by Denise Mina
“I’ve got a picture of you.” She took out the clipping of the funeral and unfolded it before handing it over, watching to read his reaction.
Bernie smiled sadly down at it. “I haven’t seen this one. The Burnetts ignored me all the way through the service. They only stood next to me at the lineup by the church door because they couldn’t cause a scene. Came to speak to me at the end but I scampered.” He touched a fingertip to the picture. “And there’s Kate.”
She twisted around and saw he was touching the blond with curly hair. “That’s Kate? I thought it was Vhari. They’re alike, aren’t they?”
He looked away from the picture quickly. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Please.”
As he walked over to a large tool table she had the distinct impression that he was trying to draw her attention away from Kate. He poured tea from a tartan flask into two heavily stained mugs. A large industrial heater burned in the corner, a flat brazier of pink flame that tinged the light in the room pink, creating an expectation of warmth that was instantly swamped by the sharp, damp cold emanating from the brick.
The room was shallow but broad. A car was neatly parked against the left-hand wall, a beige MG sports car. Off to the right, against the red brick wall, sat an old kitchen table with jotters and receipt pads on it, above a three-tiered battered red toolbox.
“No sugar, I’m afraid. You said you want to talk about Thillingly?”
“I heard Mark came here the day he killed himself.”
“Yeah.” He handed her one of the mugs. “I know Mark didn’t kill Vhari, whatever the police say.”
The tea wasn’t very hot but she wrapped her fingers around it for warmth. Her stomach was still sore and she was feeling the cold more than usual. “I was at the door the night she was killed. I saw Vhari with a man.”
Bernie stiffened. “I see. Right.” He sipped his tea, carefully not looking at her. He should have asked who the guy was or at least what he looked like but he didn’t. He didn’t need to. He already knew.
“It was Paul Neilson, wasn’t it?” she said, watching for a reaction. Bernie sipped at his cup quickly, blinking, and she knew she was right. “Why did Mark kill himself?”
“Mark was depressed. Often depressed.” Bernie drank his tea, his eyes skitting around the messy floor. He was lying, badly. He was unaccustomed to duplicity and it intrigued her.
They looked around for somewhere to sit but there wasn’t anywhere. They couldn’t even sit on the floor because it was too oily. “Usually with visitors I just sit in a car, do you mind?” He held his hand out toward the MG. “Passenger or driver? The seats are soft.”
“I’ll be the driver.” She opened the door and climbed in, sliding into the leather seat. It was comfortable, apart from a belligerent spring that jabbed her in the back if she moved about.
Bernie slipped into the seat next to her and shut the door. “Why are you so interested in Mark?”
“I was there when they pulled Mark out of the water. The police had him convicted before he was in the morgue, and it just seems too tidy to me. Was Mark’s nose burst when he came to see you?”
Bernie havered for a moment, pretending he was trying to remember Mark’s face that day, but Paddy could see he was fitting the bits of lies together to see if they worked. “Um, no, I don’t know. I didn’t notice.”
“He had a nose like a smashed potato and you didn’t notice?”
“I can’t remember.” He glanced guiltily around the garage. “I wasn’t really looking at him.”
“Right? I’ve been told that he tried to phone your sister the night before, that he called her house and someone else answered the phone.”
She had his full attention now.
“Who answered?”
“Mark asked for Vhari first. Then he asked the person who they were and where the hell she was. He was very upset afterward.”
“Who told you this?”
“Diana. He said something about Kate as well . . .”
“Did he say where she was?”
“Might have. She’s still missing, isn’t she?”
“Dunno.” Bernie shook his head too vigorously. “I haven’t seen Kate for years. Never see her. She never comes to see me either.”
Paddy tried not to pat his arm. Bernie wasn’t a good liar. “But you did see Vhari?”
“Vhari kept in touch with everyone. Never did the easy thing and just bolted like I did.” He bit his finger and looked away through the window. “Vhari was a lovely person. She was good. That’s what the papers keep missing about her. She was really good.”
Paddy thought of Mary Ann reciting prayers in the dark. Being away from them for a day was a glorious novelty but she couldn’t imagine not talking to her mother for years and years. With the luxury of distance she could see that the Meehans were warm. Fraught but warm.
“Did Vhari keep in touch with Kate?”
“Oh, yeah. Called her every week. Called us both.”
They stopped for a moment, looking out through the dirty windscreen, seeing the garage as if they had just driven in. “So this is all your own?”
“Every bit of it. Got the lease, even drew the sign myself. The Burnetts were furious.”
“What’s Kate like?”
He smiled despite himself. “Kate never gave a fuck. Kate left home at fifteen and never went back. Grandfather left her a cottage when he died, up at Loch Lomond, and she never even went home for the keys.”
“Did you get anything?”
“No.” He looked bitter. “I’m not blood. I got nothing. Vhari got the Bearsden house. It’s worth a fortune.”
Paddy thought of the old-fashioned curtains she had noticed in the big bay window on the night of the murder. “Had she just moved in?”
“Yeah, three weeks ago. Half a mile from the folks, God help her.”
They sipped their tea, watching the still room and the pink fire ripple across the brazier surface, its light shifting the tones in the room. She glanced at Bernie out of the corner of her eye so that he wouldn’t know she was watching, and saw his eyebrows furrow with worry. Every time Kate was mentioned he balked.
“And Mark spent his last day here?”
Bernie blinked hard at his mug and shrugged. “He was outside waiting when I got here at eight thirty, dressed in his smart suit and that stupid Midge Ure overcoat. He was bloody freezing.” He smirked at the memory but his face crumpled suddenly at the thought of Mark. He struggled for breath for a moment, the shock of emotion making him fleck saliva onto his chin. He raised a hand and wiped it off. “I’m very sorry,” he said, his accent still as crisp as a fresh lettuce. “It’s just . . . a lot’s happened.”
Paddy tried to think of something kind to say. “I’m sorry too.”
“Mark had come to tell me Vhari was dead. He wanted to tell me. I don’t have a phone at home and he didn’t want me to hear from the radio.”
“Are Kate and Paul Neilson still together?”
“Dunno,” he said, too quickly. “Dunno anything about Kate’s life.”
“But you know Neilson?”
Bernie nodded. “We were at school together, all of us, Mark and Paul and us. Formed a tight little gang. Mark’s family only lived across the road from us. Paul lived farther away, he never really hung around the house much. I didn’t know him well.”
“He didn’t join the gang?”
“No, just sort of took Kate away. He was nothing to do with us. After school Vhari and Mark got engaged. Big family event. We were all big pals until Diana came along.”
She had heard Bernie’s accent before and now she could place it: it was a public school accent and the last time she’d heard it was from the mouth of the man she now knew was Paul Neilson when they were both standing outside Vhari Burnett’s door.
“Where does Neilson live?”
“Killearn. Huntly House or Lodge or something, Huntly Cottage.”
“Would Neilson have known wher
e your grandfather’s house was?”
Bernie’s eye flickered to her and he shifted uncomfortably. “Dunno. Maybe.”
“But Mark would have known. They were engaged so he probably met your grandfather. He’d know where Vhari had moved to.”
“Well.” He cleared his throat unnecessarily. “I suppose.”
Paddy nodded, making mental notes. “Why didn’t Mark go to the police?”
Bernie shrugged again; it seemed to be a herald for a fib. “Mark was a lawyer. He didn’t have a particularly high opinion of the police.”
“Was he protecting you from them?” It was a stab in the dark and not a very good one.
Bernie smirked at her. “From the fuzz? What have I done? Been a toff in a working-class area?” The temperature was dropping between them so she decided to move on.
“Bernie, listen, Vhari had the chance to walk out of the house that night and she didn’t take it.” She watched his face closely. “Whatever secret you’re keeping from the rest of the world, she gave her life to keep it. I think she was protecting Kate. Why would she need to protect her from the police?”
Bernie looked at her regretfully and rolled his head away, rubbing his hair on the window, sad that he couldn’t tell her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay, Bernie. Even if she stayed for you.”
Fighting tears, Bernie rubbed his nose with an open palm. “It wasn’t for me,” he said. “Really.”
“Did Mark give Vhari’s new address to the person who beat him up?”
Bernie looked at her imploringly but said nothing.
“And then he killed himself? Because he felt he’d got her killed?”
He shook his head. Paddy felt he’d tell her if he could.
“I’ll find out, you know, I will find out and tell the police. Can’t you give me anything?”
His eyes wandered slowly around her face, considering what she said. “I can’t do anything that’ll hurt her.”
“Kate?”
He nodded at the dashboard. “We can’t involve the police.”
“Why? Has Kate done something illegal?” He didn’t answer. “I’ll protect her as much as I can, Bernie, but you need to give me something to go on, a name or a place or something, please? For Vhari.” Bernie shook his head. “For Mark?”
He drew in a deep breath and looked around the garage. “I don’t even know who he is but he’s important.” He worked his fingernail into the seam of his chair. “It’s Knox. Look for someone called Knox.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
INQUIRY
I
The clippings library was a pocket of calm order in the chaos of the newspaper. Helen, the chief librarian, dressed like a real librarian would, in tweed pencil skirts and jerseys. Her glasses hung on a red beaded chain around her neck. Paddy had never liked her when she was a copyboy but Helen seemed to have mellowed since Paddy got her promotion. Paddy sometimes dropped in for a chat when she was feeling beleaguered, a fellow female in the middle of a gang of nasty men. The rumors about Burns would be all over the newsroom by now and she wanted to linger in the safety of the library.
Helen dropped an envelope onto the counter and smiled at Paddy. “Here’s one set of Robert Lafferty clippings. We’ve got Neilson the musician but nothing for a Paul Neilson.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Not as much as a birth announcement. There’s so many clippings for the name Knox I’d need to let you in here to trawl through them yourself. Will I give you the first twenty sets?”
“Uch, no, Helen, I don’t have time this morning.”
“Yeah, I heard you’re going in front of the police inquiry into the Bearsden murder this afternoon.”
Paddy flinched. “Who told you that?”
“Shug Grant was in. He’s covering the inquiry.”
It was bad. Shug Grant already hated her for her Margaret Mary jibe and he was a loudmouthed bastard. He once slept with a sub ed’s wife after a party and came in the next day and told everyone. If he was reporting on the inquiry half of Scotland would know about the fifty quid before the first edition went to press.
The doors opened behind Paddy and a copyboy came in and stood next to her, his hands on the partition, looking around expectantly, but Helen ignored him.
“I heard,” she said quietly, “that the squad car took twenty-five minutes to get to the house. Someone’ll get their books.”
“I thought it was a closed committee?”
“It is, but Grant knows someone on it.”
Paddy smiled nervously and lifted the envelope. “Shug knows someone everywhere, doesn’t he?”
“Seems to.”
She hesitated on the stairs but climbed them slowly, making for the newsroom. She couldn’t dodge them forever or they’d know she was scared.
Slipping gingerly through the doors, she settled on the nearest seat, at the edge of the sports desk, and took the Lafferty clippings out of the envelope.
She was listening with half an ear to what was happening around her and sensed a murmur of something strange, a kind of hysterical edge to the atmosphere in the newsroom. Men were smiling fixed grins, looking busy, moving fast and typing, working unashamedly hard. At the epicenter of the oddness was a man she had never seen before, a dark, small, hairy man, simian, square-shouldered and no-necked, typing hard and looking pleased with himself, an awkward, angular smirk on his blue-shadowed face.
She nudged a fat sports boy sitting two seats away. “Who’s that?”
He glanced over, averting his eyes immediately. “JT’s replacement. From London. Famous hound, apparently. Going to make us all get our act together.” He dropped his voice. “Spy.”
“Did JT come back?”
He shook his head. “Not even having a drink out for him. He was told by phone. Don’t come in. Two subs got the bump yesterday and Kevin Hatcher as well. Fair enough. They’re keeping a book on how long it’ll take Kevin to drink himself to death.”
Paddy hadn’t seen Kevin sober since she started on the paper. He was the picture editor and miraculously managed to do an adequate job while so drunk he could hardly form consonants. The old soaks used Kevin as a measure to justify their own drinking: if they got as bad as him they’d stop, but no one ever was as bad as him.
She looked around the room at the fixed grins of fifty people moving around a room trying to look unaffiliated. When news of her fifty quid trickled back she’d be nothing more than a whisper under the breath too.
Sweating with nerves, she tried to still her mind by getting lost in her reading. Lafferty was a graduate of the Christian Brothers reform school, a brutal regime that created a common background for the most violent men in Glasgow. Bad boys from all over the region were sent there at twelve, their well-being and moral development left to monks who were not much more than spiteful, frustrated boys themselves. It was Lord of the Flies without table manners.
The cases against Lafferty tended to be assault charges for pub fights or extortion rackets. There was an unproven murder charge: a prostitute had been thrown off a multistory car park, according to one witness, because she wasn’t kicking back enough money. Lafferty was pictured outside the court, younger but no less wired than he had been when she saw him being questioned, pleased at the outcome, his tiny eyes making him look like an angry pig about to charge.
Paddy thought about the fifty-quid note Neilson had given her. Ramage would be perfectly justified in sacking her: he wouldn’t even need to pay her a severance package.
She looked up at the newsroom, at the men walking back and forth, delivering copy to their subs, typing hard on the heavy machines. Shug Grant was sitting at a desk, watching her from across the room, chewing gum with his mouth open. Fluorescent light glinted off his oily forehead. He raised his hand and pointed a long finger, jabbing the tip at her, and stood up, holding her eye as he walked across the newsroom toward her. “Just back from the inquiry. Typing up my notes.�
��
“Aye.” She affected unconcern. “Great.”
“You’re up today, yeah? Ye nervous?”
“Why would I be nervous?”
“Tam Gourlay was there this morning. Came over very badly. He contradicted you about the cars. Said they weren’t BMWs.” She hadn’t told anyone but the police about the cars. Shug was letting slip the unimportant details to let her know he was connected. It would suit the police case if she was discredited.
“So, you know someone on the inside?”
He pressed his lips together in a mock smile. If he had known about the money, he would have hinted at it. Sullivan had kept his word. The thought of being unceremoniously sacked was awful, but the idea that it might give Shug a good story stung even more.
“Who is it, Shug? It’s not Sullivan. The minutes secretary? Is it the woman taking notes?”
Targeting the secretarial staff was the obvious move. Journalists would find out where they drank or shopped or danced, mine their weaknesses and pump them for information. Shug smiled enigmatically.
She waggled a finger at him. “No, it can’t be the seccy. Your information’s very specific.” She picked her teeth in a way she hoped looked casual.
Perturbed, Shug frowned down at her. “How do you mean,
‘specific’?”
“So.” She nodded. “Who’d want to selectively control the information coming out of the inquiry? If it’s not a seccy or a clerk, there’s only policemen left. How many members of the committee are there? Usually three, isn’t it? Narrows it down a bit.”
Grant was professional enough to suppress his bruised ego, and ask the right question. “What is it? What are you holding back?”
She tried to smile confidently. “You’re being played, you know that, don’t you?”
“Three o’clock.”
Shug watched her pack up her clippings, slip them back into the envelope, and stand up. She turned to back out of the door and saw him again, a bitter twist at the corner of his mouth. He’d warn his leak that she knew and tell them to go for her.
Out on the drafty stairs she thought of Sean. Paul Neilson lived up in Killearn and she’d like to get a look at the house, see the cars outside it and get a sense of the man, but the village was well outside the city limits and she couldn’t justify getting Sean to drive her there when they were supposed to be on call. Sean brought Burns to mind and she remembered him standing in the hotel room in his underpants. She wished to Christ she had slept instead. It might be her last chance for a while.
