Denise Mina: The Dead Hour

Kate took a drag on her cigarette and reminded herself that those things hadn’t happened. She had just imagined that they had. They hadn’t happened. Realizing that she didn’t know if she had been parked for a second or an hour, she turned the radio on to give herself a measure of the passage of time. Duran Duran. She liked them. Lovely suits. Tans, nice suntans. Princess Diana liked them too. She took another draw on her cigarette and imagined herself at a smart party in Chelsea, Sloane Rangers in hairbands and guys in suits who worked in the City. Rich, rich people. Lot of money, champers, no one eating because they were all as coked up as she was. A room full of striped furniture and lovely things, well made. Italian things.

She felt warm and comfortable. She drew on her cigarette again and smiled at the passenger window as though it were a fellow guest at the party. She nodded at a woman across the room. A titled woman. Someone who had house parties in her country place. People could stay all weekend because the house was so big they’d never run into each other. Never get sick of each other. She invited Kate away for the weekend. She’d invited half the party, but only half, and Kate was included. Kate smiled over at her again. Hi.

Duran Duran stopped and the news announcer came on the radio. Vhari Burnett. Kate heard the name and for a millisecond thought Vhari had done something lovely. Been proposed to by a royal, given an MBE, won a big case. Vhari Burnett had been murdered in her home. Her body was found by a colleague arriving to give her a lift to work. Her body. Murdered. Kate took three sharp, consecutive drags on her cigarette until she was almost certain there was no corner of either lung unfilled by smoke. She tried to see the titled woman from the party again but couldn’t.

She punched the radio off. It was impossible to imagine Vhari being dead. Vhari being away on holiday was possible, she could imagine that, but not dead. Not murdered.

Kate rolled her window down a fraction and felt the skirl of a bitter wind against her cheek as she pushed the cigarette out into the road. She wound it up again and restarted the car.

A hot bath and a tin of ham and a think about things. She watched the road behind her, turning, her right arm slipping over the seamed cream leather seat back. Lovely thing, the car. Lovely things.

Paddy put her key carefully in the front door and pushed it open. In front of her the stairs were still, the bathroom door on the landing lying open, the light off. Through the living room to her right, coming from the kitchen, she could hear the burble of the radio. Two plates crashed together, louder than was necessary. A cup hit a saucer.

Trisha was smashing around in the kitchen, washing and putting away, wiping and preparing breakfast ready for a family with nowhere to go. They didn’t know whether it was the change of life or the family’s circumstances but Trisha was as likely to shout over nothing as burst out crying and Paddy was worried about her. The news was full of stories about families breaking up under the strain of the recession, of mothers being found dead in spare bedrooms with bottles of pills next to them or fathers disappearing off to London. But no one else seemed to have noticed. Con was a shadow and everyone was distracted by their own worries.

Paddy took her leather off and hung it up in the cupboard under the stairs. She imagined she felt the crumple of dry paper from the pocket and blushed that the bloody note should be so near her mother. She walked through the living room, leaning in the kitchen door and hanging onto the door frame, trying to communicate the fact that she wouldn’t be coming in.

The table was set for two people to have breakfast together, Paddy and Trisha. Martin and Gerard were still in bed though it was ten thirty. Mary Ann would be out at mass. Her father, Con, was sitting at the table, flushed with the weather, having been out walking for a couple of hours.

“Been out already, Da?”

Con nodded, stroking his little David Niven mustache. He used to color it, she knew he did, some powdery concoction Trisha bought in a paper bag from the chemist’s, but he’d stopped recently. Now it was turning gray, disappearing against his gray skin apart from a little patch of red making itself known at the side, looking like a trace of ketchup from a distance. Con had been laid off two years ago and had lost faith that he would ever find work again. Force of habit made him rise at seven every day, take the breakfast Trisha set in front of him, and then, abruptly, find the whole hollow day staring him in the face. He took long walks across the industrial desert between Eastfield and Shettleston. Inside flimsy security fences ran miles of Armageddon fields, pitted with tangled metal and abandoned buildings, and Con picked his quiet way, carrying home scraps they might have a use for.

“Find any goodies?”

He shook his head, turning back to his tea. “Nothing.”

Beyond the kitchen window the sharp, low daylight sliced across the grass tips of the overgrown garden and cut through the kitchen. Trisha was at the empty sink, her face screwed up tight against bright morning, wiping down the metal until it sparkled. She looked up at Paddy.

“I’ve put your cereal out.” She pointed to a box of pressed high fiber that tasted like malted paper.

Paddy yearned for bed. “I had something at Sean’s, Mum.”

Trisha looked at her, barely suppressing a pang of fury. “Okay then, but you’ll have tea.” She turned to the worktop and pulled off the knitted tea cozy, pouring two mugs of strong tea from the steel pot. “And how was last night?”

“Oh, quiet,” said Paddy, watching the tea pour and hanging firmly onto the outside of the door frame, as if her mother’s need for company would be strong enough to suck her into the kitchen. “Missed the big stories again.”

“Did ye hear about this girl killed up in Bearsden? A lawyer, nice girl. A Protestant but a nice girl. It was on the radio.”

Paddy smiled at her mother trying to show she wasn’t a bigot. “How do you know she was a Protestant, Mum? They hardly announced that, did they?”

Trisha poured milk into both cups of tea. “Yes, Miss Smarty-Pants: they always mention it when someone’s Catholic. Anyway, she lives in Bearsden and her name’s Burnett.” She held out the mug to Paddy, just far enough beyond the reach of her fingertips so that she would have to step into the kitchen to take it. “The news’ll be on again in a minute.”

Paddy was being sucker-punched and she knew it. Trisha lifted the mug of strong hot tea a fraction, releasing a puff of comfort. Paddy could smell it at the door. She reached for it and no sooner had her fingers curled around the handle than Trisha pulled a chair out.

“Isn’t Caroline down today?” Paddy only asked the question to upset her mother and they both knew it.

Usually Caroline would be in when Paddy arrived home late, and it was ominous that her seat was empty. Baby Con had started school and Caroline came home most days. When she didn’t get the two buses down to Eastfield it was always because of her husband: John’d either given her a sore face or raised hell about the housework and she had to stay home and scrub.

“She called from the phone box. She’s got too much to do today.” Trisha raised her mug to her mouth. “Sit. Just give us your chat for a wee minute.”

Feeling small and unkind, Paddy sat down. “Well, first we went to this car crash but no one was hurt, and then we went over to the police station in Anderston.” She monologued as she knew her mother wanted, giving her the highlights of the night shift but skipping the visit to Bearsden.

Same as all her women friends, Trisha’s life was vicarious. Paddy heard them in the Cross Café and outside the chapel: they passed on secondhand stories about their kids’ friends, got angry about fights their husbands had at work, boasted about their families’ achievements while they themselves stayed in the kitchen. With an unemployed husband and three of her kids sitting at home waiting for the recession to abate, Trisha had very little material. She couldn’t talk honestly about Caroline’s home life and Mary Ann spent her life in the chapel. Marty and Gerard were monosyllabic at the best of times. If Paddy didn’t take the time Trisha wouldn’t have anything to offer.