The Dead Hour

I

The moment she stepped into the newsroom Paddy knew some terrible, seismic shift had occurred. The last pages of the paper had gone to stone but instead of the usual hemorrhage of staff the newsroom was full of people behaving as if they were extremely busy.

A senior editor on the news desk was talking seriously on the phone while a couple of guys stood behind him, glancing nervously around to see if they were being watched. Even the sports desk looked busy. One reporter was typing and three others sat next to him reading the rival papers. No one read the rival papers except first thing in the morning. They were filling in time, waiting for some great event to unfold.

The photographers were all hiding in their office at the far end of the room. The door was ajar and Paddy could see Kevin Hatcher, the pictures editor, standing by a chair, looking out into the busy room, waiting. Kevin drank bigger quantities more often than anyone else at the paper: that he was standing up at seven o’clock at night was a minor miracle.

She shrugged off her coat and, as she was hanging it up, saw the two copyboys on the bench were sitting tall, their attention not in the newsroom but behind their backs, listening hard to what was being said in the editor’s office.

Paddy watched Reg, a sports reporter, apparently enthralled by a Daily Mail report about the Spud-U-Like shops. He felt her gaze on him and looked up, eyes red and open slightly too wide.

“Farquarson’s getting the bump,” he said quietly. “They didn’t even call him down to editorial to tell him. They came up here and did it in his office.”

Paddy looked at Farquarson’s closed office door and suddenly understood the air of shock and horror in the room. The board were making changes. Farquarson had been in the job for four long years, so it wasn’t because he wasn’t fit for the job: they were making changes because the paper wasn’t making money. Any one of them could go next.

“Who’s coming in?” she asked. “Do we know yet?”

“A bastard from London.”

“How do you know he’s a bastard?”

“Because he’s from London.”

At the far end of the newsroom the door of the office opened and Farquarson stepped out into the newsroom. Behind him a dejected crowd of his favorite editors and subeditors had gathered, along with his star columnist and a couple of red-eyed PAs.

Farquarson cleared his throat. “Right.” He paused as if the room needed a chance to turn its attention to him, as if they weren’t waiting for him. “Well, I don’t need to tell you what’s happened today. If I do you shouldn’t fucking be here.” A polite laugh rolled around the room and stopped abruptly. He held his hands out, like a fisherman describing a fish, but stopped, shaking his head at the floor. “You’ve been…” He stopped again, swallowing hard, looking as if he might cry. He took a deep breath and when he spoke again his voice was loud: “Let’s all go and get pissed.”

A great roar of approval rose from the room, largely, Paddy suspected, gratitude at Farquarson’s managing not to break down in public. Everyone stood up and began to applaud him as Farquarson made his way through the room shaking hands and accepting grand statements of loyalty.

Paddy stayed by the wall as he came past, keeping out of the way. He had been kind to her but she meant nothing to him. He’d known most of the men in the room for ten years or more. His PA carried his coat and briefcase as she followed him two steps behind, smiling at the kindness of those he passed, gracious as a politician’s wife.

Quite quickly the room emptied through the double doors as everyone was carried in the wake of Farquarson’s departure. Paddy heard the loud burble in the stairwell and went over to the window in time to see Farquarson and his coterie burst through the fire doors, leaving them swinging open as he walked down to the Press Bar, shaking hands with the van drivers and the print setters gathered in the street. His grin was forced.

Usually she only saw it at night when she was tired but Paddy turned back to look at the suddenly empty room. It was a shabby mess. The walls were marked where chairs had banged into them, the tables scuffed and the great gray typewriters all looked ancient and tired. The first thing the new editor would ever hear about her was that she took a bribe. In times of economic crisis they always sacked the women first on the grounds that they had no one at home depending on their wages.

Paddy shook her head, her mind rolling over an endless oh-no and the panicked certainty that she’d be out of a job before the summer was over. There was nowhere else for her to go. She didn’t have much experience, her shorthand was so crap even she couldn’t understand half of it. It wasn’t just a career and a future she had to lose. They needed the money. Her mum needed the money.

She looked up and saw Reg still sitting at the desk, his head in his hands, staring terrified at the tabletop. She’d seen the same look in her father’s eyes.

She walked over to him and tugged his arm to make him stand.

“Reg, ’mon,” she said briskly. “Up.”

The red-eyed man got to his feet, looking to her for further instructions.

“Everyone’s shitting it, Reg, you’re not special.” She gestured to him to follow her and prodded and waved him through the double doors and downstairs, into the street and along the pavement.

She opened the door to the Press Bar. A wall of mildly manic cheerfulness met them. Farquarson was drinking in the middle of the room, surrounded by concentric circles of jolly men, all raising glasses and making loud, happy noise, their eyes sad and frightened.

Paddy felt the emotion catch in her throat. A great man had fallen and no amount of chirpiness would make it anything but another fucking economic tragedy. She pushed Reg in front of her. Farquarson looked to the door and saw her there, his face a little lost, unsure.

Paddy grinned a big cheerful lie for him and he returned the kindness. She pushed through the crowd.

“Boss,” she said, slapping his arm as hard as she could. “Did they sack ye ’cause you asked for my move?”

He nodded. “Aye, so you owe me a drink.”

She hit him again and pushed her way to the bar, concentrating so hard at getting through the crowd of men that she washed up between Father Richards and Half-Assed Willie, a notoriously pedantic editor who was having the arse bored off him by Richards ranting about Tony Benn’s leadership bid in a hustings-steps haranguing bawl. Half-Assed sipped his beer, increasingly desperate for a break from Richards’s tub-thumping. True socialism, the great promise of the Benn candidature, a return to nationalization and full employment.

Paddy stepped back to see if she could skirt around one or both of them but found herself penned in. Richards was the head of the union but was rarely in the office anymore. He spent most of his time off on union junkets, planning a new socialist republic. People were hungry and disgusted at the callous government of grasping capitalists. Revolution was inevitable now.

Half-Assed, usually a mild man, snapped quite suddenly, reaching across Paddy and punching Richards in the face. She jumped back as the two men tumbled off their bar seats to the sticky floor, pulling at each other, a jumble of flailing hands and legs. The crowd gathered around, delighted at the drama.

As Richards rolled past him on the floor Farquarson aimed a toe tap at his back and started a game so that soon everyone was kicking Richards, some joking, some vicious. Paddy watched Farquarson and saw that he was happy his party was going so well, pleased that it had that essential, slightly brutal tone that the newsroom had. It was more than fitting.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to find McVie’s miserable face behind her. They nodded to each other. He had a clean starched shirt on.

“You never came to see me at my new flat,” he said.

Paddy wasn’t sure she wanted to be alone with McVie but he’d given her the address and been quite insistent.

All pretense of playfulness had gone from the kicking game. Richards was getting quite badly hurt. He shouted at them to stop it and tried to sit up to defend himself, but Half-Assed was enjoying the fight and pulled him back down again, eliciting a cheer from the audience.

Farquarson looked over at Paddy, a big jolly grin on his face, and nodded her toward the door. She thumbed back to the bar, that she hadn’t bought him a drink yet. He held up a whisky in each hand and nodded her away again, still her editor, knowing that Billy would be waiting for her by the car.

It was only because she knew she would probably never see him again, but Paddy did something very out of character: she covered her mouth with her hand and blew him a kiss. Farquarson did something very out of character too: he accepted it graciously, as a friend would, with a slow blink and a big grin.

Paddy made her way to the door and looked back at the circle closing around the fight. Farquarson’s hair rose above the line of men like a puff of smoke from an encampment. She smiled sadly and pushed the door open, stepping out into the bitter cold.

II

Billy had worked under Farquarson for four years and was expressing his indignation through the art of bad driving. He veered the calls car around roundabouts, speeding toward yellow lights, letting the world know he wasn’t happy. A thick smog of radio hung between them in the car, making consolation impossible. She didn’t really want to talk or rehash the injustice. She had enough worries of her own.

They were sliding through the wet town, the deserted streets washed clear of litter and dust. It had been raining in the city for two weeks now. Paddy liked the rain, the privacy of everyone walking with their heads down and the wild wind skirling in back streets and alleys.

Thillingly wasn’t the man she had seen at Burnett’s door but she wondered if he could have been the man in the second car. She imagined him, wet and chalk faced, sitting in Vhari Burnett’s brightly lit living room staring at her malevolently, his limp fingers dripping foul river water, rising up to touch the raw ripped flesh on his cheek. It didn’t feel right. She might have been prejudiced in Thillingly’s favor because he was fat, but viciously torturing an ex-fiancée didn’t seem in keeping with his chairmanship of Amnesty.

Billy pulled the car to a stop at a set of lights and the radio noise dipped, blocked off by the valley of high office buildings.

“Billy, how did your boy get on in his tryout for the Jags?”

Billy nodded sadly. “Wee bastard passed an’ all. He’s joining the junior team.”

“Isn’t that good?”

He looked at her, sadder than before. “I’m a Gers fan. I saw ye take money off that man.” He slipped the comment in at the end, blindsiding her. “Have ye done that before?”

“I didn’t really take it. He pushed it into my hand and shut the door.”

The lights changed and Billy pulled away, swaying his head sideways, only half-believing her. They passed through a valley spot and the disabled radio blurted sharp cracks and waves of noise into the cab. Paddy sat forward and touched his shoulder, making him flinch.

“I handed it in to the police this morning. I could just have kept it.”

He nodded heavily, avoiding her eye, checking the mirror. She was going to spend as much time as possible out of the car tonight.

The Marine looked warm and inviting as they pulled up outside. Yellow light from the windows cut through the rain needling puddles in the street. Paddy had the door open before Billy pulled on the hand brake.

Her boots were squelching by the time she reached the door of the police station. The suede was developing a salt rim because she kept getting them wet. As she brushed the rain from her hair she saw McCloud at the desk again. The waiting room was empty. The warmth from the radiators had had a chance to build up without the door being opened over and over again and it was cozy inside.

Two officers came through the door from the back offices, one slapping McCloud on the shoulder as he passed him, calling him “Cloudy, ye old shite” and making him laugh. Still tittering, he spotted Paddy and called to her as he flipped open the incident book. She was heading for the space on the floor below his desk but he gestured to her to come up the side stairs so that she could see the book entries for herself. It was a mark of respect. She jogged up the steps, her footsteps cracking loudly on the wooden stairs.

McCloud was talking her through all the gimcrack calls of the night, shavings from other people’s lives, when the door behind them opened and out of the door came Sullivan, still in his shirtsleeves, clearly not expecting to get home for a while anyway. He was surprised to see Paddy and pointed at her significantly.

“You,” he said, as if she had just been in his mind.

Together, McCloud and Paddy gawped at him for a moment.

“And you,” replied McCloud on her behalf.

A sharp crack from the wooden floor made all three of them start. Newly awakened, Sullivan waved her into the white wooden corridor behind him.

Through the back wall she could hear that the quiet room she had been questioned in by Sullivan and Reid was bustling and full. Officers were laughing and cheerful despite the late hour.

“You’re working late,” she said, pleasantly, trying to sustain the chummy tone she had had with McCloud.

But Sullivan was too excited. “Thanks for coming… to see Keano, you know… earlier. Outside the door at Bearsden, did you see anyone in the room, a shape through the curtain, anything?”

She cast her mind back. “What sort of shape?”

“A big guy, bald, big in the shoulders.”

She shook her head, trying to match the description to Thillingly but he had a good head of hair. She remembered a wet fringe falling over a half-opened eye, and shuddered at the thought. Sullivan was watching her, willing her to confirm the shape.

“I told you about the suspenders guy.”

“Aye, we can’t find a match for him.” He still seemed excited.

“Did you get something off the fifty-quid note?”

He crumpled his chin, thrilled and happy, looking away.

“Blood group?” she guessed.

He shook his head. “Cocaine. Covered in it. And-”

He wanted her to guess so she did. Fingerprints took weeks for a match because the files had to be trawled through manually. “Well, not prints anyway,” she said, but Sullivan raised his eyebrows and waggled his head in a tiny figure eight.

“You got fingerprints off the note? And a match for them, a name for them, on the first day? Is Deep Blue working for you?”

He bit his bottom lip hard.

“So.” She found herself smiling. “Did they match the suspenders guy?”

“No. There’s two sets on it: one of them must be his, from when he handed it to you, but we don’t have him on file.”

“But you can use it for confirmation when you get him, can’t you?”

He looked past her.

She asked him a question he could answer. “Did the other set match prints from the house?”

“No, we didn’t get anything from inside the house.” He let his face split into a grin. “It was wiped, thoroughly cleaned.”

“But why did they go to all that trouble and not bother about the note?”

He raised his eyebrows and Paddy leaned in. “They thought I’d go out and spend it, didn’t they? They thought I’d break the note up.”

“The other set match a known name, a heavy, someone Mark Thillingly would never have gone with. Supports the idea that it wasn’t him after all.” Sullivan clasped his hands together, delighted with himself. “You can’t use any of that, obviously. Not yet.”

“You know I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” Paddy said, trying to think of a way she could use it. “The lawyers won’t let us print anything that could prejudice a trial.”

“Aye. We don’t want these people walking because you put their name in the paper before they get to court.”

“What sort of names would I be not putting in the paper?”

Sullivan leaned toward her and whispered a single word before pulling away. “Lafferty.”

III

Kate had been waiting in the car for what felt like months, sitting doubled over her knees with her eyes tightly shut as her eyes streamed and tried to flush the solid crystal from the mucous membrane. As she sat there she swore she would cut the powder with something. She should have brought the milk powder from the cottage but who thought of these things.

When she finally felt she could sit up she was refreshed and feeling sensible. She had dealt with a medical emergency calmly and on her own. Well done me, she thought, and started the engine, backing out of the space slowly across the empty car park and pulling out onto the road.

The restaurant belonged to Archie and although Archie wasn’t really her friend he had always made it clear that he liked her. He tried to grope her a couple of times, running his fat American hands over her backside when he thought they were alone in the back corridor. Sometimes he followed her to the toilet during late-night lock-ins and once she had let him touch her breast and kiss her neck before fighting him off. Archie liked her a lot.

She cruised slowly past the crescent of shops, saw the TUSKS WINE BAR sign and the bright window behind the lowered white blind. It was a wine bar really, but they did little dishes, tapas, small tastes of delicious food. She’d tried a couple of things and they seemed really very good. Chips and an egg thing. Lovely.

She passed the street nearby that they usually parked in before going to Archie’s. She found a space and was about to reverse into it when she remembered she was trying to sneak around. If she knew to look there for his car, he’d know to look there for her car. Well done me.

A sharpened pencil through a drum of paper. She shook her hand as if trying to fleck off mud. Nasty feeling. She drove around the corner and parked there, on a suburban road, tucking it in tightly behind a big van so that if he was driving past her car would be hidden.

She would have a dry white wine, large, cold, and a giggle with Archie. She might let him seduce her. He was old, wasn’t attractive but she might let him anyway. It had been days since she had even spoken to anyone else and a night with a kind friend would be nice.

Feeling slightly squeamish about it, she put her handbag over her shoulder and stepped out of the gorgeous car, locking it and trying the door handle out of habit, just to be sure. She brushed her blond hair roughly with her fingers, tucking it loosely behind her ear, and did up the gold buttons on her navy suit. As she walked along the road to Archie’s she became more aware of being seen and started to sway her hips, to roll her shoulders and pout a little. She’d have a drink with Archie, scout the place, see if she could leave the pillow there somewhere, and maybe let Archie have his way.

The heat was radiating through the glass of the large window. She remembered a hundred nights here, all conflated into one door being opened for her, one table heaving with the most expensive wines, and Archie pressing dishes on all the guys to complement the wines and enhance the experience.

She smiled along with all the guys as they laughed about something, a joke she was half-listening to, a pun about types of French mustard, and smirking smugly, pushed the door open, clip-clopping down the glazed terra-cotta stairs into the circle of tiles that marked the reception area.

The restaurant was only half-busy but every single person there dropped their cutlery and stared at the door. Puzzled, Kate smiled faintly and turned back to look over her shoulder. There was no one behind her. She turned back and realized that they were all staring at her, gawping, being very very rude.

She tutted and adjusted the strap on her handbag, moving it up her shoulder and looking around for Phillipe, Archie’s maître d’. She didn’t have to wait. Archie himself came straight out of the back room, barreling across the floor when he saw her.

Kate flung her arms up in a great big glorious greeting. “Hello, darling.”

Archie took hold of her wrist, twisting it so that it actually hurt a bit, and pulled her outside, almost dragging her up the three semicircular steps to the street. Her handbag slid down her arm, bumping heavily on the tiles.

Outside, Archie turned to her, pressing his face an inch from hers. “Go away. I never want to see you here again.”

She dipped her chin down and looked up at him coquettishly. “Don’t be a meanie, Archie, I’ve had a rotten couple of days.” She ran her finger down the buttons on his shirtfront. “Be nice to me.”

“He’s after you, you know that?”

“I know, I know, it’s a misunderstanding. He thinks I did a naughty but I’m only naughty in a good way.” She smiled up at him, hoping he would get the sexy hint and take her home with him, look after her. She didn’t care that he was old tonight. She didn’t care that hair grew wildly out of his nose and the neck of his shirt. She didn’t care that he only had a restaurant. She wanted to touch someone and be touched. She needed human contact and a place to go.

“Archie.” Her hand slid up his shirt to the shoulder. It was a cheap shirt, she could hear the nylon fibers letting off a rip-zip sound as her fingertips slid across it. “You like me a lot, don’t you?”

He put his hairy fingers over hers and peeled her hand off his chest. “You know, Kate, I don’t like you. I think you’re a vacant twat. But there was a time when I’d have fucked you.” He held up his finger, drawing her attention to the salient point. “See, that’s different. I’d have fucked you because you were with him. But now-” He flicked his finger up and down her. “Now, I wouldn’t let you pay to suck my dick.”

It was the rudest anyone had ever been to her. Kate stepped back and stared at him. He was fat and old and wore cheap shirts and had hair everywhere. She was the prettiest girl in her year, the best-looking woman at the Marina Club, the biggest prize at each and every ball she had ever attended. She made a face like a little fist, knowing it suited her, playing her best card, and swung an open hand at his great fat head.

Archie grabbed her wrist and held her arm high. He was utterly unmoved. “Fuck off and don’t come back.”

Kate bit her lip. “You’re rude and vulgar,” she said and turned away, walking along the row of shut and shuttered shops, a designer clothes shop, a tobacconists’ that sold excellent cigars, an estate agents’. Lovely shops. She should come back here when they were open.

She felt Archie’s fat puffy eyes on her back all the way to the corner but she didn’t look back. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

She retained her composure until she climbed back into the car and locked the door. No one had ever spoken to her like that and she couldn’t believe he’d had the nerve. Rude, fat man. She let him touch her breast once, slip his fat, hairy hand into the silk blouse she was wearing and give her a squeeze.

She flipped down the sun shade over the passenger seat and turned it toward her, to check her hair and makeup in the mirror. She was far enough away from the strip of mirror to see the reflection of her whole face in it.

Kate gasped. It was too dark for color but she saw black tendrils coming from her nose, a thin black mess with bits, like an octopus climbing out of her nose legs first, a black string across her cheek into her hair, black into her mouth, black all over her chin. Her hair had black in it, in a lump over her ear. The skin under her eyes was puffy and blackened, as if she had been punched. She smiled hopefully at herself, a thin, nervous parody of the glorious smile she habitually gave herself in the mirror. She was missing a tooth, next to her front tooth. She didn’t even remember losing it. She looked like a tramp.

No wonder Archie had told her to leave. She looked awful, and she was awful, and in a sudden moment of clarity she knew Vhari was dead because of what she had done. Unable to take it anymore, she looked away from the mirror and saw the car slice down the empty street, not seeing her tucked in neatly behind the van. A BMW, a big model, with two men inside.