The Field of Blood (9 page)

He blinked his bloody eyes to signal that, yes, he was fine, and blinked again. The harsh light seemed to be drying his eyes out. She stepped across to the white panel and found two large-format pictures sitting on the burning surface, the photographic paper arching away from the heat. She lifted the pictures, stacked them on the tips of her fingernails to avoid burning her fingertips, and turned off the light table.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. She was blinking down at the top picture as it came into focus. It wasn’t printable quality. It had been taken through the tiny window of a moving police van. A third of the frame was a flash-bleached hand slapping at the outside. Inside, a policeman was sitting on a bench, slightly off his seat, next to a small blond boy clutching the edge of the seat, his knuckles white, his head down defensively so that the whirl of his crown was visible. The second picture was taken one window farther down. A dark-haired boy sat on the other side of the policeman, eyes shut tight and lips pulled back in a terrified grimace. The scalding picture fell from her hand, zigzagging to the floor.

Paddy knew this boy. It was Callum Ogilvy, a cousin of Sean’s.

She bent over to look at the picture on the floor. She hadn’t seen Callum since his father died and Sean had taken her to his funeral a year and a half ago, but his face was the same shape, his teeth still gray and dun, set in long gums.

The boy was related to Sean through both their dead fathers, who were cousins or brothers, she couldn’t remember. Callum’s family lived in Barnhill, on the opposite side of the city from Sean, and his mother suffered from an unnamed mental illness no one liked to talk about. Paddy had only met her at the father’s funeral, and she’d looked like a colorless hippie, with frizzy graying hair and leathery skin. The Ogilvy children were very subdued, that much Paddy did remember, but their dad had just died, so it hadn’t seemed that strange. She remembered Callum trying desperately to get attention from the older cousins, guessing Sean’s favorite footballer and showing off by jumping fearlessly off a wall. Sean had tolerated the boys politely enough, but he didn’t like them. He had never been back to see the family.

“Kevin?” She picked up both pictures and held them in front of his face. “Kevin, what are these pictures of?”

Kevin looked at them. “Bibi Bri.”

“Baby Brian?”

He nodded, shutting his eyes at the effort.

Paddy dropped the pictures to the floor and walked out of the room.

Ignoring calls from journalists, Paddy marched straight through the newsroom and out the double doors, running up the canteen stairs two at a time, ignoring the twinges in her lungs and her aching knees. She was surprised to find herself breathless as she pushed open the double doors.

Terry Hewitt sat alone at a table, about to take a bite of a sandwich. The sharp smell of eggs wafted across the room. Through the window behind him she saw snow dropping lazily from black clouds. She had never spoken to him directly before.

“Have you seen Heather Allen?”

Terry lowered his sandwich, looked surprised, and shook his head, his face composing itself into a smug smile as he inhaled to speak. Paddy didn’t wait. She pushed back through the doors and walked away.

The ladies’ toilet on the editorial floor was Heather’s private office. It was a particularly nice toilet, and because no woman was ever promoted to editorial it was private, used so little it only needed a clean once a fortnight. Paddy opened the door to the smell of smoke and Anaïs Anaïs perfume.

“Heather?” she whispered in case anyone in editorial heard them.

Heather’s hushed voice came from inside one of the far cubicles. “Paddy?”

“Heather, it’s Paddy.”

After some rustling of material and a flush, the door opened and Heather peered out. “What’s wrong?”

Paddy took a deep breath and held it in. She sat down on a hand towels bin, drinking in deep, calming breaths.

“What’s going on?”

Paddy shook her head, aware that she was half enjoying the drama.

Heather patted her arm. “Let’s have a ciggie, that’ll calm you down.”

She took one for herself and gave one to Paddy, bending over to light her up with a book of matches from Maestro’s, an intimidatingly trendy nightclub Paddy had never been to. For the first time in her life Paddy inhaled smoke.

“God.” She grimaced, rolling her tongue around her mouth. “God, that’s … I feel sick.” She lifted her hand to the sink.

“No!” Heather took the cigarette back from her fingers. She pinched the hot tip into the sink and tapped the loose tobacco out of the end, twisting the empty paper into a little point. She filed the amputated cigarette back in the packet. “Is it a long story?”

Paddy shrugged and nodded.

“Just hang on, then …” Holding her cigarette above her head, Heather trotted into a cubicle and dragged out a blue sanitary towel bin, trailing the smell of flowers rotting in ammonia across the floor. She sat down on the soft plastic bin, making its sides bulge. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Paddy smiled at the sight of her sitting on the stinking bin just to get eye level. “You need to promise you won’t repeat this to anyone.”

Heather crossed her heart and frowned. “You’re very serious.”

“I was up in Kevin Hatcher’s office and I saw some photos of the Baby Brian Boys. I know one of them.”

Heather gasped. “You lucky bitch.”

“He’s Sean’s wee cousin.”

Heather sat back. “You bloody lucky cow.” She grabbed Paddy’s sleeve. “Look, you could do a piece about the family, about the background. God … I bet you could even get it syndicated.”

“No, I can’t.” Paddy shook her head. “Sean’d never talk to me again, and my family’d disown me. They don’t approve of talking to outsiders about family business.”

“But, Paddy, if you get a syndicated story out of it you’ll be published all over the country. It could be your calling card. You could make brilliant contacts in other papers.”

“I can’t use the story.”

Heather tipped her head to one side and narrowed her eyes, pretending it was against the smoke, but Paddy could tell that she was envious of her. She relished the novelty of it.

“I can’t, Heather. Sean’ll be gutted when he hears about this. They just left those kids up there with that crazy mother. I mean, they’ll feel terrible. You would, wouldn’t you? Anyone would feel terrible. And he’s got five brothers and sisters. One of them’s wilder looking than the next. I met the wee guy at his dad’s funeral. He’d fallen into a machine at the St. Rollox works in Springburn, drunk. He was all chewed up.”

“You should use the story, Paddy. It’s unprofessional not to.”

“No, I just can’t.”

Heather looked faintly disgusted, but Paddy knew she couldn’t do it. The Ogilvys were a good family, they did voluntary work, they cared for their neighbors and were meticulous in their devotions. She wished she had never seen the picture and didn’t have to be the one to tell Sean. She felt suddenly queasy as she remembered the amount of arctic roll she had eaten at Granny Annie’s laying-in.

“He was going on about our engagement party the other night.”

Heather exhaled slowly, shifting her weight on the bin. A corner of the soft plastic buckled slowly beneath her, and Paddy realized that mention of the engagement was one inadvertent triumph too many. Heather avoided her eye and took a draw on her cigarette, tipping her head back. Her blond hair slid off her face.

“I broke my diet really badly. That’s what made me think of the engagement. I can’t stick to it at all.” She smirked at herself. “I think I’m actually getting fatter.”

Heather went back to her cigarette.

“The egg diet?” said Paddy. “You know it? I haven’t done a poo for a week.”

Heather half smiled at the floor, so Paddy tried harder, telling her about Terry Hewitt asking who the fat lassie was in the Press Bar.

“Terry Hewitt’s a knob,” said Heather spitefully, “a complete fucking nob. He fancies himself so much. Did you see him in the newsroom earlier, trying on Farquarson’s coat while he was down here on editorial?”

“No.”

“He stood on a chair so everyone could see him. It was pathetic.”

A fleck of Heather’s spittle hit Paddy on the top lip. She resisted the urge to wipe it away.

“Give us that half cigarette,” she said, “and I’ll try again.”

Paddy tried to smoke it, pulling silly faces and making herself the fool for Heather, trying to get them back on an even keel. Heather smiled politely and let her make an arse of herself. Eventually she stood up.

“You should use the story.”

“I can’t,” said Paddy, ashamed of her soft heart.

“Fine.”

Heather stood up and ran the end of her cigarette under the tap. She threw the smelly stub of it into the sanitary bin, checked her hair and lipstick in the mirror, and said “See you later” as if she hoped they’d never meet again.

Paddy watched the door swing behind her. Now she had no one.

The snowflakes were just as heavy as the day before but dissolved where they landed on the wet ground. Paddy tightened her scarf around her head, keeping her hood up, and trudged up the steep hill to the Eastfield Star.

The Meehan family home was on a tiny council estate at the southeastern tip of Glasgow’s sprawl. The estate had been built for a small community of forty or so miners working the now defunct Cambuslang coal seam. From a central roundabout of houses, the five legs radiated out with six houses on each, some containing four flats, some freestanding with five bedrooms to accommodate large, extended families. Built in the cottage style, the houses had low-fronted gable ends, sloping roofs, and small windows.

The Meehans lived in Quarry Place, the first prong to the left on the Star. The two-story house was low and built so close to the soil that every room was slightly damp. Paddy’s mother, Trisha, had to bleach the skirting in the hall cupboard every three months to get the mold off it. Gray, eyeless silverfish had colonized the bathroom carpet, making a five-second pause necessary between flicking on the light and entering the room, giving them a head start in their slither off to dark places. Theirs wasn’t a large house: Paddy shared a bedroom with Mary Ann, the boys got separate rooms after their sister Caroline’s wedding, and their parents had a room.

Each of the Eastfield houses had a decent amount of land around it, a few feet of front garden and a hundred-foot strip at the back. Mr. Anderson on the roundabout grew onions and potatoes and rhubarb and other sour things that children wouldn’t steal to eat, but the rest of the gardens were just scrub land, bald brown grass in the winter and thicker grass through the summer. Wooden fences hung to the side, and grass grew freely between the paving stones.

They were only two or three miles from the center of Glasgow, close to wide-open fields and farms, but the families who lived on the Star were city people, workers in heavy industry, and didn’t know how to tend gardens. Most found the persistent encroachment of nature bewildering and a little frightening. A tree had somehow grown at the bottom of the Meehans’ garden. It had started growing before they arrived, and they’d mistaken it for a bush until it really took off. No one knew what kind of tree it was, but it got bigger and branchier every year.

Hunched against the falling snow, Paddy walked carefully up the quiet road to her family house, passing the garage, swinging open the garden gate, and stumbling over the brick the Beatties from next door kept the garage keys under. The freestanding garage was built on the Meehan side of the fence, but the Beatties had somehow annexed it over the years, using it to store unused furniture and boxes full of toys and mementos. Con Meehan had never agreed to let them have it but pretended he had to avoid an argument. Con’s horror of confrontation had shaped his life more than his choice of wife, more than the city or times he lived in, more than his job at the British Rail engineering works. It was why he had been passed over for promotion all his life, why he never got on in the unions despite being an articulate and politically sincere man, and why he had never once, not even in his heart, questioned the teachings of the church.

Paddy took out her keys and opened the door to the home smell of wet coats and warm mince. She dipped her finger into the holy water font inside the door and crossed herself before sitting on the bottom stair, unlacing her boots, and peeling off her thick tights. She hung them over the banister and tripped through to the living room.

Con was lying on his side on the settee, watching the news, his hands tucked between his knees, still bleary after a pre-tea nap. “Hello, hello. How’s you?”

“Aye, Dad.” Paddy paused and touched his hair with her fingertips. Demonstrations of affection made her father uncomfortable, but she couldn’t always stop herself. “Good day.”

“Good girl.” He pointed at Mrs. Thatcher on the telly. “This balloon’s up to no good.”

“She’s a creep.”

Paddy paused to watch for a moment as the local news came on. The top item was a report about Baby Brian’s body being found. The footage showed a short green bank of land with a tiny square white tent erected on it and a lot of uniformed policemen standing around looking serious.

Paddy opened the door to the small kitchen. Her mum turned and smiled politely. “Thank God you’re home safe,” she said formally, indicating company.

Sean was sitting at the table eating an enormous plate of black minced beef and nylon-orange turnip. Amazed at himself, he pointed at the plate with his knife. “This is my second tea tonight.”

“He’s been waiting for nearly an hour,” said Trisha indignantly. Trisha believed that women should wait for men and never the other way around, which was part of the reason Caroline had settled for such a lazy husband. Paddy sat down at the table as her mother spooned white cauliflower soup speckled with black pepper into a bowl and set it down in front of her. “If this weather keeps up, all the works’ll be off and I’ll be tripping over the lot of you for the next couple of days.”

Paddy commiserated but knew her mother’s lifelong dream was to have five housebound children with voracious appetites. “I’ll be going into work anyway.”