Denise Mina - The Dead Hour

The ugly waitress brought her tea in a stained mug, dropping the plate with the egg roll onto the table so that it rattled as it spun to a stop.

Kate couldn’t bring herself to eat it. She didn’t belong here, she was sure of it. She’d tidy herself up in the loo and hang about for a bit, waste time reading the paper. Then she’d go to Archie’s. Archie’d help her.

Paddy dropped her head into her hands and rubbed her eyes. “Please can I go? I haven’t slept.”

She was back in the little gray office in Partick Marine, back with Sullivan and Reid, both of whom had the pink-faced freshness of men who had slept well and breakfasted. Behind them, out in the corridor, Paddy heard the noises of a busy police station firing up for the day. The wooden platform creaked as personnel scurried along it and the other desks in the room filled up with police officers coming from a morning meeting.

Reid and Sullivan nursed their mugs of tea and looked at the clear evidence bag sitting on the desk. The blood had dried on the fifty-quid note tucked inside it, creating a rusty residue that sat in the seam of the plastic. Paddy’s attention was more drawn by the packet of digestive biscuits sitting next to it, the wrapper messily ripped up the side, scattering greasy crumbs onto the paperwork. The tantalizing brown edge of a biscuit peeked out of the red packet, promising Paddy a logy carbohydrate euphoria. She wished she was alone with the packet.

“Why didn’t you tell us last night?”

“I didn’t know how to bring it up. I tried, I was hanging about at the door, d’ye remember?”

Sullivan glanced up at the doorway as if she might still be there and nodded softly.

Reid tried to take charge. “How do we know that you didn’t get this fifty from someone else?”

It was a preposterous suggestion but Paddy didn’t want a fight, she just wanted to go home. She took a deep breath. “I was reluctant to tell you because I don’t want it to get out.”

She looked up at them but they averted their eyes. Sullivan suddenly straightened his straight tie and Reid watched him, studying his senior partner for tips on how to behave.

“Look, it’ll get out eventually,” said Sullivan. “There’s going to be an inquiry into the call to the Bearsden Bird’s house. They’ll want to talk to you. No one can keep a secret in the police. You might want to tell your boss before he hears it from someone else.”

Paddy’s stomach cramped at the thought of having to tell Farquarson what she had done.

“Let’s go over this again,” said Reid. “You still printed the story after taking the bribe?”

“Well, I didn’t really take the bribe. The guy just put it in my hand and shut the door in my face. It’s a lot of money.” She looked longingly at the fifty-quid note and then up at Reid, angry, as if he was trying to steal it from her. “I want that back, by the way, especially if it’s no use, and if you can’t use it I want it back in jig time.”

“You’ll get it back,” said Sullivan, blinking slowly as he spoke.

“Now”-Paddy held a finger up to get his attention-“please don’t think I don’t mean that. I’ll be phoning every day until that money is released into my hand. Where does the evidence get kept?”

“There’s a constable upstairs,” he said. “His job is to be the production keeper. He’ll trace it coming in and out of the lab and keep it in a safe.”

“A constable? What does that mean? Someone who’s nineteen?”

Sullivan looked offended. “McDaid’s fifty-five. A lot of the old constables never changed rank.”

“Can I ask him about getting the note back?”

Reid curled his lip. “You want a fifty-quid note covered in some dead woman’s blood. What are you going to spend it on? Makeup?”

Paddy felt a hot spark at the nape of her neck. “I’ve got rent on a four-room apartment to pay for my mother who’s never owed anyone in her life so, no, I don’t think it’ll be getting spent on makeup.”

Sullivan pulled himself straight. “I’ve got three brothers at Scott Lithgow, been there all their working lives.”

Scott Lithgow shipyard was about to shut and if it did thousands of workers knew there were no jobs waiting for them elsewhere. The dole money was so low it was effectively a life sentence. Mrs. Thatcher publicly insulted the workers, and when a committee of wives traveled to London with a petition she refused to meet them, nor would the deputy prime minister or the chancellor. The beleaguered women had gone to 10 Downing Street.

Sullivan was flushed and angry. “The doorman wouldn’t even take the petition through the door. What would it have cost him?”

It was unusual for a policeman to speak against the government. Sullivan smoothed his hair back and, she suspected, regretted what he had said in front of Reid.

“Anyway,” Sullivan changed the tone, “I’ll give you the production number and you can call the lab about it and the evidence room as well. Once it’s in the evidence room there’s a wee old guy in charge and he’s the most trusted man on the force. You’ll get it back, don’t worry.”

Reid glanced nervously at him and took over. “What made you come back?”

“I met Tam Gourlay and it reminded me.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“I was at the house of a drowning suicide in Mount Florida and ran into him.” She looked straight at Sullivan, hoping they wouldn’t press her further.

Sullivan tipped his head back. “You ran into Tam Gourlay on the south side in the middle of the night?”

“Aye.”

“Tam who works the north and never goes south of the river?”

“Look.” She rubbed her eyes again. “Can I go home? Or at least have another biscuit to keep me awake?”

She could feel Sullivan watching her, willing her to look at him. She didn’t.

“I don’t think biscuits keep you awake,” he said, “but wire in, wee hen. We need to speak to someone.”

They left her sitting at the desk for ten minutes, alone with the biscuit packet. She had another digestive and then another. The sugar gave her a little lift so she had another. The rhythmic chewing became hypnotic after a while and she stared at the desktop, eyes unfocused, munching and munching. Policemen came and went from the office. An officer at a desk across the room sniggered lasciviously down the phone. A young officer in stay-press gray slacks came and left some papers on each of the desks in turn.

When she came to she found she had eaten two thirds of the packet. She brushed the crumb trail from the packet to her place onto the floor and pulled the sides of the packet straight, to hide the meager contents.

Sullivan came back with Reid, carrying their jackets over their arms, smiling and nodding over at her as they snaked through the desks, licensed to be pleasant and friendly.

“So.” Sullivan’s glance lingered on the erect packet for no more than a second and she knew he hadn’t even noticed. “Thanks for coming back in. We’ll drive you home but first we’ll take the note upstairs. You can come with us if ye like, and meet McDaid.”

Paddy bounced to her feet and grinned. By the time Sullivan and Reid got back to their desks they would blame the missing biscuits on a greedy passerby.

The station stairs were busy. Reid and Sullivan glanced back to Paddy periodically, checking she was behind them as they fought their way against the flow of officers coming down.

“So,” she said, “have they found the guy who killed her yet?”

“Aye.” Sullivan turned back. “They’ve got the guy, yeah.”

She felt a wash of relief. “Brilliant. Is he in the cells here?”