by Denise Mina
Dr Pete talked about a wife who had left for England years before and how she would cook a leg of lamb for special occasions. She stuck the meat with rosemary she grew in their garden and sat potatoes under it to roast in the lamb fat. The meat was as sweet as tablet, as moist as beer; it lingered on the tongue like a prayer. Before he met her he had never eaten food that made him feel as if he had just woken up to the world. The way she cooked that lamb was beautiful. She had black hair and was so slight he could lift her up and swing her over a puddle with one arm around her waist. He hadn’t talked about her in a long time.
The doors were busy with men finishing their shift. Another couple of journalists drifted towards the table, looking for a seat and a joke, but Pete blanked them and they moved off elsewhere.
More uninhibited than she had ever been, Paddy confided in Dr Pete that she loved his writing in the Dempsie articles and asked him why he didn’t write any more. His jaundiced eyes slid across the floor of the pub and he blinked slowly. ‘I’m writing a book. I’ve been writing a book about John McLean and Red Clydeside. They keep you back … My wife left …’
Even through the haze of alcohol Paddy knew he was making excuses. Everyone at the News was writing a book; she was writing a book about Meehan in her head. Pete had just given up and joined the other lazy cynics. She couldn’t imagine him fit enough to lift a woman over a puddle with one hand. She wanted to say something nice but couldn’t think of a pleasantry appropriate to a man who’d pissed his life away.
Both doors opened simultaneously, letting a blast of bitterly cold air swirl into the bar. A number of men clattered noisily towards the table. It was the morning boys, coming in team-handed to visit their leader. Unbidden, they pulled over seats and settled around the table. Paddy stood up, staggering to the side a little, surprised by how drunk she was. She and Dr Pete nodded to each other. Their time was over.
‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ said Pete, and he broke eye contact with her, looking back at his drink. Paddy took her half pint with her as she pulled away into the crowd.
By now the Press Bar was heaving. The air was treacle-thick with smoke and the sweet smell of spilled drink. Farquarson was standing by the door, disagreeing with a short man in front of him. A sharp, attention-grabbing, acid undertone was coming from the near corner: a sports boy had snuck in a vinegar-soused fish supper and was surreptitiously eating it off his knees. Apart from Paddy there were only three other women in the room: one, a redhead in a purple sequinned top flirting with a table of men and being bought drinks; the other two were sitting together, one of them the beady-eyed woman who’d cried as the bald policeman showed her out of the interview room. Both women stared blankly ahead as they nursed small red drinks in round glasses. Keck was hanging around a table of sports guys, laughing and leaning over while they ignored him, forcing himself on the reluctant company.
Paddy decided to go home. She tried to slip behind Farquarson but he turned to let her squeeze through and the moment for pretending not to have seen each other was past. He tried to incorporate her into the conversation he was having about football with the small man, but she didn’t know anything about it.
‘Ah ha,’ he said, ‘more of a rugby woman, are you?’
‘I don’t really watch sport.’
‘Right.’Farquarson took another sip. ‘Ah, Margaret Mary McGuire.’ He grabbed the arm of the redhead who was sidling past. ‘How the devil are you?’ Margaret Mary didn’t seem very pleased to see Farquarson, but he persevered. ‘Have you met our own Patricia Meehan? She’s something else, something else.’ He swung away abruptly, leaving the two women stuck with each other.
Margaret Mary, who was too old to be wearing a sparkly top and too ginger to be wearing a purple anything, looked Paddy up and down. Her face soured. ‘What age are you?’
‘Eighteen,’ said Paddy, bold with drink. ‘Why, what age are you?’
‘Get stuffed,’ said Margaret Mary, and recommenced her sashay to the toilets. ‘Hiya.’
Keck was pressing just a little too close to Paddy than the crowd warranted. It hurt her neck and eyes to look up at him.
‘Right, Keck?’
‘Come on over and I’ll introduce you to the guys.’ He motioned towards the sports journalists who hadn’t even noticed he’d gone.
‘I’m all right, Keck, I’m finishing my drink and going in a minute.’
‘You should come over, it’s a brilliant laugh.’ His eyes swivelled paranoiacally around the noisy room. ‘Women don’t like sport, eh? What do women like anyway?’ He looked at Margaret Mary’s back. ‘What do they want from men? Big cars? You’re chisellers, eh?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, itching to get away. ‘If you keep coming out with crap like that the only women who’ll keep your company’ll be self-loathing nut-jobs. There are lots of nice women in the world.’
He smiled like a hostage trying not to alert the police. ‘I’m always frightened to talk to you in case you think “what’s that dirty wee bastard been thinking about me?”’ His glassy eyes were fixed on her neck. She could tell he was thinking about her tits but didn’t have the courage just to stare at them. ‘I’m an animal in bed, you know.’
Paddy drained her glass and feigned bewilderment. ‘How does that work? Have you got a magic mattress or something?’
At the door she turned for a last fond look round the bar and found Pete staring after her in silent entreaty, asking her to get him out of there. Paddy waved goodbye, pretending she had misread his eyes, and left him to be enveloped in a crowd of his own kind.
II
She sobered up on the train home, sucking her way through a packet of mints to cover the smell of drink and fags. She looked out of the window at the passing lights of Rutherglen town hall and thought about the witness who had seen the boys on the train. The witness might not be credible. McVie knew all the policemen in Glasgow; he’d be able to find out something about it for her.
The house was dead. Trisha sat stiffly in the front room as Paddy ate in the kitchen, watching Adam and the Ants on Top of the Pops. They both knew she only had it on for the noise so they wouldn’t be left alone together in the itchy silence. Paddy finished her dinner, watching the back of her mum’s head, enjoying the detached numbness afforded by the alcohol. She filled her pockets with custard creams and went upstairs to her bed.
She lay on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling and eating mechanically through the biscuits, letting the crumbs spill into her hair and ears. Valentine’s was on Saturday – just one more lonely day to go. He might not phone tomorrow night but she knew she’d see him on Saturday. It would be frosty at first, but they’d kiss and touch and sort it out. Sometimes, when she thought about Sean his handsome face melted into Terry Hewitt’s, with his pretty manners and hesitant smile.
There were definite noises downstairs: someone coming in and getting their tea and then another couple of people in the living room, everyone talking quietly and abruptly to one another. Muffled footsteps came up the stairs and someone stopped off to use the toilet. The bedroom door opened and Mary Ann came in, looking serious. She shut the door carefully, climbed across her own bed to Paddy’s and sat down, poking Paddy in the ribs.
‘It’s finishing on Saturday,’ she whispered. ‘We’re having a tea for you and that’ll be it over.’ She kissed Paddy’s forehead, excited as a child at Christmas. ‘You smell like a brewery.’
Mary Ann went out to change into her night clothes in the bathroom and left Paddy alone. She took another biscuit from her pocket and chewed it meditatively. To hell with them. She wasn’t going to be in on Saturday. She was going out with Terry during the day and in the evening she’d be out at the pictures with Sean.
26
Fat, but Funny
I
Paddy shucked off her coat by the door and walked across to the bench. A balding subeditor with a small
horn of hair on his forehead caught her eye and muttered hello. It made her feel suspicious and worried. She didn’t answer back. Ten minutes later, a different journalist patted her arm and said he was sorry when she brought him a box of staples.
She was on the bench, wondering whether she’d done something in the pub that she didn’t remember, when Dub came back from the print room. She told him what had happened and said she was worried they were being friendly for a bad reason.
Dub stretched his skinny legs out in front of him. ‘Name a bad reason for being friendly.’
‘Dunno. I was in the Press Bar for a few hours yesterday afternoon. I just hope they don’t think I’m fast or something.’
Dub snorted. ‘No-one thinks that.’
She looked nervously around the room for clues. She didn’t know if it was the after-effects of the drink the day before but she was as tense as a trip wire this morning.
‘Keck confided that he’s worried in case I guess all the dirty things he’s been thinking about me.’
Dub laughed and told her that Keck was a crippled-dick-wank-donkey-fucker, and he had the photos to prove it. Paddy liked the word and laughed along with him, enjoying the camaraderie of having a mutual enemy.
They stayed on the bench, letting Keck take the calls, chatting for a while. Dub told her the police had been chucked out of the building. Farquarson and McGuigan’d had a set-to because they were disrupting the running of the paper, pulling people out of meetings and making all the women cry. They’d missed a big story on Poland because of them, lost a phone line when the police yanked Liddel off the news-room floor.
It wasn’t until after the editorial meeting that she finally heard why everyone was being nice to her; it was one of those morsels of city gossip that could never be used in the paper, like the children’s names or the details of how Brian had died. Callum Ogilvy had attempted suicide the night before and been rushed to hospital. He’d used a knife and done it under a table in the refectory with everyone there. He almost cut his hand off. It was so bad they had to operate. Only because he was almost a relative Paddy suddenly thought she should go and visit him and the thought stayed with her; Sean could probably get in to visit Callum. If she went with him she could interview the boy for the paper. Her family would never talk to her again if she did that. She’d have to think of something else.
She approached the subeditor on the news desk, the horned man who had shot her a sympathetic glance earlier, and asked him for McVie’s contact details. He got the phone number from someone on features. ‘I heard you were related to that Ogilvy boy.’
Paddy was copying out the telephone number from a Rolodex card and didn’t answer.
‘You can’t choose your family, can you?’
‘Or your colleagues,’ said Paddy, picking up a phone receiver without even asking for permission. ‘McVie won’t want you to call him.’
‘He’ll be fine.’ She dialled the number. ‘I know him. Honestly, he won’t mind. He gave me his number before but I lost it.’
McVie sounded groggy. ‘What in the name of pissing hell are you doing phoning me at home, you fat cow?’
‘Fine, yeah.’ Paddy nodded at the sub to show the call was welcome.
‘Where the hell did you get my number from?’
‘Oh, so I suppose, aye.’ She spun away from the table and scratched her nose, covering her mouth. ‘Listen, I need a favour.’
‘It’s ten o’clock in the fucking morning. Ye can shove your favours up your arse.’
‘The police asked me about Heather and you.’ She dropped her voice. ‘They wanted to know about the calls car and why you invited her out.’ He hesitated. ‘What did you tell them?’ ‘What should I have told them? Nothing happened. You’re a good guy.’
He sighed and lowered his hackles. ‘What’s the favour, then?’ She drew breath to speak but he interrupted. ‘It better not be big or involve me leaving the house.’
‘I want the name of the witness who saw the Baby Brian Boys on the train.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t believe they were on the train at all.’
‘What’s the difference how it went down? They did it, there was blood all over them. She picked them out of a line-up fair and square.’
She didn’t want to tell McVie her suspicions, much less reiterate them in the news room where anyone could be listening. ‘It makes a difference to me.’
‘Because you’re a relative?’ It was easier just to agree. ‘Yeah.’
‘Well, it’ll take a lot of string-pulling. Witnesses are special cases. If anything comes out of this I want my name on it.’
‘Come on, McVie.’She smiled weakly and looked around the room. ‘You know I’m an idiot. Nothing’s going to come out of it.’
He was suddenly wide awake and interested. ‘You’re really on to something, aren’t you?’
Paddy bit her lip. ‘Yeah,’ she said, trying to sound enthused, ‘I really think I’ve got a big story here. I promise your name’ll go on it, right next to mine.’
‘Ah.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘Well, now I don’t know what to think.’
‘I was talking to JT about the witness. He said women always come forward and it’s usually for attention.’
‘Balls, that’s just like the man. It’s much more complicated than that. People want to see things. Some think they see things. Some wish they see things. People who say it’s for attention are arseholes.’
‘For Godsake, everyone in the world can’t be an arsehole except you and me.’
‘I never said you weren’t an arsehole.’ She almost laughed out loud. ‘You know, McVie, you’re a real character.’
She could hear the smirk in his voice. ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘Fat, but funny.’
II
Farquarson had noticed that half the staff were using little pens stolen from bookies’ shops and thought it looked unprofessional. As Paddy went around the tables giving out fresh biros to everyone, she thought about Paddy Meehan and the line-up, when Abraham Ross, fresh from his dead wife’s bedside, picked him out and then fainted in front of him.
Meehan had talked about the injustice of it afterwards but no local journalist would listen. Every convicted man in Barlinnie Prison claimed he had been set up and Meehan was a well-known old con, neither liked nor respected and hardly known for his principled core. It wasn’t until Ludovic Kennedy began researching his book about the case that the details of the day were documented.
Meehan had gone into the police station feeling confident. Griffiths was dead, and the paper from the Rosses’ safe had been found in his pocket but it was a plant and really strong evidence was starting to go his way. The Kilmarnock girls had been found and were coming to identify him, and he had been told that the two robbers had referred to each other as Pat and Jim throughout the job: the police would know that no professional criminal would ever call another by his real name. Plus the police were looking for two guys from Glasgow and Griffiths had a deep Rochdale accent. Everyone who ever met him commented on it.
He thought it odd that the defence and prosecution witnesses were coming to the same identity parade: usually the prosecution had one and then, often later, the defence had a different one. But he had never been done for murder and decided that the crime was so heinous even the police were eager to get to the truth of it. It was only days before the start of the trial when he saw the girls’ names on the list of witnesses and saw that they were listed for the prosecution. The police would claim that Meehan and Griffiths had picked up the girls to give themselves alibis. The young girls, hazy in their memory and intimidated by the court, would slide the times and places back and forth to fit the case.
As soon as it began, the identity parade seemed strange. Meehan had participated in enough line-ups to know that it wasn’t being held in the line-up room. Instead they
were gathered in the CID muster room, the place where the officers assembled before a shift. It was a big square room with windows on the far wall and two doors, one on the left, one on the right, both leading into separate changing rooms. Four other men of Meehan’s age and build milled around, glancing at their neighbour’s shoes, each wondering if he did really look like that. They were only there for the couple of bob – good money for half an hour’s work.
Meehan felt calm. The lassies would pick him out, he knew they would. He’d got out of the car and they’d each seen him straight on. For once in his life he was glad of the acne scarring on his cheeks, knowing that it made him distinctive enough to remember, even in a bad light.
They heard people gathering behind one of the doors and the two attendant police officers shuffled the ID men into a line, letting Meehan take whichever place he wanted. He stood closest to the door so that they would come to him first. When they had all settled into place the officer knocked on the door and opened it.
Irene Burns came into the room accompanied by a copper and a lawyer in a cheap suit. The moment her eyes fell on Meehan it was obvious she remembered. She didn’t even look at the others in the line, just raised her finger, hardly five feet away, pointing directly at his nose. What small vestige of religious feeling Meehan had left in his heart prompted him to thank someone somewhere. The officers led her off to the far changing room and Meehan noticed that she had a thick ladder up the back of her shin and had scuffed her heel. She was still a child herself.
Isobel came next, looking very young and rather prim. Her hair was a neat little dome and she had a hairband in it with a bow at the side. Again, she recognized him immediately, hardly glancing at the others. She hung around nervously by the far wall as if she wanted to run back into the changing room.
Meehan spoke to her. ‘It’s all right, pet, don’t worry about it. Go ahead.’
Isobel gave a little sigh of relief and pointed at him. ‘It’s him,’ she said.
