Denise Mina - The Dead Hour

“I can hear you, darling.”

“They’ll kill you like they killed Vhari.”

“No they won’t. I’ve got a plan.” She was beginning to shiver.

Bernie leaned forward and cupped her chin roughly. “Listen to me.” He held her face and made her look at him. His eyes were wild with fright. “Listen.” Kate lifted her chin to get away but he held on, digging his fingers in. “Listen.” Seeing it was hopeless she sat still and looked at him. “Katie, you’re a feckless tit. Your plans are stupid. You couldn’t think your way out of a newsagents’. You’ve got to go to the police.”

She laughed in his face, a genuine, sensible, spontaneous laugh and Bernie loosened his grip and smiled back. She was like herself again and Bernie felt a wash of relief, as if he was meeting an old friend in a hostile crowd.

“But I am planning to go to the police,” she said.

Bernie watched her, reading her face, and he believed her. “God, Kate, fucking hell, I’m so glad. If you lay low and go to the police and just don’t mention the coke, everything’ll be fine. Tell them you went missing and about Vhari and even if they press you, don’t mention drugs of any kind. Promise?”

She pouted, and looked up at him. “Bernie, dearie, I need my pillow to lay low.”

Bernie frowned, annoyed again that she had brought it up. “You’ve no idea how serious this is. Mark Thillingly killed himself the other night because of this.”

“Fat Mark?”

“He’s not fat, Kate. He’s dead.”

“For God’s sake, I’m not responsible for every death in Scotland.” She wanted the pillow. She needed the pillow. The thought of living through the next ten minutes without knowing whether she could get it back scratched at her brain. “Can I have it back?”

Bernie looked at her sadly, noting that she hadn’t asked about Mark or even why he killed himself. “Katie.”

“Give it to me right now or I’ll cut myself.”

“Tell me your plan.”

The dead man giggled in her ear and she hesitated. “Knox. Knox.” She stared into the distance as she repeated the name like a prayer keeping her safe. “Knox’s the out. Paul would do anything to protect him. If I get Knox to talk to him he’ll definitely leave me alone.”

Bernie leaned in and prompted her softly. “But who is Knox?”

“Give me my pillow and I’ll tell you.” She smiled coquettishly, as she used to, but her flattened nose made the look grotesque.

“You’re a fucking nutjob. And you look like a tramp.”

“Piss off.”

He stood up and began to tidy, picking up the biscuits plate, sweeping crumbs from the table onto it. Kate loathed him suddenly. She knew then that she would do anything, literally, the worst she could think of to hurt him and make him give it back. “I’ll phone my parents.”

He looked down at her, the color bleeding from his cheeks until his face was gray.

“I’ll phone them and tell them your home address and where you work. They’ll come and see you. ”

The muscles on his face tightened. He looked a little sick, like he had when he was a boy and felt trapped, which was most of the time when he was at home. He looked at his watch. “Phone your parents if you like. I haven’t got a telephone and I’ll be out when you get back. If they see the mess you’ve made of yourself you’ll be in a sanatorium by teatime.”

“I could call them tomorrow,” she said, twisting the knife. “They will come, you know.”

Bernie let the crumbs slide off the plate into the carpet and dropped his hand to his side. “I don’t fucking care, Katie.” But he did care if they came. She could see he was trembling.

“All you have to do is give me the pillow.”

“I’ve thrown it away.”

“You weaselly little prick.” She stood up and slapped him hard across the face, making him drop the plate. He slapped her back, and felt her flaccid nose brush his palm. She toppled over, landing on the settee, holding her nose. He had made her bleed.

Kate sat up, holding her face, streams of scarlet bubbling through her fingers. She looked at him and carefully tipped to the side, letting her nose bleed itself out all over his settee. She took her hand away and smiled at her bloody palm. “If Paul finds me without the pillow he’ll kill me. My blood’s all over your sofa: the police’ll come here and find it and think you killed me. So now you’ve got to give it to me.”

He hesitated; she could see it.

“Bernie.” She sat up, holding a hand under her nose. “Bernie, I want my pillow so I can get it together and sort this out. Please? I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. If I don’t sort out my own mess we’ll both end up dead. You know that, don’t you?”

Bernie looked at her on the sofa. “You’re going to take it all and kill yourself.”

“Look at me, Bernie. I’ve got a plan. I’m as tough as nuts. If the world ended tomorrow I’d be the sole survivor. I’d be looting for handbags and jewelry. Tough as nuts.” She laughed at her own turn of phrase, holding a hand over her nose to catch the last dribble of blood.

Bernie watched her, smiling sadly, loving her and wishing everything was different, that they had stayed friends and looked after each other instead of bolting from home in opposite directions as soon as they could.

As Kate laughed up at him she heard a breathy huff in her ear: the dead man was laughing as well, deep inside her inner ear.

Paddy was terrified to be back in the courtyard of the Royal Hospital. The car park was crammed with cars and a couple of vans; every space was taken apart from the space where Billy had been parked the night before. It was left empty, a black scorch left from the fire. She tried not to look at it but saw it in the corner of her eye, the soot on the buildings nearby. The car had been taken away but had left its mark on the bubbled tarmac and the great wetness on the building and ground where it had been drenched by the fire brigade.

Paddy shuddered. She had a creepy sense that most of the soot on the building must have come from Billy’s body, from his skin as it burned. A throb started in her throat. She wanted to sit down on the step of the hospital and cover her face and cry. All she could see were his feet, twitching, his heels banging off the car park floor and the white coats gathered around him.

She looked up at the building. A hundred heart-wrenching tragedies must happen in here every day of the week, twice at weekends, and the thought brought her comfort somehow, that she was just a part of a great wave of fright and sadness. Everyone else was being brave about it. She’d be letting the side down if she wasn’t too.

The doorway was busy with staff and visitors coming in and out of the building. Deliveries were being brought in for the dispensing machines in the lobby, cans of juice and boxes of crisps. Paddy stopped in the busy crowd and looked up to the signs on the wall to find the right department. It was isolated at the very far corner of the immense building.

As she walked along the corridors, following the signs, she passed the oncology ward and remembered when her friend Dr. Pete had been in here, when he looked at her with a steady fearless eye and told her he was dying. She missed him. She missed Terry Patterson. When she thought about it, she missed every fucking person she’d ever known and wished it was some time other than now. She wished she was on day shift. She wished her father had a job and her mother was over the menopause and last night hadn’t happened and she hadn’t shagged George fucking Burns. She wished Mary Ann wasn’t a religious maniac and Sean was still her boyfriend. She wished she was thin.

She tripped along the corridor, head down, so distracted that she almost walked straight past the entrance to 7H. It was easy to miss. Only a small sign sticking out of the wall highlighted the fact that the door was there. She turned, caught her breath, knowing Billy would be a harrowing sight, and opened the door.