Field of Blood

by Denise Mina

  Paddy was starting to wonder if she was getting the sack and everyone knew but her when Keck stopped picking his fingernails with an unravelled paper clip and leaned over.

  ‘Seen your pal Heather this afternoon?’ Paddy shook her head, reluctant to get into it.

  ‘Aye, ye won’t see her tomorrow either.’ He pointed into the middle of the room. ‘Farquarson told the morning boys and they got Father Richards down here and told him her card wasn’t right and she was to get out and not come back. She was crying and everything.’ He sat back.

  Paddy looked around the room at the serious men at the news desk, at the mess of clippings piled up on the features and sports desks, where they were all gathered around one end of the table smoking Capstans and eating a box of cream cakes. She wondered how these graceless, ruined men had come to be her only allies.

  16

  Microbe Safari

  I

  The Drygate flats looked like lost American tourists. Painted and peeling Miami pink, they were topped with jaunty little Frank Lloyd Wright hats and banded with balconies. The designer had overlooked the setting: a brutally windy Glaswegian hillside facing the Great Eastern Hotel, a soot-blackened doss house for drunk men.

  Thomas Dempsie’s mother had been transferred by the council shortly after her husband was convicted of murdering Thomas. It was less than half a mile away from the old house, just down the hill from Townhead. Paddy guessed that she would have been moved by the council for her own safety. The News had published her new address when Alfred killed himself in prison.

  Paddy waited for five minutes in the lobby, watching the light display above the steel doors tell her that the lift was moving exclusively between floors four and seven, before accepting that she would have to walk. She didn’t like running or hills or walking up stairs. She didn’t like the feeling of pockets of fat jigging on her stomach or hips. She didn’t believe thin people ever got sweaty or out of breath and felt she was drawing attention to her size when she did. Everything in the urine-stained stairwell that could be broken was broken: rubber had been torn off the hand rail leaving a filthy black substance that stuck to the skin; tiles on the floor had been lifted leaving bald, tacky splats of adhesive. Several landings were littered with glue-filled plastic bags, the discarded tins often lying nearby, some still giving off a detectable tang. Paddy had to stop a couple of times to get her breath on the way to the eighth floor, and each time she stopped she could hear people’s lives clattering and murmuring through the walls around her, smell the evening meals being prepared and the mouldy rubbish blocking chutes. She reached the eighth floor and paused in front of the grey fire door, taking another breath and reminding herself why she was there and what she wanted to ask about. She had a job to do, she was going to be a reporter. Thrilled by the game, she pulled open the door and stepped out onto the windy balcony.

  The row of front doors were painted a uniform pillarbox red. Between each was a living-room window for the neighbours to peer into and a smaller mottled bathroom window. As she stood waiting in front of 8f for an answer to her knock, Paddy noted that the nets in both were grey and tired. An empty bottle lay on the blurred bathroom sill, next to a pool of what looked like dried toothpaste. She felt her lip curl in disgust but checked herself. She shouldn’t be small-minded about how other people lived, it was none of her business. She stared hard at the door and could see that the wind on the landing had brought hairs and dust and grit to it when the paint was still wet, giving it a textured microbe-safari finish. The door opened cautiously.

  ‘Oh.’ Paddy let out a little startled exclamation, surprised by the woman’s odd appearance. ‘Hello?’

  Tracy Dempsie had gone to great lengths to disguise any natural advantage she had ever had. Her hair was dyed aubergine and pulled up in a tight ponytail that dragged her face back into an unflattering mask. Her black mascara and eyeliner were thick and migrating under her eyes. Her pupils were so dilated that the blue iris was little more than a halo. Tracy blinked slowly, cutting out the scary world for a delicious moment, knowing that all the sharp edges would be waiting for her if the prescriptions ever ran out.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Dempsie? I’m Heather Allen,’ said Paddy, half hoping it would all go sour and Tracy would phone the paper and complain about her, compounding her dismissal. ‘I’m a journalist with the Daily News.’

  Reluctantly, Tracy opened the door and the wind shoved Paddy into the hall.

  The decor was as garish as Mrs Dempsie herself. The swirling carpet looked like an abstract representation of an argument between red and yellow. The walls were covered in jagged yellow artex. Tracy shuffled back, walking off to the living room. Paddy paused in the hall and then guessed that she had been invited to follow.

  A black and white portable television was on in the corner showing a nature programme about otters, their little silvery pelts slipping in and out of water. Around the set, lost in the same loud carpet as the hall, were cigarette packets and dirty plates. A saucer at the side of the settee had a bit of toast and three dog ends stubbed out on it. Two wire clothes horses were arranged around the burning fire with sheets draped over them, sending waves of wet heat into the living room.

  Tracy saw her looking at it. ‘High flats. No lines for washing. Ye can’t leave a washing out on a line ‘cause someone’ll nick it.’

  ‘You used to have a house, didn’t ye?’

  ‘Aye, Townhead. Up the hill, know?’ Tracy lifted her hand slowly and lowered it again, indicating over there, where the badness was. ‘Council moved us here after Alfred got the jail. Then your mob published this address.’ She frowned bitterly.

  ‘They have to do that, by law,’ said Paddy, ‘to identify ye. In case people think it’s someone else of the same name.’

  ‘Well, everyone knew where we’d got moved to. We lost the Kennedy Street house for nothing, know?’

  They were standing facing each other, Paddy still wearing her duffel coat and scarf, her underclothes damp after the exertion of the stairs. Tracy blinked again, oblivious to her guest’s discomfort, and her eyes fell on the television.

  ‘“We” got moved?’ said Paddy. ‘Who’s “we”?’

  ‘Me and the wean.’

  ‘I didn’t know ye had other kids.’

  ‘I had a boy before. I was married before I met Alfred. I can’t manage much so he’s with his dad now.’Tracy nodded heavily. ‘Ye can sit down if ye like.’

  They looked at the settee together. Tracy had left some damp clothes sitting on one end of it and they were smelling faintly sour. ‘Thanks.’

  Paddy took off her coat and sat it on her knee, taking care to stay away from the source of the smell. Tracy sat next to her, her knee lazily pressing into Paddy’s thigh. She didn’t seem to notice. She kept her eyes on the telly and lifted a silver packet of Lambert and Butler off the coffee table.

  ‘Smoke?’

  Paddy could see exactly where she sucked her fags: her two front teeth had a dirty little sunrise impressed on them. ‘No thanks,’ said Paddy, taking the empty notepad out of her bag and leaning back so Tracy couldn’t see the paper. She flicked elaborately through to the middle as if the pages were choked with vital information from other cases. Tracy took a cigarette out of the packet with a slack hand, lit it with a match and took three consecutive draws, tilting her head back to expand her lungs.

  ‘So, ye said on the phone ye wanted to see me about Thomas?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Paddy positioned her pen. ‘Because of the Baby Brian case—’

  ‘Tragic.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Those wee bastards should be hanged.’ Tracy touched her mouth in self-reproach. ‘’Scuse me, but I blame the mothers. Where were they? Who lets their boy do that to another woman’s wean?’

  ‘Well, because of it we’re doing a series about past stories and your son Thomas was one of the
names that came up. Would you be all right talking about it?’

  Tracy shut her eyes tight, squeezing the lids together. ‘It’s not easy, know? Because first I loss my baby and then I loss my man. Alfred was innocent.’ Tracy shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘He always said that. He was at the pitch and toss that night. That’s how he didn’t have an alibi.’

  The pitch and toss were illegal gambling schools, impromptu affairs run by gangsters in pubs and sheds and on open-air waste ground all over the city. Men could bet away their family’s weekly wage on the turn of a few coins. ‘Surely someone would come forward?’

  ‘No-one remembered him at the pitch and toss. Gamblers don’t notice ye if ye don’t have a big stake. He wasn’t a man you’d remember, Alfred.’

  The misery was vivid in Tracy’s eyes, and suddenly Paddy didn’t feel like a junior scoop, she felt like a fat girl cheering herself up by quizzing a bereaved woman about her private business.

  Tracy let the stub of her fag dawdle on her lips. ‘You wouldn’t notice him. He was a good dad though, a really good dad. Loved his weans, handed his money in, know?’ Her eyes were brimming, threatening to flood her face with mascara.

  Paddy dropped her notebook into her lap. ‘I feel terrible coming here bringing this all up for you again.’

  ‘Never mind.’ Tracy flicked her cigarette ash into a dirty saucer on the floor. ‘I don’t mind. It’s always with me anyway. Every day.’

  Paddy looked at the television. A voiceover was explaining breeding cycles while two otters swam around each other.

  ‘If Alfred didn’t kill your son, who do you think did?’ Tracy squashed her fag out in the saucer. ‘D’you know what happened to Thomas?’ ‘No.’

  ‘They strangled him and left him on the railway to get run over. He was in bits when I got him back.’ Her chin contracted into a circle of white and red dimples and her bottom lip began to twitch. To stop herself crying she picked up her packet again, flicking open the lid and pulling out another fag, lifting her box of matches. ‘No man could do that to his own wean.’ The head flew off the match as she struck it and it landed on the carpet, melting a little crater in the manmade fabric. Tracy stamped on it, squashing the flame into the ground. ‘Bloody things. Made in Poland, for petesake. As if we cannae make matches here.’

  ‘I didn’t know that about Thomas. The old papers never said that.’

  ‘They’re shutting all the works and we’re buying this rubbish from the bloody Poles. Half this landing has been laid off. And why would Alfred leave Thomas in Barnhill? He was never up that way. He didn’t even know anyone there.’

  Paddy’s face felt suddenly cold. Barnhill was where Callum Ogilvy lived. ‘Whereabouts in Barnhill?’

  ‘The tracks. Before the station.’ Tracy stared at the television. ‘He was there all night before he was found. First morning train went over him.’

  ‘I didn’t know, I’m sorry,’ mumbled Paddy. Thomas’s death was all too real now and she wished she hadn’t come here. She wished something nice had happened to Tracy. ‘Did you not marry again?’

  ‘No. Been married twice, that was enough. I was pregnant at fifteen, married at sixteen. He was just a boy himself. Never there. In and out of Barlinnie. A wild man.’ She churned out a grin. ‘Always go for the bad ones, don’t ye?’ Paddy didn’t, but she nodded to be agreeable.

  ‘He got a big shock when Thomas was killed, cleaned up his act. Tried to be a father to his own boy. Had him to stay when the neighbours were attacking the house up the road. He stays with him still.’

  Paddy nodded encouragingly. ‘At least he tries.’

  ‘Oh, he tries. He does that,’ Tracy conceded, dropping her voice to a whisper.

  ‘Brian was taken on the same day as Thomas. Did you notice?’

  ‘Of course I did. Eight-year anniversary.’ Tracy took a draw on her cigarette and watched the otters, sedating herself with the television. ‘Stays with ye, the death of a child. Never seems by, like it’s always happened this morning.’

  II

  As Paddy stepped out onto the windy veranda she saw a strip of green light on the balcony floor, thinning between the shutting lift doors. Driven by her dread of the grim stairs, she ran for it, catching the doors with just an inch to go, frantically pressing the button on the wall.

  There were two boys in the lift, both about thirteen, guarding either side of the doorway. Paddy stepped in and heard the door shut behind her before she had the wit to change her mind.

  They were poor boys, she could see that, both wearing cheap Parkas with flattened orange linings and thin fur edging on their hoods, both in school trousers that were too short for them with tide marks where hems had been let down.

  The lights through the tiny lift window showed them passing the seventh floor, a big industrial stamped number on the far wall flicking past and registering on Paddy’s eye. After glancing at each other, the boys turned to look at her.

  One of them had his hood up, covering all but his nose and mouth. The other’s hair was cut so short that tell-tale patches of ringworm were visible on his scalp. Each of them flicked his eyes at the other again, signalling something sneaky and malign.

  The most expensive thing she owned in the world was her monthly travel Transcard in her bag. Paddy pulled her bag strap over her head and held onto the base of it in case the boys tried to grab it.

  They passed the fifth floor, the lift gathering momentum, the cable above their heads creaking.

  The boys looked at each other again, smirking, putting their hands behind their backs and pushing themselves off the wall as if getting ready to pounce. It occurred to Paddy suddenly that one of the boys might be Tracy Dempsie’s other son. Either of them looked poor enough. ‘I know your mum,’ said Paddy, looking at the wall.

  A little disconcerted, the boys glanced at each other again. ‘Eh?’

  She looked at the ringwormed boy who had spoken. ‘Is your mum called Tracy?’ He shook his head.

  ‘Mine’s dead,’ said the hood, with such relish she doubted it was true.

  Paddy put her hand in her pocket, feeling past the bits of tissue to her house keys, slipping them through her fingers to make a face-ripping fist. She tried speaking again, thinking that any local connection would protect her a little. ‘Do you know Tracy Dempsie on eight?’

  The boys laughed. ‘She’s a fucking ugly hooker,’ said the hood.

  Paddy felt suddenly protective of Tracy. ‘“Hooker”? Where’d ye get that word? Off the telly?’

  The lift bounced to a stop on the ground floor. The boys stood still, staring at her feet as the doors slid open. The hood tipped his head back, his mouth falling open, eager to see what she would do.

  Paddy held onto her bag with one hand and kept the other in her pocket. She worked hard not to turn her shoulder or give way to them, just to walk straight through the middle. She lifted her foot but faltered before taking the first step, prompting a giggle from one of the boys. As she stepped out into the foyer a cold sweat formed over the back of her neck. They could have cut her or raped her or mugged her and there would have been nothing she could do to defend herself. She was out of her depth.

  She scuttled out of the lobby and the building, hurrying out of the shadow of the block and across a patch of grass, passing a garden party of old alki men standing around a burning brazier, too late or too drunk for the Great Eastern Hotel’s seven o’clock check-in time.

  III

  Distracted by the memory of Tracy’s hollow eyes, Paddy walked up the steep hill to the blackened cathedral and cut around the back of the Townhead scheme to the old Dempsie house. She was walking fast, hurrying away from the fright of the boys and the unfamiliar air of regret in Tracy’s house.

  She felt sure she had stumbled on something significant. Someone had killed Thomas Dempsie and left him in Barnhill. If the same person had
killed Baby Brian on Thomas’s anniversary they couldn’t leave him in Barnhill; they would have to leave him somewhere else if they didn’t want to draw attention to the similarities. That might be the reason they took him to Steps, to cover up the fact that it was a repeat murder. But it wasn’t a repeat: Callum Ogilvy and his friend had killed Baby Brian. They had his blood on them and their footprints were found there, and they were toddlers themselves when Thomas died. That could be good for her, though: if Farquarson thought Thomas Dempsie’s case was highly relevant a better journalist would get to take it over. For her to get to write it up it needed to seem only quite interesting. Still, she shouldn’t even be considering it. Her mum would put her out of the house if her name appeared on any article connected to Baby Brian.

  A plyboard wall ran along one side of Kennedy Street, blocking entry to one of the many bomb sites still pock marking the city from the Second World War. On the other side, a snake of houses clung to the edge of a spur of land. They were mirror images of Gina Wilcox’s house, from the concrete steps leading up to the narrow door to the three banded green fence. A nearby household had taken offence at the Irish Republican implications of the fence colour and had repainted theirs a royal blue. Apart from one house using its small garden to store bald tyres, the neighbourhood was well tended, the front rooms cosy and peaceful when seen from the cold street.

  Around the shoulder of the crescent a middle-aged man in a navy overcoat came walking towards her, his hands jammed into his pockets. Paddy walked towards him and saw him flinch warily, hurrying to get past her. ‘Excuse me?’

  The man sped up. ‘Can I speak to you, sir?’

  He stopped and turned, looking her over. Are you the police?’