And When I Die

by Russel D. McLean

  As a child, I’d play with the other kids, but I was always happiest leaving them behind, going back home, shutting myself in my room and just sitting there in the quiet.

  The quiet is bliss.

  The gentle roar soothing.

  Is this heaven?

  I doubt it.

  * * *

  ‘It’s a simple question.’

  No, it really wasn’t. Maybe to her it was simple. But to me, it was the most complex question in the world.

  Was I with her for her?

  Or her family?

  Indecision. Uncertainty. Something in my brain tripped. Made me freeze up.

  ‘That’s the answer, then.’

  We were in a bar near the Mitchell Library. Place where we went on our first date. The kind of bar that’s cool enough it doesn’t need to have its name on its door. Named for one of those hip writers had their day in the ’50s and ’60s. The beat generation. She’d brought me here deliberately, I guess, to try and spark a response out of me. Symbolism. Trying still to rekindle something. But this was our last chance to salvage anything.

  And it was too late. Maybe we both knew.

  ‘I really thought you were different.’ She looked at me over a glass of wine she hadn’t touched since sitting down. I took a slug from my pint in a vain need to do something, anything. Because I knew that whatever I said, I either screwed her or I screwed the operation. Both outcomes were equally bad.

  From a personal point of view.

  ‘All my life, it’s been men who wanted to get close to my uncle, get a taste of the gangster life. You were supposed to be different. There was no face with you, no deception.’

  I sat there and took every word. Offering no defence. No excuse. The job demanded it. That had been made clear to me: I was getting too close to my target, delaying the necessary work of entangling myself into Derek Scobie’s life. Starting with small financial favours, slowly making my way into more criminal activities.

  The way in had been through Kat. Problem was, that was where the lines blurred between me and my cover. Between who I was pretending to be and who I really was.

  Don’t fall for the target.

  Aye, great advice. Great bloody advice.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ was the best I could manage.

  She’d already told me she’s leaving, got a transfer to a hospital somewhere up near Shetland. Looking for a quieter life, and one away from all that being a Scobie in Glasgow entails, whether you’re on the right side of the law or not.

  ‘That’s really it?’

  I took another drink.

  ‘It was good,’ she said.

  ‘It was,’ I agreed.

  ‘Bastard,’ she said. First time I ever heard her swear. The only time, now that I think about it. She took the business of being the only decent member of her family seriously, although sometimes I wondered if it was that which screwed her up, made her toss and turn at night, was responsible for the indistinct sounds she made as she slept restlessly and in fits and starts.

  When she left, her glass remained full.

  I finished my pint. Called her cousin to tell him what had happened.

  * * *

  The bubble bursts. The ocean recedes.

  Someone’s hands are on my shoulders. A voice yells somewhere beyond a locked door. I can’t make out the words. They blend into long stream of gibberish.

  I blink. The light is gone. There’s a stippling at the edge of my vision.

  Tony’s the one gripping my shoulders, pulling me up and off the carpet so that his face is inches from my own. Another situation, it might be romantic, but his features are contorted with feral anger, and I can smell the stale stench of his breath, feel the hot spittle land on my skin as he yells at me:

  ‘–up, you tosser! Get up and get your arse in gear!’

  I hustle my shoulders and he backs off. I bum it away from him and sit up straight. I think I might vomit, but thankfully swallow the urge.

  My head is too small. My skull has contracted. There’s a sharp pain in my side, and when I move, I breathe out fast and get this deeper stippling on the right of my vision.

  I lie back.

  Someone else is beside me. On his knees. He puts heavy hands on my body. Presses down where the pain is.

  I scream.

  Fat Dunc says, ‘You’ll live.’

  I don’t feel like it. What does he know? Is he a doctor, now?

  Tony says, ‘Get him the fuck up, then.’

  With Dunc’s help I struggle into a chair.

  ‘Where’s Ray?’ I ask. ‘Kat?’ My voice sounds strange. Like I’ve got a bad cold that’s ripped my throat raw.

  ‘Aye,’ Tony says. ‘You may well fucking ask, my son.’

  KAT

  I’m going to die.

  I’m going to die.

  I’m going to die.

  * * *

  I’m flying.

  The night air breezes against my face. I swoop through the dark. Free.

  Free from everything.

  I can see the city below. I think to myself that I won’t miss it. I just need to fly higher. And higher.

  I don’t have to go back to what I used to have. Don’t have to think about anything. All I have to do is close my eyes and fly.

  * * *

  ‘Kat?’

  Mum’s talking close to my ear, the way she used to when I was ill. Five or six years old, running a fever, she’d sit beside me in bed and tell me stories. Her lips right next to my ear gently speaking in a soft rhythm that calmed my breathing, made me feel safe.

  ‘Kat?’

  I try to speak, but my throat is closed. I can taste blood.

  ‘It’s all right, Kat. It’s okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

  Am I crying? I don’t know.

  ‘I’m always here, honey. Always. Beside you. Looking out for you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The only good one was Ray. You know that, right? That they made him what he was? That he was always different.’

  ‘He’s a killer.’

  ‘A wee boy pulling wings off flies. Doesn’t understand that they feel things.’

  ‘What’s to stop him taking my wings?’

  ‘He’d never do that, baby. Not Ray. He told me. He told me he’d always look out for you. Always.’

  * * *

  I open my eyes. Back seat of a car. The engine rumbles gently. But that’s not what woke me. It’s the way the car slides about the road, like whoever’s up front can’t control the wheel. It slips through their hands. Easy enough done when your hands are slick with blood.

  I try to move and something in my abdomen protests. A dull kind of pain. At first, simply insistent. But then I push it too far and it becomes this jagged icicle sticking inside my gut. I cry and fall back to how I was before.

  The pain eases. The sweat on my forehead cools.

  In the front seat, Ray says, ‘Shhhh, shhhh,’ and doesn’t look back. Too busy focussing on the road.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

  ‘Your friend…said it. Hospital.’

  ‘Hospital?’

  ‘Wasn’t supposed…to happen.’

  ‘What?’

  But I know what he’s talking about.

  Like thinking back over a movie half-watched in the dark. Remembering fragments. Moments. Piecing together the idea that something larger had happened. Filling in the blanks.

  * * *

  Ray had a gun to Tony’s head.

  Ready to kill his brother.

  But he hesitated. Because unlike Tony, Ray believed in everything he had been told as a child. Everything that his father had said. He truly believed that in some special connection among our family.

  But he had already killed his father. I can only imagine the strength of will that required. And now his brother? Could he really do it?

  I watched, observing from this space inside my head where I was completely safe. Like I wasn’t really there
at all. Maybe in the cinema or curled up on front of the TV with the lights off.

  Tony had come through the door after Dunc. That was when Ray made his move, stepped out, held the weapon against Tony’s skull and told him to drop his own gun. Just behind them, still in the main hall, I could see John.

  John.

  Looking tired. Hair messed up, skin pale, eyes wide. Dressed the same as at the funeral, but now his tie was loose and the top few buttons of his shirt were undone. Another time, I might have thought he looked rakish, a little sexy in that kind of messed-up way. But looking at him then, I felt disgust.

  Not just at him. More than a touch of self-loathing in there too.

  After all, I’d been the one idiotic enough to fall for his lies. Believing everything he told me. Wide-eyed, innocent, stupid girl. Oh, I always knew he was lying, at least a little. Boys always lie. I’d worked that out a long time ago. There’s always some little thing they don’t tell you, or they exaggerate.

  John.

  The bastard. The cop. The liar.

  His eyes focused on me, as though trying to figure whether I was alive or dead. Maybe it had been hard for him to tell. I hadn’t said a word since he entered. Was just sitting there. Breathing in and out, observing everything from that little place inside my head where I could say and think and hate whatever I wanted.

  He was still as I was.

  And then he moved. Like we were playing musical statues and someone had just turned the music up.

  No warning. No indication. He just charged. Shoved Tony forward and reached to grab Ray’s gun arm. Maybe he thought he could wrestle the gun from Ray’s grip. Maybe he really thought he stood a chance.

  I thought he was many things, but I’d never have imagined delusional was one of them.

  At least he had the element of surprise.

  I watched what happened from the little place inside my head. If I could have, I’d have been eating popcorn.

  Ray’s gun arm swung up. John hung from it for a second, like a child holding onto a tree branch. His feet might even have left the floor. I figured he was trying to use his weight to knock Ray off balance. Dumb move.

  Ray’s finger, the one which had already curled into the trigger guard, twitched. I watched it happen. Saw the tiny, imperceptible movement and knew what was coming.

  I thought about Lesley. The surprise on her face. The way the dog walker had simply dropped out of my line of sight.

  The gun went off.

  For just a moment, I thought John had been shot. The gun had been near the side of his head. It was possible he’d been grazed, maybe had his skull drilled.

  He let go of Ray’s arm and fell on top of Tony. Bounced off my cousin, landed on the floor and let loose this little breath like an exclamation point at the end of a sentence.

  That was when I felt the heat at my side. Like someone had spilled tea on my top and it had soaked through, finally touching against the cool of my skin.

  I moved.

  Finally.

  My hand reaching to where I felt the gentle heat and the wet.

  Not tea. Thicker. Heavier. I craned my neck. Looked down at myself.

  * * *

  I’d been shot.

  The bullet digging deep into my abdomen. Hadn’t felt a thing until I realised what had happened.

  Me and Ray, bonded by more than family now. Both of us with a bullet inside, bound by the creeping sense of our own mortality.

  When it hit me, that’s when events stuttered, like a film with scenes and frames randomly dropping out. I remember crying out. Being lifted bodily. Hearing screams and threats that ripped through the air.

  And then the flying.

  My mother’s voice. And now…

  Here, in the back of a car. Ray driving me to the hospital. Wondering: is this how it ends?

  I pull myself up, both hands grabbing at the front seats and pulling myself forward so that I can speak to him. The effort tears the skin in my side. If I move too much I’ll just unravel like a soft toy with bad stitching.

  ‘Is this it?’

  Ray says nothing.

  ‘Is this it? You take me to hospital? You know that it’s a risk, don’t you? That if you drop me off, they’ll try and stop you from leaving too?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  ‘I couldn’t let…you…die.’

  ‘Why? You said it yourself, you’d kill me if I got in your way.’

  He doesn’t say anything, just keeps watching the road. I turn my head to look at him in the rear view mirror. He’s pale, and his breathing is getting worse. There’s a strange whistling sound every time he breathes out.

  He looks worse than I remember.

  What happened in that house? Why am I still alive?

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  ‘There was… I…you were…shot. I couldn’t…’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘You could.’

  He pulls over to the side of the road, slams on the brakes. We clunk against the rise of the pavement. I lose my balance, twist to the right. Scream in agony as I aggravate the hole in my side.

  Jesus, is the bullet in there? Scraping against my internal organs?

  I can visualise it. I can see it. The thought make me nauseous, but I hold it down. Same way I’m holding down the horror and overwhelming panic.

  Ray turns in the seat. He looks at me as I stay perfectly still, trying to suck breath into my lungs.

  ‘Can’t let you die.’

  ‘You told me all that mattered was revenge. That hasn’t changed.’ My voice is tight. It hurts to speak. A cold, white kind of pain.

  He hesitates. I speak through the hurt. ‘You killed my best friend. And a man I never met before. Without blinking. Because you know that Tony deserves to die. And you wanted me to understand too.’

  I’m light-headed. Losing blood. Possibly delirious. The little part of me that coolly remembers all the training at nursing college tries to tell me that this is a bad idea. I’m going to regret this.

  But after all I’ve seen, I know there’s only one way this evening can end.

  I’m a Scobie, after all. Much as I try to play the good girl, to live up to my mother’s expectations, her double standards, I know what I am. If there’s a gene for badness, it’s there inside me somewhere, the family inheritance. Why not embrace it? Stop running away from it. Your inheritance. Turn and be honest about who and what you are. Admit that even if you suppress it, the Scobie genes are there, in your blood. You can run away and look out at oceans and pretend you’re normal all you like, but in the end you’re just like them. Somewhere, deep down.

  ‘Tony deserves to die,’ I say, ‘More than I deserve to live.’

  JOHN

  Fat Dunc wheezes.

  He’s screwed and he knows it. But he’s still trying to do what he can to change the situation.

  His act – patching me up, making sure the rib was just cracked and not completely broken – was little more than an attempt to make us think he was on our side.

  Too little. Too late.

  Fat Dunc’s children flew the nest a long time ago. His wife followed suit, leaving Dunc to rattle around in this veritable mansion all by himself. The place is thick with memories like dust. Most of them, I imagine, bad.

  I wonder what he was like in the old days. What kind of man he used to be that everyone was so scared of. This was the man that Ray learned his trade from. This was the man used to rule the streets of Govan. And now he’s a quivering mess. Afraid of dying.

  But how long has it been since he lived?

  ‘Tell me when it happened,’ Tony says. ‘Tell me when my arsehole of a brother got to you.’

  Dunc shakes his head. ‘I betrayed him. And your old man.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ Tony says, and laughs ‘Bit late to worry about that, Dunc.’

  There’s something between the two of them that I haven’t seen before. A palpable tension. A guilt that Dunc wants to share,
but that Tony could never feel.

  Hard to think of Tony feeling anything. Textbook sociopath. How’d he get that way? Nature or nurture? And what about his bastard brother?

  ‘I thought you were a visionary,’ Tony says. ‘Thought you had your old balls back.’

  ‘Balls? I had any kind of testicles left, I’d never have trusted you in the first place, you entitled wee prick.’

  Tony laughs.

  I make the connections in my head.

  Tony’s plan to take over from his father took more than just brass balls. Took cunning, too. Not Tony’s strong suit. His idea of subtlety was a pool cue to the back of the head or a sharp knife across the throat. But this play, setting up Ray to look like he’d betrayed the family, playing a long fucking game to get the old man into a position of weakness, it didn’t feel right.

  It would take a subtler mind to come up with this kind of plan.

  An older mind, perhaps. One with maturity. And patience.

  I look at Dunc. The former king-of-the-walk, now an overweight joke to the new generation, a faded memory to the old. What did he have left? Nothing, except an empty house and a feeling that he’d been left behind. Close as him and the man were, when Neil came along – younger, sharper more willing to play the toadie – Dunc became a third wheel. He was the old, trusted family pet, kept around out of sentimentality rather than necessity. No-one wanted to put him down, but no-one really wanted him around, either.

  No wonder he’d been tempted by any overture from Buchan. The East Side King, as he’s known, always wanted a slice of the Scobie business. And Dunc had all the inside gossip. Bringing along the heir apparent, that would have just been the icing on the cake. Dunc would have been welcomed with open arms.

  And then everything went to shite.

  Did he intend for Ray to die? How did it feel when the big bastard showed up still alive, hell-bent on revenge against those who had tried to kill him? Why didn’t Ray just kill Dunc, same as every other bastard? Did Dunc somehow persuade Ray that he’d never intended for any of this to happen?

  Dunc was no longer a hard man. He was a scared old bastard twisting any which way: a snake trying to escape a trap. All he’s got to save him now is that he had the presence of mind to grab up Tony’s gun when the shooting finally started and fire off shots at Ray, the unkillable bastard.