Denise Mina - Slip of the Knife

“Are journalists coming? Aren’t you coming?”

“I have to meet someone here.”

“Who?”

“A man.”

“A journalist?”

“No, a man. It’s not about you, it’s about another thing.”

“What other thing?”

“Nothing to do with you, just another thing.”

They looked at each other and she saw a spark of recognition in his eyes. “It’s not safe here. Who’s it not safe for?”

She shook her head, looking at her hands. “You need to go.”

He nodded as if he understood perfectly and wrapped his arms around his knees, mirroring her pose. “Can I come back here after? I could be happy here. If I had a radio and food, I’d be happy here. I could look after it, sort a wee garden out for myself.”

Her eyes welled again. “Sweetheart, you won’t want to come back here.”

He stared at her rudely for a long time, watching her cry. Embarrassed, she fumbled her cigarettes out of her pocket. Callum took them gently from her hand, opened the packet, and handed her one. He lit a match for her, but her whole body was trembling and she couldn’t dock the tip to the flame. Callum held the end of her cigarette steady so that she could light it.

He sat back, very calm, muttering so quietly she had to tease the words apart in her mind to make sense of them. “Gotaknife?”

She shook her head. “Scissors.”

“No gun?”

“No.”

“Plan?”

She inhaled and took Callum’s big hand in hers. “Son, you’re young. Go home and have a life. It’s time for you to have a life. Live in the country. Meet a girl. You’re handsome, did you know that?”

Callum blushed.

“You’re a nice young man, well-meaning, good-looking. You’re an Ogilvy. Have a family, go to chapel, that’s what Ogilvys do. You like families?”

He nodded eagerly.

“That’s what Ogilvys do.”

“You’re my family.”

“I’m not your family, Callum. I’m close to your family but I’m not your family.”

He sounded sulky when he answered, “Aye, ye are.”

Dub leaned back in the door, pasty skinned and wet eyed, afraid to cross the threshold of the kitchen. “Callum,” he gestured outside, “’mon. Let’s go.”

“I only did it for you,” Callum said to him.

“I know, pal, that was nice of ye. I’m a bit soft. Come on. Paddy needs to be alone here. Someone’s coming to meet her. He won’t come if we’re here. Pad, I’ll be back at ten in the morning to pick you up.”

“Take care on the road,” she said, keeping it light.

He left. They could see him through the side window as he stepped carefully across the moss on the paving stones by the house.

Callum stood up suddenly, staring down at Paddy sitting balled up on the floor. His voice was shaking. “Ye call me son. Ye look after me. Ye are my family.”

Paddy’d known Callum since he was eight years old, had been to his father’s funeral and fought for him before she ever liked him.

“Son,” she said, her voice a growl, “you’re right. We are family.”

She went to wave them off. Dub backed nervously out of the driveway to the lip of the road, Callum guiding him through the grass with waves and warning slaps on the bonnet.

Out on the road, cars were speeding past at irregular intervals, more frequent on the opposite side of the road. Callum climbed into the passenger seat. Paddy could see Dub’s head flicking back and forth, worried about how to get across. Finally, Dub revved the engine, jolted forward, and hit the road going the wrong way. He sped off in the direction of Ayr. They’d have to turn at the roundabout.

The noise of the road died as she walked around to the back of the house. A low sun was setting over the lush green hills, the horizon baby-girl pink. It would be a long night.

She stood at the kitchen doorway, holding the frame to steady herself, and thought of her father. It was resisting death that made it painful. Con should have embraced it. She’d never thought about it before but his resistance was the ultimate act of defiance. She didn’t recognize it at the time, mistook it for fear because she’d never seen him resist anything before, but it took real guts to cling to life when the odds meant you’d die.

It was too dark inside, so she lifted one of the spindly-legged kitchen chairs and took it out, setting it against the back wall, on the spot where they had found Callum. She arranged her funeral coat around herself to keep warm, took the useless scissors out of her pocket and set them on her lap.

Then she lit another cigarette, leaned her head back against the crumbling wall, and waited for the sun to go down.

A car was approaching them from behind, coming out of the dark. Dub slowed to let it pass but it lingered behind them, wary of straying onto the midline of the road until they were out of the hills.

Callum looked at Dub, hunched over the wheel. He didn’t look as friendly as he did when Paddy was with them. His jaw was tight and his eyes narrower. His breathing was fast.

“This fucking road,” he mumbled, glancing nervously in the mirror.

He seemed angry and Callum was afraid that Dub hated him because of the mice. He thought back to Paddy at the cottage, worried, crying and not saying why, wanting him to leave. She said it wasn’t safe.

The car behind slid out to the side, peering around them, and slipped back, gathering speed, headlights growing in the mirror, shining a rectangle of blinding light into Dub’s eyes, before pulling out into the road and passing them in a flash.

“STOP!” yelped Callum, making Dub’s hands jump so the car swerved towards the grass verge.

“Fuck!” shouted Dub. “Don’t scream like that, this is hard enough.”

Frightened at the level of anger in his voice, Callum moderated his voice: “Stop the car.”

But Dub wasn’t listening. He wasn’t looking at him, he was watching the road, checking the mirror every few seconds, holding the wheel so tight his arms were pulling his body forward in a rigid curve. He slowed on the approach to the roundabout, the lights of the petrol station glistening in the dark.

Callum tried to explain. “I need you to stop the car. I need to go back. She said it’s not safe.”

Dub didn’t answer but pulled the car across the roundabout and veered left into the petrol station, blinking hard at the brightness and carrying on until they were around the side of the building, right around at the back, in the dark again. He slowed to a stop.

Callum was sweating. “This isn’t right. She’s not safe.” The words rattled around the inside of the car. The silence afterwards was suffocating.

Dub’s voice was barely a whisper. “She said she loved me. I don’t know how to handle myself. I’m not a violent man.”

Callum wanted Dub to think well of him, not because he could give him a good report or parole, just he liked the gentle way he had about him and how scared he was of the mice. “But I am,” he said quietly. “I am violent. I know how to handle myself. She’s on her own up there and she’s my family and I’m going back.”

Callum wouldn’t have thought someone as wet as Dub had it in him but his cheeks flushed a furious red and he leaned across the gear stick to press his face into Callum’s: “You fucking listen to me: you are a child.” He was pointing in Callum’s chest, poking his finger as if he wanted to stab him. “Sean Ogilvy didn’t take you to live with his family so you could get involved in rubbish like this, d’ye hear me? Paddy didn’t drive all the way up the fucking coast and take shit at her work so you could be a heavy for her. You are a child.”