The Dead Hour

by Denise Mina

  He reached inside her coat, cupping her soft round stomach, his thumb brushing the underside of her breast. Her hand slid back down to his stomach, feathering the powder-soft skin, making his eyes roll back in his head. He was melting into his seat when she pulled her hand away.

  “Not outside my parents’ house.”

  Burns sat upright. “Where is there around here?”

  Paddy sat back. “Out onto the main road and go right,” she said.

  They took the old road to the steelworks, a defunct metal purifying facility that once occupied two square miles of land. It had been closed down, leaving a devastated landscape where the sulfurous scent of the devil still clung to the ground.

  Burns found a potholed turning off the main road and cut his lights as they drove down it.

  Moonlight illuminated a churned field of discarded rope and jagged shards of metal. When they were far enough not to be seen from the road he stopped the car, turned the engine off, and looked at her.

  Paddy had cooled a little, caught her breath, and she wasn’t sure now but Burns’s fingers brushed her ear.

  “Your neck,” he whispered, pulling her scarf. It fell away, unwinding like a snake uncoiling from a branch.

  There were reasons why this was a bad idea but Paddy struggled to recall what they were. He pulled a small square packet from his hip pocket, a condom, and set it on the dashboard in a smug certainty that made her despise him. Oblivious, he reached across with his other hand and took her by the waist, pulling her to his lap, sliding her skirt up her legs. His hot hands were on her thigh, on her arse, on her bare breasts, his lips wet and ardent.

  The last conscious thought in Paddy’s mind was a note of caution so distant that it seemed to relate to events far away.

  She leaned back and handed him the condom, leaving him to pull it on as she wrestled her tights and knickers down over one ankle, graceless and desperate, leaving them to dangle off her left foot. She straddled him, kissed him, pushing his shirt up and pressing bare skin to bare skin.

  When Burns pushed himself into her he still had the strip of the condom packet in his mouth. Paddy felt her eager cunt flowering out to greet him, a giant fleshy rose.

  She couldn’t focus or see anything but the hairs on his neck, the maze of wrinkles on the leather headrest behind him. She couldn’t control her breathing. She held his shoulder tightly, perhaps hurting him, she didn’t know or care, pulling herself back and forth, stroking her clit with her free hand.

  She was nothing but an overwhelming urge and couldn’t stop now if she needed to. Suddenly her cunt spasmed, her legs shutting as she jackknifed into his chest. Every pore on her skin shuddered and a cold wash swept over her.

  She could feel something warm dribbling down her bare thighs. The skin between her legs was wet, not slimy, and she was sure she had urinated into his lap. Ashamed, she stayed where she was, stiff, feeling ridiculous and naked and vulnerable. His large hand was suddenly obscene on her damp buttock. She shifted her weight, extricating her trembling legs, but Burns stopped her, making her wait where she was while he kissed her neck with an open mouth and breathed her name.

  She didn’t look at him as she climbed back into the passenger seat. She stared out of the window, pretending to be engrossed in the flat, ruined land, wondering what the hell had just happened to her. Her knickers and tights were still around her ankle but she pulled her skirt down primly, wondering how she could get them up and cover herself with any dignity.

  Next to her Burns pulled the condom off and tied a knot in it, smiling to himself in a way that made her feel excluded and stupid and angry. The windows were opaque with condensation. Burns ran a finger down the windscreen and smirked again. Turning on the engine, he sat back, waiting for the windows to clear, and tapped his knee patiently. He reached forward to the radio but Paddy panicked, thinking he was going to touch her again.

  “We should go,” she said unnecessarily. “I’m tired.”

  It was half two and she worked the night shift five days a week. She would be awake all night and they both knew it. Burns gave half a smile and stumbled across a station playing Lionel Richie’s “Running with the Night.” A childlike pleasure came over his face until he heard her snigger; his fingers flicked onward to another station and Echo and the Bunnymen.

  “Better?”

  “I don’t like Lionel Richie but put it back if you want to hear it.”

  “No, I don’t like him either.” He cringed at his obvious lie. “Okay, I do like him. Is he not cool?”

  She smiled. “Lionel Richie?”

  “Yeah? He’s not, is he?” He bit his lip.

  “Burns, what age are you?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “You’re only two years older than me. How come you dress like Val Donigan?”

  He sat back and smiled at her, pulling his V-neck straight. It wasn’t his usual toothy matinee idol smile but a coy asymmetric face crumple. “I’m a polis. This gear is cool in the polis. You like this crowd?” He pointed to the radio.

  “I like Echo and the Bunnymen, yeah.” She didn’t really but she wanted to.

  “See, I just think that guy can’t sing.”

  They each nodded hesitantly, looking unguardedly at each other. She imagined him dressed well for a moment, without the severe haircut and the terrible outfit. He had dark eyes and a big, character nose. He scratched his neck. “I want to see you again.”

  Paddy smiled at the euphemism and then laughed. “Is that what we just did? ‘Saw’ each other?”

  “Yeah.” He gave a satisfied sigh. “I gave you a seeing-to, yeah.”

  She felt unbelievably relaxed and calm as she yanked her tights up, pulling her coat around her hips for privacy, and fell back in the seat, grinning. “Take me home, Burns.”

  They drove back listening to the radio. “Killing Moon” finished and the DJ announced a change of pace and played a Madness record. They sang along—even though they were a teenybopper’s band, somehow they knew every word. It didn’t take them long to get back to Eastfield.

  “Okay.” Paddy gathered her things together. “I know a lot of policemen. If you ever tell anyone about this I’ll phone your wife.”

  He clutched his chest prudishly. “Listen, I’m as ashamed as you are.”

  She didn’t want to smile or look at him again in case she stayed. Opening the passenger door, she stepped out of the car and watched him drive away, leaving her alone on the broken pavement.

  If her mother had seen them pull up earlier and then drive off, she’d say she forgot something at the comedy club. Her scarf. And they went back for it and stayed for another drink.

  She watched him leaving. Burns didn’t look back but she could tell by the inclination of his head that he was watching her in the rearview. It was only then that she saw the red Ford Capri parked outside Mrs. Mahon’s house. She looked carefully, though it was in the shadow of the streetlamp, but couldn’t see anyone inside. She was being paranoid. Cars could park on the roundabout without her permission.

  It wasn’t until she was lying in her bed, reliving every touch and caress of the night, that she remembered the Ford hadn’t been there when they first got home. Mrs. Mahon was in her seventies. She wouldn’t be receiving visitors at one thirty on a Friday night.

  Paddy sat up, pulled on her dressing gown, and padded silently down the stairs, looking out of the front door into the silver-frosted street.

  The Ford was gone.

  SEVENTEEN

  SUBJECTS NOT OBJECTS

  I

  Bernie sipped cold tea from the plastic flask mug and glanced at his watch. It was late but he was into the rhythm of the work now, lost in it. The jack was well fitted under the car, he had his tools fanned out around the boogie board so that he could reach them easily without having to get up. It was a complicated job, requiring concentration, and any cracks or crevasses in his thinking were filled with the jabber of a phone-in on the radio.

  The
tea was bitter but he drank it down, hoping to sate his hunger. He hadn’t eaten for six hours but didn’t want to go back to his flat for food and sit, wide awake, thinking about Kate and Vhari and glancing down at the “sorry, sorry” message on the newspaper. Vhari dead and Kate gone. The police had left him in no doubt as to how Vhari died, either; they spared him no detail because they suspected him, briefly.

  When the police made him look at photographs of a bloody trail through the house and Vhari crumpled at the end of it, Bernie sobbed so hard that he threw up. The policemen made him breathe into a paper bag and the smell of his own vomit got stuck around his nose and under his chin.

  He frowned at his watch. It was two thirty. If he worked on until three or four he’d be so tired when he got home that he might even sleep.

  He was sliding back under the car when the radio discussion turned to the morality of private schools. He remembered waiting at the bus stop with Vhari and Kate on wet winter mornings, fighting with each other as a way of keeping warm, the girls’ bare legs mottled pink from the cold. He remembered the journey back as well, standing at the bus stop, hoping hard that none of the kids from the local comprehensive would come past and see them there in their blue Academy uniforms. He was the only boy at their bus stop until Paul came to the school. He came in fifth year and everything changed forever.

  Paul Neilson had been expelled from Fettes boarding school for stealing. They all knew that even before he started because someone’s brother was at Fettes and told them. A lot of the girls had decided not to talk to him. All the good girls. Vhari said it was wrong to treat people meanly because of rumors and would try to be kind to him. Kate, he noted at the time, said nothing.

  But then Paul arrived and everyone changed their minds. Paul wasn’t just handsome, he was cool as well. He wore his rugby shirt with the collar turned up and exuded a vague sense of rebel threat. Kate, the prettiest girl in the school, was captivated from the first bus journey. She watched him introduce himself to the group, invite questions, tell them where he lived, that his dad had a business importing from South Africa and what the turnover was every year. She watched him with her pretty gray eyes, curling a blond trestle of hair behind her ear. By the time they stepped off the bus at Mount Florida she deigned to smile at him. He walked up the road with them even though his house was in a different direction. By the next morning Kate and Paul stood apart from the waiting crowd, backing up against the wall, talking privately. If Bernie had known what would happen he would have dragged Kate away by the hair.

  Down in the darkness under the engine, tears rolled down Bernie’s temples into his hair and he shook his head. She’d stolen a fucking car from him. Even for Kate that was very bad. The Mini wasn’t worth much but he didn’t have much. Just as well it wasn’t a punter’s car, in for a service. Everyone she knew had more money than him, but then he was quite glad she had chosen to steal from him and not them. The people she knew now were not people you wanted to piss off.

  The discussion on the radio moved on to yuppies and tax evasion, and Bernie, unable to ignore the insistent hunger pangs in his stomach, finished off retightening everything and slipped out from under the car. He still wasn’t tired.

  Trying to listen to the fuck-wit callers on the radio, down with this and up with that, he lowered the jack on the car slowly, bringing the front wheels back to the floor and pulling the jack out from under it. A man with a Birmingham accent was railing against the south of England inflicting the Thatcher government on the rest of the country for a second term as Bernie picked up his spanners and began to wipe the oil off them. Old news.

  Bernie walked over to the table and crouched down to open the top drawer of his toolbox. He pulled it out, sat the spanners in place, and shoved it back. It didn’t close. He opened it again, checking along the lip to see if anything was sticking out but nothing was. He tried shoving it back in but again it stuck out half an inch, just far enough for him to be able to see inside. Something was stuck around the back.

  Crouched by the side of the table, Bernie waddled sideways and saw the corner of the clear plastic sheeting. He smiled, thinking it was food, something he could pick the mold off of that would keep him going for another hour or so. He pinched the plastic corner between two fingers and pulled. It was heavy and bigger than a sandwich wrapper. He pulled and it kept coming until he had to reach blindly with both hands and pull it out. It was the size of a small cushion, square and heavy.

  The clear plastic had been folded over many times, the inside obscured by white dust, but the much used silver duct tape, losing its adhesiveness, had rolled off a slit in the front when he lifted it and Bernie knew what was inside. White powder spilled out into a little pile on the floor. Panicked, Bernie found his breath stuck in his throat like a fish bone. He couldn’t exhale.

  This was why Kate was so, so sorry. This was why she loved him. Stealing a car, inadvertently getting Vhari murdered, they were minor sins in comparison to this.

  II

  The sharp morning wind hurtled across George Square, eddying around monuments to the forgotten heroes of forgotten wars. It was the coldest place in the city center. The brisk wind gathered speed across the wide open plain, pushing people into side streets.

  Paddy walked past the giant post office building and crossed over to the square, in front of the turreted City Chambers, around the imposing white cenotaph, and saw them: a small gathering of people dressed in white with placards at the far end of the square. Some wore white sweaters or overcoats, one a thin anorak. They were huddled together lighting small, sputtering candles with a Bic, guarding the flames carefully with their hands and bodies and coats.

  She had eaten a whole bag of Lemon Bonbons on the way here, buying them as a treat for her mum, from the sweet shop at the station. She had one bonbon, just for a taste, and then another and then another one after that, and again and again until the bag was obviously half empty and she either had to throw them away or eat them all and buy another bag. Her teeth were coated in sugar, squeaking from the bicarbonate in the sherbet.

  Queasy with glucose and guilt, she approached across the square and spotted a familiar green sports jacket hovering in front of the pristine line, breaking it up. It was JT, notebook in hand, with his head tilted to the side, a stance that always denoted heavy questioning. He’d heard about Thillingly and beaten her to it. She stopped, sighing with defeat, shutting her eyes. The wind brushed her hair from her ear and suddenly Burns was nuzzling into her neck, his hot breath damp on her skin. She gave a pleasured shiver at the memory.

  Sex had always been a bewildering fumble that she got distracted from but never lost in. She had a moment in every sexual encounter when she was lost in everyday considerations: where she had left her house keys, would her diet work, should she get her hair cut. But not this time. It was because she had no respect for Burns. She smiled and opened her eyes, finding herself flushed, remembering where she was and what she was meant to be doing here.

  The green sports jacket moved along the line to a tall woman. Cursing, she walked up to JT and stood at his elbow, listening in as unobtrusively as she could.

  He was quizzing a tall woman with an aristocratic nose and thick, lush gray hair pulled back and up into a leather clasp.

  “For the release of Nelson Mandela.” Her accent was soft and English but authoritative somehow, as if she was used to public speaking. “He’s a lawyer who’s been imprisoned in South Africa—”

  “For starting a violent uprising.” JT spoke quickly as he always did when he was being confrontational. “Some people would say you’re supporting violent criminals. What would you say to those people?”

  “Well,” the woman replied, smiling uncomfortably, “Amnesty’re not supporting his release as a prisoner of conscience. We’re arguing for his right to a fair trial.”

  JT’s pencil hovered idly over the page. He glanced up, waiting for her to say something outrageous.

  “You ought to write tha
t down,” said the woman. “That’s an important point.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll remember it. There are people who say he’s the head of the South African equivalent of the IRA. What would you say to those people?”

  Paddy stood behind him and listened to him wittering. He wasn’t asking about Thillingly at all and she wondered what the hell he was doing here. Amnesty held their candlelit vigil in George Square every Saturday, each week for a different person. Mandela was a controversial choice because he had supported an armed struggle after the Sharpeville massacre.

  “Stuck for a story?” she asked.

  JT turned and looked at her suspiciously. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, you know, I heard they were supporting Nelson Mandela this week. Just wanted to ask them about it.”

  “Yeah, looking for something to dazzle Ramage with? Well, you’ve missed your chance with this baby.” JT smiled smugly. “I’ve just done it. And now I’m going back to write it up.” He snapped his notebook shut and walked away. Paddy watched him saunter across the square, shaking her head slowly, staying disappointed in case he looked back.

  The Amnesty supporters formed a solemn semicircle around two posters: one the Amnesty sign and the other a typewritten summary of Mandela’s case below a slightly blurred photograph of him as an earnest young man, his Afro in a side parting. Above it, broken Letroset letters in purple felt pen read 20 YEARS WITHOUT A TRIAL.

  Paddy stamped her feet against the freezing cold. The protesters looked at her, distrustful, avoiding eye contact because she knew JT.

  “Look, um . . .” She stepped back, keen to differentiate herself from bombastic JT. “I don’t know how to approach this. I’m a very junior, not an important reporter like him”—she thumbed after JT—“but I wanted to ask you about a man called Mark Thillingly.”