Denise Mina - The Dead Hour

Kate looked back at her parents’ house and wished herself back at the start of all of this. She’d play it differently if she had another chance. Moderate her intake, scurry money aside into a secret account. Now she had nothing but the pillow. And Knox. She still had Knox. And she knew where he lived.

Paddy hesitated by the wooden gate, looking down the long lawn toward the house. She had never been sent out on a death knock. The news editors always seemed to overlook her for the task and for once she was sure it was out of kindness. Dub had been asked to leave the paper after a death knock. He was supposed to ask a decapitated man’s wife how she felt about it but was seen sitting in a café reading a poetry book instead.

It was a critical moment in most people’s professional development. Even seasoned journalists hated it. Whenever people expressed bewilderment over JT’s complete lack of compassion someone would bring up the rumor that he had cried in the toilet after his first death knock, as if it mitigated his lack of humanity to know that there had once been some to beat out of him. More worryingly, some people took to the work: one guy who made the move to a London tabloid had a habit of getting death knock exclusives by turning on the family on his way out of the house and insulting the dead person. It was her own fault, he’d say, bitch shouldn’t have been driving a shit car. The family would be so hurt they’d refuse to speak to another journalist.

It was two in the afternoon and the curtains were still drawn in the living room. Tingling with trepidation, Paddy walked the gray gravel path across the tidy lawn and remembered the horrified cry she had heard through the hedge two nights ago. She was going to hurt the woman again, she knew it. And yet her feet kept moving, one in front of the other, falling onto the gravel, crunching it beneath her weight, displacing it to the side as she passed. She wished she had Dub’s integrity.

She reached the end of the path before she was ready.

The Thillinglys’ front door was sheltered from the elements by a shallow trestle tunnel hung with vines, leafless at the moment, hanging like excised veins around the door. The brass doorbell rang out a soft two-tone.

Paddy stepped back, straightened her coat and scarf, and fluffed her hair up at the sides, hoping she looked like a credible journalist or at least an adult.

She heard shuffled steps approach across carpet and the door opened. A pretty but disheveled woman stood in the narrow crack, head bowed as if expecting a blow. Her dirty blond hair stood up on top and lay flat at one side where she had been sleeping on it.

“Are you the insurance company?” Her voice was as high and breathless as a child’s.

“No, I’m sorry to bother you at this difficult time-” Paddy stared at the small, heartbroken woman and wondered what the hell she was doing here and how frightened of Ramage could she pos-sibly be.

The woman leaned against the door frame, attempting to focus on Paddy’s face. “Who are you?”

“I’m from the Scottish Daily News. I wondered if I could talk to you about Mark?”

A slow tear rolled down the woman’s face and she stuck her tongue out to catch it. “They said you’d come.”

“They?”

“The police. They said you’d come. From the newspapers.”

No one else from the press had been yet. “Oh.” Paddy nodded, trying to jolt the words to the front of her mouth. “I wanted to ask about Mark’s relationship with Vhari Burnett.”

Suddenly awake, Mrs. Thillingly looked up, swayed, then slammed the door shut.

Paddy stood staring at the red paint. If she wasn’t so tired and had her wits about her she could have sidestepped this basic mistake. Of course it was a big deal; Thillingly was accused of killing Burnett. The woman behind the door hadn’t only been widowed, her husband had been slandered as well.

The rain pattered on her shoulders, dripping cold onto her scalp. What a wasted fucking afternoon, and she’d have to stay in the office on Monday morning to return the chitties favor to JT.

Paddy looked down the wet garden, wondering where she could find a phone box to call for the taxi home. Mount Florida was a long way from George Square and farther yet from Eastfield. She could have spent the afternoon at home, in the garage, with the fire on, reading a book or something, warm and alone. She was imagining herself in the big armchair drinking tea when she heard a gasp followed by another loud breath. Mrs. Thillingly was still on the other side of the door, her sobs escalating.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Paddy told the door. “I’m sorry about Mark. Everyone I’ve spoken to about Mark says he couldn’t have hurt her. Mrs. Thillingly?”

After a pause Paddy heard a soft voice. “Diana. Call me Diana. Who did you speak to?”

“The Amnesty people in George Square. Diana, are you all alone in there?”

There was a loud sniff. “Yeah.”

“Should you be alone?”

Diana sniffed again. “Dunno.”

“Please… can I come in and talk to you?”

The lock slid back and the door opened wide into a neat hall. A muggy warmth floated out to caress her face, contrasting with the cold of the day.

Diana turned and walked off down the hall, padding along the carpet in her bare feet. She had the build of a child, slim-hipped and thin-ankled, wearing capri pants and a man’s gray V-neck sweater that swamped her and hung over her fingertips. She flapped her hands behind her as she walked, hurrying away from the woman she had just let into her house.

Paddy pushed the door open with her fingertips and stepped inside, shutting the door behind her. The house was overheated, the air thick with fiber and dust motes from new carpets. The long hallway was papered in pink and gray, with two matching paper borders at hip and head level that made it seem even more narrow. At the far end a doorway led into a kitchen awash with gray outdoor light.

Paddy walked toward it, listening for sniffs and clues that Diana was in there. She heard the fizz of a match striking and her throat tightened with yearning for a harsh, scratchy cigarette.

The kitchen was a later addition to the little thirties house. It was a big room plonked on the back so that the kitchen cupboards ran underneath what was once the outside wall. At the end of the extension was a glass box with a sloping roof, overlooking a large back garden and concrete patio.

Diana was sitting at a dining table in the middle of the glass shed, puffing on a cigarette without inhaling. The tabletop debris suggested she had been sitting there for hours. A blue glass ashtray on the table had been emptied but not washed, and a recently crumpled cigarette, only half smoked and smoldering, lay facedown. A navy-and-gold packet of Rothmans sat next to a very dirty white coffee mug which Diana was clutching, the rim marred with dried brown drips.

Shedding her good coat and leaving it on the empty worktop, Paddy took a seat on the other side of the table. Diana exhaled and, even through the scent of cigarette smoke, Paddy could smell the sharp edge of the brandy in the coffee. Diana was as pissed as a tramp at a whisky tasting.

“I’ve kind of been here all day.” She took a fresh cigarette from the packet and lit it with a match. “Watching the garden. Mark’s parents owned this house. His mother left it to him a few years ago. That’s why the garden’s so well established. He didn’t want to change a thing.”

Paddy looked out at the small lawn bordered by bushes heavy with globe flowers in purple and red. She hardly knew enough about nature to differentiate an oak tree from a spider plant. “Those flowers are nice. The round ones on the bushes-they look like Christmas decorations.”