Denise Mina - Field of Blood

“So, ye said on the phone ye wanted to see me about Thomas?”

“That’s right.” Paddy positioned her pen. “Because of the Baby Brian case-”

“Tragic.”

“It was.”

“Those wee bastards should be hanged.” Tracy touched her mouth in self-reproach. “’Scuse me, but I blame the mothers. Where were they? Who lets their boy do that to another woman’s wean?”

“Well, because of it we’re doing a series about past stories, and your son Thomas was one of the names that came up. Would you be all right talking about it?”

Tracy shut her eyes tight, squeezing the lids together. “It’s not easy, know? Because first I loss my baby and then I loss my man. Alfred was innocent.” Tracy shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “He always said that. He was at the pitch-and-toss that night. That’s how he didn’t have an alibi.”

The pitch-and-toss were illegal gambling schools, impromptu affairs run by gangsters in pubs and sheds and open-air waste grounds all over the city. Men could bet away their family’s weekly wage on the turn of a few coins.

“Surely someone would come forward?”

“No one remembered him at the pitch-and-toss. Gamblers don’t notice ye if ye don’t have a big stake.” Her eyes deadened. “He wasn’t a man you’d remember, Alfred.”

The misery was vivid in Tracy’s eyes, and suddenly Paddy didn’t feel like a junior scoop, she felt like a fat girl cheering herself up by quizzing a bereaved woman about her private business.

Tracy nursed her fag, letting it dawdle on her lips. “You wouldn’t notice him. He was a good dad, though, a really good dad. Loved his weans, handed his money in, know?” Her eyes were brimming, threatening to flood her face with mascara.

Paddy dropped her notebook into her lap. “I feel terrible coming here bringing this all up for you again.”

“Never mind.” Tracy flicked her cigarette ash into a dirty saucer on the floor. “I don’t mind. It’s always with me anyway. Every day.”

Paddy looked at the television. A voice-over was explaining breeding cycles while two otters swam around each other.

“If Alfred didn’t kill your son, who do you think did?”

Tracy squashed her fag out in the saucer. “D’you know what happened to Thomas?”

“No.”

“They strangled him and left him on the railway to get run over. He was in bits when I got him back.” Her chin contracted into a circle of white and red dimples and her bottom lip began to twitch. To stop herself crying she picked up her packet again, flicking open the lid and pulling out another fag, lifting her box of matches. “No man could do that to his own wean.” The head flew off the match as she struck it and landed on the carpet, melting a little crater in the man-made fabric. Tracy stamped on it with her foot, screwing the flame into the ground. “Bloody things. Made in Poland, for petesake. As if we cannae make matches here.”

“I didn’t know that about Thomas. The old papers never said that.”

“They’re shutting all the works and we’re buying this rubbish from the bloody Poles. Half this landing has been laid off. And why would Alfred leave Thomas in Barnhill? He was never up that way. He didn’t even know anyone there.”

Paddy’s face felt suddenly cold. Barnhill was where Callum Ogilvy lived.

“Whereabouts in Barnhill?”

“The tracks. Before the station.” Tracy stared at the television. “He was there all night before he was found. First morning train went over him.”

“I didn’t know, I’m sorry,” mumbled Paddy. Thomas’s death was all too real now, and she wished she hadn’t come here. She wished something nice had happened to Tracy. “Did you not marry again?”

“No. Been married twice, that was enough. I was pregnant at fifteen, married at sixteen. He was just a boy himself. Never there. In and out of Barlinnie. A wild man.” She churned out a grin. “Always go for the bad ones, don’t ye?”

Paddy didn’t, but she nodded to be agreeable.

“He got a big shock when Thomas was killed, cleaned up his act. Tried to be a father to his own boy. Had him to stay when the neighbors were attacking the house up the road. He stays with him still.”

Paddy nodded encouragingly. “At least he tries.”

“Oh, he tries. He does that,” Tracy conceded, dropping her voice to a whisper.

“Brian was taken on the same day as Thomas. Did you notice?”

“Of course I did. Eight-year anniversary.” Tracy took a draw on her cigarette and watched the otters slither over each other, sedating herself with the television. “Stays with ye, the death of a child. Never seems by, like it’s always happened this morning.”

As Paddy stepped out onto the windy veranda she saw a swath of green light on the balcony floor, thinning between the shutting lift doors. Driven by her dread of the grim stairs, she ran for it, catching the doors with just an inch to go, frantically pressing the button on the wall.

There were two boys in the lift, both about thirteen, guarding either side of the doorway. Paddy stepped in and heard the door shut behind her before she had the wit to change her mind. With a dawning sense of danger, she turned around.

They were poor boys, she could see that, both wearing cheap parkas with flattened orange linings and thin fur edging on their hoods, both in school trousers that were too short for them, with tide marks where hems had been let down.

The lights through the tiny lift window showed them passing the seventh floor, a big industrial stamped number on the far wall flicking past and registering on Paddy’s eye. After glancing at each other, the boys turned to look at her.

One of them had his hood up, covering all but his nose and mouth. The other’s hair was cut so short that telltale patches of ringworm were visible on his scalp. Each of them flicked his eyes at the other again, signaling something sneaky and malign.

The most expensive thing she owned in the world was her monthly travel Transcard in her bag. Paddy pulled her bag strap over her head and held on to the base of it in case the boys tried to grab it.

They passed the fifth floor, the lift gathering momentum, the cable above their heads creaking.

The boys looked at each other again, smirking, putting their hands behind their backs and pushing themselves off the wall as if getting ready to pounce. It occurred to Paddy suddenly that one of the boys might be Tracy Dempsie’s other son. Either of them looked poor enough.

“I know your mum,” said Paddy, looking at the wall.

A little disconcerted, the boys glanced at each other again. “Eh?”

She looked at the ringwormed boy, who had spoken. “Is your mum called Tracy?”

He shook his head.

“Mine’s is dead,” said the hood, with such relish she doubted it was true.

Paddy put her hand in her pocket, feeling past the bits of tissue to her house keys, slipping them through her fingers to make a face-ripping fist. She tried speaking again, thinking that any local connection would protect her a little. “Do you know Tracy Dempsie on eight?”

The boys laughed. “She’s a fucking ugly hooker,” said the hood.

Paddy felt suddenly protective of Tracy, as if being insulted by small boys was compounding all the insults life had dealt her. “Hooker? Where’d ye get that word? Off the telly?”

The lift bounced to a stop on the ground floor. The boys stood still, staring at her feet as the doors slid open. The hood tipped his head back, his mouth falling open, eager to see what she would do.

Paddy held on to her bag with one hand and kept the other in her pocket. She worked hard not to turn her shoulder or give way to them, just to walk straight through the middle. She lifted her foot but faltered before taking the first step, prompting a giggle from one of the boys. As she stepped out into the foyer a cold sweat formed over the back of her neck. They could have cut her or raped her or mugged her and there would have been nothing she could do to defend herself. She was out of her depth.