Denise Mina - Field of Blood

Voices approached her through one of the closed doors, and she turned to see it open. A bald policeman was accompanying one of the women from personnel, crying behind her thick-lensed glasses, her faraway eyes pinpricks of red regret. The officer patted her elbow and muttered empty words of comfort.

“I don’t want tae-” She broke off, kneading a cotton hankie into a flat plane and blowing her nose into it.

The impatient officer pushed the crying woman by the upper arm out into the corridor, swinging her around the corner towards the lifts. The woman turned and crossed the doorway, still sniffling and covering her mouth with her handkerchief as she made her way towards the back stairs. He watched her double back and looked puzzled.

“We’re not allowed to use the lifts,” explained Paddy.

He shook his head, looking at her for the first time. “Who are you?”

“Paddy Meehan.” She felt as if she’d done something wrong but couldn’t think what it might be. “You were asking for me upstairs? I just got in.”

He didn’t look pleased to see her and glanced back at someone sitting at the table. It was Patterson, the squat-faced bully from yesterday. Patterson looked a little flushed when he saw it was her.

“Got any more brilliant ideas for us?”

“I’ll go away if you want.”

The bald officer stepped aside to let her in, glancing behind her into the corridor to make sure there wasn’t a queue forming.

The policemen had clearly been there all morning: four big white tea mugs from the canteen were drained and drip-stained, red-and-gold wrappers from caramel log biscuits were folded into interesting shapes on one side of the table, rolled up into tight little balls on the other.

Patterson stood up as Paddy approached, pulling out a seat for her, managing to make her feel that she had let everyone down by not already being in the chair. The sheet of paper in front of his seat had diagrams on it drawn in ballpoint, circles joined and overlapping with lines scored between them, retraced over and over. On a separate sheet, a long list of names was illegibly written in longhand, some with ticks, some with crosses next to them.

“So…” Patterson slid into his seat and looked her up and down as if he’d heard something about her. He left the moment hanging in the air between them.

“What did you want to see me for?” she asked flatly, determined to be more wily than she was yesterday.

“We want to ask you about the radio car and the night you and Heather were supposed to go out in it. What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Weren’t you both supposed to be going?”

“She dropped out.”

“Why?”

Paddy thought about it for a moment. They were after McVie. “Dunno. She couldn’t be bothered. She didn’t think there was a story in it.”

Patterson nodded and hummed, tapping his rough diagram with his pen. “Right?” He rolled out his bottom lip and nodded softly, as if he was seriously considering the possibility. “See, I heard that Heather thought McVie had a thing about her.”

Paddy tutted and shook her head. “D’you know how many men she thought had a thing about her? Every man in here, and she was mostly right. McVie’s harmless; he didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Is he a letch?”

Paddy laughed alone for a moment. “How long have you been in this building? They’re all letches. The print room’s wallpapered in pornography. Most of them can’t hold a conversation with a woman without staring at her chest. If letching was a concern you’d need to instigate a policy of internment for the entire paper.”

The officers looked at her for a telling moment. Only someone from a Republican background would use a loaded word like “internment.” She knew it was still rare for a Catholic to work in a middle-class profession like the papers, or even the police. Paddy was a new generation and had never knowingly suffered anti-Catholic discrimination, but she still enjoyed the status of political underdog. She squared her shoulders and looked Patterson straight in the eye, raising an eyebrow, embarrassing him into continuing.

“So you went out in the radio car,” he said, four hundred years of bloodshed lying unacknowledged between them. “And what happened?”

She shrugged. “Nothing. We went on a couple of calls, a suicide and a gang fight in Govan. It was interesting.”

“What day was it?”

“Monday, last week.”

He made a note of it in one of his interconnecting bubbles. “Now, think carefully: did Heather know anyone who lived in Townhead?”

“Townhead? I don’t think so. She was posh.”

“She never mentioned anyone to you? A friend, someone she might go up there to see?”

“No. Why?”

“Any idea why she would go up there last Thursday evening?”

It was the same night Paddy had been there after visiting Tracy Dempsie. She was glad she hadn’t bumped into Heather; she didn’t know what she would have said.

“I don’t know why she was up there,” she told Patterson. “It’s bound to be something to do with Baby Brian.”

“Bound to be? You seem very sure about her motives.”

He had that spark in his eye. He was going for her again, but this time she was ready.

“What’s your problem with me?” she said angrily. “Why’re you always picking on me?”

Patterson looked a little bit startled. “I’m simply asking a question.”

“And I’m simply answering them.” She had frightened him, and she was pleased.

“Fine.” Patterson stood up and pulled at the back of her chair. “That’s all. Get out.”

She stood up. “You are a rude wee bastard.”

“Out, or I’ll arrest you for breach.”

Paddy looked at his bald colleague, who affirmed with an incline of his head that Patterson was mad enough to do it and she should go while she could.

Patterson pointed at the door. “We’ll come for you again if we need you.” He waved her out into the corridor and shut the door firmly in her face, giving it a little extra tug as if to stop her getting back in.

She called the door an arsehole, but it gave her no relief.

On the back stairs she picked up a new edition from the stack and locked herself in the toilets on editorial. For ten minutes she sat there staring blankly at the back of the door, sweating softly. Heather seemed very dead now. They could have met that night. Heather might even have been in Townhead at Thomas Dempsie’s house, she could have found the clippings herself, she was brighter than she seemed sometimes. Paddy lit a cigarette and inhaled deep into her lungs to wake herself up. The nicotine hit her system, firing up her nerves and making the back of her skull throb.

She looked at the paper. The black-bordered photograph of Heather on the front page was a formal, posed picture. She was very pretty: she had a dainty little button nose and nice teeth, and her hair was as thick as possible without being coarse. Paddy remembered unraveling long, golden threads from her fingers outside the newsroom. It occurred to her that the editors must have been kicking themselves for using the proprietorial approach with Baby Brian when they could have used it almost justifiably with Heather. She had gone from being an outcast to the beloved daughter of the Daily News in less than a week.

On the inside pages Heather’s mother spoke of her heartbreak, highlighting all that was best in Heather’s life: her academic ability, her kindness, her sense of humor, and her three Duke of Edinburgh awards. She asked why anyone would want to snuff that out, as if the murderer had, God-like, given due weight to every deed Heather had ever done, judged her, and decided to kill her anyway. The mother was photographed outside the Allens’ enormous Georgian house, looking exhausted and angry.