Page 109 of Playing By Ear

Their first kill? Maybe a metaphorical kill, the hostile takeover of someone’s prized business. Or maybe not so metaphorical. Maybe somewhere nearby, a body lay moldering in a decades-old grave.

Jamie tucked the binoculars back into their pouch. They clearly weren’t here to see the otters.

A rebellious thought: Ritchie should be with them right now. They should have all faced Martin’s cancer together: Jamie, his sister, and his cousin who’d been like a brother.

The wind rose, sending a chill through him, enough to make him hunch his shoulders and zip his hoodie up to his neck.

It seemed backward, on this spring day, to feel such cold seeping in. This was meant to be the season of new beginnings. But for his father it was the beginning of the end. Martin would descend into the dark while the world grew lighter, into the cold while the world grew warmer.

“Might change my mind, by the way,” Martin said. “About radiation.”

Jamie blinked at him, confused. Had he accidentally voiced his morbid thoughts, or were the two of them simply on the same wavelength? “You’ll try it?”

“Maybe. I know it’s nae cure, but the doctor said it’d gie’s a few extra months.”

“Dad, that’s brilliant.” Jamie gave him a light elbow nudge. “It’s me, int’it? Life’s worth living again, now I’m part of it?”

“Cheeky bugger.” Martin’s brief smirk faded. “Thing is, what if someone spots me going in for treatments? One of the under-families, or worse. Cannae take the chance of someone finding out. Not yet.”

“But everyone⁠—”

Oh. Oh, no.

Martin didn’t know what Middle Tony had told Jamie in the market—what Jamie had passed on to his sister—that the other families suspected he was dying. Belinda had kept this information to herself for nearly a week.

“Everyone what?” Martin asked.

“Erm, everyone wants you to live as long as you can. We want you around.”

Martin gave a skeptical grunt and returned to his crisps.

Jamie tried to do the same, but the dilemma made it hard to eat. If it was fear of exposure keeping Martin from the radiation treatments—not merely fear of side effects, as Jamie had assumed—then Jamie had to tell him about Tony Coyle’s proposition. Even if it meant breaking his promise to his sister.

From the corner of his eye he watched his father struggle to open the bottle of Irn Bru, holding it against himself with his left arm instead of gripping it in his weakened left hand.

“Let me.” Jamie reached out. “Some of the bottles are stubborn these days. Dunno why. It’s not like they need childproofing.” When Martin reluctantly handed it over, Jamie made out like it was an effort for him as well.

His father had been diagnosed mid-March, and the doctors had said that without treatment he’d run out of road in three to five months, but radiation could buy him as much as four additional months. Perhaps he’d see another Christmas.

He gave his father the opened bottle. “There’s something you need to know. About Tony Coyle.”

Martin’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know Middle Tony?”

Jamie described his encounter in the market—leaving out Perry, of course. As Martin listened, he tightened and loosened the cap of his Irn Bru bottle, his fist clenching tighter with each twist.

When Jamie finished, Martin growled, “Who else knows about this?”

“I don’t know who Tony has talked to. I’ve only told Belinda.” Jamie’s stomach wanted to crawl up his throat at this betrayal of his sister. But the length of their father’s life was at stake.

Martin rubbed his beard again, grumbling inaudible syllables, his face growing stormier by the second.

His mumbling slowly morphed into coherent words. “…spend your whole life…build something, create a legacy. For your family, for yourself, something people can remember you by. Something people might even write books about. That’s all anybody ever wants: to fucking be somebody, to make something that lasts. And these shitestains want to take that away from me.”

“But—”

“Not just take it from me. They expect me to hand it over, and for what? Peace?” He slammed the plastic bottle against the rock at his feet. “When I’m gone, the only one gonnae be at peace is me. Martin fucking MacKray.”

Jamie doubted it. His dad seemed more the haunt-his-enemies-from-beyond-the-grave sort. “But if the cat’s out of the bag about your cancer, it means you can have the radiation.”