Paddy stood looking into the mouth of the postbox, the soft rain pattering on her hood as midmorning commuters brushed past her on their way to work. Her Valentine card to Sean had dropped like a lead weight into the black void, and now she didn’t know if she had done the right thing. He’d get it before the actual day; she’d posted it too early. If only the card hadn’t been quite as soppy. She was afraid the stench of desperation would stick to it and he’d guess how much she needed to see him. She wouldn’t be able to take in what had happened to Heather until she told him, until he was there to hold her hand and make it okay.
She was still worrying about the card when she got into the office. Her back shift started at ten, during the slump before the morning editorial meeting, and the newsroom wasn’t busy. Keck waved her over to the bench and told her excitedly that the police were looking for her again. They had been pissing everyone around all morning, pulling staff down to the interview rooms for three-minute questionings, checking people’s work times with the employment records. They interrupted someone on a difficult-to-get line from Poland, insisting that he come downstairs with them. Farquarson was livid about it. He was heard shouting down the phone to McGuigan, telling him he wanted the police put out of the building.
“I said I’d send you down right away,” said Keck, watching her approach Farquarson’s door. “You’ve to go right now.”
Paddy nodded at him as she knocked on the glass. “In a minute.”
Farquarson called out permission to come in.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Literally a minute?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” He put down the sheet of paper he was reading. “Start now.”
She leaned on his desk, bending her fingers back and rocking to and fro as she spoke. “I’ve got an idea that there’s another story hiding inside the Baby Brian one because the case is very similar to another case that happened to another child who lived in Townhead, on the same estate actually, but it was eight years ago and I went to Steps on the train and it doesn’t make sense for the boys to take a train past Barnhill to hide the baby when Barnhill’s full of disused buildings and waste ground.” She looked up. “What do you think?”
Farquarson was looking past her to the door.
“Liddel phoned Poland and he’s giving his copy to the editor now. D’you want to give it tops?”
Terry Hewitt was standing behind her, taking all of Farquarson’s attention. He smiled straight at Paddy, making her drop her eyes and turn briskly away.
“We’ll see what he’s got first,” said Farquarson. “But, aye, bring it in before the meeting starts.”
Hewitt withdrew, leaving Paddy standing, forgetting what she’d said and what she hadn’t said.
Farquarson looked up at her. “I’m sick of this. Everyone’s been in here with a different idea for a Baby Brian story.” He picked his teeth and stared at the wall for a moment. “Okay. No one’s mentioned this previous case. Find out more about it, write it up, and maybe we can run it for contrast or something during the trial.”
It was all Paddy could do not to skip the two flights down to the police on editorial.
The corridor was overheated, the air thick with fibers and dust from the rarely used lush carpet. Paddy could hear low voices through the door. She waited in the corridor, looking out the window. The police cars were gone from the street. Scottish Daily News delivery vans were backed up nose to tail like a troop of elephants, waiting for bales of the final edition. The drivers were gathered in an empty van near the front, keeping out of the way of the rain, laughing and smoking together.
Remembering the look in Terry Hewitt’s eye, she found herself salivating. She corrected herself: he wasn’t better-looking than Sean. He might be more attractive, but he wasn’t better-looking. She had chosen the wrong Valentine’s card for Sean. It was padded blue silk and said “I love you” inside; bought it on a whim that morning. Open, bare-faced emotion was out of character, but it was how she really felt about him. He wasn’t returning her calls as it was. She should have matched his coolness and kept her dignity. She hoped he didn’t show it to Mimi.
Voices approached her through one of the closed doors, and she turned to see it open. A bald policeman was accompanying one of the women from personnel, crying behind her thick-lensed glasses, her faraway eyes pinpricks of red regret. The officer patted her elbow and muttered empty words of comfort.
“I don’t want tae-” She broke off, kneading a cotton hankie into a flat plane and blowing her nose into it.
The impatient officer pushed the crying woman by the upper arm out into the corridor, swinging her around the corner towards the lifts. The woman turned and crossed the doorway, still sniffling and covering her mouth with her handkerchief as she made her way towards the back stairs. He watched her double back and looked puzzled.
“We’re not allowed to use the lifts,” explained Paddy.
He shook his head, looking at her for the first time. “Who are you?”
“Paddy Meehan.” She felt as if she’d done something wrong but couldn’t think what it might be. “You were asking for me upstairs? I just got in.”
He didn’t look pleased to see her and glanced back at someone sitting at the table. It was Patterson, the squat-faced bully from yesterday. Patterson looked a little flushed when he saw it was her.
“Got any more brilliant ideas for us?”
“I’ll go away if you want.”
The bald officer stepped aside to let her in, glancing behind her into the corridor to make sure there wasn’t a queue forming.
The policemen had clearly been there all morning: four big white tea mugs from the canteen were drained and drip-stained, red-and-gold wrappers from caramel log biscuits were folded into interesting shapes on one side of the table, rolled up into tight little balls on the other.
Patterson stood up as Paddy approached, pulling out a seat for her, managing to make her feel that she had let everyone down by not already being in the chair. The sheet of paper in front of his seat had diagrams on it drawn in ballpoint, circles joined and overlapping with lines scored between them, retraced over and over. On a separate sheet, a long list of names was illegibly written in longhand, some with ticks, some with crosses next to them.
“So…” Patterson slid into his seat and looked her up and down as if he’d heard something about her. He left the moment hanging in the air between them.
“What did you want to see me for?” she asked flatly, determined to be more wily than she was yesterday.
“We want to ask you about the radio car and the night you and Heather were supposed to go out in it. What happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“Weren’t you both supposed to be going?”
“She dropped out.”
“Why?”
Paddy thought about it for a moment. They were after McVie. “Dunno. She couldn’t be bothered. She didn’t think there was a story in it.”
Patterson nodded and hummed, tapping his rough diagram with his pen. “Right?” He rolled out his bottom lip and nodded softly, as if he was seriously considering the possibility. “See, I heard that Heather thought McVie had a thing about her.”
Paddy tutted and shook her head. “D’you know how many men she thought had a thing about her? Every man in here, and she was mostly right. McVie’s harmless; he didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Is he a letch?”
Paddy laughed alone for a moment. “How long have you been in this building? They’re all letches. The print room’s wallpapered in pornography. Most of them can’t hold a conversation with a woman without staring at her chest. If letching was a concern you’d need to instigate a policy of internment for the entire paper.”
The officers looked at her for a telling moment. Only someone from a Republican background would use a loaded word like “internment.” She knew it was still rare for a Catholic to work in a middle-class profession like the papers, or even the police. Paddy was a new generation and had never knowingly suffered anti-Catholic discrimination, but she still enjoyed the status of political underdog. She squared her shoulders and looked Patterson straight in the eye, raising an eyebrow, embarrassing him into continuing.
“So you went out in the radio car,” he said, four hundred years of bloodshed lying unacknowledged between them. “And what happened?”
She shrugged. “Nothing. We went on a couple of calls, a suicide and a gang fight in Govan. It was interesting.”
“What day was it?”
“Monday, last week.”
He made a note of it in one of his interconnecting bubbles. “Now, think carefully: did Heather know anyone who lived in Townhead?”
“Townhead? I don’t think so. She was posh.”
“She never mentioned anyone to you? A friend, someone she might go up there to see?”
“No. Why?”
“Any idea why she would go up there last Thursday evening?”
It was the same night Paddy had been there after visiting Tracy Dempsie. She was glad she hadn’t bumped into Heather; she didn’t know what she would have said.
“I don’t know why she was up there,” she told Patterson. “It’s bound to be something to do with Baby Brian.”
“Bound to be? You seem very sure about her motives.”
He had that spark in his eye. He was going for her again, but this time she was ready.
“What’s your problem with me?” she said angrily. “Why’re you always picking on me?”
Patterson looked a little bit startled. “I’m simply asking a question.”
“And I’m simply answering them.” She had frightened him, and she was pleased.
“Fine.” Patterson stood up and pulled at the back of her chair. “That’s all. Get out.”
She stood up. “You are a rude wee bastard.”
“Out, or I’ll arrest you for breach.”
Paddy looked at his bald colleague, who affirmed with an incline of his head that Patterson was mad enough to do it and she should go while she could.
Patterson pointed at the door. “We’ll come for you again if we need you.” He waved her out into the corridor and shut the door firmly in her face, giving it a little extra tug as if to stop her getting back in.
She called the door an arsehole, but it gave her no relief.
On the back stairs she picked up a new edition from the stack and locked herself in the toilets on editorial. For ten minutes she sat there staring blankly at the back of the door, sweating softly. Heather seemed very dead now. They could have met that night. Heather might even have been in Townhead at Thomas Dempsie’s house, she could have found the clippings herself, she was brighter than she seemed sometimes. Paddy lit a cigarette and inhaled deep into her lungs to wake herself up. The nicotine hit her system, firing up her nerves and making the back of her skull throb.
She looked at the paper. The black-bordered photograph of Heather on the front page was a formal, posed picture. She was very pretty: she had a dainty little button nose and nice teeth, and her hair was as thick as possible without being coarse. Paddy remembered unraveling long, golden threads from her fingers outside the newsroom. It occurred to her that the editors must have been kicking themselves for using the proprietorial approach with Baby Brian when they could have used it almost justifiably with Heather. She had gone from being an outcast to the beloved daughter of the Daily News in less than a week.
On the inside pages Heather’s mother spoke of her heartbreak, highlighting all that was best in Heather’s life: her academic ability, her kindness, her sense of humor, and her three Duke of Edinburgh awards. She asked why anyone would want to snuff that out, as if the murderer had, God-like, given due weight to every deed Heather had ever done, judged her, and decided to kill her anyway. The mother was photographed outside the Allens’ enormous Georgian house, looking exhausted and angry.
On the opposite page a kidney victim (31) was trying to raise money for a dialysis machine by holding a sponsored tea party. The Evil Baby Brian Boys were still being investigated. Their old school was pictured, a photo of the empty playground in an eerie light with sweet wrappers and crisp packets floating around, the debris of a hundred packed lunches. It mentioned that the school was Roman Catholic twice in the text and once below the picture.
Paddy looked at the picture of Heather again. They had been kicking around Townhead on the same evening. If Paddy had met her she might still be alive. Maybe they would have had a fight and made up and Heather would have invited her along to the Pancake Place to meet a contact. But they wouldn’t have made up and Heather would never have shared a contact or an advantage if she could help it.
Paddy dropped the cigarette between her legs and into the toilet bowl, folded her paper neatly, and went up to the clippings library.
Helen was off sick, they said, with a head cold, and Paddy was glad of it. The other librarians were difficult and rude, but she knew they’d give her what she wanted. The woman serving her was Sandy, Helen’s right hand in the library. Sandy was secretly a very pleasant, helpful woman, but it was a side of her personality she only got to show when Helen wasn’t there to tut at it.
Paddy told her that the police had requested any gray slips filled out by Heather Allen in the last week and a half.
“Slips?”
“Yeah, what clippings she requested in the last week or so. They want me to take it down to them.”
Sandy bit her lip. “God, isn’t it awful sad?”
“It’s her family I feel for,” said Paddy.
“I know, I know.” She opened a drawer beneath the counter and pulled out a foolscap file marked “A,” searching through it with nimble fingers. “Nothing in the last week. But she’d a lot of stuff two weeks before that.” She pulled out the sheets and flipped through them. “Yes, I remember those ones. All about Sheena Easton and Bellshill.” She pulled them out of the file and sat them on the counter. “She was writing an article.”
“But nothing in the last week?”
“Nothing for two weeks.”
“Oh, and Farquarson wants any clippings on an old case.” Paddy tried to look nonchalant. “Thomas Dempsie. It’s an old murder. Some of them’ll be under Alfred Dempsie.”
The afternoon was busy, and Paddy didn’t get the chance to read the clippings before she went home. She left them hidden in a drawer in the photographers’ office, underneath the picture editor’s portfolio, knowing they would be safe there.
On the train home she leaned her head against the window and imagined Heather up in Townhead on the same night as her, asking questions and banging on doors. She might have met Kevin McConnell as well, but Paddy didn’t think so. He wouldn’t have wasted time flirting with Paddy if Heather had been there.
The house was a husk. They had now been ignoring her for nearly a week, and Mary Ann couldn’t say when it would end. The silence had hardened from a sorrowful quiet to a bitter sneer. Marty smirked straight at her when they passed each other on the stairs; Trisha no longer served her careful dinners but dished up carelessly overboiled potatoes and unsalted soup; and her father and brothers stayed out as much as possible.
Things were getting worse, but Paddy had come to enjoy the solitude and silence of it. It left swathes of space in her head, and across these great prairies she stumbled from Thomas Dempsie to the layout of Townhead and the railway in Steps where Baby Brian had been found. The elements were there, she was sure, but her unpracticed mind couldn’t tease sense from them.
She sat in her bedroom looking out the window at the garden, watching the steam from the washing machine curl up the outside wall. She imagined Sean sitting near her, just out of the scope of her vision. In her mind she reached back and touched him, comforting herself. He kissed her neck and floated off to another part of the house, leaving her warm and happy. She was getting used to being alone.