Slip of the Knife

I

The police broke the door down and Paddy followed the paramedics into the flat.

Kevin was in the living room, limp, lying on his left side, his cheek sitting in a pool of dry, chalky saliva. Behind him, bright yellow sunlight flooded the living room, casting a gray shadow over his face. His eyes were open a little, a slice of white. They looked as dry as the saliva under his cheek. His right hand was clamped at his breastbone, the hand clawed tight. He’d had a stroke, they said, almost certainly.

Paddy’s voice was a strangled whisper. “He’s thirty-five. How could he have a stroke?”

The paramedic pointed to the coffee table in the living room. The boxes of negatives had all been moved. It looked strange because it was the only clear surface in the house. Sitting on the smoked-glass surface was a single line of white powder. “Cocaine.”

“Will he be all right?”

“He’ll be fine,” the paramedic said, avoiding her eye.

“You’ll be OK, Kevin,” she said, raising her voice and sounding more frightened than she meant to. “Don’t worry. They’ve said you’ll be OK.”

Paddy stood in the cozy mess of the hall and watched as the ambulance men took Kevin’s vital signs and declared him not dead, yet. One of them touched his fingertips to the chalky mess under his cheek, rubbing it between his fingers. It was gritty, he said; definitely an overdose. They asked if he was a habitual drug user and she said she didn’t really know but didn’t think so: he didn’t even drink anymore. They nodded as if that was exactly what they expected her to say. One of them seemed to be trembling, which alarmed her.

Two police officers stood in the door of the bedroom, talking quietly. Their summer shirts were so starched they looked like blue cardboard. Start of the shift.

Kevin’s hall wasn’t used to having five people in it. They had to pick their steps. He had dropped things as he came home, ran out to meet people, staggered home after a good night out with pals. She looked around, imagined him seeing it and vowing to tidy it on quiet Sundays but having warm lie-ins instead, lingering over his breakfast, listening to the radio or reading a book.

She looked back at him. His left arm was beneath him, the soft inside of his forearm facing upwards. It was blue. A huge blue-and-green bruise covered the skin, deep, a memory of trauma. He hadn’t had it when she saw him on Sunday.

She stepped forward. “That bruise on his arm.” She pointed it out to the ambulance men. “Could he have done that when he fell?”

One of them shrugged, irritated that she had drawn their attention away from their work. “Suppose.”

She tried to imagine a fall that would occasion a bad blow on the inner forearm. And then she noticed it: a matching bruise under his chin. It wasn’t obvious because of the sharp light behind him. A U-shaped bruise, a grip on either side of his chin, holding him tight.

“Excuse me.” She reached forward and touched the ambulance man’s shoulder. “Are you sure it’s a stroke?”

He shook her hand off, angry at being distracted. “Aye, it is. It just is, look at his hand.”

She stepped around Kevin’s feet to get a better look and the ambulance man sighed and glanced back at the police officers. “Can ye…?”

A noise came from deep inside Kevin, a gurgle that seemed to emanate from his stomach. A small bubble of wet formed at his lips and burst.

He was dying. She knew he was dying. One of the officers saw Paddy reel backwards and grabbed her under the arm, turning her away. He took her out to the cold, dark close and encouraged her to catch her breath.

“Is he dead?”

“He’s going to be fine. The paramedics say he’s going to be fine.”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“No, he’s fine.”

“He’s dead.”

He sat Paddy on the neighbor’s front step and told her to bend over and put her head between her legs. She couldn’t quite hear him so he held her head down, cupping it as if she was being guided into a police car. She had a pencil skirt on and her cheeks were pressed tight against her knees. Staring at her orange suede trainers, the cold stone numbing her bum, she didn’t want to see any more, couldn’t bear the thought of looking up. She thought of Terry, how sad he would be, and thinking about that reminded her of Kevin showing her the photos on Sunday night. He said no one was after him. He said it was nothing to do with the book.

She watched as they lifted him carefully onto the stretcher, one side limp, the other tight as a traction band. His left knee was almost up to his chin, his clawed hand in the way. The walls slid sideways and she dropped her head to her knees again.

Paddy had been to the site of a hundred car crashes and fatal accidents but the bodies in the bags weren’t people she knew, the blood was a faceless stranger’s blood, the weight of sorrow someone else’s.

She eased herself upright. The young police officer was in front of her, looking into the house, stepping from foot to foot, his hands fiddling with his belt. He was excited to have a job that didn’t involve hassling truants in the park or chasing junkies out of Woolworths.

Kevin looked smaller on his side. Paddy watched as the paramedics lifted the stretcher slowly, carried it through the door, and negotiated the turn of the stairs. She saw Kevin’s blond hair darkened and crusty, a white residue over it.

The older officer was standing in front of her, nodding as his walkie-talkie crackled instructions at him. He signed off and hung it on his belt, turning formally to Paddy.

“We’d like to ask you about how you came to be here and what you know about-” He thumbed back to the hallway.

“Kevin.”

He nodded gravely. “About Kevin.”

She looked back into the hallway. The sun had moved, the tip of it touching the crusty saliva mess.

Kevin wouldn’t take cocaine. If he’d been taking it she would have known. She’d seen him drinking when he worked at the News and he was a compulsive, mental drunk. Men had gone to their graves swearing they’d chuck it if they got as bad as Kevin. She had once seen him have an alcoholic seizure in the office, then sit for a while with a cup of tea before going out drinking again in the afternoon. Men like that didn’t take an occasional line, not like Dub did sometimes. Someone had made him take it.

Collins. She could see him stand by while Kevin vomited on the floor, watching calmly as a stroke curled him up like a dead leaf.

“Look, I need to go but take it from me, Kevin didn’t do drugs,” she told the older officer. “The bruises on his arm and chin-didn’t you see them?”

He looked at her. “Not really.”

“I think Kevin was killed by the same guy who murdered Terry Hewitt.”

“Terry…?”

“Hewitt. The guy found shot dead on the Greenock road? The journalist?”

Terry’s death had been blanketed over the papers, over the television and radio news, but neither of the officers seemed to know what she was talking about. Not the sharpest pencils in the box.

The younger officer sensed her disapproval. “Oh, I think I heard something about that,” he said, nodding at his colleague.

“How do you know it’s to do with that?” The older officer leaned in, as if half expecting Paddy to confess to the killings herself.

“Oh, for Christ sake,” she said impatiently, “just call it in. Ask for the team investigating Terry Hewitt’s murder. They’ll know what I’m talking about.”

The older man pulled himself up to his full height, nostrils aflare, and she realized that her sniping tone had been a bad mistake. He might be an idiot but, in common with all police officers, he didn’t want to be spoken to with anything but fawning respect.

“I will decide what we do and don’t call in, and I’ll thank you to watch your language when you speak to me.”

She apologized, said it was the shock, and tried to explain how she needed to look through the portfolio of photographs Kevin had taken for the book.

The younger officer glanced at his mentor, nodding so much she guessed he wasn’t listening. The older officer seemed to understand this time but didn’t take notes or react. When she had finished he told her to wait here and went downstairs, presumably to call it in and ask a senior officer who the hell Terry Hewitt was and what the fuck he should do now.

The younger man stayed with her in the close. Paddy knew they were keeping her with them, intending to take her in for questioning, which would mean a two-hour wait, a short conversation and then another two-hour wait before someone decided she could go. She could leg it but the squad car would probably be just outside the close. Even if she ran, both officers looked fit enough to outrun her. Actually, her mother could probably outrun her. She wasn’t very fit.

“So you knew this guy?”

“We worked together.”

“In papers?”

“Yeah.”

“You a secretary then?”

“No, I’m a journalist.”

He grinned, not maliciously. “So you make things up for a living?”

“Kind of.”

He smirked a little and looked away, leaned over the banister, looking for signs of his partner. When he found none he stepped into Kevin’s flat, shrugging and smiling like a naughty schoolboy. He beckoned Paddy to come too.

“Let’s look for the photos,” he said, showing he had been listening after all.

She stood in the hall watching him in the bedroom, stepping over a tidal wave of dirty clothes stacked against a chest of drawers. She turned away, looking back into the living room. The line of cocaine on the coffee table was wrong. She tipped her head at it: if Kevin had cleared a space to chop a line he would have put the boxes of negatives on the floor under the table, which was the only empty space that was big enough. She glanced around at the settee, under the television, by the chair. The boxes were gone.

“There should be boxes of negatives somewhere near the table, they were on the table…”

The nosy officer was smiling out at her, standing beyond the rumpled bed, triumphantly holding a big black portfolio that Paddy recognized from her last visit. He put it on the bed.

“Wait, wait,” she said. “If Kevin’s attacker picked it up his prints’ll be on it.”

He shrugged, slipped the elastic band off its shoulder, flipped it open, dragging his greasy fingertips down the cover with a recklessness that Paddy couldn’t quite believe. She realized that he wasn’t a considered liberal or a genius working undercover. He was an idiot who didn’t believe her fantastical story that Kevin and Terry had been killed by someone Kevin had photographed. Quiet people always fooled her.

He lifted the photos, one after the other, looking at them and at her, waiting for her to say stop, there he is, but the black woman’s picture wasn’t in the portfolio.

“Well, it was there,” she said, “and the negatives have gone.”

He replied with his customary smirk.

Echoing footsteps heralded the return of the older officer. Panting lightly, he rolled his eyes at the stairs and caught his breath enough to order the other officer to secure the flat. They shut the door, fixing the lock to stop it blowing open in a draft but not much more.

“Listen,” Paddy told their backs, “I really have to go. I’ll give you my number if you need to call me.”

“You’re coming with us, Miss Meehan,” the older officer said with relish. “DI Garrett wants to talk to you in Pitt Street.”

Outside, Paddy could see that they hadn’t had any trouble finding a parking space for their squad car. They had stopped it in the middle of the two lines of cars and got out, and now it was jammed between the other cars in the street. The officer who had pawed the portfolio could only open the back door halfway for her.

“But I’ve got my own car,” she protested.

“No,” his friend said, “you can’t drive your own car to the station.” He didn’t want her driving in on her own in case she took a wrong turn and pissed off, presumably. Nor would he agree to his partner accompanying her while he drove the squad car.

“Corroboration,” she said, letting him know that she understood. If she suddenly confessed that she’d attacked Kevin they wouldn’t be able to use it in court without a second officer hearing it too. He didn’t answer her. “So I’m a suspect?”

“He had a stroke.”

“If I’m a suspect you should caution me.”

But he wasn’t willing to arrest her, or let her go.

“Can I get something out of the boot of my car?”

They glanced at each other and said no.

“It’s another portfolio like the one upstairs, but it’s got the picture I was telling you about.” She handed them the keys. “You get it.”

Together, they walked down to the corner and found her car parked precariously on the turn of the curb.

“This is illegal. You can’t park here. You’ll get towed.”

It might have been the shock, or the worry, or just the officers’ cold officiousness, but Paddy found herself trembling with annoyance.

“Look, I was worried about Kevin and just stopped the car to run up and chap the door, OK? I didn’t think I’d be in there for a full fucking hour and a half, havering about.”

But they were unmoved. “You’ll still have to move it. What if a fire engine needs to come along here?”

“The ambulance got in OK.”

“Fire engine’s wider.”

They saw her look back accusingly at the squad car. They’d blocked the entire street.

“We can do that,” the younger officer said smugly, “because we’re on police business. But you’ll need to move yours.”

“Where to? There isn’t anywhere.”

“Put it down there at the turning circle.”

She threw her hands up. “Right,” she said loudly, “fine, I’ll fucking move it.”

They gave her the keys and she climbed in, shut the door, and started the engine. She threw her Volvo into first, mouthed “fuck ye” at the officers and sped off, heading straight for the main road.

It would take them fifteen minutes to get out of the narrow gully of cars they’d jammed themselves in.

II

The West End was the student quarter of the city and every second shop, whether a dry cleaner’s or a newsagent’s, had a photocopier in it.

She stopped at a newsagent’s near her house and opened the boot, sorting through the portfolio, pulling the photo of the black woman out and rolling it into a cylinder before shutting the boot and going in.

A hand-scribbled sign on the door said that only two schoolkids were allowed in at one time. When she got inside she could see why: she was in a shoplifter’s paradise. Crisps and sweeties were stored in boxes near the door, the magazines were in a blind corner by the exit, and they even had cheap toys piled up on a shelf at elbow height to a child. The woman behind the counter sat up nervously as she came in, as if expecting a fresh assault.

Paddy could tell by the concentric circle of dirt around the copy button that the photocopier had been used a lot. She made three black-and-white copies, moving the picture around to get Collins’s face in the center of the frame, then made an extra enlarged one and a color picture that didn’t come out very well. There wasn’t a lot of color in the background anyway but Collins’s shirt came out an irradiated pink that bled into his neck.

She was looking at it, worrying about the quality, when her eye was caught by a shadow in the cabin of the car. A rainbow of shadow in the passenger seat: the driving wheel. She realized suddenly that Americans must drive on the other side of the road, the car was left-hand drive. Collins wasn’t the driver. He was just the passenger: the fat man was driving him somewhere.

She paid the woman behind the counter and bought a giant chocolate bar and another packet of Embassy Regal, justifying the fags with the thought that if she wasn’t going to drink with Brian Donaldson, she’d better have at least one vice and overplay it. Guys like that never trusted the abstinent.