The Dead Hour

I

Bernie sipped cold tea from the plastic flask mug and glanced at his watch. It was late but he was into the rhythm of the work now, lost in it. The jack was well fitted under the car, he had his tools fanned out around the boogie board so that he could reach them easily without having to get up. It was a complicated job, requiring concentration, and any cracks or crevasses in his thinking were filled with the jabber of a phone-in on the radio.

The tea was bitter but he drank it down, hoping to sate his hunger. He hadn’t eaten for six hours but didn’t want to go back to his flat for food and sit, wide awake, thinking about Kate and Vhari and glancing down at the “sorry, sorry” message on the newspaper. Vhari dead and Kate gone. The police had left him in no doubt as to how Vhari died, either; they spared him no detail because they suspected him, briefly.

When the police made him look at photographs of a bloody trail through the house and Vhari crumpled at the end of it, Bernie sobbed so hard that he threw up. The policemen made him breathe into a paper bag and the smell of his own vomit got stuck around his nose and under his chin.

He frowned at his watch. It was two thirty. If he worked on until three or four he’d be so tired when he got home that he might even sleep.

He was sliding back under the car when the radio discussion turned to the morality of private schools. He remembered waiting at the bus stop with Vhari and Kate on wet winter mornings, fighting with each other as a way of keeping warm, the girls’ bare legs mottled pink from the cold. He remembered the journey back as well, standing at the bus stop, hoping hard that none of the kids from the local comprehensive would come past and see them there in their blue Academy uniforms. He was the only boy at their bus stop until Paul came to the school. He came in fifth year and everything changed forever.

Paul Neilson had been expelled from Fettes boarding school for stealing. They all knew that even before he started because someone’s brother was at Fettes and told them. A lot of the girls had decided not to talk to him. All the good girls. Vhari said it was wrong to treat people meanly because of rumors and would try to be kind to him. Kate, he noted at the time, said nothing.

But then Paul arrived and everyone changed their minds. Paul wasn’t just handsome, he was cool as well. He wore his rugby shirt with the collar turned up and exuded a vague sense of rebel threat. Kate, the prettiest girl in the school, was captivated from the first bus journey. She watched him introduce himself to the group, invite questions, tell them where he lived, that his dad had a business importing from South Africa and what the turnover was every year. She watched him with her pretty gray eyes, curling a blond trestle of hair behind her ear. By the time they stepped off the bus at Mount Florida she deigned to smile at him. He walked up the road with them even though his house was in a different direction. By the next morning Kate and Paul stood apart from the waiting crowd, backing up against the wall, talking privately. If Bernie had known what would happen he would have dragged Kate away by the hair.

Down in the darkness under the engine, tears rolled down Bernie’s temples into his hair and he shook his head. She’d stolen a fucking car from him. Even for Kate that was very bad. The Mini wasn’t worth much but he didn’t have much. Just as well it wasn’t a punter’s car, in for a service. Everyone she knew had more money than him, but then he was quite glad she had chosen to steal from him and not them. The people she knew now were not people you wanted to piss off.

The discussion on the radio moved on to yuppies and tax evasion, and Bernie, unable to ignore the insistent hunger pangs in his stomach, finished off retightening everything and slipped out from under the car. He still wasn’t tired.

Trying to listen to the fuck-wit callers on the radio, down with this and up with that, he lowered the jack on the car slowly, bringing the front wheels back to the floor and pulling the jack out from under it. A man with a Birmingham accent was railing against the south of England inflicting the Thatcher government on the rest of the country for a second term as Bernie picked up his spanners and began to wipe the oil off them. Old news.

Bernie walked over to the table and crouched down to open the top drawer of his toolbox. He pulled it out, sat the spanners in place, and shoved it back. It didn’t close. He opened it again, checking along the lip to see if anything was sticking out but nothing was. He tried shoving it back in but again it stuck out half an inch, just far enough for him to be able to see inside. Something was stuck around the back.

Crouched by the side of the table, Bernie waddled sideways and saw the corner of the clear plastic sheeting. He smiled, thinking it was food, something he could pick the mold off of that would keep him going for another hour or so. He pinched the plastic corner between two fingers and pulled. It was heavy and bigger than a sandwich wrapper. He pulled and it kept coming until he had to reach blindly with both hands and pull it out. It was the size of a small cushion, square and heavy.

The clear plastic had been folded over many times, the inside obscured by white dust, but the much used silver duct tape, losing its adhesiveness, had rolled off a slit in the front when he lifted it and Bernie knew what was inside. White powder spilled out into a little pile on the floor. Panicked, Bernie found his breath stuck in his throat like a fish bone. He couldn’t exhale.

This was why Kate was so, so sorry. This was why she loved him. Stealing a car, inadvertently getting Vhari murdered, they were minor sins in comparison to this.

II

The sharp morning wind hurtled across George Square, eddying around monuments to the forgotten heroes of forgotten wars. It was the coldest place in the city center. The brisk wind gathered speed across the wide open plain, pushing people into side streets.

Paddy walked past the giant post office building and crossed over to the square, in front of the turreted City Chambers, around the imposing white cenotaph, and saw them: a small gathering of people dressed in white with placards at the far end of the square. Some wore white sweaters or overcoats, one a thin anorak. They were huddled together lighting small, sputtering candles with a Bic, guarding the flames carefully with their hands and bodies and coats.

She had eaten a whole bag of Lemon Bonbons on the way here, buying them as a treat for her mum, from the sweet shop at the station. She had one bonbon, just for a taste, and then another and then another one after that, and again and again until the bag was obviously half empty and she either had to throw them away or eat them all and buy another bag. Her teeth were coated in sugar, squeaking from the bicarbonate in the sherbet.

Queasy with glucose and guilt, she approached across the square and spotted a familiar green sports jacket hovering in front of the pristine line, breaking it up. It was JT, notebook in hand, with his head tilted to the side, a stance that always denoted heavy questioning. He’d heard about Thillingly and beaten her to it. She stopped, sighing with defeat, shutting her eyes. The wind brushed her hair from her ear and suddenly Burns was nuzzling into her neck, his hot breath damp on her skin. She gave a pleasured shiver at the memory.

Sex had always been a bewildering fumble that she got distracted from but never lost in. She had a moment in every sexual encounter when she was lost in everyday considerations: where she had left her house keys, would her diet work, should she get her hair cut. But not this time. It was because she had no respect for Burns. She smiled and opened her eyes, finding herself flushed, remembering where she was and what she was meant to be doing here.

The green sports jacket moved along the line to a tall woman. Cursing, she walked up to JT and stood at his elbow, listening in as unobtrusively as she could.

He was quizzing a tall woman with an aristocratic nose and thick, lush gray hair pulled back and up into a leather clasp.

“For the release of Nelson Mandela.” Her accent was soft and English but authoritative somehow, as if she was used to public speaking. “He’s a lawyer who’s been imprisoned in South Africa -”

“For starting a violent uprising.” JT spoke quickly as he always did when he was being confrontational. “Some people would say you’re supporting violent criminals. What would you say to those people?”

“Well,” the woman replied, smiling uncomfortably, “Amnesty’re not supporting his release as a prisoner of conscience. We’re arguing for his right to a fair trial.”

JT’s pencil hovered idly over the page. He glanced up, waiting for her to say something outrageous.

“You ought to write that down,” said the woman. “That’s an important point.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll remember it. There are people who say he’s the head of the South African equivalent of the IRA. What would you say to those people?”

Paddy stood behind him and listened to him wittering. He wasn’t asking about Thillingly at all and she wondered what the hell he was doing here. Amnesty held their candlelit vigil in George Square every Saturday, each week for a different person. Mandela was a controversial choice because he had supported an armed struggle after the Sharpeville massacre.

“Stuck for a story?” she asked.

JT turned and looked at her suspiciously. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, you know, I heard they were supporting Nelson Mandela this week. Just wanted to ask them about it.”

“Yeah, looking for something to dazzle Ramage with? Well, you’ve missed your chance with this baby.” JT smiled smugly. “I’ve just done it. And now I’m going back to write it up.” He snapped his notebook shut and walked away. Paddy watched him saunter across the square, shaking her head slowly, staying disappointed in case he looked back.

The Amnesty supporters formed a solemn semicircle around two posters: one the Amnesty sign and the other a typewritten summary of Mandela’s case below a slightly blurred photograph of him as an earnest young man, his Afro in a side parting. Above it, broken Letroset letters in purple felt pen read 20 YEARS WITHOUT A TRIAL.

Paddy stamped her feet against the freezing cold. The protesters looked at her, distrustful, avoiding eye contact because she knew JT.

“Look, um…” She stepped back, keen to differentiate herself from bombastic JT. “I don’t know how to approach this. I’m a very junior, not an important reporter like him”-she thumbed after JT-“but I wanted to ask you about a man called Mark Thillingly.”

The line rippled, disconcerted. A man at the far end shuffled his feet; someone coughed. A delicate girl in the middle of the lineup sobbed suddenly, covering her face. Her neighbor put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her into his chest, holding the back of her head as she convulsed into the cables of his white Aran knit. He looked accusingly at her.

“Mark was our friend.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Paddy. “Please, I don’t want to upset anyone.”

The girl sobbed afresh, noisily gulping air. Paddy noted the gray-haired woman roll her eyes, so she turned and spoke to her instead. “I do know that Mark was a good man.”

The woman took Paddy by the elbow, pulling her aside. “Mark was a good man, you’re right. He was very committed.” She nodded back to the sobbing girl. “Natasha hardly knew him but she enjoys any drama to the hilt.”

“I’m sorry he died.”

The woman checked she was out of earshot of the others and dropped her voice confidentially. “His suicide was a shock.”

Paddy matched her tone. “Why?”

The woman shook her head. “He was here last week. Seemed fine. Upbeat. Something must have happened between then and Wednesday night.”

Paddy looked down to the cenotaph, scratching around for one more question. “He was a lawyer, wasn’t he? Where did he work?”

“The Easterhouse Law Center.”

Paddy nodded at her shoes. “Right.”

The woman was looking at her curiously. “You knew that already.”

It was so cold that the woman’s nose blushed red, her eyes narrowed against the wind, the skin comfortable in that position, and Paddy noticed that she looked rugged, as though she spent a lot of time outside. She imagined her briskly walking around the grounds of a grand estate, small dogs yapping at her heels.

“Could it be anything to do with Vhari Burnett’s murder?”

The woman nodded sadly. “Yes, poor Vhari. She was a member as well. Mark brought her to our first meeting. They were an item back then.”

“An item back when?”

“Years ago.” She thought about it. “Five years ago? About that. That’s when we started this.” She turned and looked back at the group, taking in the crappy poster and Natasha crying, dry-eyed. She raised an appalled eyebrow and hummed to herself.

“And Mark was married then?”

“Oh, no, he went out with Vhari years ago. They knew each other at law school. Before he married Diana. I think their families lived near each other.”

Paddy nodded. “Why did they split up? Did she chuck him?”

She smiled at Paddy’s nerve. “Other way ’round, actually. He went off with the woman who became his wife. Vhari stopped coming to meetings but she was still committed. Wrote letters from home, made a financial contribution, that sort of thing.”

“Was Mark ever violent?”

“Mark?”

“Yeah, was he ever violent?”

“The police think he killed her, don’t they?”

“So I’ve heard. “

The woman thought about it for a moment. “Honestly, I don’t think he was even fit enough to be violent. He got breathless walking up hills. He smoked like mad and was a bit-” Her eyes flickered down to Paddy’s body but she stopped herself from looking. “Chubby.”

Paddy nodded at her notebook, trying not to blush.

“He was sad when he split up with Vhari.” The woman spoke quickly, trying to brush over the implied slight. “He talked to me about it, seemed to be confiding but I think, really, he was trying to get me on his side. Mark was a natural politician. Everything was an opportunity to lobby. He was very measured.”

“It wasn’t a very nice thing to do, go off with someone else.”

“Well, his wife, Diana, she’s the insistent sort. Vhari was much more like Mark, very even-tempered. Diana has a bit more fire.” She wouldn’t look at Paddy.

“You don’t like her.”

The woman smiled wide. “No. Diana gave up work after she married. I can’t abide women who won’t work if they’re able. I’m like Vhari: came from money but refused to take it and worked. I’ve never married. I’ve always supported myself.”

“You’ve made your own way.”

“I have.”

They smiled at each other, these two working women, both keeping jobs from needy men, betraying nature by escaping the kitchen sink, these two women who were out in the world, active not passive, subjects not objects.

III

Paddy was walking calmly away, feeling smug and superior when she thought of JT just ahead of her in the street. She bolted after him, hoping she had correctly guessed his route back to the office, and caught sight of him a hundred yards ahead, about to turn the corner into Albion Street and the office. She jogged on, losing her breath, and caught his sleeve.

“Wait, wait, JT, I need to trade for a favor.”

He turned to look at her face-on, skeptical that she had anything to offer him.

“I’ll do all your library searches for Mandela on Monday in exchange for a couple of taxi chitties. You’ll get your Ramage story done twice as fast. He might even kiss you with his big red face.”

His head recoiled on his neck. “What do you need a chitty for?”

“To take a cab journey at the paper’s expense,” she said, acting stupid.

“Going to see a boyfriend, no doubt.” He started a smile, trying to engage in a bit of sexual banter, but she left her face flaccid and he gave up. “Mandela and one other search.”

“No, just Mandela,” she said flatly. It was no skin off his nose to give her chitties. They were presigned forms to give to the paper’s taxi firm and, as chief reporter, JT had an infinite supply, never questioned by management. They were supposed to be for office business only but she saw him climb in a firm’s cab on his way home most evenings.

He watched her, grinding his teeth and looking for a chink he could exploit. “Full-time search,” she said. “And one on his wife, Winnie, as well.”

He pulled a small pad out of his inner pocket and tore off two yellow slips, handing them over.

Paddy took them greedily, checking to make sure they were signed.

“What’s it for, then? You doing a story?”

She smiled up at him, pleased by the small wondering throb in his voice. “I’m doing an exposé of the illegal taxi chitty trade. And now I’m making my excuses and leaving.”

Pleased with the line, she turned and walked away.

IV

Kate found herself driving the battered Mini through streets so familiar they made her feel quite sentimental. Every street corner and hedge held a memory of an event or a person or a rumor or a game. Mount Florida. As she neared her parents’ house she could name the family who lived in every second house back then, recall summer afternoons spent in most of the front gardens. There was the school bus stop and the wall where she first met Paul Neilson.

She hadn’t meant to come here really, but was drawn by a memory. She had her snuffbox with her, had taken a good dose and knew she could do anything.

She looked at the house. Daddy’s lawn was as neat as a sheet of glass, leading up to the small thirties detached house, perfectly tidy and completely unobjectionable. They could have had a bigger home. They could have had a big home in Bearsden like the one her grandfather had, with a bedroom each and a field at the back. Their parents made sure the children knew that they could have afforded a lot of things, but were being actively denied. Money was available, but the children weren’t worthy of it. Their school fees were expensive. They all knew, in itemized detail, how much food cost, how much their uniforms set the family budget back, how dear each holiday was. Their parents’ ever-changing wills dangled over everything like a Damoclean sword, casting a threatening shadow, spoiling every banquet. It affected them each differently: Vhari stopped caring about money and Bernie refused to take a penny off them. Kate liked money, though. As soon as she got some, from Paul admittedly, she splurged on jewelry and trips and clothes, lovely lovely things.

She stayed in the car, watching her parents’ house to get a measure of it as she rifled blind in her handbag and felt the cold surface of the silver snuffbox. She couldn’t see any movement inside the house and a suffocating sense of dread came over her. She hadn’t seen her parents for three years. If she went in now she’d have to tolerate their shock at her appearance. They’d be crying about Vhari now she was dead when they had been so nasty about her when she was alive.

A fat girl in an old green leather coat sloped past her. Kate watched her in the rearview mirror. She looked cheap; a loose thread was hanging from the hem of the coat. She had a small rucksack slung between her shoulder blades and spiky hair, as if she’d cut it herself. More interestingly, she stopped across the road, at the gate to the Thillingly house.

Kate looked back at her parents’ house and wished herself back at the start of all of this. She’d play it differently if she had another chance. Moderate her intake, scurry money aside into a secret account. Now she had nothing but the pillow. And Knox. She still had Knox. And she knew where he lived.