The Last Breath

by Denise Mina

She grinned at him. He knew she was lying, everyone knew she was lying about Callum Ogilvy, but McVie could read her better than most.

  ‘How are ye, George?’

  He hissed at the feeble detour, and took out another cigarette. She tried again. ‘How’s that nice young man of yours?’

  He sucked his teeth, lit the cigarette and blew thick smoke across the table. It hit her place mat, lifting off it like a morning mist rising from a lake.

  ‘Meehan, we’ve got guys camped outside the prison. We can wait for ever. You tell Callum Ogilvy this: we’ll pay top whack for an exclusive. With pictures. Someone’s getting it and he might as well make a few quid off it. Set him up in his new life.’

  ‘Johnny Mac from the Times offered him 50K and he doesn’t want it.’

  ‘Unless you’re keeping it for yourself, exclusive on the cheap, family connections and all that.’ He gave her a sly look. Callum and Sean Ogilvy weren’t members of her family. People forgot that she had been engaged to Sean and that he wasn’t her cousin. She herself forgot sometimes.

  ‘George, what does your man think about you outing gay men in your paper?’

  McVie’s face tightened. ‘The judge was picking up teenage junkie prostitutes and fucking them in his car.’

  ‘Still,’ she sipped her mineral water, ‘it was a bit of a gay bash.’

  He excused himself with a wave of his cigarette. ‘Sells papers. That’s the business we’re in.’

  The Standard guys were sniggering at the waitress, who was trying to lift the plates from their table. ‘Aren’t you frightened those bastards’ll out you?’

  ‘No,’ said McVie, but he looked worried.

  McVie had left his wife seven years ago and had gradually come out to the industry. Under the unspoken rules of engagement his sexuality had never been mentioned in the press, even when he took over the Scottish Mail on Sunday and became a name, but the Standard’s spite knew no bounds.

  ‘If they decide to out you it’ll be ugly.’

  McVie wriggled as if he had a cockroach between his shoulder blades. ‘Shut up about that.’ He took a slice of bread from the basket and then a butter portion, cracking it back and forth in the paper to thaw it. ‘What did Hatcher say about Terry?’

  As luck would have it, the butter was frozen solid and McVie didn’t notice the moment’s pause before she spoke. ‘Kevin Hatcher?’ she said as if she was correcting him.

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘He must have said something. He left Terry outside the casino.’

  Paddy took a slice of bread too, pulled the soft guts out of it and chewed, ‘Just, you know …’ She took a guess. ‘They lost money.’

  McVie unwrapped the butter portion and put it on his bread, trying to spread it with his knife. The butter gathered the soft bread to it, pulling the slice into lumps.

  ‘So,’ said Paddy casually, ‘Kevin was the last person to see Terry? Where is he now, the Express ?’

  McVie looked angrily at the mauled slice of bread. ‘Freelance. Got his own agency.’ He picked the bread up, used both hands to form it roughly into a ball and threw it towards the startled waitress, who was taking a pudding order from the romantic couple. The ball of bread hit the curtains and dropped to the floor. He didn’t need to raise his voice: everyone was looking at him already. ‘I want butter that isn’t frozen fucking solid.’

  The couple looked appalled. The Standard boys cheered, because they always cheered bullies, and the Mail clapped half-heartedly because he was their boss.

  ‘You’re an arsehole.’

  He sat back and sucked his cigarette. ‘When’s Ogilvy getting out?’

  ‘Shut the fuck up.’

  The waitress brought the plates of haggis and ham over, apologizing for the butter and explaining that the chef had forgotten to take it out earlier but as soon as it was softened she’d bring it right over. McVie grunted an answer. She backed off as soon as she dared, hurrying away to hide in the kitchen.

  ‘Meehan, this is my one night off,’ he said when she’d left. ‘I’m doing you a favour.’

  Paddy made him look at her. ‘George, you know you’ve barely looked me in the eye since you got here. Ye were never very nice to start with, but for Christsake, are ye in there?’

  Resting his elbow on the table, McVie poked his fork at her, his scowl lifting. ‘I’m in here, aye.’

  ‘Good. Remember, you don’t have to be an arsehole to be an editor. It helps, but you don’t need to be. Remember Farquarson? He was decent.’

  ‘Yeah, and where’s he now?’

  As far as she knew, their old editor was enjoying a leisurely retirement in Devon, but that wasn’t what George meant. ‘Every editor gets the bump some time. It wasn’t because he retained a sliver of humanity.’

  ‘Come on. Give me something. I’ll look like an arsehole if I come away with nothing.’

  She pretended to think about it. ‘Ogilvy is getting out, you’re right about that.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘In a while.’

  McVie tried to read her face. ‘Two weeks, that’s what everyone thinks.’

  ‘They’re wrong.’

  ‘Three weeks?’

  Paddy wobbled her head from side to side and sliced into the soft pink ham.

  ‘Three weeks?’

  She tipped her head encouragingly.

  ‘Three weeks then.’

  She looked up at him. ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘No, that’s right.’ McVie nodded and smiled at his plate.

  ‘You didn’t. Thanks.’

  II

  The night shift were absent from the newsroom, most of them out on assignments or hiding in different secret places around the building. Larry was in his office listening to the radio. She kept her coat on and lifted the phone book from the secretaries’ desk, flicking through the residential numbers for ‘H’.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  She started and looked up to find Merki standing at the side of the desk, peering at the listings. ‘Christ, what are you sidling about after?’

  Merki stared hungrily at the phone book. ‘Looking for something?’

  Paddy pursed her lips at him.

  Merki licked the side of his mouth, trying to think of another move. ‘The Provos say it wasn’t them.’

  ‘They told you that, did they?’

  ‘Naw.’ He craned his neck, trying to read the page upside down. ‘They didn’t claim responsibility. They have a code word they use to admit responsibility and they haven’t done it yet.’

  ‘Well, maybe they’re all away on training this weekend.’

  His eyes were fixed on the phone book listings. ‘“H”?’

  ‘How soon do they make the phone call?’

  ‘Usually before the body’s even found. It’s been twenty-four hours now and nothing.’

  She stared at him, blank and still, until he sloped off towards the coffee cupboard, glancing backwards at the phone book, wondering.

  Paddy found Kevin Hatcher’s name. His address was listed as Battlefield on the South Side.

  She looked up to the coffee room and saw Merki’s shoulder. He was waiting in there, ready to come out and check the phone book after her. She could phone Sinn Fein and ask if they’d heard anything about Terry but they’d have to deny all knowledge of IRA activities: the only reason they were legally allowed to exist was that they claimed to be separate from the IRA. She looked up the contacts book on the secretaries’ table and called the Irish Republican News.

  The call was eventually answered by a bored copy taker.

  ‘Sorry, not copy, I want to talk to a reporter.’

  ‘Is it a story?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. Well, it kind of was. She’d be lucky to get a journalist who could be bothered to help her.

  A news reporter caught the call and asked her what the fuck she wanted in a thick brogue. She lowered her voice and tried to sound terribly senior.

>   ‘Paddy Meehan here, from the Scottish Daily News. Big story over here: suspected execution of a journalist by a soldier of the IRA. Any word on it?’

  He covered the phone with his hand. She couldn’t hear any talking at the other end. He might have put the receiver down and walked away, for all she knew. Suddenly he came back on and surprised her. ‘We’ve heard nothing.’

  ‘Would you have?’

  ‘Aye, yeah, usually. No press release, nothing. Here, hang on.’ He covered the phone again but she could hear talking in the background this time. ‘Right? ’K. No, right ye are.’ He came back on. ‘Getting it in now. Not them.’

  ‘They’re denying it?’

  ‘Official,’ he said. ‘Any jobs over there?’

  ‘Some. What’s your name?’

  ‘Poraig Seaniag.’

  She wrote it on an invisible bit of paper with an invisible pen, just to get the right effect to her voice. ‘Poraig, you’re a doll.’

  ‘If you need anything done on the story I could do with a byline.’

  She’d never heard of anything so pushy: an informant asking for a name check as the author of an article. ‘It’s not necessarily an article, to be honest. We were close. I just want to know what happened to him.’

  ‘Oh. Was he family?’

  ‘Kind of.’ She let the conversation trail away, adding in a sniff for flavour.

  ‘OK, sorry. Well, keep an eye out for my name.’

  ‘Will do.’

  She tutted indignantly at the receiver after she’d hung up.

  Merki was still hiding behind the door to the coffee room, she could see his feet shuffling. He’d come running over the moment she left, look for notes jotted on a pad, try to find the page she’d been checking out in the phone book. Spitefully, she opened the phone book at the ‘p’s, running her hand down the spine to flatten it before she shut it and put it back on the shelf.

  8

  The Darkness in Fort William

  I

  Kevin Hatcher moved like an old man, his actions stiff and slow. He wasn’t old though. He actually looked younger than Paddy remembered him being six years ago when she last saw him up close, but he was a drinker then. His hair was blond, lighter now that his life didn’t consist of staggering from bar to bar, and he had a tan. Through the thin denim of his worn shirt she could tell that he exercised and had developed broad shoulders and solid arms.

  When she called ahead he didn’t ask her why she wanted to come over, even though it was eight o’clock on a Sunday night. He opened the door to her, mumbled ‘hello’ as he took her coat, dropped it carelessly on to a chair in the hall and pointed her into the living room. He was still shocked, she could see that.

  The flat was on the top floor of a red sandstone tenement, nice but fantastically messy and cave-like, definitely a bachelor’s house. They passed the kitchen door and she caught a whiff of sour mop. She suspected that a woman had lived here at one point: framed pictures were hung with care and there was a degree of order under the blanket of mess. Two sofas faced each other in the living room, there was a carpet under there somewhere but the flat was layered with dust and clutter, dirty mugs, prints of photographs, mysterious bits of kit and wrappers from motorway cuisine. Tripods of various sizes were propped in the doorway. A lone chair had been placed right in the middle of the living-room floor, directly in front of the television.

  As he followed her in he told her that he’d gone out to buy milk at noon and seen the Daily News headline several times before he recognized the photo of Terry.

  ‘That was an old picture,’ he said, pushing a clutter of magazines to one side of the settee so that Paddy could sit down.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘from before he went away.’

  He stood in front of Paddy, looking at the floor, clasping and unclasping his hands as if trying to cast his memory back and recall where these interactions went next. At last he remembered. ‘Tea?’

  ‘I’m fine. Are you OK?’

  Kevin shook his head.

  ‘Sit down.’ She patted the settee next to her. ‘What have you been doing all day?’

  He shuffled over to the settee, waved a hand helplessly over the jacket and cup sitting on it, trying to magic them away. Finally he picked them up, put them on the floor, sat down and wrapped his arms around his waist. He’d called the police and spent a few hours with them, reiterating the events of the night in the casino.

  Kevin’s work was everywhere. The coffee table held several open boxes of slide negatives and large black portfolios sat against the wall or lay open on the floor. The photographs were wonderfully crisp street portraits, each of them brimming with narrative: a fishmonger with blood on his overalls smoking a cigarette, three jolly men in leather aprons outside a Brutalist abattoir, a fat man in sports gear on a bleak winter hillside, his reflective sunglasses showing the hordes of tourists trailing up a steep path. She wanted to compliment Kevin on them but thought it would sound frivolous.

  Kevin was nodding rhythmically at his feet and looked at her suddenly. ‘He really loved you.’

  She shivered.

  ‘I don’t mean that you should have loved him back, just – you know – he did.’

  ‘Kevin, Terry hadn’t spent any time with me for years. I don’t know who he was in love with but he didn’t know me anymore.’

  ‘Do people change?’ he said, as if it was news to him. ‘Bigger houses, kids and money, it’s all just garnish, isn’t it?’

  She liked his phrasing. ‘You’re pretty smart for a snapper.’

  He flashed a polite smile. ‘Did you see his body?’

  Paddy nodded. ‘They came to my house and took me to ID him.’ She could see that he wanted to ask about it but couldn’t bring himself to. ‘They said it would have been fast. They shot him from behind so he wouldn’t even have seen them coming, might not have known it was about to happen.’

  He knew she was lying, she could tell. He nodded for a bit, his eyes skittering around the floor as he gnawed a cuticle.

  ‘I heard you were with him earlier that night.’

  ‘Yeah, we went to the casino. We’re writing a book together. Were. It was a short text to accompany the pictures. They gave us a shit advance to finish it so we went out to spend it all in one night. Casino’s the only place you could do that really.’

  ‘What, on drink?’

  ‘No, gambling. I don’t drink any more.’

  She’d heard that Kevin had got sober. He had disappeared for a while back in the mid-eighties; everyone had assumed he was dead but then he had reappeared, working for himself. She had only seen him across dark banqueting halls, jogging up to various stages to accept prizes for his work.

  He was looking at her out of the corner of his eye. ‘I recognize you from telly but did you used to work at the Daily News?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m back there again now.’

  ‘Did we work together?’

  ‘Yeah, for about four years,’ she said, adding, ‘I was just a copy girl,’ to excuse the fact that he didn’t recognize her.

  He shifted uncomfortably on the chair arm, straddling it. ‘When I was there I was a bit … unconscious. Sorry. Sabbatical from reality.’

  ‘I remember you getting redundancy and disappearing. We were running a book on how long it’d take for you to kill yourself.’

  He smirked. He didn’t look bad for a dead man. ‘I’d have taken short odds on that myself.’

  ‘Did you manage to spend the advance?’

  Kevin looked up at a framed poster on the wall. An Edwardian portrait of a woman in a large red hat. Red and green, like Christmas. He sighed a ‘no’. ‘We came out four quid up. Just as well, wasn’t it? I’ll have to give it back now. Terry hadn’t nearly finished the writing.’ He glanced at her shoes. ‘What happened between you two in Fort William?’

  She wanted to get up and leave. Instead she said, ‘I got a note from him last month, came in the post to work. He said he was sorry.’r />
  ‘What was he sorry for?’

  They were looking at each other, less than a foot apart. If she was ever going to speak about Fort William it would be now. ‘People do change, Kevin. He changed. He wasn’t who he used to be. He was more soft before, you know?’

  She looked to Kevin to absolve her for not loving his dead friend.

  They both watched as he turned his toe to her. He spoke softly. ‘He’d been about.’

  ‘He’d seen things,’ she added sadly.

  ‘He had. I think Angola was pretty heavy.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  He shut his eyes and nodded once. ‘Yeah.’

  They left it at that. She didn’t need to go into the details or explain that Terry frightened her so much she couldn’t bear to talk to him.

  It was in the dark hotel room in Fort William. They’d been out for a meal: it was lovely, she hardly remembered where, just Terry’s eyes smiling and him taking her hand in the street as they walked back to the hotel. They started kissing in the lift, the first touch after eight years of thinking about each other. In the privacy of the room he was older, more considered and mature. Paddy didn’t get distracted by the wallpaper or noises in the hall or work worries. They spoke to each other, making requests, laughing when he couldn’t get his trousers off over his shoe. They ended up on the floor because the bed was covered in stupid little cushions.

  But at the end, as he came, Terry forgot himself. He held on to her hair, digging his nails into her scalp, and banged her head hard off the floor five times, too many times to be a mistake. Far too many.

  He apologized briefly and fell asleep while she lay beneath him, shocked and silent. His breathing became regular, the heat from his skin burning where it touched her. She disentangled herself, grabbed her clothes and ran, speeding all the way back to Glasgow.

  She couldn’t articulate why it bothered her so much. Perhaps it hinted at him secretly despising her. But really it was the casualness of his apology. He’d done that before, it had the feel of a habit. He’d done it many times to many women and not one of them was in a position to tell him to fuck off and never do that to her again.