by Denise Mina
‘How about this one?’ Terry turned the page back to one of Naismith standing in the garden in Townhead.
Paddy could feel her pulse on her throat. She felt sure that Tracy would be able to see the throb in her jugular if she looked up.
‘He’d do anything for our boy. He’s training him to take over the van. He’d never hurt a child—’ Paddy cut across her. ‘We’d better go.’
Terry’s mouth dropped open a little.
‘We should,’ she said insistently. ‘I need to go.’
‘We’ll just get the picture,’ said Terry carefully, taking the photo album from Tracy before she had time to object and lifting out the picture he wanted. Paddy was starting to sweat. ‘I’m off.’
He looked at her defiantly. ‘We need to thank Tracy for all her help.’
But Paddy was already at the door of the living room. ‘Goodbye.’
She hurried across the hall and opened the door to the howling vortex, narrowing her eyes against the stray dust, racing along the balcony to the stairs. She pulled at the door, using her weight when she felt that it wouldn’t give. For a terrifying moment she thought Garry was behind it, smiling calmly and holding it closed effortlessly. Terry leaned over her shoulder and pushed open the door with one hand. She tumbled into the echoing stairwell, into the acrid stench of solvent and piss.
‘Are you nuts? What the hell was all that about?’ She spun to face him, grabbed his neck with both hands and shook, mistaking Terry for the real threat, making him lose his footing until his flailing hand fell on the metal banister and he managed to steady himself.
They stood still, Paddy holding his neck, Terry bent curiously towards and away from her, averting his eyes in submission. The muffled vibration of their struggle throbbed through the thick concrete. Horrified, she opened her fingers and Terry stood up slowly. He straightened his jacket without looking at her. They walked down together, Paddy panting until she got her breath back, Terry saying nothing. Downstairs, they crossed the lobby, walked out into the day and parted without speaking.
II
Dr Pete was propped up on marshmallow pillows, looking out of the window at a high statue of the Protestant Reformationist John Knox. She was quite sure they weren’t his own pyjamas. They had the stiffness of institutionally laundered clothes. Boil-washing had faded them to a sunbleached blue that clashed horribly with his yellow skin. The crisp white sheet in his lap was folded neatly down and sometimes, while he was talking, he would stroke it thoughtfully.
‘Ludicrous. Knox was an anti-iconoclast. He wouldn’t have approved of a statue.’ He smiled distantly. ‘If they weren’t Calvinists you’d suspect the memorial committee of having a sense of humour.’
Paddy didn’t know anything about the various Protestant splinters but she smiled to please him.
It was a modern extension to the old hospital with copper-tinted windows facing on to the Necropolis, a jagged Victorian mini-Manhattan of exuberant architecture, erected when celebrating death wasn’t yet taboo. The three other beds in Dr Pete’s room had a large floor space around each for all the equipment they might need. The patient in the bed across the way was unconscious, an unpromising strip of skin under a paper-pristine sheet. Expensive equipment was conferenced around his bed: a heart monitor, a hissing pump, a drip and a blinking television screen. Next to him his ruddy-cheeked wife sat reading the Sun, squinting as if it required concentration.
It was an unhappy accident that the cancer ward overlooked the graveyard but one which Dr Pete, full of medication and clear of pain for the first time in months, was enjoying. Sober, pepped-up and without his habitual pained slouch, he was suddenly a very different man. It no longer seemed infeasible that he had swung women over puddles or written beautifully. He had been talking about John Knox’s statue at the top of the hill for ten minutes, picking his words carefully as he related the history of its construction and why it had been built in the middle of what became a huge graveyard.
‘But by then no-one cared where he was. Why did you come?’ Pete’s steady eyes seared into hers.
‘Just wondered how you were,’ she lied. ‘I wanted to see how ye were.’
Pete watched his fingertips running over the stiff hem of the sheet. ‘Well, I’m dying, as you can see.’
She smiled politely again. She had come here to hide for half an hour. The visit was supposed to be a light-hearted stopover to break up a very bad day but it wasn’t working out at all. She decided to hand over her token gift and get out. The cellophane wrapper crackled loudly as she pulled the bottle out of her bag. ‘Lucozade.’
He sat up, genuinely pleased, and patted the top of his bedside locker. ‘Put it up there.’ She opened the door to the cabinet but he stopped her. ‘No, no, put it on top.’
He glanced around the room and she followed his eye to the other patients’ lockers. Every one of them had bottles and bags of sweets and flowers and cards stacked on them, but Pete’s was completely bare.
‘I was rushed in this time. When I came in before I brought my own. I won’t be pitied by bloody nurses.’
He wouldn’t have said it if he hadn’t been on morphine, and she was shocked to hear that he was so alone. Whenever she’d been to visit relatives in hospital she’d had to queue in the corridor, waiting for a batch of family to leave before she could get in. She felt ashamed for him and changed the subject.
‘I’ve always wondered,’ she said,‘why do they call you Dr Pete?’
‘I am a doctor. I’ve got a doctorate in divinity.’ She waited for him to laugh at her credulity and admit it was a joke, but he didn’t. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘I wanted to be a minister. I’m a son of the Manse.’
‘Your dad was a minister?’
‘And his father before him.’
‘You’re less like a minister than anyone I’ve ever met.’
‘I was a disappointment. I liked what you said to Richards, about substituting the basic text. My family couldn’t conceive of a life outside the Kirk. I’m just getting there myself.’
‘I lost my faith early, before I made my first communion. I still can’t tell my family.’
He reached across, a beatific light in his eye, and patted her hand. ‘Lie to them. Let them not worry. I hurt my father. It was needless. I didn’t change his mind and he didn’t change mine. We argued on the day he died.’
Paddy shook her head. ‘I can’t fight with my father. He’s very meek.’
‘Ah, the meek. Playing the long game. Sneaky bastards.’ The man across the room let out a soft groan. His wife reached out and patted the bed without taking her eyes off the paper.
‘That man’ll be dead in the morning,’ said Pete. ‘If he’s lucky.’
Paddy glanced over at the man and felt her face flush suddenly. She hadn’t come here to have her nose rubbed in the inevitability of death. Pete saw her eyes redden and looked alarmed.
‘No, it’s not about you,’ she blurted, realizing too late that it would be wrong to say she didn’t care that he was going to die. ‘Oh God almighty, Pete, I’ve done an awful thing. I planted evidence on Henry Naismith and now he’s confessed to killing Brian Wilcox. I was sure it was him.’
‘What did you plant?’
‘Hair.’ She rubbed her eyes hard. ‘Heather Allen’s hair. And he confessed to killing her and Thomas Dempsie as well.’
‘Naismith didn’t kill Thomas Dempsie. He was in the cells that night.’
‘I know. So if he’s confessing to that as well how genuine can the confession to Baby Brian be?’
Pete’s eyes widened calmly. ‘Why would he make a false confession?’
‘It was his son. He’s protecting his boy.’ Pete frowned for a moment. ‘Garry Naismith.’
‘That’s right. Garry killed Thomas and let Alfred take the blame. I think Naismith found out and blamed h
imself. I think he’s been covering up for his son ever since.’
‘Makes sense. Henry saw the light after Thomas died. Changed his life.’ Pete could have been discussing biscuits. ‘Naismith’s giving up his life to save his boy. Greater love hath no man.’
She nodded at the familiar phrase heard out of context. ‘You did do divinity, didn’t you?’
The curtain on the far side of the bed swept back suddenly and a neat nurse looked at them accusingly.
‘What are you doing here?’ She addressed Paddy, pulling her lips back in a smile that wouldn’t have fooled anyone. ‘Visiting,’ said Paddy.
The nurse’s mouth spasmed wide and she busied herself tidying the folds in the curtain. ‘Family are allowed to visit outside visiting hours but I’m afraid everyone else has to come between three and eight.’ She turned to face Paddy square on. ‘You’ll have to leave.’
Confused and embarrassed, Paddy reached for her bag. ‘Iona, Iona.’ Pete pushed himself up on the pillow, coming alive at the possibility of a fight. ‘Get your thumb out your arse. She’s my daughter.’ Nurse Iona glanced at his ring finger.
‘That’s right, she’s a bastard. A love child. I wouldn’t marry her pregnant mother because she was ugly and below marriageable age.’ He lifted his bandaged hand. ‘In Texas. Give me more?’
The nurse was staring unkindly at Paddy, taking in her cheap black jumper. It was bobbled under the arms and stretched at the bottom from being self-consciously tugged down to hide her body whenever she stood up off the bench. ‘It’s not time for more, Mr McIltchie, as well you know.’ She looked from Paddy to Pete but couldn’t find any echo of his face in hers. ‘If she is your daughter why isn’t she down as your next of kin?’
‘She’s untrustworthy. A dipsomaniac.’ Pete’s face was bright with innocent enjoyment. ‘When I die she’ll be in here pulling rings from my fingers before you can say“cock and balls”.’
Iona thanked him not to use that language and pissed about a bit, taking his pulse and looking at her watch, before leaving them alone again. Pete sighed contentedly and stroked the sheet.
‘There, you have to come back and visit me now.’
‘She’s a bit scary.’
Pete pulled himself up and leaned across the bed confidentially. His breath smelled foul. ‘She’s a fucking cow. I watch her going around this room bullying them all. I try to frighten her back. She scratches when she washes me. Every time.’ He leaned back against the pillow and looked at the door. ‘I don’t want to die in here. Have to keep fighting.’ He frowned briefly at the sheet, banishing whatever thought was interfering with his medication. ‘Sad.’ He shook his head. ‘As if we’re not scared enough in here. I’d hate to recant at this stage.’
Paddy didn’t know what to say so she apologized again. He didn’t notice. ‘I’m dying,’ he told the sheet, sounding surprised to hear it himself. ‘And I don’t believe in God. I hope I don’t get scared at the last minute.’
‘I’ve got to go, Pete.’
‘Where?’
‘I need to get the bus to Anderston and tell that wee bastard Patterson what I’ve done. There’s nothing else for it.’ She half hoped he’d think of something. ‘Right enough.’
She saw into her future and the best she could hope for was a job in a shop or a factory. She couldn’t even marry now. The disappointment was so bitter it made her bones ache.
‘I’ll never be a journalist now.’
‘That’s right.’
She looked at him. He was staring up at John Knox. She wasn’t at all sure he was really listening. He had other things on his mind, she supposed.
‘It would be a shame to recant at this stage,’ she said quietly.
He became animated suddenly. ‘Wouldn’t it? Fear.’S fear. There are ministers and lay preachers and hairy beasts patrolling the corridors of this hospital, waiting. They can smell moments of weakness. I don’t want to weaken. I’d die sad. This, here’–he pointed at the cannula on the back of his hand–‘this is my last defence against them. I’d like to go out on a big burst of that.’
It took her the rest of the visit to work out that he was talking about his four-hourly doses of morphine.
35
A Leaving Do
I
Paddy stood with the other passengers in a neat row, all watching down the road for the bus, their faces pinched against the biting, dusty wind. The bus stop was a shelterless pole on the edge of a Hiroshima desert landscape. The area around the hospital had been razed of its tenements and not yet redeveloped. Ghost blocks were linked by a network of pointless pavements and crazed roads leading nowhere. The air smelled dry and dead. Here and there developers had erected fences around their own precious plot but the wind still had a good, clear run across the land. Tiny dunes of grey dust gathered at the kerb.
Paddy promised herself a binge reward: after she had been to the police station and spoken to Patterson she would eat two Marathon bars one after the other. It didn’t matter how fat she got now because Sean was lost and she would never face the harsh light of the news room again. She wasn’t going back. She bowed her head and felt the loss of her future as a drop of pressure. She’d have to work in a shop or something, wear a uniform and take shit from a manageress. She’d probably panic and marry someone unsuitable just because they asked her and end up living next to her ma, wondering what the hell happened for the rest of her life.
The passenger at the front of the queue stepped forward, a reflex response to the sight of the bus turning a faraway corner, and the others followed, reaching into pockets and bags for bus passes and loose change for the fare.
Two Marathons and a cheese and onion pastry from Greggs the baker’s. And a fudge doughnut. As the bus pulled up alongside she was planning how she would get all the food up to her room and manage to be alone.
The conductor was all nose. He stood, thoughtlessly scratching his balls through his pocket lining, as Paddy stepped onto the open platform and asked,‘D’ye go past Anderston?’
‘Other way. You want the one six four. They’re every twenty minutes.’
She stepped off backwards onto the pavement and backed away, digging her hands deep into her pockets, watching the tail of the bus pull away from the kerb. She became aware that the sharpness of the wind had changed on the back of her neck.
He swung around in front of her, his eyes a brilliant, burnished green. He was wearing a black woolly hat. The stud in his left earlobe glinted bright against the grey landscape.
‘You’re not Heather Allen.’
His pink tongue left a wet trail as it slid across his bottom lip. When Paddy looked into his eyes her delusions about being able to defend herself evaporated. Cold fear seized her joints, making her stand stiff in front of him while her legs told her to run. She had been able to bully Heather and Terry but she knew it would be pointless with Garry Naismith. He would go further faster, and it wasn’t because he had more to lose. He wanted to. He liked it.
‘I need to see you.’
Her family thought she was at work. She wouldn’t be missed for hours and the police had their man; they weren’t looking for anyone else. She ducked behind him in panic and saw the back of the bus retreat down the dusty road. His hand was on her elbow, a polite request for her time.
‘You know my old man.’
‘I need to go,’ she said, but stayed where she was. ‘I need to get somewhere.’
It was a subtle shift of position: his hand dropped an inch, his thumb and fore finger coming together around the tendon on her elbow. Her stomach heaved at the pain, flooding her mouth with saliva, and she arched backwards, trying to release his grip. Garry Naismith loomed, smiling gently at her lips, leaning over as if he was going to kiss her.
‘I see women like you all the time.’ He squeezed again. ‘But ye won’t refuse me this time.’
&n
bsp; His free hand rose at his side. Beyond the veil of pain radiating from her elbow she was aware of his fingers curved comfortably around a dull, matt egg. She didn’t realize it was a rock until the cold stone weight of it hit the back of her head and the night came down.
She wasn’t dead. It was daylight, and she was bent over from the waist, moving forwards across a grey pavement, black woolly tights wrinkled around her ankles, unsteady feet tripping over each other. An arm was hooked under her armpit supporting her weight, guiding her by the elbow. Her scalp was hot and damp, and she had to concentrate hard to work out that the itching on her hairline was caused by the woolly hat he had pulled onto her head.
Another pair of feet coming towards them. A lady’s shoes: brown, sensible, and a blue shopping bag. The woman spoke, and the supporting arm spoke back, making a joke of it. Paddy slumped forwards and was yanked upright. They moved on.
It was darker. She was sitting on something soft, slumped to the side at an angle that made her side and back hurt. The floor beneath her feet rumbled. She was in a taxi and he was at her side, still holding her elbow, his nimble fingers ready to pinch if she did anything. Imagining the future felt like wading through hot sand, but she tried: they were travelling, on their way to somewhere she would never leave. Her mind yearned to slip back into the warm water but she fought hard to stay conscious. Slowly, she dropped forward, her chin gently pressed against her knee; she saw the squashed end of a cigarette on the floor. Meehan never gave up. He spent seven years in solitary confinement, was despised and vilified, and still he never gave up. Using the muscles on her back, she pulled her head up a little.
‘Heb,’ she shouted, but her voice was weak and toneless. His fingers twitched and a spasm of white-hot pain convulsed her body.
‘Aye, pal,’ he said loudly, talking to the driver. ‘Dead drunk, daft cow.’
‘Heb.’
Garry Naismith laughed loud, covering the sound of her whimpering until she slid forward and gave in.