Stuart MacBride - A Song for the Dying

‘That’s it, three doors from the end.’ I put my phone away. ‘Erm … you know Shifty’s boyfriend’s thrown him out? Would it be OK if he crashed with us for a couple of nights?’

Alice bit her top lip for a breath, then blinked a couple of times. Pulled her smile back on. ‘Of course. We like David, don’t we, I mean he was always there trying to help get you out, why would I have a problem with that, it’s no problem at all.’

‘Are you sure, because-’

‘No, he’s your friend and he needs your help, and is this it?’

I nodded and she pulled up opposite the block of flats. Then sat, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, frowning.

‘Look, if you don’t want him there, it’s OK, I can-’

‘It’s fine. I said it was fine, didn’t I? It’s fine.’ She undid her seatbelt and climbed out into the drizzle. ‘Coming?’

One of the kids peeled away from his mates and cycled towards the car.

I grabbed my cane.

Drizzle leached the warmth from my face and hands, greying my jacket as I worked my way around the Suzuki and out onto the road.

Alice didn’t wait, just marched over to the flats and up the stairs to the front door. Peered at the buttons by the intercom.

The kid on the bike went by, grinning on one side with picket-fence teeth, the other side clamped around a cigarette. His blond fringe stuck out from beneath a red hoodie with ‘BANZI BOYZ’ printed on it in black marker pen. A face full of freckles. Couldn’t have been much more than seven or eight. He circled around me. ‘Hoy, granddad?’

I kept on going.

‘Hoy, limpy, talking to you. Got any fags?’ He drifted round slow enough to wobble. ‘Come on you auld fart, got any cash?’

‘Get lost, you wee shite.’

The kid widened the circle, sooking on his cigarette, making the tip glow bright orange. ‘You got a pension, right? Don’t want to be a greedy bastard, do you?’

‘Not telling you again.’

He popped the BMX up on to the pavement, stood upright on the pedals and drifted closer, standing almost as tall as me. ‘Welfare state’s for everyone, right? So come on then, hand it over.’ He grinned at his little friends, still weaving their way slowly back and forth between the bollards. ‘Or you more a Werther’s Original paedo? Eh?’

Alice was bent over, face close to the intercom. Listening or speaking — it didn’t really matter which, as long as she wasn’t looking this way…

The BMX went around me again. ‘Peeeeee-do, peeee-do.’

I grabbed the little git by the throat and shoved him off his bike. Bent down, grabbed a handful of fringe and thunked his head off the pavement. Not hard enough to do any permanent damage, just enough to set his ears ringing. ‘Listen up, you little shite, I’m going to give you five seconds to bugger off back to your cesspit before I kick your arse.’ Loomed in close. ‘We clear?’

He blinked up at me, mouth hanging open.

I reintroduced his head to the pavement. ‘I said, are we clear?’

‘Gerroffus!’ He scrambled to his feet, grabbed his bike and legged it. Hopped onboard and jumped the BMX off the pavement. Freewheeled off with one hand on the back of his head and the other making wanking gestures.

Big and brave with a bit of distance on him.

He re-joined his mates at the end of the road and they stood there, giving me the finger, waving them back and forth, before laughing and cycling off.

Their mums and dads must’ve been so proud .

Alice’s voice cut through the drizzle. ‘Ash?’

‘Right.’ I turned my back on the church and limped up the steps to meet my past.

Ruth Laughlin’s living room didn’t look as if it saw much in the way of living. A three-bar electric fire pinged and glowed against one wall, making the air scratchy and dry. Hot enough to prick sweat across the back of my neck. A small portable TV sat on a battered nest of tables, the plug pulled from the wall, the screen thick with dust; a brown corduroy couch draped with tartan blankets; a couple of faded family photos in clipframes; a standard lamp with tassels on the shade. As if someone had transported an old lady’s house into a block of soulless flats.

She sat in the only armchair, knees together, arms limp in her lap. Her left wrist was cocooned in a bandage, stained grey with dirt. Creases lined Ruth’s broad forehead, her hair hanging down over her shoulders in a mousey-brown frizz. Deep-set purple folds lurked beneath her small eyes. Sunken cheeks. She didn’t look anything like the woman who’d taken care of me till the ambulance came.

Only thirty-three and she looked sixty — as if someone had reached deep inside her and hauled something out, leaving her empty and broken.

Alice shifted on the couch, rearranging her arms and legs until she mirrored Ruth. Smiled. ‘How are you feeling?’

Ruth didn’t move, her voice small and crackly. ‘They spit at me sometimes. When I go to the shops.’

‘Who do?’

‘The kids. They’re feral. They spit at people and they break into houses. Steal things. Smash everything up.’ Her eyes drifted down to the bandage on her wrist. ‘I had to stop volunteering at the vet’s.’

‘Did something happen?’

‘It… I thought it’d be nice to go back to it, you know, when I got out? But it’s…’ Her face pinched. ‘We had to put down six dogs in one day. I cried for a week.’ She reached up and wiped her eyes on the dirty bandage. ‘I’m stupid.’

‘You’re not stupid, Ruth.’ Alice let that hang in the air for a bit, then: ‘Did you see the fireworks last week? I went down to Montgomery Park and watched the council display on the other side of the river. It was beautiful, all reds and blues and greens, the cascade of gold down the cliff from the castle.’

Heavy metal sounded in the flat below, distorted by too much volume on cheap speakers, making the floor thrum.

Ruth kept her gaze fixed on the window. ‘They should’ve let me die.’

I cleared my throat. ‘I’m sorry.’

She blinked up at me.

‘You don’t remember me? Ash Henderson? I was chasing the Inside Man, in the train station? There’d been an accident?’

‘Oh.’ She looked out of the window again. ‘I’m tired.’

‘I’m sorry he got away. If he… If I’d been stronger, I could’ve got him.’

A long sigh rattled its way out of her. ‘You were bleeding.’

That didn’t mean it wasn’t my fault.

Alice leaned forward, placed a hand on her knee. ‘You were very brave, Ruth, you helped him.’

‘I was a nurse. We…’ A frown. ‘There was lots of us there, on the bikes, raising money for the people in that storm. We did it for Laura.’

Silence.

‘We’d like to ask a few questions about what happened to you, Ruth, is that OK? Do you think you can do that?’

She pulled up her jumper, then the grey vest underneath, exposing her bare stomach. A puckered line of scar tissue disappeared into the waistband of her jeans. Another ran left to right under the edge of her bra. ‘Ever since I was little, I wanted to be a mother. Two boys and a girl. And we’d go on holiday, and I’d help them with their homework, and we’d be the happiest family in the world… All I ever wanted.’ The jumper fell back into place. ‘It’s all ruined now. They should’ve let me die.’

‘You know, there’s always hope. Remember Laura Strachan?’ Alice dug into her leather satchel and came out with a copy of the Castle News and Post . Held it out. It was the one from last week: ‘“CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!” BABY JOY ON THE WAY FOR INSIDE MAN VICTIM’. She placed it on Ruth’s lap. ‘The doctors said she could never have children, and now look at her: nearly eight months pregnant.’