Denise Mina - Slip of the Knife

As she walked up the road she could see busy shadows at the window of the Press Bar and hear a rumble of noise coming from inside. The presses were still; a dry dust was rising from the car park opposite the News building.

Paddy took the stairs, feeling relieved to be back where the fights were familiar and playful, back among her pack. She thought more calmly about Callum. He was nineteen. How many women would he have met in his adult life? Two? Three? Still, the parole board shouldn’t have released him, even if they’d run out of legal justifications to keep him in.

Upstairs, a crowd, back from an early lunch and full of patter and drink, had gathered inside the newsroom doors. As she pushed through, they greeted her warmly; a sub-ed put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a couple of hearty squeezes.

News of Paddy coming in in the middle of the night to write the copy about Terry had got around and everyone was assuming she’d done it out of decency and fellow feeling. Even being greeted on the basis of a misunderstanding felt warm and welcome. She wanted to turn to someone and tell them that she’d just met the most famous criminal in Scotland, and he was a car crash waiting to happen. But she didn’t. She stood with them, smiling sadly as they talked about Terry, letting the sub-ed squeeze her shoulder again, drop his hand and try for the waist before she pulled away, saying she needed to get something out of her pigeonhole.

“I have that trouble all the time,” said someone and everybody laughed.

She turned to the guy nearest her, a short, bald veteran. “Who’s our Home Secretary?”

“Billy, over there.”

Billy Over-There had his coat on and was smoking a cigarette with such robotic precision he was almost certainly very, very drunk.

“Billy, who can I talk to about the IRA?”

Billy’s eyes weren’t focusing properly. He blinked at her several times before rolling his mouth around a name: “Brian Donaldson.”

“Short, dirty blond hair, specs?”

He shook his head. “Five eleven, brown crew cut, fat, no specs.”

“Where could I get hold of him?”

“Shammy’s.”

She hesitated. “Are you drawling ‘Sammy’s’ or saying ‘Shammy’s’?”

Billy Over-There took an elaborate draw on his cigarette as he considered the question. A finger of ash tumbled down the front of his coat. “The shecond one.”

Paddy left him to his smoke and returned to the group. “Is there a pub called Shammy’s?”

A sports-desk guy raised his arms triumphantly and shouted yes to jeers from everyone else. Shammy’s was short for the Shamrock, a Celtic pub over in the Gallowgate. Glasgow had three football teams: Catholic Celtic, Protestant Rangers and Partick Thistle, for supporters who eschewed sectarianism and liked their football tinged with disappointment and hardship.

Paddy found the number in the phone book and asked the barman for Brian Donaldson. He asked who was calling, as if that was any kind of a security check, and Paddy wondered at the wisdom of it as she told him the truth. If journalists were being targeted maybe she should have used a pseudonym. But it was too late. Donaldson came to the phone.

“Wha’?” His voice was smoky and warm.

“Ah, Mr. Donaldson, I wonder if you can help me. A man came to see me at my home last night. He said he spoke for your organization and wanted to tell me that Terry Hewitt’s death was nothing to do with you-”

“Neither it was.”

“He was quite threatening. Can you tell me if it’s deliberate policy to target members of the press?”

“It is not. I’m sorry if you were troubled. Who was it?”

“He said his name was Michael Collins.”

Donaldson laughed softly at the other end.

“I know,” she said, “daft, I know it’s not his name. He’s wee, fair hair, wore steel-rimmed glasses and a blue jumper.”

“Right? OK, right.” She could tell by his voice that he knew who she was talking about. “I’ll, ah, ask around and see what I can do. Sorry, Miss Meehan, if you got a fright or wha’.”

He hung up.

Paddy made her way over to the pigeonholes.

The stack of wooden shelves was divided up into small squares, each with a name underneath. Those who had been at the paper since the sixties had their names picked out in italic calligraphy, while those who had joined in the seventies had a sticker with their name printed on it. Recent recruits had blue tickertape with their name punched out in white. Originally the most lowly members of staff were given the lowest shelves and moved up as they got promoted. As the staffing got more bloated, pigeonholes became scarce and everyone tended to hang on to the first one they were assigned. It was a mark of honor to be a senior member of staff with a pigeonhole near the ground.

Paddy’s hadn’t been claimed while she was away and her shelf was one of the lowest. She crouched down on her hunkers, not a very dignified stance but better than bending over and baring her arse to the room. Inside she found some flyers for union meetings. A talk by the new chair of the NUJ, Richards, who had been at the News. A blank sponsored-walk form. And a yellow note from one of the secretaries, a number, time of the call 9.15, McBride’s Solicitors and Notaries, ask for Mr. Fitzpatrick re Terry Hewitt.

“Miss Meehan?”

She looked up to find Bunty’s sidekick standing formally in front of her. He had arrived at the News with Bunty, like a bonded servant. People called him Bunty’s Monkey behind his back but never knew what to say to his face. He hadn’t introduced himself or clarified his position to anyone but he moved and talked like a henchman, always gliding sideways, easing people around his master, human lubricant, making things run smoothly.

“Bunty would like to see you for a moment.”

Bunty, the paper’s editor, had arrived from an Edinburgh daily a year ago. He had promised the Daily News owners an economic miracle but after all the redundancies and reshuffling the paper was still leaking profit. Bunty wasn’t a happy man.

The walk across the floor of the newsroom felt very long. Paddy had time to panic about having been seen with Callum, about Sean losing his job and herself ending up with no job or home and Burns laughing at her as he drove away from her mother’s house with Pete on visitation days. She was very tired, she realized. The weekend had been less than restful.

The glass cubicle Larry Gray-Lips inhabited at night had the lights on inside and the blinds drawn down. The Monkey waved her towards the door with the grace of a butler. She knocked on the glass and opened the door quickly, keeping the advantage.

Bunty sat at a small corner of the big table, pencil in hand, shading in a big doodle. He was a small, bald man and as such didn’t like to be seen doing small, bald things. He stood up, cheeks flushed defensively, and covered the sheet with his hand. The Monkey slipped into the room behind Paddy and tiptoed up the table to his handler’s side.

“Hello, Patricia.” Bunty covered his annoyance with a flash of teeth. “Shut the door, would you?”

She clicked it shut and took a seat in front of the table. It was a surprisingly large room and housed the big table Bunty used for smaller meetings; the full news ed meetings were held downstairs. Despite the table being a good six feet long, the Monkey and Bunty were taking up barely three feet of one side and looked across at Paddy in unison, smiling, mock friendly.

Bunty made a pyramid of his fingers. He looked like a man with the shadow of professional death hanging over his shoulder, which he was. Sales of the Daily News were in a steady decline, and advertising was plummeting as more and more of the big spenders were going over to the Standard. The Daily News wasn’t making a loss but they weren’t turning a great profit either and the board of directors had been through four of the five stages of economic grief already: hope, disappointment, blame and fury. The next stage, Paddy knew, was good-bye Bunty.