The Dead Hour

by Denise Mina

“No. Let’s wait a bit longer.”

  “What are we waiting for?”

  “Dunno. Just waiting.”

  Paddy was expecting Sean to tell her about Elaine but he hadn’t. She was afraid to bring it up herself, worried that she might give herself away. She practiced faint surprise and disinterest in her head as they sat there, watching the house. That’s lovely, Sean. Good for you. You must be gagging for it; no, that sounded ungracious. You must be pleased. I’m pleased for you.

  With half an eye she watched shapes of figures in the front room, behind the curtains, moving, sometimes quickly like the flurry of movement in Vhari Burnett’s living room, sometimes slow shifts of light. It was two thirty in the morning and anyone with a clear conscience would be asleep. But Knox probably had a family; the house looked far too big for a single man. She hadn’t looked for a wedding ring on his finger because she didn’t fancy him.

  She counted three dark windows on the second floor, none of them mottled for a bathroom. He could be innocently having an argument with a wayward child. A teenager could be watching television in the front room, perhaps have some friends over, they could be getting cups of tea from the kitchen, standing up to change the channel.

  Parked at a discreet distance farther down the street was the familiar shape of a BMW but she didn’t set any store on it: the car could easily be a neighbor’s and Lafferty could be somewhere else, in Ireland or parked in the Eastfield Star right now, watching her mother and father’s darkened bedroom window, while she and Sean idled outside the house of an innocent man she didn’t like the look of.

  She looked around the car park. Behind them, the pub was shut and dark, the empty hooks for hanging baskets like gibbets for midgets. The only thing between them and the big house was a rusted yellow Mini parked as if abandoned, looking onto the road.

  Sean whispered, “Someone’s coming out.”

  Paddy sat forward and flinched when she saw the shape of the man stepping out of the front door and into the glass porch. He was broad and bald and she knew him immediately. “Turn the radio down.”

  “Why?”

  She leaped forward to the radio, pressing her sore stomach hard against the passenger seat. Silence fell over the car. She could hear Lafferty’s feet clipping on the pavement as he swaggered down to the BMW, fitted the key in the door, and climbed into the passenger seat. He left the lights off as he backed the car up the road toward them.

  “Get down.” She pushed Sean’s shoulder and he slumped down in the seat. “Keep your head below the dash.”

  “Who is he?”

  The smooth engine burred toward them.

  “The firebomber. That’s the guy.”

  They crouched in the dark car, blind to what was going on in the street. The engine changed tone as Lafferty managed a maneuver and then stopped. A door opened and shut gently. At the first click of his heel Paddy imagined him walking toward them, but the second and third footsteps headed away and suddenly became muffled. She heard the distant click of a door handle carried through the cold night air and pulled herself up enough to see Lafferty step back into the glass porch.

  The front door opened, the hall darkened now. Plants obscured the glass panel. She couldn’t make out what was happening inside but seconds later she saw Lafferty reappear, carrying something at his side, a rug maybe. When he stepped out of the porch and into the street she saw that his arm was around the waist of a slumped figure. A tumble of hair had fallen over the face but Paddy recognized her anyway.

  Kate was tiny. Lafferty carried her easily on one arm, her feet trailing along behind her, the toes scuffling along the ground. She looked dead but as Paddy watched the street, light caught her limp arm and the small right hand flexed as if she was in pain.

  Paddy remembered Lafferty’s neck. He looked enormous and brutal next to the tiny figure, reckless of her feet. Paddy imagined the muscular arm around her own waist, squeezing the breath from her. He might just be taking Kate home. He could be fed up chasing around after his boss’s girlfriend.

  At the BMW he opened the door to the backseat and dropped Kate into the car, taking hold of her feet and bundling her legs in after her. He turned and reached back to the door, slamming it shut just as a slim calf dropped back out to the pavement, catching the door full on the bone. Paddy inhaled sharply. The leg must have broken from the force, but Lafferty didn’t flinch. He peered at the obstruction dispassionately, bent down, pushed the offending leg back into the car and watched as he shut the door again. He wasn’t taking her home. He was going to kill her.

  “Sean, can you follow that car without letting him know you’re there?”

  “Which car?” He was slumped down as far as he could go in the driver’s seat, his long legs crossed in front of him, knees trapped under the steering wheel.

  “Look.”

  Pulling himself up to peer over the wheel he saw the BMW pull out onto the road. “I’ll try.”

  “No swerving about.”

  He turned the key. “I’ll try.”

  The roads were too quiet to stay close without being seen and Sean hung back, making Paddy worry that they would lose Lafferty at every corner and junction. Soon they were out of the tangle of suburban streets and following the big open road to the north of the city.

  Paddy clung to the back of the passenger seat, watching the distant red taillights, promising Vhari Burnett that she wouldn’t walk away this time. Vhari had died to protect Kate, she was certain of this now, and Thillingly had killed himself because he let the sisters down. Paddy had to do the right thing this time. She couldn’t take Lafferty on herself, though, and Sean wasn’t a fighter; Lafferty might easily kill them both.

  Before long they had left the main road and were following a winding single strip of tarmac bordered by vegetation. Sean was having trouble keeping the car inconspicuous, but he dropped back so that the car was invisible ahead of them, reappearing just as they turned a corner. He flicked the lights off.

  “Sean, that’s not safe.” Paddy had to blink hard to make out the road in front of them.

  “It’s okay.” He leaned over the steering wheel and peered ahead. “I know this road. We took it last night. They’re headed to Killearn.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Aye. I remember that bend in the road back there.”

  “Stop if you see a phone box.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m going to call the police.”

  He drove on for a minute. “Paddy, who is this guy?”

  She didn’t know what to say. “He’s a bad man. He’s got a woman in there and he’s going to kill her.”

  Sean dropped speed rapidly until the car stopped dead.

  Paddy slapped his shoulder. “Go. Go!”

  He pointed out of the passenger window. “Phone,” he said simply.

  A red phone box stood by the side of the road. The bordering hedge was trimmed carefully around it and the light in the ceiling glowed pale yellow in the dark.

  Paddy scrambled out of the car, feeling in her pocket for a five-pence piece. The dial unfurled slowly after each nine and she held the five pence poised above the slot. She didn’t need it. The calm operator asked her whether she needed fire, police, or an ambulance.

  “Police,” she said, watching the blind corner ahead of them, afraid they’d lose him completely. She told the police officer that a woman was being murdered in Huntly Lodge, Killearn.

  “How do you know that, madam?”

  “I’ve seen a man hitting her and now I can hear her screaming,” she lied.

  “Uh huh.” He didn’t sound at all concerned. “You can hear her screaming now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see, and your name is . . . ?”

  Her own name might be flagged up to Knox. She didn’t know who she could trust. “Mary Ann Knox,” she said. “Please hurry.”

  “Yes, Miss Knox, and you can hear her screaming?”

  “Yes.”

  “I se
e, uh huh, well, the phone box you’re calling from is three miles from Killearn, so how can you hear her screaming?”

  They weren’t going to come. Paddy looked at Sean sitting in the car. “I heard her screaming. Please come.”

  “How do we know this isn’t a hoax?”

  “You don’t want this to be the Bearsden Bird all over again,” she said, and hung up. She was back in the car and Sean pulled off before she had the door shut.

  “They coming?”

  “Aye,” she said, not sure at all. “Aye, they’ll come.”

  For three long minutes they drove into the dark, following the road, not knowing if he was ahead of them or behind them or already parked in a lay-by, strangling Kate in a field, burying her helpless body in a shallow grave.

  “There!” shouted Sean so suddenly he made Paddy catch her breath. Red taillights glinted on a far hill, following the road around a corner.

  The road was straightening out as they came into the dark village and Sean hung back, letting the slow BMW take Killearn Main Street alone, following it down through a dip in the road to Huntly Lodge.

  They had passed the gate to Huntly Lodge before Paddy had realized where they were.

  “Was that it?”

  Sean was concentrating on the road. “Was what it?”

  “Was that the gate we stopped at last night?”

  “Aye, it was. He’s driven past it. Should I stop?”

  “No.” She sat back in the seat, stunned at the enormity of her mistake. She had called the cavalry to the wrong place. “No, keep following.”

  The taillights led them on and Sean followed at a cautious distance. Paddy hoped that they were following the wrong car, that Lafferty had stopped at Huntly Lodge and met the police there, that the car in front of them was an innocent midnight driver, someone pleasant going home after a long night out in the city, but they saw him as he hit the top of a hill and it was Lafferty; she could see him in the front seat, his round bald head and broad shoulders clear in the moonlight.

  They were out of the green soft hills now, away from the relatively flat farming land, following the road down the side of Loch Lomond. Steep hillsides rose to their right; wind-gnarled trees clung dramatically to the sheer rock. To their left the flat land led down to the gleaming waterside. Sean had to let Lafferty get lost ahead of them and for a while they weren’t even sure they were on the same road.

  They came to a turn in the road, passing a small cottage partially hidden behind a set of trees. They wouldn’t have noticed it if the BMW lights weren’t still on. The front door of the cottage swung wide into the dark inside. The car doors lay open. Lafferty was inside.

  Paddy waited until they were around the corner. “Stop here.”

  Sean brought the car slowly to the side of the road. He looked at her in the mirror. “The police aren’t coming here, are they?”

  “No. They’re not coming.” She looked out at the flat silver expanse of the loch. “We’re on our own.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  TWO TWENTY AN HOUR

  I

  Paddy opened the door, stepping out into a soft muddy bank that swallowed the sole of her boots.

  “Fuck.”

  Sean leaned over from the driver’s seat and whispered loudly. “Should I come too?”

  Paddy tutted. “Of course ye should bloody come. This guy’s an animal.” She found herself echoing Burns’s words.

  Sean climbed out of the car and looked anxiously back down the road. “Sure ye don’t want me to wait with the car?”

  “He’s going to kill her. He’s built like a brick shithouse. I could do with a wee hand.”

  “But the police . . .” Sean shrugged nervously. “Can’t we drive until we find a phone and tell them to come here?”

  “She could be dead by then.”

  “We could be dead.” He felt immediately ashamed and slipped her eye. “I didn’t really sign up for this.”

  “Okay.” She was furious. “You just keep watch then.”

  “I’m not much of a fighter, Paddy—”

  “Please your fucking self, Ogilvy.”

  “Paddy—”

  “I’m trying to save someone’s life, here, I haven’t got time to squabble.”

  “Can’t I—”

  But she’d moved off already, creeping down the lane heading back to the cottage, angry at Sean and sick with fright. Reluctantly Sean tripped after her.

  It was a small Victorian cottage, a miniature mansion. A low slate roof hung over the whitewashed walls; picturesque windows had black wooden shutters open at either side. The front door was low, the heavy black lintel giving it a frown, flanked by cast-iron foot scrapers for horse riders to clean their boots on.

  Across the road Paddy and Sean hung back behind the trees. Through the front windows they could see light seeping through doorways from the hall. Lafferty believed he was alone: he didn’t need to leave the lights off anymore.

  Paddy looked back to the loch and saw the shape of a rickety wooden boathouse down by the water. She looked around the ground and picked up a thick branch. It was rotten and crumbled in her hand when she gripped it. There was nothing else by the roadside, no bits of metal or big round stones. She didn’t even have a plan.

  Sean looked over at the house, fists firmly in his pockets, elbows locked tight. He saw her looking at his hands and smiled nervously. “Cold, isn’t it?”

  “I’m going in,” she said angrily. “You do what ye like.” She crossed the road and headed around the side of the house alone.

  Unlike at the Killearn house, the path here was overgrown with plants. She had to negotiate her way through the branches of an old tree that had snapped and fallen against one of the windows. A bush at her feet released the smell of spearmint as she brushed through it.

  Around the back the lane opened up into a steep garden, shallow, with a sheer wall of black wet rock at the back. It was neatly set out but untended. The only part bare of vegetation was a big patch of turned earth at her feet.

  The back wall of the house had two small windows on either side of a set of French doors leading from the kitchen. The far window was dark, a bathroom maybe. The window next to Paddy looked in over the sink.

  She crept along the wall, the soft bare earth under her feet giving at every step. She stood flush to the wall and looked in. It was a pretty Edwardian kitchen, with beautifully crafted wooden shelves and pierced doors on the pantry, painted pale yellow and cornflower blue. An old-fashioned black cooking range sat in a large inglenook.

  The kitchen had been beaten up: the wall cupboards lay open, doors had been yanked off hinges, the table overturned. Matching sets of plates and cups lay shattered on the black slate floor. Below the window the Belfast sink had loose tea and empty jars lying under a dripping tap, and a thick black crack snaked from one side to the other. A packet of flour had been emptied around the room, leaving a thin Christmas dusting on all the surfaces.

  She didn’t see the legs at first. It was the drag mark from the doorway that led her eye to the filthy stocking feet near the window. Kate’s lower calf was horribly swollen, bent at an illogical angle, the pale sheer material of her tights holding the bloody mess together. Her feet were filthy, caked in mud, and a big toenail had come off, Paddy could see the coin-sized shape and the raw bloody mark underneath.

  She tore her eyes from the figure on the floor and looked for a weapon. There were no knives visible in the kitchen; a couple of copper pots lay by the doorway but they didn’t look very heavy. She stepped back in the soft earth and looked around the garden. No tools. Big stones in the rockery but her hands were too small to pick them up.

  Panicking, she stepped back to the window and peeped in. Something about the drag marks on the floor caught her eye. Paddy looked carefully at Lafferty’s footsteps next to the twin track marks from Kate’s feet. The footsteps were confused, as if Lafferty had turned around. Not around. He’d turned back. Lafferty’s footsteps doubled back,
heading out of the kitchen.

  He’d gone back out to the car, to the front of the house where Sean was waiting. Paddy froze in horror. Sean was alone with him. She listened hard, every sense heightened, listening for a cry or a call or a noise.

  Wind rasped through the trees on the high hill behind her, dead leaves hissed around her ankles. So rigid with indecision that she could hardly blink, she stood there, a woman dying in front of her, her own breath frosting and clearing the small panel on the window, listening for Sean’s death.

  A shift in the light at the kitchen doorway made her jump back into the dark and her heel sank into the soil.

  Lafferty sauntered back in through the kitchen door, calmly stepping over the table to Kate, holding a large knife. He took the hem of his sweatshirt and wiped the blade with it, a faint smile on his lips.

  Paddy could hear her heartbeat drumming in her ears. As Lafferty dropped to his knees in front of Kate his free hand brushed the broken leg and she saw Kate’s leg twitch, heard a desperate groan through the window.

  She couldn’t move. She had walked away from Vhari, had stood silently in a rockery while Lafferty killed Sean, and now she was going to watch him cut Kate’s throat. Suddenly, she saw a shadow in the kitchen doorway.

  Having come in from the dark, Sean was blinded by the overhead light and blinked hard. Lafferty was on his feet, standing straight, twisting from the waist toward the doorway, holding the big knife in front of him.

  Tearing her eyes from the window, Paddy grabbed a huge stone at her feet and stood up, surprised by the weight. She swung it at the French doors. The loud shattering of glass panels and aged wood splitting into kindling hit the back wall of the garden, reverberating through the doors. The French doors swung languidly inward. They were unlocked.

  Clueless as to what she’d do when she landed, Paddy jumped into the kitchen, feet skidding on the shards of glass. Lafferty spun toward her, his neck a solid flex of muscle, his teeth bared. Sean swung a wild punch at the back of Lafferty’s head.

  Paddy watched Lafferty’s face as he received the blow. His jaw slackened and the anger left his eyes for a moment. Behind him Sean retracted his arm and watched.