Denise Mina - Field of Blood

“You had a fight with Heather, didn’t you? What was that about?”

Paddy looked around the table for a moment, wondering whether she had any reason not to tell the truth about Callum. “My fiancé’s related to one of the boys in the Wilcox case.”

“The what?”

“The Baby Brian case.”

The policemen shot each other significant looks and glanced at their papers for a moment, changing expressions before looking up again. The squat one nodded at her to go on.

“When I found out, I confided in Heather, and she wrote the story up and syndicated it.”

“Syndicated?”

“She sold the story to an agency, and they sell it on to lots of other papers, papers whose markets don’t overlap.” They didn’t look any more enlightened. “The English papers. The story was everywhere. My family won’t believe I didn’t do it, and now they won’t talk to me. I don’t even know if I’m still engaged. I don’t know if my fiancé’ll have me back.”

“So you were angry with her?”

She considered lying but didn’t think she could carry it off. “I was.”

“So you hit her?”

“No, we had an argument in the toilet.” She closed an eye and shifted in her seat.

“You seem uncomfortable.”

“I didn’t hit her.”

“You did something.”

“I held her head down the toilet and flushed it.” It sounded so thuggish she tried to excuse herself. “I’m sorry I did it now.”

“It must take quite a temper to actually hold someone’s head down the toilet and flush it.”

The beautiful policeman caught her eye and smiled encouragingly. “Have you got a temper?” She realized suddenly that he’d been brought in to question the wee fat bird deliberately. Resentful, she crossed her legs and turned to Patterson.

“Are you working on the Baby Brian case?”

They glanced at each other. “Our division is, yes.”

“Have you ever heard of a wee boy that died called Thomas Dempsie?”

Patterson barked an indignant laugh. It was an odd reaction. Even McGovern seemed surprised.

“Does no one think there are similarities between the two?”

“No,” said Patterson angrily. “If you knew anything about the cases, you’d know they were completely different.”

“But Barnhill-”

“Meehan.” He said it too loud, shouting over her. McGovern watched him, trying not to frown too openly. “We’re here to ask you about Heather Allen, not to speculate about ancient cases.”

“Thomas Dempsie was found in Barnhill. And it was his anniversary. Exact to the day.”

“How would you even know about that?” He looked at her carefully. “Who have you been talking to?’

“I was just asking if you’d thought about it.”

“Well, don’t.” He was getting very angry. “Don’t ask. Answer.”

Paddy suddenly remembered that the editorial toilets were two doors down the corridor, and she remembered Heather sitting on the sanitary bin. She wanted to cry.

“Are they really sure it was Heather?”

“They can’t say for sure. She was in a bad state. We can’t use dental records, but we’re quite sure it’s her. Whoever it is, it’s wearing her coat. Her parents are going to identify the body now.”

“Why can’t you use dental records?”

He said it with a certain relish. “Her skull was smashed in.”

It was the bareness of the statement that shocked Paddy, and suddenly she could see it, Heather’s body lying on the floor of the toilets in editorial, a halo of jammy mess, her blond hair spread out like the rays of the sun and a shuffled confusion of skin and bone in the middle.

McGovern handed her a paper hankie. She struggled to speak.

“Is there a chance it might not be her?”

“We think it is.” Patterson leaned in, watching her face. She couldn’t help but feel he was punishing her for asking him questions. “We need you to be as honest as possible. You may know something important. Being honest might help us catch whoever did this.”

Paddy blew her nose and nodded.

“Did Heather have a boyfriend?”

Paddy shook her head. “She doesn’t have one.”

“Are you sure? Couldn’t she have had a secret boyfriend that she didn’t tell you about?”

“I think she’d have told me. She got pretty jealous when I talked about my fiancé.”

She looked up at McGovern and he smiled inappropriately.

“So you think she’d have told you if she was having an affair with anyone working here?”

Paddy snorted. “No way. She wouldn’t go out with anyone here, she was too career conscious.”

“What difference would that make?”

“She’d have been labeled a tart. She just wouldn’t do it.”

“What if it gave her an advantage at work?”

Paddy wavered. “Well, she was very ambitious.”

“She was very good-looking,” said McGovern. “It can’t have been easy for you: two girls working in an office, one of them-” He caught Patterson’s eye and broke off.

“When one of them’s beautiful and I’m a right dog?”

“I didn’t say that.”

She could have slapped his perfect face into yesterday. “It’s what you meant.”

She talked fast and loud to hide her hurt pride. “To be honest, it’s easier working here if you’re not that good-looking. With Heather they were always making sexy jokes about her and then hating her for not fancying them back.”

“Did it bother her?”

“It must have. She wanted to be a journalist, not a bunny girl. But she played on it. She’d have used anything to get ahead. Even her looks.”

Paddy glanced at McGovern, leveling the accusation at him as well. He smiled enchantingly, oblivious to the implied insult. He really was gorgeous. It was a shame Heather wasn’t here, she thought before she caught herself. She was sure they’d have fancied each other.

“Were you jealous of Heather?” Patterson asked carefully.

She didn’t want to answer. It pained her to admit it and made her look small, but they had said it might help if she was honest. “Yes, I was.”

Had Patterson had any manners he would have left it there, but he didn’t. He kept asking for more details. What aspects of Heather’s life was she jealous of? How jealous? Did she hate her, would she say that? Well, if not hate, then dislike? Was that why she attacked her in the toilet? Paddy tried to answer as honestly as possible, every time. She didn’t know what was relevant but gradually came to realize that while the state of her friendship with Heather might be, asking her what she currently weighed wasn’t. She resisted, and he insisted. Just answer the questions, Miss Meehan, he said seriously, we’ll decide what’s relevant. McGovern wasn’t as fly. She saw him grinning a couple of times, leaning back in his chair so that she wouldn’t see. Patterson was humiliating her deliberately, punishing her for having the cheek to suggest she knew something about Brian Wilcox.

By the end of the interview Paddy felt belittled and stupid, and suddenly knew things about herself that she wasn’t nearly ready to face. She was fiercely competitive and had always wanted to go to university herself. She had catalogued and coveted every one of Heather’s advantages, envied her clothes and figure, but believed that she was smarter- that’s where she was the winner. Paddy had always hoped she was gracious in her limitations and could enjoy other girls being thin and good-looking, but she discovered in front of two strange policemen that she wasn’t. She was a mean-spirited wee shite and she’d privately hoped some awful catastrophe would befall Heather.

Changing the subject, Patterson told her that Heather seemed to have taken her mother’s car in the middle of the night and parked outside Central station. Why would she go into town alone on a Friday night? Did she have any contacts she’d meet regularly? Could she have been investigating anything? Had Heather ever taken her to the Pancake Place at night? Paddy shook her head. Heather wouldn’t go to the Pancake Place at her own instigation. There were two all-night cafés in Glasgow: the Pancake Place was one, but the other one, Change at Jamaica, had a baby grand piano and a jazz set at weekends. It occurred to Paddy that if Heather had chosen a midnight venue, she would have gone there. She would have gone to the Pancake Place only if someone invited her there.