THE SAM BRYSON COLLECTION

by McLean, Russel D; Chercover, Sean

  As he opens the door of his car – a BMW that’s a few years old, now, but he keeps it in fine repair – his mobile clearly goes off because he has to fumble with his coat to retrieve it from the inside pocket. He talks as he climbs into the car. Something in his body language tells me that he’s annoyed. The caller’s unwelcome. And yet Cullum clearly has to talk to him.

  Business?

  When the BMW finally starts up, I give it enough time before following.

  There’s an art to the tail. I still sweat hard every time, convinced that I’ve been made from the get-go. But you can’t allow paranoia to get the better of you. You have to keep believing that you’re fine unless the subject gives a clear indication that he’s noticed you.

  Cullum’s driving is natural enough. He takes his time, indicates clearly. He doesn’t try anything fancy. So if he knows he’s being followed, he’s happy enough with it.

  We head North East to a clutch of multis that have been earmarked by the council for demolition in the next few years. Every time I pass the buildings, I feel a strange sense of sadness at their history, the grand dreams that became nothing more than a failed social experiment.

  Cullum’s car doesn’t fit round this part of town. It’s too new. Too clean. It screams: money.

  When Cullum finally pulls over, I do likewise, making sure I’m far enough behind that he won’t notice me.

  Cullum double checks the car is locked before he makes his way to the front door of one of the tall, imposing, grey buildings. I wait a little longer before twisting in my seat to open the door and follow him.

  That’s when I see the old man. He’s skeletally thin with lank, grey hair that falls forwards across his face. His stubble is salt and pepper and growing thick. There’s a scar just under his right eye, which seems to have a life of its own, the pupil not dilating properly. I think maybe he’s blind in that eye.

  When I open the door, I see that he’s holding a long-bladed knife. The steel looks a little rusty, but that doesn’t mean its not going to do any damage.

  The old man says, “Get out the car.” His voice is rough, deeper than I expected.

  I do what he says. “You’ll be Neil’s dad,” I say.

  Craig Kinney.

  ***

  Cullum’s birth father is squatting in an abandoned flat on the fifth floor of the mostly-abandoned multi. It’s an unofficial residency. He has to jimmy the lock to get in, and makes sure that Cullum is holding the knife on me while he does so.

  Cullum holds the knife at an awkward angle, more like he’s afraid to get it near him. Where his dad has the stance of a killer, Cullum looks like he’s never even used a knife to slice a lemon.

  I make a mental note of that.

  Inside, the flat is a mess. Long abandoned, the floors are starting to rot and the only real comfort is a rotting mattress with a rough blanket.

  Cullum’s dad – Kinney – gestures for me to sit down against a wall. I opt to squat for fear of going through the floor.

  Cullum starts to pace.

  Kinney says, “Ye knew this was comin’.” Takes me a minute to realise he’s talking to his son.

  “Aye,” says Cullum. “Aye, but you said you were just going to scare him off, and – ”

  “Ah, shut your pus, ye wee crybaby.” Cullum’s dad looks at me, and shakes his head. “Chrissakes, eh? What have they done to my wee lad? Who’d’ae thought my son would grow up tae be a bloody wuss?”

  I nod. “He’s still your son.”

  “Aye,” he says. “There is that.”

  “And you’re still his dad,” I said. “Which in a way explains everything.” I look at Cullum. Still pacing. I say, “What age did they tell you the truth?” and he finally stops.

  He looks at me with his head cocked at an angle. He hasn’t quite worked out who I am. I’ve caught him off balance. He says “I was eight. He wrote me a letter from prison.”

  “How did it make you feel?”

  “Oh, come on, pal,” his dad says, “You’re no’ a bloody psycholologist.”

  I ignore him. Although the old playground taunt, don’t say words you cannae spell, pops into my head for one dangerous moment.

  Cullum says, all his attention on me, now, “It was a bloody betrayal. Like, Andrew wasn’t my real dad? My real dad was in prison. In prison and they wouldn’t let him write to his own son.”

  I look at Kinney. The “real dad”. Some role-model. He’s still got the knife, holding it ready in case I make a move. “Enough of this shite,” Kinney says to his son. Then, challenging me directly: “Who the bloody hell are you, anyway?”

  “My name’s Bryson. I’m a private investigator.” I look at Cullum directly, knowing he’s the best chance I have of getting out of here in one piece. Back to my own child.

  Besides, I feel sick every time I look at Kinney. I know what he’s done. Extorting his own son. Kinney may talk like a mouthy prick, but underneath that skeletal exterior, he’s got a sharp mind. The kind you develop after years Inside. The kind of mind that sees another man’s weakness and exploits it mercilessly. Doesn’t matter who the other person is. Even if they’re your own son.

  I say to Cullum, “Your dad’s come to you with a sob story, right? About how he needs to get on his feet? Look at him living here like this, you can’t have that. This is your dad, after all, Even if you never really knew him. He’s still your flesh and blood. He’s what you’ve been missing all your life. Right?”

  Cullum’s starting to shake.

  As long as he could kid himself that no one knew what he was doing, he was fine. But now there’s an outsider involved, and he’s scared.

  I start to stand up, slowly, using the wall behind me for support. Cullum’s dad is now looking at his son, gauging the younger man’s reaction to what I’m saying.

  “So he’s out of prison, he’s down on his luck, and he comes to you, his son, and he asks for help. Nothing much. Just a few small favours. How can you say no? But he’s asking to take these bags around town, to talk to people you’d normally only see in the dock, and it’s too much for you. That’s why your work’s been suffering, why you won’t talk to your mum. But this man here, he’s your dad. And you want to help him. What does it matter if no one knows and no one gets hurt?”

  I’m getting to him. Cullum’s moved to the window now, has his back to both of us. He’s staring out through the grime-streaked glass at the sunshine outside.

  I say, “It’s not late, Neil. This man may be your biological father, but he’s never been there for you, he’s never wanted to be there for you, not unless –”

  I realise my mistake too late. I’ve been focussing all my energy on Cullum – the weak link – when I should have been keeping at least half an eye on Kinney.

  He’s on me fast, the knife plunging low. I don’t react in time. I twist to escape the attack, but the knife digs into the left hand side of my stomach.

  I roar with pain and fall to the side, lashing out towards my assailant. My guts are on fire.

  Kinney retracts the knife, and the pain is enough that the world blacks out on me for a moment. Somehow I stay on my feet, and my vision clears.

  Kinney’s looking at me expectantly. I think he’s waiting for me to collapse.

  I can’t give him the satisfaction.

  But I can’t fight back.

  I’m in no state.

  I lunge towards the door. Out into the stairwell.

  Every steps feels like it tears a muscle in my abdomen.

  I’m bleeding out.

  My stomach feels warm, but the rest of my body is growing cold. I know the pain’s there, but I have to ignore it. I have to keep moving.

  I grasp at the bannister in the stairwell for support. My grip slips, my hand slick with my own blood. My stomach does flips. I taste vomit at the back of my throat. The world is moving too fast and I can’t keep my balance.

  Five floors up.

  I don’t want to fall.

  I do
n’t want to die.

  I think about Ros. The life that’s growing inside her.

  I hear swearing and footsteps behind me. I try to move faster, to fight through the pain, but only tip my weight forward.

  Six concrete steps down to the landing. Again, my vision goes. This time the recovery is only partial.

  I’m on my back. There’s a shadow standing over me.

  I know its Kinney.

  I know what he’s going to do.

  I close my eyes.

  Think of Ros.

  Saturday

  2358

  Ros was sleeping, her breathing gentle and controlled. I was propped on one elbow, watching her. The bedroom was to the back of our block, looked out on uninterrupted views towards the Tay. We slept with only the thin lace curtain across the window, which allowed the light of the moon to spill across us as we slept.

  I watched Ros’s face bathed in that gentle light.

  Thinking about the past.

  About all we had been through. As much as we loved each other, there had been bad patches, the strains and stresses you always get when you allow someone to get close to you. My obsession with work, with involving myself in other people’s troubles, had nearly destroyed what we had. But we’d come through all of that. I think it made us stronger in a strange way.

  Ros muttered something, and moved slightly in her sleep.

  I thought about the future.

  About the promises I’d made to her.

  Promises I meant to keep.

  Ros mumbles something again and this time turns over so that she’s facing me. Her eyes open. She says, “Sam?” and reaches up to touch my face. Her palm cups the side of my face so that I can’t look away from the question…

  Sunday

  2303

  “Sam?

  I’m not in bed. At least, not my bed.

  The sheets are tucked tight round my upper body. I’m lying on my back and someone has the back of their hand on my forehead?

  “Sam?”

  It’s not Ros.

  I open my eyes. The woman smiling back at me is dressed in Nurses’ scrubs. Her kind smile could be practiced.

  I try to speak.

  My mouth is dry.

  There’s a drip feed in my arm and I can feel a dull throbbing in my abdomen. I don’t know how bad things are.

  But I know this:

  I’m alive.

  ***

  A DS by the name of Lindsay takes my statement. He’s a gruff bastard, looks like he doesn’t believe a word I say.

  He fills in the blanks.

  Neil Cullum’s facing a manslaughter charge. Killing his own father. I get the impression that if Lindsay had his way, Cullum would be getting a medal.

  It was Cullum called the police. They found him weeping over his father’s corpse, still holding the knife he’d wrestled from the old man. I was a couple of feet away on the landing. They’d thought I was dead too, when they first saw me.

  I think about how Cullum’s life has been pulled apart.

  Because of his father. Because of the expectations of family. He had wanted to believe that somehow he and his dad had a connection because they were flesh and blood.

  But being a parent is about more than that.

  Flesh and blood only counts for so much.

  After the DS is gone, Ros comes into the ward and sits beside my bed. I reach and take her hand. She looks at me, and her brow furrows. She seems uncertain what to say as though she still hasn’t worked out how to react.

  I try for a smile. “I hope this isn’t a preview of future Fathers’ Days.”

  She doesn’t return the smile.

  More than anything, she looks scared.

  I take a deep breath. My voice has been coming in fits and bursts, like my vocal chords have forgotten how to work properly.

  “I’ve made a decision,” I say. “About the business. About our future.” And when I say our I’m thinking about all three of us.

  Ros doesn’t say anything.

  So I tell her.

  AFTERWORD AND CASE NOTES

  By the author

  It’s a strange feeling, to look back on your old work.

  In assembling this collection, I had to re-read some stories I hadn’t looked at since initial publication. That’s odd for any writer. You see ticks and quirks you had forgotten, parts of yourself that belong to another age. You forget how different you used to sound, how much you’ve learned over the years.

  Which isn’t to say that I’m ashamed of any of these stories. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m immensely proud of them. When I first began this project, Kevin Burton Smith of Thrilling Detective Magazine urged me not to make any changes to the stories. He cited the case of John D MacDonald’s OLD STORIES, where the author made substantial edits to his original works. Mr Smith urged me to let these stories breathe “warts and all”, and I have attempted to do so wherever possible. Admittedly, some deletions have been made here and there, where certain lines made me want to weep upon re-reading. I think there were maybe four such clunkers in total, and all confined to one story. Which is pretty staggering when you consider that I’m my own worst critic. I won’t tell you which story it was, but I think even KBS would have to agree with me if he read the original lines..

  As Sean Chercover notes in his introduction (after mentioning – and how could he resist? – about the time I ruined his shoes - - and let me re-iterate that it’s the absolute truth concerning the mushroom allergy) Sam was essentially a dry run for the character of J McNee who appeared in my later novels. Sam’s an easier going character, I think, than McNee. Certainly less tragic.

  But he’s no less fuelled by a sense of unjustice in the world. In his own eyes, Sam is the embodiment of the fictional white knight. He is the only man who can set the world to rights. And as much as this is a virtue, we see it can just as often be a curse. Sam is apt to act in the heat of the moment (witness his “interrogation” of Beany in What Friends Are For), absolutely convinced of his own righteousness and to hell with the consequences. He is, in short, exactly what I intended him to be: the traditional hardboiled PI transplanted to modern Scotland.

  Sam’s rougher edges are smoothed, thank goodness, by the supporting cast. I still am half in love with Ros, which is I think as in love as you can be with a fictional creation. As to Sandy, he was always meant to be far darker than he eventually became. Although hints of the past I had originally planned for him do sneak through in one or two of the stories. And then there’s Babs, who was meant to have a far larger role when I took the stories to novel length. Unlike the traditional private eye’s secretary who tends to be cast in a wife/emotional partner role, Babs was always intended to be a mother figure. I like to think that fear of Babs’s disapproval was often what kept Sam more or less on the straight and narrow.

  Of course, Sam’s story isn’t finished. Not quite yet. Eagle eyed readers of my novels will have spotted that Sam appears in THE GOOD SON (and indeed that J McNee appears in one of these short stories), providing some hint as to his fate. As such it might be worth noting that all of these stories occur prior to 2007/8, even the ones written after those years. It’s not necessary to your enjoyment that you know that, of course. It just helps if, like me, you’re a freakish continuity geek. But there’s every possibility that a few more stories will appear that fill in the gaps between Sam’s last appearance and his short but sweet appearance at the start of J McNee’s investigative career.

  Anyway, I guess all there’s left for me to say is that I hope you enjoyed these stories. While they have all appeared before, I know a great many of you will have missed them during their first run, and there’s something kind of cool about collecting them together like this. I’m seeing some of the stories in a whole new light and finding to my delight and surprise that they still hold up after all this time. I certainly hope you feel the same.

  Russel D McLean

  Dundee, 14/08/11

  ACKN
OWLEDGEMENTS

  With thanks to,

  Mum and Dad – who’ve been there from the beginning.

  Allan “Sunshine” Guthrie – Cheese addict, agent, editor, friend, and sensei-like guide to the vagaries of digital publication.

  JT Lindroos – for another brilliant cover.