Denise Mina - The Dead Hour

Sullivan shook his head and beckoned her to follow him. The stairwell was painted like a close: thick green gloss to shoulder height and then white. Judging from the skid marks and the chunks out of the green Paddy imagined the stairs had seen a lot of action and scuffles. The dark wood banister had been broken on the first landing and mended with a two-foot length of wood that was a bad color match. Paddy touched it as she passed, her finger noting the bump in the join. She thought of one of Terry Patterson’s articles about the torture techniques used by the Argentinean military. They threw unconscious political prisoners from helicopters into the sea so that the bodies would be found drowned and responsibility couldn’t be traced back to the army. She had heard unprintable rumors that the British government were dropping blindfolded suspects out of helicopters in the North of Ireland. The helicopters were only five feet off the ground but the accused didn’t know that.

Sullivan dropped back to level with Paddy. “The guy who murdered Burnett’s dead. They pulled him out of the river last night.”

“Out of the river?”

“Aye.”

“Was his face burst?”

Sullivan stopped and looked down his nose suspiciously at her. “Why?”

“The drowned man was identified as Mark Thillingly.” She dropped her voice to a mutter. “Sullivan, I saw the guy at the door: it wasn’t him.”

Glancing at Reid, Sullivan nudged her to fall back out of earshot. “But he knew Burnett, knew her well. They went out together, grew up near each other. They were engaged.”

“I can only tell you what I saw,” she whispered. “Even with the ripped face, I’m sure he wasn’t the guy who answered the door. That guy had her blood on his neck.”

“It can’t just be coincidence, though, him dead within twenty-four hours of her murder.”

Paddy nodded. “It might not be a coincidence but it still wasn’t him at the door.”

Sullivan sighed through his nose. “If I could get you in for another look at Thillingly, would you come?”

“Aye.”

Reid stopped and looked back at the two of them ten steps behind him on the final flight of steps. “… ’S a welder, apprenticed since he was a boy,” said Sullivan, hurrying her to catch up with his partner, “and there’s no work anywhere. Man, he’s got no chance of another job if the yard does shut.”

Paddy caught the thread of the lie quickly. “They’re just wicked bastards, I know. They’re goading the coal miners into a summer strike as well, loading up stocks of coal so they can ride it out. It’ll be a disaster for the miners if they fall for it.”

“You two and your politics,” said Reid indulgently. He led them up along a long corridor with a low ceiling and windows set deep into the wall.

They stopped at a door and Reid knocked a jaunty little rhythm, glancing at Sullivan and smiling, anticipating the answer. They heard it as a cheery call from far away.

“Hello out there?” A man’s voice, a highland accent like Murdo McCloud’s, in a high register with burrs and wide-mouthed vowels.

Reid opened the door into a small attic office. The back of the room was walled in with padlocked chicken wire, fencing in two gray filing cabinets and an open set of shelves. A large blue steel safe stood next to the plump, white-haired man sitting at a desk. His eyes were warm and kindly, Santa Claus in a police uniform.

The room was warmer than the rest of the station, pleasantly so, and smelled of polished leather and tea. On the desk was a blue teacup in its saucer with a small matching plate of gingersnaps at the side. He was holding one to his mouth, a crescent bitten out of it already.

“Oh, no,” he said, looking crestfallen. “I’m just having my tea. Can you not come back later?”

Sullivan held up the plastic bag with the fifty-quid note in it. “Important production. Needs to be filed right away. You can drink your tea in a minute.”

PC Santa dropped his biscuit hand to the desk, rolling his eyes theatrically and pretending to be very angry. “I’ll have to make another cup and start all over again. Who is this fine young lady?”

As if remembering that she was there, Reid and Sullivan parted and looked at Paddy with renewed interest to see if she was either fine or a lady. Uncomfortable at the assessment, Paddy took the initiative, stepping across the floor and holding her hand out.

“Delighted to meet a man who takes tea and biscuits seriously. I’m Paddy Meehan.”

The constable stood to meet her hand and shook it firmly once. “Ah, Meehan, now, what county would your people be from?”

Normally, suggesting that someone with an Irish name wasn’t Scottish would be tantamount to hinting at repatriation, but highlanders were as obsessed with their ancestry as the Irish.

“Donegal, I believe, around Letterkenny.”

“Not Derry?”

He was right and she was surprised and smiled. “Aye, the Meehans tend to be from there but ours were from Donegal.”

“And you didn’t go to New York with the rest of them?”

Paddy’s jaw dropped. “How would you know that?” Con’s glamorous cousin lived in New York, in the Bronx, where the cheers came from. Her own family talked about them as if they were movie stars.

He winked. “Lucky guess, actually. I’m a McDaid.” He shook her hand once more and let go. “Colum McDaid.”

He was letting her know he was Catholic too; a lot of the Western Islanders were, having never converted during or after the Reformation. Paddy was ashamed that she cared which religion he was or that it instantly made her trust him more. She was barely Catholic herself.

“Now.” He sat back down and looked at the two policemen. “Now, what’s important enough to interrupt my tea, you godless pair?”

Reid chortled and put the plastic bag on the table, prompting Colum McDaid to put his tea aside and open a drawer next to him, pulling out a large, black leather-bound book. Half the pages were rumpled and crisp from having been written on, with the facing pages flat and new. From the shallow drawer above he took out a thin three-ring binder and opened it to a page of stickers. Seven-digit numbers were penned carefully in a tiny script above the empty spaces where white labels had been peeled off.

Colum McDaid opened the leather book. A margin and columns had been drawn in using a ruler and a red biro. A third of the page was filled in, again in tiny perfect writing. Paddy couldn’t read it upside down but she could just about make sense of it. Each row had a paragraph of jagged capitals describing an item, next to an entry for the case number, the location, a policeman’s name and rank, a date, and, finally, a seven-digit number to match the sticky labels.

Sullivan leaned forward and placed a note on the end of the desk. It was a scrap of paper torn from a ruled jotter with a seven-digit case number on it. McDaid read and understood it immediately.

“Bearsden?” he asked.

Sullivan nodded. “Miss Meehan’s very worried about getting her fifty-quid note back.”

McDaid looked at her and poked the bag with his finger. “So this is yours?”

“Aye.”

“Well, you’ll certainly get it back but it might take a wee while. Depends on how important it turns out to be to the case. Rest assured, though: this production will be escorted by me to the laboratory and back, and the rest of the time”-he pointed to the blue safe behind his desk-“she’ll be keeping warm in there. And I’ll be sitting here watching everyone who comes in.”

“No one else can get in?”

“Not a soul. Top of the police station, manned twenty-four hours, and,” he patted the safe door, “you’d need a lorryload of dynamite to open this door.”