Denise Mina - Slip of the Knife

She stood in the hall watching him in the bedroom, stepping over a tidal wave of dirty clothes stacked against a chest of drawers. She turned away, looking back into the living room. The line of cocaine on the coffee table was wrong. She tipped her head at it: if Kevin had cleared a space to chop a line he would have put the boxes of negatives on the floor under the table, which was the only empty space that was big enough. She glanced around at the settee, under the television, by the chair. The boxes were gone.

“There should be boxes of negatives somewhere near the table, they were on the table…”

The nosy officer was smiling out at her, standing beyond the rumpled bed, triumphantly holding a big black portfolio that Paddy recognized from her last visit. He put it on the bed.

“Wait, wait,” she said. “If Kevin’s attacker picked it up his prints’ll be on it.”

He shrugged, slipped the elastic band off its shoulder, flipped it open, dragging his greasy fingertips down the cover with a recklessness that Paddy couldn’t quite believe. She realized that he wasn’t a considered liberal or a genius working undercover. He was an idiot who didn’t believe her fantastical story that Kevin and Terry had been killed by someone Kevin had photographed. Quiet people always fooled her.

He lifted the photos, one after the other, looking at them and at her, waiting for her to say stop, there he is, but the black woman’s picture wasn’t in the portfolio.

“Well, it was there,” she said, “and the negatives have gone.”

He replied with his customary smirk.

Echoing footsteps heralded the return of the older officer. Panting lightly, he rolled his eyes at the stairs and caught his breath enough to order the other officer to secure the flat. They shut the door, fixing the lock to stop it blowing open in a draft but not much more.

“Listen,” Paddy told their backs, “I really have to go. I’ll give you my number if you need to call me.”

“You’re coming with us, Miss Meehan,” the older officer said with relish. “DI Garrett wants to talk to you in Pitt Street.”

Outside, Paddy could see that they hadn’t had any trouble finding a parking space for their squad car. They had stopped it in the middle of the two lines of cars and got out, and now it was jammed between the other cars in the street. The officer who had pawed the portfolio could only open the back door halfway for her.

“But I’ve got my own car,” she protested.

“No,” his friend said, “you can’t drive your own car to the station.” He didn’t want her driving in on her own in case she took a wrong turn and pissed off, presumably. Nor would he agree to his partner accompanying her while he drove the squad car.

“Corroboration,” she said, letting him know that she understood. If she suddenly confessed that she’d attacked Kevin they wouldn’t be able to use it in court without a second officer hearing it too. He didn’t answer her. “So I’m a suspect?”

“He had a stroke.”

“If I’m a suspect you should caution me.”

But he wasn’t willing to arrest her, or let her go.

“Can I get something out of the boot of my car?”

They glanced at each other and said no.

“It’s another portfolio like the one upstairs, but it’s got the picture I was telling you about.” She handed them the keys. “You get it.”

Together, they walked down to the corner and found her car parked precariously on the turn of the curb.

“This is illegal. You can’t park here. You’ll get towed.”

It might have been the shock, or the worry, or just the officers’ cold officiousness, but Paddy found herself trembling with annoyance.

“Look, I was worried about Kevin and just stopped the car to run up and chap the door, OK? I didn’t think I’d be in there for a full fucking hour and a half, havering about.”

But they were unmoved. “You’ll still have to move it. What if a fire engine needs to come along here?”

“The ambulance got in OK.”

“Fire engine’s wider.”

They saw her look back accusingly at the squad car. They’d blocked the entire street.

“We can do that,” the younger officer said smugly, “because we’re on police business. But you’ll need to move yours.”

“Where to? There isn’t anywhere.”

“Put it down there at the turning circle.”

She threw her hands up. “Right,” she said loudly, “fine, I’ll fucking move it.”

They gave her the keys and she climbed in, shut the door, and started the engine. She threw her Volvo into first, mouthed “fuck ye” at the officers and sped off, heading straight for the main road.

It would take them fifteen minutes to get out of the narrow gully of cars they’d jammed themselves in.

The West End was the student quarter of the city and every second shop, whether a dry cleaner’s or a newsagent’s, had a photocopier in it.

She stopped at a newsagent’s near her house and opened the boot, sorting through the portfolio, pulling the photo of the black woman out and rolling it into a cylinder before shutting the boot and going in.

A hand-scribbled sign on the door said that only two schoolkids were allowed in at one time. When she got inside she could see why: she was in a shoplifter’s paradise. Crisps and sweeties were stored in boxes near the door, the magazines were in a blind corner by the exit, and they even had cheap toys piled up on a shelf at elbow height to a child. The woman behind the counter sat up nervously as she came in, as if expecting a fresh assault.

Paddy could tell by the concentric circle of dirt around the copy button that the photocopier had been used a lot. She made three black-and-white copies, moving the picture around to get Collins’s face in the center of the frame, then made an extra enlarged one and a color picture that didn’t come out very well. There wasn’t a lot of color in the background anyway but Collins’s shirt came out an irradiated pink that bled into his neck.

She was looking at it, worrying about the quality, when her eye was caught by a shadow in the cabin of the car. A rainbow of shadow in the passenger seat: the driving wheel. She realized suddenly that Americans must drive on the other side of the road, the car was left-hand drive. Collins wasn’t the driver. He was just the passenger: the fat man was driving him somewhere.

She paid the woman behind the counter and bought a giant chocolate bar and another packet of Embassy Regal, justifying the fags with the thought that if she wasn’t going to drink with Brian Donaldson, she’d better have at least one vice and overplay it. Guys like that never trusted the abstinent.

The Shammy was certain of its clientele, that much was clear. The barman was all but wearing a buckle hat and hollering begorra.

They sold Guinness on tap, two kinds of lager, Irish whiskey and Tayto-brand crisps. Everything that wasn’t smeared yellow with cigarette tar was green, even the seats. Wizened paper shamrocks were strung along the back of the bar, a souvenir of a St. Patrick’s Day past, although what the noble-born stoic would have made of the filthy bar was anyone’s guess.

Along three walls a high shelf held memorabilia of a less benign kind. A brass armor shell had a blackened commemoration band around the bottom. Dusty flags of several Irish counties, Mayo, Galway and Cork, were propped up in among tankards. A plastic replica gun and a small, very badly executed model of an H block from the Maze prison made out of painted cardboard, with tiny men sitting on one of the roofs, were placed near the front.

The centerpiece of the bar was a brass engraving of Bobby Sands mounted on a block of wood, his eyes not quite matching, his long over-the-ears seventies hairdo just as misplaced on his square farmboy’s face as it had been in real life.