. And then you…you and your dad…you accepted me. In a way I don’t know Kat ever could. I didn’t stop loving her, but at the same time…’ I stop talking. Maybe he thinks I can’t keep going. Maybe he thinks I can’t come up with a decent excuse.

  All I can see is the gun. Slowly, it drops.

  He stares at me with blank eyes that make me think of his brother.

  Blinks. Is he getting emotional? Over Kat? Or something deeper? An acknowledgement of his own betrayal.

  Family is everything to these people, encoded in the Scobie DNA. They would lay down their lives for each other without ever thinking why. That’s been one of the reasons it’s been tough to break the inner circle. Loyalty is absolute. Blood trumps anything else. Or so they keep telling themselves.

  It was easy to believe, of course.

  One of the reasons why Ray’s apparent defection came as a surprise. Why it provoked such a brutal reaction. Also why I couldn’t see Tony’s betrayal, even when it was right in front of my face.

  Tony. The son. The blood. Planning wholesale betrayal. Probably for a long time. Combine that with the drugs and what I’m convinced is a general undiagnosed psychopathy, and you have someone utterly unpredictable. I don’t think even he knows which way he’s going to jump next.

  He wants to be a leader. Wants people to fall at his feet. He saw what the old man had and wanted to make a play for it. Going against that Scobie herd instinct. Which is why he’s getting so cut up over Kat: the only Scobie who never wanted power, who never hurt anyone else. He’s making up for the guilt he feels over his own actions. Despite everything, despite what she said when she left, he still cares for her.

  Not for who she is, of course. For what she is.

  Family.

  I say, ‘Raymond won’t hurt her.’

  He shakes his head. ‘You don’t know him like I do.’

  ‘I know enough. He cares for her like you do.’

  ‘He was the one who got her involved.’

  No. She was in the wrong place at the wr
ong time. Raymond, like Anthony, treasures her innocence, puts her on a pedestal and makes like she’s a saint. Because she’s the closest any of these men will ever know to innocence. They don’t love her. They love the idea of her.

  She’s a dream girl. A pixie. A mythical creature. No wonder they’ve always been so protective of her. So understanding of her decision to try and live like any normal citizen.

  ‘He can’t hurt her,’ I say. ‘He won’t.’

  ‘If he does,’ Anthony says, ‘he’ll wish he died in that fire.’

  Look at those eyes. Pupils wide, the black overtaking the blue. Pure crazy.

  I say, ‘When this is over, it’s you and me, man. No-one will ever hurt her.’

  He nods.

  I think about the look on his face when they take him down. Wish I’ll be around to see it. But I’ll be on a plane high above the Atlantic. And Kat will be with me.

  And all of this will be fading so fast, we’ll think it was a bad dream, a nightmare that lasted most of our lives and then vanished upon waking. Like all nightmares, it would become little more than a dissipated fog of discomfort that holds no real fear when you stop and think about it.

  KAT

  The markings on the road blur and blend into each other. A long, white line that runs into eternity.

  The world seems distant. Sensations are muffled. My hands don’t register the touch of the steering wheel. I don’t know much pressure I’m applying to the accelerator.

  Nothing matters.

  Maybe I always accepted that my uncle would die violently. Not at the hands of Ray. But someone would try and murder him eventually. The life he led, not many people ended up dying peacefully. Even taking Arthur Thompson into account, a heart attack was not the way most gangsters went out.

  Uncle Derek.

  Neil.

  I’d been able to accept what happened because of who they were. Push past the shock and accept the situation and accept their deaths as a kind of karma. You don’t do bad things without bad things happening to you.