The Field of Blood (36 page)

Patterson looked at her. “Naismith?”

“He’s the man who runs the grocery van. He was Tracy Dempsie’s first husband. He could have killed Thomas and then Baby Brian.”

“He didn’t kill Baby Brian. Your cousin killed him.”

“He’s not my cousin.”

“Naismith didn’t kill Thomas Dempsie,” said Patterson certainly.

“How can you know that for sure?”

“He had an alibi. He was in the cells when that boy was killed.”

He caught Paddy’s eye, and a hot flush was just discernible on his cheeks. He had the details of the case to hand in the same way that she had old Paddy Meehan’s.

“And how would you know that?” she said quietly.

McGovern piped up to defend his friend, adding it as a throwaway fact, thinking nothing of it. “Turns out his old man worked that case.”

“The Thomas Dempsie case?”

McGovern nodded innocently. “That’s how he knows Pete McIltchie. His dad knew him from back then.”

Patterson colored a little and nodded at the table, pressing his lips tight together and raising his eyebrows. “Naismith was in the cells the night the boy was killed.”

“He’d been arrested?”

“It was just an affray. He was a senior in a gang back then, caused a lot of damage. He was broken up when that kid died. He got religion just after it, went through a big conversion.”

“He’s got a history of violence?”

“He was a street fighter at the tail end of the sixties, but he’s a nice old guy now, he wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“Well, he tried to hurt me.”

Patterson shook his head. “Look, we know Naismith didn’t kill anyone.”

“But Alfred Dempsie did?”

It was only an implied slight, but when she saw the reaction she wouldn’t have wanted to slag off Patterson’s dad overtly. He narrowed his mean little eyes and the red flush on his face deepened.

“You don’t know anything about that,” he said.

“I know enough.”

McGovern was watching them, a small, vacant smile on his beautiful face, not quite knowing what was going on. Patterson slid his hands back off the table, slapped it once, and clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth.

“So, you think Heather Allen was in the van, but you took the evidence out and lost it in the road. And now you’re sure it’s got something to do with Thomas Dempsie? What are you going to do about it?”

He looked at her intently, his eyes flicking angrily across her face. He thought she was going to write an article exposing his dad for setting up Alfred Dempsie. He must have pored over the details of the case over the years and known his dad had set Dempsie up. She could see the shame burning bright behind his eyes. She was flattered and pleased that he didn’t know she was just a copyboy.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”

Suddenly Patterson was on his feet. He jerked the door open as he pulled her coat off the back of the chair and shoved it into her arms.

“Look,” she said, trying one last time. “I could have imagined the hair and him going for me, I know that, but he was waiting outside my work when I went back there last night. How would he know where I worked?”

Patterson pulled her into the corridor by the arm. “Unfortunately we can’t arrest people for parking outside your work. This thing with you and Naismith’s just a misunderstanding. Maybe you left something in his cab and he wants to return it to you or something.”

“Yeah. That’s bound to be why he’s got Heather Allen’s hair in his van, isn’t it?”

Leaving McGovern behind, Patterson led Paddy through the door to the waiting room, acting as if she had hurt his feelings. Still holding on to her arm, he pulled her across the floor, depositing her arm into the tender care of Terry.

“Don’t worry,” he told Terry. “The man in question is known to us. We’ll be having a word, telling him to lay off and stay away from her and the paper.”

“Hey! Talk to me, not him.”

Patterson turned, his face a mask of disgust. “You shouldn’t be getting into vans with men you don’t know. Old guys like Naismith are prone to get the wrong idea, and you’d have no one to blame but yourself if he did.”

He turned and walked away. The desk sergeant raised an amused eyebrow.

Terry looked at her. “I’m guessing it didn’t go that well.”

“You’d be guessing right.”

Outside the station they climbed into the car and sat staring out the windscreen for a moment, Paddy stunned, Terry patient.

“The red-faced guy there?” she said finally. “His dad investigated Thomas Dempsie. There’s no way the police will ever open that case again.”

“What if we approach Farquarson—”

“Terry,” she said, turning to him. “Listen to me. We’re nothing. McGuigan and Farquarson won’t print an article denouncing the Strathclyde police force on our say-so. “

“They won’t publish, will they?”

“They won’t publish a speculative story. We’d need definite proof. And in the meantime no one’s the slightest bit interested in searching Naismith’s van. Those wee boys are going to get the blame.”

“We can’t let this happen.”

“I know.” She looked out the window, following the path of a crisp packet across the windy road. “I know.”

It was always quiet on the editorial floor, but the absence of doors opening or movement through the corridors lent the air a peculiar weight. Paddy kept close to the wall, staying away from the windows as she crept along to the last door before the back stairs. Her fingers were touching the door handle before it occurred to her that the toilets might even be locked over the weekend.

The handle turned, she felt a gentle click, and the door to the ladies’ opened. With a last glance into the corridor, she stepped in. Whether she was smelling or remembering it she couldn’t quite tell, but the tang of Heather’s Anaïs Anaïs perfume caught her throat, and she had to press her eyes shut and take a deep breath before making herself move on.

The cleaners had been. The sink had been wiped down, the used towels emptied from the wire-mesh bin, and the sanitary towel bin, its top still crumpled from Heather’s weight, had been moved back into the corner of the far cubicle. Paddy bent down and ran her finger over the hollow. Naismith was going to walk, and Callum Ogilvy and the other child would lose their lives because the cleaners had been. She turned to go, catching sight of herself in the full-length mirror by the door. Her chin sloped straight into her chest. She was putting on weight. She spun away from the mirror, and her gaze landed on the floor at the back of the toilet, a stray glint causing her to stop dead. She smiled. That cleaner was a lazy cow. She had mopped the floor without sweeping it first, pushing the debris against the wall under the low cistern, convinced no one would look there between one shift and the next.

Paddy bent down a little and smiled. She could see the threads, dulled with dust particles clinging to them, but they were there: a little golden bundle of Heather Allen’s hair.

Terry sat on his bed, head bent over the phone book, running his finger down the list of names while Paddy leaned against the wall and watched him. The bedsheets were creased in the middle from the night before. She didn’t want to sit down next to him, didn’t want to approach the bed or touch the sheets. With the overhead light on she could see that a fuzzy gray oval had formed in the middle where Terry slept. She could hardly believe that she had lain there the night before, her bare skin touching the grubby linen, her hands moving slowly over him, faking pleasure. She searched her soul for the crippling shame she had been warned about but couldn’t find it. She wasn’t a virgin anymore, and no one knew but her. She crossed her arms, hugging herself, and tried not to smile.

“There’s a few in Baillieston,” he said. “Three in Cumbernauld.”

“Must be a family.”

“Must be.” His eyes followed his fingers to the bottom corner of the list, and then he turned the page. “Here, H. Naismith.”

Paddy stepped quickly towards him. “Is there one there?”

“Yeah, H. Naismith, Dykemuir Street.”

She remembered the address from the mass card they had sent after Callum Ogilvy’s father died.

“That’s Callum Ogilvy’s street,” she said. “Naismith lives in bloody Barnhill.”

Of all the houses in the street it was the most unremarkable. Naismith’s house was modest and tidy, the curtains hung neatly. The short front garden had been paved over with red slabs that had sunk irregularly into the sand beneath, their edges sticking up and down. An empty hanging plant basket at the side of the front door swung with a mild metronomic regularity in the evening wind. The grocery van was parked proudly outside.

Twenty yards away across the road, in the incline of the hill, sat the Ogilvy house. Looking out the passenger window as they passed, Paddy could see where weeds and weather were eating through the brick in the garden wall, chewing into the FILTH OUT slogan, the weight of soil from the garden forcing the bricks to buckle out onto the pavement.

Barnhill was not the preferred residence of motorists. Terry had parked near the Ogilvys’, but his white Volkswagen was still the only car in the dark street apart from Naismith’s grocery van. They were acutely conspicuous.

“Shit. We might as well have phoned ahead to tell him we were coming.”

“I know,” said Terry, peering through the windscreen into the deserted street. He started the engine again and pulled the car out into the road, pulling off quickly as though they were going somewhere.

“What about here?” said Paddy as they passed an empty pub car park two streets away.

Terry shook his head. “That’s not safer. There’re more witnesses here.”

They passed by, and Paddy saw in the window the backs of a man and a woman sitting close in the warm amber light, their heads inclined together. They drove on, following a broad road out towards the Springburn bypass. A stretch of waste ground next to the road was dark with nothing nearby but an abandoned, boarded-up tenement building and a pavement running outside it. Terry slowed the car a little and glanced at her inquiringly.

“No, too obvious.”

He sped up, heading farther away again.

“But Terry, the farther we go from the van the farther we’ve got to walk back to it. We’re more likely to be seen.”

“Ah, you’re right.” He slowed over to the side of the road and swung the car through a sharp circle. “Let’s just do it.”

He drove down Callum Ogilvy’s road, parked the car twenty feet behind the van, and turned off the engine. He zipped up his leather jacket, tugging the toggle at the end twice, making sure it was up properly. Paddy watched him. Terry was sweating with nerves. They had agreed beforehand that this would be his job, knowing that if Naismith saw Paddy he’d go for her, but Terry was very jittery. She didn’t know if he would be able to pull it off.

“Are we sure about this?” he said, talking quickly, as if he was afraid to breathe out.

“I am. Are you?”

He nodded, looking anxiously out the window. “He was in the cells when Thomas Dempsie was killed, though.”

“He could easily have taken him earlier and hidden him. Tracy Dempsie would hardly be the most reliable person to get times from. Dr. Pete said she changed the times back and forth when they interviewed her.”

“Right.” He nodded out the window again. “You’re sure, then?”

“Terry, look where he lives: he knows Callum Ogilvy, Thomas Dempsie was his ex-wife’s wean by her new man, and his rounds are in Townhead. He must have passed Baby Brian every day. He fits in with all of it perfectly.”

“Yes,” he said, still frowning at the street.

“We’re only making them check his van. If they don’t find any other evidence, he’ll walk.”

“He’ll walk.” Terry nodded. “He’ll walk.”

“But they will find evidence. I’m sure they will. They’ll find evidence of the Wilcox baby and Heather as well, I’m sure they will.”

“You’re sure they will.” His nervous nodding grew faster and he began to rock forward slightly on his seat. “Sure they will.”

He threw open the door and stepped out into the street in one seamless move, striding towards the van with his head down. He stayed in the road, keeping the van between himself and Naismith’s front door, stepped up on the chrome-trimmed step on the driver’s side, keeping his balance by resting his belly against the door, flattening himself against the body of the cab.

Paddy was staring straight at the van, but if she hadn’t known Terry was there she wouldn’t have seen him. His elbow rose, and she saw a flash of light from the screwdriver as he pulled it from his pocket. He jacked the window down, working with the winding mechanism, emptied the contents of the green hand towel in through the window, and stepped away from the cab. Then he walked back towards her, his shoulders still up around his ears, his eyes on the ground in front of him. Paddy watched his face and saw that he was grinning.

She pressed the rim of the receiver tight against her ear, wondering. Terry was watching her from the car. She was certain they were doing the right thing when she was with him, but as soon as she was alone in the call box, dialing the number for Anderston police station, she wondered if the whole idea seemed sensible only because she wanted to show off to him, acting confident of the facts the way she had acted about sex in his bed the night before. Her pulse throbbed in her throat as she blurted out the story to the officer on the other end: She had seen Heather Allen on that Friday night getting into a grocery van outside the Pancake Place in Union Street; she didn’t know whose van it was, but it was purple and old and she’d seen it doing rounds in Townhead. She hung up when he asked for her name and address.

Striding back to the car, she hoped she looked as confident as Terry had when walking away from Naismith’s van.

“Is that it?”

“Done,” she said, catching her breath. “Done and done.”

Terry drove her all the way to the first leg of the Star, and she didn’t care if she was seen with him. Around the Star, front room lights were on as families settled around the telly after Songs of Praise. Terry smiled at the little houses and said he liked it.