by Val McDermid
11
In spite of her eagerness to hear how Danny’s trip had gone, Allie hadn’t wasted the days till they were both back in the office. On Sunday, she was back on the day shift, disorientated and short-changed on sleep as always happened on a one-day transition from nights to days. But at least Sunday was usually a quiet news day. Desmond, the deputy news editor, was in charge, a lumbering ox of a man who hid his insecurities behind bluff, bullish banter. His greatest sin was a lack of imagination. His idea of setting the news agenda on a Sunday morning was to focus all his attention on the Sunday Thistle, a publication that was read around the world by ex-pat Scots wallowing in nostalgia for a native land that had never existed outside its pages. It also boasted an ageing circulation among those who still lived in Scotland and who wanted to believe that nothing much had changed since the 1930s. For anyone of Allie’s generation, it held no attraction.
Running the Sunday newsdesk, Desmond loved to scour the columns of the Thistle, tearing out stories he thought were worth following up and scattering them among the duty reporters. Which would have been fine, if the stories had offered any follow-up angles. What made it worse was the invariable imprecision of the stories. They tended to feature vague addresses, often in streets that ran for the best part of a mile. Sometimes they were a straight lift from an edition of the paper from twenty years before, as Allie had found to her cost on her second week on the Clarion.
She’d been sent out to Knightswood, a council estate in the west of the city. It had been built as a garden suburb between the First and Second World Wars, its neat streets comprising semi-detached houses and so-called cottage flats – blocks that resembled large semis but which were in fact four flats. It was the sort of place that gave council housing a good name.
The story seemed straightforward, potentially amusing. A Mrs Aggie Mackenzie faced eviction from her flat because of complaints to the council from the neighbours about her pet parrot. Not only was the parrot loud, it also possessed a rich and ribald vocabulary. According to the Thistle reporter, one neighbour had said, ‘I’ve had to stop the minister coming to visit because of the terrible swearing that bird screams at everybody.’
The only address was Archerhill Road, the longest street on the estate. Allie tried the phone book first. There was a J. Mackenzie and a T. McKenzie. If she was in luck, it would be one of those. Nobody from the picture desk wanted to come with her. ‘If it works out, we’ll send somebody out to do pix,’ was the most she could squeeze out of them. So she summoned an editorial driver and headed for Knightswood. Of course, neither of the Mackenzies in the phone book had heard of Aggie Mackenzie and her parrot. But it being Sunday, she headed for the church and waited till the service was over. She drew a blank with half a dozen members of the congregation, but her luck changed with the deaconess, who gave her precise directions.
Allie rang the bell of the downstairs flat and waited. She was poised to ring again when the door inched open to reveal a stooped woman with an ancient face and thick glasses. Allie hesitated. ‘Mrs Mackenzie?’
‘Aye, hen. Who are you?’
‘My name’s Alison Burns, I’m a reporter with the Clarion.’
‘The newspaper?’ She seemed astonished. ‘What’s the newspaper got to do with me?’
‘It’s about your parrot.’ Seeing the woman’s look of confusion, Allie forged on desperately. ‘About the complaints to the council about the noise nuisance.’
‘My parrot? You’re here about my parrot?’
‘Yes. After the story in the Sunday Thistle today.’
‘Today?’
Allie produced the cutting from her bag. ‘There you go. That’s you, isn’t it? Mrs Aggie Mackenzie of Archerhill Road?’
Suddenly the old woman hooted with laughter, rocking back and forth. ‘By jingo, they’ve got nae shame. Hen, that story was in the paper twenty year ago.’
‘Twenty years ago? Are you sure?’
‘Hen, I might be old but I’m not wandering in my wits yet. Twenty years old, yon story. My parrot’s been dead seventeen years past.’ She shook her head. ‘Somebody’s been playing a joke on you, hen.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Allie said, pink with embarrassment and anger.
‘Don’t you be sorry, I’ve not had a laugh like this for years.’
Back in the editorial car, she’d told the driver what had happened. He’d laughed too. ‘Bloody Desmond on the desk,’ he said. ‘Stupid bastard never learns. Every Sunday, he sends one of you guys out on a Thistle story. It’s either ancient history or totally made up in the first place.’
‘How does a paper get away with that?’ Allie was still raging.
‘Different rules, Allie. It’s not a paper, the Thistle. It’s a comic.’
With that in mind, Allie showed her face in the newsroom then slunk off to the library to avoid a Thistle assignment. She buried herself in cuttings about the SNP’s recent history and the devolution debates for a couple of hours then returned upstairs to find Desmond had taken three of the other day shift reporters off to the Press Club to play snooker. His place at the newsdesk had been taken by a forty-something woman with blazing red hair and black-rimmed glasses. She looked up as Allie approached. ‘I wondered where you were hiding. You must be Allie Burns,’ she said in an accent Allie had learned to identify as ‘posh Glasgow’.
‘I am, and I wasn’t hiding. I told Desmond I was away down to the library. If he’d needed me, he knew where to find me.’
The woman twisted her mouth into a wry smile. ‘Typical bloody Desmond. Divide and conquer. I’m Fatima,’ she said. ‘Fatima McGeechan.’
Allie tried to hide her surprise at the name. She’d never seen anyone who looked less Arabic than the woman running the desk. ‘Good to meet you.’ It came out more of a question than she’d intended.
The woman sighed. ‘Let me explain two things. I’m not a Muslim, I’m a good Catholic girl. Well, a good Catholic girl gone bad, if you want to be pedantic. And pedantic is one of the many attributes a good hack should cultivate. Here’s how the story goes. My mother was desperate for a child that just wasn’t coming until she went to the shrine to Our Lady of Fatima in Johnstone and prayed there. Hence the name. And anybody who tries to shorten it to Fats – the only thing they’re going to shorten is their life expectancy. Clear?’
Bossy, then. ‘Clear.’ A pause. ‘You said, two things?’
Another sigh. ‘I’m here under protest. I’m an editor at the BBC up the road at Queen Margaret Drive. When your esteemed news editor has exhausted his list of Sunday casual desk execs, he bribes me with a double shift payment to come in and hold Desmond’s hand.’ A sardonic smile. Allie was beginning to like Fatima.
‘I suspect you earn every penny.’
‘And more besides. So what were you doing down in the library? Apart from dodging the Sunday Thistle bullet?’
Allie considered. A lie could be unravelled in a thirty-second conversation with the duty librarian, and she wouldn’t put that past ‘Don’t call me “Fats”’. So she shrugged. ‘I’ve only been back in Scotland for three and a bit months. Before that, I was in England for five years. With the devolution referendum coming up, I figured it would be helpful to get some background under my belt.’
Fatima nodded her approval. ‘Smart. Sadly for your education, I’ve got a job for you. ID just in from a fatal car crash just north of Carlisle last night.’ For a moment, Allie’s chest contracted, remembering what Danny had been up to. But relief came with Fatima’s next sentence. ‘A van driver from Kilmarnock. The word is he was taking a delivery down to Preston. It was part of what should have been on a lorry load heading south, but because of the strike . . . well, you get the picture. Away and talk to the grieving widow and don’t come back without a collect picture. Get an editorial car and—’ She raised her voice to attract the attention of the picture editor. ‘Get a snapper, there might
be something to tug the heartstrings if they’ve got photogenic kids.’ She snorted. ‘Who am I kidding? Take a snapper anyway.’
Nobody liked a death knock. But Allie knew she was good at it. It was definitely one situation where being a woman was an advantage. Nobody felt threatened by her except when she was trying very hard to be threatening. It was also a test. Her first assignment from Angus Carlyle, the ruthless, shameless and graceless Clarion news editor, had been a quadruple death knock – four teenagers killed in a late-night car crash on the Rest and be Thankful road. Nobody expected the new girl – Cambridge graduate, training scheme product – to manage that on her first day.
Allie came back with pictures of all four, plus quotes from devastated parents and siblings. It was a quiet Sunday and it earned her a splash with her debut story. ‘You’ll do,’ Carlyle had said. Then spoilt the grudging compliment with a final two words. ‘For now.’
And so she went off to do Fatima’s bidding. Hunkered down in the passenger seat of the company Cortina, Allie went through the notes she’d made, committing the list of women’s names to her memory along with their party affiliations. Now all she had to do was figure out how to transform them into useful sources.
12
Monday was dreary outside and inside the newsroom. The prime minister had flown back from a conference in the Caribbean, tanned and in denial about any crisis back home. He probably hadn’t noticed the weather either, Allie thought as she struggled to cover the aftermath of the New Year blizzards. The big freeze followed by the thaw spelled misery for millions. Well, it was more like thousands, but the alliteration of ‘millions’ read better. Official statements claimed it had landed Scotland with a £10 million bill. Dozens of homes were uninhabitable because of burst pipes, and the temperatures were plummeting again. Although it was a guaranteed page lead, putting it together meant she had to endure deskbound tedium and endless phone calls. No chance to pursue anything of her own, and no Danny Sullivan till the next day.
Back home, she heated up some soup from the freezer and tried to distract herself with the TV. Blake’s 7, and Strangers, Don Henderson playing the idiosyncratic Detective Sergeant Bulman with his gloves, his inhaler and his habit of taking the bus to crime scenes. Allie would be the first to agree she hadn’t spent a huge amount of time with coppers, but she’d never come across one remotely like Bulman. Between him and Laidlaw, she was forcibly reminded of the gap between fiction and reality when it came to the investigation of crime. How much more interesting her professional life would be if it imitated art more closely, she thought.
In spite of the gas fire, the living room was growing chilly, so she headed for bed with The Women’s Room, another second-hand find. Somehow, it lacked the grip that Laidlaw had exerted and it fell from her hand as sleep overtook her.
By the time she woke next morning, Danny Sullivan was already at his typewriter on the other side of the city, making a final fair copy of his notes from Southampton. Even after a solid nine hours’ sleep he still felt drained, but he was determined to have his story straight for Peter McGovern. And even more importantly, for Allie. She’d be the one sprinkling it with stardust, after all. He couldn’t explain why, but he wanted to impress her with his achievement, even if it needed her polish to make the best impression.
The past few days had been gruelling. The interview with Bill Maclay had demanded focus and concentration as well as the energy it took to maintain a false front. He hadn’t realised how much it had taken out of him till somewhere south of Birmingham, he’d been overwhelmed with the urge to sleep. He’d ended up in an anonymous chain hotel in a Black Country town whose name he couldn’t recall till he checked the receipt. Danny forced himself to drive the rest of the way back on Saturday, his aching body protesting at two nights in terrible beds and two days cramped in a car seat. The driving conditions were still atrocious, and he’d never been happier to make it home.
The ordeal hadn’t finished there, though. He still had to get through the ritual Sunday family meal, knowing what he knew now about his brother. Danny had fidgeted throughout the train journey to Edinburgh, unable to settle, dreading the possibility that somehow his fishing expedition to Southampton had been uncovered. But his fretting had been in vain. It was just like any other Sunday. Joseph self-important, boasting that the weather hadn’t prevented him travelling down south to service his wealthy client. Danny struggled to maintain his composure. But nobody noticed anything amiss, apart from his mother taking offence at his refusal of second helpings of apple sponge and custard. ‘I was out for my tea last night,’ Danny lied. ‘Ate too much curry.’
He’d tried to make an early getaway, but his father had insisted they play cards. He loved Solo, and it was a game that required four players. The afternoon trickled away and by the time they’d finished, Danny was ninepence poorer and the snow had started again. His heart sank as he took in the thick flakes cascading past the window. The road outside was blanketed once more, the scarce traffic crawling and sliding along. A bus attempting to stop slithered sideways and came to a stop at an angle, blocking most of the road. ‘You’re not going out in that,’ his mother proclaimed. ‘Your bed’s made up, you can stay over till morning.’
There were times when argument was futile and this was clearly one of them. Mrs Sullivan made a mound of sandwiches from the leftover roast lamb they’d had for lunch and they munched their way through them as they slumped in front of the TV. Joseph sprawled in his chair, working his way through a few cans of lager, never pausing for long between sardonic comments about plots, presenters and pundits. ‘I can’t believe you spend your life running after stupid wee stories about the likes of her,’ he said, pointing at a Scottish actress. ‘She couldn’t act her way out of a puddle.’
‘At least I’m not some rich man’s lackey, running about at their beck and call in a blizzard,’ Danny muttered.
Joseph scoffed. ‘I’m nobody’s lackey. What I do, it’s a vital role in the lives of powerful men.’
‘Aye, right.’
‘Stop bickering like bairns,’ his mother ordered. ‘I’m watching this. You’re not too old to be sent to your beds.’
Joseph and his father chuckled. And everyone settled down again till the next needle. Now Danny was confident he hadn’t been rumbled – or, if he had, his brother didn’t know yet – his anxiety levels had dropped, only to be replaced by a simmering outrage this his brother had the nerve to sit there, lording it over them all, when he was up to his neck in a criminal conspiracy. It took an effort of will to be civil. As soon as he could reasonably get out of the stifling family embrace, Danny announced he was heading for bed. ‘Busy week ahead,’ he said.
Joseph grinned. ‘Really? Ambulances to chase, panic buying to report?’
‘Your brother does an important job,’ their father said. ‘There’s more worthwhile things in life than helping rich folk get richer, Joseph. Working people deserve to be told what’s going on around them. Wrapping it up in daft wee stories is what Danny has to do to get folk’s attention to the stuff that matters. Right, Danny?’
‘That’s about the size of it.’ Grateful for his father’s intervention, he’d escaped to the small, chilly bedroom where he’d grown up. The piles of Superman and Batman comics remained under the bed, arranged in date order, all in mint condition. They’d been Danny’s escape from the humdrum as a boy; he still flicked through them when he spent a night in the family home. His mother had often threatened to give them away, but she’d eventually recognised how serious her son had been when he insisted that deciding their fate was his decision alone. Now, to calm himself and escape the tension that had been gripping him all day, he fished out a sheaf of Dennis O’Neil’s issues from the early 1970s. The idea of Batman as an obsessive righter of wrongs, confronting killers who murdered without compunction was a potent reminder of the kind of journalist he wanted to be.
As he knocked his note
s into shape, he was fired up again by his determination to make the world a fairer place. He sensed that same sense of purpose in Allie Burns and hoped he was right. Soon he’d know for sure.
Allie was already at her desk with a carton of coffee and her first cigarette of the day when Danny arrived. Deliberately casual – for she knew better than to offer ammunition to gossip or malice – she greeted him as he passed behind her on the way to his own place. ‘Good weekend?’ Casual, as if she didn’t care one way or another.
‘Not bad,’ he replied, equally nonchalant.
They kept their distance till the morning news conference drew all the executives away from their seats round the H-shaped central desks, then Danny crossed behind Allie and leaned over, pointing to something with absolutely no relevance on the newspaper she had open in front of her. ‘Library, in five,’ he muttered.
She found him alone in the reference room. The librarians also knew the time of the news conference and invariably sneaked off to the canteen for a mid-morning snack. ‘How did it go?’ Allie demanded, perching on a table.
Danny leaned against the shelves, arms folded across his chest. ‘Honestly? It’s hard to see how it could have gone better. I got in to see the boss right away and he totally fell for my cover story. I made a wee change to my original plan – I dropped my brother’s name, because I knew he’d be in transit and Maclay couldn’t call him to check. I followed it up, dead casually, with the name of the December guy on Joseph’s list and that was the Open Sesame.’