The Dead Hour

I

The clippings library was a pocket of calm order in the chaos of the newspaper. Helen, the chief librarian, dressed like a real librarian would, in tweed pencil skirts and jerseys. Her glasses hung on a red beaded chain around her neck. Paddy had never liked her when she was a copyboy but Helen seemed to have mellowed since Paddy got her promotion. Paddy sometimes dropped in for a chat when she was feeling beleaguered, a fellow female in the middle of a gang of nasty men. The rumors about Burns would be all over the newsroom by now and she wanted to linger in the safety of the library.

Helen dropped an envelope onto the counter and smiled at Paddy. “Here’s one set of Robert Lafferty clippings. We’ve got Neilson the musician but nothing for a Paul Neilson.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Not as much as a birth announcement. There’s so many clippings for the name Knox I’d need to let you in here to trawl through them yourself. Will I give you the first twenty sets?”

“Uch, no, Helen, I don’t have time this morning.”

“Yeah, I heard you’re going in front of the police inquiry into the Bearsden murder this afternoon.”

Paddy flinched. “Who told you that?”

“Shug Grant was in. He’s covering the inquiry.”

It was bad. Shug Grant already hated her for her Margaret Mary jibe and he was a loudmouthed bastard. He once slept with a sub ed’s wife after a party and came in the next day and told everyone. If he was reporting on the inquiry half of Scotland would know about the fifty quid before the first edition went to press.

The doors opened behind Paddy and a copyboy came in and stood next to her, his hands on the partition, looking around expectantly, but Helen ignored him.

“I heard,” she said quietly, “that the squad car took twenty-five minutes to get to the house. Someone’ll get their books.”

“I thought it was a closed committee?”

“It is, but Grant knows someone on it.”

Paddy smiled nervously and lifted the envelope. “Shug knows someone everywhere, doesn’t he?”

“Seems to.”

She hesitated on the stairs but climbed them slowly, making for the newsroom. She couldn’t dodge them forever or they’d know she was scared.

Slipping gingerly through the doors, she settled on the nearest seat, at the edge of the sports desk, and took the Lafferty clippings out of the envelope.

She was listening with half an ear to what was happening around her and sensed a murmur of something strange, a kind of hysterical edge to the atmosphere in the newsroom. Men were smiling fixed grins, looking busy, moving fast and typing, working unashamedly hard. At the epicenter of the oddness was a man she had never seen before, a dark, small, hairy man, simian, square-shouldered and no-necked, typing hard and looking pleased with himself, an awkward, angular smirk on his blue-shadowed face.

She nudged a fat sports boy sitting two seats away. “Who’s that?”

He glanced over, averting his eyes immediately. “JT’s replacement. From London. Famous hound, apparently. Going to make us all get our act together.” He dropped his voice. “Spy.”

“Did JT come back?”

He shook his head. “Not even having a drink out for him. He was told by phone. Don’t come in. Two subs got the bump yesterday and Kevin Hatcher as well. Fair enough. They’re keeping a book on how long it’ll take Kevin to drink himself to death.”

Paddy hadn’t seen Kevin sober since she started on the paper. He was the picture editor and miraculously managed to do an adequate job while so drunk he could hardly form consonants. The old soaks used Kevin as a measure to justify their own drinking: if they got as bad as him they’d stop, but no one ever was as bad as him.

She looked around the room at the fixed grins of fifty people moving around a room trying to look unaffiliated. When news of her fifty quid trickled back she’d be nothing more than a whisper under the breath too.

Sweating with nerves, she tried to still her mind by getting lost in her reading. Lafferty was a graduate of the Christian Brothers reform school, a brutal regime that created a common background for the most violent men in Glasgow. Bad boys from all over the region were sent there at twelve, their well-being and moral development left to monks who were not much more than spiteful, frustrated boys themselves. It was Lord of the Flies without table manners.

The cases against Lafferty tended to be assault charges for pub fights or extortion rackets. There was an unproven murder charge: a prostitute had been thrown off a multistory car park, according to one witness, because she wasn’t kicking back enough money. Lafferty was pictured outside the court, younger but no less wired than he had been when she saw him being questioned, pleased at the outcome, his tiny eyes making him look like an angry pig about to charge.

Paddy thought about the fifty-quid note Neilson had given her. Ramage would be perfectly justified in sacking her: he wouldn’t even need to pay her a severance package.

She looked up at the newsroom, at the men walking back and forth, delivering copy to their subs, typing hard on the heavy machines. Shug Grant was sitting at a desk, watching her from across the room, chewing gum with his mouth open. Fluorescent light glinted off his oily forehead. He raised his hand and pointed a long finger, jabbing the tip at her, and stood up, holding her eye as he walked across the newsroom toward her. “Just back from the inquiry. Typing up my notes.”

“Aye.” She affected unconcern. “Great.”

“You’re up today, yeah? Ye nervous?”

“Why would I be nervous?”

“Tam Gourlay was there this morning. Came over very badly. He contradicted you about the cars. Said they weren’t BMWs.” She hadn’t told anyone but the police about the cars. Shug was letting slip the unimportant details to let her know he was connected. It would suit the police case if she was discredited.

“So, you know someone on the inside?”

He pressed his lips together in a mock smile. If he had known about the money, he would have hinted at it. Sullivan had kept his word. The thought of being unceremoniously sacked was awful, but the idea that it might give Shug a good story stung even more.

“Who is it, Shug? It’s not Sullivan. The minutes secretary? Is it the woman taking notes?”

Targeting the secretarial staff was the obvious move. Journalists would find out where they drank or shopped or danced, mine their weaknesses and pump them for information. Shug smiled enigmatically.

She waggled a finger at him. “No, it can’t be the seccy. Your information’s very specific.” She picked her teeth in a way she hoped looked casual.

Perturbed, Shug frowned down at her. “How do you mean, ‘specific’?”

“So.” She nodded. “Who’d want to selectively control the information coming out of the inquiry? If it’s not a seccy or a clerk, there’s only policemen left. How many members of the committee are there? Usually three, isn’t it? Narrows it down a bit.”

Grant was professional enough to suppress his bruised ego, and ask the right question. “What is it? What are you holding back?”

She tried to smile confidently. “You’re being played, you know that, don’t you?”

“Three o’clock.”

Shug watched her pack up her clippings, slip them back into the envelope, and stand up. She turned to back out of the door and saw him again, a bitter twist at the corner of his mouth. He’d warn his leak that she knew and tell them to go for her.

Out on the drafty stairs she thought of Sean. Paul Neilson lived up in Killearn and she’d like to get a look at the house, see the cars outside it and get a sense of the man, but the village was well outside the city limits and she couldn’t justify getting Sean to drive her there when they were supposed to be on call. Sean brought Burns to mind and she remembered him standing in the hotel room in his underpants. She wished to Christ she had slept instead. It might be her last chance for a while.

Exhaustion was creeping through her bones, making her skin feel clammy. She could have thrown up on the stairs.

II

The gray waiting room smelled of dust. Blinding low winter sun shone in through tall windows, making one half of the room uninhabitably bright. Huddled in the shadowed half, in among the thick air swirling with dust motes and the scent of floor wax, sat Paddy, Shug Grant, and three guys from other papers. The men chatted among themselves, sharing cigarettes, gossiping about Random Damage and the reshuffle at the News. JT had walked straight into another paper across town on the same day that he was sacked. He claimed that his new job paid better money but no one was sure. Kevin Hatcher, the drunkest man at the News, had slept on a bench in the Press Club last night. They’d have sent him home in a taxi but no one knew where he lived. This morning he left the second half of a pint on the bar, said he was going to the toilet, and disappeared. Shug had a fiver on him dying in four weeks. A guy from the Mirror knew Kevin when he was a sober freelancer and won prizes for his photo-essays. He was funny, apparently, back in those days, a clever man, educated and erudite.

A uniformed officer was stationed by the door to stop everyone talking about everything before they went into the inquiry. For a secretive committee Paddy thought it particularly stupid to allow journalists into the waiting room, doling out cigarettes to waiting witnesses, there afterward to take them for a friendly drink to calm their nerves. But she knew the witnesses weren’t Grant’s source; he knew what was coming up and what questions they were going to ask her, and the leaks were strategic, not random. They were coming from someone who wanted to control the way the story was reported.

She leaned her poor head against the wall and shut her eyes, just for a moment; she wasn’t going to fall asleep, it was just to give them a rest and avoid talking to Grant. As the skin of her scalp made contact with the plaster she felt the tingling sensation of sleep creeping over the back of her head. She saw Billy in bed in the hospital and smiled to herself about his hair. He might not be back at the job for a long time but he was alive and relatively unscathed. She saw the image of Lafferty in his rearview mirror, carefully creeping up on the car, and Billy inside, smoking, oblivious.

It was warm in the room, body temperature. A veil of sleep slid down from her brow like a black cashmere blanket until a finger poked her on the shoulder. She opened her burning eyes. Grant was watching her carefully.

“Hey, tubs, what’re ye going to say?” He smiled.

The uniformed officer stepped forward. “Ah, come on now, Mr. Grant, you’ve been well warned about that sort of behavior.”

It was as effective as a midgie trying to stop a mudslide. Grant raised a finger, telling her he’d get her later, and sat back. Paddy shrugged as if she was helpless and thought about all the other people Ramage could have sent to cover the inquiry. He was holding on to all the hungry hacks like Shug and herself, stripping the News of kindness and camaraderie. The other journalists were listening for her answers.

“Who have they had in this morning?” she asked them.

A slick guy in a cheap suit sat forward, making Grant sit back. “The operator who got the call for the address. And Tam Gourlay. Dan McGregor was yesterday.”

“Much of a morning, then?”

He smiled coldly. “No, not really.”

She smiled back, baring her teeth. Shug returned the warmth. The two other journalists joined in until they were all smiling insincerely and wondering when they could stop. The inquiry room door opened and Sullivan looked into the waiting room. He clocked Paddy and smiled wide. “Meehan, please.”

She was so tired that her legs felt rubbery, her footfalls uncertain, as she stood up and shuffled over to the door. She paused and took a breath before following Sullivan through the tall double doors, into the official inquiry.

It was a big, empty room for such a small committee. Four great long windows overlooked the Clyde River and a red marble bridge, currently choked with traffic. The ceiling was high but plain with thick, unembarrassed utility pipes snaking across it.

A long table was set to the side of the room. At the far end sat an older woman with thick glasses, head down over a notepad. Along the table, three men in fancied-up police uniforms-a strip of braiding here, some gold trim on a pocket-were sitting in a little line facing an empty chair. They seemed too old to be dressed in uniform, too dignified, and would have looked as if they were in fancy dress but for the obvious quality of the material. They didn’t look at Paddy as she came in but filled up a glass of water or checked through the sets of notes they had in front of them.

Sullivan invited Paddy to sit at the table opposite the men but remained standing himself, hovering in her eye line near the door.

These three were prosperous men, working-class boys who had slowly worked their way up through the ranks. She could see in their faces a kind of rake’s progress of middle age, a warning tableau of what might happen if you didn’t look after yourself. The man nearest the secretary had a red complexion and puffy, blood-pressured eyes. Next to him was a thin, sallow-skinned man with a pinched mouth, bitter perhaps over some blip in his career. The third man was cheerful, glancing sideways at his companions, seeming to look for reassurance or signs of friendship, needy and ungrounded.

Paddy fumbled with her coat and it slid inelegantly to the floor. Rather than bend the four miles to the floor, she kicked it under the chair and sat down, putting her hands on the table, trying to shake the dozy mist from her mind.

The sallow man tapped the table in front of her to get her attention. “Good afternoon, Miss Meehan.”

The secretary raised her pen and began to scribble.

“Hiya.” Paddy raised a hand and waved at them, felt stupid, and dropped her hand to the table, stroking the wood and smiling weakly. She needed to be more lucid, her job was hanging on a shaky nail and these were not kind men.

The sallow man continued: “As you know, Miss Meehan, this inquiry is convened to take evidence about the police call to seventeen Holbart Road, Bearsden, at two forty-seven a.m., one week ago. This is a closed committee. Do you understand what that means?”

She looked young, she knew that, but there was no reason to talk to her as if she was stupid. “I do understand what a closed committee is, yes.”

“Anything you tell us will remain confidential.”

The red-faced man glanced suspiciously at Sullivan. The insecure one saw him and did it too. Paddy looked up and found Sullivan examining his shoes, poker-faced. It was a direct insult but it was from senior officers and Sullivan had to pretend not to notice. If the men worked in a newsroom Sullivan would have been within his rights to punch both of them.

“Yeah,” she said, feeling a defensive spark. “It won’t stay confidential, though, will it? Shug Grant’s got a hotline to what you’re going to ask me and I know it isn’t coming from Sullivan or this lady here.”

The secretary allowed her eyes to rise to the ring binding on her notebook and stopped taking notes. The policemen shuffled uncomfortably in their seats. The uncertain one looked to his friends to see what to do.

“So, confidentiality is a worry for you.” The sallow one brushed over the comment. “What is it you have to tell us?”

Shocked at their lack of concern, she sat back in the chair. “Aren’t you interested in the fact that there’s a leak here?”

The sallow man looked surprised that anyone anywhere would dare to question him. The rosy-faced man sat forward and took over. “Miss Meehan-”

“It’s ‘Ms.,’ actually,” she said, because she knew it pissed people off.

The men paused to smirk and the rosy-faced man tried again. “We do have the authority to require you to cooperate. I can guarantee that nothing you say will be leaked.” He glanced accusingly at Sullivan again.

“You’re wrong.” Paddy stroked the desk again. “See, I know for certain that Mr. Sullivan isn’t the leak because I’ve already told him what I’m going to tell you. I also know it isn’t the lady secretary because the leaks are too strategic. So, if this information gets into the press after this conversation then we’ll know for certain that it’s one of you three.”

She looked along the line of distinguished gentlemen, each of whom dodged her eye. They seemed perplexed. The very idea that they might be challenged by a plump youngster was ridiculous.

“I’m going to be frank.” She watched the tabletop but her voice was strident and schoolmarmish. “I know your name. You, the guy who’s telling Shug Grant about what goes on in here. Now, I’m not going to announce your name at the News but I do know who you are.”

They sat still and looked at her. The red-faced man’s smirk was frozen into a rictus grin. Paddy tried not to smile. It was delicious to be frightening when so little was expected: the element of surprise always gave her a running start.

The three men shifted in their seats, raising an eyebrow, tilting a chin back, twitching their annoyance. The sallow man took charge. “Shall we start again?” He nodded to the secretary to resume writing.

“Okay, then, let’s introduce ourselves properly: I’m Patricia Meehan.” She looked at the rosy man, staring at him until he was embarrassed into speaking.

“Superintendent Ferguson.”

She stared at the sallow-faced man.

“I’m Chief Superintendent Knox,” he said reluctantly.

The third man introduced himself too but Paddy wasn’t listening. Knox was a common enough Scottish name but Paddy couldn’t think past it. This Knox seemed a closed man, bitter and repressed, and looked like the type to misuse his position. If a chief superintendent’s name was used at the door, it would explain why Gourlay and McGregor had left Vhari Burnett in her house in Bearsden. And it explained Gourlay and McGregor’s being transferred to Partick just as the investigation into Vhari Burnett’s murder got under way. No wonder Tam Gourlay thought he could threaten her.

If Knox was on the take, the money would show: he’d have a big house, a flash car, or kids at an expensive school. She could find out where he was spending it unless Lafferty found her first. But if Knox was working with Neilson, Lafferty would know she was here.

Quelling her panic, reminding herself that Knox couldn’t do anything while she was in the room, she tried to concentrate.

After gentle prompting by Ferguson, Paddy told them about arriving at the house in Bearsden and finding Gourlay by the car. She repeated the conversation about the BMWs. They brought out a car catalog and let her pick out which models most resembled the cars she had seen. Eventually, when she could put it off no longer, she told them about the man in suspenders pressing the fifty quid into her hand. Knox was genuinely surprised.

“He bribed you?” he said, as if it was Paddy’s fault that he didn’t know already.

“He put money in my hand and asked me to keep it out of the paper.”

“But you printed the story anyway?”

“Well, I’d’ve given it back but he shut the door in my face.”

“So, it was a bribe?” he repeated, looking angrily at her.

Sullivan stepped forward to the table and leaned on his fingertips, looking at no one, and said, “The fifty-pound note was the object from the house that we found Robert Lafferty’s prints on.”

The rosy joiner whose name she hadn’t caught rolled his head in recognition. They’d all heard about the prints but not the note. Sullivan had kept his word not to tell. She watched him withdraw. He seemed no more aware of Knox than he was of the other two senior officers.

“Did you see any money being passed to Tam Gourlay or Dan McGregor?”

“Nothing,” she said, to their evident relief. “I saw nothing.” Then, as if she was just continuing the story, she added, “I walked back toward my car, passing Gourlay and McGregor, and Gourlay said, ‘It’s really important to keep it out of the papers because she’s a lawyer,’ something like that, and McGregor slapped him on the back of the head.”

The committee looked a little stunned. “What do you think he meant by that?”

“I don’t know. I’m just telling you what happened.”

They were pleased that she hadn’t directly accused either of the officers of taking a bribe. Ferguson ’s eyes flickered to the secretary taking the minutes. There were two conversations taking place here, she realized: what was said or inferred, and what was minuted. Only the minuted conversation would be of any consequence in the future.

Ferguson offered her a drink of water and stood up, leaning across the desk and pouring it for her, diverting her attention, breaking up the line of questioning. This was a damage limitation exercise. They weren’t going to ask anything they didn’t already know or pursue a wild-card line of questioning.

Knox looked at her hard. “We’ve seen the notes from the first time you were questioned by DI Sullivan. You didn’t mention the fifty pounds then, did you?”

“No.”

“And despite taking the money, you still printed a story about the incident in the paper the next day?”

“Which part are you objecting to? Taking the money or welshing on the deal? Because I didn’t really take the bribe, he shoved it into my hand and shut the door.”

“But you kept the money?” He was emphasizing the point, knowing it would be minuted.

“I couldn’t give it back. He’d shut the door.”

“Wasn’t there a letter box?” Knox’s despising eyes were gray and half-closed.

To a young policeman his manner would have been frightening but Paddy was a journalist and dealt with cheeky fuckers all day. She sighed impertinently and drummed her fingers on the desk. “We finished here? Can I go now?”

Ferguson sat forward. “Would you say that you left the scene quite content that Miss Burnett was safe?”

This was the crunch question, the one they would be asking of everyone. It was the issue that would decide whether Gourlay and McGregor were guilty of any misdemeanor. The truth was she hadn’t felt Vhari Burnett was safe. She hadn’t cared whether Burnett was safe. As Vhari Burnett and her bloody neck slid back into the living room and out of view all Paddy cared about was how soon she could get back into the warm car. She had assumed things about Burnett that seemed ridiculous now: that she was rich and selfish and slim, that she consented to stay with Neilson, that they were a couple and would sort it out between themselves. There were a hundred selfish, shaming reasons why Paddy hadn’t barged in and insisted Burnett leave with her, and the only way she could avoid admitting them now was to back up Gourlay and McGregor.

“No. I felt she was unsafe. And I still walked away.”

“Why did you do that, Miss Meehan?”

She was too tired to think of a lie. “Same reason McGregor and Gourlay walked away. Because I’m a stupid wee shite.”

Sensing the danger of an unrehearsed conversation, a frisson of panic rippled along the line. The minutes secretary glanced up. Knox wound up her interview as quickly as possible, blocking Paddy from saying anything else untoward.

Sullivan saw her to the door, as if she couldn’t find her own way, and slipped out with her into the waiting room. He checked that Grant wasn’t in earshot. “What you said about her being safe, that was… the right thing to say.”

She looked at him, trembling at the thought that Lafferty might be outside. “I thought you were going to tell me it was stupid.”

“It was that too.”

He smiled down, impressed enough to hold his stomach in for her, and slipped back into the room.

Outside the street was quiet. Paddy hurried along, keeping her eyes on the taxi rank two blocks away, telling herself to stay calm, Lafferty wouldn’t dare pick her up here, not outside the police HQ. A car approaching behind her made her heart leap and she broke into an ungainly sprint, yanking her pencil skirt up over her knees, belting across a busy road, running faster and faster until she leaped into the first taxi in the queue.

“Daily News office in Albion Street,” she said, heading for the only place she felt safe.