Field of Blood

by Denise Mina

  Patterson pulled her into the corridor by the arm. ‘Unfortunately we can’t arrest people for parking outside your work. This thing with you and Naismith’s just a misunderstanding. Maybe you left something in his cab and he wants to return it to you or something.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s bound to be why he’s got Heather Allen’s hair in his van, isn’t it?’

  Leaving McGovern behind, Patterson led Paddy through the door to the waiting room, acting as if she had hurt his feelings. Still holding onto her arm, he pulled her across the floor, depositing her arm into the tender care of Terry.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he told Terry,‘the man in question is known to us. We’ll be having a word, telling him to lay off and stay away from her and the paper.’

  ‘Hey! Talk to me, not him.’

  Patterson turned, his face a mask of disgust. ‘You shouldn’t be getting into vans with men you don’t know. Old guys like Naismith are prone to get the wrong idea and you’d have no-one to blame but yourself if he did.’

  He turned and walked away, hitting the doors to the waiting room so hard they bounced loudly off the corridor walls. The desk sergeant raised an amused eyebrow. Terry looked at her. ‘I’m guessing it didn’t go that well.’

  ‘You’d be guessing right.’

  Outside the station they climbed into the car and sat staring out of the windscreen for a moment, Paddy stunned, Terry patient.

  ‘The red-faced guy there,’ she said finally. ‘His dad investigated Thomas Dempsie. There’s no way the police will ever open that case again.’

  ‘What if we approach Farquarson—’

  ‘Terry,’ she said, turning to him,‘listen to me. We’re nothing. McGuigan and Farquarson won’t print an article denouncing the Strathclyde Police Force on our say-so.’

  ‘They won’t publish, will they?’

  ‘They won’t publish a speculative story. We’d need definite proof. And in the meantime no-one’s the slightest bit interested in searching Naismith’s van. Those wee boys are going to get the blame.’

  ‘We can’t let this happen.’

  ‘I know.’ She looked out of the window, following the path of a crisp packet across the windy road. ‘I know.’

  III

  It was always quiet on the editorial floor but the absence of doors opening or movement through the corridors lent the air a peculiar weight. Paddy kept close to the wall, staying away from the windows as she crept along to the last door before the back stairs. Her fingers were touching the door handle before it occurred to her that the toilets might even be locked over the weekend.

  The handle turned, she felt a gentle click and the door to the ladies’ opened. With a last glance into the corridor, she stepped in. Whether she was smelling or remembering it she couldn’t quite tell, but the tang of Heather’s Anaïs Anaïs perfume caught her throat and she had to press her eyes shut and take a deep breath before making herself move on.

  The cleaners had been. The sink had been wiped down, the used towels emptied from the wire-mesh bin and the sanitary towel bin had been moved back into the corner of the far cubicle, the corner still crumpled from Heather’s weight. Paddy bent down and ran her finger over the hollow. Naismith was going to walk and Callum Ogilvy and the other child would be locked up for years because the cleaners had been. She turned to go, catching sight of herself in the full-length mirror by the door. Her chin sloped straight into her chest. She was putting on weight. She spun away from the mirror and her gaze landed on the floor at the back of the toilet, a stray glint causing her to stop dead. She smiled. That cleaner was a lazy cow. She had mopped the floor without sweeping it first, pushing the debris against the wall under the low cistern, convinced no-one would look there between one shift and the next.

  Paddy bent down a little and smiled. She could see the threads, dulled with dust particles clinging to them, but they were there: a little golden bundle of Heather Allen’s hair.

  IV

  Terry sat on his bed, head bent over the phone book, running his finger down the list of names while Paddy leaned against the wall and watched him. The bed sheets were creased in the middle from the night before. She didn’t want to sit down next to him, didn’t want to approach the bed or touch the sheets. With the overhead light on she could see that a fuzzy grey oval had formed in the middle where Terry slept. She could hardly believe that she had lain there the night before, her bare skin touching the grubby linen, her hands moving slowly over him, faking pleasure. She searched her soul for the crippling shame she had been warned about but couldn’t find it. She wasn’t a virgin any more and no-one knew but her. She crossed her arms, hugging herself, and tried not to smile.

  ‘There’s a few in Baillieston,’ he said. ‘Three in Cumbernauld.’

  ‘Must be a family.’

  ‘Must be.’ His eyes followed his fingers to the bottom corner of the list, and then he turned the page. ‘Here, H. Naismith.’

  Paddy stepped quickly towards him. ‘Is there one there?’

  ‘Yeah, H. Naismith, Dykemuir Street.’ She remembered the address from the mass card they had sent after Callum Ogilvy’s father died.

  ‘That’s Callum Ogilvy’s street,’ she said. ‘Naismith lives in bloody Barnhill.’

  V

  Of all the houses in the street it was the most unremarkable. Naismith’s house was modest and tidy, the curtains hung neatly. The short front garden had been paved over with red slabs which had settled unevenly into the sand beneath, the edges sticking up and down. An empty hanging plant basket at the side of the front door swung with a mild metronomic regularity in the evening wind. The grocery van was parked proudly outside.

  Twenty yards away across the road on the incline of the hill sat the Ogilvy house. Looking out of the passenger window as they passed, Paddy could see where weeds and weather were eating through the brick in the garden wall, chewing into the FILTH OUT slogan, the weight of soil from the garden forcing the bricks to buckle out onto the pavement.

  Barnhill was not the preferred residence of motorists. Terry had parked near the Ogilvys’ but his white Volkswagen was still the only car in the street apart from Naismith’s grocery van. They were acutely conspicuous.

  ‘Shit. We might as well have phoned ahead to tell him we were coming.’

  ‘I know,’ said Terry, peering through the windscreen into the deserted street. He started the engine again and pulled the car out into the road, pulling off quickly as though they were going somewhere.

  ‘What about here?’ said Paddy as they passed an empty pub car park two streets away.

  Terry shook his head. ‘That’s not safer, there’re more witnesses here.’

  They passed by and Paddy saw in the window the back of a man and a woman sitting close in the warm amber light, their heads inclined together. They drove on, following a broad road out towards the Springburn bypass. A stretch of waste ground next to the road was dark with nothing near by but an abandoned, boarded-up tenement building and a pavement running outside it. Terry slowed the car a little and glanced at her enquiringly. ‘No, too obvious.’

  He sped up, heading further away again.

  ‘But, Terry, the further we go from the van the further we’ve got to walk back to it. We’re more likely to be seen.’

  ‘Ah, you’re right.’ He slowed over to the side of the road and swung the car through a sharp circle. ‘Let’s just do it.’ He drove down Callum Ogilvy’s road, parked the car twenty feet behind the van and turned off the engine. He zipped up his leather jacket, tugging the toggle at the end twice, making sure it was up properly. Paddy watched him. Terry was sweating with nerves. They had agreed beforehand that this would be his job, knowing that if Naismith saw Paddy he’d go for her, but Terry was very jittery. She didn’t know if he would be able to pull it off.

  ‘Are we sure about this?’ he said, talking quickly as if he was
afraid to breathe out. ‘I am. Are you?’

  He nodded, looking anxiously out of the window. ‘He was in the cells when Thomas Dempsie went missing, though.’

  ‘He could easily have taken him earlier and hidden him. Tracy Dempsie would hardly be the most reliable person to get times off. Dr Pete said she changed the times back and forth when they interviewed her.’

  ‘Right.’ He nodded out of the window again. ‘You’re sure, then?’

  ‘Terry, look where he lives: he knows Callum Ogilvy, Thomas Dempsie was his ex-wife’s wean by her new man, and his rounds are in Townhead. He must have passed Baby Brian every day. He fits in with all of it perfectly.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, still frowning at the street.

  ‘We’re only making them check his van. If they don’t find any other evidence he’ll walk.’

  ‘He’ll walk.’ Terry nodded. ‘He’ll walk.’

  ‘But they will find evidence. I’m sure they will. They’ll find evidence of the Wilcox baby and Heather as well, I’m sure they will.’

  ‘You’re sure they will.’ His nervous nodding grew faster and he began to rock forward slightly on his seat. ‘Sure they will.’

  He threw open the door and stepped out into the street in one seamless move, striding towards the van with his head down. He stayed in the road, keeping the van between himself and Naismith’s front door, stepped up on the chrome-trimmed step on the driver’s side, keeping his balance by resting his belly against the door, flattening himself against the body of the cab.

  Paddy was staring straight at the van, but if she hadn’t known Terry was there she wouldn’t have seen him. His elbow rose and she saw a flash of light from the screwdriver as he pulled it from his pocket. He jacked the window down, working with the winding mechanism, emptied the contents of the green hand towel in through the window and stepped away from the cab. Then he walked back towards her, his shoulders still up around his ears, his eyes on the ground in front of him. Paddy watched his face and saw that he was grinning.

  VI

  She pressed the rim of the receiver tight against her ear, wondering. Terry was watching her from the car. She was certain they were doing the right thing when she was with him but as soon as she was alone in the call box dialling the number for Anderston police station she wondered if the whole idea seemed sensible because she wanted to show off to him, acting confident of the facts the way she had acted sex in his bed the night before. Her pulse throbbed in her throat as she blurted out the story to the officer on the other end: she had seen Heather Allen on that Friday night getting into a grocery van outside the Pancake Place in Union Street; she didn’t know whose van it was but it was purple and old and she’d seen it doing rounds in Townhead.

  She hung up when he asked for her name and address.

  Striding back to the car, she hoped she looked as confident as Terry had when walking away from Naismith’s van.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Done,’ she said, catching her breath. ‘Done and done.’ Terry drove her all the way to the first leg of the Star, and she didn’t care if she was seen with him. Around the Star, front-room lights were on as families settled around the telly after Songs of Praise. Terry smiled at the little houses and said he liked it.

  ‘All the houses are facing each other, though. Don’t the neighbours all watch each other?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Paddy. ‘Everyone knows everything. Even the Prods know who’s skipping mass. Cheers for running me home.’

  They looked at each other, a bold, bald stare, and she was dismayed to see a tiny ambivalent twitch on his chin.

  ‘We did a good thing today, Terry.’

  ‘I hope we did.’

  They would be for ever bound together by what they had done, and they both knew it.

  She climbed out of the low car, regretting the fact that her fat arse was the last thing to leave his line of sight, and bent down to look at him once more. She saw him sitting in the sagging seat, his little pot belly straining through his T-shirt, saw herself lingering too long to talk, reluctant to leave his company. If Pete could see what there was between them then other people could too. Sean would be hurt to his core.

  ‘We’ll hear in the morning anyway. I’ll see you then.’ She withdrew and slammed the car door behind her.

  She could see his face as he took the rickety car around the roundabout. He looked scared but bared his teeth in a smile as he came past. She waved back, watching the rusting backside of the car until Terry was gone.

  31

  Goodbye

  They were still treating her like a walking sack of pitiful contagion. Marty wouldn’t speak or look at her when they were alone together, and Con pursed his lips tight when they passed on the stairs, treating her like a stranger he had heard unpleasant things about. She had seen them do it to Marty and had happily participated in it herself, but she wasn’t going to let them wear her down.

  She sat alone on her bed, looking at the engagement ring on her finger. The ring felt tight and cut into the skin – she had put on weight in the last week or so – but she kept it on. Sean might not help her otherwise. She could hear Marty listening to the radio in the next-door room, John Peel’s droning monotone interspersed with bursts of synth music and thrashing punk vocals.

  She jumped up when she heard the doorbell downstairs. She heard her mother greeting Sean in the hall with a loud, cheerful whoop followed by a hundred tittering questions about his week, talking as if he had been away at sea for two years. The voices drew closer and she heard their soft tread on the carpeted stairs.

  They were almost up the stairs when Paddy suddenly fumbled the ring off her finger. She grabbed the little velvet box from the dresser and tried to fit the band back into the foam slit but her hands were too jittery. She dropped the ring inside the box and snapped the lid shut just before the bedroom door opened.

  Sean looked in at her. He was wearing formal clothes, his new shiny bomber jacket over a crisp orange Airtex shirt, troublingly close in tone to Terry Hewitt’s bed sheets.

  Trisha was standing behind him. ‘Here’s Sean to see you.’ Her voice was manically cheerful. ‘Hiya.’

  Paddy stood up. ‘Let’s go, then.’

  ‘Well, we’re a bit early,’ said Sean, angling to come into the room for a snog. ‘But the buses …’

  Paddy looked vaguely at her mother, willing her to move out of the way. She didn’t want to talk to him here, not with her mother creeping past on the landing, downstairs praying to JC for a Catholic outcome and smiling hopefully every time they came down for a cup of tea.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said, keeping her eyes down stubbornly. Down in the hall, Trisha helped them on with their coats. She patted Paddy on the arm, signalling a motherly message about compromise and keeping a man: don’t let him go, perhaps, or agree to anything.

  Outside in the crisp air Paddy looked back through the mottled glass and saw the outline of her mother standing still with her head bowed in prayer. She wanted to kick the fucking door in.

  ‘Which cinema do you want to go to?’ asked Sean, pulling up his collar.

  ‘Can we go up the brae?’

  Sean raised a suggestive eyebrow. There was never any evidence of it but rumours abounded of sexy goings-on up the brae, just because it was dark and out of sight. Paddy didn’t giggle or respond the way he expected. ‘I need to talk to you,’ she said seriously.

  His face tensed. For the first time since he shut his front door on her, Paddy felt that he was on the back foot, not her.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s go up the brae.’

  They walked to the end of the street in silence, to the raw mud path leading up the hill. It was a long corridor with bushes on either side. Sean took out his cigarettes to have something to do and Paddy tapped him on the back. ‘Give us a fag, eh?’

  He looked surp
rised: he had never known her to smoke. He held out the packet and she took one, holding it between her lips and tipping her head to the side to take the light from the match in his cupped hand. She didn’t really enjoy smoking. It made her teeth feel dirty and her blood pressure rise, but she liked the idea of being a narrow-eyed, knowing smoker.

  ‘We’re never getting to the pictures, are we?’ Paddy exhaled, looking down the dark path.

  ‘Is it because it’s a boxing flick? We don’t need to go and see that one; we could go and see a romance if you like.’

  ‘No, no, I liked that film.’

  ‘Ye saw it already?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He looked suspicious. ‘I went on my own. It’s been a lonely week.’

  She scratched her nose and saw his eye fall on her naked ring finger.

  ‘Come on.’ She pushed him forwards, following him along the wild path until the bushes cleared.

  They made their way along the steep hillside until the lights from the Eastfield Star were eclipsed by the bushes and trees behind them. Paddy found a flat shelf of rock and sat down on it, crossing her legs and clearing her coat next to her to leave room for Sean. Less elegantly, he lowered himself beside her, stiff from a hard day’s carrying. ‘Since when do you smoke?’

  Paddy shrugged, staring out at the flat valley below them. She started to speak and stopped, taking a smoky draw before starting again. She felt in her pocket and found the engagement ring box. She held it out to him, afraid to look in his eyes and see the hurt there.

  ‘I need to give you this back, Sean. I’m not getting married.’

  He laughed at the abruptness of it and looked at her, hoping for a moment that she’d laugh back and it would be all right. She didn’t. She stared ahead, squinting at the road below them, tucking her hands into her sleeves.

  ‘It’s not you, you’re wonderful. If I wanted to get married to anyone it would be you, but I don’t. I’m too young.’

  ‘We’re only engaged,’ he pleaded.