The Last Breath

by Denise Mina

  A breeze picked up, swirling grainy dust around her bare ankles. She stared into the messy boot. It was the photographs they wanted, and she knew completely, whatever Knox or Aoife said, that it was McBree. She rummaged in her handbag. The photocopies were in there. They weren’t very good, she didn’t have a proper picture of the woman any more, but she did have a photo of McBree standing at the door of the car facing a fat man in a blue suit. This story could be huge.

  She shut the boot and walked over to the News building, pulling open the fire exit door and jogging purposefully up the stairs.

  II

  Her entrance to the newsroom elicited a small cheer from those who could remember back to the morning’s drama, but the look on Paddy’s face killed the joy stone dead. The lights were on in Bunty’s cubicle.

  She knocked once and opened the door, to find Bunty and the Monkey relaxing at the far end of the table, eating poached salmon sandwiches and drinking half-pints of beer in Press Bar glasses. Bunty retracted his feet from the conference table when he saw it was her, rearranging his face to denote managerial fury.

  She held a hand up and took a deep breath. ‘I lied. I wasn’t visiting Ogilvy, I didn’t even meet him. I was waiting in the car while Sean went in, keeping an eye out for journalists.’

  She waited for a moment, steeling herself against a gale of shouting, but none came. She carried on:

  ‘There’s a story, a much, much bigger story going on. It’s a keynote story and I’ve come to you with it because I haven’t got a fucking clue what to do.’

  Intrigued, Bunty flicked his fingers, waving her forward, and nodded to the Monkey to leave them alone for a moment. Monkey took his sandwich and half-pint with him.

  She sat down near him, feeling exhausted, her stomach aching. She told him about Kevin, about the bruises on his arm and chin and Aoife’s theory about the methods of cocaine ingestion. Ask anyone, she said, about Kevin’s drinking; he wasn’t a man who would take drugs quietly and have a mishap. She told him about Kevin’s dis-appearance in the ambulance, about the innocuous coffee-table book, about McBree and the portfolio, and her boot being broken into.

  ‘Every single copy of that photograph has been taken. I’ve got some bad photocopies of it.’ She pulled them out of her bag and unfolded them on the table.

  Bunty glanced through them, chewing his sandwich, looking back at her to continue.

  ‘Now,’ she said nervously, ‘the really interesting thing about this is Knox.’

  Bunty looked sceptical. She’d raised Knox with him before and he stymied her plan to do an investigation into him.

  ‘This is real, though, listen: Knox pulled me in for questioning this morning. They made me wait and then in saunters Knox and tells me to stay off McBree: Kevin wasn’t killed by anybody, the IRA had nothing to do with this, I should go home and let the whole thing drop.’

  Bunty swallowed his mouthful, took a sip of beer and looked up at her. ‘Maybe you should.’

  She was shocked. He was a good editor, a good journalist and any idiot could tell there was a story here. ‘I cannot believe you’re saying that.’

  Bunty took another bite of his sandwich, folding the crusts into his mouth. He leaned back in his chair, lifting his feet up on to the table, making her wait for him to finish his mouthful before he answered her. He swallowed, reached forward for his glass and took a sip of beer. He rolled his tongue along the line of front teeth, top and bottom.

  ‘Get a fucking move on,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t you ever wonder,’ he said quietly, ‘why Knox is out of bounds?’

  She didn’t answer. She hadn’t wondered that actually. She often wondered why she couldn’t catch him, wondered what he did to frighten so many people into keeping quiet about him, but she had never been aware that he was being kept from her.

  ‘Is he out of bounds?’

  Bunty cradled the back of his head with his hands, sucked a morsel from his front teeth and nodded once.

  ‘Says who? British Intelligence?’

  Bunty raised an eyebrow.

  Paddy shook her head at the table: it was so obvious now. Consecutive editors had turned the Knox story back, no one outside the police knew a thing about his activities and she couldn’t find a policeman with a bad word to say, and they had a bad word about everyone. It was a sure sign that he was being kept clean. And then Kevin’s admission to hospital being wiped off whichever record while they fixed the body just so, the deserted office and Knox’s arrogant assurances about what was and wasn’t the case.

  She’d interviewed Patrick Meehan many times about his brushes with British Intelligence and what always struck her was how commonplace it all sounded. A room set aside in a police station. Stone-faced men with Oxbridge accents and just the right coat from the right tailor’s, unimaginative and protectionist, unashamed of their agenda. They called them spooks but they sounded like irritable bank managers. Knox had that commonplace look. She remembered him in Babbity’s, recalled him sliding around at a hundred press functions.

  ‘If,’ Bunty paused dramatically, ‘if you can get anything on him, which I doubt, I’ll go with it.’

  ‘You’ll publish it?’

  He sucked his teeth again, enjoying himself. ‘Yes.’

  Any senior editor who OK’d a story that threatened national security could get sacked by the proprietor, or worse.

  ‘Bunty, you could get the bullet for it.’

  ‘I could get the bullet anyway. They could sack me tomorrow for not selling enough advertising.’

  She leaned forward. ‘What do you think? Why are Intelligence protecting McBree?’

  He thought for a moment, slowly brushing bread-crumbs from his shirtfront. ‘It’s one of two things: either McBree’s still loyal to his cause but is working with them. He could be a bridge, helping negotiations in Northern Ireland. Or else, and if this is the case you better buy a gun: they’ve got something on him and McBree’s a double agent.’

  He looked her in the eye and they both drew breath.

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  Bunty nodded slowly. ‘Quite so: fucking hell.’

  Traipsing downstairs to her car, she thought about McBree working for the British government. He wouldn’t just be spying for them, telling them what was going on inside the Republican movement in Northern Ireland. He’d be too valuable an asset to use so lightly. If McBree was working for the government they’d be getting him to mould and shape decisions in their favour. And if he was working for them he’d kill to stop anyone finding out. He’d have to. If his own side found out he’d be a dead man.

  She walked over to the car and looked back at the bright door of the bar, saw McGrade smiling benignly as he poured a pint, heard the chat and a drunkard’s laugh. A man passed inside and she thought for a moment it was someone she knew a long time ago, a union official who got a kicking the night her first boss, Farquarson, was sacked. But that was a long time ago in another garden.

  III

  She knew before she reached the door that something bad had happened. The light was wrong, it was too bright in the close and warm air was filtering down from up above, from her house, her open door. The wood around the lock had been shattered from a rough kick and the door hung open into the hallway.

  She ran up the final steps and found the hall in a mess. The boxes of Dub’s records had been tipped over, some of them stamped on maliciously, the broken bits kicked around the floor. Terry’s trunk had been opened and upended, the binbags of his papers emptied. In the living room the mess was even worse. The bookcases had been ransacked, cushions ripped off the settee and chair and the screen of the telly was kicked in.

  ‘Hey, you.’ Dub came out of the kitchen. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day.’

  Paddy threw her hands up, shocked into silence.

  ‘I know. The police came and looked around, made some notes but I can’t really tell what was taken. They didn’t nick anything, just broke stuff. Left th
e records, the radio, didn’t even take the telly – look, just kicked it in. My watch was in the bathroom, they didn’t even take that.’

  She brushed past him into her bedroom. Her underwear was all over the place, the sheets on her bed had been dragged on to the floor and a dark wet stain was drying in the middle of her mattress.

  ‘Piss. Consider yourself lucky, they said, some of them do a shit. They get excited and it loosens their bowels.’

  She slumped in the doorway, staring at the mess.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ She didn’t so Dub stroked her hair awkwardly. They were rarely affectionate to each other when the lights were on. His hand found a rhythm, some way between boyfriend intimacy and supportive friend.

  She looked up at him. ‘What did they say?’

  ‘The police? Neds. They asked the neighbours and one of them saw a wee guy in a tracksuit heading down the stairs.’

  ‘A black tracksuit?’

  He was surprised that she knew. ‘Yeah. Black tracksuit.’

  She took hold of his arm. ‘You need to come with me. It’s not safe here.’

  ‘I’m not scared of a vandal.’

  ‘He’s more than that. He’s a lot more than that. Get your coat.’

  They pulled the door over to make it look secure, fitting the splintered wood back in around the useless lock.

  Dub looked at it. ‘Paddy, that won’t fool anyone who wants to steal something.’

  ‘They don’t want to steal anything,’ she said. ‘They’re trying to scare me.’

  IV

  A tin of white paint had been thrown over the windows of the Shammy since she had been there last, probably by a Loyalist. A rudimentary effort had been made to wash it off, smearing the white over the shopfront, mixing it with the street dust already gathered on the walls, making it look like a slightly dirty protest. Irish flags hung in the high-up windows.

  She turned the engine off and Dub looked at her.

  ‘You’re not going in there?’

  ‘Wait here,’ she said, getting out of the car.

  He was on the pavement next to her. ‘Don’t go in. Those places are mental.’

  But she shook his hand off. ‘I’ve been in before.’

  She left him standing in a quandary by the car, watching after her, afraid to let her go but worried about leaving the car unguarded in such a rough area.

  She pushed the black-painted doors open and walked into a wall of smoke and chat. There were hardly any women, but it looked no rougher than the Press Bar in the olden days. The clothes were cheaper, the chat less conversational, just drunk men slurring at each other. Music was playing in the background, a high tinny Irish tune played on pipes, an old song about the green of the homeland and Brits shooting at children.

  She glared along the line-up at the bar, checking each of the leathers, but didn’t see Donaldson. The barman recognized her though, half watching her as he wiped the bar with a stained cloth. She looked around the tables tucked to the side of the door. Red-faced men looked up at her from a crowd grouped around an ashtray. Two of them had taken their jackets off and wore Celtic tops. She didn’t recognize any of the faces.

  Their eyes were gathering on her back and she pushed through the crowd to the dimly lit booths. Behind her someone whooped at the sight of an angry woman: ‘Someone’s getting a thick ear tonight, bhoy.’

  Six plump men were squashed into the booth but he was standing by, a hanger-on, no more than that, a heel-sniffer. His hands were in his pockets, his elbows locked tight with excitement at being in their company, pulling the tracksuit trousers out at the side, making a V of his legs.

  He saw her and started. A parliament of heavies sat at the table, a thick smog of smoke hanging over their heads. Their shot and half-pint glasses were filthy: an old man’s habit to keep the same glass all night, build up a taste on it.

  The leader of them looked up at her, taking the measure of the plump, furious woman standing at the side of his table. A flushed face, drink-sodden eyes, his fist so big that it obscured his half-pint glass. The other men looked to him to say something, set the tone.

  ‘Wha’?’ The effort of talking seemed to take it out of him.

  Paddy pointed at the tracksuit. ‘Who is this fucker?’

  The men looked at the boy, bewildered, as if he’d just appeared at their side and they’d never seen him before. They looked back to their leader.

  ‘Wha’?’

  ‘This idjit, is he working for you?’

  ‘Him?’

  The men looked at the tracksuit, who smiled nervously back, tipping on to his toes, keen for someone, anyone, to acknowledge him. No one did.

  They looked back at the leader and he shook his head slowly, signalling to the others that he didn’t want to talk to her. A big man at the end of the table stood up, blocking her approach with his chest. She tried to step around him but he wrapped his hand around her arm, pulling her back. ‘Naw.’

  ‘Your boy’s been following me for two days. He ripped my house apart. He followed me taking my son to school.’ The memory of Pete made her angry enough to pull her arm away from him. ‘My son.’ She looked up at his face and spat at him, ‘How dare you.’

  A fleck of saliva hit his cheek but he didn’t flinch. This man wasn’t fat. This man looked as if he had just left a maximum security prison, possibly through the wall. As she stood three inches from him, his chest looked as big as her bed. He glanced back to the drunkard boss, who flicked his wrist in the direction of the door.

  The Mountain stepped between her legs and took hold of both arms, ready to wrestle her out of the bar. He was expecting Paddy to fight him but she went limp and he fumbled as she slid below his waist, letting go for a second, giving her an opportunity to duck around him and scream across the table, ‘He threatened my son!’

  The Mountain grabbed her around the waist, dragging her back from the table just as the tracksuit came forward and punched her in the stomach. It wasn’t an expert punch. The flat of his knuckles didn’t slam into her spine, but made a short jab up to the diaphragm, knocking the wind out of her, bruising her lungs, making her jackknife over the arm.

  An uncomfortable quiet fell over the bar. The tinny music droned in the background, an upbeat tune with a jig rhythm. She opened her eyes as the Mountain spun her in a half-circle. The whole bar was watching them now, retreating, appalled.

  The Mountain dragged her on her heels, not to the front door but out the back.

  ‘What the fuck did ye do that for?’ a Scottish voice asked.

  Lifting her head for a second, she saw the tracksuit shrug.

  They were going through a fire exit door, painted black with a bar handle, leading straight out to the dark and a dirt floor next to stinking bins. He lifted her over his own leg, dumping her but keeping hold. Rats scuttled away behind a wall and Paddy realized that she was utterly fucking done for.

  The door slapped shut behind them, blocking out the music and the silence, leaving them alone. The Mountain pinched her face between his thumb and middle finger, cutting the inside of her cheek on the edge of her teeth, and held her up to look at him. He was very calm.

  ‘You—’

  Behind him the door opened again and Paddy shut her eyes, expecting the tracksuit with his sharp jab.

  ‘Off. Inside. Move it.’

  She opened her eyes. Donaldson.

  The Mountain dropped her back on to her feet and turned. ‘Oh,’ he said, politely, ‘awful sorry.’ He looked down at her. ‘Awful sorry. Are you OK?’

  She nodded hard, hoping he’d go away. Donaldson flicked his thumb at the door and the Mountain stepped back into the bar, letting the door fall shut behind him.

  Donaldson reached out and brushed her shoulder, making her jerk upright, flinch away from him.

  He dropped his hand and stepped back, giving her space. As she breathed in deeply a sharp pain shot across her gut, making her feel as if she might vomit.

  Dona
ldson stood calmly by, hands in his pockets, letting her gather herself together for a moment before turning back to the door. ‘That was …’ He looked perplexed. ‘Well, that was … what it was.’

  The bins behind him were stuffed full, overflowing with ripped black bags and bottles, newspapers and smell. Paddy rubbed her stomach. ‘That wee shite in the tracksuit’s working for you?’

  Donaldson dropped his head and pinched his nose, his shoulders jerking.

  ‘I don’t see what’s so fucking funny.’ She sounded angry when he had just saved her. She shouldn’t. He might step back in and send the big guy out again.

  ‘Ah.’ He held out his hand. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Come on what?’

  ‘Come on, shake my hand. You’re a wild woman.’

  ‘My house is smashed up, he pissed on my bed. My friend died and I’m trying to find out what happened to him. Is that what happens to people who ask questions? I thought you nut jobs were all about justice for the working man and truth, for fucksake.’

  He looked at her playfully. ‘Well, girlie, that’s a different story from the one you were telling me the other day. You sat across from me and said we were nothing but thugs who’d hijacked the history of the Fenian Brotherhood.’

  ‘And that annoyed you enough to set that wee shit on me, did it?’

  ‘That wee guy is a – what’s this you call them, neds?’ He savoured the unfamiliar word and fell serious. ‘He hangs around the bar, trying to be part of something he doesn’t understand. He hasn’t any conviction, knows nothing about history. He’s just angry. People tolerate him.’