And When I Die

by Russel D. McLean

  Uncle Derek lets go when Ray staggers, rolls away. But the effort’s too much. He’s not as young as he used to be and when he tries to move, it’s painfully slow. His face stretches in agony. He looks at me like I’m the biggest eejit on the face of the planet. ‘Get help, you stupid wee bitch!’

  My legs move before I think about it. Like someone slapped me back to my senses. I bolt for the fire door, stumble inside The Crow, fall over the boxes in that cramped hall, draw in a breath to call for help. I’m ready to yell my lungs hoarse.

  But I don’t get the chance.

  The gunshot beats me to it, loud and sudden, echoing down into unbearably painful silence.

  I stay where I am. Frozen. I should run, but I can’t move. My body shakes. There are tears hanging in my eyes. My breath bursts in and out of my lungs.

  A hand lands on my shoulder. Hot breath tickles me ear and my cheek; someone leaning in close.

  ‘Don’t,’ the voice says. And it’s Ray. But it’s not him, either. There’s a hoarse crack, like someone’s taken sandpaper to his voice box. There’s something else, too: a kind of threat that I’d never heard from him before. It touches something in the base of my neck, makes me tense. It’s primal, this feeling. I want to run away. Hide in a dark corner somewhere, close my eyes and hope that whatever this thing is, it will pass me over and go on its way.

  This thing that might be Ray, with its melted face and broken voice, moves his hand from my shoulder, wraps his arm around my chest and pulls me in close so I can feel his plastic skin press against the side of my head. There’s an overwhelming stench of sweat, mixed with a sweeter scent I can’t identify that makes me think of almonds.

  ‘If you don’t…do what I say…,’ The Not-Ray says, gently indicating that I should walk forward. I can’t move my head, but my eyes look down and I can see that he’s holding something in his free hand. There’s a block in my brain, and I tell myself that I don’t know what it is. ‘If you don’t…do what I say, I will not hesitate to kill you.’

  I say, ‘We buried you.’

  ‘No body.’

  ‘There was…. There was a body. But we buried you… We buried you this afternoon.’

  Am I going mad? Is this all in my head?

  ‘They fuckin… wish.’ He speaks in short, hurried bursts, like it’s too much effort to say anything in that sandpaper voice. I’m pressed so tight against his chest that I can feel the sharp rise and fall of his chest, the way his lungs seem to vibrate with each breath, as though it’s a superhuman effort just to keep oxygen pumping.

  We stumble into the main bar, a strange dance, with Ray taking the lead. All the hub-bub of the Scobie wake stops in a slow wave of silence that ripples from one end of the room to the other.

  Did they hear the gunshot over their self-involved chatter? Do they have any idea what’s happened?

  In the back of my mind, over and over, the question runs:

  Will he kill me? Will he kill me?

  This is Raymond Scobie. Ray. My cousin. The one who saved me from the bullies.

  And yet I know he’s serious. He will kill me. It wasn’t Ray who saved me. It was the code. The family code. We look out for each other. Now that his father tried to kill him, what’s to stop him from killing me? From killing all of us?

  I scan faces. See John at the bar. He hasn’t moved from his seat. Unlike everyone else, he doesn’t look too surprised to see Ray. His brow is furrowed with concern, like he’s trying to solve a particularly difficult equation. I want to yell at him to do something, but I can’t.

  I can’t do anything except move where Ray indicates.

  Not if I want to live.

  I am completely aware of the gun that he carries with his free hand.

  The silence makes me want to scream.

  ‘Neil? Anthony?’His voice echoes inside my head.

  When I was a girl I’d have dreams about voices that tried to tell me what to do. Used to wake up terrified, not entirely sure I had been dreaming. The voices sounded like Ray.

  Neil steps forward, hands raised. Says, ‘Fucking Lazarus. Looking better than you did this afternoon.’

  ‘Where’s my brother?’

  No response.

  ‘Where’s the fearty…wee prick?’ Longer sentences are a struggle. He has to stop in the middle of them, let his lungs draw enough breath to finish.

  Ray points the gun right at Neil. Making a point.

  A few years back I went to self-defence classes. Came out pretty good. Learned a load of useful moves. How to disarm someone holding a knife. Knock down a man twice my size.

  Of course, the first rule was always this:

  Avoid getting into trouble in the first place.

  Or, as our instructor put it,

  If you can: run.

  I’m trying to think of something I could do now that it’s too late to make a break. There has to be some way of breaking free from Ray’s hold. But I remain compliant. Held in place by a primal fear. Petrified like in some childish game of musical statues.

  I want to cry. Ashamed that I can’t do anything.

  But I can’t even summon up tears for that.

  Ray says, still talking to Neil, ‘He run off? That it? Fucking coward. Talks the talk. But...’

  ‘What do you have to talk about?’

  ‘I killed…our father.’

  No-one says anything. The silence makes me wonder if they even heard.

  Neil breaks the spell: ‘You’re a dead man. You’re going to wish you were in that coffin.’

  ‘No,’ says Ray. Simple.

  There is a sound like all the air being sucked out of the room. At once quiet and deafeningly loud. Followed by a dull hum that makes my skull shake. My eyes sting. The world turns fuzzy around the edges.

  Neil gasps, mouth dropping open, head rolling forwards. Someone’s turned off the volume and slowed the action right down. Neil’s arms spread out from his body spasmodically, and his jacket starts to crease in increments as his body flops down into itself. As though someone’s punched him in the chest with a giant fist. Red stains spread across his white shirt. His tie flaps.

  And then he’s down. On his knees. He flops backwards. A yoga position I’ve never seen before. The red continues to soak through his shirt.

  Sound bursts back into the world.

  Screaming.

  Chaos.

  I close my eyes tight. My throat goes cheese-grater hoarse before I realise I’m screaming as much as anyone else.

  Ray tugs me back. Awkward, like we’re in a three-legged race.

  I hated the three-legged race at school. The idea of relying on someone else to be in time with me was the kind of thing that made me hyperventilate.

  But now I can’t afford to just give up and trip my partner, throw the race like I used to do. Because this time my partner has a gun.

  He whispers, ‘Run and…I will…kill you…,’ and I don’t know if he’s sorry for what he’s doing or that I got in his way.

  No-one makes a move to follow us. In shock, perhaps.

  The dead man resurrected, Neil’s corpse on the floor, not moving. I can’t be the only one thinking this isn’t real.

  We edge out the rear of the club into the alley. Ray says, ‘You can…drive, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ But I don’t know why he’s asking. It’s not dawned on me yet, the reason he took me hostage, why he needed a human shield.

  ‘Good,’ he helps me step over the corpse of my uncle. I try not to look at him, to pretend that he isn’t there. ‘Do what…I say… You might…live.’ He stops there, and I don’t know if it’s because it’s too painful to speak or because he thinks I get the point.

  I shiver like it’s the middle of winter. But the air is warm for the time of year, and objectively I know I’m in a kind of delayed shock. The nurse in me is trying to break through, all that training finally meaning something.

  The more I try to stop myself from shaking, the worse it gets.
/>   And I think,

  He’s going to shoot me.

  He’s going to kill me.

  Ray tugs and whirls me round, out onto the street. He wraps his arm around my shoulder, stands beside me. We could be mistaken for lovers eager to get home as the dark draws in.

  Is anyone following us?

  I wish I knew. I want to look back. But I can’t.

  He stops beside a dark blue Megane, the kind of car a mid-level professional might drive. Lets go of me for a moment and fishes the leys from his jacket

  I should take the chance to run but I don’t do anything. Thinking about the expression on Neil’s face as he crumpled to the ground.

  Shocked. As though he had expected he might be bullet-proof, somehow. The old lech. Probably believed that too.

  ‘Get in,’ Ray says.

  I clamber in the driver’s side. All perfectly normal. Like nothing’s wrong. Roy walks calmly round to the other side of the car. As he’s opening the door, I hear a loud bang that makes me duck my head. Someone screams. I think it might be me. A second bang, just as loud but less surprising. Ray thumps into the passenger’s seat, slams the door. Says, ‘Drive.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Anywhere. Just…drive.’ He still has the gun. He holds it up. His trigger finger snakes. I want to think he doesn’t mean it, but that feeling’s in the back of my neck again, and I know that when he says he’ll kill me, he means it.

  This isn’t the Ray I thought I knew. The fire, the explosion, whatever, it didn’t just melt away his skin, it melted away his mask.

  Underneath, he’s a monster. A killer.

  Pulling away from the kerb, I glance in the rear view. See John maybe twenty metres behind us, running, feet pounding the gravel path.

  I think again about Neil. About my father.

  Get us out of there as fast as possible.

  JOHN

  Three minutes earlier

  A second shot.

  Definitely gunfire.

  Everyone’s quiet. The moment stretches. No-one makes eye contact.

  Someone laughs and says, ‘It’s a bastard car backfiring!’ A good laugh ripples. The conversation resumes.

  We’re all paranoid. Jumpy. What does that say?

  I’m about to get up when the conversation quiets again, a Mexican wave of silence running from the rear of the bar all the way to the front door.

  I look up. See Kat. Then see the man standing behind her, one arm wrapped around her upper body to hold her close.

  Jesus Christ, it’s Ray. Looking worse – if that’s possible – than he did in hospital. Unsteady, but only a minor tremble. Most people in the room probably don’t notice.

  That he’s standing at all is a miracle.

  I try not to look at Kat, find a rage building up in my chest. The kind of rage that breaks free, makes you do stupid things. The kind of rage that gets you killed.

  So I suppress it as best I can. Focus on other details. Like Ray’s free hand. The one holding the gun. Looks like a Glock 17 from where I am. But what does that matter? All guns serve the same purpose. What difference does it make that it’s Austrian?

  Look at Ray’s posture, the way he’s holding Kat, leaning on her just a bit too heavy. Like she’s a crutch. Maybe a defensive move to make himself less of a target. Or something’s seriously wrong.

  The doctor said Ray can’t feel pain. Doesn’t mean he won’t know when something’s wrong. Like those videos the doc mentioned of kids with broken legs, walking funny and unable to work out why because the signals weren’t there to tell them that something was wrong. But Ray’s not a kid, he’s a grown man. He can put two and two together. He’s smart. A predator. Just look into his eyes, you know what he’s capable of.

  Kat looks right at me. No looking away now. I can’t avoid this.

  So here’s the question: can I do something? Play the hero?

  It would be a bloody stupid move. Because Ray will kill her. And me. And anyone who gets in his way.

  Why’s he here?

  Oh, it’s obvious, isn’t it? He tried to tell me in the hospital, but I ignored what he was saying, believed it to be posturing – real hard-nut stuff, even if that wasn’t his style.

  Ray makes like he’s checking out the room, but what he actually does is make eye contact with me.

  Like we share something. A guilty secret.

  So I stay still.

  Neil challenges him first. This is what Ray wants. He’s after Neil. And Anthony. Listen to the way he bellowed his brother’s name.

  What else does he want?

  I know the answer to that without him saying anything.

  Me.

  Neil.

  Anthony.

  Derek is missing. Ray doesn’t roar his name. Why not?

  Neil makes threats. Ray says that he killed the old man.

  The whole time, Kat says nothing.

  Everything falls into place.

  At the hospital, I tried to use the betrayal to turn Ray against his family. But he’d refused. I thought at the time it was out of the stubborn Scobie loyalty. That he was refusing to believe what really happened.

  Truth was, he didn’t want the kind of revenge that I was offering.

  Rolling over, playing bitch for an undercover pig like me? Like fuck was that revenge. His style of retribution was direct. More than anything the justice system could offer. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t admire him in some way.

  He’s still standing.

  Not just that he can’t feel the pain. He’s driven by his desire to confront the men who tried to kill him.

  I have to be on that list. But he’s leaving me alone for now.

  Why?

  I sit at the bar like a lemon, utterly powerless. There are maybe forty or fifty people squeezed in the Crow. We keep perfectly still. Like we’re watching a film. Long as we don’t move, don’t say anything, it means that none of this is real.

  Ray asks about Anthony.

  I haven’t seen the little arsewipe in about twenty minutes, maybe more. Did he know something was up? Or just get lucky? Story of his life. The prick should have been killed or slammed up a long time ago, but he’s still parading around like king cock of the walk.

  Ray and Neil posture. Sizing each other up. A nature documentary, two alpha males trying to force each other to back down.

  But it’s always going to be Ray who wins this pissing contest. Neil’s just a slimy fuck with an inflated ego and an overactive, self-activated sex drive.

  That’s why it’s inevitable when Ray simply shoots the bollocks in the chest. Although people still make shocked noises.

  Neil collapses. I don’t see his face, but I imagine he’s surprised.

  No-one moves. Except Ray. He backs up. Takes Kat with him.

  Her eyes are wide. She scans the room. Maybe looking for me. Wanting me to meet her gaze, reassure her that everything’s going to be okay.

  But Neil’s death has got me moving. Round the edge of the bar, slow and low. Steady. Making sure Ray doesn’t see me.

  What’s my plan?

  Christ knows, but I can’t just sit there.

  I’m too slow. They’re out the rear exit before I get anywhere. I bolt it past boxes and crates that threaten to trip me. When I get outside into the alley, he’s gone. Back in the bar, someone hits the play button. There’s screaming. Chaos. Panic.

  I think about Kipling.

  If you can keep your head while all around are losing theirs...

  There’s a Kipling poem Kat’s dad used to read to her. She told me about it once. I have this urge to recall it, but I don’t know why.

  Out the rear door, the harsh October air assaults my lungs. I gasp. Hesitate. Try to see which way Ray and Kat have gone.

  Someone’s standing next to me. Low-level thug, name of Michael, wears short-sleeved shirts, has this intricate tattoo round his forearm he likes to show off.

  ‘You see what happened?’

  ‘Madnes
s,’ I say.

  ‘Where’s the old man?’

  ‘You heard Ray.’

  ‘He can’t have killed him. His own father?’

  And that’s when we spot the body. Abandoned on grey concrete. Arms and legs at awkward angles. Not that the old man cares about comfort any more.

  Sod it. Don’t let it distract you. Step over his body, let Michael make useless attempts to check for a pulse. Let him flop those arms and legs about to get the corpse into the recovery position. Let him check the airways.

  There’s no point. I know it. I feel it.

  Out the alley, on the street, I spot them. Maybe two or three hundred yards ahead of me. Walking quick, but keeping a low profile. There’s a few citizens out dog walking in the early evening. Ray’s smart enough to know that the last thing you do when leaving a crime scene is draw attention to yourself.

  I don’t give a toss. Run fast. Draw that attention. To shite with it.

  But they’ve got a good lead. I’m close when Ray hustles Kat into a dark blue Megane – a fucking family car, the most ordinary vehicle he could have found. Perfect camouflage.

  I stop running. My lungs start to freeze. I can’t stand up straight. Can’t do it. I can’t save her.

  Vomit threatens.

  Michael’s beside me. ‘You okay?’ I nod.

  Michael stays where he is. He raises his arm. He’s got a Browning. Army issue. Takes him a moment or two to flip the safety. That’s why I know he’s already too late. Still, I sidestep and cover my ears as he pulls the trigger. Two shots. But he doesn’t hit anything that I can see.

  The last thing I notice when I raise my head and watch the Megane peel off down the road is that Kat is driving. And I have to wonder what that means. If it means anything at all.

  Three

  And When I Die

  1615 – 2043

  KAT

  We pull into the multi-level off Jamaica Street. Driving through the city centre, rush hour getting on, we blended in nicely. The car could have belonged to any suburban couple driving home from work. Long as no-one looked in the windows too closely, saw the face of the man they would have presumed to be my husband.