Slip of the Knife

I

She called Pitt Street and asked for Knox. The receptionist put her through to a secretary. DCS Knox wasn’t in right now but she wondered if she could take a message?

“It’s really him I need to speak to,” Paddy told her. “It’s quite urgent.”

“Well, I’m very sorry but he won’t be back in again tonight.”

Paddy couldn’t go and wait in the cottage on her own all night if McBree didn’t know where she was. He’d come after Pete and find him in the house with her mother and brothers. It would be a massacre.

“It’s about Martin McBree, I have some-”

“Just a moment.”

She heard two soft-tone beeps and Knox picked up.

“This is Paddy Meehan. I’ve got McBree’s pictures, the last few copies. I want to hand them over.”

He thought for a moment. “That’s nothing to do with me,” he said.

“Tonight. Eriskay House, off the Ayr road. There’s a small sign for the house, shortly before the Troon petrol station on the roundabout.”

“Why are you telling me?” He sounded so casual and self-assured it made her furious.

“Knox, I will get around to you.”

“Will you?” He was smiling.

“I know about you.” She had nothing on him, but the more threatened he felt the more likely he was to call McBree immediately.

“Miss Meehan-”

She hung up on him. Knox moved in that murky area between criminality and government-licensed corruption. He would have his finger in a hundred scams and couldn’t know which of them she was alluding to.

She stood in the hall, felt the familiar breeze at her ankles from the gap under the front door, heard the murmur of the television in the living room, looked at the tread on the stair carpet, unchanged throughout her entire life. She began to tremble.

II

The twenty-four-hour shop was a five-minute detour from the motorway, on the lip of the West End. It sold munchie food, catering to hungry drunks on their way home from clubs in the town and hash-smoking students who ventured out in the night in search of nourishment. As a backup source of income it had diversified, offering a hundred other services: handwritten adverts for rooms to let, a bulky photocopier near the back, magazine subscriptions and, behind the counter, under the cigarettes, a fax machine.

“Nah, ye can’t send it yourself. Give me the number and I’ll send it for ye.”

The sleepy young woman had bleached hair that seemed to be melting at the tips. Paddy wondered at the wisdom of entrusting her with her revenge. “It’s quite important. Can I come round and make sure you do it right?”

The shop assistant sighed as if she’d been asked to clean her room. “I can’t let people around the counter. Yes or no. Hurry up.”

The machine was small but looked new.

“OK.”

The girl pulled out a cover sheet from under the counter. “Fill it out.”

Paddy used a pencil:

Number of pages including this one: two.

From: blank.

To: blank.

Subject: Martin McBree’s meeting with British security agent in New York, 1989.

She stacked the photocopy of McBree under the cover sheet and handed it over with the list of Irish phone numbers she had got from directory inquiries that afternoon. “These three numbers.”

The girl took them, turned her back, and fitted the picture facedown into the feeder. She looked at the numbers. “Which one first?”

“Sinn Fein Offices. Then the Irish Republican News. Then the Sweetie Bottle Bar.”

“All in Northern Ireland?”

“Yeah. The area codes are all there.”

The blonde punched the numbers in lazily, sensing that Paddy was anxious and in a hurry, so taking her time. Eventually the machine swallowed the sheet and spat it back out, gave off a whirring-beeped burp, and a short slip of paper slid out of the underside.

“And I’ll take a couple of Snickers bars as well.”

Paddy checked the transmission report as she waited for her change. It was number perfect. It would take some time, she felt sure, for the word to get out, be checked and double-checked, and finally for someone to believe Martin McBree was working with the security services. But one day he’d get a knife in his neck and he’d know it was because of her.

He was coming to get her and, she realized, she didn’t even have a pocket knife.

The shop assistant held out the change to her, looking at her hand and noting the tremble in her fingers.

“Sorry,” said Paddy, “do you sell kitchen scissors?”

III

She stood by her Volvo, cramming the second Snickers bar into her dry mouth, hardly tasting it on the way down but aware of the stringy caramel sticking in her throat. She looked at her hands, at her chocolate-coated fingertips. She was too full even to lick them clean and they were still shaking.

She rapped on the window and Dub rolled it down. “Could you drive, Dub? I wouldn’t mind just looking out of the window.”

They got back onto the motorway, took the bridge across the river, and followed the signs for Ayr. Before long the lanes narrowed, then converged, and they were in a drag race with the late commuters who had missed the rush hour and were desperate to get home.

Dub wasn’t used to driving. The dark, the sweeps and turns through the hills and the aggressive locals made him lean forward in his seat, hanging over the steering wheel, neck craned, cursing under his breath every time a car or a van shot past him. When they reached a broad stretch to the south of the city he relaxed a fraction and sat back.

“Now,” he said, “this meeting: you’re just going to hand over the photos to the McBree guy? Are you sure you’ll be all right out here on your own?”

“Yeah.” She drew on her cigarette, keeping her hand close to her face so he couldn’t see her shaking. “He won’t approach if there’s anyone there.”

An articulated lorry overtook them at an alarming speed, clearing the side of the car by less than a foot, the canvas straps whip-cracking at Dub’s window. He panicked and hit the brakes hard, slowing down to thirty, panting and leaning over the wheel again until he’d calmed himself down. His eyes kept flickering to the darkness in the rearview mirror as if he expected another assault. “The crying at the house, what was all of that about?”

“Mum called the boys up to come and batter Mary Ann’s boyfriend and I said Dad wouldn’t want that.”

“Quite right, neither he would.”

Outside the window the gentle hills of Ayrshire rolled softly away to a darkening sky. I may not come back this way, she thought. I may never come back.

She looked at Dub, memorizing his face. She could think about him when the time came. Not Pete, because she’d sob and struggle and lose it, but if it came to it, if McBree got her, in her final moments she could think about Dub and smile. She’d remember walking home with him late at night, eating sticky pasta in the flat, the warm toasting smell of him ironing behind her while she watched TV and his hand finding hers under the duvet in the dark night. They should have gone on holidays. They should have dated each other.

Like bubbles rising from a mile under water, the words found her lips: “I love you.”

Dub slowed down to thirty again and looked sternly out at the road. “I don’t think this is the time or the place…”

She smiled at his discomfort. “Yeah, yeah.”

“We talked about this before.”

“Yeah, your fat arse, Dub McKenzie.”

He turned his head but was afraid to take his eyes off the road. “Meehan, it was you who said we shouldn’t try to pin it down, not me.”

“Shut up and drive. You wanker.” She grinned out of the side window. “And I do love you. I don’t even love you as a friend, I’m in love with ye. I think everything you do is brilliant. So ye can shove that up your arse. Fucking Proddy twat.”

When she glanced back he was smiling at the road, sucking his cheeks to stop his face splitting in half.

“Happy now?” she said seriously. “You’ve trapped me with your wiles and sexual trickery.”

Chewing his lip, he slapped her leg with the back of his hand.

Paddy threw her hands up in mock exasperation. “And now the violence.”

IV

Their headlights left the road and sliced, waist high, through the dark around the cottage. They could see that Callum had been busy.

The sturdy grass pressing up against the façade had been flattened, roughly cut away under the windows and the door. An orange-rusted rotary-action lawn mower stood indignantly upright in front of the house.

Dub parked and Paddy got out, looking around for Callum. She felt Dub behind her and his fingertips found hers, squeezed them, and then retreated. “He’s round the back,” he said and walked off.

Paddy took a step and the tip of the kitchen scissors needled her thigh. They weren’t very sharp.

She felt a front of cool air sliding up the hill from the sea, heard the bushes whisper beyond the orchard wall and the old house groan at the weight of its history. The crack across the front looked deeper in the dark. She followed Dub’s shadow.

The lawn mower’s last act had been to chew the grass off around the side of the house. Callum had cleared a path along the side wall, down to moss-covered paving slabs underneath. The thick, spongy surface was waterlogged and her trainers squelched as she stepped across them.

They found Callum sitting on the ground by the kitchen door, his back to the wall, looking out and enjoying the night view of the hills. He was eating dry white bread, squashing slices into hard dough and biting chunks off. “It’s so quiet here, I heard you two a mile away.”

“You’ve been busy enough,” said Dub.

Callum smiled and stood up. “I’m going to live in the country one day. Come on in.”

Though the light was failing outside, they could see that he had cleared the whole kitchen floor, found some cleanish water in the water tank on the far side of the house and used a bucket with a hole in it to drag it into the house. He’d managed to wipe the thick layer of dust off the worktop and the range, but he didn’t have a mop so the floor looked not so much cleaner as dirty in a different way.

Dub was at a loss. “Lovely.”

Glassy-eyed with pride, Callum grinned and swept an arm around the filthy kitchen. “But this didn’t take half as long as the other job did.”

He planted his hands on his hips and waited for them to ask. Paddy didn’t have time for this. She needed to get him the fuck out before McBree turned up.

Dub obliged. “What other job?”

Gleefully, Callum made them stand by the back wall, clearing a space on the floor. “Ye can sit down if you like.”

“Callum, I need you to go with Dub. You can stay at his mum and dad’s tonight. I have to meet someone here.”

“Two minutes.”

He disappeared into the front room. Dub looked at Paddy and smiled the warmest smile she had ever seen. She took his hand, dropping it abruptly when Callum reappeared holding cardboard flattened like a pizza box, carrying it carefully in front of him, holding the lid down.

Callum looked coyly at Dub. “I did this for you. So you can sleep.” He lifted the lid.

Paddy was expecting a drawing, pressed flowers, something creative and asinine. But Callum hadn’t made a drawing.

Dub slid along the wall, rolling his shoulder to the doorway, half muttering “fuck” before staggering outside. They could hear him vomiting.

Paddy sat down.

Sitting in the base of the box were nine dead mice, their slender bodies lined up neatly. The fleshy pink pads on their feet looked too tender to have carried them through rough wall cavities and fields. Paddy could see soft brown hair on their bellies, and, from the low-down swelling, that one of them was pregnant. Their front paws were curled tightly up at their chests. Above the neck their heads were bloody tattered smears.

Callum looked sadly at the door. “I battered them with a brick. But it wasn’t for a laugh, I did it for him.” He dropped the lid and slumped to the floor.

Paddy couldn’t look away from the box. She could still see their feet, the skin on their toes, translucent as an embryo’s. She hugged her knees to her chest.

Callum slid along the floor to her side, his shoulder tight to hers. “Are you crying?” He looked at her closely. “You’re not crying about the mice.”

It wasn’t a question so she didn’t answer him.

She rubbed her face roughly. “Look, Callum, son, you need to go with Dub, go back to the city. It’s not safe here anymore.”

“Are journalists coming? Aren’t you coming?”

“I have to meet someone here.”

“Who?”

“A man.”

“A journalist?”

“No, a man. It’s not about you, it’s about another thing.”

“What other thing?”

“Nothing to do with you, just another thing.”

They looked at each other and she saw a spark of recognition in his eyes. “It’s not safe here. Who’s it not safe for?”

She shook her head, looking at her hands. “You need to go.”

He nodded as if he understood perfectly and wrapped his arms around his knees, mirroring her pose. “Can I come back here after? I could be happy here. If I had a radio and food, I’d be happy here. I could look after it, sort a wee garden out for myself.”

Her eyes welled again. “Sweetheart, you won’t want to come back here.”

He stared at her rudely for a long time, watching her cry. Embarrassed, she fumbled her cigarettes out of her pocket. Callum took them gently from her hand, opened the packet, and handed her one. He lit a match for her, but her whole body was trembling and she couldn’t dock the tip to the flame. Callum held the end of her cigarette steady so that she could light it.

He sat back, very calm, muttering so quietly she had to tease the words apart in her mind to make sense of them. “Gotaknife?”

She shook her head. “Scissors.”

“No gun?”

“No.”

“Plan?”

She inhaled and took Callum’s big hand in hers. “Son, you’re young. Go home and have a life. It’s time for you to have a life. Live in the country. Meet a girl. You’re handsome, did you know that?”

Callum blushed.

“You’re a nice young man, well-meaning, good-looking. You’re an Ogilvy. Have a family, go to chapel, that’s what Ogilvys do. You like families?”

He nodded eagerly.

“That’s what Ogilvys do.”

“You’re my family.”

“I’m not your family, Callum. I’m close to your family but I’m not your family.”

He sounded sulky when he answered, “Aye, ye are.”

Dub leaned back in the door, pasty skinned and wet eyed, afraid to cross the threshold of the kitchen. “Callum,” he gestured outside, “’mon. Let’s go.”

“I only did it for you,” Callum said to him.

“I know, pal, that was nice of ye. I’m a bit soft. Come on. Paddy needs to be alone here. Someone’s coming to meet her. He won’t come if we’re here. Pad, I’ll be back at ten in the morning to pick you up.”

“Take care on the road,” she said, keeping it light.

He left. They could see him through the side window as he stepped carefully across the moss on the paving stones by the house.

Callum stood up suddenly, staring down at Paddy sitting balled up on the floor. His voice was shaking. “Ye call me son. Ye look after me. Ye are my family.”

Paddy’d known Callum since he was eight years old, had been to his father’s funeral and fought for him before she ever liked him.

“Son,” she said, her voice a growl, “you’re right. We are family.”

V

She went to wave them off. Dub backed nervously out of the driveway to the lip of the road, Callum guiding him through the grass with waves and warning slaps on the bonnet.

Out on the road, cars were speeding past at irregular intervals, more frequent on the opposite side of the road. Callum climbed into the passenger seat. Paddy could see Dub’s head flicking back and forth, worried about how to get across. Finally, Dub revved the engine, jolted forward, and hit the road going the wrong way. He sped off in the direction of Ayr. They’d have to turn at the roundabout.

The noise of the road died as she walked around to the back of the house. A low sun was setting over the lush green hills, the horizon baby-girl pink. It would be a long night.

She stood at the kitchen doorway, holding the frame to steady herself, and thought of her father. It was resisting death that made it painful. Con should have embraced it. She’d never thought about it before but his resistance was the ultimate act of defiance. She didn’t recognize it at the time, mistook it for fear because she’d never seen him resist anything before, but it took real guts to cling to life when the odds meant you’d die.

It was too dark inside, so she lifted one of the spindly-legged kitchen chairs and took it out, setting it against the back wall, on the spot where they had found Callum. She arranged her funeral coat around herself to keep warm, took the useless scissors out of her pocket and set them on her lap.

Then she lit another cigarette, leaned her head back against the crumbling wall, and waited for the sun to go down.