Slip of the Knife (36 page)

The receptionist called out for Mr. McKenzie, telephone. Dub took the lobby floor in two enormous loping steps and grabbed the receiver from him. He smiled and turned back to her.

“Hello, wee man.”

II

They were led up one flight of stairs by a skinny young policeman with a lisp. He took them along a noisy corridor, through a set of doors marked INTERVIEW ROOMS, and into a side room with more black chairs, an instant coffee machine and a dead plant.

He left them there, flicking his hand vaguely to the machine, telling them to help themselves if they had fifty pence.

A door opened out in the corridor. Paddy and Dub stood up, expecting Pete, but Burns peered in at them, looking like shit warmed up. He was flanked by a tall man in rolled-up shirtsleeves.

“That’s her,” Burns said. “She’s his mum.”

III

Pete had been having a lovely time. He told them who he had met and where the cells were and how they smelled of pee with bleach in it, like the time Cabrini took her nappy off and weed in the cupboard and Mrs. Ogilvy scrubbed it but made it worse. Like that. And he’d had a cake with raisins in it.

Paddy didn’t want to alarm him with a terrified burst of tearful affection. She gave him a hug but didn’t cling or cry, and let go so that Dub could say hello, but she couldn’t get her hand to leave him. She cupped his head, held his shoulder, tried to take his hand, which he didn’t like, even when they were crossing roads. He wriggled his fingers free but she couldn’t bear not to touch him and contented herself with resting her hand on the back of his shoulder.

A woman officer had been assigned to look after him. She kept putting her hands between her knees and bending down to patronize him, but Pete ignored her, caught up in the excitement of being in a police station with real-life actual policemen.

Burns took a seat across from them, tried the coffee machine, and lost his money. He had blue circles under his eyes and kept blinking slowly, telling them he’d had three hours’ sleep and felt sick. Sandra couldn’t bear the thought of going home. She had checked into a hotel. The most expensive in the city, Paddy noted, where the pop stars stayed when they came by on tour.

After a while Pete calmed down and sat on the floor playing with some leaflets about joining the police. Burns sagged in his chair and Dub leaned over and slapped his knee.

“Shouldn’t you be recording that piece-of-shit show tonight?”

Burns looked up, eyes reddened, and flashed him a filthy look.

Dub misunderstood. “OK, OK, ‘that show.’ Better? Shouldn’t you be recording it tonight?”

Burns blinked hard at the floor. “Canceled.”

“Hmm.” Dub tried not to smile. “Rough.”

Burns sprang to life, sliding over to Dub’s side and telling him that his manager had gone ahead and arranged a tour of the clubs without waiting for Burns to confirm and now half the gigs were sold out and his name was up everywhere.

Dub frowned at him. “But you haven’t signed the contract?”

“No, but I’ll be letting everyone down if I don’t do them.”

“Do you know what sort of backhander your manager’s getting? Above the ten percent?”

“Backhander?”

“If he’s pushing it this hard he’ll be getting a good few thou in cash, ten or twenty, you can guarantee.”

The thought hadn’t occurred to Burns and he was furious. “I’m only getting fifty-five gross.”

Dub reached forward with his foot and tucked it under Pete’s leg, lifting it and rocking him, making him smile at the pamphlets. “Flat rate? He didn’t offer you a percentage of the door?”

Paddy watched them talking, looked at Pete reading and smiling, saw the patronizing WPC sitting across with her knees clamped together, head tilted at a saccharine angle as she watched Pete.

She looked at the back of Pete’s head, at the perfect black whirl of hair at his crown. McBree didn’t want Pete. He wanted her.

She took out her cigarettes, lighting one, sliding away from Pete when Dub gave her a warning look. She sat on the edge of the long row of chairs, looking back at them, inhaling bitter courage.

As inevitable as daffodils, McBree would come for her. He was trained, brutal and desperate. It was unwinnable.

A strange calm came over her as she looked at the little family group. If she died, the mortgage would be paid off by the insurance. Dub would keep Pete—he did most of the child care anyway—and Burns would chip in when it suited him. And if all that broke down her mother would take him and his dream of living with BC full-time would be realized.

Ash dropped from her cigarette onto the industrial-gray carpet and she rubbed it in with the tip of her shoe. Unwinnable.

IV

They were released into the baby-killing world with assurances from the police that it was a random incident, that they would do all they could, that it was probably some nut who had become obsessed with Burns because he/she had seen him on telly. Good-bye and good luck.

Useless, lazy bastards was the gist of Burns’s rant on the pavement outside, as if it was only happening to him, as if Paddy wasn’t standing in a shit storm waving out.

They stood in the afternoon sunshine in Pitt Street, Pete pulling at Paddy’s arm as Burns related the traumas of the morning. More officers than necessary had tumbled into his house, all eager to have a look around; the incompetent forensics failed to find as much as a fingerprint; it had taken thirty minutes to get an ambulance for Sandra, and then she had to get a taxi from the hospital over to the station to subject herself to questioning. They gave her a Valium tablet at the casualty department and she wasn’t used to it.

He suddenly turned his anger on Paddy. “So what do we do now?”

“Well,” her hand was on Pete’s shoulder and she felt very calm, “you go to Sandra. Hide out for a bit. Stay in your hotel room. It’ll all be settled in a couple of days.”

Burns glanced at Pete, censoring himself. “What about the burglar?”

“That’ll be sorted out.” She looked away, sudden self-pitying tears nipping her eyes. Afternoon buses floated past the end of the road. A cyclist zipped down the hill, red hair fluttering out behind her. People walked, friends in twos and threes, contented, enjoying the warm weather, looking for lunch before they had to head back to work.

“I’ll sort it out.”

THIRTY-ONE

PHONE CALLS FROM HOME

I

Pete had only ever been in Paddy’s office once before, when he was one and a half, teething molars and refusing to sleep unless it was light. Her mother was at some dead friend’s rosary with Caroline and BC and she’d had no option but to take him with her. It was late at night, at that quietest moment in the twenty-four-hour culture of the place, when she took Pete in to pick up a folder and some telephone messages from her pigeonhole. She hoped he would fall asleep in the car but he didn’t; expected him to cry in the office but he didn’t do that either. He sat on her hip, watching everything, smiling for everyone and pointing everywhere, shouting a string of consonants at a desk and dribbling on her shoulder.

The night came back to her as she pushed in through the double doors. She would love to hold Pete like that again, wrap her arms around him and have him reciprocate. She was his world then and he was still hers now.

The few journalists who hadn’t stayed at Terry’s party downstairs or passed out or gone home were at the desks, burrowing away. Only the secretaries sat up at the sight of the little boy standing in the door looking around with honest interest.

Two of them came over and made a fuss, told Paddy that he looked like her and asked Dub if he was the daddy. Pete smiled up at him until Dub said kind of, aye. Pete punched Dub’s thigh, narrowly missing his balls, insisting that he wasn’t his daddy, his daddy was his daddy, but smiling all the same.

Paddy led them over to a desk on the fringes of News with a big space behind it for Pete to play in, found him some paper and pencils, and asked him to do some drawings of the police station with Dub while she worked.

She laid out the photocopies and Joan Forsyth’s list of names and addresses in front of her. It was long but she crossed off all the men and called international inquiries to get telephone numbers for all the other addresses. The operator would only give her three at a time so she kept having to phone back until she had the full fourteen. Then she called again, because she was in the swing of it, and got three Irish numbers as well. None of the names on Forsyth’s list sounded African or even West Indian so she began at the top of the list.

Two no answers and one reply, a man, said that the woman she was looking for, Fransy, was at “woyk.” Call later.

“I’m trying to trace someone, it’s quite urgent. I hope you don’t mind me asking but is Fransy black?”

The man stalled. “Who is this?”

“The woman I’m looking for is black. Is she black?”

“No, but I am.”

A yappy dog began to bark in the background.

“Right? But she’s white?”

The dog gave a sudden yowl and the speaker came back on the phone. “The fuck are you getting at?”

He sounded ready for a fight so she thanked him and hung up.

Two more calls and two more answers, both of whom were offended when she asked them about the color of their skin. Evidently, the question meant something over there that it didn’t mean over here.

“Hello?”

“Can I speak to Karen, please?”

“Speaking.” Her voice was a sexy southern-belle drawl. She sounded as if she was lying down, or at least walking around looking super in nice underwear.

“Karen, I wonder if you can help me. You had your photo taken last summer by a photographer—”

“Kevin? Sure, I have the form here, right in front of me. Sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry. “I’ll sign and send it back.”

“Well, the thing is—”

“How is Kevin anyway? Is he coming back? Do you know Terence?”

Paddy touched her funeral skirt, thought about telling her, and then realized it was far too long a story to go into. “Fine. See, the thing is we don’t know which photo is yours. I’ve offended a lot of people by asking this, but are you black?”

Karen laughed. “Well, sweetheart, I’m not surprised they were offended. It’s a issue over here.”

“Right. But are you?”

“As a midnight river.”

They smiled at each other down the phone. “Lovely,” said Paddy.

“I am that,” said Karen and let out a frank, dirty cackle that made Paddy want to meet her.

“You’ve got your hair in braids with yellow through them?”

“No,” she said sharply. “Not anymore.”

“But you did when the photo was taken?”

“Yeah. That was last year. No one does that anymore.”

Odd clunks in the background and the sound of the receiver being pinched between her shoulder and chin made Paddy think she was fixing breakfast.

“Karen, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this . . . Kevin died, that’s why I’m chasing up his notes for him.”

Karen gave out a sad “oh,” like the final breath from a deflating balloon.

“Yeah, he, well, he was killed by somebody.”

“Tssh. They’re animals.” She didn’t sound very concerned.

“Yeah. But you got the photograph?”

“Yeah.” Voice suddenly high, a little defensive, Paddy thought. “I didn’t really look at it, just saw my own face. Listen, could you leave me out of it? I do not look good in that picture. That’s kind of why I didn’t send the form back, you know, that old hairdo and all. Very unstylish now. They’ll be laughing about me from here to Union Square.” She laughed with her tongue clamped between her teeth, an obligation laugh. Now that she was talking Paddy could hear the phoniness in her U.S. accent, the way it slid up and down the East Coast, the occasional flat vowels creeping in to match Paddy’s own Scottish accent.

“Karen, Terry’s dead too.”

Down the line, metal clunked against metal. She heard a hiss and “plouf” as the gas was lit.

“I see . . . Really?” She paused as if Paddy was talking and then replied, “Great, baby, so you can leave me out of it?”

Karen wasn’t alone. She was putting on a show for someone. Paddy flattened the close-up of McBree and the car, touching the corner of Karen’s face that she had included in the enlargement.

“The book won’t come out now, Karen. You’re quite safe.”

“Well, that’s great . . . Yeah, I’m making coffee.” She laughed again, for a long time. The sound of her voice seemed to pivot away from the receiver and back, as if she was watching someone moving. Suddenly they were alone. “Listen, you see that picture doesn’t come out, right? I’ll get my fucking arse felt if it does.”

Flat Glasgow South Side accent, undisguised.

“Karen, I’ve known both Kevin and Terry since I was eighteen. I need to know why.” She looked at the photocopy of McBree, at the fat man turned away from the camera, a hand on the driver’s door handle. “Who’s the suit?”

Karen drew a breath, muttered, “In the bathroom now.”

“Who is he?”

“British.”

English people were English. Scottish people were Scottish. The only people who called themselves British worked for the military or the government and he was too fat to be a soldier.

“I, um,” Karen was whispering, sounding tearful, “I liked my picture. I’m sorry.”

Paddy found herself listening to a flat dial tone. A small hand landed on the soft inside of her elbow.

“Mum, I’m hungry.”

II

Dub remembered where the canteen was. They no longer made hot food but the room was furnished with fizzy drink and food vending machines, selling all the crap adults tried to keep children away from. Paddy asked him to pick the least appalling thing and promised Pete a proper meal when they went to his granny’s.

They walked up the stairs and Paddy went back into the office, considering her next move.

Back at the desk she put her notes, one photocopy, and the list into an internal mail envelope with a note to Bunty, asking him to get Merki to write it up. She found some small satisfaction in the thought that Merki would have to contradict himself in print. She jotted notes on the meaning of the picture, and slid the clippings envelopes in with it, folded the envelope shut, opened the wire butterfly clips, put her name on the front as the sender, and slipped it in Bunty’s pigeonhole.