Denise Mina - The Dead Hour

“Naw.” He grinned at her. “Nothing came over.”

She could see that he was loving this. She nearly told him that it wouldn’t always be this much fun, he’d get as jaded as she had when the tiredness and the sameness became oppressive but she stopped herself. She’d had that spark when she first started, and it was fun taking these small glimpses into unfamiliar lives.

“’Mon, we’ll go.”

She got back into the car, watching the policemen for signs of Gourlay, and it occurred to her that Gourlay had parked outside her house on Friday night. If he had been there earlier and she hadn’t noticed him he could have seen her pull up with Burns. A rush of hot blood up the back of her neck made her think suddenly that possibly, just possibly, Gourlay had followed them to the waste ground and watched them fucking in the car. And he had told everyone in the Strathclyde region. It all made sense now. He was trying to discredit her before the inquiry.

“Sean,” she shouted over the noise of the radio, sounding so alarmed that he turned it down suddenly. “Sean, give us a cigarette, would ye?”

He was a more committed smoker than she was. He pulled the car over to the pavement and handed his packet back to her, watching in the mirror as she took one out and lit it with his lighter.

Paddy drew heavily on the cigarette. It was an unfamiliar brand and the taste raked hard at her throat, making her heart race and her hands shake. Burns was innocent after all. Well, innocent-ish.

“Is there any point in us driving around?”

“Eh?”

Sean took a cigarette himself and lit it. “Is there any point in us driving around if we’re going nowhere? Shouldn’t I just pull over and we can listen from the curbside?”

“Aye, yeah, whatever you think.”

He parked in a street and they sat with the radio blaring between them, smoking, not speaking. Sean didn’t look at her once and didn’t notice how flustered she was at the thoughts rolling around her head. Sitting with him was actually more comfortable than it had been with Billy, and she was surprised by that. She kept looking in the mirror and expecting to see Billy’s eyes.

They followed a call to a high-rise dive suicide and stopped at the burger van where Paddy bought Sean a Nick Special, a deep-fried burger on a bun with a fish stick and extra onions. They ate in the car listening to the radio for West End calls. Neither of them really believed they were ever going to find Gourlay.

She was looking out of the window, looking forward to the hotel room she could never seem to get to, raking through her troubles and feeling sorry for herself, when she remembered that Lafferty was still out there and that if he found her, and she lived, she might look back on this as a high point in her life.

Her hotel room was small, built into the attic space, furnished with a single bed so narrow that turning over in her sleep would be tricky, and a window set deep into the roof, showing nothing but sky. The sheets were nylon and the blankets scratchy but it was quiet and Paddy was alone. She had shared a room with Mary Ann since she was born and had never slept in a room by herself. She could sleep naked if she wanted. She took off all her clothes and climbed into the bed, looking at the sagging wallpaper on the sloping ceiling, luxuriating in the quiet.

As she fell asleep, in her last conscious moment, she listened, as she always did, for her sister’s soft breathing.

She had to tell the board of inquiry about her fifty-quid bribe this afternoon; that, coupled with the knowledge that Lafferty was out there somewhere, prowling for her, made her sleep fitful and tense. Syrupy dreams bled through her mind of Billy burning in sudden bright lights and Ramage scowling and blaming her.

A knock on the door startled her awake. She sat up, hot-faced and bewildered, not knowing where she was for a moment. The officious knock came again, three raps and a pause before the fourth. A man’s voice called out that he was from room service and she was suddenly conscious of being naked and alone in a quiet part of the hotel.

“I didn’t order room service,” she said, sitting up, disoriented and wobbly, dragging her sweater over her head and standing up unsteadily to pull her pencil skirt on.

Someone was breathing behind the door.

There was no spyhole and no chain. She stood behind the door and listened for clues. The knock came again; the same slow rhythm sounded sinister this time. Glancing back into the room her eye fell on the trouser press, on a chair, on the telephone for reception. The phone cord was long enough for her to carry it across the floor to the door and she brought it over, lifting the receiver and pressing “ 0” for reception, holding the handset behind the door as she slipped the lock and opened it an inch, keeping her foot behind it in case the man in the corridor tried to push his way into the room.

Burns was out of uniform, dressed in a shirt and slacks so clean that they looked as if they had just come out of the packet. He gave a penitent little smile and she slammed the door on him.

“Hello, room seven-four-five?” The receptionist’s voice was insistent. “Room seven-four-five, may I help you?”

“No, it’s fine, my mistake.” Paddy hung up the receiver and turned back to the door.

“Paddy,” Burns breathed. “I didn’t tell anyone, honestly.”

Paddy stood panting behind the door. “How did you find out which room I was in? I’m supposed to be in hiding here.”

“I’m a polis.”

So was Tam Gourlay. Lafferty might be on his way up in the lift right now. She was doing his job for him, frightening herself. Paddy rubbed her face and wished she had a mirror. She’d look terrified and pink and sweaty and puffy and didn’t want Burns to see her this vulnerable.

“I heard about Billy,” he said. “I just want to see that you’re all right. Can I come in?”

“I’m fine.” She brushed her hair up at the sides and composed her face.

“Please?”

She hesitated for effect before letting him in. She let the door swing open a couple of inches and backed off into the room. There was nowhere to sit down but on the bed or the single chair. It would seem suggestive to sit on the bed so she took the chair and sat, one arm slung stiffly over the back, mock casual, as Burns stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. He looked very tall and broad in the confined space. He stood for a moment, awkward, his hands patting the side of his thighs, looking around the mean little room with a strangely nervous look on his face. “I didn’t tell anyone what happened between us.”

“No, I know. Tam Gourlay did it.”

He frowned. “How would Gourlay know?”

“He’s been following me, trying to warn me off about the inquiry. He was outside my house that night, I think he saw us.”

Burns’s lips thinned, his eyes widened. “Did he indeed? Ye sure?”

“I saw his car outside my house that night.”

“Right, right.” He calmed himself and looked at her. “You think Gourlay’s bent anyway, don’t you? The guys who questioned you yesterday told me.”

“Well,” she said, unsure whether she could trust him. “I dunno. We’ll see. They didn’t seem to be listening to anything else I told them. I said it was Lafferty who firebombed the car but they were hell-bent on not listening.”

“They don’t always seem interested in the stuff that matters. It’s a bit of an act.”

“Those guys weren’t acting.”

Burns tapped his hands on the side of his thighs again, looking unsure. He looked at the bed and a small smile flitted across his face, suppressed as soon as it occurred to him. “Can I…?”