by Denise Mina
‘Well,’ Paddy said, sitting back,‘can’t see anything.’ Billy pulled the car from the kerb and Paddy watched the scheme pull past the window. Little drops of not-quite rain started to smear the windscreen. She hid her mouth under her hand, trying not to smile. She could read the scheme. She could see patterns that McVie and Billy were blind to.
III
They were on the Jamaica Street Bridge when they heard it over the radio. A christening in Govan had turned into a gang fight– one dead so far. McVie kicked the back of the seat and Billy swung the car around, cutting in front of a bus on the other side of the road and getting honked for his cheek. The snow came on heavily. Flakes as big as rose petals tumbled gracefully out of an ink-black sky. Pedestrians evaporated off the streets and traffic slowed to a cautious crawl. In the ten minutes it took for them to get to the address the snow grew thick, sticking to soot-blackened walls in patches.
The gangs had dispersed by the time they arrived in Govan. The tall street was bare of cars, a deep valley between two long red tenement rows. The crisp sheet of snow covering the ground was punctuated by regular warm pools of orange from the street lights. A few stray policemen were still standing in the tumbling snow, teasing out names and addresses from shivering witnesses desperate to get back into their houses and out of the weather, wishing they hadn’t bothered to come for a look at the dead boy.
Billy pulled the car over to the pavement. Invited, Paddy followed McVie out of the car. Big soft snowflakes stuck to her hair and face, and lay on her shoulders and chest, dampening her duffel coat. She looked down at the pavement and saw fresh scarlet speckles melting into the snow on the kerb.
McVie walked over to one of the policemen. ‘Alistair, what’s happening?’
The policeman pointed around the corner and explained that an eighteen-year-old boy had been chased into an innocent family’s house by five members of an opposing gang. The boy had tried to escape by jumping out of the window but his foot got caught and tipped him upside down. He landed on his head, dying instantly.
As the policeman spoke Paddy stood five feet away looking at the deep dots of blood melting through the white snow to the black pavement beneath, tracing the path of the body to the ambulance tyre tracks in the road.
‘’Mon.’ McVie flicked his finger and Paddy followed him to the alley running between two blocks of flats.
The snow had barely reached the ground in the dark, narrow lane. It was lit by overspill from the kitchen windows above. McVie stalled in front of her, inadvertently sucking in a disgusted gasp through his teeth. Looking around his legs, Paddy saw a jammy, lumpy mess arranged in a halo around a central point of contact. A clump of long brown hairs was soaking up the blood. He must have had very dry hair, she thought. She stared at it, unmoved, surprised at her cold reaction. She felt nothing, just hot excitement at being there, bearing witness to events that would have happened anyway.
McVie looked up at an open kitchen window, tracing the boy’s trajectory from the window three floors up to the ground. The window was still sitting wide open and inside a hub of people were gathered. A uniformed policeman squinted down at them and, seeing McVie, waved happily. McVie was busy scribbling something in his pad so Paddy waved back in his stead. Her feet were going numb and she was hungry. She looked down at the blood of a dead man her own age. This was exactly what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. Exactly.
McVie flipped his notepad shut and nodded her towards the car. ‘Right then. That’s tonight finished. We’ll drop you home.’
‘I’m not going home. The shift’s not finished yet.’
‘Look, that snow’s gonnae shit down and we’ll get stranded.’ He pushed her out of the alley but she knew he meant it nicely. ‘Everyone stays home when the weather’s like this. They don’t even fight with each other. The calls will all be stranded motorists. We’ll go back to the office and get the rest of the night’s stories over the phone.’ Paddy didn’t know whether to believe him or not. She chapped on Billy’s window and when he wound it down she asked if they would be going back to the office. Billy looked up at the sky. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We’ll end up stuck in snow otherwise.’
Snow muffled the noise of the night city. The few people they passed in the street were making their way out of the weather, stepping carefully as if tiptoeing through oil. Billy concentrated hard on the road while McVie and Paddy listened to the radio calls getting fewer and further between. The city was putting itself to bed. They passed through the Gorbals and the blazing lights of the damp Hutchie E housing scheme, past the edge of Glasgow Green and Shawfield Stadium dog track and on through Rutherglen. By the time they arrived at Eastfield the snow was at least an inch deep.
The snow had cleaned the Eastfield Star up beautifully. All the roofs on the cottages matched and the unmanaged gardens looked tidy. With a blanket of snow the overall design of the scheme was clear and coherent. Even the broken cars and tattered fencing looked clean and pretty. Lights blazed bright and warm from every home. Flocks of wily pigeons gathered on the snow-free roofs of uninsulated houses. Paddy felt proud to come from such a solid workingclass background. She wished McVie had some friends at work he could tell about it. Maybe word would get around and people would respect her for it. Maybe Billy would tell someone.
She got out and leaned back through the door, telling Billy and McVie to come back to her house if they got stuck: they would be more than welcome to spend the night there, please don’t hesitate.
‘Fuck off,’ said McVie, pulling her door shut. ‘We’re not coming back to your scabby wee house.’ She watched the car roll away until it was swallowed by a white curtain. It was only when her back was turned and her face was hidden in her duffel hood that she burst into a smile. She was a journalist. She had to run around the block twice to burn the buzz off before she went home.
9
On the Light Table
I
Paddy smiled to herself and leaned her head on the window of the early-morning train, looking up at passing tenements, dark and full of sleep, the households warmly savouring the last delicious half hour before the alarm. She was thrilled by her night in the calls car. She could do that job, she knew it.
Beyond the cold window pane, frosting and cleared by her breath, the thin blanket of snow had blunted the edges of the landscape, softening bare trees and jagged buildings, rounding the coal carriages in the sidings, sitting inch-thick on the overhead cables. The sun rose abruptly, turning the sky a brilliant crystal blue. Paddy could see her whole future in the same colour.
II
A large portion of the staff at the Daily News had inexplicably been made late by the melting inch of snow. The building was half shut, the car park almost empty, and even the clattering of the print machines was subdued.
Through the open print works door Paddy could see that only two of the three presses were working. The side door was still locked and chained and she had to make her way through the main reception. Inside, a single Alison was sitting at the desk wearing her furry-collared coat. ‘D’ye get in all right?’ asked Paddy.
Alison shrugged, reluctant to chat. ‘S’pose,’ she said, picking her ear with a manicured fingernail.
On the way up the stairs Paddy lifted a copy of the paper and was delighted to find the street suicide story about Eddie and Patsy in its own boxed paragraph on page five. McVie had managed to edit it into a noble story about thwarted love, a death with meaning.
The news room was half dead. They were so short-staffed that even Dr Pete had been drafted on to the news desk. He sat dumbly with his jacket off, staring at a typewriter as if it had just insulted him. Before Paddy had time to hang her coat up inside the door he raised a hand to call her over. As she walked across the floor he typed three consecutive letters and sat back, staring at the machine suspiciously. ‘Go and ask a news sub if I have to do this.’ Paddy looked around the
news room but could see only one sub, and he was on the phone. The lights were on in the pictures office. Sometimes subs and journalists hid in there to make a private phone call or have a quiet smoke. There was no answer when she knocked at the door. The light seeping underneath seemed unusually sharp. She opened the door and a hyper-white light erupted through it. The light table, three feet square of buzzing brightness used to view negatives, had been left on at the back of the room. Next to it sat Kevin Hatcher, the perpetually drunk pictures editor. He was sitting in a desk chair at a strange angle, his head hanging to the side, his hands loose in his lap. He looked like a posed corpse. ‘Kevin? Kevin? Are you OK?’
He blinked his bloody eyes to signal that, yes, he was fine, and blinked again. The harsh light seemed to be drying his eyes out. She stepped across to the white panel and found two large-format pictures sitting on the burning surface, the photographic paper arching away from the heat. She lifted the pictures, stacked them on the tips of her fingernails to avoid burning her fingertips, and turned off the light table.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. She was blinking down at the top picture as it came into focus. It wasn’t printable quality. It had been taken through the tiny window of a moving police van. A third of the frame was a flash-bleached hand slapping at the outside. Inside, a policeman was sitting on a bench, slightly off his seat, next to a small blond boy clutching the edge of the seat, his knuckles white, his head down defensively so that the whirl of his crown was visible. The second picture was taken one window further down. A dark-haired boy sat on the other side of the policeman, eyes shut tight and lips pulled back in a terrified grimace. The scalding picture fell from her hand, zigzagging to the floor.
Paddy knew this boy. It was Callum Ogilvy, a cousin of Sean’s.
She bent over to look at the picture on the floor. She hadn’t seen Callum since his father died and Sean had taken her to his funeral a year and a half ago but his face was the same shape, his teeth still speckled black, grey to the verge of green and set on long gums.
The boy was related to Sean through both their dead fathers who were cousins or brothers, she couldn’t remember. Callum’s family lived in Barnhill, on the opposite side of the city from Sean, and his mother suffered from an unnamed mental illness no-one liked to talk about. Paddy had only met her at the father’s funeral and she’d looked like a colourless hippy with frizzy greying hair and leathery skin. The Ogilvy children were very subdued, that much Paddy did remember, but their dad had just died so it hadn’t seemed that strange. She remembered Callum trying desperately to get attention from the older cousins, guessing Sean’s favourite footballer and showing off by jumping fearlessly off a wall. Sean had tolerated the boys politely enough but he didn’t like them. He had never been back to see the family.
‘Kevin?’ She picked up both pictures and held them in front of his face. ‘Kevin, what are these pictures of?’ Kevin looked at them. ‘Bibi Bri.’
‘Baby Brian?’
He nodded, shutting his eyes at the effort.
Paddy dropped the pictures to the floor and walked out of the room.
III
Ignoring calls from journalists, Paddy marched straight through the news room and out of the double doors, running up the canteen stairs two at a time, ignoring the twinges in her lungs and her aching knees. She was surprised to find herself breathless as she pushed open the double doors.
Terry Hewitt sat alone at a table about to take a bite of a sandwich. The sharp smell of eggs wafted across the room. Through the window behind him she saw snow dropping lazily from black clouds.
‘Have you seen Heather Allen?’ She had never spoken to him directly before.
Terry lowered his sandwich, looked surprised and shook his head, his face composing itself into a smug smile as he inhaled to speak. Paddy didn’t wait. She pushed back through the doors and walked away.
The ladies’ toilet on the editorial floor was Heather’s private office. It was a particularly nice toilet, and because no woman was ever promoted to editorial it was used so little it only needed a clean once a fortnight. Paddy opened the door to the smell of smoke and AnaïsAnaïs perfume.
‘Heather?’ she whispered in case anyone in editorial heard them.
Heather’s hushed voice came from inside one of the far cubicles,‘Paddy?’ ‘Heather, it’s Paddy.’
After some rustling of material and a flush the door opened and Heather peered out. ‘What’s wrong?’
Paddy took a deep breath and held it in. She sat down on a hand towels bin, drinking in deep, calming breaths. ‘What’s going on?’
Paddy shook her head, aware that she was half enjoying the drama.
Heather patted her arm. ‘Let’s have a ciggie, that’ll calm you down.’
She took one for herself and gave one to Paddy, bending over to light her up with a book of matches from Maestro’s, an intimidatingly trendy night club Paddy had never been to. For the first time in her life Paddy inhaled smoke.
‘God.’ She grimaced, rolling her tongue around her mouth. ‘God, that’s … I feel sick.’ She lifted her hand to the sink.
‘No!’ Heather took the cigarette back from her fingers. She pinched the hot tip into the sink and tapped the loose tobacco out of the end, twisting the empty paper into a little point. She filed the amputated cigarette back in the packet. ‘Is it a long story?’ Paddy nodded.
‘Just hang on then …’ Holding her cigarette above her head, Heather trotted into a cubicle and dragged out a blue sanitary towel bin, trailing the smell of flowers rotting in ammonia across the floor. She sat down on the soft plastic bin, making its sides bulge. ‘OK. I’m ready.’
Paddy smiled at her, sitting on the stinking bin just to get eye level. ‘You need to promise you won’t repeat this to anyone.’
Heather crossed her heart and frowned. ‘You’re very serious.’
‘I was up in Kevin Hatcher’s office and I saw some photos of the Baby Brian Boys. I know one of them.’ Heather gasped. ‘You lucky bitch.’
‘He’s Sean’s wee cousin.’
Heather sat back. ‘You bloody lucky cow.’ She grabbed Paddy’s sleeve. ‘Look, you could do a piece about the family, about the background. God … I bet you could even get it syndicated.’
‘No, I can’t.’ Paddy shook her head. ‘Sean’d never talk to me again and my family’d disown me. They don’t approve of talking to outsiders about family business.’
‘But, Paddy, if you get a syndicated story out of it you’ll be published all over the country. It could be your calling card. You could make brilliant contacts in other papers.’
‘I can’t use the story.’
Heather tipped her head to one side and narrowed her eyes, pretending it was against the smoke, but Paddy could tell that she was envious of her. She relished the novelty of it.
‘I can’t, Heather. Sean’ll be gutted when he hears about this. They just left those kids up there with that crazy mother. I mean, they’ll feel terrible. You would, wouldn’t you? Anyone would feel terrible. And he’s got five brothers and sisters. One of them’s wilder looking than the next. I was at their dad’s funeral. He’d fallen into a machine at the St Rollox works in Springburn, drunk. He was all chewed up.’
‘You should use the story, Paddy. It’s unprofessional not to.’
‘I just can’t.’
Heather looked faintly disgusted but Paddy knew she couldn’t do it. The Ogilvys were a good family, they did voluntary work, they cared for their neighbours and were meticulous in their devotions. She wished she had never seen the picture and didn’t have to be the one to tell Sean. She felt suddenly queasy as she remembered the amount of arctic roll she had eaten at Granny Annie’s lying-in.
‘Sean was going on about our engagement party the other night.’
Heather exhaled slowly, shifting her weight on the bin. A corner o
f the soft plastic buckled slowly beneath her and Paddy realized that mention of the engagement was one inadvertent triumph too many. Heather avoided her eye and took a draw on her cigarette, tipping her head back. Her blonde hair slid off her face.
‘I broke my diet really badly. That’s what made me think of the engagement. I can’t stick to it at all.’ She smirked at herself. ‘I think I’m actually getting fatter.’ Heather went back to her cigarette.
‘The egg diet?’ said Paddy. ‘You know it? I haven’t done a poo for a week.’
Heather half smiled at the floor so Paddy tried harder, telling her about Terry Hewitt asking who the fat lassie was in the Press Bar.
‘Terry Hewitt’s a knob,’ said Heather, spitefully,‘a complete fucking knob. He fancies himself so much. Did you see him in the news room earlier, trying on Farquarson’s coat while he was down here on editorial?’ ‘No.’
‘He stood on a chair so everyone could see him. It was pathetic.’
A fleck of Heather’s spittle hit Paddy on the top lip. She resisted the urge to wipe it away.
‘Give us that half cigarette,’ she said,‘and I’ll try again.’ Paddy tried to smoke it, pulling silly faces and making herself the fool for Heather, trying to get them back on an even keel. Heather smiled politely and let her make an arse of herself. Eventually she stood up. ‘You should use the story.’
‘I can’t,’ said Paddy, ashamed of her soft heart.
‘Fine.’
Heather stood up and ran the end of her cigarette under the tap. She threw the smelly stub of it into the sanitary bin, checked her hair and lipstick in the mirror and said ‘see you later’ as if she hoped they’d never meet again.
Paddy watched the door swing behind her. Now she had no-one.
