Denise Mina - Field of Blood

They finally let her go, holding open the door and telling her to come back and see them if she remembered anything or heard anything she thought was relevant. They still wouldn’t catch her eye. She sloped off, feeling exposed and foolish.

She took the back stairs but hesitated on the first step. She couldn’t face the newsroom yet. She headed downstairs to get a breath of air. One flight down she found Dr. Pete. He was damp and shivering with pain, clinging to the railing. He glanced at her feet.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he whispered.

“D’you want a hand to get down?”

He nodded, rolling his shoulder back stiffly. Paddy took his left elbow and led him down to the ground floor. He was shuffling like an old man, every muscle in his body taut and rigid. Every few steps a tiny inadvertent groan was carried on his breath. When they were facing the outside door he shook off her hand, took a deep breath, and straightened himself up, standing tall. He set his face to a blank sneer.

“Tell no one.”

As Paddy watched him push the bar on the door and walk out into the street, she knew that he would never have let her see him that vulnerable if he thought her significant in any way.

Two hours later half of the newsroom had been questioned. They all went to the door when their names were called, walking out cocky and coming back sheepish. The men had been told more details of Heather’s death than Paddy, and word burned its way around the newsroom: Heather’s head had been beaten in with a block of concrete or a metal thing, and she’d been dead when she was dumped in the river. No one, not even the morning boys, had managed to come up with a joke about it yet. A two-hour joke lag was as reverent as a full day’s silent mourning at the News . Half of them didn’t believe it was her. The other half thought a boyfriend had done it.

The newsroom was so disrupted by Heather’s death that Paddy still hadn’t managed to go for lunch and there was only an hour and a half left on her shift. Keck sat next to her on the bench, touching its surface near her leg by way of symbolic physical contact. “It’s been a shock. Why don’t you skip your break and just go home?”

“No, I want to stay on. Everyone’ll be working late tonight. I want to stay on.” She needed to stay on. She didn’t feel clean enough to go home.

Finally sent on her lunch break, Paddy left the building and found herself heading for the river. She hadn’t eaten anything, so she stopped in a newsagent’s and bought a packet of cheese-and-onion crisps for savory and a chocolate bar with nuts and raisins for sweet, together with a packet of ten Embassy Regal.

It was good hiding weather. A bitter, heavy drizzle fell from a gray sky, and she pulled up her duffel coat hood, wrapping the coarse material tight around her chest. She ate the crisps and chocolate as she walked, dodging the heavy-eyed lunch-hour drunks, marooned until the pubs opened again at five, who busied themselves by begging for loose change to piss away on drink. Paddy found a stretch of railing out of the way of pedestrians and turned her face to the water.

As she watched the rain needle the slow river, she smoked and had no trouble inhaling. She hadn’t known how much she’d resented Heather or how ugly she’d felt next to her. With all her defenses down, Paddy could see that she wasn’t a nice girl at all. Maybe Sean and her family were right: she was nasty and mean and fat and stupid. She was an arsehole.

She hung over the steel railings, smoking and watching the thick, gray water, self-pitying tears sliding down her face, and wished that Sean were there to hold her head against his chest and stop her seeing.

Paddy stood looking into the mouth of the postbox, the soft rain pattering on her hood as midmorning commuters brushed past her on their way to work. Her Valentine card to Sean had dropped like a lead weight into the black void, and now she didn’t know if she had done the right thing. He’d get it before the actual day; she’d posted it too early. If only the card hadn’t been quite as soppy. She was afraid the stench of desperation would stick to it and he’d guess how much she needed to see him. She wouldn’t be able to take in what had happened to Heather until she told him, until he was there to hold her hand and make it okay.

She was still worrying about the card when she got into the office. Her back shift started at ten, during the slump before the morning editorial meeting, and the newsroom wasn’t busy. Keck waved her over to the bench and told her excitedly that the police were looking for her again. They had been pissing everyone around all morning, pulling staff down to the interview rooms for three-minute questionings, checking people’s work times with the employment records. They interrupted someone on a difficult-to-get line from Poland, insisting that he come downstairs with them. Farquarson was livid about it. He was heard shouting down the phone to McGuigan, telling him he wanted the police put out of the building.

“I said I’d send you down right away,” said Keck, watching her approach Farquarson’s door. “You’ve to go right now.”

Paddy nodded at him as she knocked on the glass. “In a minute.”

Farquarson called out permission to come in.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Literally a minute?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” He put down the sheet of paper he was reading. “Start now.”

She leaned on his desk, bending her fingers back and rocking to and fro as she spoke. “I’ve got an idea that there’s another story hiding inside the Baby Brian one because the case is very similar to another case that happened to another child who lived in Townhead, on the same estate actually, but it was eight years ago and I went to Steps on the train and it doesn’t make sense for the boys to take a train past Barnhill to hide the baby when Barnhill’s full of disused buildings and waste ground.” She looked up. “What do you think?”

Farquarson was looking past her to the door.

“Liddel phoned Poland and he’s giving his copy to the editor now. D’you want to give it tops?”

Terry Hewitt was standing behind her, taking all of Farquarson’s attention. He smiled straight at Paddy, making her drop her eyes and turn briskly away.

“We’ll see what he’s got first,” said Farquarson. “But, aye, bring it in before the meeting starts.”

Hewitt withdrew, leaving Paddy standing, forgetting what she’d said and what she hadn’t said.

Farquarson looked up at her. “I’m sick of this. Everyone’s been in here with a different idea for a Baby Brian story.” He picked his teeth and stared at the wall for a moment. “Okay. No one’s mentioned this previous case. Find out more about it, write it up, and maybe we can run it for contrast or something during the trial.”

It was all Paddy could do not to skip the two flights down to the police on editorial.

The corridor was overheated, the air thick with fibers and dust from the rarely used lush carpet. Paddy could hear low voices through the door. She waited in the corridor, looking out the window. The police cars were gone from the street. Scottish Daily News delivery vans were backed up nose to tail like a troop of elephants, waiting for bales of the final edition. The drivers were gathered in an empty van near the front, keeping out of the way of the rain, laughing and smoking together.

Remembering the look in Terry Hewitt’s eye, she found herself salivating. She corrected herself: he wasn’t better-looking than Sean. He might be more attractive, but he wasn’t better-looking. She had chosen the wrong Valentine’s card for Sean. It was padded blue silk and said “I love you” inside; bought it on a whim that morning. Open, bare-faced emotion was out of character, but it was how she really felt about him. He wasn’t returning her calls as it was. She should have matched his coolness and kept her dignity. She hoped he didn’t show it to Mimi.