The Dead Hour (33 page)

“Hiya.” Paddy raised a hand and waved at them, felt stupid, and dropped her hand to the table, stroking the wood and smiling weakly. She needed to be more lucid, her job was hanging on a shaky nail and these were not kind men.

The sallow man continued: “As you know, Miss Meehan, this inquiry is convened to take evidence about the police call to seventeen Holbart Road, Bearsden, at two forty-seven a.m., one week ago. This is a closed committee. Do you understand what that means?”

She looked young, she knew that, but there was no reason to talk to her as if she was stupid. “I do understand what a closed committee is, yes.”

“Anything you tell us will remain confidential.”

The red-faced man glanced suspiciously at Sullivan. The insecure one saw him and did it too. Paddy looked up and found Sullivan examining his shoes, poker-faced. It was a direct insult but it was from senior officers and Sullivan had to pretend not to notice. If the men worked in a newsroom Sullivan would have been within his rights to punch both of them.

“Yeah,” she said, feeling a defensive spark. “It won’t stay confidential, though, will it? Shug Grant’s got a hotline to what you’re going to ask me and I know it isn’t coming from Sullivan or this lady here.”

The secretary allowed her eyes to rise to the ring binding on her notebook and stopped taking notes. The policemen shuffled uncomfortably in their seats. The uncertain one looked to his friends to see what to do.

“So, confidentiality is a worry for you.” The sallow one brushed over the comment. “What is it you have to tell us?”

Shocked at their lack of concern, she sat back in the chair. “Aren’t you interested in the fact that there’s a leak here?”

The sallow man looked surprised that anyone anywhere would dare to question him. The rosy-faced man sat forward and took over. “Miss Meehan—”

“It’s ‘Ms.,’ actually,” she said, because she knew it pissed people off.

The men paused to smirk and the rosy-faced man tried again. “We do have the authority to require you to cooperate. I can guarantee that nothing you say will be leaked.” He glanced accusingly at Sullivan again.

“You’re wrong.” Paddy stroked the desk again. “See, I know for certain that Mr. Sullivan isn’t the leak because I’ve already told him what I’m going to tell you. I also know it isn’t the lady secretary because the leaks are too strategic. So, if this information gets into the press after this conversation then we’ll know for certain that it’s one of you three.”

She looked along the line of distinguished gentlemen, each of whom dodged her eye. They seemed perplexed. The very idea that they might be challenged by a plump youngster was ridiculous.

“I’m going to be frank.” She watched the tabletop but her voice was strident and schoolmarmish. “I know your name. You, the guy who’s telling Shug Grant about what goes on in here. Now, I’m not going to announce your name at the News but I do know who you are.”

They sat still and looked at her. The red-faced man’s smirk was frozen into a rictus grin. Paddy tried not to smile. It was delicious to be frightening when so little was expected: the element of surprise always gave her a running start.

The three men shifted in their seats, raising an eyebrow, tilting a chin back, twitching their annoyance. The sallow man took charge. “Shall we start again?” He nodded to the secretary to resume writing.

“Okay, then, let’s introduce ourselves properly: I’m Patricia Meehan.” She looked at the rosy man, staring at him until he was embarrassed into speaking.

“Superintendent Ferguson.”

She stared at the sallow-faced man.

“I’m Chief Superintendent Knox,” he said reluctantly.

The third man introduced himself too but Paddy wasn’t listening. Knox was a common enough Scottish name but Paddy couldn’t think past it. This Knox seemed a closed man, bitter and repressed, and looked like the type to misuse his position. If a chief superintendent’s name was used at the door, it would explain why Gourlay and McGregor had left Vhari Burnett in her house in Bearsden. And it explained Gourlay and McGregor’s being transferred to Partick just as the investigation into Vhari Burnett’s murder got under way. No wonder Tam Gourlay thought he could threaten her.

If Knox was on the take, the money would show: he’d have a big house, a flash car, or kids at an expensive school. She could find out where he was spending it unless Lafferty found her first. But if Knox was working with Neilson, Lafferty would know she was here.

Quelling her panic, reminding herself that Knox couldn’t do anything while she was in the room, she tried to concentrate.

After gentle prompting by Ferguson, Paddy told them about arriving at the house in Bearsden and finding Gourlay by the car. She repeated the conversation about the BMWs. They brought out a car catalog and let her pick out which models most resembled the cars she had seen. Eventually, when she could put it off no longer, she told them about the man in suspenders pressing the fifty quid into her hand. Knox was genuinely surprised.

“He bribed you?” he said, as if it was Paddy’s fault that he didn’t know already.

“He put money in my hand and asked me to keep it out of the paper.”

“But you printed the story anyway?”

“Well, I’d’ve given it back but he shut the door in my face.”

“So, it was a bribe?” he repeated, looking angrily at her.

Sullivan stepped forward to the table and leaned on his fingertips, looking at no one, and said, “The fifty-pound note was the object from the house that we found Robert Lafferty’s prints on.”

The rosy joiner whose name she hadn’t caught rolled his head in recognition. They’d all heard about the prints but not the note. Sullivan had kept his word not to tell. She watched him withdraw. He seemed no more aware of Knox than he was of the other two senior officers.

“Did you see any money being passed to Tam Gourlay or Dan McGregor?”

“Nothing,” she said, to their evident relief. “I saw nothing.” Then, as if she was just continuing the story, she added, “I walked back toward my car, passing Gourlay and McGregor, and Gourlay said, ‘It’s really important to keep it out of the papers because she’s a lawyer,’ something like that, and McGregor slapped him on the back of the head.”

The committee looked a little stunned. “What do you think he meant by that?”

“I don’t know. I’m just telling you what happened.”

They were pleased that she hadn’t directly accused either of the officers of taking a bribe. Ferguson’s eyes flickered to the secretary taking the minutes. There were two conversations taking place here, she realized: what was said or inferred, and what was minuted. Only the minuted conversation would be of any consequence in the future.

Ferguson offered her a drink of water and stood up, leaning across the desk and pouring it for her, diverting her attention, breaking up the line of questioning. This was a damage limitation exercise. They weren’t going to ask anything they didn’t already know or pursue a wild-card line of questioning.

Knox looked at her hard. “We’ve seen the notes from the first time you were questioned by DI Sullivan. You didn’t mention the fifty pounds then, did you?”

“No.”

“And despite taking the money, you still printed a story about the incident in the paper the next day?”

“Which part are you objecting to? Taking the money or welshing on the deal? Because I didn’t really take the bribe, he shoved it into my hand and shut the door.”

“But you kept the money?” He was emphasizing the point, knowing it would be minuted.

“I couldn’t give it back. He’d shut the door.”

“Wasn’t there a letter box?” Knox’s despising eyes were gray and half-closed.

To a young policeman his manner would have been frightening but Paddy was a journalist and dealt with cheeky fuckers all day. She sighed impertinently and drummed her fingers on the desk. “We finished here? Can I go now?”

Ferguson sat forward. “Would you say that you left the scene quite content that Miss Burnett was safe?”

This was the crunch question, the one they would be asking of everyone. It was the issue that would decide whether Gourlay and McGregor were guilty of any misdemeanor. The truth was she hadn’t felt Vhari Burnett was safe. She hadn’t cared whether Burnett was safe. As Vhari Burnett and her bloody neck slid back into the living room and out of view all Paddy cared about was how soon she could get back into the warm car. She had assumed things about Burnett that seemed ridiculous now: that she was rich and selfish and slim, that she consented to stay with Neilson, that they were a couple and would sort it out between themselves. There were a hundred selfish, shaming reasons why Paddy hadn’t barged in and insisted Burnett leave with her, and the only way she could avoid admitting them now was to back up Gourlay and McGregor.

“No. I felt she was unsafe. And I still walked away.”

“Why did you do that, Miss Meehan?”

She was too tired to think of a lie. “Same reason McGregor and Gourlay walked away. Because I’m a stupid wee shite.”

Sensing the danger of an unrehearsed conversation, a frisson of panic rippled along the line. The minutes secretary glanced up. Knox wound up her interview as quickly as possible, blocking Paddy from saying anything else untoward.

Sullivan saw her to the door, as if she couldn’t find her own way, and slipped out with her into the waiting room. He checked that Grant wasn’t in earshot. “What you said about her being safe, that was … the right thing to say.”

She looked at him, trembling at the thought that Lafferty might be outside. “I thought you were going to tell me it was stupid.”

“It was that too.”

He smiled down, impressed enough to hold his stomach in for her, and slipped back into the room.

Outside the street was quiet. Paddy hurried along, keeping her eyes on the taxi rank two blocks away, telling herself to stay calm, Lafferty wouldn’t dare pick her up here, not outside the police HQ. A car approaching behind her made her heart leap and she broke into an ungainly sprint, yanking her pencil skirt up over her knees, belting across a busy road, running faster and faster until she leaped into the first taxi in the queue.

“Daily News office in Albion Street,” she said, heading for the only place she felt safe.

It was three a.m., the dead hour, and Paddy knew she should have slept while she had the chance. Now, standing in the all-night grocer’s, she felt distinctly light-headed and had to sit down to stop the colors fading from everything. The ancient, bedraggled woman being questioned next to her noted the stagger in her step and ignored the police officers talking to her. She leaned over and touched Paddy’s knee.

“Sick?” she asked, and laughed like Mother Death.

Yellow mottled skin hung down over her eyes, her bulbous nose had folds of skin on it, and she had a blackhead on her cheek the size of a thumbprint. By the time Paddy walked in she was sitting on a chair by the door, sipping a half bottle of whisky that she claimed to have brought with her, being questioned about the fight and why the whisky bottle had the same sort of pink price sticker on it as every other item in the shop.

The shopkeeper was being kept away from her, in the stockroom. Paddy could hear him shouting at the officers pinning him in behind the curtain of plastic ribbons that he wasn’t the criminal here. She was a whoor, a filthy thieving old whoor.

Dressed in a number of overcoats, the woman had wandered into the twenty-four-hour shop stinking of drink and TCP antiseptic. She lived not far away and, according to the shopkeeper, came in most nights to steal from him. She was looking for things to sell to buy drink, trying to lift the coffee or teabags. She never went for the few overpriced half bottles of emergency drink, which were kept on shelves next to the cigarettes behind the counter, carefully covered by a cloth out of licensing hours.

Tonight the shopkeeper had had enough and, fly to the woman and sick of losing stock, had left an empty coffee jar and box of teabags on the shelf. The woman had come in and, as usual, made straight for the coffee. She stood, holding the empty jar, trying to understand, holding her coat open ready to pinch it. Finally convinced that the jar was empty, the woman turned to the shopkeeper, dropped the jar, and flew at him, screaming, aiming for the bottles of drink under the cloth.

The shopkeeper claimed he was simply trying to restrain her when a group of young Goths waiting at the bus stop outside the window saw him wrestle the old lady to the ground and rifle through her clothes.

There is no sense of justice quite as uncompromising as drunken nightclubbers’ justice. The Goths ran in and counterattacked the shopkeeper, pulling him off the old woman. A couple of girls sat on him while the rest helped themselves to juice and smokes and packets of crisps, leaving the old woman free to roam at will for the ten minutes it took the police car to arrive.

There weren’t enough officers to arrest the mob so they limited their inquiries to the two main players. Outside, the heavily made-up youngsters in a mess of black and purple, genders indistinguishable, watched shiftily through the window. Littering the pavement around them were half-eaten packets of crisps and biscuits. Incriminating cans of Coke emptied themselves into the gutter.

Paddy came out of the small shop with two pages of shorthand notes but knew it wouldn’t be worth calling it in to the night subs.

Back in the car Sean was mesmerized by the crowd and desperate to hear what had happened inside. “Man.” He smiled, shaking his head in wonder. “You wouldn’t believe these things go on until you’re actually there. Will I find a phone?”

“No point. It won’t make it into the paper.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not a car crash or a murder. They don’t print vignettes, just hard news.”

“Shame.” Sean started the engine. “It was bloody entertaining to watch.”

Sensing that Paddy’s job had taken her away from him, Sean had always been a bit sneery about it, cutting her off when she tried to talk about the sights in the night city. It was affirming to see him so buzzed about it. Suddenly she loved the job she’d been trying to shed for months. By the morning Shug Grant would either know or not know about her fifty-quid kickback, depending on how the leak felt about it. If Shug had been told, everyone at the News would know too. Ramage would call her. She wouldn’t be allowed to take her coat off. Or he might call her at the hotel later and tell her to get out of the room, she was sacked.