Denise Mina - The Dead Hour

Kate had the fears badly now. Every person in the street or shadow that shimmered across the road was the first sign of an imminent attack, foreshadow of a gang, a team of Archies, men over whom she had no pull and no power.

Without her looks and the good regard of every man she met to play on, she was nothing but a sad cokehead, past her prime. For the first time in her life she would have to look after herself.

The social club was a gray concrete box with a red-and-white brewery sign hanging outside like a red cross. Three old men in baggy trousers and dirty suit jackets helped each other along the road and up to the red tenements.

Kate waited until the street was empty before opening the car door and stepping out, daintily fitting the strap of her handbag over her shoulder. The exposed metal heel of her shoe skidded on the wet cobbles and she almost lost her footing but grabbed the car door to steady herself, leaning all her weight on it. Two days ago she would have stopped and checked the door, make sure she hadn’t damaged it by grabbing it like that or pulling at it, but now she didn’t care what happened to the stupid car. It belonged to a different Kate. She leaned into the backseat, lifted out the blue-handled bolt cutters she had found in the boot, shut the door as quietly as she could, and stood to listen.

Beyond the darkness of the railway arch was a waste ground. Jagged muddy hills were punctuated with tufts of grass and beyond that a red tenement, dark windows and a bright light at the close opening.

Somewhere in the far distance a dog yelped in pain and stopped abruptly. Fired by the sound she slipped her shoes off and left them by the car, walking to the end of the arch, keeping close to the wall. The frost on the cobbles numbed her soles but she hardly felt it. She’d tried to have another wee sniff after Archie. God, she needed it, but it stung too much to sniff so she resorted to rubbing it on her gums. It wasn’t as pleasant but it worked: it woke her up a bit and took the edge off.

Bernie’s garage had a sign above it. It was cheaply done and badly hung. No logo, no design consultant or marketing manager, just BERNIE’S MOTORS in black paint, handwritten. It was so simple and plain and like Bernie that she smiled as she walked along the shadows toward it. She’d love to see Bernie now, to sit in the garden in Mount Florida and drink Pimm’s or something delicious, Bucks Fizz, something summery. Normally a thought like that would lift her spirits. Normally she would taste the drink, her skin would warm with the sun and she would feel Bernie nearby, but it wasn’t working tonight. She knew what was real tonight. She felt the weight of the bolt cutters hanging at her side, her bare feet and numb toes on the time-smoothed stones, the cold spittle of rain on her ruined face.

Bernie’s arch had been bricked up with gray breeze blocks and petrified gray mortar oozed like ice cream between wafers. In the center of the high bricked arch were two red metal doors padlocked together with a chain so that they swung a few inches either way but wouldn’t open. She lifted the bolt cutters and fitted them around a hoop of the chain, spinning the screw tightly into place and squeezing the hands together. The metal held out for a moment and then snapped open.

Grinning, Kate pulled the big doors from the handles, opening them just enough to step inside, and pulled them shut behind her.

The darkness was absolute. She had never visited but if she had been blindfolded and shoved in here she would have known Bernie’s scent, the smell of motor oil and builder’s tea. A little frightened of the oily black dark, she felt inside her bag for her lighter and broke into a sweat of sheer relief when she found it.

The ceiling above her was cavernous, a red-and-yellow brick patchwork with shadows flickering over it. A train passed overhead and the arch shuddered like the belly of a brooding animal. Kate hurried over to the wall and flicked the light on.

The strip light hung on two chains, swaying at the memory of the last train. She spotted a sink over in the corner, a plastic framed mirror above it, and hurried across. No plug. She let the tap run-even the water smelled of motor oil-and used a bit of orange towel to wash her face. She took a deep breath and looked in the mirror.

Her nose had flattened at the bridge. A glacial deposit of scarlet and white skin sat on her top lip, dried and hard. She prodded it with a fingertip. Solid. No wonder she couldn’t sniff or breathe out of her nose. She turned sideways and looked at her profile. Flat as a wall. She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She’d get a nose job later, when things got ironed out. They could do amazing things now.

She dabbed at the mess with the wet towel and finally picked the huge scab off her lip, leaving the worst of it up her nose to save the raw skin from contact with the air. Finally clean, she gave her customary hopeful little smile but turned away in disgust.

It was a large room. The floor space was quite big. Parked neatly in a row were an old green Jaguar, an MG, and a rust-spotted green Mini Cooper. Cloths and dirty spanners and bits of metal were strewn across the floor. Bernie was a messy little bugger, always had been. Next to her, along the wall from the sink, sat a table encrusted with cup marks and splotches of white paint and receipt books, a pile of brown envelopes for sending out bills, and a filthy, filthy vacuum flask with a tartan pattern on the outside and a thick rim of dried brown tea on the inside. Under the table was a red metal cabinet.

Kate walked around to look at the cabinet from the front. It had long slim drawers for keeping tools and things in, and it was tucked neatly under the table. She walked around to the other side. The table and tool drawer were flanked by a filing cabinet, no taller than the table, blocking the view of the back of the tool cabinet from anyone not standing flush with the sink.

She switched the light off before she opened the doors again and scuttled carefully along to the wall to the car. She opened the boot and lifted the pillow out, carefully keeping the slit uppermost, carrying it like a sleeping child back to the garage and in through the doors.

She sat it on the floor, unpeeled the tape over the slit, and filled up two brown envelopes from the table, sealing them and sitting them upright on the tabletop so that the rim of little white dunes showed through the address window. She pushed as much air out of the pillow as she could, trying not to lose the fine dust, resealed the slit, and folded the empty corners down to make it as small and compact as she could. Then she leaned down by the side of the sink and fitted the pillow behind the tool box.

She stood up and looked at the space critically. Even from the side of the sink she couldn’t really see it. She stepped in front, walked around the side, tried it from the other side of the room. It was invisible.

She loved that little parcel. She could use it to bargain her way out of trouble but didn’t want to hand it over. It was valuable, sure, worth a lot, but he wouldn’t appreciate it the way she did. She needed another chip. And then it occurred to her-Knox. She knew about Knox and she could use this instead. She gasped at her cleverness. Knox would matter much more to him than the pillow. All she had to do was work out how to make the most of what she had.

Excited and buoyed by the thought that she wouldn’t need to hand the pillow back, feeling pretty smart for a party girl in need of a nose job, she scrambled around in the debris on the table and found the keys to the Mini Cooper. It started first time. Good old Bernie. She left the engine running and tiptoed back to the table, fitted the two brown envelopes inside a bigger one to allow for spills. She picked up a stubby pencil from the table and jotted on the top border of an old copy of the Scottish Daily News, “Sorry, Bernie.”