by Denise Mina
He had depended on Betty his entire adult life– he half despised her for being so dependable– but now she was moving away he felt nothing but admiration. He wished her well, he really did. He felt that she had got out too.
This was Betty’s front room, not theirs. This little square room with a window that looked over the river, it rightfully belonged to her. She had made it clear that he was welcome and would be sleeping on the settee. He would get digs as soon as possible and give her peace.
Cousin Alec and his wife left, and the kids went down to the shops for half an hour to leave them alone. Betty and Meehan sat in silence side by side on the settee, drinking tea and slowly eating biscuits.
30
The Mr Pattersons
I
Terry was waiting in his car, his arm slung over the back of his seat, mock casual, watching the station door for her. She was twenty minutes late and he looked as if he’d been there for a while. He had washed his hair and shaved, taking the shadow from his chin, making him look boyish and eager. Paddy felt breathless and excited at the sight of him. She looked away and took a deep breath as she crossed the road. He leaned across the passenger seat and opened the door for her. She slid in next to him.
‘Hiya.’
‘Hiya.’
They looked at each other for a hard moment, their eyes locked.
‘How’s the knee today?’
‘Fine.’
They sat in silence. Terry’s hand moved forward, invisible under the dashboard, covering hers. ‘I had an amazing time last night.’
‘Me too.’
His hand pressed on hers. ‘Actually, I had four amazing times last night.’
‘You don’t need to boast to me, Terry. I was there.’
‘I know.’ He bared his teeth. ‘But it’s a personal best and I can’t tell anyone else. Shall we go?’
Paddy nodded, dreading him taking away his hand, savouring the heat from the heart of his palm. He turned to face the road, put both hands on the steering wheel and sighed contentedly.
Neither of them knew which police station to go to, nor could they recall which division had done the questioning. They drove up to the Press Bar, which was open on Sundays, a fact that Paddy had never realized before. It opened in the afternoon, Terry explained, for the staff who were getting Monday’s edition together, and he was sure that someone there would know which station had been handling it. He drove down Albion Street slowly with Paddy sitting low on the seat, checking for the grocery van.
A smattering of cars were arranged near the front of the car park and the News delivery vans were parked along Albion Street, locked up and waiting for the next edition. Still concerned for her safety, Terry stopped at the door to the bar and let her climb out through the passenger seat and run in while he went off and parked. She arrived through the door breathless with nerves, an agitated face in a room of drink-softened men.
Richards was sitting alone at the bar, boring McGrade with second-hand jokes and commonplace observations. A team of three printers were sitting at a table together, relaxed, chatting just enough to keep the beer company. Dr Pete was alone at a table near the back. In the three days since she had seen him his skin seemed to have aged a decade. He sucked in his cheeks as he drank and the withered skin around his mouth puckered into radial lines. It was warm in the bar but he had his overcoat pulled tight around him.
Paddy walked over. She had meant to work her way around to enquiring after his health but it was so obviously wrong for the man to be sitting in a pub in his condition that she blurted it out. ‘You look fucked.’
He smiled up at her and blinked slowly. ‘Fucked, is it?’ he drawled, hands in pockets, pulling the tails of his coat around his thighs. ‘I’ll tell you fucked. Thomas Dempsie, murdered in 1973, found at Barnhill by the train station. Father, Alfred Dempsie, found guilty, hanged himself, sad case, blah blah blah.’ He smiled at her again and gave a jaunty little salute. ‘See, yeah? I remember you, remember what you were asking about. I remember it all.’
‘Have you been here since Thursday?’
‘Was it Thursday?’ He seemed quite surprised, and lit a fag to mark the moment.
‘You’ll kill yourself in a month like this.’
‘Balls to the lot of them,’ he said quietly.
‘Listen, was there ever mention of a grocery van being seen in the area when Thomas Dempsie went missing?’
Dr Pete thought for a moment, blinking at his glass of beer before lifting it to his mouth and draining it. ‘Nut.’
‘Are you sure?’
The door to the bar opened behind her and she felt a stiff breeze on her neck. The feet moved towards her and she knew it was Terry. ‘Certain.’
‘What about a guy called Henry Naismith, ever heard of him?’
Terry arrived at the edge of the table and Pete looked up at him.
‘How are you, Pete, all right?’ Pete nodded, smiling vaguely at the wall. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
Pete nodded again and Terry pointed questioningly at Paddy. She asked for lemonade and held her ground when they insisted she have something else. Her stomach couldn’t take it, she said; once a week was more than enough for her. Terry moved off to the bar and Pete smirked knowingly and chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment. ‘You should watch out. A woman can’t afford to get a reputation in this business.’
‘Am I not allowed friends my own age?’
‘It shows. The way a man holds a woman’s eye like that– steadily, as if the whole world was just a secret between them.’ It was the way he used to write– she could hear the unique tone– but instead of going on for ten paragraphs he stopped dead and looked at his glass.
Terry arrived back at the table with a packet of ten Embassy Regal and the drinks: a lemonade for Paddy, a half pint for himself and a half and half for Dr Pete. He put down the cigarettes in front of Paddy. ‘That’s for last night,’ he said, making her flinch in front of Pete. ‘What were ye talking about?’
‘Whether there is a connection between Naismith and Tracy Dempsie,’ said Paddy, carefully changing the subject. Dr Pete’s eyes were wide and wet, three degrees removed from the table. He picked up his whisky glass and threw the contents into the back of his throat, his lip curling in either disgust or pain, Paddy couldn’t quite tell. Then he lifted the half pint of beer to see if a sip of that would help. It didn’t.
‘D’you know what I’d like now?’ Pete looked at Paddy and only at her. ‘I’d like a plate of lamb.’ He dropped his head and wept into his beer.
Terry had to tap him on the elbow and repeat his name a couple of times to get his attention, and asked him for the name of the police station that was dealing with Heather’s murder. Pete told them it was Anderston station, and be sure to ask for Davie Patterson– Pete knew his father. Paddy smiled a thank you but had no intention of asking for the squat-faced policeman. He couldn’t possibly be the only man on the investigation team.
When she looked up she found Pete watching her again. ‘Henry Naismith’, he said,‘was Tracy Dempsie’s first husband.’
‘Her husband? The one she left for Alfred Dempsie?’ He slumped and nodded sadly at his beer. ‘Aye.’
II
The lobby walls were panelled in a cheap, dark veneer which clashed with yellowing turquoise marmolite on the floor. Anderston station had twice as many chairs as the police station she had been in with McVie, three rows of five screwed to the floor.
The desk sergeant’s post was on a rostrum so high that Paddy peered over the lip like a child in a chip shop. A tired young officer in full uniform was sitting in a creaking wooden chair that protested loudly when he moved more than half an inch in either direction. It was Sunday, he informed them, no-one was in today. They could talk to someone if they were prepared to wait, but he didn’t know when anyone would be available. It might
be better if they phoned tomorrow.
‘We’ve got some pretty important information about Heather Allen’s murder. We think we should tell someone right away,’ said Terry, raised with the expectation that important people would listen to him.
The desk sergeant looked suspicious. ‘Heather Allen, is it?’
It was clear to Paddy that he didn’t know who they were talking about.
‘Yes, Heather Allen,’ said Terry. ‘The girl who was found in the river last weekend with her head caved in. We know something about it and we need to tell someone.’
The sergeant nodded. His chair let out a furious creak as he pointed them towards the far wall. ‘Go and wait over there. Someone’ll be out in a minute.’
They walked across the floor to the first set of chairs and sat down in time to see the sergeant disappear through a doorway to his right.
Two minutes later he returned, his eyebrows drawn tight with surprise, and flicked his finger at them to come over. ‘They’re coming straight out,’ he said.
They waited for ten minutes, smoking a cigarette between them. Terry was putting it out on the floor when a door opened behind the desk sergeant. Patterson and McGovern stumbled through it looking playful and mischievous, as though they had just been having a good laugh. All roads in the Heather Allen case seemed to go through Patterson. Paddy was dismayed and he wasn’t pleased to see her either. He baulked, put out a hand to stop McGovern going to the trouble of leaving the rostrum, and called over to her.
‘Ah, yeah. What do you want?’
Paddy stood up. She didn’t want to go over to him, she wanted him to come to her.
‘Pete McIltchie sent me,’ she said, trying to make it clear that she didn’t want to see him either. ‘I need to tell someone something about Heather.’
He didn’t move towards her but stood up straight, picking at a mark on the desk in front of him. ‘McIltchie?’
‘He told me to come and see you.’ He nodded up at her. ‘Is it new information?’ ‘Yes.’ And still he stayed ten yards away, making her talk to him over the head of Terry and the desk sergeant. She decided just to shout:‘I was picked up by someone in Townhead and I found one of Heather’s hairs on a towel. The guy tried to attack me.’
Patterson nodded at the desk and glanced back at McGovern. If they had been alone, if McGovern and the desk sergeant and Terry hadn’t been there, she was sure he would have told her to piss off.
‘OK,’ he muttered. ‘Come through to an interview room.’
McGovern followed Patterson out from behind the desk, stepping down so that they were on her level, and showed her to a double doorway at the side. Patterson pinched her upper arm firmly, as if she needed coaxing. Terry tried to follow but McGovern put a firm hand on his chest.
‘We’re not going to be long.’
Terry looked at Paddy protectively. ‘I’d like to stay with her.’
Patterson pursed his lips. ‘No,’ he said firmly.
McGovern’s eyes shone triumphantly, pleased at the petty point, and Paddy took it as a bad sign.
Beyond the doors the broad corridor was panelled in the same darkwood veneer as the waiting room. The turquoise floor was stained with a yellow streak down the centre. Paddy could smell tea and toast from not far away. The Sunday shift seemed like a mellow call but it wasn’t translating into any benign feeling towards her. As they walked along the corridor in front of her the two burly policemen’s shoulders were almost touching. Neither of them wanted to look at her.
Fifteen yards down the corridor Patterson knocked briskly on a door, paused and opened it, peering in to see if the room was empty. He flicked a finger at her. ‘In.’
Paddy stepped into the room, not at all certain they weren’t going to shut the door and walk away. She heard a voice in the corridor calling Patterson, a low voice asking something.
‘I’ve just got a contact in, sir.’ Patterson’s voice sounded higher than when he spoke to her. ‘About Heather Allen.’
The white-haired man who had vied with McGuigan for the attention of the news room looked in through the door. He was wearing weekend clothes, navy slacks and a grey jumper, as stiff and formal as a uniform. ‘Hello,’ she said.
He looked at her duffel coat suspiciously and addressed Patterson. ‘Don’t take too long. I’ve got work for you.’
Patterson nodded, enjoying the implied slight to Paddy. He followed her into the room and took a seat at the table without offering her one. She sat down anyway. McGovern sat down opposite her and lit a cigarette.
‘Tell me,’ he said, suppressing a smile,‘why do you call yourself Paddy Meehan?’ Patterson smirked next to him. ‘It’s my name.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ said McGovern. ‘Your name’s Patricia Meehan. You chose to call yourself Paddy Meehan.’
She had always known her name would excite comment, that it gave her away as a Pape and marked her out at work, but she hadn’t anticipated it being regarded as a reproach by the police. The two men looked at her, enjoying her discomfort.
‘I’ve always been called that. Is that why you don’t like me? Because my name’s Paddy Meehan?’
It was a mistake. She’d left herself wide open; they could fill in any number of insults now: we don’t like you because you’re fat, we don’t like you because you’re ugly. McGovern and Patterson didn’t even bother filling in the caption. They sniggered at her mistake, McGovern turning it into a laugh as he thought of a quip, Patterson losing interest, taking a deep breath and scratching at the corner of his mouth with his fingernail.
‘I’ve come here to tell you something important,’ she said quietly.
Patterson nodded at the table. ‘Fire away, Scoop.’
McGovern tittered.
She didn’t know where to start so she took it chronologically. She told them about the grocery van and the icecream van’s stops and about the smelly towel on the floor of the van and Heather’s hair and the man trying to grab her ear and sitting outside her work. She listened to herself talk and realized that it all sounded meaningless and circumstantial. McGovern asked her if the towel was still in the van and she had to admit that she had held onto it and then lost it in the street somewhere. He picked up his cigarettes from the table, slipped the lighter into the packet and put them in his pocket, getting ready to leave. She began to speak faster, leaving out the fact that she had given Heather’s name to several people. It was when she said the name Henry Naismith that she saw a flicker of something approaching interest.
Patterson looked at her. ‘Naismith?’
‘He’s the man who runs the grocery van. He was Tracy Dempsie’s first husband. He could have killed Thomas and then Baby Brian.’
‘He didn’t kill Baby Brian. Your cousin killed him.’
‘He’s not my cousin.’
‘Naismith didn’t kill Thomas Dempsie,’ said Patterson certainly.
‘How can you know that for sure?’
‘He had an alibi. He was in the cells when that boy was killed.’
He caught Paddy’s eye and a flush was just discernible on his cheeks. He had the details of the case to hand in the same way that she had old Paddy Meehan’s. ‘And how would you know that?’ she said quietly. McGovern piped up to defend his friend, adding it as a throwaway fact, thinking nothing of it. ‘Turns out his old man worked that case.’
‘The Thomas Dempsie case?’
McGovern nodded innocently. ‘That’s how he knows Pete McIltchie. His dad knew him from back then.’
Patterson coloured a little and nodded at the table, pressing his lips tight together and raising his eyebrows. Naismith was in the cells the night the boy was killed.’
‘He’d been arrested?’
‘It was just an affray. He was a senior in a gang back then, caused a lot of damage. He was broken up when that kid died. He got religion jus
t after it, went through a big conversion.’
‘He’s got a history of violence?’
‘He was a street fighter at the tail end of the sixties and into the seventies, but he’s a nice old guy now, he wouldn’t hurt anyone.’
‘Well, he tried to hurt me.’
Patterson shook his head. ‘Look, we know Naismith didn’t kill anyone.’
‘But Alfred Dempsie did?’
It was only an implied slight, but when she saw the reaction she wouldn’t have wanted to slag off Patterson’s dad overtly. He narrowed his mean little eyes and the red flush on his face deepened.
‘You don’t know anything about that,’ he said.
‘I know enough.’
McGovern was watching them, a small, vacant smile on his beautiful face, not quite knowing what was going on. Patterson slid his hands back off the table, slapped it once and clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth.
‘So, you think Heather Allen was in the van but you took the evidence out and lost it in the road. And now you’re sure it’s got something to do with Thomas Dempsie? What are you going to do about it?’
He looked at her intently, his eyes flicking angrily across her face. He thought she was going to write an article exposing his dad for setting up Alfred Dempsie. He must have pored over the details of the case over the years and known his dad had set Dempsie up. She could see the shame burning bright behind his eyes. She was flattered and pleased that he didn’t know she was just a copyboy and didn’t have anything like enough credibility to do that.
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.’ Suddenly Patterson was on his feet. He jerked the door open, letting it bang off the wall as he pulled her coat off the back of the chair and shoved it into her arms.
‘Look,’ she said, trying one last time,‘I could have imagined the hair and him going for me, I know that, but he was waiting outside my work when I went back there last night. How would he know where I worked?’