The Dead Hour

I

The night shift were herded together in one corner of the newsroom. They stood unnaturally close to each other, an ill-assorted crowd, nervously straightening ruined ties and clearing smoky throats. Everyone was trying to hide behind someone else, all avoiding eye contact with the man in front of them.

Andrew Ramage was delivering an address to the troops. Paddy could see immediately that he was from the same place as them. He was working-class like most of the journalists and subs. He’d had the same paltry chances as them and despised them for not getting on as he had. She could hear it in his rounded London accent, see it in the expensive cut of his clothes which he touched every so often, stroking the seam of his steel gray suit jacket, touching the perfect cuff of his white shirt. She could see the thickness of a neck that had done hard physical graft at some point in his life. Farquarson had been privately educated, a middle-class boy who understood that he was from a privileged social stratum compared to the men who worked for him and had tried hard to compensate. He always had a gentler air about him.

Ramage paced the newsroom in front of them, crossing back and forth in front of the open door of Farquarson’s empty office. His hands were clasped behind his back in a Napoleonic gesture, uncoupling occasionally for an adamant wave or an air splice.

The night shift on any paper were the front line, he told them, the commandos. The night shift formed the back shop boys-and girl, he nodded at Paddy, a lopsided smile on his face. They caught the unexpected stories as they came in and without them the paper would be far, far less something or other. Paddy’s attention wandered. Neither she nor, she suspected, anyone else from the night shift recognized their jobs from Ramage’s description. They were only employed because missing the huge story that broke in the middle of the night every ten years or so, an earthquake in Armenia that killed tens of thousands, the unexpected death of a Soviet leader, would ruin the paper’s reputation and advertisers would stop buying space. The night shift knew they were nothing more than an insurance policy against Suits for Sirs and Bejam’s Freezer Stores moving their account to the Glasgow Herald.

Ramage raved on, shaming them with hyperbole until many of them began to wonder if they should have been doing something very noble at night instead of dozing or scratching their bollocks or fighting among themselves like kids in detention. He wanted them to know that the entrepreneurial spirit sweeping Britain was going to be welcomed at the News. Anyone could come straight to him with a story suggestion. Any time of the day or night, just knock on his door. It’s about selling papers, and stories sell papers. Let’s never forget that.

Then Ramage gave them the death blow: slightly less than half of them would be superfluous. The tight crowd drew in a collective breath but no one complained or spoke. Someone at the back sniggered and someone else struggled to clear an unclearable throat. The News needed producers, product. Come up with product and you’ll be safe, he said. Anyone who didn’t like the new regime could fuck off. Clear? He fixed them carefully with his gorgon gaze, hoping someone would go and get their coat and save him a big payout. The room was still.

He reminded them again that stories sell papers and left, walking through the silent room with every eye following him.

They stood for a moment, stiff necked, watching the door. A tentative voice from the back of the room muttered, “Cunt.” Ramage didn’t fly back into the room and sack the voice, so it was said again, louder, and another faceless voice agreed. Paddy looked around. Eyes were wide and frightened, falling on their neighbor, assessing where they each came in a ladder of indispensability. Paddy had no direct contemporaries. Her job was a one-off so she was probably safe. Unless they brought in someone from the day shift to replace her. Or used an agency.

The miserable group dissolved, floating slowly back to their desks. Most of them were exiled to the night shift because they were unpopular and unsympathetic. Richards wouldn’t fight for them. Allowing Ramage to decimate the night shift could well be Richards’s price for concessions on the changes to the day shift.

Paddy spoke to the retreating crowd. “Shouldn’t we do something about this? Object or something?”

A sub turned back to her. “Either they cut the staff or the whole paper goes down. Richards knows that. The NUJ knows that. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Won’t the print unions do something?”

The sub stopped and looked at her sadly. “Meehan, that’s why the management are refusing to buy the new presses. If the technology comes through the print union’ll be dead in five years and we’ll be doing all this ourselves. New editors like to slash and burn and make their mark anyway.” He flicked a finger at the door. “He’s making a list of everyone who doesn’t come up with a story idea. It could be a massacre.”

She was halfway down the stairs before realizing she hadn’t any ideas for any stories about anything.

II

Ramage’s office was on the editorial floor, one level below the newsroom. Because no one but the board and admin staff came to editorial during Farquarson’s reign, the corridor always seemed to have the heavy scent of lemon in it, as if the cleaners had just been and no one had passed through to stir up the air. But doors were opened into some of the rooms now and boxes piled up along walls where people were laying claim to the space. It felt like the emergence of a new class in a new regime, splitting off from the old journalistic camaraderie and boxing themselves away from everyone else.

Ramage’s name was on a door that she remembered from a scary incident a long time ago. Standing looking at it now made her feel sick and frightened. She knocked, waited for the call, and then opened the door to the conference room, the biggest on the floor.

Ramage was sitting a mile away, watching the door from behind a massive dark oak desk. The desk was built like a small castle: solid, square, and elaborately ornamented with carvings of apples, finials, oyster shells, all topped with a lush green leather top. It shamed the nasty industrial carpet and navy blue Hessian walls. All he had in front of him was a telephone, a leatherbound notebook, and a gold fountain pen. His chair was red leather, mounted on an oak frame that tipped back. He wore a crisp blue shirt and black suspenders, tipped back in his seat, tapping his teeth with the pen, and looking her up and down.

“I’m Meehan, calls car night shift.” She didn’t like him looking at her. She’d have been rude if he wasn’t sacking people all over the place.

“What do you want?”

“I’m on a story, Strathclyde police’re claiming the Vhari Burnett murderer was a guy who committed suicide the other night. I saw the guy at the Burnett door and it wasn’t him. The police saw him too but they’re sitting on the evidence.”

She saw an excited flicker in his eyes but he sat forward and blinked, hiding it from her.

“Thing is, the story isn’t ready yet, it’s my word against theirs and I need to get some other evidence before I run with it.”

“Good. Good story, it’s got legs. Burnett was a good-looking bird, it’ll keep going.”

She couldn’t disguise her lip curl and he saw it.

“Meehan, don’t give me any women’s lib shit.” Ramage hissed the word. “I haven’t got time for that crap.”

“No, Boss.” She spoke so flatly, eyes half-closed, that they both heard her telling him that she hated him.

“I had a girl working for me in the last place. She had bigger tits than you but I like girls on the floor, gives the place a different atmosphere. I’m a definite fan of the female species.” He smiled a toothy smile that never got anywhere near his eyes. Paddy smiled back, matching his warmth, and considered stabbing him in the face with his letter opener.

III

Both of the drivers involved in the crash stood sullenly on the steep motorway grass verge, arms crossed, twenty feet apart, ignoring each other while the police and firemen and ambulance men chatted around the fused cars. The whole west carriageway was shut down, a cordon farther back keeping the few midnight motorists waiting until all the debris could be safely picked off the road.

The driver of the Mini Metro said it was an unfortunate mistake; according to the Ford Anglia it was an act of vicious stupidity. The two cars moving along the motorway at two thirty a.m. had made contact in the middle lane after the Metro, realizing that he was about to miss the off-ramp for his exit, slid across from the inside lane without looking or indicating. The cars had somehow locked flanks and waltzed across all three carriageways, failing to turn over because they were stuck together.

When the police arrived the men were jammed in their cars, side by side, screaming abuse at each other. They didn’t shut up until the firemen threatened to piss off and leave them like that. Once they’d been cut out and the ambulance service had the chance to examine them, neither man was found to have a bruise or a mark on him. Both cars were write-offs.

It was a nice call to be on. There were no fights to break up, no one had died, and the emergency service lingered on the empty carriageway in a moment of unexpected bonhomie, like a town fair held on a frozen river.

Half an hour ago Billy had gone to find a phone box to ask the office to send the photographer out. Frankie Miles had turned up with a ton weight of photographic equipment in a shoulder bag and then realized he didn’t have a News chitty for the return taxi ride. He couldn’t walk far with the heavy bag and wouldn’t find a roving black cab at this time of night without walking to a rank anyway. Billy and Paddy offered to run him back, so now he and Billy were standing by the car, smoking silently as they rested their bums on the warm bonnet and waited for her.

Paddy was finishing up her notes, checking the junction number on the overhead sign, when she noticed the funny officer from Thillingly’s drowning holding forth to a crowd of uniformed officers. Remembering Dub, she walked over and joined them, momentarily distracting his audience and causing him to mistime an important line. She held up her hands and waited for him to finish his story.

“So I go, ‘That woman’s had more miscarriages than the Argentine judiciary.’”

The men laughed dutifully and drifted off.

“Thanks very much; you just ruined my story.”

“I didn’t know you were in full flow. I wanted to ask you something. The river death the other night, is it definitely murder?”

“Well, yeah, that’s how they’re dealing with it.”

“Was there some physical evidence, then? Was the torn cheek a wound from something?”

“Nah, they found a bit of stick in there from the river. But the guy was functioning fine on the actual day, his wife said. He left a note in his car, didn’t say why really, just blah blah can’t go on.”

“What kind of car was it?”

“A Golf GTI, top spec.” He nodded approvingly. “Nice.”

“Right, right.” Paddy glanced down the road. “Ever heard of a thug called Lafferty?”

“Bobby Lafferty?”

She wasn’t sure of his first name but repeated Sullivan’s description: “Big guy? Broad shoulders, bald head?”

“Aye. I arrested him for drunk driving a few years ago. He was so pissed he was in the backseat looking for the steering wheel.”

She laughed loud, pleasing him enough to prompt another story.

“I was lucky he was too pissed to fight me. He bit someone on the eye, ye know. Blinded the guy. He’ll do anyone, his relatives, his school pals, anyone.”

Paddy watched him, an obsequious smile on her face, privately observing. Lafferty was a known criminal and Vhari Burnett was a prosecutor. There had to be a link between them. She might have been prosecuting him for something, something that would cause him to attack her.

“He kicked his dog to death. His own dog. Can you imagine the mentality of the man? Threw it out the window, from twenty up.” His eyes were shining and if she blocked out the words he could be talking about a great sportsman or a war hero.

“Anything recent? Has he been charged with anything?”

“Nothing I’ve heard of. Doesn’t mean anything, though. They’re always up to something. Animals, these people, animals.” He nodded at her to concur but she was thinking about Lafferty and Thillingly and Burnett and she missed her cue by a half beat.

“Aye,” she said. “Aye, right enough.”

He looked wary. “You don’t know Lafferty, do you?”

“Like you, I also believe violent people to be animals.” The grammar was all wrong. She was talking like a bad robot. She giggled, looking away down the black glistening road to the three-car police cordon. “Oh, dear. Have you ever done continuous night shift for months on end?”

He frowned. “We do rotation shifts.”

“Well, this is my fourth consecutive month. If I seem a bit odd or my timing’s off… it’s not because… I don’t mean anything by it.”

“Yes.” She could already see him forming a story about the journalist who couldn’t speak. “You seem to be aware of English yet not familiar with it. Is this your first time in our country?”

She laughed so hard her head reeled on her neck. “Okay.” She calmed herself down. “Right, let’s give up on conversation and just get to the important bits. Does Lafferty work alone?”

A policeman by the squad car twenty feet away called across to them.

“Nah, he’s a hired hand.” He looked over her shoulder to the squad car and saw that he was being shouted back. “I need to go.”

She meant to grab his arm and stop him slipping past but she misjudged the distance and took hold of his first two fingers, squeezed to check if she was indeed holding his hand.

They were standing shoulder to shoulder, like flamenco dancers. He smiled down at her, not displeased at the intimacy. Opening her fist and releasing his fingers, she considered acting as if the flirty gesture was deliberate. He was attractive and funny, he was tall and he wasn’t Sean, all good things, but she imagined touching him, kissing him and being kissed, and nothing stirred anywhere. All she felt was a little bit hungry. He was definitely funny, though; she should tell him about the Comedy Club and invite him to meet Dub McKenzie.

“My friend-” She hesitated, wondering if it was a good idea to invite him out after touching his hand, and realized that she sounded as if she was addressing him as “friend.” “Um, my friend’s a comedian. He’s doing a stand-up gig tomorrow night at the comedy club in Blackfriar’s. You should come and meet him.”

Surprised, he raised his eyebrows, smiling as though he had just seen her tits. “Okay. Maybe see you there.”

“I’m just saying. Comedy’s a good thing. I’m not asking ye out on a date.”

“’Course not.” His glance flickered down to her neck and he licked his bottom lip, leaving a glistening trail that glinted silver in the dark. “’Course not. Mibbi see you there, then.”

There was no saving the situation. He smiled at her, eyes narrowed so that she couldn’t see what was in them. He swaggered back to his colleagues who were watching him, curious about wee Paddy Meehan grabbing his hand.

The cold white motorway lights glinted at her from his left hand and it took her a moment to realize that it was a ring. The joker was married.