by Denise Mina
Meehan smiled at her and got a smile back. Isobel patted her hair coyly, as if he’d complimented her. He found himself smiling after her, watching her generous arse as she disappeared off into the far changing room.
Three other witnesses came through. He would learn later that each of them had seen the men leaving the Ross house in the morning. Not one of them picked Meehan out. One of them was certain it was number four; another couldn’t say; the last felt it might be number three.
The men in the line-up knew that the final witness was the big one, the victim himself, and they watched the door next to Meehan expectantly, anticipating the end of the chore and the two bob they had been promised. It was the far door that opened, the door all the other witnesses had left by. The line-up men snickered at the obvious ploy: the girls could easily have told Mr Ross where the mark was standing, but Meehan felt quite confident. The girls had picked him out. He had his alibi.
Rheumy-eyed Mr Ross, frail as a baby bird, had a big black bruise covering one side of his face and a brawny female nurse supporting his arm. The detective sergeant led the old man along the line, straight to Meehan. He ordered Meehan to read a line written on a scrap of paper.
Meehan was puzzled. He should have been told beforehand if he was to say anything. They were breaching protocol to eliminate him, he felt sure. He repeated the line flatly.
‘Shut up, shut up. We’ll send an ambulance. All right?’ The old man’s knees buckled. ‘My God, my God,’ shouted Mr Ross, falling back into the arms of his nurse. ‘That’s the voice. I know it, I know it.’
III
The temperature had dipped again and Paddy could hardly feel the tip of her nose. She rubbed it with her gloved hand, trying to encourage the blood back into it, and turned the corner to the given address. She sighed up at the red sandstone. It was a neat front-door flat in a three-up tenement on the Southside, in a more than decent neighbourhood. The soft rain had darkened the stone to patches of black and every window was clean. The close passage through to the back was tiled in green and cream. Across the tidy square of front garden Mrs Simnel’s front door screamed good order. Pale-yellow storm doors were folded back, revealing a perfectly polished brass letter box and matching knocker sitting over a pristine doormat. Paddy had been hoping for somewhere a bit less respectable and solid.
As she approached the door she could hear a distant radio through the etched glass, tuned to an easy-listening station. The door bell rang out in two complementary tones and a woman’s shape shimmered into view. Paddy huddled in her duffel coat and watched as the shadow woman patted her hair and pulled a pair of rubber gloves off her hands before opening the door.
A small puff of domestic perfection wafted out at Paddy standing on the cold doorstep. A saccharine version of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ was playing in the kitchen. The hall smelled of crumbled biscuits and warm tea.
Mrs Simnel wore flat brown shoes and a cream skirt and blouse. Her hair was pulled gently up into a greying French roll. Paddy explained that she was researching a story about the Baby Brian Boys and had been given her name by one of the officers at the station. Mrs Simnel looked surprised and smiled kindly.
‘But, what age are you, for goodness’ sake? Are you at college?’
Paddy supposed that she was, yes, studying for A levels too, if that was what Mrs Simnel wanted.
‘Good for you,’ said Mrs Simnel. ‘It’s so important to get an education.’
‘It is.’ Her accent was softening the way it sometimes did when she spoke to Farquarson. ‘Terribly, terribly important.’
‘And here you are out on a cold night, working away.’ Paddy smiled bravely, touching her cold nose again, hunching her shoulders. She could tell that Mrs Simnel still wasn’t quite sure of her: she held firmly onto the door handle, creating a barrier between her warm house and Paddy on the outside. ‘Did you have far to come?’
‘Not really.’ Paddy leaned in confidingly. ‘Actually, my daddy dropped me off on the corner.’
‘I see.’ Mrs Simnel’s eyes widened, delighted. ‘I see. Well, come in and warm yourself up. Let’s get you a cup of tea.’ With the door shut behind her Paddy breathed in the warmth and comfort of the generous hall. The ceiling was high with delicate plaster leaves trailing around the cornice. Mrs Simnel took her duffel and hung it by the label on a coat rack behind the door. On the floor beneath the coats sat two pairs of well-worn Wellingtons and a shooting stick, as if the green fields of Perthshire were just beyond the front door instead of the Southside streets of Scotland’s largest city. Paddy wanted to live here, to be from here, to be surrounded by helping hands who would encourage her.
‘Now, let’s have a cup of tea and see what we can do for your college project.’
It was the biggest kitchen Paddy had ever been in. Her entire family could have gathered by the sink and still have left room for a car.
Mrs Simnel had been polishing a strap of ornamental horse brasses when Paddy knocked on the door and now she picked up the newspaper with the blackened cloth and ornaments and simply moved it out of the way of the tea and biscuits. Fading sunlight filtered in through the window, absorbed by thriving plants on the sill, glinting off the ceramic tiles on the floor. Mrs Simnel served up tea and biscuits on genteel flowery crockery. She didn’t use mugs either, but cups and matching saucers. The china cup was so light that even full of tea Paddy could lift it with a gentle pinch of her thumb and forefinger.
Mrs Simnel told the story of the Baby Brian Boys well, recalling the information as she did, sliding her eyes to the side and wondering about things, bringing up details after thinking about them for a moment. She was a widow and had eight sons, all of whom lived near by, all of whom had children of their own. She was hardly short of attention. She had been a primary school teacher in her younger days and could recognize children very well, because they’re all different, aren’t they? All individuals. Paddy resigned herself to the truth of it: Mrs Simnel had been on the train at exactly the time she said and had seen three kids.
She had been on her way to visit her sister who lived in Cumbernauld and, knowing she would be coming back in the dark and not being a confident driver, decided to leave the car and take the train. Sarah – her sister was called Sarah – was expecting her at eight o’clock so she took the seven twenty-five, which was due in at five to eight. It took her five minutes to walk around to the house from the station.
Paddy nibbled the biscuit off a fig roll and sipped her tea. She wanted to live like this when she had a house of her own. She didn’t want to use mugs or eat biscuits out of the packet any more.
Relaxing into her company, Mrs Simnel gestured towards the ornamental brasses and asked if Paddy would mind her carrying on. No; Paddy even offered to help but there wasn’t a spare set of rubber gloves under the sink so she just had to sit there, nibbling biscuits and watching as the woman dabbed Brasso onto the metal and conjured blackness out of nothing.
Mrs Simnel had never been a witness to anything else before and was a little uncomfortable at coming forward. She was surprised how well mannered the police were. She’d expected them to be rather more thuggish, frankly, the officers lower down the ranks at least. As she made the snobbish observation her eyes fell on Paddy’s cheap black crewneck. She blinked, forgiving herself the offence, and shifted the emphasis: they made her a cup of tea before they went in to see the line of boys and gave it to her in a china cup, with a biscuit, an iced ring of all things. Wasn’t that dainty? A pink iced ring. Not what you’d expect from big burly men at all.
She was the perfect witness, recalling details and colours and times exactly, as though she had been rehearsing all her life for this one moment.
‘Those boys who did this,’ she said sadly. ‘Those boys are only ten years old. It makes me shiver to think about it.’
‘Yes, their backgrounds are very deprived,’ said Paddy, hoping to temper her
attitude to them if nothing else.
‘I know. They told me that the dark-haired one had never been to a dentist. Not once in his entire life.’ She put down her cloth for a moment. ‘It must hurt, to have those teeth. And the diet you’d need to make them so … I couldn’t finish my biscuit.’
It hit Paddy like a cold wash. ‘You couldn’t finish the iced ring?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Simnel. ‘I just put it down on the saucer. I mean, it must hurt to have such bad teeth. Even if the parents can’t take the child to the dentist, why don’t the schools do something?’
Paddy pretended that her father was picking her up at the bus stop on Clarkston Road. Mrs Simnel waved her off, wishing her good luck with the project and her exams. As Paddy walked to the end of the street she heard the woman closing the storm doors firmly behind her. She should hurry home or she’d miss Sean if he phoned about their Valentine’s date tomorrow, but she didn’t know where the buses ran to from here and she was numbed by Mrs Simnel.
She walked past the bus terminus and under a railway bridge, following the road over the high crescent of Prospecthill. It was a leafy bump of land, one of two neighbouring hillocks overlooking the broad valley plain. At the crest of the hill she paused, hands in her pockets, looking out over the lights of the Friday-night city. She mapped her way around the distant streets using the red neon sign on the Daily Record building as a starting point.
This time last week Heather Allen was alive and had parked her car in Union Street over there. Paddy had walked down to Queen Street station that night; she could just make out its illuminated fan of glass. She had taken the train to Steps and stood by the tracks. This time last week Mrs Simnel had gone to the police about the boys she saw on the train. They gave her tea and biscuits before she went in to pick them out of a line-up, casually mentioning Callum Ogilvy’s bad teeth to her and the fact that he’d never been to a dentist. She must have known Callum the moment she saw him. They’d primed her just as carefully as Abraham Ross had been primed. The police were determined to put the boys alone on the train and Paddy couldn’t understand why.
27
Red Hot Spite Date
I
Sean didn’t call, and now there was no card. Paddy stared so hard at the bare doormat that she could see small grains of mud and dirt between the brown bristles. Her hot feet began to stick to the plastic floor protector. She cursed her stupid fucking soppy bastard card. It became bigger and bluer and more italicized the more she remembered it. Ashamed of hoping and afraid of being seen, she ran back upstairs to her bedroom.
II
It was quiet in the town. The streets emptied under a heavy sky, shoppers hurrying home before the hunger strikers’ march began or the rain came on again. She watched down the road, facing into cold rain, resisting the urge to pull up her hood because it made her look so young and unsophisticated. Thoughts of Sean made her throat ache. She couldn’t stand it if he abandoned her altogether. She was frightened of herself without him.
A filthy white Volkswagen Beetle peeled off from the thin traffic and pulled into the bus stop. The whitewall tyres were caked in grey dirt and the front wheel hood was rusted and painted over with a watery white treatment. Terry leaned an elbow on the passenger seat and smiled up at her. She pulled open the door and climbed in. ‘I thought you might not be there for a minute.’ She struggled to shut the creaky door behind her. ‘Why?’ ‘’Cause of the rain.’ He pointed to the grey sky. He was nervous too, and she liked it.
She looked up through the windscreen. ‘Is that where rain comes from?’ she said, trying to tease him but sounding sarcastic.
Terry restarted the car. The engine was old and tired, one of the wheels was making an oddly intense ticking noise and the gears crunched like a mouth full of gravel, but still Paddy marvelled at someone near her age having the money to buy a car.
‘This is the coolest motor I’ve ever been in,’ she said, pleasing him and making up for sounding like a bitch.
They looked away from each other, each smiling out of the window. Paddy hoped she was seen out on her spite date, that someone would tell Sean and he’d feel as upset and frightened and jealous as she did at the moment. She had considered and rejected the possibility that Sean was seeing someone else: it wasn’t his style, he was too self-righteous.
Terry slowed for a red light at George Square and they saw steel barriers cordoning off the central space in preparation for the post-march rally. They weren’t the usual barriers, keeping marchers on the central concourse and safe from traffic; they were corridors for funnelling marchers through, keeping them on the roads and away from pavements. Angry vandals had already managed to spray paint slogans on nearby buildings. A bank straight in front of them had UP THE PROVOS across a window; another hand had added MUST DIE in red. The rival slogans made the square look like the venue for a battle of the bands more than the site of a political rally.
Terry drew a wary breath in through his teeth. ‘It’s going to be mental. They’re bussing UDA men in from Larkhall.’ He said it as if he knew the area. Paddy smiled at the dashboard of his car and his expensive leather jacket. ‘Are you from Larkhall, Terry?’ He glanced at her. ‘No.’
‘Whereabouts are ye from?’ He hesitated. ‘Newton Mearns.’
‘Fancy,’ she said, hoping she didn’t sound bitchy again because she meant it.
Newton Mearns was intimidating nice. It was a prosperous, middle-class area on the far south side of the city with nice houses in big grounds and a lot of cared-for gardens. Even the roads were full of vegetation. Paddy and Sean had been out for a day there once, looking for a nice pub Sean had heard about from some workmates. They couldn’t find the pub and were back at the bus stop on the opposite side of the road within twenty minutes. Paddy kept her hood up while Sean smoked a fag and threw stones at cows. They were relieved when the bus arrived to take them back to the city. They never went there again.
Terry’s eyes slid towards her. ‘Newton Mearns isn’t all posh,’ he said, as if he knew what she was thinking. ‘Some parts of it are quite rough, you know.’
‘Is that right? You from the rough part, are ye?’ He didn’t answer. It wasn’t going very well. She was trying to be jokey but she was tense and kept sounding like a snidey know-all.
‘I’d like to nip home first.’ He glanced at her. ‘Is that OK?’
‘The Mearns is miles away.’
‘No, I’ve got my own place. I’m just around the corner.’
Paddy was so impressed she covered her mouth to stop herself from gasping a sarcastic comment. He had a car and his own flat. His parents must be millionaires.
The old car rattled up through the town to Sauchiehall Street, home to drunken students, cinemas and curry houses, and parked outside a newsagent’s. Terry pulled the keys out of the ignition with a flourish and turned to face her.
‘Want to come up?’ He saw her reluctance and added, ‘Just be for a minute. I’ve been working all morning. I want to change my top.’
She tried not to say the first thing on her tongue, which was piss off. Eastfield girls would be wary of entering a boy’s house if his parents were out. Terry didn’t seem embarrassed to be asking her though. Maybe in Newton Mearns girls went in and out of boys’ houses all the time and were just good friends. They probably played tennis together and spent time in conservatories, eating fresh fruit. His breath brushed two hairs from her forehead. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s see your gaff.’
It was a dingy close with a worn wooden balustrade and a filthy concrete floor. Dirt had gathered along the base of the walls. The front doors to the flats became increasingly grotty from landing to landing, and by the third floor they were either chipped and battered or blank pine replacements for those that had been kicked in during drunken arguments. An overhead roof window flooded the filthy stairwell with bright daylight so that every dirty corner was crisp and v
isible, every brown smear on the walls so vivid she could almost taste it. She kept close to Terry, who was bounding up the stairs ahead of her.
‘Why do you need a car,’ she asked, finding herself breathless halfway through the steep climb,‘when you live so near work?’
‘I only use the car to impress women.’
Surprised and flattered at being called a woman, and the subject of anyone’s attempt to impress, she laughed and lashed out, punching him on the thigh.
Six up, on the top-floor landing, two big doors faced each other across a jumble of bicycle parts and a brown corduroy armchair. Terry took a stern bunch of keys to a cardboard front door that would have blown open in a stiff breeze.
The hallway didn’t have any lights in it. More bikes were parked behind the door and every available surface was covered in posters of rock bands: the Floyd, the Quo, Thin Lizzy.
‘God,’ said Paddy quietly. ‘Wake up to the eighties.’ Terry led her to a door at the back, undid the padlock on it and used a long key for the mortise lock below the handle. As the door to his room opened she was struck by a beguiling smell, a mixture of musky sebum and lemon– concentrated scent of big, dirty men.
If Terry was a millionaire he wasn’t making a show of it. His bedroom was long and narrow. A single window at the far end stared straight into the top-floor windows of the mean little tenement opposite. Between his unmade single bed and the sink a paper suitcase did for a table. Terry kept some tins of beans and corned beef on it, sitting next to an open waxed paper packet of white bread and a tub of cheap margarine. The bed sheets were orange, the blankets a grubby cream. He had no hanging space for clothes so he had carefully balanced ironed shirts on hangers from the picture rail around the room. A spindly spider plant on the bookshelf seemed to be slowly lowering its young to the ground, eager for them to escape.
Stepping deep into the room so that Paddy had to follow him, Terry opened a drawer and took out a clean white T-shirt, folded with the front flat as if it was shopnew. He let his leather jacket slide down his arms to the floor, untucked his white work shirt and undid the top three buttons. He put his hand to the fourth and wavered. ‘For Godsake,’ she said,‘I’ve got two brothers. I’ve seen men without their shirts on before.’
