Denise Mina - Slip of the Knife

A floorboard groaned as he took a step and corrected himself. Cloth brushed a wall. He was hanging on to the wall because the floorboards would be better attached there. Smart. Following his lead, she slid around the room, taking careful steps, tiptoeing silently along the edge of the room, past the back door, around to the side of the dresser where it was dark. He would come in here, look around from the door, searching at head height. So she crouched, keeping her feet exactly where they had landed, twisting her knees to keep in the shadows.

She heard a breath, a nasal exhalation, coming from the living-room doorway. A congested smoker’s breath. And then McBree spoke, not whispering, just in a normal voice. As if he was asking for a paper.

“Well, you called me here.”

He was right. She slid up the crumbling wall to stand. He stepped around and looked at her, flashed a smile as if they were friends of old.

“Come out here,” he said, sounding kind.

But she didn’t. “Do you know who lived here?”

He gestured for her to come over.

Again, she stayed where she was. “Terry Hewitt grew up here.”

There was no flicker of recognition. “It’s like a lot of the old houses at home.”

“’S a bad road out there, isn’t it?”

“Bad, aye. Blind turn out there.” McBree looked around the room, as if there was anything to see in the inky dark. He reached into his pocket and took something out. She didn’t realize it was a packet of cigarettes until he lit one. He held them out to her, trying to goad her out of her corner.

She ignored the offer. “Terry’s parents died on that driveway. He was seventeen. Only child. First on the scene.”

“Aye.” He lifted his cigarette to his face, inhaling greedily, the glow casting a vibrant red over his glasses, masking his eyes. “My parents’ chip shop got bombed. That’s how they died. Ripped limb from limb, my daddy was.”

“Are you an only child?”

“God, no.” He looked at her pointedly. “There’s hundreds of us.”

“Did they get the bombers?”

“Who? The police?” He chuckled. “No, never got them. Knew them but never bothered arresting them.”

“And now you’re working for the people who let your parents’ killers walk.”

McBree gave a small start, then laughed at her and twirled a finger at his ear. “You messing with my head, are ye?”

“How can ye? What have they got over you? Are ye gay, or a gambler or something?”

He laughed again, less certainly this time. “You’re very young for your age. Things are more straightforward when you’re young.”

“Have they got pictures of ye doing something nasty? Torn loyalties: betray the cause or be known as a gay boy? Or did you just forget what side ye were on?”

“What side I was on?” His voice was high and as he looked at her she could see the hate building behind his eyes, the loathing that would justify the attack. “Like there’s two sides in the world and you get to pick one, you stupid bitch.”

“There’s more than two?”

He sneered. “Whose side are you on, ye fat, ignorant cow, your mother’s or your wean’s?” His glance slid suddenly to the side and she knew instantly that he regretted saying it. He lifted his cigarette to his mouth, sucked smoke deep, deep into his lungs, the red tip flaring against his troubled face.

“It’s your kid?” she said softly. “They’ve got something on one of your kids?”

McBree held his breath, exhaled thick smoke, and looked back at her. “Ye’ve got the pictures?”

“I read about Donaldson’s boy being murdered in prison. Did they have something on your kid? Were they going to send him to prison?”

Eyes downcast, he held his hand towards her. “Just give us the fucking pictures.”

“And you such a big man, they’d try to kill him for sure. You’re doing all this for him. You’d kill Terry and Kevin and my five-year-old son to protect him?”

He dropped his hand, looked at the ceiling, composed himself. When he looked back at her he was smiling. “Will I come over there and get them from ye?”

She put the scissors in her pocket carefully, took the photocopies out, balled them in her fists, and threw them over to his feet.

He smiled wryly. “Is that your wee hidey-hole over there, wee mousey?” He bent down, scooped up the balled photocopies, and stood up again in a flash. He was more agile than he looked. He watched her as he pulled the paper straight, glanced at it, and took his lighter out.

“Now…” He touched his lighter to the edge of the sheet, holding on to the top corner while the flames took hold and then letting go, watching the flickering paper float to the floor. “Well, I for one feel much better.”

She didn’t see him coming. Didn’t see him drop his cigarette or take a step-just, very suddenly, he was across the room with one hand on her neck and the other on her wrist, pinning her against the wall, pressing her head into the crumbling plaster. He had seen the scissors in her hand. The fist around her neck tightened, squeezing the breath from her, making her tongue swell, lifting her off her feet.

Paddy swung her foot at his balls but missed, waved her free hand at his face and managed to knock his glasses off, but he didn’t flinch. He just pressed tighter and tighter until her eyes felt too big for her head, until her ears began to scream a high-pitched tone, and then he let her go.

Too stunned to go for the scissors, she stood, the very tip of her nose touching his, looking into his eyes wide with shock.

McBree dropped to his knees, bending forward, pressing his face into her groin like a man pleading for mercy. She raised her hands away from him, remembered her scissors, and fumbled to get them out of her coat pocket as McBree swayed first one way, then the next, and fell onto his side.

Callum Ogilvy was standing behind him, panting, holding a brick.

Behind him, framed in the kitchen doorway, furious and carrying a red petrol can, stood Dub. “I told you to wait in the fucking car!” he shouted.

Paddy, Dub and Callum sat close together along the wall, numbed, watching the man die. McBree’s right hand had landed on his chest but the left hand was thrown out to the side, palm open to the ceiling, like a singer reaching the crescendo. On the top of his head, facing the three of them, was a gash of bloody skin, a ragged split. Warm blood was still oozing lazily out of it, the puddle black in the dark of the kitchen, a slow-moving slick of ink that glistened silver as it split into tributaries on the uneven floor, making lakes of dips, looking for the sea.

The left hand was near to them, sitting in a diamond of the morning light coming through the window. Paddy could see a strip of soft white skin under his heavy wedding ring. His face looked strange without his glasses, naked, vulnerable. His eyes were smaller than she’d supposed, his lashes short and curled.

“We bury him in the garden,” said Callum.

Paddy was perturbed by his attitude. “He’s not dead.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” said Dub.

They sat in silence for a moment. Callum took a breath and spoke again. “We burn the place down with him in it. They come here and find the food and one sleeping bag. We leave a lighter near him and a packet of fags and they’ll think he was a jakey who was living rough and set fire to himself with a fag. The problem is the car out the front… We could drive it back, lose it in the city.”

Paddy and Dub looked at him. He was very calm, as if he had been born for this moment.

“Callum,” said Paddy, “the man is not yet dead. What part of that don’t you get? He’s not dead, he’s alive.”