The Last Breath

by Denise Mina

She grinned back at them, then stopped abruptly.

  The young man looked sheepish, standing behind the gathering crowd as if he had been caught out, keeping his head down, hoping not to be seen. His jacket was open but she could see the black collar and the silver zip of his tracksuit and the neck of his Celtic top underneath.

  The officer started the car and pulled away, easing down the busy street to another smattering of applause. As they turned the corner she looked back and saw the man in the black tracksuit slip away in the opposite direction.

  Paddy cleared her throat and sat forward. ‘Did you get into trouble because I ran away?’

  ‘Sit back and put your belt on.’

  Every single car on the road gave way to them, let them cut in, slowed down when they noticed the squad car. She watched the driver, saw the expectation of deference and how angry he got when a driver didn’t let them in, noticed how he muttered under his breath that they must be blind.

  ‘You’re not arresting me, are you?’

  They didn’t answer.

  ‘How’s Kevin? Is he OK? Where is he? I went looking for him yesterday and couldn’t find a trace of him.’

  She looked at the back of their heads, at their shoulders. Neither of them cringed or twitched, they weren’t with-holding anything: they didn’t know how Kevin was.

  ‘They haven’t told you, have they?’

  Seen in the rear-view mirror, the driver’s eyes were heavy. ‘Shut the fuck up,’ he said.

  So she did.

  III

  Squad cars lined the street in front of a modest red-brick office block, built in the thirties, all long lines and big windows. The cantilevered slab over the door had been updated, clad in raw steel and extended so that it covered the entire pavement. Picked out in confident blue letters, the building declared itself to be Strathclyde Police Headquarters. The overall effect wasn’t friendly. It was a public space annexed by the big boys.

  They found a parking place in the street, and straightened their uniforms as they got out and came round to her door. They glanced up at the building and Paddy thought they looked intimidated, two constables from the South Side bringing her to their unseen masters. They grabbed her as she got out, holding her elbows too tight, pinching the bones, nasty little bullies as they huckled her towards the glass doors on behalf of their bosses.

  ‘You really don’t need to hold me this tight,’ she said, as they pushed the doors open and brought her into reception.

  They weren’t in a police station, Paddy could see that straight away. Reception looked like a corporation’s. There were no holding cells here and the public had little reason to drop in, so leather seats lined the wood-panelled hall, a pretty receptionist looked up attentively, and the phones on her desk weren’t nailed down the way they were in other cop shops.

  ‘I’m not going to run again,’ Paddy told the older officer.

  He shot her a dirty look. ‘Be quiet.’

  The younger officer came over, settled on her other side and they waited. She’d have to speak to Sean and tell him they’d been seen picking Callum up. It wouldn’t be as bad for him as it was for her, she thought. He was only a driver for the News and was Callum’s cousin. Sacking someone for not reporting a member of their own family was too Maoist, even for panicky Bunty.

  She looked up the slatted wooden stairs. Whoever had sent them to get her was up there, reading about Terry, or Kevin, or her. She’d come back from this with a story about Kevin Hatcher, squeeze something out of the person questioning her and feed it to Bunty to appease him. Whatever Merki was writing, he was still a hundred miles behind her.

  ‘I think I’m being followed,’ she said to the chinless officer next to her, ‘by a wee guy in a tracksuit. I’d suspect the police, but he’s wearing a Celtic shirt and I know you’re all Prods.’

  He wasn’t listening though; he was looking past her to the stairs. He stood up, raising an eyebrow.

  Paddy turned to see a frumpy woman in a cheap business suit coming down towards them, nodding once at the officer. She spoke as she took Paddy by the upper arm, urged her to her feet and marched her to the lift. ‘Miss Meehan, I’m DI Sharon Garrett. Can you come with me, please.’

  It wasn’t a question.

  Paddy looked at their watered reflection in the steel elevator doors. She was flanked by Garrett and the young officer, the older guy standing behind them, allowing himself a smile. She looked very small in among them, her clothes crumpled. She could smell the smoke off herself.

  The empty lift arrived and they got in, Garrett pressed the button for the fifth floor and the door slid shut.

  ‘Do you want to question me about Kevin? Is this whole thing about Kevin or are you factoring in Terry as well? I’ve got a photo of the guy I was telling you about.’

  No one spoke.

  ‘How is Kevin? Did you see his bruises?’

  Garrett shifted her weight to her other foot.

  ‘I was thinking, why would he have a line out to sniff if he was swallowing cocaine? And stuff was missing from his house, boxes of negatives. Did they tell you that?’

  The doors opened out on to a long, quiet corridor of partitioned offices. At the far end a man in blue overalls was buffing the green lino floor with a humming machine. The corridor was very quiet.

  As Garrett led them to the end, Paddy could see that all of the offices were empty. Windows on to the corridor looked into dark rooms, straight through to the windows. They passed the cleaner, stepped over the flex of his humming buffer and went into a disused office. The shelves were empty, the desk clear. Someone had worked here once though: pale oblongs where posters and wall charts had hung marked the wall. It smelled of dust.

  Garrett sat Paddy down and moved about behind her, pulling down the blinds on to the corridor, adding gloom to the office’s many other crimes. Then she sat down behind the desk, facing Paddy, blinking every ten seconds, leaving the two officers to stand by the door.

  In the corridor outside, the floor buffer bumped gently off a skirting board, the hum missing a beat before continuing its journey.

  Paddy had been interviewed by the police before, but this didn’t feel like a police interview. It felt like an ambush.

  ‘Sorry’ – the wooden chair creaked beneath her as she leaned forward – ‘who are you again?’

  ‘DI Garrett.’

  ‘You’re a policewoman?’

  ‘Police officer.’

  ‘Aren’t you a woman? Sorry. The skirt made me think, you know …’ Garrett continued blinking to schedule. ‘You prefer “officer”?’

  ‘It’s customary.’

  ‘What do you prefer though?’

  ‘Whatever is customary.’ Garrett didn’t display a flicker of emotion. It was like talking to a fridge. No one at personnel would be tempted to strong-arm Garrett into Family Liaison.

  ‘Hm.’ Paddy sat back. ‘This empty office, away from everyone, waiting. We are waiting, aren’t we? For someone. Someone more senior than you.’

  Garrett wasn’t unattractive but she had gone to a lot of trouble not to make the best of herself: shoulder pads emphasized her square body, the skirt didn’t fit her and her haircut was boxy, the blonde streaks fooling no one. She didn’t have a smear of make-up on.

  ‘Miss Meehan, why were you at Kevin Hatcher’s flat yesterday morning?’

  Paddy told her the truth, aware that the stuffy office was isolated from the rest of the station; no one passed in the corridor outside, the lift didn’t ting as it reached their floor.

  Garrett asked pointless questions, things she already knew the answer to, about Paddy’s claims regarding an Irishman who had come to her house, descriptions of the man who had been at her son’s school yesterday. She didn’t seem to be coaxing information out of Paddy but rather keeping her busy.

  She made Paddy go over the details of finding Kevin, of going to his house on Sunday night, but cut her off whenever Paddy mentioned the Lebanon or the IRA. She didn’t even
want her talking about the missing photograph from the portfolio so Paddy pushed it, starting to answer a question innocuously and then veering off to speak about the Irishman, naming him as McBree, mapping Garrett’s reaction when she said it. McBree. The name made her blink out of sequence.

  ‘So you went there yesterday morning expecting Kevin Hatcher to—’

  ‘Would a police officer ever wear a Celtic top?’

  ‘Just answer the question—’

  ‘McBree. He’s an important man in the IRA, very, very high up. International profile. Why does that not interest you?’

  No one spoke.

  ‘My family are Irish and my mum thinks the police’ll arrest you for being in possession of a potato. Why am I getting no interest in this guy? If I told you one of the Guildford Four had done it, would you pull them in? A big man in the IRA is in the city and that’s of no interest to you? What, because you already know?’

  Before Garrett had the chance not to answer, the door behind the officers opened and Garrett sat up, her face warming. ‘Afternoon, sir.’

  Knox was standing in the doorway, face pinched, shoulders square, ready to make his mark. He turned to the officers behind him. ‘Wait in the corridor.’

  Suddenly sweating, Paddy stood up. ‘I’m leaving.’

  He smiled calmly. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I’m not under arrest.’

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  Knox shut the door slowly, listening for the secure click of the mechanism, and turned back to the room. As he sauntered over to Garrett’s seat she backed out of his space, standing subserviently at the side. He sat down, looked out of the window and back at her, overplaying his insouciance.

  Paddy took out a cigarette, lit it and blew the smoke at him.

  ‘No one will believe you,’ he said coldly.

  ‘That you brought me to a deserted part of the building to menace me?’

  His eyes flickered in Garrett’s direction. ‘About Hewitt,’ he said casually.

  Paddy uncrossed her legs. ‘Terry’s murder.’

  ‘The officers told me what you said this morning. You’re wrong. The IRA have denied responsibility. The gun has been found and traced to a drugs murder in Easterhouse last year. We have evidence that it was nothing to do with the IRA.’

  She took another draw on her cigarette, listening to the hum of the buffer slowing to a dying whine. She could hear the plug being snapped out of the wall. The lift tinged and she heard the doors slide shut after the cleaner. They were alone on the floor.

  ‘Why am I here?’

  What little colour there was in Knox’s face drained away. He craned towards her, the skin so tight she could see the hammering of the pulse in his neck. ‘You’re here because you ran away yesterday morning. You should have come straight here as the officers requested. It makes police officers suspicious when someone they want to question runs away.’

  ‘If it was such a big deal why didn’t they come to my house last night? Everyone knows where I live. The police found me easily enough on Saturday night. And by the way, where is Kevin? I spoke to all four casualty departments yesterday and couldn’t find him registered as a patient.’

  ‘Kevin Hatcher is dead.’

  He watched her face, taking a clinical interest in her reaction as the news sank in.

  ‘When? When did he die?’

  Knox cleared his throat, tipping his head back to Garrett. She stepped forward and spoke, her voice softer than before. ‘Kevin was dead on arrival at the hospital. They register a death differently, that may be why you missed him.’

  ‘No, they don’t. I was on the calls-car shift for six months. I went around the hospitals every night, twice sometimes. They register a death on arrival in the same book as casualty admissions.’

  Knox’s face didn’t move, but as he looked at her his eyes softened in amusement. This is how big we are, he was saying; we can make a man disappear. I could make you disappear.

  He was expecting her to shout at him, to meet his play and issue impotent threats, but Knox was as hardened as Donaldson and her threats would be just as flaccid. Instead, she made the one move he wouldn’t have an answer to: she covered her face and pretended to cry, muttering about poor Kevin under her breath. She was only acting, and when her face was good and wet she looked up at Garrett, who blinked twice, for her the equivalent of an emotional flurry.

  Knox had a stale smile stapled to his face. He rubbed the table top with his fingertips, trying to worry off a small stain.

  Paddy took a shaky draw on her cigarette. ‘McBree. He killed them both.’

  Knox shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘How can you possibly know he didn’t?’

  ‘Nothing links the two deaths. One’s a shooting, one’s a stroke, one’s indoors, one’s outdoors, neither man was involved in politics.’

  ‘Why would Kevin leave out a line of cocaine to inhale when he’d swallowed enough to make him have a stroke and vomit? It’s like finding a glass of whisky next to someone who died from drinking vodka, for fucksake.’

  Knox stood up calmly and made for the door. The interview was over, though she couldn’t see what he’d got out of it. She stood up too. ‘You’re refusing point blank to look at McBree?’

  He stood, rolled his head back and turned to face her.

  ‘They spent the night before Hewitt’s death at the casino. A lot of strange people visit casinos. We’re interviewing several of the people who were there that night.’

  ‘But not McBree?’

  ‘You will get the wrong end of the stick and keep chewing, won’t you?’

  She meant to give a cavalier laugh but it sounded like a hysterical sob. ‘You’re concerned that I may be slandering the IRA?’

  ‘We’re concerned that you may be spreading fear and alarm, Meehan.’

  Paddy stubbed her cigarette out on the table, picked up her bag and brushed past Knox at the door. Outside, the two officers turned as she opened it, looking back into the room for guidance. Someone gave them a nod to let her go and she pushed through them.

  She didn’t want to wait for the lift and found the door to the stairs, jogging down three flights without drawing a breath. She stopped when she felt sure they weren’t coming after her, leaned her back against the wall and let herself cry properly.

  Her feelings for Terry were complicated. He’d frightened her and chased her and she knew deep down that her life would be easier now that he wasn’t around. But Kevin Hatcher – Kevin was just a nice man.

  22

  Notes from a Texan

  I

  Blythswood Square was a short, steep street away from the police headquarters and Paddy found herself heading up that way, trying to think of a justification for going into Fitzpatrick’s office and orchestrating a fight with him. She steamed up the hill, her face still puffed and red from crying. At the top she caught her breath, realized she was looking for someone timid to have a fight with. She couldn’t go back to the News offices or Bunty would banjax her into writing about Callum. She found a seat on the square, looking back down the hill to a line of squad cars.

  She could write a news piece about Kevin dying and phone it in. Writing things up always made her feel detached and calm. But the editors wouldn’t take it without certain bald facts: she didn’t know which hospital to namecheck or even what he died of.

  Kevin was dead, Terry was dead and the Strathclyde Police Force weren’t showing a flicker of interest in the fact that McBree had to be involved.

  She took out a cigarette and lit it, her throat closing over in disgust as she tried to breathe in. She persevered. The nicotine made her feel detached, calmer, fed. She sat back on the wooden bench, the heat from the slats soaking into her back, thinking about Father Andrew making a big point of shaking her hand after mass every Sunday and Mary Ann crying at the kitchen table.

  Sickened, she threw the cigarette to the kerb.

  II

  The mousy receptionis
t rolled her finger around her necklace, half strangling herself with her pearls, as Paddy leaned on her desk, messing up the tidily sorted pencils laid out in a neat row by the phone.

  ‘He’s just very, very busy, you see.’ She glanced at the door to Fitzpatrick’s office.

  ‘Listen to me,’ said Paddy. ‘I want you to go in there and tell him if he doesn’t see me now I’m going to report him to the Law Society.’

  III

  She was too old for sitting on stairs in buildings, but today she didn’t care about dignity or who she was supposed to be. The doors to the offices down and upstairs were open into the stairwell for ventilation on a hot day. The muffled clack of electric typewriters and distant chat wafted up to her and the soft brown folder sat on her knees. Her name was written in his handwriting, carefully scrawled in capitals, big and clear enough to be read by any stranger.

  She stroked it. A small grease spot had blossomed on the front, on a low corner. Fitzpatrick had said Terry gave it to him a year ago, to keep in the safe, when he had just come back to Glasgow, before he went to New York, before any of this had happened, probably before he had even become good friends with Kevin again.

  She opened it.

  The covering letter from Terry was written in his shorthand. She sighed. Everyone started out using the same textbook shorthand but over a lifetime it became a private language, virtually indecipherable to anyone else. Paddy could hardly read her own any more. She peered at the sheet carefully. It was perfectly legible: Terry must have gone back to the book to write it.

  P,

  Notes here for you. Materials and stuff a friend gave me re your favourite person. Came to me through complex route, cost a lot of Marlboro and vodka.

  Now you can do him justice.

  She thought it was signed ‘Texan’ but a second look told her he had slipped out of shorthand and marked the end T with a cross for a kiss.

  Behind it, in a tidy pile of old papers, was a bill for two tickets on a commercial flight from Berlin Tempelhof in 1965. On a grey typewritten sheet behind that, a bill of lading acknowledging the receipt of prisoner 2108 by the British Embassy in West Berlin in the same year. In among yellowed press reports about the Patrick Meehan murder trial he had put a photocopy of the minutes of a meeting between the detective chief inspector in charge of Meehan’s investigation and a source called Hamish, whose name always appeared in inverted commas. It was vague, referring to actions commenced re PM and continued, threats to national security, details of Muscovite facilities where PM was held and reports written by PM. She understood every abbreviation, recognized each date and location. She knew what it all meant.