Denise Mina - The Dead Hour

“I couldn’t give it back. He’d shut the door.”

“Wasn’t there a letter box?” Knox’s despising eyes were gray and half-closed.

To a young policeman his manner would have been frightening but Paddy was a journalist and dealt with cheeky fuckers all day. She sighed impertinently and drummed her fingers on the desk. “We finished here? Can I go now?”

Ferguson sat forward. “Would you say that you left the scene quite content that Miss Burnett was safe?”

This was the crunch question, the one they would be asking of everyone. It was the issue that would decide whether Gourlay and McGregor were guilty of any misdemeanor. The truth was she hadn’t felt Vhari Burnett was safe. She hadn’t cared whether Burnett was safe. As Vhari Burnett and her bloody neck slid back into the living room and out of view all Paddy cared about was how soon she could get back into the warm car. She had assumed things about Burnett that seemed ridiculous now: that she was rich and selfish and slim, that she consented to stay with Neilson, that they were a couple and would sort it out between themselves. There were a hundred selfish, shaming reasons why Paddy hadn’t barged in and insisted Burnett leave with her, and the only way she could avoid admitting them now was to back up Gourlay and McGregor.

“No. I felt she was unsafe. And I still walked away.”

“Why did you do that, Miss Meehan?”

She was too tired to think of a lie. “Same reason McGregor and Gourlay walked away. Because I’m a stupid wee shite.”

Sensing the danger of an unrehearsed conversation, a frisson of panic rippled along the line. The minutes secretary glanced up. Knox wound up her interview as quickly as possible, blocking Paddy from saying anything else untoward.

Sullivan saw her to the door, as if she couldn’t find her own way, and slipped out with her into the waiting room. He checked that Grant wasn’t in earshot. “What you said about her being safe, that was… the right thing to say.”

She looked at him, trembling at the thought that Lafferty might be outside. “I thought you were going to tell me it was stupid.”

“It was that too.”

He smiled down, impressed enough to hold his stomach in for her, and slipped back into the room.

Outside the street was quiet. Paddy hurried along, keeping her eyes on the taxi rank two blocks away, telling herself to stay calm, Lafferty wouldn’t dare pick her up here, not outside the police HQ. A car approaching behind her made her heart leap and she broke into an ungainly sprint, yanking her pencil skirt up over her knees, belting across a busy road, running faster and faster until she leaped into the first taxi in the queue.

“ Daily News office in Albion Street,” she said, heading for the only place she felt safe.

It was three a.m., the dead hour, and Paddy knew she should have slept while she had the chance. Now, standing in the all-night grocer’s, she felt distinctly light-headed and had to sit down to stop the colors fading from everything. The ancient, bedraggled woman being questioned next to her noted the stagger in her step and ignored the police officers talking to her. She leaned over and touched Paddy’s knee.

“Sick?” she asked, and laughed like Mother Death.

Yellow mottled skin hung down over her eyes, her bulbous nose had folds of skin on it, and she had a blackhead on her cheek the size of a thumbprint. By the time Paddy walked in she was sitting on a chair by the door, sipping a half bottle of whisky that she claimed to have brought with her, being questioned about the fight and why the whisky bottle had the same sort of pink price sticker on it as every other item in the shop.

The shopkeeper was being kept away from her, in the stockroom. Paddy could hear him shouting at the officers pinning him in behind the curtain of plastic ribbons that he wasn’t the criminal here. She was a whoor, a filthy thieving old whoor.

Dressed in a number of overcoats, the woman had wandered into the twenty-four-hour shop stinking of drink and TCP antiseptic. She lived not far away and, according to the shopkeeper, came in most nights to steal from him. She was looking for things to sell to buy drink, trying to lift the coffee or teabags. She never went for the few overpriced half bottles of emergency drink, which were kept on shelves next to the cigarettes behind the counter, carefully covered by a cloth out of licensing hours.

Tonight the shopkeeper had had enough and, fly to the woman and sick of losing stock, had left an empty coffee jar and box of teabags on the shelf. The woman had come in and, as usual, made straight for the coffee. She stood, holding the empty jar, trying to understand, holding her coat open ready to pinch it. Finally convinced that the jar was empty, the woman turned to the shopkeeper, dropped the jar, and flew at him, screaming, aiming for the bottles of drink under the cloth.

The shopkeeper claimed he was simply trying to restrain her when a group of young Goths waiting at the bus stop outside the window saw him wrestle the old lady to the ground and rifle through her clothes.

There is no sense of justice quite as uncompromising as drunken nightclubbers’ justice. The Goths ran in and counterattacked the shopkeeper, pulling him off the old woman. A couple of girls sat on him while the rest helped themselves to juice and smokes and packets of crisps, leaving the old woman free to roam at will for the ten minutes it took the police car to arrive.

There weren’t enough officers to arrest the mob so they limited their inquiries to the two main players. Outside, the heavily made-up youngsters in a mess of black and purple, genders indistinguishable, watched shiftily through the window. Littering the pavement around them were half-eaten packets of crisps and biscuits. Incriminating cans of Coke emptied themselves into the gutter.

Paddy came out of the small shop with two pages of shorthand notes but knew it wouldn’t be worth calling it in to the night subs.

Back in the car Sean was mesmerized by the crowd and desperate to hear what had happened inside. “Man.” He smiled, shaking his head in wonder. “You wouldn’t believe these things go on until you’re actually there. Will I find a phone?”

“No point. It won’t make it into the paper.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not a car crash or a murder. They don’t print vignettes, just hard news.”

“Shame.” Sean started the engine. “It was bloody entertaining to watch.”

Sensing that Paddy’s job had taken her away from him, Sean had always been a bit sneery about it, cutting her off when she tried to talk about the sights in the night city. It was affirming to see him so buzzed about it. Suddenly she loved the job she’d been trying to shed for months. By the morning Shug Grant would either know or not know about her fifty-quid kickback, depending on how the leak felt about it. If Shug had been told, everyone at the News would know too. Ramage would call her. She wouldn’t be allowed to take her coat off. Or he might call her at the hotel later and tell her to get out of the room, she was sacked.

“You like this job, then, Sean?”

He pulled the car out to the road. “Don’t tell anyone, but I think I’d probably do it for nothing.”

Sean drove down through the empty town, a high yellow sky with a fat moon hanging low in it. His driving was improving, she had to admit, even in the single night he’d been working.

“You’re less swervy tonight. You’re getting the hang of it.”

“It’s good practice.” He smiled to himself. “It’s great money as well.”

She didn’t want him thinking he was a shoo-in for a permanent job. “This might not be permanent, you know? When you hand in your license they might make an issue out of the fact that you’ve just passed.”