After the Last Shot

In a Scottish city and under the Costa del Sol sun, the Marrs and the Devlins discover that an ending can arrive without peace.

By Nora Vale, a fictional Bunko byline · Intimate social crime fiction · 17 min read · Published 2026-08-01

Leah Ferris stood in Elspeth Marr's kitchen in a Scottish city just after eight on a wet weekday morning, holding a loaf of bread she had brought because she did not know what else to bring. The news from the Costa del Sol had settled over the house during the night: a double assassination, and with it the possibility that the twenty-five-year feud between the Marrs and the Devlins had finally spent itself.

Elspeth had not put on the big light. The kitchen lived in the grey from the window and the small gold lamp under the cupboard, which made the mugs look warmer than they were. There were dishes drying on a towel, a pillbox beside the kettle, a school photograph of Callum at thirteen still pinned under a magnet shaped like a pear. Leah had seen that photograph through years of birthdays, wakes, whispered visits, and dinners where everyone pretended not to hear a car slowing outside.

Elspeth stood at the sink in slippers, twisting a tea towel around her hands. Her hair was brushed, her cardigan buttoned wrong at the throat. That, more than the hard set of her mouth, told Leah the morning had found her unready.

"You should sit down, Elsie," Leah said, putting the bread on the table.

Elspeth looked at the loaf as if it might answer for Leah. "People bring bread when someone has died. Is that what this is now?"

"I didn't want to come with empty hands," Leah said.

"No," Elspeth said, and opened the cupboard though there were already two mugs on the counter. "You never did. That's why they all told you things. Marrs, Devlins, men who couldn't remember their own children's shoe sizes, all of them telling Lee Ferris their aches like she was a cupboard they could shut after."

Leah took the kettle from its cradle and filled it. The tap gave its ordinary cough, then steadied. Ordinary things had a cruelty after violence. They went on insisting that hands be washed, tea be made, toast be scraped.

Callum Marr came in from the hall without a coat, though rain shone on his shoulders. He had his father's breadth and his mother's guarded eyes, but there was a softness around him when he was tired, a boyishness that made people underestimate him until they remembered his surname.

"Cal," Elspeth said, too quickly. "Where were you?"

"Walking," Callum said. He wiped his shoes on the mat as if there were still rules that could save them. "I couldn't sleep."

Leah watched Elspeth's hands. They stopped twisting the towel.

"There's men outside," Elspeth said.

"There are always men outside," Callum said.

"Don't be clever with me this morning," Elspeth said. "Not this morning."

Callum looked at Leah then, and she saw the question he would not ask in front of his mother. Was it true? Had it ended? Leah had no answer worth giving. The only fact anyone seemed willing to hold was thin and dangerous: a feud of twenty-five years may have ended after two deaths on the Costa del Sol. May have. The word sat between them like a cup with a crack in it.

"Have you heard from Sofia?" Callum asked.

Leah nodded. "Before I came over. She said the street's quiet now. Too quiet, she said."

Elspeth flinched at the word street. For years, the feud had been spoken of as if it were weather. Bad out there. Heavy over there. Clearing, maybe. Never as rooms, tables, bodies, mouths left open in surprise.

"Sofia Calder should have kept her distance," Elspeth said.

"She hosted half of you when you wanted sun and clean sheets," Leah said, more sharply than she meant.

Elspeth's eyes moved to her. There were whole shelves of old affection and old offense in that look. Leah had been a young woman when she first carried messages between houses without calling them messages. A dish returned. A warning folded into talk of groceries. A funeral time confirmed. She had never belonged to either family, which meant both had used her as proof they could still trust someone.

"I'm sorry," Leah said.

"Don't be," Elspeth said. "I'm tired of soft speech. Soft speech kept us at tables with people who were counting exits."

Callum pulled out a chair and sat. He had mud at the hem of his jeans. "If it's finished, Mam, we need to let it be finished."

Elspeth gave a short, humorless laugh. "Listen to him. The Quiet Son brings us a sermon before breakfast."

"I'm not preaching," Callum said. "I'm saying there's nothing left in it."

"There is always something left," Elspeth said. "A cousin. A debt. A fool who thinks silence is weakness."

Leah poured boiling water over tea bags and watched the color bleed out. She thought of Roisin Devlin, who used to sit on Leah's back step as a teenager and smoke one cigarette over an hour, pinching it out carefully between two stones so no one would know. Roisin had been all elbows and defiance then, with grief already making a room for itself in her body. Now she carried herself like a woman who had spent too long braced for impact.

The phone rang on the counter. Elspeth did not move. Callum did not move. Leah looked at the name glowing on the screen and saw Roisin Devlin.

"It's Roe," Leah said.

Elspeth's jaw tightened. "In my house?"

"It's my phone," Leah said.

Callum stood. "Answer it."

Leah picked up. "Roisin?"

Roisin Devlin's voice came thin through the speaker. "Is he there with you?"

Leah turned away from Elspeth without hiding anything. "Callum is here."

"And Mrs Marr?" Roisin asked.

"Yes," Leah said.

There was a pause. Leah heard traffic behind Roisin, or rain, or her own blood in her ear.

"Martin says nobody moves today," Roisin said. "Nobody calls anyone clever. Nobody sends flowers. Nobody stands outside looking pleased with themselves."

Elspeth made a sound under her breath, but Leah lifted one hand, asking for a mercy she had no right to demand.

"Is that Martin talking or you?" Leah asked.

"It should be everyone talking," Roisin said. Her voice cracked, then repaired itself. "Tell Callum if he means what he said last winter, he'll keep his people indoors."

Callum reached for the phone, and Leah let him take it.

"Roe, it's Cal," Callum said, standing by the table with his wet shoulders and tired face. "I mean it. I meant it then."

Roisin was silent long enough that Elspeth turned toward the window, refusing to be seen listening.

"Good," Roisin said. "Then prove it by doing nothing."

"Doing nothing is harder than you make it sound," Callum said.

"I know exactly how hard it is," Roisin said, and ended the call.

Callum held the phone a moment after the line went dead. Leah saw his thumb hover, as if he might call back and offer something gentler. He did not.

In the Costa del Sol, Sofia Calder had already stripped the guest bed. She did it with the shutters half closed and the radio off. The sheet came away smelling of starch and salt air, no different from any other morning except that her hands shook when she folded the corners. She had not seen the killing. She had not wanted to see anything. But aftermath did not require witnesses. It entered through messages, through chairs left unused at a cafe, through the sudden politeness of men who had once laughed too loudly under her balcony.

Sofia carried the sheets to the washing machine and found a cufflink in the fold. Plain, silver-colored, almost nothing. She placed it on the counter beside a bowl of lemons and stared until the machine beeped impatiently at her open door.

Her phone buzzed with Leah's name.

"Sof, are you all right?" Leah asked.

Sofia leaned against the counter. "I have clean towels, three empty rooms, and nobody willing to say what happens next. That is not the same as all right."

"No," Leah said. "It isn't."

"Elspeth is with you?" Sofia asked.

"Yes. Callum too. Roisin phoned."

Sofia shut her eyes. "And Martin?"

"Roisin spoke for him," Leah said.

"Martin never lets anyone speak for him unless it suits him," Sofia said.

Leah knew that tone. Sofia had not been born into either household, but she had hosted enough of their exiles, holidays, and nervous reconciliations to understand the uses of silence. She kept a place where people could pretend they were only tired. Breakfast on the terrace, spare cotton shirts, the good soap in the bathroom. Men became sentimental near clean linen. Women became watchful.

"Have you found anything you shouldn't have?" Leah asked.

Sofia looked at the cufflink. "Nothing with a voice."

"Sof."

"I found a small thing," Sofia said. "I don't know whose. I don't want to know."

"Put it away," Leah said.

"That is what everyone always says to women with cupboards," Sofia said. "Put it away. Wash it out. Keep it till a man decides whether it matters."

Leah had no defense. In Elspeth's kitchen, Callum and his mother had lowered their voices into the old argument, the one about doors and debts and whether a son could refuse the inheritance of fear. The kettle ticked as it cooled.

"What will you do?" Leah asked.

Sofia picked up the cufflink and closed her fist around it. "I will finish the laundry. Then I will decide whether peace is only another mess left for me to clean."

After the call, Leah found Elspeth at the back door smoking a cigarette she must have taken from some forgotten drawer. Elspeth had given up years ago, loudly and with contempt for anyone who had not. Now she held the cigarette like an old photograph of herself.

"Don't look at me," Elspeth said.

"I wasn't," Leah said.

"You were. You've a face like a parish notice."

Leah stood beside her and watched rain stipple the small yard. Two cracked pots held soil and no plants. A plastic bucket had filled halfway overnight. Beyond the wall, the city was doing what cities do after other people's disasters: vans reversing, bins dragging, a child protesting a hood being pulled up.

"Roisin sounded tired," Leah said.

"Good," Elspeth said. Then, after a moment, "No. Not good. But I don't have it in me to be generous before ten."

"Nobody's asking you to be generous."

"They always ask mothers to be generous," Elspeth said. "Give up your sons to pride, then give up your anger when pride gets them buried. Smile at the girl from the other side because she has sad eyes. Feed anyone who knocks. Don't ask what they did before they came to your table."

Leah thought of the many meals in that kitchen. Soup stretched with barley. Toast burned and scraped. Men washing their hands too long at the sink. Callum as a boy doing homework under the table while voices above him moved around words like weapons hidden in coats.

"Cal wants out," Leah said.

Elspeth blew smoke toward the rain. "Cal wanted out when he was six and asked why we couldn't move somewhere nobody knew our name."

"You could let him."

"Let him," Elspeth said, and the laugh she gave was full of metal. "As if I have a gate key. As if sons leave because mothers open doors."

Inside, Callum's phone rang once, stopped, then rang again. Elspeth crushed the cigarette in a saucer on the step and went in before Leah could touch her arm.

Callum stood in the hall with the phone to his ear. His face had gone flat. Leah knew that look from both families. It was the look people wore when listening not to words but to the shape of danger behind them.

"No," Callum said into the phone. "No visits. No cars. No messages through anybody's auntie, nobody's driver, nobody's barber. If they ask, tell them Cal said they can sleep late for once in their lives."

Elspeth's mouth parted, perhaps to object to his tone, perhaps to bless it. She did neither.

Callum ended the call and looked at his mother. "Some of ours think the Devlins will mistake quiet for weakness."

"Of course they do," Elspeth said. "Men who have never washed a bloodied shirt always love a brave sentence."

Leah felt the morning tilt. Not into safety, not exactly, but into something that had room for choice. Small room, poorly lit, but room all the same.

"Martin will be counting," Callum said. "Who's outside, who's missing, who sends word first."

"Martin counts because he can't mourn," Leah said.

Callum glanced at her. "You know him better than most."

"I know what people do when feeling one thing would cost too much," Leah said.

At the Devlin house across the city, Roisin stood in a bedroom that had not changed enough. The curtains were new, the carpet cleaner, but the wardrobe still stuck unless you lifted the left handle. She had slept there as a girl whenever the adults said it was safer to stay close. Safety had smelled of dust, hair spray, and men talking softly downstairs.

Martin Devlin sat on the edge of the bed with a notebook open on his knee. He had always dressed as if expecting an appointment that might become a funeral, dark jumper, clean collar, shoes polished even indoors. Roisin hated and loved him for that discipline. It had fed them. It had also kept the feud alive with the patience of a bank account.

"Callum told his side to stay in," Roisin said.

Martin wrote nothing. "He would say that to you."

"He said it to Leah."

"Leah hears what people want to be," Martin said.

Roisin picked a loose thread from the cuff of her sleeve. "And you hear what?"

"What they can afford," Martin said.

The house was quiet beneath them, too many rooms holding their breath. Someone had left a mug on the windowsill with a skin of tea darkening at the rim. Roisin wanted to take it downstairs, wash it, make one square inch of the day clean. She did not move.

"If this is done," Roisin said, "we have to let it be done."

Martin closed the notebook. "If this is done, there will be men trying to buy the ending cheap."

"Not everything is buying."

"Everything costs," Martin said.

Roisin looked at him then, really looked. He seemed older in the weak light, his neatness no longer a strength but a habit he could not set down. She remembered him teaching her sums at this very bed, patient with her mistakes, drawing columns in blue ink. Add what is owed. Subtract what is paid. Carry the remainder. She wondered when the remainder had become all of them.

"What did it cost you?" Roisin asked.

Martin's face did not change, but his hand went to the empty space where a watch might have been. "Don't start making me human this morning, Roe. It won't help."

"It might help me."

He stood and smoothed the bedcover where he had been sitting. "Then hear this. Nobody goes near the Marrs today. Nobody celebrates. Nobody speaks of endings outside this house. If Callum Marr truly wants peace, he can survive a day of being doubted. So can you."

Roisin nodded, though anger moved in her throat. "And tomorrow?"

Martin picked up his notebook. "Tomorrow will be greedy enough without us feeding it now."

By noon, the rain in the Scottish city had thinned to a damp brightness. Leah walked from Elspeth's house to a small cafe that belonged to no one important. She chose it because the chairs were uncomfortable and the woman at the counter never asked questions beyond milk or sugar. Leah ordered tea and sat by the window with her coat still on.

Callum arrived five minutes later. Roisin arrived three minutes after him. They had not planned it through Leah, which annoyed her and relieved her. It meant they were still capable of foolishness that was their own.

"This is a bad idea," Leah said when Roisin sat down.

"Most family history is," Roisin said.

Callum gave a tired smile and then seemed ashamed of it. Roisin noticed. Her face softened for half a second, then closed.

The cafe smelled of frying butter and wet wool. At the counter, spoons clinked in a plastic tub. Ordinary witnesses everywhere, Leah thought. People with shopping bags and phones and no idea they were sharing air with a possible ending.

"I told mine to stay in," Callum said.

"I told Martin the same," Roisin said.

"Did he listen?" Callum asked.

"Martin listens to everything," Roisin said. "Obedience is another matter."

Leah wrapped both hands around her cup. "Say what you came to say. Then leave separately."

Callum looked at Roisin. "I don't want anything from you. Not apology. Not permission. I just need to know if your house can leave a quiet day alone."

Roisin's eyes flashed. "My house?"

"You know what I mean."

"I know exactly what you mean," Roisin said. "You want the comfort of thinking peace is one phone call you made in your mother's hall."

Callum took that without answering. Leah saw him swallow it, not because he was weak, but because he was trying to learn which pain did not need passing on.

"You're right," Callum said. "I don't know how to do this."

Roisin's anger faltered. She looked out at the street, where a bus hissed at the curb and an old man bent into the rain with a newspaper under his jacket.

"Neither do I," Roisin said.

There it was, Leah thought. Not peace. Not forgiveness. Only two people admitting they had inherited a machine without instructions and were tired of feeding it fingers.

Callum leaned back. "Sofia found something."

Leah went still. "She told you?"

"She messaged me after you spoke to her," Callum said. "A cufflink. She doesn't know whose."

Roisin's face changed so slightly that Leah might have missed it years ago. Now she knew the scale of small movements. "Martin was missing one this morning."

Nobody spoke.

The cafe carried on around them. Cups, rain, coins, the soft tear of a receipt. Leah felt the word may return, colder than before. May have ended. May have widened. May have moved from one coast to one kitchen, from a dead man's sleeve to a living man's notebook.

"Does that mean he was there?" Callum asked.

Roisin's answer came too quickly. "No."

Leah looked at her.

Roisin pressed her fingers to her eyelids, then lowered them. "It means I don't know. I hate that I don't know."

Callum's phone buzzed on the table. He turned it over without reading. Roisin's buzzed in her pocket. She did not reach for it.

"If Sofia has it, people will look at her," Leah said. "From both sides."

"She should throw it away," Roisin said.

"No," Callum said.

Roisin stared at him. "No?"

"If she throws it away, someone will decide what it meant for her," Callum said. "If she keeps it, same. If she gives it to you, same. That's how this works. Things become stories in other people's mouths."

Leah heard Elspeth in him then, and maybe someone better than Elspeth too.

"Then what?" Roisin asked.

Callum looked at Leah. "She decides. Not us."

Leah thought of Sofia's clean towels and empty rooms, the lemons on the counter, the little silver-colored object in her fist. She nodded once.

Roisin stood. "I need to speak to Martin."

"Roe," Callum said.

She looked down at him.

"Do nothing first," Callum said. "Just for today."

Roisin's mouth trembled with something too bitter to be a smile. "You stole my advice."

"Borrowed," Callum said.

Roisin left with her hood up, walking fast into the fine rain. Callum waited, as Leah had told him to, his hands flat on the table. He looked young again, but not innocent. Innocence was not returning to any of them. Leah found that she did not miss it as much as she expected. Innocence had been useless in those houses. Decency, if they could manage even a poor version of it, might do more.

That evening, Sofia stood on her terrace in the Costa del Sol with the cufflink sealed in a jam jar. The sky had gone the color of watered wine, and the rooms behind her were made up for guests who would not come. She had cleaned all day and changed nothing. The jar sat on the table beside a plate of sliced bread she had not eaten.

Leah's call came as the first lights appeared in the buildings below.

"I spoke to them," Leah said.

"And?" Sofia asked.

"They want you to decide what to do with it."

Sofia laughed once, softly. "How generous."

"I know."

"No," Sofia said, looking at the jar. "It is something, Leah. Late, small, maybe cowardly. But something."

In Elspeth's kitchen, Leah watched Callum wash the mugs while his mother dried them. They did not speak, but Elspeth let him put the cups on the wrong shelf and did not correct him. Across the city, Roisin sat opposite Martin Devlin and placed her phone face down between them like a challenge. In the Costa del Sol, Sofia carried the jam jar to the back of a cupboard, behind flour and spare candles, not hidden exactly, not offered either.

The day ended without a visit, without flowers, without a car slowing twice outside the wrong house. No one sensible would have called that peace. But in rooms trained for catastrophe, people ate toast, locked doors, charged phones, and lay down in their clothes or did not. The quiet held until morning, which was not the same as mercy, though Leah, listening to Elspeth breathe through the wall of the spare room, allowed herself to count it anyway.