Denise Mina - The Dead Hour

Paddy had seen the guy before. Every time she met him he seemed to be giving a command performance to a group, usually telling a long story that involved a woman taking her top off. He was funny; she’d laughed at a couple of his stories before and she’d meant to tell him about Dub and the comedy club.

She felt she should announce her arrival. “What’s the story here, then?”

“Ah, some guy dead in the water,” said the joker.

Paddy looked around at the empty street and heavy fog.

“How did anyone know?”

“A couple coming from a nightclub stopped at a phone box. They saw him splashing about.” He nodded over. “Saw him from the bridge.”

“Take it to the bridge,” called a stocky policeman, trying to mimic James Brown and failing. There was a small bleak pause.

“Aye, right enough,” said the funny one, smiling but not laughing.

The boatman had pinned the bobbing body to the bank and shouted up to them to come and get it out of the water.

“Ah, Christ,” said the joker, “we’ll be stinking of the fucking river for the rest of the shift.”

The river was swollen by the heavy rains and the steep cliff was only three feet deep. As they edged gingerly down to the water’s edge Paddy stepped to the side to get a better view. She had never seen a drowning victim before. They were usually found during the day when her shift was finished. Teenagers and disoriented people favored the river-jumping from a bridge was an impulsive act-but this body looked too big to be a young person. The black balloon bumped between the boat’s side and the riverbank.

The joker and the not-funny one grabbed the wet material with both hands, lifting on a count of three. They rose for a moment and then fell back as the weight of the body came out of the water. One more surge of effort and they pulled him onto the muddy bank.

The body rolled over onto its back and everyone recoiled at the sight. It was a man in his thirties, clean shaven, eyes open, the bridge of his nose swollen from a blunt hit. His cheek had burst, flesh blooming outward like a meaty flower. The rip was so deep that Paddy could see flashes of his white jawbone. His ear was slack, hanging too low toward the back of his head. It turned her stomach and she was repelled, but found her eyes drawn to it, racing across the mess, doing a mental jigsaw, trying to make sense of it.

“What do you think?” The joker stood back and looked at him. “Someone put him in there or a suicide?”

The policemen closed in around the body.

A stocky policeman who hadn’t spoken yet bent over the body and flicked at the messy tear with the blunt end of a biro, dropping the flap of skin back to where it should have been. The ear twisted like a doorknob coming back to true.

“Yeah, something in the river got stuck in his face and ripped it open. The nose looks like a straight punch. I’m guessing suicide.”

Paddy didn’t want to give away her fright so she focused on his eyes. They were open, staring blankly, black speckles of mud filigreed over from the drag up the cliff face. His skin was a terrible vibrant white and, when her eyes strayed back to the cheek again, the face resolved itself and she could make out the messy tear, now just a puffy black crease across the cheek. His nose was swollen between his eyes, the bulbous skin split in a thin crack. He’d lost a loafer and a wet silk sock perfectly outlined his toes. A sharp big toenail was slicing against the material.

“That’s enough,” said the stocky policeman, stepping back. “I’ll phone it in as a possible murder, just in case.” He pulled away from the crowd and made his way back to the car and the radio.

Paddy kept looking, memorizing the details for the piece in the paper. The man was in his thirties, a bit pudgy and self-conscious about it: she knew the tricks. He wore a vertically striped shirt under a long overcoat. Paddy could spot someone who hated their body across a room. The overcoat was straight cut with rolled-back cuffs and thin lapels, diagonal pockets. Under the coat his pale gray trousers were pleated and baggy coming into a narrow ankle with a thin turn-up.

The joker rifled through the man’s pockets, pulling melted clumps of paper hankies out of one pocket. He found the wallet in the inside pocket and flipped it open.

“Money not missing. Twenty quid in here. Lived in Mount Florida. Thirty-two years old.” He pulled cards and sodden paper out of the wallet, flipping them dismissively onto the ground after he read them. “Visa card. Member of the Law Society. Chairman of the local Amnesty International chapter, and the Child Poverty Action Group. Our Mother Theresa’s name is: Mark Thillingly.”

“Maybe someone killed him for having a dick’s name,” said the not-funny one but everyone laughed anyway, just for relief.

The boatman didn’t laugh. Still sitting in his boat at the bottom of the cliff, he used a single oar to negotiate the water, remaining steady among powerful eddies. Paddy caught his eye over the heads of the policemen. She could see that he hadn’t lost his compassion for the people he dredged out of the water. He’d been doing the job for ten-odd years and she knew his father had done it before him. If anyone needed a laugh for relief at the sad fate of the late and lost it was him.

“Thillingly,” repeated Not-funny, chuckling again and enjoying his triumph. “And he was a lawyer.”

“I’ll go then.” The boatman raised a hand and the wooden rowing boat slid back into the bank of fog.

The policemen stared down at the body lying limp on the frozen ground, waiting until the boatman was out of earshot, and hesitating because they were unsure when that would be. The joker spoke for everyone but Paddy. “That guy’s a creep.”

Kate had been watching through the dark wood for over an hour, listening to the noises of smashing glass and breaking furniture coming from the cottage. A lot of the furniture had been made for the house in the late eighteen-hundreds, when it was built as a holiday home for her great-greats. The dresser in the kitchen, that was irreplaceable. She wouldn’t get half as much for the place if they ripped it apart.

It was bad of him to do that when he didn’t need to. She would hardly have stashed the pillow in the cottage and left on her own. It was bad of him not to know that.

Her eyes were getting tired, focusing through the bald trees to the cottage so far away. She’d seen them going back to the cars a couple of times to get things and assumed that was what the man in the sheepskin was doing when the yellow light from the hallway was interrupted by his big frame. He passed the car, not turning to the passenger door or the boot, but walking straight past, pausing at the side of the road to look up and down. He stood, turning his head slowly, scanning the wood for movement of any kind. Kate held her breath.

He spotted the boathouse and stopped scanning. He stuck his head out on his neck and looked again. Crossing the road, walking lightly for such a big man, he held big arms out to steady himself as he tiptoed over the muddy ground, hesitating when he snapped sticks before taking the next step, always coming straight for her. She recoiled from the rotting wooden boards, feeling for the orange box lid and her snuffbox. She needed to hide. She looked up at the boat hanging from the ceiling. She was slight but didn’t think the ropes and ceiling would hold her. She tried the orange box lid, knowing it was kept locked, had always been kept locked and the key was in the cottage pantry, hanging up behind the cups.

She looked up at the oars on the wall but they were too unwieldy. By the time she got a good swing he could have grabbed her arm. She picked up her one shoe, hugging it together with her snuffbox, flattening her body against the wall behind the door.