Denise Mina - Field of Blood

She saw a snapshot as she passed the serving hatch to the living room. Her family were gathered around the kitchen table, her mother and father grim-faced, the boys and Mary Ann huddled close together in a little row. Mary Ann was smirking at the tabletop, pressing her lips first to one side and then the other, trying not to scream with laughter. The boys stared at the table, dying with discomfort at the confrontation, the very men their father had made them. She noted sadly that Sean wasn’t there and the only unoccupied place at the table was untouched, a clean glass sitting by it, clearly intended for her.

The kitchen table was scattered with the remains of a stillborn party: triangular sandwiches curling into sarcastic grins, a jug of weak orange squash, and an unopened bottle of sweet, viscous Liebfraumilch. As a centerpiece to the table sat a small white cake. The decorative silver balls on Marty’s side of the table had been pulled out, leaving bullet holes in the icing.

Paddy held her coat over her arm, standing in the kitchen doorway like a visitor who didn’t plan to stay long. She saw herself through their eyes: in at ten thirty without her engagement ring on, with mud on her shoes and tear-swollen eyes.

Con was so tense that he had to turn his entire body to look at her, twitching his little moustache side to side like a comedy humbug.

“It’s late, I know,” she said.

Her dad couldn’t cope. It was enough that a child had defied him, but for her not to be penitent and for it to be his youngest daughter was too much.

“How dare you,” he spluttered, the whites of his eyes turning red. “I will not be spoken to… I will not be spoken to-”

Trisha pressed her hand over Con’s. “Where have you been all day?”

“I was at a friend’s house.”

“Which friend? We’ve phoned everyone.”

“It’s someone you don’t know.”

The boys glanced nervously at each other. Mary Ann took a deep, shuddering breath and bit her hand. The family knew everyone; they were everyone.

Her mother choked back a sob. “Patricia, where are your tights?”

Paddy looked down at her bare legs. One of her fat knees was capped with a large scarlet scab. She could imagine what her mother thought: that she had been chased by a gang of men in some sort of bizarre Protestant sex ceremony. It was kind of true.

She bristled. “I didn’t want to come home. I can’t stand the atmosphere here.”

“Well, who made the atmosphere here what it is?” Con shouted, standing up and leaning over the table. “You did. You bloody made it.”

Trish pulled him by the sleeve down into his seat. “Quiet, Con, stay calm.”

“Look,” Paddy shouted, “I was at the hunger strikers’ march. I fell and hurt my knee and I had to take off the tights to clean the dirt out of the cut.”

She shifted her heavy coat to the other arm and lifted her knee for them to see. It looked very dramatic in the bright light. The cut was scabbing up brown at the edge but still wet and yellow on the inside. They stared, but no one said anything. Marty looked suspiciously at Paddy, as if she had done it deliberately for sympathy.

Her mother stood up. “A hundred and fifty people were arrested in the town today. We’ve been phoning every police station in the city.”

“I wasn’t arrested, I just got knocked over.”

“Well, thank God for that, anyway,” said her father loudly.

“I’m very tired,” said Paddy. “I’m very, very tired.” She didn’t know what else to say, so she backed out of the kitchen.

Gerald responded instinctively. “G’night, God bless.”

Paddy heard her mother muttering angrily to him as she hung up her coat and climbed the stairs.

She lay down fully dressed and stared at the ceiling, thinking about Heather Allen’s shuffled teeth and the stray hairs stuck in the stinking towel. Paddy had ruined herself and killed a girl. She had done terrible, terrible things.

The bed was shaking. She opened her sticky eyes and found Trisha sitting on the side, crying, a hand pressed tight against her mouth, worried and frightened and small.

Paddy had never seen her mother look so helpless. They reached for each other, hands knocking against faces, head against head, as Trisha folded up her baby in a watery mist of coos and sighs.

“I’m so worried for you,” she said when she finally had her breath.

Paddy sniffed hard. “You don’t have to worry for me.”

“But last Sunday ye missed mass, and now yesterday… I’m frightened for you.”

“Don’t worry, Mum.”

Trisha smiled anxiously and stroked Paddy’s hair back off her face. “Will you come to mass for me?”

“Mum…”

“Please, do it- for me?”

Paddy had been hoping last week would set a precedent. She hadn’t planned to go to mass. She didn’t believe in it and never had. The whole parish hated her. She’d had sex with a man she wasn’t married to. She’d told a lie that killed a woman. The last thing she wanted to do was pause an hour and consider her conscience.

“Please?”

So Paddy went to mass for her mother, who went for her father, who went to set a good example for his children.

Parishioners greeted friends and chatted in the chapel yard. The Meehans felt themselves being watched by the rest of the congregation as they walked around the corner and entered the low-walled yard. Gerald and Marty pretended not to care. Every thirty seconds or so Mary Ann gave out alarmed little yipping barks, laughs delivered too quickly to have any breath behind them. Paddy stared straight ahead, looking at no one. She felt a hand on her arm. Her father was there, his hand on her elbow, showing a united face for other people’s benefit.

The Meehans didn’t linger on the steps but went straight in and sat along a pew two-thirds of the way up the chapel, where they always sat, near to the ostentatiously religious families but not with them.

Father Bowen began the service, accompanied by the squalling of small children stationed at the back, their parents ready for a quick exit if the babies got too noisy. Paddy didn’t dare look at the benches where the Ogilvys sat, but guessed from the shape of the shadows in the right-hand corner of her eye that Sean was sitting with his mother and two older brothers, their wives, and an assortment of fidgeting nephews and nieces.

She stood and sat as required, her mind obsessively circling Heather Allen. Someone had killed her because they thought she was Paddy, but she couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to kill her in the first place. It was to do with Townhead, to do with the man in the grocery van, maybe even something to do with Thomas Dempsie.

Five young girls from Trinity school made the offertory procession, and stilted bidding prayers were read out by boys from the same year. Prayers were offered up for the repose of Granny Annie’s soul. Communion was run like a military operation: the deacons stood at the side of the pews, letting out and holding back the communicants, only ever allowing four or five to queue in the aisle. Those who didn’t have souls clean enough to receive the Eucharist had to stay behind alone on the bench. Paddy sat alone on the bench, feeling watched by the people behind, imagining Ina Harris spitting at her up the aisle.

At the end of the service, when they were all going in peace to love and serve the Lord, Paddy found Sean waiting by her pew. He genuflected with her, and they fell into step for the silent walk down the aisle, shuffling through the main doors and shaking hands with Father Bowen. Paddy looked back to the congregation flooding out and saw the pink relief on her father’s face because Sean Ogilvy was back onside. They tripped down the stairs to the yard.