Denise Mina - Field of Blood

“Now, let’s have a cup of tea and see what we can do for your college project.”

It was the biggest kitchen Paddy had ever been in. Her entire family could have gathered by the sink and still have left room for a car.

Mrs. Simnel had been polishing a strap of ornamental horse brasses when Paddy knocked on the door, and now she picked up the newspaper with the blackened cloth and ornaments and simply moved it out of the way of the tea and biscuits. Fading sunlight filtered in through the window, absorbed by thriving plants on the sill, glinting off the ceramic tiles on the floor. Mrs. Simnel served up tea and biscuits on genteel flowery crockery. She didn’t use mugs either, but cups and matching saucers. The china cup was so light that even full of tea it could be lifted with a gentle pinch of thumb and forefinger.

Mrs. Simnel told the story of the Baby Brian Boys well, recalling the information as she did, sliding her eyes to the side and wondering about things, bringing up details after thinking about them for a moment. She was a widow and had eight sons, all of whom lived nearby, all of whom had children of their own. She had been a primary-school teacher in her younger day and could recognize children very well, because they’re all different, aren’t they? All individuals. Paddy resigned herself to the truth of it: Mrs. Simnel had been on the train at exactly the time she said and had seen three kids.

She had been on her way to visit her sister who lived in Cumbernauld and, knowing she would be coming back in the dark and not being a confident driver, decided to leave the car and take the train. Sarah- her sister was called Sarah- was expecting her at eight o’clock so she took the seven twenty-five, which was due in at five to eight. It took her five minutes to walk around to the house from the station.

Paddy nibbled the biscuit off a fig roll and sipped her tea. She wanted to live like this when she had a house of her own. She didn’t want to use mugs or eat biscuits out of the packet anymore.

Relaxing into her company, Mrs. Simnel gestured towards the ornamental brasses and asked if Paddy would mind her carrying on. No; Paddy even offered to help, but there wasn’t a spare set of rubber gloves under the sink, so she just had to sit there, nibbling biscuits and watching as the woman dabbed Brasso onto the metal and conjured blackness out of nothing.

Mrs. Simnel had never been a witness to anything else before and was a little uncomfortable at coming forward. She was surprised how well mannered the police were. She’d expected them to be rather more thuggish, frankly, the officers lower down the ranks at least. As she made the snobbish observation her eyes fell on Paddy’s cheap black crewneck. She blinked, forgiving herself the offense, and shifted the emphasis. They made her a cup of tea before they went in to see the line of boys and gave it to her in a china cup, with a biscuit, an iced ring, of all things. Wasn’t that dainty? A pink iced ring. Not what you’d expect from big burly men at all.

She was the perfect witness, recalling details and colors and times exactly, as though she had been rehearsing all her life for this one moment. And she didn’t for an instant seem like a woman who was short of attention.

“Those boys who did this,” she said sadly. “Those boys are only ten years old. It makes me shiver to think about it.”

“Yes, their backgrounds are very deprived,” said Paddy, hoping to temper her attitude to them if nothing else.

“I know. They told me that the dark-haired one had never been to a dentist. Not once in his entire life.” She put down her cloth for a moment. “It must hurt, to have those teeth. And the diet you’d need to make them so… I couldn’t finish my biscuit.”

It hit Paddy like a cold wash. “You couldn’t finish the iced ring?”

“No,” said Mrs. Simnel. “I just put it down on the saucer. I mean, it must hurt to have such bad teeth. Even if the parents can’t take the child to the dentist, why don’t the schools do something?”

Paddy pretended that her father was picking her up at the bus stop on Clarkston Road. Mrs. Simnel waved her off, wishing her good luck with the project and her exams. As Paddy walked to the end of the street she heard the woman closing the storm doors firmly behind her. She should hurry home or she’d miss Sean if he phoned about their Valentine’s date tomorrow, but she didn’t know where the buses ran to from here and she was numbed by Mrs. Simnel.

She walked past the bus terminus and under a railway bridge, following the road over the high crescent of Prospecthill. It was a leafy bump of land, one of two neighboring hillocks overlooking the broad valley plain. At the crest of the hill she paused, hands in her pockets, looking out over the lights of the Friday-night city. She mapped her way around the distant streets using the red neon sign on the Daily Record building as a starting point.

This time last week Heather Allen was alive and had parked her car in Union Street over there. Paddy had walked down to Queen Street station that night; she could just see its illuminated fan of glass. She had taken the train to Steps and stood by the tracks. This time last week Mrs. Simnel had gone to the police about the boys she saw on the train. They gave her tea and biscuits before she went in to pick them out of a lineup, casually mentioning Callum Ogilvy’s bad teeth to her and the fact that he’d never been to a dentist. She must have known Callum the moment she saw him. They’d primed her just as carefully as Abraham Ross had been primed. The police were determined to put the boys alone on the train, and Paddy couldn’t understand why.

Sean didn’t call, and now there was no card. Paddy stared so hard at the bare doormat that she could see small grains of mud and dirt between the brown bristles. Her hot feet began to stick to the plastic floor protector. She cursed her stupid fucking soppy bastard card. It became bigger and bluer and more italicized the more she remembered it. Ashamed of hoping and afraid of being seen, she ran back upstairs to her bedroom.

It was quiet in the town. The streets emptied under a heavy sky, shoppers hurrying home before the hunger strikers’ march began or the heavy rain came on again. She watched down the road, facing into cold rain, resisting the urge to pull up her hood because it made her look so young and unsophisticated. Thoughts of Sean made her throat ache. She couldn’t stand it if he abandoned her altogether. She was frightened of herself without him.

A filthy white Volkswagen Beetle peeled off from the thin traffic and pulled into the bus stop. The whitewall tires were caked in gray dirt and the front fender was rusted and painted over with a watery white treatment. Terry leaned an elbow on the passenger seat and smiled up at her. She pulled open the door and climbed in.

“I thought you might not be there for a minute.”

She struggled to shut the creaky door behind her. “Why?”

“’Cause of the rain.” He pointed to the gray sky.

He was nervous too, and she liked it.

She looked up through the windscreen. “Is that where rain comes from?” she said, trying to tease him but sounding sarcastic.

Terry restarted the car. The engine was old and tired, one of the wheels was making an oddly intense ticking noise, and the gears crunched like a mouth full of gravel, but still Paddy marveled at someone near her age having the money to buy a car.

“This is the coolest motor I’ve ever been in,” she said, pleasing him and making up for sounding like a bitch.

They looked away from each other, each smiling out the window. Paddy hoped she was seen out on her spite date, that someone would tell Sean and he’d feel as upset and frightened and jealous as she did at the moment. She had considered and rejected the possibility that Sean was seeing someone else: it wasn’t his style, he was too self-righteous.