Denise Mina - Field of Blood

Her dark room was cold, and the wind outside shook the lone tree far away at the bottom of the garden. She heard the radiator tick, tick as the heating was turned off and the metal contracted.

She waited until she was bursting for a pee so that she wouldn’t have to go twice before she fell asleep. At the head of the stairs she turned on the light, pausing outside the bathroom door, giving the silverfish a head start. Downstairs, the lonely voice of a news reader murmured. The family was listening to her move.

Paddy used the loo and washed her hands and face. She was drying them on the hand towel when she heard the living room door open and a soft footfall on the stairs. She froze, watching him through the mottled glass. Marty stopped outside, running a hand through his curly black hair, head dipped as if he was going to whisper to her through the door. She listened carefully. He didn’t speak, but his cheeks bunched as if he was smiling. He straightened his arm, reached out to the door frame, and snapped off the light.

She watched him from the dark, his splintered shape dropping down the stairs and disappearing, leaving her with imaginary silverfish swarming over her feet.

One by one her family came up to bed, taking turns in the bathroom, whispering good nights on the landing as they passed each other, pretending that they thought she was asleep, when they all knew she was hiding.

Mary Ann sidled into the room on tiptoes and picked up her wash bag from her chest of drawers and her nightie from under her pillow, leaving the door open so that the bright light from the hall lit her way. When she came back she shut the door carefully behind her, clambered under the covers, and rolled over onto her side, turning her back on Paddy.

Paddy had been brave and angry all night, but she couldn’t keep it up anymore. She tried to disguise her breathing by biting the blankets. She knew Marty deserved his shunning but never thought they would do it to her. Everyone at work thought she was a fat joke, and everyone at home hated her. She found herself descending to that level of self-pity God had reserved for teenagers when she felt a slap on her shoulder. She rolled over a little.

Mary Ann’s eyes looked like little currants in the dark. She was hanging off her own bed, slapping Paddy on the arm, silently laughing a desperate request for a smile. Paddy couldn’t. She shook her head and pulled the covers up to her mouth, trying not to cry.

“I didn’t do it,” said Paddy, her voice less than a murmur.

Mary Ann reached across and pulled Paddy’s wet hand away from her face, squeezing it tight. She held it until her wee sister fell asleep, and then she got out of bed and tucked Paddy’s chubby arm under the covers. She sat on the side of Paddy’s bed, smiling until her teeth dried and her lips stuck to them, until her feet went numb with the cold.

Sneaking down an hour earlier than usual for breakfast, hoping to miss everyone, Paddy paused on the stairs, listening for noises, for the high tink of spoons hitting crockery or a thunk of teacups meeting the table. The house was silent. She crept down and was in the kitchen doorway before she realized that the entire family had also risen early, hoping to miss her, and were sitting in an awkward silence around the table.

She couldn’t back out. They tensed collectively as she approached, looking for a chair. The only free place was next to her father. He stared manically at the back of the Sugarpuffs packet while Paddy pulled over the foldaway step stool and sat down. She poured herself a cup of tea from the pot.

Con cleared his throat several times. Gerald glanced around the table from place to place, silently urging someone to do something, while Trisha banged plates around in the sink. Marty was the only one who seemed half content. He looked around happily, humming the chorus of “Vienna” to himself.

Trisha began the exodus. She abruptly abandoned her cleaning and left the room. Gerald finished up quickly and ran upstairs. Con left without finishing his porridge. Marty took his time, helping himself to a luxurious extra half slice of toast while Paddy and Mary Ann watched him. Eventually his affected calm ran out and he left too.

Paddy looked across the wreckage of the table to her sister. Mary Ann raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Oo,” she said, and then laughed until her face turned puce.

It was a disgusting cover page. The main story was a picture of Baby Brian under the mawkish headline AGONY OF OUR BRIAN, four words that managed to imply not only that the child had suffered terribly but that he had, shortly beforehand, become the property of the Scottish Daily News . It had been written during a late editorial meeting as a compromise, a blind guess at what the public wanted to hear by senior editors so jaded they couldn’t recall the taste or flavor of genuine sentiment. A pall of sticky shame hung over the newsroom, implicating everyone, pricking journalists’ tempers so that they picked on the juniors, shouted at copyboys, and complained about everything. Two hours into the shift, half the staff was pissed and the other half was downstairs in the Press Bar working at it.

Heather appeared at the newsroom door. Paddy could tell that she had dressed carefully to give herself confidence: her hair was very big, extra back-combed, and she was wearing a red double-breasted blazer, like a junior executive.

Keck, to the left of Paddy on the bench, nudged her. “Check out that tart,” he said. “She’s gagging for it.”

Dub sighed heavily on Paddy’s other side, muttered that Keck was a crippled-dick wanker, and went back to his reading.

A light hush fell over the newsroom. Paddy looked up and realized that half of the news desk and all of the sports desk were watching her, amused and waiting for a reaction.

A sports boy stood up and held his nose, announcing loudly into his fist, “And in the red corner…” Everyone laughed. Heather smiled graciously, dipping her head down and taking it all in good part. Paddy, raw and guileless, stared at her feet miserably until Keck nudged her.

“Smile. Act like you don’t care.”

“To hell with them,” said Paddy, too loud, alienating anyone who had taken her side. “I’m not in the least bit bothered what those stupid old bastards think.”

She usually left the building for her lunch, preferring to wander around the town rather than sit in the canteen, fending off suggestive conversations that were kindly meant but creeped her out. Today she was angry and fit for any one of them. She took her lunch alone, sitting at a small table tucked at the side of the busy canteen, sipping milky coffee and eating a squashed-fly slice in three inches of custard for a wee treat. She covered the tabletop with copies of the Daily News , the Record, and the Evening Times, reading and rereading the Baby Brian stories, carefully teasing out the facts from among the treacle.

The coverage was the same from paper to paper, with some phrases consistent from story to story, so she knew they had been lifted directly from the police’s press statement. The two arrested boys were playing truant from school that day and had walked to Townhead from their homes in Barnhill. Every single story mentioned the fact that the children were alone, that there were no adults with them at any point. They were so adamant about the detail that Paddy guessed that all the journalists must have pressed the question at the police briefing. The boys had taken Brian from his garden to Queen Street station, less than half a mile downhill into the town. They took the train to Steps, a country station eight minutes away. When they arrived at Steps they walked up the long ramp to the quiet country road, crossed it, led the child through a break in the fence, down to the tracks, and killed him there.