The Dead Hour (26 page)

He was talking about Burns, hinting at the rumors. A hot flush crept up the back of Paddy’s neck but she stared at him defiantly. The police were a tight community. They drank in the same pubs, supported the same football team. They gossiped incessantly about each other, knew who was shagging who, who drank too much, who the idealists were, and who was corruptible or corrupt.

One of the officers stole a look at his watch.

“Apart from Gourlay and McGregor, I’m the only person who saw the good-looking guy at the Bearsden Bird’s door that night,” she said. “They’re saying it was the river suicide, Mark Thillingly, who killed her and I say it definitely wasn’t him. Doesn’t that make you wonder?”

They glanced at each other, hesitant, knowing, she felt sure, that Gourlay and McGregor were men of questionable ethics. The knowing looks dissolved into apathy. Ten minutes and they could go home. They just didn’t give a shit.

Paddy felt her eyes brim with big, stupid tears. “If Lafferty kills me it’ll be on your heads.”

The canteen doors opened and the skinny copyboy peered in. “Meehan? Ramage wants to see you when you’ve finished here.” He looked at the unhappy group around the table and slid back out to the corridor, shutting the door noiselessly after him.

Paddy looked at the bored policemen and felt a burst of righteous fury. “Is this what you joined the police for? To protect each other? What if Gourlay and McGregor are bent?”

She’d gone too far. One officer hissed a warning at her.

Paddy stood up suddenly on unsteady legs. “If that animal hurts my mum I’ll come and find the three of yees.”

She shouldn’t have voiced the fear out loud. She started to cry, her face convulsing as she edged out from behind the table.

As she pulled the door open she heard one officer mutter under his breath, “That’s our home time, guys.”

Ramage’s gruff voice called out, “Come!” Paddy brushed her mouth and chin for chocolate debris, stood as tall as her failing backbone would let her, and opened the door.

Dwarfed behind the enormous desk, Ramage had an early-morning shave that made him look young and vulnerable, a small boy in a starched shirt and tie. He was sitting back in his chair, three neat piles of papers sitting side by side, perfectly aligned on his desk. Farquarson would have looked crumpled already, the papers would have been scattered around a tabletop, and he’d have been hunched over them, working.

“Meehan,” Ramage said baldly. “I want three hundred about the firebomb, this time do it in first person and make it punchy. Get Frankie Mills to take a photo of you looking like shit and then fuck off home for a rest until I call you.”

She shook her head. “No. No picture of me. The guy who did this is after me, but so far he’s only got my name. I don’t want him to have a photo of me as well.”

“You think he bombed Billy thinking he was you?”

“Billy looks like a woman from the back,” she explained. “He’s got a curly perm. The guy crept up from behind and threw the bomb at the window. He might even think he got me. When he hears from the police that it was someone else he’ll come to my house.”

Ramage smiled and widened his eyes at the mention of the police. “You think the police are giving him information?”

“They’re the only people who know I’m not saying the same thing as the coppers on the call.”

Ramage nodded at his desk. “So,” he said to himself, “a young lady on the brink of a big story.” He licked his thumb and reached forward, moving a sheet of paper from the middle stack to the next one. He stopped to tidy the edges of the pile. She could almost see the captions on each one: layoff, potential layoff, keep. She hoped she was being moved to keep.

“Okay, then. Three hundred words and then fuck off home.”

“Look, I can’t go back to my house. The police haven’t caught the guy and as far as I know he already knows where I live. I keep catching the same car watching my house. I need a hotel room.”

Ramage smirked at her audacity, put the pen down, and sat up straight to look at her. “Good for you, Patricia.”

“My name’s Paddy,” she corrected curtly.

He tensed his brow at her. “Yeah, don’t act the uppity twat with me.” Staring at her, he licked his thumb again and moved the sheet back to the original pile.

“Boss,” she said, though it nearly choked her, “I’m going to get you a great story. Sell shitloads of papers. Shitloads.”

His smile was reptilian. “We’ll see. I’ll shell out for a bed and breakfast, and that’s only for three days—”

“No, it has to be a hotel. Bed and breakfasts make you leave during the day and I need to sleep.”

He didn’t like being interrupted. He raised his hand and licked the thumb again but stopped and smiled, dropping his hand without moving a sheet. “Three hundred words, and make it good. You’ll need a driver. Know anyone?”

She remembered Sean. She didn’t know if he’d passed his test but the image of his face soothed her. “I do, but he hasn’t got his own car.”

Ramage shrugged. “Get one out of the pool. Tell them to get a new radio and fit it.” He looked her up and down. “You’re young, Meehan. Was Farquarson the first editor you’ve worked under?”

She nodded dumbly.

“You probably miss him and think I’m a dick.”

She wanted to nod but guessed that it wouldn’t be well received. “Dunno.”

Ramage’s smile was almost genuine this time. He lifted a gold fountain pen and tapped the soft green leather blotter in front of him in a slow, rhythmic thud. They should have been up on editorial, in a noisy room surrounded by bustle where the dull thunk of a stupid ostentatious gold pen would be lost.

He shifted in his seat. “As you go on in this business you’ll learn that loyalty to dead men is a waste of time. Grieve, get over it, and then move on to arse-licking the next man in charge. That’s the business we’re in.” He smiled faintly, as if his brutal creed was a source of pride. “You can come with me or you can give me that uppity cow crap and end up selling advertising space. Understand?”

Paddy nodded and Ramage dismissed her with a flick of his hand.

Paddy backed out of the room and shut the door quietly. The windows along the corridor let the weak light of the day into the corridor. She slowed to a stop, leaning on the windowsill and looking out over the roofs of the Scottish Daily News vans parked outside. In the future the printworks wouldn’t be under the paper. They’d move to the new site and the building would be nothing more than an office. They could be selling insurance.

She looked out over the gray day and knew Billy’s family would be in the hospital, waiting for her to turn up and commiserate on behalf of the Daily News. She should go and phone Sean and tell him he had a good-paying job if he wanted it. She had three hundred words to write and just six hours before she was expected at the inquiry into the police call to Burnett’s house, but still she lingered in the lemon-scented corridor, looking out of the window at the windy street, feeling one era slip into the past and another begin.

Bernie knew it was Kate at the door. The whisper of a knock at ten in the morning, the tentative pause between the raps—he didn’t know anyone else who would do that. He stood behind the door, sensing her on the other side, wanting to open it to her but never wanting to see her again.

“Bernie?” Her voice was as familiar as his own and he could read volumes into the timbre. She was frightened and worried that he might be angry with her. She was ill too, didn’t sound strong. Her normal voice was breathy but there was no air behind the voice. “Bernie? Let me in?”

He imagined what she’d say to him if he did open the door: there were bits of engines and old newspapers stacked all over the floor of the pokey wee hall. He had pale blue striped pajama trousers and an undershirt on, hardly appropriate for receiving such a grand guest. But Kate had deigned to come to his council house, she’d never been before, she might not be just as snooty as she usually was.

“Darling? I’m cold.”

Bernie didn’t even make a decision to open the door. The reflex to save Kate from any and all discomfort was so ingrained that he leaned forward and pulled the heavy toolbox away from the bottom of the door while he snapped the lock and pulled it open.

He gasped when he saw her. As soon as the breath left him and his hand was across his mouth he knew he had broken her heart.

“You’re so thin,” he said, lying to spare her.

She knew why he had gasped. He could see by the way she hung her head and looked at his feet. Her hand rose to her face, covering her nose. It had collapsed. The tip drooped over her top lip like the nose of a witch in a children’s book.

The last time they met, at the old man’s funeral, she’d looked just as stunning as ever. She’d had the sort of looks that caught the eye and kept it, that made a man feel that his hands were designed to fit around her perfect face, cinch her tiny waist. She knew what she looked like then, had the sense of absolute entitlement that truly beautiful girls have. And she knew what she looked like now.

“When did you last eat?”

She raised her eyes and looked so defenseless she could have been twelve again. “I’m cold, Bernie.”

She had barely spoken to him for years, had been the cause of Vhari’s murder, had stolen a car from him and planted a parcel in his garage that could have had him killed, but Bernie reached out and took her hand, pulled her into his modest flat, and shut the door to the world behind her.

The floor was incredibly dirty. Paddy had been asleep in Farquarson’s darkened office for three hours, lying on the dusty floor, starting awake every twenty minutes or so at noises from the newsroom.

She lay awake now, knowing she should get up and phone her mum again, just to check. Her hot eyes looked along the length of filthy carpet, past the indents from the conference table, to the door. Through the half-opened venetian blinds she could see shadows moving past and the still, squat figures of the copyboys perched on their bench, waiting to be called for a chore. She should get up and phone her mum, ask if she’d seen a red Ford outside. She should apologize to JT for not getting his Mandela clippings out for him. She’d been expecting him to burst into the office all morning to give her a bollocking for not having done it already.

A perfunctory rap on the door was followed by the door opening, and a shard of bright light made her eyes smart.

“Ramage has booked you a hotel room.”

She sat up, blinking and brushing fibers and dust from her cheek, resisting the urge to rub her eyes. It was one of the copyboys.

“Is JT about?”

“Naw.”

“Is he out on a job?”

“Naw.”

He retreated back to the bench, leaving the door swinging open.

Pleased about the hotel room, Paddy brushed her clothes clean and stepped out into the busy room. The morning conference had apparently taken place in Ramage’s suite downstairs: editors and significant journalists were pouring back in through the double doors, some scowling, some buzzed up, depending on who had been lauded and who lampooned for the morning edition. She peered at them until the last few trickled back in and settled at their desks. JT wasn’t among them.

She sidled up to Reg at the sports desk. “Where’s JT?”

Reg shook his head. “Got the bump.”

She opened her eyes properly. “But he’s just won a Reporter of the Year.”

“Aye.” Reg nodded miserably at his typewriter. “Wages were too high, though. I heard you’ve got a hotel room.”

“Aye.” She looked at her feet, wondering if she’d been wise to ask for anything but a chance to prove herself.

The furnishings were all perfunctory and worn, gleaned from cheap secondhand shops. The gray sofa and a wooden chair, the smoked-glass coffee table, all ugly things, and Bernie’s living room was full of bits of engines and oily rags and tools. Kate hated the room. She was glad she had never been here before and yet Bernie’s company was a comfort in itself. Just the sight of his square face and cheap barber flattop made her feel safe, as if it were another time, as if they were still children and were back before this all began, long before it went bad.

Kate sat her second cup on the coffee table. She didn’t drink tea, usually. She knew what it did to the color of people’s teeth and had convinced herself that she didn’t like it, like ice cream and chocolate. Now she drank it down to try to warm herself up, and then asked for more from the tarnished metal pot. Bernie brought out a packet of digestives and handed her a couple.

“Try to eat them. You’re so skinny, honestly, your legs look like strings with knots in.” He pointed to her knees under the laddered blue tights and silently hoped the dried brown stuff flecked all over the back of her calves was mud.

Kate smiled softly, eyes focused somewhere far off. She sucked an edge of the biscuit and pretended to eat, indulging him. She used to get that look in her eye when she wanted to leave home but couldn’t just say so. “Have you got my pillow?”

He wouldn’t have known what she was talking about if he hadn’t been waiting for her to ask for it. “Pillow?”

She smiled. “My ‘comfort pillow.’”

Bernie smiled back but stopped when he looked at her. “You’re killing yourself.”

She stared at him wearily. She wasn’t well enough to cope with a scene. Her head was bursting and she had shooting pains in her stomach. “You take everything too seriously, Bernie, you always have, ever since you were little.”

She was saying that to make him angry, to stop him admitting he cared. Being emotional was a crime to the Burnetts. But Bernie wasn’t a Burnett, he had chosen not to be, and he did care.

“Look at you,” he said, shouting suddenly. “Look at the state of you. What he’s made of you.”

She picked up the cup and sipped again. “Has he been to see you?”

“What the fuck do you think, Katie? Would my fucking skull still be intact if he’d been here? He battered Vhari to death.”

She looked down, holding her hands together to stop them trembling. “I want my pillow,” she said when her shallow reserve of remorse had run out.