Denise Mina - Slip of the Knife

Bullshit.

He stepped forward, aware of the brush of his sole on the fibers of the carpet, the rubber of his gloves catching on the landing banister as he trailed his fingers. He was facing the boy’s bedroom door, could sense the living presence on the other side. He did a quick mental rehearsal: open the door, step in, find the torso, knife into left side, straight for the heart. He had a point to make. Every drop of blood, every gut-churning task-they were all necessary. But McBree’s heart weighed like a stone in his chest. The justifications weren’t working tonight. A child. A healthy child. Asleep, trusting the world to mind him.

He remembered his O-level Shakespeare. Macbeth. Losing it. “I am in blood stepped in so far that returning were as tedious as going over.” Something like that. Go. Just go.

His right hand circled the handle of the blade. His left took hold of the door handle, his wrist moving awkwardly, pressed it down, releasing the catch.

“What are you doing here?”

McBree spun on his heel. He hadn’t even heard footsteps, hadn’t heard a door open, no padding feet or steadying hand brush a wall. A woman, good-looking, blond hair pillow blustered, eyes heavy with sleep, standing in the doorway to the master bedroom in a long white nightie, the ties at the neck lying open, exposing the curve of her breasts. He lunged with the knife but she fell back into the room and he only nicked her skin, carving a wide crescent on her left breast. She fell to the floor, scrambling backwards on all fours like a spider, blood gushing, panting and whimpering at the same time.

The man snoring in the bed sat up very suddenly, threw the duvet off and got to his feet, staggering sideways, facing the wrong way. He was six foot two, three maybe, and broad, much bigger than McBree.

McBree’s combat-hardened mind gave him two options: kill them all, stage it like a break-in, or run.

The man stumbled to where he had begun as the woman rolled her head back to let out a ripe, earsplitting scream.

McBree bolted down the stairs, threw open the door, and was gone.

It felt like the first day of school. Everyone was wearing black and looking neat and scrubbed. Men she hadn’t seen looking clean in years were standing around in groups, hair smeared flat, dressed in whatever formal clothing they could find, chatting on the forecourt of the cathedral.

There was Merki and Keck and Bunty and his Monkey. All of the Standard guys were there, none of whom could possibly have known Terry more than in passing. McGrade, the manager from the Press Bar, was there, together with his tiny, bearded sidekick, which meant the bar was shut for the first time in living memory. Sean was standing with the drivers and gave her a wink and turned away.

McVie had called everyone in the business and they had all come because it was about more than Terry Hewitt: it was a celebration of who they were. Terry would have loved it.

Paddy’s eyes prickled. Tipping her head back to stop her mascara running, she looked up at the Gothic spires of the cathedral and the green Necropolis hill beyond, Victorian death monuments choked with ivy. She was getting Pete withdrawals, a tightening in her stomach because she hadn’t spoken to him before he went to school, didn’t know what he’d eaten or if he’d slept at all. She’d call Burns after the ceremony and ask Sandra what he’d had. At least she knew how to make toast.

Glasgow Cathedral dated largely from the end of the thirteenth century. It was saved from destruction during the Reformation when a gang of the city’s tradesmen armed themselves and fought off a mob of treasure seekers in a pitched battle. The squat building was blackened during the Industrial Revolution and sat at the top of the High Street like a fat toad draped in a mourning mantilla.

McVie was greeting mourners like a maitre d’, working the crowd, certain that the Mail on Sunday would be mentioned in all the coverage. He spotted Paddy and Dub coming towards him, did a spot check of her clothes and saw she was dressed smartly.

“You’re up first then,” he said. “Set the right tone.”

“But I haven’t got anything prepared.”

He saw the panic in her eyes. “Just do it off-the-cuff. Since when could you not talk? Did you see Merki’s exclusive?”

“Where did he get that from?”

It was a rhetorical question but McVie looked irritated. “The fuck should I know?” He slipped away to talk to someone else.

A hand landed hard on her shoulder and she turned to see Billy, her first-ever driver, standing behind her, grinning. Billy had beefed up in the intervening years. He had left the News after a firebomb attack on her car, using the payout to buy a burger van so he could continue working nights. His hands were badly scarred, the skin smooth and watered; the little finger of one hand had been removed after a graft didn’t take. He’d had long hair then but it was shaved now, tight into the wood, like Terry’s when she first knew him. His wife, Agnes, was at his side, as warm as a tank. She looked away as they greeted each other with kisses and slaps to the arm.

“And is this your young man?” asked Billy of Dub.

“Oh no, this is Dub McKenzie. D’ye not remember Dub?”

Billy said he didn’t, so they told him about Dub’s time as a copyboy at the News , gave dates and outlined a couple of stories: Dub getting caught hiding in a café when he was supposed to be death-knocking a widow, Dub stapling prawns to the underside of an editor’s desk before he left. Billy still didn’t remember but pretended to and that did well enough.

Paddy and Dub moved away.

“Why are we a secret?” asked Paddy under her breath.

“I can’t remember,” said Dub, pretending he hadn’t seen Keck waving to him. “Let’s body-swerve that tit for a start. Will Callum be all right out there on his own, do you think?”

They had left him back at the cottage with three cans of juice and a loaf of bread, promising to come back later or send Sean. He was happy to stay there, said he had never been to the countryside and wanted to know what all the trees were.

“Not gossiping, dears? Naughty, naughty.” It was Farquarson, Paddy’s first-ever boss, the last editor any of them had known who stood up to the board for them. Paddy had hero-worshipped Farquarson, who’d taken an interest in her, given her writing assignments when she wasn’t due them. He had aged badly since she last saw him. He was wearing a trilby hat but she could still see that his hair had thinned. His ears were long, drooping, the skin loose where they were attached to his skull, and his face was livered and jowly.

He pointed at Paddy, couldn’t locate her name, and then it occurred to him. “Monihan!”

Paddy grinned at him. “Meehan, you mad old bastard.”

McVie was persuading everyone inside and nipped her elbow, muttering, “You’re next to me at the front.” Then he turned to greet Farquarson. “You look a hundred years old.”

McVie didn’t like Farquarson. He had languished on night shift under him and only got out of it by convincing a grieving mother to let him document her son’s death from a heroin overdose.

She was worried that McVie was picking on a faded old man but Farquarson answered, “And I hear you’re a nancy now.”

Insults met and meted, everyone settled into the company and headed towards the chapel doors.

A big chauffeur-driven car pulled up suddenly at the curb. They watched as the driver leaped out and ran around the car to open the door. Out stepped Random Damage, the short, overbearing editor who had turned the News from a dull-as-dust broadsheet into a tabloid success. He was dressed in a beautifully cut gray suit and was carrying a small black box. Paddy realized it was a portable telephone. Why Damage would need a telephone at a memorial service was obvious to anyone who knew him: he was obsessed with image and wanted the world to know he had a portable telephone. Second out of the car was his slim, six-foot-tall wife, who straightened her black velvet overcoat and stood, willowy, at his side. Paddy heard that he had left the press to run his wife’s chain of luxury hotels.