Prayer for the Dead

by James Oswald

  Apart from the lack of roof, the entrance hall was remarkably similar to how he remembered it, possibly a bit cleaner. Rain had washed the large flagstones, and the extra ventilation had managed to remove almost all trace of a hundred and fifty years of cat piss. At the back of the hall, the staircase only climbed a dozen or so steps now, the rest of the building having been cleared away beyond the top of the ground floor walls. McClymont stepped through an opening that would have been Mrs McCutcheon’s front door, then down a set of new steps where the back wall had been and into the communal garden. A couple of Portakabins had been craned in to form a site office, but McLean took a moment to turn and look up at the back of what had once been his home. All he could see was the inside of the front wall, held aloft by massive steel pillars and braces. Individual flats were marked out by the different coloured walls, and there at the top on the right, the bay window of his front room still with a bit of skirting board hanging on like a drowning man. He’d stripped paint off that board, sanded it until it was smooth, and varnished it. He’d spent hours, days, years in that room, staring out the window or just sitting on the sofa, listening to music, reading a book, sharing pizza and wine with friends, cuddling up with one in particular. The rush of memories made him dizzy.

  ‘We have to keep the original frontage. That’s part of the deal with the council. Much easier if we could knock it down and start again, but it wouldn’t be the same, aye?’

  McLean turned back, seeing another dark-suited man, this one without a hard hat. He was older, grey-haired and thick-set, eyes cracked with lines set deep in leathery skin.

  ‘Joe told me you were here. Come on in the hut and I’ll show you what we want to do to the place.’

  3

  ‘The front stays the same, but we’re going to extend out here into the back by three metres on the first four floors. Fifth will have a balcony looking out towards Salisbury Crags and the top two storeys will be twin-level apartments.’

  Joe McClymont had A1-sized plans splayed out on a large table in the Portakabin, and a scale model of the development stood in one corner. The old man had turned out to be his father, Jock. Whilst he let the youngster talk, he was quite obviously in charge. McLean couldn’t say that he took much to either of them. Despite their outwardly professional appearance, the well-polished shoes, the suits and the expensive car, these two screamed dodgy to him. A third person hovered in the back of the office, a middle-aged lady McLean hadn’t been introduced to. She was working at a slim laptop computer, but every so often would look up and eye him with ill-disguised hostility.

  ‘Hang on. Balcony on the fifth and two storeys at the top?’ McLean counted on his fingers. He’d not really been paying too much attention, but that detail suddenly hit home. ‘You’re building a six-storey block here?’

  ‘That’s right. Six storeys, aye. Three flats each on the first four, two big apartments spread over the top two floors.’

  ‘How’s that going to work? The building’s only four storeys high.’ McLean glanced over at the model in the corner, then studied it a bit harder. From the front it looked just like the building he knew of old, but then of course it would have to. No way the council would let anyone demolish it if they could make life difficult by insisting it be preserved. No matter that half of the street didn’t match anyway.

  ‘See those steps you came down from the ground floor?’ Joe McClymont jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the remains of Mrs McCutcheon’s flat. ‘We had to underpin all the old walls, front and side. Meant digging down the best part of three metres. You’ve no idea how much that lot cost, by the way. But it means we’ve space for a couple of basement flats below the original. They won’t get much light from the front, but the backs’ll open out on to the gardens. Be great for kids.’

  ‘They’ll still be communal, though? The gardens?’

  McLean didn’t need to be a detective to see the shifty look that passed between the two developers. ‘Something like that, aye,’ Joe eventually said.

  McLean looked back at the plans, paying a bit more attention now. It certainly looked impressive, but he couldn’t help thinking the rooms were rather small, the ceilings low. He turned fully and studied the model a bit more carefully this time. The frontage was as it ever had been, but the floors didn’t line up with it any more. The facade was just that, and a much more compressed living experience was being created behind it.

  ‘Seems to me you’ve already done quite a bit of work.’

  ‘Site like this doesn’t come up often,’ Jock McClymont said. ‘You can’t sit still in this game.’

  ‘Which brings us to the point of the meeting, really.’ This time it was Joe McClymont who spoke, but it was obvious that the two of them had rehearsed their pitch.

  ‘You want me to sell you my share in the site. I know.’ McLean paused for a moment, watching the expressions on the faces of the two men. Now that he knew, he could see that they were father and son, but where old Jock had an avuncular look, his face filling out with the years, Joe was thin and hungry. Of the two, he looked the most dangerous, but McLean had been around long enough to know that if he had any trouble it would come from the old man. Behind them, the woman was muttering strange words under her breath as if on the phone to a foreigner. They made his head ache slightly, so he tuned her out as best he could.

  ‘What if I don’t want to?’

  A distant siren underlined the long moments of silence that followed. Even the woman stopped speaking.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Joe’s face was creased with genuine bewilderment, as if no one had ever refused to be bought before. ‘Why wouldn’t you? I mean, what’s the alternative?’

  ‘I was rather hoping you might be able to tell me. I mean, it seems a bit presumptuous starting work when you don’t actually own the site, doesn’t it?’

  ‘We own a controlling share, laddie.’ Jock McClymont’s gruff but cheerful voice changed to a low growl. ‘We’ve been playing nice so far, what with this being your home an’ all. But there’s only so much slack we can cut you.’

  Interesting choice of words. He didn’t really need the hassle all this was going to create, but he also knew better than to fight his own nature. ‘What if I just want my flat back?’

  Jock’s eyes narrowed. ‘You want one of the apartments.’

  ‘No. I want my apartment. Top floor left. Shiny blue door. Three bedrooms, proper bathroom and a box room a hard-up student would be happy to live in. I want a kitchen where I can look out over the garden and see Arthur’s Seat if I crane my neck a bit. I’ll pass on the rusty bicycle frame chained to the railings on the stairs outside, and if there’s no lingering smell of cat piss in the entrance that would be a plus.’

  Both McClymonts stared at him, their expressions nearly identical. Joe was the first to speak again.

  ‘But the plans—’

  ‘Are a bit rubbish, aren’t they?’ McLean cut him off. ‘Six storeys? Really? How the hell did you get that past planning? All you’re doing is leaving the front wall and building a crappy modern box behind it. You really think that’s what the city needs?’

  ‘What the city needs is unimportant.’ Jock McClymont’s growl was even more menacing now. ‘We’ve a lot of cash tied up in this place. More besides. We’re not going to let it go just because of you. Top-floor flats are going to cost way more than your share’s worth. If you’ll no’ take the money we’ve offered …’

  ‘I think you misunderstand me, gentlemen. I appreciate the time and effort you’ve put into all this.’ McLean swept an arm around the general area of the Portakabin. ‘But what you’re proposing … I can’t begin …’ He picked up the top sheet of plans, spun it around on the table. ‘You need to come up with something a lot better than this if you want me to help make it happen. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve important work I need to get back to.’

  McLean stood outside the front door, took a deep breath and looked around the street. It was as familiar to h
im as his skin, a place he had lived for fifteen years and more before that terrible fire. But that was then and this was now. He had a house, far too big but just as difficult to part with. It wasn’t that he needed a place nearer to work, he could have bought one if he wanted. No, it was something much less rational, a feeling that the people who’d lived and died in that tenement block somehow deserved better. More than that, was a growing dislike of McClymonts senior and junior. And finally, the nub of it. He’d been taken for granted. They wanted him to sell up, thought that throwing a little more money at the problem would make it go away. They should probably have made the effort to get to know him a bit better first.

  Head down to avoid making eye contact with passers-by, he set off on the walk back to the station, hoping for a chance to get his thoughts together. When his phone started to buzz in his pocket, it wasn’t one of the ring tones DC MacBride had programmed into it that he knew he had to answer, and yet something about the trilling gave it an urgency he couldn’t ignore. Fishing it out of his pocket, McLean stared at the screen. An international number. No doubt someone trying to sell him some scam financial scheme or get him to part with sensitive passwords for his computer. Intrigued, he thumbed the accept call icon and held the slim handset up to his ear.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘That’s not Gordon. Shit, have I dialled the wrong number?’ McLean recognised the voice even though it was far too long since last he had heard it, and couldn’t help the smile that turned up the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Seems so, Phil. How’s things?’

  ‘Wait … What? Tony? Jesus mate. How are you doing?’

  ‘Oh, same old same old. Busy. You know how it is.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Place is running me ragged. American students. They’re so … what’s the word?’

  ‘Committed?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ Phil laughed. ‘Either that, or they should be.’

  ‘How’s Rae? You two not going to be asking me to be godfather any time soon, I hope.’

  ‘Rae’s …’ Phil paused a little too long, out of practice at talking to his old friend the detective. ‘Rae’s fine.’

  ‘Not taking to California then?’ McLean slowed his pace, eking out the time before he reached the station and had to end the call. Then he realised he was in the wrong street, stopped, looked around. He’d started walking home without realising it.

  ‘Damn. Forgot who I was talking to. Yeah. She’s not really enjoying it all that much. And truth be told, she does want kids. Just not sure this is where I’d want to raise them, you know.’

  McLean didn’t say ‘and you think over here’s any better?’, even though he wanted to. It surprised him that Phil would even consider having children, but then it had surprised him when his old flatmate had got married too. People change.

  ‘Might be better off coming home. Who knows? Could be an independent nation in a month or two.’

  ‘Don’t joke about it, Phil. The whole thing’s a bloody nuisance.’

  ‘You don’t think Scotland could go it alone?’

  ‘Could? Aye, course it could. Should? Well that’s a question for a long evening of beer and pizza. Probably a bottle of whisky to round it all off.’

  ‘Sounds like a date. Next time I’m over. Listen Tony, it’s been great chatting but—’

  ‘You still need to phone Gordon. Whoever he is. Yeah, it’s good to hear your voice, Phil. Should call more often. And you know you can, any time, right?’

  ‘Yeah. I will. Maybe see you soon, too.’ And with that the phone went dead.

  McLean stood at the edge of the Meadows, watched the afternoon walkers, the students lazing on the grass or playing kick-about football. A couple walked past, their young daughter holding one hand each. She swung crazily with every third or fourth step, totally trusting in their grip, certain she could come to no danger. Such innocence was both touching and troubling. Bitter experience had made a cynic of him, but that didn’t mean it had to be the same for everyone. He shook his head at the strange thought and the even stranger circumstance that had brought it. A glance at the clock on the corner of the old Dick Vet building told him it was late enough to consider not going back to the station, heading home for a well-deserved evening off.

  But that was never going to happen, was it.

  4

  They always pick on the little ones.

  They’d pick on me, only I know the teachers have been talking. Telling everyone about mum and dad. I can see it in their eyes, the way they won’t look at me, or speak to me. They want to bait me like they did last term, but something stops them. They still talk about me behind my back, though, just quiet enough that I can’t really hear. Johnson and Bain and Cartwright, they know they can’t be mean to me, and that just makes them want to do it more.

  So they take it out on the little ones.

  This boy’s new. His folks live in the big house around the corner from mine. Just moved back from overseas, wherever that is. The bullies have been working at him for a week now, and he just won’t rise to their bait. That’s not good. I learned the hard way. Ignoring them doesn’t make them go away, just makes them crueller. He’ll learn, but how long will it take? And how badly will they hurt him?

  He’s in the corner now, surrounded by them. Johnson’s maybe a year older than me, Bain and Cartwright my age. They’re all big, and stupid. The new boy’s tiny. Like he’s only four or something. He doesn’t really stand a chance. And he lives just around the corner from Gran’s house, which is maybe why I step in.

  ‘Leave him be, aye?’ My voice wavers as the words come out. As I realise what I’ve done. Never draw attention to yourself, that’s the first rule.

  Johnson turns slowly, his piggy little eyes searching to see who’s interrupted him. At first I think he’s going to hit me. Won’t be the first time, won’t be the last. But then he sees who it is, and his face changes. A hint of uncertainty in his frown, a hint of fear?

  ‘What’s he to you, McLean?’

  ‘Nothin’.’

  ‘Aye, right. Nothin’.’ Johnson pauses for a moment, then slaps Bain on the shoulder, his frown breaking into a grin, making him look like the idiot he is. ‘Hey everyone, McLean’s a homo. He’s got a new boyfriend.’

  Bain and Cartwright laugh like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. ‘Homo! Homo!’ And they run off down the corridor in search of someone else to pick on.

  ‘You OK?’ I ask the boy. He says nothing. Just nods. Eyes still wide.

  ‘Best keep away from them. You’re Bale, right?’

  He nods again. ‘N … Norman.’

  ‘I’m Tony. I live just round the corner from your place. You know the old lady who used to live in your house died in her bed? They didn’t find her for months.’

  It’s not true. Well, not entirely. Mrs Leslie did die in her bed, but my Gran was there with her when it happened, and they buried her in the churchyard a week later. ‘Hey. I wonder if that’s your room now?’

  Norman’s eyes widen even further, the colour draining from his face.

  ‘Y … You think it might be?’

  I’m about to answer, tell him it’s unlikely, but the bell cuts me off. ‘Gotta run. Maths next.’

  It’s only when I’m in the classroom and opening up my exercise book that I realise I’ve probably been just as cruel to him as Johnson, Bain and Cartwright.

  5

  ‘Hurry up, Constable. I haven’t got all day.’

  McLean held open the back door to the station, waiting for Detective Constable MacBride to come in. Heavy rain spattered off the tarmac of the car park, bouncing up as high as the constable’s knees as he ran from the squad car he’d just vacated. It didn’t matter; by the time he reached the door, he was just as soaked as if he’d walked. Or maybe fallen into a swimming pool.

  ‘Bloody hell. Where’d that come from?’ MacBride shook himself like a dog as McLean let the door swing closed. Water sprayed liberally around the en
tranceway, soaking the already slippery floor tiles, the grubby walls and the detective inspector.

  ‘Cheers. That’s just what I needed.’ McLean slapped his damp folder against his legs, trying to wipe the worst of the rain off it. He’d missed the downpour by seconds, counting himself lucky that seniority meant MacBride had been driving and had to lock up.

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ MacBride dipped his head like a serf before a nobleman, then ran a damp hand through wetter hair. It was long, McLean couldn’t help noticing. Perhaps a bit too long for regulations, though he wasn’t about to say anything. Things were a bit more lax in plain clothes anyway, and there was that other matter …

  ‘They still giving you grief about your scar?’

  MacBride’s hand stopped mid-run, a familiar red tinge blushing his cheeks. McLean could see the mark quite clearly, despite the long fringe of thin ginger hair. If anything the attempt to hide it just brought it more to everyone’s attention.

  ‘You know what policemen are like. Bunch of wankers the lot of them.’ MacBride patted down his fringe, not quite managing to hide the livid red scar on his forehead. The result of a near miss from a piece of glass blown out of the window of an exploding mental hospital, it formed a perfect lightning-flash mark. Even more so now the tiny dots where the stitches had been had faded.

  ‘Still calling you Constable Potter, I take it?’

  ‘And worse. Like bloody children.’

  McLean tried not to laugh. DC MacBride looked like he wasn’t long out of school himself.

  ‘They put a cloak in my locker. Must’ve nicked it from some university professor or something.’

  ‘Could be worse. Knowing this lot they’d probably have hidden a black cat in there if they could find one.’

  MacBride looked at him like he was mad. ‘A black cat?’

  ‘ You know. Witchcraft, covens, that sort of thing.’

  ‘ You’ve not actually read the Harry Potter books, have you, sir?’