by Denise Mina
Two of the kids had slept in here. Their bunk beds had been moved to the end of Sean and Elaine’s bed. The yellow wallpaper had bits of stickers on it, half a spaceship, a lion’s mane and legs, the face missing. In the corner Elaine had tried to wash off a scribble of black felt pen.
The window in Callum’s room looked out over the street. It’s better this way, said Elaine over dinner, because now the kids won’t get woken up with the noise of cars in the street. Better this way. As if she was trying to convince herself. She was slim for a mum of four, brown hair, shiny. When she bent forward at dinner her shirt fell open a bit and he saw her bra. Nearly jumped her there and then.
They’d lied about him to the kids. The oldest girl, Mary, told him while they were out of the room getting the wee ones bathed. You’ve been away in Birmingham, she said. You’ve got a lot of problems. She was tiny, hands so small they didn’t cover his palm. Everything she did was cute. When she spilled milk all over the floor it was cute. She smiled at him a lot, set an example to the others. The toddler, Cabrini, liked him too but the atmosphere was still tense. Elaine was nervous and Sean never took his eyes from him.
Who could blame them.
Callum sat up in the bed and dropped his feet to the floor, holding the curtain away from the wall with one finger, watching the cars speed past outside, craving the fresh cold radiating from the glass. A woman passed by, head down, jeans too tight for her, showing off all her lumps and bumps. He thought about masturbating to get to sleep but someone might come in and find him.
It was so warm, the curtains, the carpet and the heating on. He was used to walls breathing cold, to pulling the prison blankets around himself to stave off the chill. He didn’t know if he could stay in this heat; he could hardly draw a breath in it.
It was dark outside. Across the road, on the step of a close mouth, he saw something move and thought it was a rat. A couple of rats. But they were shiny, caught the orange street light, sleek. Feet. A pair of feet hiding in the dark doorway, shuffling to keep warm. Someone was watching the street.
Sweat prickled at the nape of Callum’s neck. His fingers began to tremble, making the curtain quiver. He dropped his hand but stayed where he was, trapped, tearful, panicked and alone.
He sat there all night, sleeping in small nervous bursts, his head lolling against the wall, craving the cold from outside the cluttered little flat.
15
The Sound of Music
I
The morning was bright as Paddy led Pete around the corner. The street was swarming with small children in red T-shirts and grey skirts or trousers, ready for the new school year. The children came from a poor catchment area and the uniform was minimal.
It was an old-fashioned primary school, the playground railed off from the street and the building arranged in a tall U around it. The two entrances were at opposite ends of the yard and carved into the stone above them were ‘Girls’ and ‘Boys’.
Pete stopped dead. ‘Mum! Gym kit!’
Paddy touched his backpack. ‘In here.’
He did a comedy phew, rolling his head in a figure of eight, showing the small hairs on the back of his neck, like Terry’s. She considered picking him up and running back to the car. Phone the school. Plead a cold. She could give in to her fears every day and keep him under her bed until he was eighteen.
A young man in a black tracksuit stepped out in front of them, crossing the road to the railings, pressing his face through, looking for a kid.
In the yard a blonde teacher, Miss MacDonald, was marshalling the children into groups of their own year in preparation for the line-up and roll call they took before the kids went into the school building. Out on the street parents were lined up along the railings, staring into the yard at their children who were showing off their latest toys, making alliances for the fresh day or chasing each other within the limited parameters of the group Miss MacDonald had put them in.
Suddenly, Pete slipped Paddy’s hand and bolted into the road. She leaped, grabbing his shoulder with a talon hand, spinning him so hard he almost fell to one knee.
‘Mum!’ He looked up at her, mouth hanging open in shock.
She saw herself, grabbing him to assuage her insecurity, keeping him from his life. Flattening his hair with her hand, she avoided his eye. ‘What have I told you about running into the road?’
‘You hurt me.’ He looked at her, demanding that she look back.
She busied herself straightening the straps on his backpack. ‘Just … be careful.’
He hit her hand away. ‘I am being careful.’
‘I’m sorry. I got a fright when you ran out. Sorry.’ Apologizing to a child – her mother would hate that. Never apologize and never explain, Trisha would say, which was all right for her: everything she did was explained by the Church or by teachers in the Catholic school. Paddy wanted Pete to grow up being able to question authority, but it was a lot more work than telling him to shut up and do what he was told.
‘Sorry.’
Pete nodded and looked over at his friends, his face lightening in delight, her offence forgotten.
‘Come on.’ She took his hand and led him over the road.
He ran into the yard, straight into Miss MacDonald who ordered him over to another group, away from his friends. Paddy followed him in.
‘Miss MacDonald? Could you keep an eye on Peter today?’
‘Is he ill?’
‘No.’ She didn’t want to sound paranoid. ‘You know Peter’s father and I aren’t together?’
Miss MacDonald touched the tiny gold crucifix around her neck and mugged sorrow, as if everyone had tried but failed to keep them together.
‘We’re in dispute about access,’ she said, sounding stern when sad would have done better. ‘I’m concerned Peter’s dad might try to come and take him out of school today. Could you keep an eye on him?’
‘Of course.’
‘He might not come himself. He might send a friend to get Peter.’
‘We’ll keep an eye on him.’ She turned to a child who was wandering around between groups, ending the conversation.
‘Don’t let him leave with anyone but me, is what I mean.’
But Miss MacDonald was out of earshot.
Paddy shuffled out of the yard and stood outside with the other mums, holding on to the railings with both hands, fighting a familiar knot of terror with phrases that didn’t mean anything: he’s fine, you’re worrying too much, it’s normal to be afraid, you have to stop this.
A loud rankling bell ripped through the cheerful sounds from the children, bouncing off the sides of the building. Late parents hurried their children along the road and shoved them roughly through the gates. Miss MacDonald waited for the last few stragglers and pulled the gates closed, shutting them with a latch.
Paddy watched as Pete was put in line, hoping for one last wave from him, but he was talking to his friends.
She walked sadly back to the car, thinking about Michael Collins and how terrifying being a mother was. There was no need to be so scared: she had a photo of Collins now, she could show it to people, get an ID.
She unlocked the car door and climbed in, rolled down all the windows and lit a cigarette.
Parents were dispersing in the street. Women walked in ones and twos, those with cars pulled out slowly, all a little dazed at the sudden calm after the rush of the morning, looking forward to the next six hours until home time.
The one-way system in the small back streets channelled Paddy up to the lights on Hyndland Road. She stopped for red and shut her eyes, thinking through what she had to do today. Find Collins’s real name. Kevin Hatcher should be up now. She’d call him and ask him about the picture.
A car behind her hooted its horn. Glancing in the mirror she saw a mum she recognized from the school, a pretty woman whose son had a stammer. The woman smiled, pointed at the green light up ahead and the empty road ahead of her. Paddy held her hand up in apology and took the handbrake
off. She glanced to the side, looking for oncoming cars, pulling out into the road.
She was focused on the distance, that was why she didn’t see him at first. He was in the corner of her vision, a small blurred head, leaning casually on the bus stop. The silver zip on his black tracksuit caught the sun, glinting like sun-kissed water, and made her look at him.
It was the young man from outside the school, the childless man who crossed in front of her and Pete and watched through the railings. He was standing, body casual but the expression on his face curiously intense, staring straight in at her. Under the black tracksuit she could see a flash of green and white. He was wearing a Celtic top.
Unnerved and jittery, she pushed hard on the accelerator, shot straight across the road and into the mouth of a lane, throwing the door open as she pulled the handbrake on, jumping out and looking back.
A bus was between her and the young man but she ran across the road anyway, bolting around the back of it.
She reached the corner no more than five seconds after she’d seen him, but he was gone.
II
The tenements in Kevin’s street were five storeys high and in an area so aspiring that every single flat had at least one car. Paddy toured the street twice, looking for a space to stop.
One of the corners looked marginally less illegal than the others and she parked carefully, her car bonnet sticking out into the street. She’d only be ten minutes. Kevin probably wasn’t in anyway and, if he was, all he had to give her was three lines of information. She wasn’t going to take a cup of tea if he offered. She’d get a name, call the police and go straight back to Pete’s school and pull him out of his class.
Kevin’s close was nicer than she remembered. She’d only seen it in the dark and the dusty forty-watt bulbs didn’t do justice to the green wall tiles. The neighbours had put plants out on the landing and they flourished in the south-facing light coming in through big wire-meshed windows.
Kevin’s door was firmly shut. She rang the bell and waited for a polite length of time before knocking. She could hear the sound of her knuckle raps echo around the empty hall. He wasn’t in. Considering the trouble Michael Collins had taken to frighten her, he might have freaked Kevin out too.
She took a notepad from her pocket and scribbled her number on the back with her name and a request that he call her. She was holding the letter box open to slip it in when she heard the sound of music.
Bending down, she peered through the letter box. She couldn’t see anything: on the other side of the door was a two-sided brush, the bristles coming up and down to meet in the middle, a device designed to stop draughts and nosey people from doing exactly what she was trying to do: looking into the flat. She tried pushing the bristles apart with her fingers but the letter box was too deep and she couldn’t reach. There was definitely music coming from in there, from the living room, she thought.
Kneeling down on the rough doormat, she used her pen and one of her house keys to hold the bristles slightly apart. She could just see in but not much. She put her mouth to the opening.
‘Kevin? Are you in?’
He could be sleeping in the living room, using the music to block out morning noises and sounds from the street. She could see the rug on the floor, the foot of a tripod, the chair where he had put her coat on Sunday night.
Shuffling sideways on her knees like a pilgrim, she changed her point of entry: the living-room door was open, sunlight pooled on a discarded trainer lying on its side, the worn sole towards her. The music was coming from there, the cheerful overture to Marriage of Figaro. It sounded like the radio was on.
She was just about to withdraw her eye, to pull back and shout in again, when she saw the toe of the trainer twitch. The trainer had an ankle attached to it.
16
Negative Negatives
I
The police broke the door down and Paddy followed the paramedics into the flat.
Kevin was in the living room, limp, lying on his left side, his cheek sitting in a pool of dry, chalky saliva. Behind him, bright yellow sunlight flooded the living room, casting a grey shadow over his face. His eyes were open a little, a slice of white. They looked as dry as the saliva under his cheek. His right hand was clamped at his breastbone, the hand clawed tight. He’d had a stroke, they said, almost certainly.
Paddy’s voice was a strangled whisper. ‘He’s thirty-five. How could he have a stroke?’
The paramedic pointed to the coffee table in the living room. The boxes of negatives had all been moved. It looked strange because it was the only clear surface in the house. Sitting on the smoked-glass surface was a single line of white powder. ‘Cocaine.’
‘Will he be all right?’
‘He’ll be fine,’ the paramedic said, avoiding her eye.
‘You’ll be OK, Kevin,’ she said, raising her voice and sounding more frightened than she meant to. ‘Don’t worry. They’ve said you’ll be OK.’
Paddy stood in the cosy mess of the hall and watched as the ambulance men took Kevin’s vital signs and declared him not dead, yet. One of them touched his fingertips to the chalky mess under his cheek, rubbing it between his fingers. It was gritty, he said; definitely an overdose. They asked if he was a habitual drug user and she said she didn’t really know but didn’t think so: he didn’t even drink any more. They nodded as if that was exactly what they expected her to say. One of them seemed to be trembling, which alarmed her.
Two police officers stood in the door of the bedroom, talking quietly. Their summer shirts were so starched they looked like blue cardboard. Start of the shift.
Kevin’s hall wasn’t used to having five people in it. They had to pick their steps. He had dropped things as he came home, ran out to meet people, staggered home after a good night out with pals. She looked around, imagined him seeing it and vowing to tidy it on quiet Sundays but having warm lie-ins instead, lingering over his breakfast, listening to the radio or reading a book.
She looked back at him. His left arm was beneath him, the soft inside of his forearm facing upwards. It was blue. A huge blue-and-green bruise covered the skin, deep, a memory of trauma. He hadn’t had it when she saw him on Sunday.
She stepped forward. ‘That bruise on his arm.’ She pointed it out to the ambulance men. ‘Could he have done that when he fell?’
One of them shrugged, irritated that she had drawn their attention away from their work. ‘Suppose.’
She tried to imagine a fall that would occasion a bad blow on the inner forearm. And then she noticed it: a matching bruise under his chin. It wasn’t obvious because of the sharp light behind him. A U-shaped bruise, a grip on either side of his chin, holding him tight.
‘Excuse me.’ She reached forward and touched the ambulance man’s shoulder. ‘Are you sure it’s a stroke?’
He shook her hand off, angry at being distracted. ‘Aye, it is. It just is, look at his hand.’
She stepped around Kevin’s feet to get a better look and the ambulance man sighed and glanced back at the police officers. ‘Can ye …?’
A noise came from deep inside Kevin, a gurgle that seemed to emanate from his stomach. A small bubble of wet formed at his lips and burst.
He was dying. She knew he was dying. One of the officers saw Paddy reel backwards and grabbed her under the arm, turning her away. He took her out to the cold dark close and encouraged her to catch her breath.
‘Is he dead?’
‘He’s going to be fine. The paramedics say he’s going to be fine.’
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’
‘No, he’s fine.’
‘He’s dead.’
He sat Paddy on the neighbour’s front step and told her to bend over and put her head between her legs. She couldn’t quite hear him so he held her head down, cupping it as if she was being guided into a police car. She had a pencil skirt on and her cheeks were pressed tight against her knees. Staring at her orange suede trainers, the cold stone numbing her bum, she didn�
�t want to see any more, couldn’t bear the thought of looking up. She thought of Terry, how sad he would be, and thinking about that reminded her of Kevin showing her the photos on Sunday night. He said no one was after him. He said it was nothing to do with the book.
She watched as they lifted him carefully on to the stretcher, one side limp, the other tight as a traction band. His left knee was almost up to his chin, his clawed hand in the way. The walls slid sideways and she dropped her head to her knees again.
Paddy had been to the site of a hundred car crashes and fatal accidents but the bodies in the bags weren’t people she knew, the blood was a faceless stranger’s blood, the weight of sorrow someone else’s.
She eased herself upright. The police officer was in front of her, looking into the house, stepping from foot to foot, his hands fiddling with his belt. He was young and excited to have a job that didn’t involve hassling truants in the park or chasing junkies out of Woolworths.
Kevin looked smaller on his side. Paddy watched as the paramedics lifted the stretcher slowly, carried it through the door and negotiated the turn of the stairs. She saw Kevin’s blond hair darkened and crusty, a white residue over it.
The older officer was standing in front of her, nodding as his walkie-talkie crackled instructions at him. He signed off and hung it on his belt, turning formally to Paddy.
‘We’d like to ask you about how you came to be here and what you know about—’ He thumbed back to the hallway.
‘Kevin.’
He nodded gravely. ‘About Kevin.’
She looked back into the hallway. The sun had moved, the tip of it touching the crusty saliva mess.
Kevin wouldn’t take cocaine. If he’d been taking it she would have known. She’d seen him drinking when he worked at the News and he was a compulsive, mental drunk. Men had gone to their graves swearing they’d chuck it if they got as bad as Kevin. She had once seen him have an alcoholic seizure in the office, then sit for a while with a cup of tea before going out drinking again in the afternoon. Men like that didn’t take an occasional line, not like Dub did sometimes. Someone had made him take it.