The Last Breath

by Denise Mina

  Collins. She could see him stand by while Kevin vomited on the floor, watching calmly as a stroke curled him up like a dead leaf.

  ‘Look, I need to go but take it from me, Kevin didn’t do drugs,’ she told the older officer. ‘The bruises on his arm and chin – didn’t you see them?’

  He looked at her. ‘Not really.’

  ‘I think Kevin was killed by the same guy who murdered Terry Hewitt.’

  ‘Terry …?’

  ‘Hewitt. The guy found shot dead on the Greenock road? The journalist?’

  Terry’s death had been blanketed over the papers, over the television and radio news, but neither of the officers seemed to know what she was talking about. Not the sharpest pencils in the box.

  The younger officer sensed her disapproval. ‘Oh, I think I heard something about that,’ he said, nodding at his colleague.

  ‘How do you know it’s to do with that?’ The older officer leaned in, as if half expecting Paddy to confess to the killings herself.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ she said impatiently, ‘just call it in. Ask for the team investigating Terry Hewitt’s murder. They’ll know what I’m talking about.’

  The older man pulled himself up to his full height, nostrils aflare, and she realized that her sniping tone had been a bad mistake. He might be an idiot but, in common with all police officers, he didn’t want to be spoken to with anything but fawning respect.

  ‘I will decide what we do and don’t call in, and I’ll thank you to watch your language when you speak to me.’

  She apologized, said it was the shock, and tried to explain how she needed to look through the portfolio of photographs Kevin had taken for the book.

  The younger officer glanced at his mentor, nodding so much she guessed he wasn’t listening. The older officer seemed to understand this time but didn’t take notes or react. When she had finished he told her to wait here and went downstairs, presumably to call it in and ask a senior officer who the hell Terry Hewitt was and what the fuck he should do now.

  The younger man stayed with her in the close. Paddy knew they were keeping her with them, intending to take her in for questioning, which would mean a two-hour wait, a short conversation and then another two-hour wait before someone decided she could go. She could leg it but the squad car would probably be just outside the close. Even if she ran, both officers looked fit enough to outrun her. Actually, her mother could probably outrun her. She wasn’t very fit.

  ‘So you knew this guy?’

  ‘We worked together.’

  ‘In papers?’

  ‘You a secretary then?’

  ‘No, I’m a journalist.’

  He grinned, not maliciously. ‘So you make things up for a living?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  He smirked a little and looked away, leaned over the banister, looking for signs of his partner. When he found none he stepped into Kevin’s flat, shrugging and smiling like a naughty schoolboy. He beckoned Paddy to come too. ‘Let’s look for the photos,’ he said, showing he had been listening after all.

  She stood in the hall watching him in the bedroom, stepping over a tidal wave of dirty clothes stacked against a chest of drawers. She turned away, looking back into the living room. The line of cocaine on the coffee table was wrong. She tipped her head at it: if Kevin had cleared a space to chop a line he would have put the boxes of negatives on the floor under the table, which was the only empty space that was big enough. She glanced around at the settee, under the television, by the chair. The boxes were gone.

  ‘There should be boxes of negatives somewhere near the table, they were on the table …’

  The nosey officer was smiling out at her, standing beyond the rumpled bed, triumphantly holding a big black portfolio that Paddy recognized from her last visit. He put it on the bed.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ she said. ‘If Kevin’s attacker picked it up his prints’ll be on it.’

  He shrugged, slipped the elastic band off its shoulder, flipped it open, dragging his greasy fingertips down the cover with a recklessness that Paddy couldn’t quite believe. She realized that he wasn’t a considered liberal or a genius working undercover. He was an idiot who didn’t believe her fantastical story that Kevin and Terry had been killed by someone Kevin had photographed. Quiet people always fooled her.

  He lifted the photos, one after the other, looking at them and at her, waiting for her to say stop, there he is, but the black woman’s picture wasn’t in the portfolio.

  ‘Well, it was there,’ she said, ‘and the negatives have gone.’

  He replied with his customary smirk.

  Echoing footsteps heralded the return of the older officer. Panting lightly, he rolled his eyes at the stairs and caught his breath enough to order the other officer to secure the flat. They shut the door, fixing the lock to stop it blowing open in a draught but not much more.

  ‘Listen,’ Paddy told their backs, ‘I really have to go. I’ll give you my number if you need to call me.’

  ‘You’re coming with us, Miss Meehan,’ the older officer said with relish. ‘DI Garrett wants to talk to you in Peel Street.’

  Outside, Paddy could see that they hadn’t had any trouble finding a parking space for their squad car. They had stopped it in the middle of the two lines of cars and got out, and now it was jammed between the other cars in the street. The officer who had pawed the portfolio could only open the back door halfway for her.

  ‘But I’ve got my own car,’ she protested.

  ‘No,’ his friend said, ‘you can’t drive your own car to the station.’ He didn’t want her driving in on her own in case she took a wrong turn and pissed off, presumably. Nor would he agree to his partner accompanying her while he drove the squad car.

  ‘Corroboration,’ she said, letting him know that she understood. If she suddenly confessed that she’d attacked Kevin they wouldn’t be able to use it in court without a second officer hearing it too. He didn’t answer her. ‘So I’m a suspect?’

  ‘He had a stroke.’

  ‘If I’m a suspect you should caution me.’

  But he wasn’t willing to arrest her, or let her go.

  ‘Can I get something out of the boot of my car?’

  They glanced at each other and said no.

  ‘It’s another portfolio like the one upstairs, but it’s got the picture I was telling you about.’ She handed them the keys. ‘You get it.’

  Together, they walked down to the corner and found her car parked precariously on the turn of the kerb.

  ‘This is illegal. You can’t park here. You’ll get towed.’

  It might have been the shock, or the worry, or just the officers’ cold officiousness, but Paddy found herself trembling with annoyance.

  ‘Look, I was worried about Kevin and just stopped the car to run up and chap the door, OK? I didn’t think I’d be in there for a full fucking hour and a half, havering about.’

  But they were unmoved. ‘You’ll still have to move it. What if a fire engine needs to come along here?’

  ‘The ambulance got in OK.’

  ‘Fire engine’s wider.’

  They saw her look back accusingly at the squad car. They’d blocked the entire street.

  ‘We can do that,’ the younger officer said smugly, ‘because we’re on police business. But you’ll need to move yours.’

  ‘Where to? There isn’t anywhere.’

  ‘Put it down there at the turning circle.’

  She threw her hands up. ‘Right,’ she said loudly, ‘fine, I’ll fucking move it.’

  They gave her the keys and she climbed in, shut the door and started the engine. She threw her Volvo into first, mouthed ‘fuck ye’ at the officers and sped off, heading straight for the main road.

  It would take them fifteen minutes to get out of the narrow gully of cars they’d jammed themselves in.

  II

  The West End was the student quarter of the city and every second shop, whether a dry cleaner’s or
a newsagent’s, had a photocopier in it.

  She stopped at a newsagent’s near her house and opened the boot, sorting through the portfolio, pulling the photo of the black woman out and rolling it into a cylinder, before shutting the boot and going in.

  A hand-scribbled sign on the door said that only two schoolkids were allowed in at one time. When she got inside she could see why: she was in a shoplifter’s paradise. Crisps and sweeties were stored in boxes near the door, the magazines were in a blind corner by the exit and they even had cheap toys piled up on a shelf at elbow height to a child. The woman behind the counter sat up nervously as she came in, as if expecting a fresh assault.

  Paddy could tell by the concentric circle of dirt around the copy button that the photocopier had been used a lot. She made three black-and-white copies, moving the picture around to get Collins’s face in the centre of the frame, then made an extra enlarged one and a colour picture that didn’t come out very well. There wasn’t a lot of colour in the background anyway but Collins’s shirt came out an irradiated pink that bled into his neck.

  She was looking at it, worrying about the quality, when her eye was caught by a shadow in the cabin of the car. A rainbow of shadow in the passenger seat: the driving wheel. She realized suddenly that Americans must drive on the other side of the road, the car was left-hand drive. Collins wasn’t the driver. He was just the passenger: the fat man was driving him somewhere.

  She paid the woman behind the counter and bought a giant chocolate bar and another packet of Embassy Regal, justifying the fags with the thought that if she wasn’t going to drink with Brian Donaldson, she’d better have at least one vice and overplay it. Guys like that never trusted the abstinent.

  17

  Love Was an Accident

  I

  The Shammy was certain of its clientele, that much was clear. The barman was all but wearing a buckle hat and hollering begorra.

  They sold Guinness on tap, two kinds of lager, Irish whiskey and Tayto-brand crisps. Everything that wasn’t smeared yellow with cigarette tar was green, even the seats. Wizened paper shamrocks were strung along the back of the bar, a souvenir of a St Patrick’s Day past, although what the noble-born stoic would have made of the filthy bar was anyone’s guess.

  Along three walls a high shelf held memorabilia of a less benign kind. A brass armour shell had a blackened commemoration band around the bottom. Dusty flags of several Irish counties, Mayo, Galway and Cork, were propped up in among tankards. A plastic replica gun and a small, very badly executed model of an H block from the Maze prison made out of painted cardboard, with tiny men sitting on one of the roofs, were placed near the front.

  The centrepiece of the bar was a brass engraving of Bobby Sands mounted on a block of wood, his eyes not quite matching, his long over-the-ears seventies hairdo just as misplaced on his square farmboy’s face as it had been in real life.

  The smog of cigarette smoke made Paddy want to light up herself, if only to mask the smell. She took out her packet and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it with a match, inhaling half-heartedly and thinking she probably looked shifty.

  A row of men sitting at the bar turned to stare as she approached. She had thrown on clothes this morning, but she still felt wildly overdressed. They were all wearing T-shirts or sweatshirts under black leather jackets and denims that hung under their beer bellies. She nodded at them.

  ‘Howareye?’ she said, running the words together as the Irish did, meaning to be friendly.

  Someone snorted cynically. She took a covering drag of her cigarette and felt foolish, stepping towards the rail. The barman was resting a half-poured pint of Guinness under the taps, patiently waiting for it to settle.

  ‘Ah, hello, I’m looking for a guy called Brian?’

  ‘No one called Brian here,’ he said. Scottish with an Irish twang, an affectation members of her own family used sometimes.

  ‘I spoke to him the other day. I have some photos of the gentleman he was telling me about.’

  He looked her up and down. ‘And you are …? Detective Constable …? Detective Inspector …?’

  Paddy held her hands out indignantly. ‘Do the polis take fat birds now? I’m five foot four, for fuck-sake.’

  He shook his head and flicked the Guinness tap back on. ‘No one named Brian in here, love.’

  ‘Well, when No-one-named-Brian gets here, tell him Paddy Meehan was in looking for him and I’ve got the photos to show him. He knows where I work.’

  Wood screeched against stone as one of the line-up pushed his stool back, stepped off and squared up to her.

  Paddy guessed he would have been the pride of the pack once. Now, fat had gathered around his middle, and his round paunch, starting below two well-formed breasts, was vivid under his cheap white T-shirt. His black leather jacket was elasticated at the waist, drawing in where he spread out, showing off what would once have been fine legs. He stepped into the light and she saw that a tidy slice was missing from the top half of his ear.

  Paddy half expected him to chase her to the door but, instead, he picked his pint up and flicked his index finger at her, beckoning her to follow him. She stubbed her cigarette out in a nearby ashtray and walked after him to the back of the bar.

  The booth was set at ninety degrees from the room so no one could see into it from the floor. It was dark, dimly lit with a yellowed wall light, the heat from the bulb burning a brown oval on the plastic shade. The benches were worn wood, the table marked with water rings and cigarette burns. He slid along a seat, his paunch pressing against the fixed table, and nestled in the corner, resting one leg along the bench, motioning for her to sit opposite him.

  ‘Nice of you to come in person.’ His tongue slicked up the corner of his mouth like a sleepy lion. She knew his voice immediately. Brian Donaldson.

  She took out her cigarettes and lit one, offered them to Donaldson but he refused, tipping his glass at her as if one weakness was enough. He was in his mid-forties and handsome beyond the scars. A square jaw, blue eyes and the manner of a man in charge. His face had wrinkled into the memory of a smile, tide marks around the eyes and mouth.

  ‘Kevin Hatcher’s dead.’ She didn’t want to tell him Kevin was injured. They might go to the hospital and finish the job.

  He shook his head. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Kevin Hatcher,’ she repeated. ‘Hatcher and Terry Hewitt were working together on a book, about expats in New York.’

  ‘Irish expats?’

  ‘Scottish. They took photos of people, street portraits, and Terry wrote a little bit of text to go with them. A coffee-table book. A light thing really, an excuse so that they could go off on a trip to New York together.’ She imagined Kevin and Terry eating peanuts on the plane, giggling together, and found herself tearful. ‘Two good guys. Now they’re both dead. I told you about the guy who came to my house? Michael Collins. Very threatening, said he spoke for your people.’

  ‘He doesn’t.’

  ‘You said you didn’t know him.’

  ‘Neither I do, but I know who speaks for us.’

  ‘I think you knew who I was talking about when I described him before, but I wanted to show you this.’ She unrolled the photocopies. ‘I found him in the background of one of the portraits.’

  Donaldson peered down at the grainy enlargement, flattened it and looked again.

  Collins was laughing in perfect profile, and his glasses were perched on his nose.

  ‘Is this the whole photo?’

  ‘No, it’s an enlargement. That’s why it’s so grainy.’

  ‘I was going to say, it’s not a very good photo of anyone.’

  He sifted slowly through the other pictures.

  Collins wasn’t as distinct in them – she wouldn’t have recognized him herself if his face hadn’t been emblazoned on her mind – but Donaldson didn’t seem to be looking at him anyway. She watched him examine the street, the buildings on either side, the fat man by the driver’s door, the car lic
ence plate, the slice of the black woman’s face at the edge of the photocopy.

  Going back to the enlargement, he looked through all the pictures, one by one, stone-faced. He pushed them across the table to her.

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Never seen him before.’ His tone was studiously flat, his eyes steady and expressionless.

  ‘Yes you have.’ She rolled the pictures up into a tight cylinder. ‘I’m not researching a story, Donaldson, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘Journalists are always researching a story. They don’t wonder what time it is without researching a story.’

  ‘This isn’t about a story.’ She tapped the rolled-up sheets. ‘This cunt sent someone to my son’s school this morning. He’s been to my fucking house. I need to know what kind of threat he is.’

  Donaldson’s expression didn’t waver. ‘We’ve all lost family.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  He blinked, lifted his glass and swallowed three-quarters of a pint of Guinness, watching her over the rim. Placing his glass on the table, he did a clean sweep of his top lip with his tongue. Never once did his gaze waver. He was waiting for her to speak.

  ‘If violence is a gamble …’ she said carefully, ‘if it’s about who has the higher stake, remember that I’m talking about my son here.’

  Donaldson stared through her, his fingertips turning the rim of the empty glass as white scum slid slowly down the inside.

  ‘Do you hear me, Donaldson?’

  ‘I can hear ye fine, girlie.’

  She pointed across the table with the rolled-up sheets, leaned across at him and poked him hard in his soft chest. ‘Tell your friend this and mark it well: neither you, nor he, nor the entire mustered armies of thugs who’ve hijacked the history of the Fenian Brotherhood of Ireland want to get between me and my young.’