Denise Mina - Field of Blood

McVie’s mood had mellowed, even to the extent of talking to Billy. “Well,” he said as he got back into the car, “there actually was a story in it.”

Billy shrugged. “D’you want to go anyway?”

“Aye, why not.”

“Go where?” asked Paddy.

Neither of them answered her.

Billy didn’t get faster than five miles an hour, crawling along slowly for a couple of streets. At the heart of the housing project they cruised past a dark swing park with mini-chutes and barred baby swings glistening with frost. Billy took a sharp corner a little too fast and drove along for a hundred yards before parking.

It took Paddy a minute to work out where they were. Following McVie’s gaze she looked up the gentle incline of the road and recognized the green ribbon fencing before anything else.

There was no one outside the Wilcoxes’ house, but the lights were on in the living room. The only thing that picked it out from the other houses on the modest terrace were the yellow ribbons tied randomly to the railings, the dirty bows soggy from exposure to the elements. One of them was a big perky bow from a bouquet of flowers and remained obscenely cheerful, hanging at an angle near the gate.

“Gina Wilcox’s house,” said Paddy.

Billy smiled in the mirror. “We’re here looking for a story to save his career.” He glanced at McVie. “He wants to get off night shift, but he’s annoyed too many people. Careers’ll be made over those boys. Could be bigger than the Ripper.”

“Aye, you’d know,” said McVie. “You’re a fucking taxi driver. Right, bint, you want to be a reporter. What do you see in there?”

Paddy looked at him half amused, expecting him to laugh at the paper-thin ruse, but McVie didn’t laugh back. He genuinely expected her to tell him everything she could glean from the scene without questioning his right to use it. Flustered, she looked back at the house.

“Um… I dunno.” Maybe there was some unspoken rule about giving up information and no one had told her about it. Paddy could see into the empty living room. The curtains in the window were unlined, the ornaments small and cheap. “Nothing much.”

The settee and armchair were brown and old, antimacassars pinned over balding arms and backs. It was an elderly person’s suite, perhaps donated to a poor new house by a kind relative or bought secondhand. At the center of the wall above the gas-fire mantel was a wooden clock in the shape of Africa with two red dots on the lower coastline. Someone in the Wilcox family had emigrated to South Africa. A lot of working-class families went, drawn by tales of ex-bus drivers with swimming pools, of plumbers with private airplanes.

“I can’t see anything at all. Are the two boys from around here?”

“No, Barnhill,” said McVie.

Paddy knew the area. She had been to a funeral there once. “That’s a couple of miles north. So they came here, got the baby, went to Steps, left him there, and went all the way home alone? What ages are they?”

“Ten? Eleven?”

Paddy shook her head. “Why were they here in the first place if they live in Barnhill? Do they know someone here?”

McVie shook his head. “No. The police think they came to use the swing park after seeing it from the road, maybe from a bus into town; came to have a go, saw Baby Brian, and… well, you know. Pop.”

They had passed the swing park and Paddy noticed that it was for babies and under-fives. The chutes had a gradient as gentle as the horizon. There was even a sandpit and rubber matting around the ridey horses for tiny tots to take tumbles on. Paddy looked around. Across the road, over a grass verge and broad dual carriageway, was the high back wall of the bus station. The swing park wasn’t even visible from the road: it was tucked in tight into the center of the estate. She was sure those boys had been brought here by someone who knew the area. An adult had brought them here.

“Well,” Paddy said, sitting back. “Can’t see anything.”

Billy pulled the car from the curb and Paddy watched the housing scheme pull past the window. Little drops of not-quite rain started to smear the windscreen. She hid her mouth under her hand, trying not to smile. She could read the scheme. She could see patterns that McVie and Billy were blind to.

They were on the Jamaica Street bridge when they heard it over the radio. A christening in Govan had turned into a gang fight- one dead so far. McVie kicked the back of the seat and Billy swung the car around, cutting in front of a bus on the other side of the road and getting honked for his cheek. The snow came on heavily. Flakes as big as rose petals tumbled gracefully out of an ink-black sky. Pedestrians evaporated off the streets and traffic slowed to a cautious crawl. In the ten minutes it took for them to get to the address, the snow grew thick, sticking to soot-blackened walls in patches.

The gangs had dispersed by the time they arrived in Govan. The tall street was bare of cars, a deep valley between two long red tenement rows, the crisp sheet of snow covering the ground punctuated by regular warm pools of orange from the streetlights. A few stray policemen were still standing in the tumbling snow, teasing out names and addresses from shivering witnesses desperate to get back into their houses and out of the weather, wishing they hadn’t bothered to come for a look at the dead boy.

Billy pulled the car over to the pavement. Invited, Paddy followed McVie out of the car. Big soft snowflakes stuck to her hair and face and lay on her shoulders and chest, dampening her duffel coat. She looked down at the pavement and saw fresh scarlet speckles melting into the snow on the curb.

McVie walked over to one of the policemen. “Alistair, what’s happening?”

The policeman pointed around the corner and explained that an eighteen-year-old boy had been chased into an innocent family’s house by five members of an opposing gang. The boy had tried to escape by jumping out of the window, but his foot got caught and tipped him upside down. He landed on his head, dying instantly.

As the policeman spoke, Paddy stood five feet away looking at the deep dots of blood melting through the white snow to the black pavement beneath, tracing the path of the body to the ambulance tire tracks in the road.

“C’mon.” McVie flicked his finger and Paddy followed him to the alley running between two blocks of flats.

The snow had barely reached the ground in the dark, narrow lane. It was lit by overspill from the kitchen windows above. McVie stalled in front of her, inadvertently sucking in a disgusted gasp through his teeth. Looking around his legs, Paddy saw a jammy, lumpy mess arranged in a halo around a central point of contact. A clump of long brown hairs was soaking up the blood. He must have had very dry hair, she thought. She stared at it, unmoved, surprised at her cold reaction. She felt nothing, just hot excitement at being there, bearing witness to events that would have happened anyway.

McVie looked up at an open kitchen window on the third floor, tracing the boy’s trajectory from the window to the ground. The window was still sitting wide, and inside a hub of people were gathered. A uniformed policeman squinted down at them and, seeing McVie, waved happily. McVie was busy scribbling something in his pad, so Paddy waved back in his stead.

She found herself standing in the cold, dark alley next to a stranger’s blood. Her feet were going numb and she was hungry. She looked down at the blood of a dead man her own age. This was exactly what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. Exactly.

McVie flipped his notepad shut and nodded her towards the car. “Right, then. That’s tonight finished. We’ll drop you home.”