Field of Blood

I

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.”

II

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.

Meehan was puzzled. He should have been told beforehand if he was to say anything. They were breaching protocol to eliminate him, he felt sure. He repeated the line flatly.

“Shut up, shut up. We’ll send an ambulance. All right?”

The old man’s knees buckled. “My God, my God,” shouted Mr. Ross, falling back into the arms of his nurse. “That’s the voice. I know it, I know it.”

III

The temperature had dipped again and Paddy could hardly feel the tip of her nose. She rubbed it with her gloved hand, trying to encourage the blood back into it, and turned the corner to the given address. She sighed up at the red sandstone. It was a neat front-door flat in a three-up tenement on the Southside, in a more than decent neighborhood. A passing soft rain had darkened the stone to patches of black, every window was clean, every sill in good order. The close passage through to the back was tiled in green and cream. Across the tidy square of front garden Mrs. Simnel’s front door screamed good order. Pale yellow storm doors were folded back, revealing a perfectly polished brass letter box and matching knocker sitting over a pristine doormat. Paddy had been hoping for somewhere a bit less respectable and solid.

As she approached the door she could hear a distant radio through the etched glass, tuned to an easy-listening station. The doorbell rang out in two complementary tones and a woman’s shape shimmered into view. Paddy huddled in her duffel coat and watched as the shadow woman patted her hair and pulled a pair of rubber gloves off her hands before opening the door.

A small puff of domestic perfection wafted out at Paddy standing on the cold doorstep. A saccharine version of “Fly Me to the Moon” was playing in the kitchen. The hall smelled of crumbled biscuits and warm tea.

Mrs. Simnel wore flat brown shoes and a cream skirt and blouse. Her hair was pulled gently up into a graying French roll. Paddy explained that she was researching a story about the Baby Brian Boys and had been given her name by one of the officers at the station. Mrs. Simnel looked surprised and smiled kindly.

“But what age are you, for goodness’ sake? Are you at college?”

Paddy supposed that she was, yes, studying for A levels too, if that was what Mrs. Simnel wanted.

“Good for you,” said Mrs. Simnel. “It’s so important to get an education.”

“It is.” Her accent was softening the way it sometimes did when she spoke to Farquarson. “Terribly, terribly important.”

“And here you are out on a cold night, working away.”

Paddy smiled bravely, touching her cold nose again, hunching her shoulders. She could tell that Mrs. Simnel still wasn’t quite sure of her: she held firmly on to the door handle, creating a barrier between her warm house and Paddy on the outside.

“Did you have far to come?”

“Not really.” Paddy leaned in confidingly. “Actually, my daddy dropped me off on the corner.”

“I see.” Mrs. Simnel’s eyes widened, delighted. “I see. Well, come in and warm yourself up. Let’s get you a cup of tea.”

With the door shut behind her Paddy breathed in the warmth and comfort of the generous hall. The ceiling was high, with delicate plaster leaves trailing around the cornice. Mrs. Simnel took her duffel and hung it by the label on a coatrack behind the door. On the floor beneath the coats sat two pairs of well-worn Wellingtons and a shooting stick, as if the green fields of Perthshire were just beyond the front door instead of the Southside streets of Scotland’s largest city. Paddy wanted to live here, to be from here, to be surrounded by helping hands who would encourage her ambitions instead of being afraid of them.

“Now, let’s have a cup of tea and see what we can do for your college project.”

It was the biggest kitchen Paddy had ever been in. Her entire family could have gathered by the sink and still have left room for a car.

Mrs. Simnel had been polishing a strap of ornamental horse brasses when Paddy knocked on the door, and now she picked up the newspaper with the blackened cloth and ornaments and simply moved it out of the way of the tea and biscuits. Fading sunlight filtered in through the window, absorbed by thriving plants on the sill, glinting off the ceramic tiles on the floor. Mrs. Simnel served up tea and biscuits on genteel flowery crockery. She didn’t use mugs either, but cups and matching saucers. The china cup was so light that even full of tea it could be lifted with a gentle pinch of thumb and forefinger.

Mrs. Simnel told the story of the Baby Brian Boys well, recalling the information as she did, sliding her eyes to the side and wondering about things, bringing up details after thinking about them for a moment. She was a widow and had eight sons, all of whom lived nearby, all of whom had children of their own. She had been a primary-school teacher in her younger day and could recognize children very well, because they’re all different, aren’t they? All individuals. Paddy resigned herself to the truth of it: Mrs. Simnel had been on the train at exactly the time she said and had seen three kids.

She had been on her way to visit her sister who lived in Cumbernauld and, knowing she would be coming back in the dark and not being a confident driver, decided to leave the car and take the train. Sarah- her sister was called Sarah- was expecting her at eight o’clock so she took the seven twenty-five, which was due in at five to eight. It took her five minutes to walk around to the house from the station.

Paddy nibbled the biscuit off a fig roll and sipped her tea. She wanted to live like this when she had a house of her own. She didn’t want to use mugs or eat biscuits out of the packet anymore.

Relaxing into her company, Mrs. Simnel gestured towards the ornamental brasses and asked if Paddy would mind her carrying on. No; Paddy even offered to help, but there wasn’t a spare set of rubber gloves under the sink, so she just had to sit there, nibbling biscuits and watching as the woman dabbed Brasso onto the metal and conjured blackness out of nothing.

Mrs. Simnel had never been a witness to anything else before and was a little uncomfortable at coming forward. She was surprised how well mannered the police were. She’d expected them to be rather more thuggish, frankly, the officers lower down the ranks at least. As she made the snobbish observation her eyes fell on Paddy’s cheap black crewneck. She blinked, forgiving herself the offense, and shifted the emphasis. They made her a cup of tea before they went in to see the line of boys and gave it to her in a china cup, with a biscuit, an iced ring, of all things. Wasn’t that dainty? A pink iced ring. Not what you’d expect from big burly men at all.

She was the perfect witness, recalling details and colors and times exactly, as though she had been rehearsing all her life for this one moment. And she didn’t for an instant seem like a woman who was short of attention.

“Those boys who did this,” she said sadly. “Those boys are only ten years old. It makes me shiver to think about it.”

“Yes, their backgrounds are very deprived,” said Paddy, hoping to temper her attitude to them if nothing else.

“I know. They told me that the dark-haired one had never been to a dentist. Not once in his entire life.” She put down her cloth for a moment. “It must hurt, to have those teeth. And the diet you’d need to make them so… I couldn’t finish my biscuit.”

It hit Paddy like a cold wash. “You couldn’t finish the iced ring?”

“No,” said Mrs. Simnel. “I just put it down on the saucer. I mean, it must hurt to have such bad teeth. Even if the parents can’t take the child to the dentist, why don’t the schools do something?”

Paddy pretended that her father was picking her up at the bus stop on Clarkston Road. Mrs. Simnel waved her off, wishing her good luck with the project and her exams. As Paddy walked to the end of the street she heard the woman closing the storm doors firmly behind her. She should hurry home or she’d miss Sean if he phoned about their Valentine’s date tomorrow, but she didn’t know where the buses ran to from here and she was numbed by Mrs. Simnel.

She walked past the bus terminus and under a railway bridge, following the road over the high crescent of Prospecthill. It was a leafy bump of land, one of two neighboring hillocks overlooking the broad valley plain. At the crest of the hill she paused, hands in her pockets, looking out over the lights of the Friday-night city. She mapped her way around the distant streets using the red neon sign on the Daily Record building as a starting point.

This time last week Heather Allen was alive and had parked her car in Union Street over there. Paddy had walked down to Queen Street station that night; she could just see its illuminated fan of glass. She had taken the train to Steps and stood by the tracks. This time last week Mrs. Simnel had gone to the police about the boys she saw on the train. They gave her tea and biscuits before she went in to pick them out of a lineup, casually mentioning Callum Ogilvy’s bad teeth to her and the fact that he’d never been to a dentist. She must have known Callum the moment she saw him. They’d primed her just as carefully as Abraham Ross had been primed. The police were determined to put the boys alone on the train, and Paddy couldn’t understand why.