The Dead Hour

I

As soon as Bernie pulled the comfort pillow out from under a pile of bricks in the garage, Kate knew she would be able to come here. Now, she sat in the Mini, cold condensation forming a mist on the inside of the windscreen, blocking out the view of the pub and Knox’s house across the road. The tip of her right index finger was withered from rubbing high-grade cocaine into her gums.

She needed to watch the house and make sure he was in before she went across, pressed the doorbell, and told him that she would go to the papers if he didn’t call Paul off. He could do that. He could tell Paul to let her go. He wasn’t Paul’s boss or anything, no one was Paul’s boss, but she knew enough to damage all of them and Knox was the cautious one. They had laughed at how careful he was, always meeting at night, in the wine cellar at Archie’s basement, never wanting Paul to come to his house and refusing to come to theirs.

Knox was the cautious one.

She had said it out loud, she realized. Sitting alone in a cheap car, in the damp dark, outside a nasty brewery pub with a red PUB GRUB neon light blinking in the window.

She said it again just to be sure-“Knox was the cautious one”-and smiled, incredulous, at the sound of her own voice. She hadn’t realized she was talking and not just thinking. She decided to practice her speech.

“Hello, Knox. I need your help.”

That was no good. It sounded subservient.

When he opened the door she’d bluntly say, “Knox-” He’d pull her into the hall, check outside to make sure she hadn’t been seen in the street. “I want you to help me. Paul Neilson and I are in dispute and you have to tell him to leave me alone.”

Better. It sounded forceful, as if she was in charge.

“If you don’t want me to go to the papers with what I know, you’ll tell him to back off.”

That was it. Pitch perfect. And then shut up, don’t start twittering or say anything about Vhari or anything. Perfect. She licked her fingertip and reached across to the passenger seat, running the numb skin over a fold in the plastic before lifting it to her mouth. A little engine rev and she’d open the door and go over there. But the little dab did nothing so she tried again and again. She was rubbing and dabbing and rubbing, waiting for the perfect chemical equation to occur and give her the courage and clarity to do what she needed to.

The balance eluded her. All she could do was sit and sweat and listen to her tired old heart thumping like a galley drum while her blood raced through her brain bringing thought after thought, conclusion after conclusion, details and meaning indistinguishable, red streaks of taillight in a time-lag photograph. She knew what the thoughts were about but couldn’t capture any of the detail: reminiscences of childhood, holidays, dull days off school with colds, meals she’d eaten somewhere.

She dabbed again. Her tongue was terribly dry, she didn’t know if she would be able to move her mouth to talk. She could go into the pub and get a drink. A spritzer. She had money. A tenner appeared in her hand.

It took her a week to pull the clammy metal door handle toward her and step out onto the soft black tarmac. Suddenly she was in the pub, by the bar, blinking hard at the unflattering light. The decor was a crime: horseshoes, brass bedpans, horrible pretend England. It was almost empty but everyone who was there was looking at her. She wouldn’t have walked into a pub this brightly lit on her best day and, she remembered dimly, she looked bad, really bad.

White wine and soda, please, and Marlboro. The sweet drink washed the salty numbness from her gums, sloshing across her tongue to hit the parched spot on the back of her throat. Another one. She smoked a cigarette, looking away from everyone, trying not to be seen. Struck by a sudden pang of longing for the pillow, she put the half-drunk glass down and reeled her shoulders, heading out through the doors to the car park and back to the side of the Mini.

She looked up and found herself standing outside Knox’s house. Evidently she’d had another rub and dab; her tongue kept finding its way up past her teeth to her grainy gums and running the length of them.

Knox’s front garden had been paved over to make parking spaces and the front of the house seemed very close to the road. It was a small house, Kate thought, with a cheap-looking glass porch stuck on the front of it, jammed full of ugly little plants and Wellingtons and so on. Outdoor accoutrements. Perhaps he had a dog. Was he married? She couldn’t remember. There was only one car parked in front of the house. Next to the glass porch, on the far side, was a window into a front room but the curtains were shut.

Kate’s heart ached, not with fear but with the simple strain of keeping going. She pressed the buzzer and stepped back, watching as the light snapped on in the hall, rosy behind the cheap orange glass in the window of the front door. The door opened, spilling light into the porchway. He was wearing slippers. And a cardigan. His angry voice crackled at her.

She answered, barking the only words she could remember. “Knox. Help.”

II

Down at the Salt Market a Volvo station wagon was underneath a bus. The car driver was dead, flattened inside his car. The safety windscreen had come off whole and lay on the road by the pavement, smeared with his blood. The car was such a mess that it took the ambulance men a while to work out if they were looking at one very big car or two wee cars.

The blameless bus driver was sitting on the wet curb, his mouth hanging open, tears streaming down his face, blankly watching the fire brigade cutting the car up with torches, trying to establish whether there had been a passenger as well.

Paddy was jotting down the statement of an eyewitness, a tipsy old man who saw the car going fast down this road, the bus coming down that one and then, kaboom, he wasn’t watching, but what a bloody bang, excuse his French. She’d already written his name and address down for the story and couldn’t be arsed to try and find another witness.

“Would you say you were terrified?” she said, being unprofessional and putting words in his mouth.

He looked a little skeptical. “I suppose…”

“Have you ever seen anything like it before in your life?”

He looked even more unconvinced. “Well, I fought in the war, at Monte Cassino, and it wasn’t anything like as bad as that.”

Paddy sighed, exhausted. “Was it like something you might have seen in the war? Could you say that?”

“Aye.” He could go along with that. “Maybe. A bit like that.”

She wrote it down. “Alistair Sloane of Dennistoun said, ‘It was like something out of the Battle of Monte Cassino and I should know because I was there.’ Is that any good?”

He looked at her shorthand, excited that he might be in the paper. “Aye. Is that going in tomorrow?”

“It’s not up to me, really, but that’s how I’ll put it in.”

She left the old man, who was grinning gleefully, looking like a ghoul, and walked back toward the car, working hard at keeping her gaze away from the undercarriage of the bus. Even in the dark road she could see splatters of blood on the bus wheels, pooling on the road. Her half-informed eye kept trying to reconstruct a person out of the shapes she wasn’t looking at, a round object turned into a head. There was black stuff all over the road and she wasn’t certain that it was oil. She was glad Sean was waiting in the car. If she wasn’t being brave for him she might have followed one of the police officer’s examples and thrown up.

“I heard you were here.”

At the sound of Burns’s voice her already delicate stomach spiked acid. He let his pal walk on and sauntered over solo, standing between her and the bus. She had no option but to follow the line of his body from waist to face to avoid seeing an image that might haunt her.

“Burns.”

“Meehan?” He returned the bald greeting but looked disappointed.

“Sorry.” She tipped her head to the mess under the bus. “I’m trying not to look.”

Burns glanced back at it, unflinching. “Yeah, messy. We’ve been sent over to redirect the traffic. Exciting. I love nights. Standing in the bollock-freezing cold telling nosy bastards to go left. I got that address you were after.”

“Brilliant.” He recited it for her and she jotted it down. “Does Knox have a reputation? A flashy car or too much money?”

“Not so much that anyone’s talking about it, no.” Burns shifted nearer, looking down at her mouth as if he was going to kiss her. Paddy noticed that she was salivating. His breath hit her face in warm puffs. “You still at the hotel?”

“Did they arrest Lafferty for the firebomb yet?”

His gaze slid down her neck. “No. He’s gone abroad.”

“Abroad to where?”

“ Ireland, the wife says. No proof, just her say-so.”

She shut her notebook. “Looks like I’m still in the hotel, then.”

“That’s safest, yeah.” He looked over at the calls car. “Is that Billy’s replacement? You found him awful quick. Is he a boyfriend of yours?”

She stumbled over the answer, hoping he wouldn’t want an introduction. “No, he’s not my boyfriend. He’s my… well, it’s complicated.”

“Is it?”

She hesitated again. If she’d had her wits about her she could have made up a salving lie. “We’ve just… known each other a long time.”

Burns tipped his chin at her, looking down his nose and sucking air in between his teeth in a sour hiss. “I see. That’s nice and cozy. I’m doing an open spot at Blackfriar’s tomorrow night. Can you come?”

Dub generally booked an open-mike night once a month so it wasn’t the free-for-all. Burns must have arranged an open spot with Dub, which meant he had spoken to him, independent of her. He was muscling in on her meager social life.

“I’ll try.”

A spine-chilling creak of ripping metal filled the street as the fire brigade cleaved part of the bloody hood away from the bus’s axle. Paddy suddenly saw herself and Burns standing too close to each other, too keen to exclude others from their conversation. It was obvious there was something between them.

“I’d better go and call this in.” She backed off toward the car.

Burns watched her mouth as she moved away and she watched his. His pink tongue glistened behind the rim of his white teeth.

III

It was the middle of the night or so. Or day. Or night. Kate was lying down on something soft. A sofa. A sofa draped in a sheet. Her fingertips ran over the sheet and it felt marvelously comforting, familiar and kind and warm to the touch. Like skin. Soft like skin and smelling comforting, like the comfort pillow. Paul was talking to her, reminding her how much they liked each other, how it was important to be kind to each other and help each other. She felt wonderful.

Suddenly the cold realization made her eyes spring open. The comfort pillow was plastic. She was lying on a plastic sheet.

Paul was sitting on a chair next to her, his legs crossed, talking softly to her. He was dressed nicely, a tailored blue shirt and slate gray slacks with a pleated front. He liked to dress like a businessman. He could see that she was alarmed but said she didn’t need to be afraid. Everything was going to be fine. Not to worry.

He blinked slowly and Kate knew that he was lying. She knew what Paul Neilson was seeing. A woman with no nose, an underweight woman who hadn’t eaten more than a tin of ham and some biscuits in more than a month. He despised women who lost their looks. And she knew what Paul could do to people he despised.

They were in an unfamiliar living room with nasty decor. A varnished gas fire surround that ran the full length of the room had small promontories for ugly ornaments: china dogs, cut crystal, some Limoges figurines in swirling skirts. Hanging from the ceiling was a bulb in a small shade. It was shining right into her eyes.

Knox was standing behind Paul’s chair, watching her.

“Kate.” Paul leaned forward and used a finger to lever a trestle of blond hair from her forehead. “Katie, tell me where it is. The package.”

She didn’t think it would make any difference but she had a habit of deference. “In the Mini. Across the road. It’s… it’s almost empty.”

Paul looked beautiful. His dark hair was swept back off his face, his chin smooth and shadow free despite the late hour. He always looked expensive, groomed. His shirt was white linen, pressed by a professional, his cuffs starched and pinned with silver-and-tigereye studs. He didn’t have a tie on but the shirt was buttoned to the neck, the top button open to the hollow of his throat.

He crossed his arms and curled his lip at her. “Why did you come here, Katie?”

She started crying, pitiful whimpers bubbling up from her tummy. Uncomfortable at scenes, Paul looked away, drawing his fingernails down his neck, leaving welts that rose and reddened as she watched. He waited until she stopped making noise and spoke quietly again.

“I can’t have you threatening our friends, Katie, it’s rude.” His voice was calm but his eyes were livid. “Where’s the BMW? You’ve lost it, haven’t you?”

She was aware of a noise behind her head. It was Lafferty and he was watching Paul, waiting for a signal, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. She craned her neck to see his big body and his musclebound arms. The soft plastic crinkled sweetly by her ear. A hammer hung limp from his big hand. He was here to kill her. He wouldn’t be here otherwise.

Lafferty saw her looking at him and backed out of view. Kate struggled to sit up but Paul reached forward and pressed her throat firmly, putting pressure on her airway, pushing her back down onto the plastic-covered sofa.

“I came here looking for you,” she said desperately. “I wasn’t threatening anyone. I wanted to see you, to tell you I’m sorry.”

Paul tilted his head and looked her in the eye. “You’ve told me you came here to threaten Knox, Kate. You’ve just told me that.”

“No, no I haven’t.”

“You told me a moment ago. If he doesn’t want you to go to the papers he should tell me to back off. You just said it.”

Kate was lost. She had delivered the perfect speech to the wrong man, hadn’t negotiated or bought any time for herself. She’d just blurted it out for nothing. It was a child’s voice and surprised her, rising from the pit of her stomach: “Why did you kill my Vhari?”

Paul breathed in, puffing his chest defensively at her, sucking his cheeks in and tipping his head back, diffident. “She wouldn’t tell me where you were.”

“She didn’t know. I didn’t go to her.”

He loomed over her, face flushed and furious, and shouted, “Well, how the fuck was I supposed to know that? You’re the one who ran away with sixty grand’s worth of car and kit. What was I supposed to do?”

“Sorry.”

He stood up off the chair to lean closer but his voice didn’t drop and she shut her eyes.

“What was I supposed to do, Kate? Sit at home and wait for you to come back?”

He left a pause for her to defend herself but her voice was too small to match his. “You hit me,” she said, keeping her eyes shut.

His voice was so loud it blew a hair from her cheek. “You were out of it again. What kind of man comes home every day to an unconscious junkie?”

“You didn’t need to kill her.”

He fell back into the chair and she opened her eyes to look at him. He looked sorry. “She was very stubborn. We had to turn the music up to drown out the noise she made but she still wouldn’t tell us where you were. Lafferty got angry after the police came to the door. He doesn’t like the police. They make him angry. The mess you’ve made, Kate, you’ve no idea. There’s only so much I can take. And now it’s over.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.” He blinked slowly. “It’s over. You know it is.”

Suddenly and completely she saw herself and how dumb she was, how ugly she had become, how worthless. And how lost. She whimpered, cringing, bringing her knees up to her chest and making the plastic rumple noisily below her.

“Please, Paul, don’t make it like the kaffir on the wire?”

He told her the story when they very first got to know each other. It was a turning point in their relationship, when they made their deal, when she agreed to accept everything about him. It happened on their estate in South Africa, outside J’burg. One morning before school, Paul’s father spotted a kaffir he didn’t recognize standing in the garden, in full view, looking at the ground. Grabbing the gun, he ran outside. The kaffir ran when he saw a white man after him. He ran so fast Paul’s father thought he might need to go back for the truck.

The kaffir ran out of sight, across a meadow and behind some bushes. He ran straight, that’s how they knew he was just in from the country. He ran straight for over a mile and into a barbed-wire fence on the perimeter of the property. The more he struggled the more he became entangled.

Paul’s father watched the man ripping himself to ribbons on the wire. When he was sure the kaffir couldn’t possibly get away he walked slowly back to the house and got Paul to come with him, to see how stupid the kaffirs were, that they would make it worse and worse and worse and not know to stop. It took the man three days to die.

Paul and Katie looked at each other one last time. They had known each other for seven years, had barely spent a day apart. She could see disgust in the twist of his lips and his hooded eyes.

“Don’t worry.” He flicked his hand in signal to Lafferty. “It won’t be like that.”

Kate Burnett shut her gray eyes and breathed out for the last time, dismayed at her stupidity, exhausted. She heard Lafferty step forward, felt the plastic crumple as she cringed, ready for the blow.

A flash of electric white pain and then came a velvet darkness.