Requiem for Rab

by Marie Treanor

  Even actors.

  “He thought about it,” Tony admitted. “But in the end, he told them to fuck off, too. Which is when the real fun began. The persuasion began to have a threatening edge. They tried to insist that those games belong to Head because he developed them on Head’s time and equipment.”

  “They might have a point.”

  “No they don’t. He did it on his own time. And mine. And yours, Lili.” I stopped to frown at him, but ignoring the red crossing light he dragged me in front of the oncoming traffic and we dodged our way to the safety of the opposite kerb with several other casual risk takers. Jaywalking is like a national sport in Glasgow.

  At last, I unstuck my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “What do you mean, my time?”

  Tony shrugged. His denim jacket stayed up when his shoulders came down, making him look like some scruffy Elvis lookalike. “Nights he should probably have been home with you, he was at mine or Alec’s testing his games or throwing ideas at us. Sometimes he even worked there. He said you distracted him.”

  The unfairness of that struck me like a blow. “I always let him work!”

  Tony smiled and flung a friendly arm around my shoulders. “I know that. But if you were there he didn’t want to work. That was the difference. Also…” He broke off.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Rab can tell you himself. Why are we going to the office by the way?”

  “We’re not. We’re just going to the carpark.” I didn’t know whether to be flattered by Tony’s insight or angry at being kept in the dark about something so huge as preparing to start his own company. On the whole, I thought the latter, though what the hell it mattered when we’d been divorced for two years, I didn’t know.

  “The carpark,” Tony repeated. “Want to tell me why?”

  I took a deep breath. “Do you believe in ghosts, Tony?”

  “Nah. Though my sister swears she sees them all the time. She’s off her trolley, mind.”

  “Last night,” I said carefully. “Last night, I was a bit pissed, a bit stressed. I might even have been dreaming. But whatever, I thought I saw a ghost. It told me…it told me someone had been shot in Head’s carpark.”

  This time it was Tony who stopped dead. Several people walked into him. Some muttered sorry; a few gave him some pithy advice. I dragged him on by the arm.

  “Rab? This ghost or dream said Rab had been shot?”

  I nodded.

  “Oh, fuck.”

  “And then the police turn up just because he’s been missing since last night. And even you’ve got your knickers in a twist. Nothing makes sense. Is Rab in hiding from these guys who want to steal his games?”

  “I was hoping so, to be honest. But he didn’t phone me, Lili. We had an agreement once it got so nasty and he told me about the death threats.”

  “Death threats!”

  “Oh, yes. When the legal ones didn’t work, it got a hell of a lot nastier. Rab was seriously rattled. He was afraid they’d track down his parents, or you.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, I told him that was unlikely. You only got on the telly after the divorce and he never told anyone you were his ex-wife. You were good in Dr. Who, by the way. And Anne-Marie liked the sit-com, what’s its name.”

  “Thank you,” I said faintly, feeling as if all that was part of a different life. No wonder I hadn’t been home in two years. Had it always been like this?

  No. This was bloody, fucking weird.

  “So was he really coming to see me then? To warn me about these nutters?”

  Tony grinned. “I think it was an excuse. Your Queen of Scotts is being hyped like mad on the TV, and all over the city. All over Scotland, I suppose.”

  He stopped outside a building I recognized. A new office block, one of many built on a bit of city wasteland. Head Games had a floor in it. Looking up, I wondered if Rab was looking out of a third floor window. He’d come down to talk to Tony. I wondered if he’d be pleased to see me and, stupidly, my heart began to beat faster. Something twinged pleasurably in my stomach.

  And then I saw the barriers into the basement carpark, and the lurch my pulses gave was not pleasant at all.

  How dare Rab still churn me up like this after all these years?

  Bastard.

  Taking a deep breath, I walked into the carpark. It was empty, apart from one at the back.

  “That’s Rab’s,” Toni said at once. I didn’t recognize it. The clapped out yellow mini had obviously died of old age since my time. In its place was an almost-as-old Volkswagen Beetle in dirty red. Rab never washed his car.

  Walking toward it, I said “You sure he’s not inside, beavering away? Just forgotten the time?” When work and play combined, I’d known him to sit at the computer for forty-eight hours at a stretch, with breaks only of enough time to make coffee or go for a pee.

  “The police checked. And I’ve been phoning him every hour.”

  It was Rab’s car all right: CDs and tapes all over the front passenger seat, spilling onto the floor, a computer game someone had lent him or he was lending to someone else, two scrunched up polystyrene cups on the dashboard. I could almost imagine him in it, shoving a disk in the player, turning the music up, reaching for his coffee while he turned to me in the front seat and grinned…

  Shit.

  I looked down at my feet. I moved them. The ground was marked with dust and old stains, the odd bird dropping. Nothing that resembled blood. Under Tony’s curious gaze, I walked slowly round the car, peering at the ground.

  The round drops were on the driver’s side of the car. A larger splodge close by. Crouching down, I stretched my trembling hand out toward them.

  “Lili, don’t,” Tony said with difficulty.

  “It’s blood, isn’t it? The police found it, that’s why they’re all over me. They probably even knew my voice from the 999 call—they record them all, don’t they? Tony, is Rab dead?”

  I couldn’t bear the answer to that. I already knew it. I wanted to spring to my feet and run away. But I couldn’t move. My finger seemed glued to the gory stain on the ground.

  There was one quite like it, regularly touched up, on the floor of Holyrood Palace, where David Rizzio had been killed in front of the Queen. No wonder the police had been so taken with our Queen of Scotts and its plot centered on vicious company politics…

  I closed my eyes, remembered Rab’s ghost on my bed, in my living room. Jesus, Rab, did you have to do this? Did you have to die?

  A hand touched the back of my head, smoothed my hair in a soft, gentle stroke. It was nice of Tony. But it felt like Rab. I could almost smell Rab, the soap he used and was in too big a hurry to rinse off properly, the splash of warm, spicy aftershave, the clean, unique, earthy scent that was totally Rab. If I turned, I’d turn right into his arms, just like in the old days before hurt and disillusion had destroyed us. I wanted, I needed, his comfort.

  But Rab was the one who was dead.

  Gasping, I leapt up and swung round to grab Tony and get out of there. But Tony still stood several feet away, watching me with distinct unease. I glanced around me wildly, looking for my comforter, but apart from Tony and me, the place was empty.

  Not even a ghost.

  I caught the 5:15 train from Glasgow, which would get me into Edinburgh just after 6 p.m. I wasn’t sure what I’d achieved by my jaunt. Apart from churning myself up and pissing off my colleagues in Edinburgh.

  Fortunately, I managed to get four seats and a table to myself. I took out my book, laid it in front of me, and stared out of the window. Glasgow began to move faster, shooting past my window as the train gathered speed. I should have been rehearsing my part in my mind, going over and over it to make it better. In a high profile Fringe play, you can get the sort of critical acclaim that just isn’t possible from TV sit-coms. Or even Dr. Who. In many ways, my career hinged on this play. So did my personal life.

  Menzies, I said distinctly in my head. Menzies…
/>   And yet all I could really think of was Rab, and was the bastard dead or not.

  I got a cup of so-called coffee from the passing trolley and went back to staring morosely out of the window. Someone sat down beside me—I felt the seats wobble. Eventually I was sure the newcomer was watching me, and my heart sank further. Had I been recognized by someone desperate to talk to me? Or just by a gawper?

  I looked at my watch. Thirty-five minutes to go. It could be a long thirty-five. Or I could just ignore the starer. Let them stare. Let their eyes bore into the back of my head for thirty-five minutes.

  Irritated, I turned to face them, frowning direly.

  Rab winked at me. “How’s it going?”

  Chapter Three

  I tried squeezing my eyes tight shut, but when I opened them again, he was still there, his big, long body folded into the seat next to me, his denim-clad legs stretching across under the opposite seat. His black T-shirt still oozed blood from his heart. Above it, he regarded me with a mixture of surprised pleasure and concern.

  How was it, I wondered in despair, that even dead, something as untidy and carelessly slung together as Rab could contrive to be sexier than any other man yet born?

  I drew in a breath that shuddered. “Are you really haunting me? Or am I finally insane?”

  “Can’t really speak for the latter, but I’m definitely haunting you right now. Fun, isn’t it?”

  He nudged me with his right arm and thigh. I could feel their warmth. Like living flesh. He was real.

  “No, it bloody isn’t!” I raged. “I’ve no idea what’s going on here.”

  “Well you’d better lower your voice or they’ll be calling you a doctor. What’s up?”

  “Tony just told me all this stuff about…” I glanced beyond him to the chattering passengers, all of whom were ignoring us, and lowered my voice. “About the company and the takeover. And stuff.”

  “Ah.”

  “Would they really shoot you?” I whispered.

  He glanced at his chest, but otherwise didn’t bother answering.

  “All right, where’s the body?” I asked with a hint of triumph.

  “I don’t know that yet,” he confessed. “I left it—when I died, I can only suppose. Maybe it’s still in the green Peugeot. “

  “Tickets, please,” said the conductress, appearing beside Rab without warning. Jolted, I began rummaging through my bag and my pockets, while the conductress watched me with an air of patience that was only barely polite. I found the ticket eventually in the back pocket of my jeans and leaned across Rab to pass it to her.

  “Halleluja,” she observed, clipping it.

  Rab waved his empty hands in front of her face. “See that? No ticket!”

  I nudged him, which made the conductress glance sharply at me. She held out my ticket, forcing me to lean across Rab once more to get it. Rab grabbed my hand and raised it high.

  “This woman has a ticket to ride! I do not have a ticket! Here’s to Scotrail!” And he gave a loud raspberry.

  By now the conductress looked slightly pitying rather than alarmed as I sat there with my ticket in the air, scowling at something in the region of her chest.

  “Thanks,” I said feebly, and yanked my hand down so hard it escaped Rab’s hold to thump loudly and painfully down on the table.

  “Sorry,” said Rab, picking it up again. “I’ve always wanted to do that. But it’s not nearly as much fun as I imagined.” Unexpectedly, he kissed the side of my hand that had struck the table.

  “Tickets, please,” said the conductress, moving on with some relief.

  “More fun if she can see you. Though, of course, you’d get thrown off at Falkirk, which is no fun at all.”

  “Might be when you’re twelve,” Rab observed judiciously. He was still holding my hand, gazing down at the fingers. I wondered if he noticed my wedding band wasn’t there. I hadn’t worn it since I’d chucked him out. I always meant to give it to charity, but somehow it still languished in a box in my bedroom.

  He glanced up at me through his shaggy hair. After a second, a smile flitted across his face. “I like you best like this.”

  “Silent?”

  “Natural. Without the make-up and the glamour stuff. Though you look bloody good then, too,” he allowed.

  “Thank you,” I said faintly, and he grinned, more like the Rab I remembered.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  I shook my head, trying to clear it, to get past the weirdness. “So where have you been?”

  It came out more sharply than I’d intended. More like a nagging wife than a seeker after paranormal truths. It brought out his lop-sided smile. “You never used to ask me that.”

  “I never used to want to know.”

  “I wished you did.”

  I stared at him. “Why didn’t you just tell me? Why do I have to hear this stuff from Tony, years later, after you’re dead?”

  His eyes flickered away from mine, to our still joined hands. I tried to draw mine away, but he held on.

  “Would you believe—I wanted to surprise you?”

  A lump formed in my throat. It hurt. I shook my head. The train came to a halt, exchanged a few passengers. I gazed out of the window, more to hide from Rab than from a burning yen to view Falkirk High Station. I felt the touch of his lips on my knuckles.

  He had nice lips, soft, sensitive, firm when you wanted them to be. And he knew what to do with them. Even that faint brush of them across my fist made me shiver with memory.

  I whispered, “I don’t want you to be dead.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s been quite fun so far.”

  “What?” I turned to stare at him.

  “Well, I never expected a great deal of amusement from the unliving state, but I have to say that so far it’s okay.” He smiled, nudging me again with his arm and his thigh. The surge of awareness shocked me. And it wasn’t just memory of those long, strong limbs wrapped around me in the past. It was urgent, very present desire.

  “I mean,” he went on when I proved to be uncharacteristically speechless, “I’d forgotten what fun it is to do ordinary things with you. Like sitting on the Glasgow to Edinburgh train.”

  Bastard. He was going to make me cry properly any minute.

  “Where do you go?” I managed hoarsely. “I mean, when you’re not having all this fun with me?”

  “Falkirk tickets please!” said the conductress, meandering down the carriage again. I’m sure she stared at me—well I was the nutter talking to myself—but I kept looking out of the window and she didn’t stop.

  “Oh, around,” Rab said vaguely. “I just sort of drift. Pity it’s never back to my body. At least then we could point the polis in the right direction.”

  “So you’ve been ‘drifting’ around central Scotland? And home in on me occasionally?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t seem to have much control over the materialization thing. Sometimes I can make myself drift to certain places or people. Most of them can’t see me, but one or two can—that’s quite amusing, too. I never believed before that some people can see ghosts.”

  “Tony’s sister can. Apparently.”

  “I’d forgotten that. I might drop in later and freak her out. Sometimes,” he added, more carefully, “I’m pulled to you, but I’m not so…solid.”

  I glanced at him. “Head’s carpark?”

  He nodded. For the first time, he seemed a little uncertain. And with shame, I realized that however huge and scary and just plain weird this was for me, it must be a hundred, a million times worse for him.

  “Rab?” His unquiet, hazel eyes came back to me. I said, “Are you—afraid?”

  There was a pause, then he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Mainly I’m angry.” His lip quirked. “I always thought I’d have more time, that eventually I could make things right. I never expected to have every possibility removed. Seize the moment, Lil. Always seize the moment.”

  My hand twisted convulsively i
n his. Gripping his fingers, I pulled them to my cheek. “I’m sorry, Rab, so sorry.” I didn’t even know if I was talking past or present. Both probably.

  His so unghostly fingers stroked my cheek once. He leaned forward, lips slightly parted, and for a moment I thought that even dead, Rab was about to seize this moment. And God help me, I wouldn’t have minded. It had been a long time since I’d felt Rab’s kisses. His eyes darkened, as they did when, to use his own words, a mighty lust was upon him, and my stomach squirmed, heating all the way to my core.

  But he made no move. Instead, he seemed to be searching my eyes for something. After a moment, he smiled slightly and sat back in his seat.

  Bugger.

  “So what’s the play like?”

  “Good,” I managed.

  “And old Minger gets to play your lover on stage, as well as in real life.”

  “Only on stage,” I said drily. “You rather took care of the real life bit last night.”

  “Sorry,” he said without making any attempt to sound sincere. “Never mind, he’s got a tiny tadger.”

  I glared at him. “Rab, he does not have a tiny tadger! What would you know about it?”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Bollocks,” I said rudely. “When could you possibly have done that?”

  “When you and lover boy banged heads, of course. I got a first class view of the decidedly third class organ. Trust me, he’d only have disappointed you.”

  “Well, I’m used to that,” I said bitterly. “Why the jealousy?”

  “I’m not jealous.”

  “Dog in the manger,” I sneered. “You don’t want me, but you’re buggered if you want anyone else to have me either.”

  He looked genuinely startled. “Don’t want you? When did I ever say I didn’t want you?”

  When you let me divorce you. When you never came home. When fun became something you did only with other people…

  For a moment, my gaze was locked in his. I couldn’t read him. Had I never been able to read him? Or had I stopped looking?

  “Anyway,” said Rab. “At least I can come to your play. I’ll sit in the wings and call encouragement.”