Denise Mina - The Dead Hour

Kate looked around the car park, realizing that it was overshadowed by the office buildings above. She could have a little snifter quite safely here, she thought, but she was super thirsty and definitely needed a drink first. Or after. After would do too.

She felt naughty as she took the snuffbox out of her handbag and detached the little spoon, dipping it into the powder as her other hand flicked the lid open.

It hurt. For the first time in a long time the inside of her nose burned white hot. She had the presence of mind not to drop the snuff box, even though she had the pillow in the boot. Eyes shut, she snapped the box shut and put it in her handbag, keeping her other hand on the bridge of her nose as she doubled over her knees.

She rubbed the bone vigorously as if that would make it go away. Her eyes were streaming, her nose running. It must have been a big crystal. A big solid coke crystal had landed in her nose and it was tickling like a complete bugger. She gasped a smile, squeezing a tear out of one of her eyes. Complete bugger.

The moment she stepped into the newsroom Paddy knew some terrible, seismic shift had occurred. The last pages of the paper had gone to stone but instead of the usual hemorrhage of staff the newsroom was full of people behaving as if they were extremely busy.

A senior editor on the news desk was talking seriously on the phone while a couple of guys stood behind him, glancing nervously around to see if they were being watched. Even the sports desk looked busy. One reporter was typing and three others sat next to him reading the rival papers. No one read the rival papers except first thing in the morning. They were filling in time, waiting for some great event to unfold.

The photographers were all hiding in their office at the far end of the room. The door was ajar and Paddy could see Kevin Hatcher, the pictures editor, standing by a chair, looking out into the busy room, waiting. Kevin drank bigger quantities more often than anyone else at the paper: that he was standing up at seven o’clock at night was a minor miracle.

She shrugged off her coat and, as she was hanging it up, saw the two copyboys on the bench were sitting tall, their attention not in the newsroom but behind their backs, listening hard to what was being said in the editor’s office.

Paddy watched Reg, a sports reporter, apparently enthralled by a Daily Mail report about the Spud-U-Like shops. He felt her gaze on him and looked up, eyes red and open slightly too wide.

“Farquarson’s getting the bump,” he said quietly. “They didn’t even call him down to editorial to tell him. They came up here and did it in his office.”

Paddy looked at Farquarson’s closed office door and suddenly understood the air of shock and horror in the room. The board were making changes. Farquarson had been in the job for four long years, so it wasn’t because he wasn’t fit for the job: they were making changes because the paper wasn’t making money. Any one of them could go next.

“Who’s coming in?” she asked. “Do we know yet?”

“A bastard from London.”

“How do you know he’s a bastard?”

“Because he’s from London.”

At the far end of the newsroom the door of the office opened and Farquarson stepped out into the newsroom. Behind him a dejected crowd of his favorite editors and subeditors had gathered, along with his star columnist and a couple of red-eyed PAs.

Farquarson cleared his throat. “Right.” He paused as if the room needed a chance to turn its attention to him, as if they weren’t waiting for him. “Well, I don’t need to tell you what’s happened today. If I do you shouldn’t fucking be here.” A polite laugh rolled around the room and stopped abruptly. He held his hands out, like a fisherman describing a fish, but stopped, shaking his head at the floor. “You’ve been…” He stopped again, swallowing hard, looking as if he might cry. He took a deep breath and when he spoke again his voice was loud: “Let’s all go and get pissed.”

A great roar of approval rose from the room, largely, Paddy suspected, gratitude at Farquarson’s managing not to break down in public. Everyone stood up and began to applaud him as Farquarson made his way through the room shaking hands and accepting grand statements of loyalty.

Paddy stayed by the wall as he came past, keeping out of the way. He had been kind to her but she meant nothing to him. He’d known most of the men in the room for ten years or more. His PA carried his coat and briefcase as she followed him two steps behind, smiling at the kindness of those he passed, gracious as a politician’s wife.

Quite quickly the room emptied through the double doors as everyone was carried in the wake of Farquarson’s departure. Paddy heard the loud burble in the stairwell and went over to the window in time to see Farquarson and his coterie burst through the fire doors, leaving them swinging open as he walked down to the Press Bar, shaking hands with the van drivers and the print setters gathered in the street. His grin was forced.

Usually she only saw it at night when she was tired but Paddy turned back to look at the suddenly empty room. It was a shabby mess. The walls were marked where chairs had banged into them, the tables scuffed and the great gray typewriters all looked ancient and tired. The first thing the new editor would ever hear about her was that she took a bribe. In times of economic crisis they always sacked the women first on the grounds that they had no one at home depending on their wages.

Paddy shook her head, her mind rolling over an endless oh-no and the panicked certainty that she’d be out of a job before the summer was over. There was nowhere else for her to go. She didn’t have much experience, her shorthand was so crap even she couldn’t understand half of it. It wasn’t just a career and a future she had to lose. They needed the money. Her mum needed the money.

She looked up and saw Reg still sitting at the desk, his head in his hands, staring terrified at the tabletop. She’d seen the same look in her father’s eyes.

She walked over to him and tugged his arm to make him stand.

“Reg, ’mon,” she said briskly. “Up.”

The red-eyed man got to his feet, looking to her for further instructions.

“Everyone’s shitting it, Reg, you’re not special.” She gestured to him to follow her and prodded and waved him through the double doors and downstairs, into the street and along the pavement.

She opened the door to the Press Bar. A wall of mildly manic cheerfulness met them. Farquarson was drinking in the middle of the room, surrounded by concentric circles of jolly men, all raising glasses and making loud, happy noise, their eyes sad and frightened.

Paddy felt the emotion catch in her throat. A great man had fallen and no amount of chirpiness would make it anything but another fucking economic tragedy. She pushed Reg in front of her. Farquarson looked to the door and saw her there, his face a little lost, unsure.

Paddy grinned a big cheerful lie for him and he returned the kindness. She pushed through the crowd.

“Boss,” she said, slapping his arm as hard as she could. “Did they sack ye ’cause you asked for my move?”

He nodded. “Aye, so you owe me a drink.”

She hit him again and pushed her way to the bar, concentrating so hard at getting through the crowd of men that she washed up between Father Richards and Half-Assed Willie, a notoriously pedantic editor who was having the arse bored off him by Richards ranting about Tony Benn’s leadership bid in a hustings-steps haranguing bawl. Half-Assed sipped his beer, increasingly desperate for a break from Richards’s tub-thumping. True socialism, the great promise of the Benn candidature, a return to nationalization and full employment.