The Field of Blood (29 page)

He smiled like a hostage trying not to alert the police. “I’m always frightened to talk to you in case you think, ‘What’s that dirty wee bastard been thinking about me?’ ” His glassy eyes were fixed on her neck. She could tell he was thinking about her tits but didn’t have the courage just to stare at them. “I’m an animal in bed, you know.”

Paddy drained her glass and feigned bewilderment. “How does that work? Have you got a magic mattress or something?”

At the door she turned for a last fond look round the bar and found Pete staring after her in silent entreaty, asking her to get him out of there. Paddy waved good-bye, pretending she had misread his eyes, and left him to be enveloped in a crowd of his own kind.

She sobered up on the train home, sucking her way through a packet of mints to cover the smell of drink and fags. She looked out the window at the passing lights of Rutherglen town hall and thought about the witness who had seen the boys on the train. The witness might not be credible. McVie knew all the policemen in Glasgow; he’d be able to find out something about it for her.

The house was dead. Trisha sat stiffly in the front room as Paddy ate in the kitchen, watching Adam and the Ants on Top of the Pops. They both knew she only had it on for the noise, so they wouldn’t be left alone together in the crushing silence. Paddy finished her dinner, watching the back of her mum’s head, enjoying the detached numbness afforded by the alcohol. She filled her pockets with custard creams and went upstairs to her bed.

She lay on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling and eating mechanically through the biscuits, letting the crumbs spill into her hair and ears. Valentine’s was on Saturday— just one more lonely day to go. He might not phone tomorrow night, but she knew she’d see him on Saturday. It would be frosty at first, but they’d kiss and touch and sort it out. Sometimes, when she thought about Sean, his handsome face melted into Terry Hewitt’s, with his pretty manners and hesitant smile.

There were definite noises downstairs: someone coming in and getting their tea, and then another couple of people in the living room, everyone talking quietly and abruptly to one another. Muffled footsteps came up the stairs, and someone stopped off to use the toilet. The bedroom door opened and Mary Ann came in, looking serious. She shut the door carefully, climbed across her own bed to Paddy’s, and sat down, poking Paddy in the ribs.

“It’s finishing on Saturday,” she whispered. “We’re having a tea for you, and that’ll be it over.” She kissed Paddy’s forehead, excited as a child at Christmas. “You smell like a brewery.”

Mary Ann went out to change into her nightclothes in the bathroom and left Paddy alone. She took another biscuit from her pocket and chewed it meditatively. To hell with them. She wasn’t going to be in on Saturday. She was going out with Terry during the day, and in the evening she’d be out at the pictures with Sean.

Paddy shucked off her coat by the door and walked across to the bench. A balding subeditor with a small horn of hair on his forehead caught her eye and muttered hello. It made her feel suspicious and worried. She didn’t answer back. Ten minutes later, a different journalist patted her arm and said he was sorry when she brought him a box of staples.

She was on the bench, wondering whether she’d done something in the pub that she didn’t remember, when Dub came back from the print room. She told him what had happened and said she was worried they were being friendly for a bad reason.

Dub stretched his skinny legs out in front of him. “Name a bad reason for being friendly.”

“Dunno. I was in the Press Bar for a few hours yesterday afternoon. I just hope they don’t think I’m fast or something.”

Dub snorted. “No one thinks that.”

She looked nervously around the room for clues. She didn’t know if it was the aftereffects of the drink the day before, but she was as tense as a trip wire this morning.

“Keck confided that he’s worried in case I guess all the dirty things he’s been thinking about me.”

Dub laughed and told her that Keck was a crippled-dick-wank-donkey-fucker and he had the photos to prove it. Paddy liked the word and laughed along with him, enjoying the camaraderie of having a mutual enemy.

They stayed on the bench, letting Keck take the calls, chatting for a while. Dub told her the police had been chucked out of the building. Farquarson and McGuigan had had a set-to because they were disrupting the running of the paper, pulling people out of meetings and making all the women cry. They’d missed a big story on Poland because of them, lost a phone line when the police yanked Liddel off the newsroom floor.

It wasn’t until after the editorial meeting that she finally heard why everyone was being nice to her; it was one of those morsels of city gossip that could never be used in the paper, like the children’s names or the details of how Brian had died. Callum Ogilvy had attempted suicide the night before and been rushed to hospital. He’d used a knife and done it under a table in the refectory with everyone there. He almost cut his hand off. It was so bad they had to operate. Only because he was almost a relative Paddy suddenly thought she should go and visit him. The thought stayed with her; Sean could probably go and visit Callum. If she went with him she could interview the boy for the paper. Her family would never talk to her again if she did that. She’d have to think of something else.

She approached the subeditor on the news desk, the horned man who had shot her a sympathetic glance earlier, and asked him for McVie’s contact details. He got the phone number from someone on features.

“I heard you were related to that Ogilvy boy.”

Paddy was copying out the telephone number from a Rolodex card and didn’t answer.

“You can’t choose your family, can you?”

“Or your colleagues,” said Paddy, picking up a phone receiver without even asking for permission.

“McVie won’t want you to call him.”

“He’ll be fine.” She dialed the number. “I know him. Honestly, he won’t mind. He gave me his number before but I lost it.”

McVie sounded groggy. “What in the name of pissing hell are you doing phoning me at home, you fat cow?”

“Fine, yeah.” Paddy looked at the sub and pressed her lips together, nodding to show the call was welcome.

“Where the hell did you get my number from?”

“Oh, so I suppose, aye.” She spun away from the table and scratched her nose, covering her mouth. “Listen, I need a favor.”

“It’s ten o’clock in the fucking morning. Ye can shove your favors up your arse.”

“The police asked me about Heather and you.” She dropped her voice. “They wanted to know about the calls car and why you invited her out.”

He hesitated. “What did you tell them?”

“What should I have told them? Nothing happened. You’re a good guy.”

He sighed and lowered his hackles. “What’s the favor, then?” She drew breath to speak, but he interrupted. “It better not be big or involve me leaving the house in the next hour.”

“I want the name of the witness who saw the Baby Brian Boys on the train.”

“Why?”

“I don’t believe they were on the train at all.”

“What’s the difference how it went down? They did it, there was blood all over them. She picked them out of a lineup fair and square.”

She didn’t want to tell McVie her suspicions, much less reiterate them in the newsroom, where anyone could be listening. “It makes a difference to me.”

“Because you’re a relative?”

It was easier just to agree. “Yeah.”

“Well, it’ll take a lot of string pulling. Witnesses are special cases. If anything comes out of this I want my name on it.”

“Come on, McVie.” She smiled weakly and looked around the room. “You know I’m an idiot. Nothing’s going to come out of it.”

He was suddenly wide awake and interested. “You’re really onto something, aren’t you?”

Paddy bit her lip. “Yeah,” she said, trying to sound enthused. “I really think I’ve got a big story here. I promise your name’ll go on it, right next to mine.”

“Ah.” He thought about it for a moment. “Well, now I don’t know what to think.”

“I was talking to JT about the witness. He said women always come forward and it’s usually for attention.”

“Balls, that’s just like the man. It’s much more complicated than that. People want to see things. Some think they see things. Some wish they could see things. People who say it’s for attention are arseholes.”

“For Godsake, everyone in the world can’t be an arsehole except you and me.”

“I never said you weren’t an arsehole.”

She almost laughed out loud. “You know, McVie, you’re a real character.”

She could hear the smirk in his voice.

“Funny,” he said. “Fat, but funny.”

Farquarson had noticed that half the staff were using little pens stolen from bookies’ shops and thought it looked unprofessional. As Paddy went around the tables giving out fresh Biros to everyone, she thought about Paddy Meehan and the lineup, when Abraham Ross, fresh from his dead wife’s bedside, picked him out and then fainted in front of him.

Meehan had talked about the injustice of it afterwards, but no local journalist would listen. Every convicted man in Barlinnie Prison claimed he had been set up, and Meehan was a well-known old con, neither liked nor respected and hardly known for his principled core. It wasn’t until Ludovic Kennedy began researching his book about the case that the details of the day were documented.

Meehan had gone into the police station feeling confident. Griffiths was dead and the paper from the Rosses’ safe had been found in his pocket, but it was a plant and really strong evidence was starting to go his way. The Kilmarnock girls had been found and were coming to identify him, and he had been told that the two robbers had referred to each other as Pat and Jim throughout the job. The police would know that no professional criminal would ever call another by his real name. Plus the police were looking for two guys from Glasgow, and Griffiths had a deep Lancastrian accent. Everyone who ever met him commented on it.

He thought it odd that the defense and prosecution witnesses were coming to the same identity parade: usually the prosecution had one and then, often later, the defense had a different one. But he had never been done for murder and decided that the crime was so heinous that even the police were eager to get to the truth of it. It was only days before the start of the trial when he saw the girls’ names on the list of witnesses and saw that they were listed for the prosecution. The police would claim that Meehan and Griffiths had picked up the girls to give themselves alibis. The young girls, hazy in their memory and intimidated by the court, would slide the times and places back and forth to fit the case.

As soon as it began, the identity parade seemed strange. Meehan had participated in enough lineups to know that it wasn’t being held in the lineup room. Instead they were gathered in the CID muster room, the place where the officers assembled before a shift. It was a big square room with windows on the far wall and two doors, one on the left, one on the right, both leading into separate changing rooms. Four other men of Meehan’s age and build milled around, glancing at their neighbor’s shoes, each wondering if he did really look like that. They were only there for the couple of bob— good money for half an hour’s work.

Meehan felt calm. The lassies would pick him out, he knew they would. He’d got out of the car and they’d each seen him straight on. For once in his life he was glad of the acne scarring on his cheeks, knowing that it made him distinctive enough to remember, even through a haze of drink and in a bad light.

They heard people gathering behind one of the doors, and the two attendant police officers shuffled the ID men into a line, letting Meehan take whichever place he wanted. He stood closest to the door so that they would come to him first. When they had all settled into place the officer knocked on the door and opened it.

Irene Burns came into the room accompanied by a copper and a lawyer in a cheap suit. The moment her eyes fell on Meehan it was obvious she remembered. She didn’t even look at the others in the line, just raised her finger, hardly five feet away, pointing directly at his nose. What small vestige of religious feeling Meehan had left in his heart prompted him to thank someone somewhere. The officers led her off to the far changing room, and Meehan noticed that she had a thick ladder up the back of her calf and had scuffed her heel. She was still a child herself.

Isobel came next, looking very young and rather prim. Her hair was a neat little dome, and she had a hairband in it with a bow at the side. Again, she recognized him immediately, hardly glancing at the others. She hung around nervously by the far wall as if she wanted to run back into the changing room.

Meehan spoke to her. “It’s all right, pet, don’t worry about it. Go ahead.”

Isobel gave a little sigh of relief and pointed at him. “It’s him,” she said.

Meehan smiled at her and got a smile back. Isobel patted her hair coyly, as if he’d complimented her. He found himself smiling after her, watching her generous arse as she disappeared off into the far changing room.

Three other witnesses came through. He would learn later that each of them had seen the men leaving the Ross house in the morning. Not one of them picked Meehan out. One of them was certain it was number four; another couldn’t say; the other felt it might be number three.

The men in the lineup knew that the final witness was the big one, the victim himself, and they watched the door next to Meehan expectantly, anticipating the end of the chore and the two bob they had been promised. It was the far door that opened, the door all the other witnesses had left by. The lineup men snickered at the obvious ploy: the girls could easily have told Mr. Ross where the mark was standing, but Meehan felt quite confident. The girls had picked him out. He had his alibi.

Rheumy-eyed Mr. Ross, frail as a baby bird, had a big black bruise covering one side of his face and a brawny female nurse supporting his arm. The detective sergeant led the old man along the line, straight to Meehan. He ordered Meehan to read a line written on a scrap of paper.