The Dead Hour

I

The smell of tired men on a Friday night hit her nose, a mingling of sweat and disappointment. The Press Bar was no longer a nice place to drink. Most of the powerful movers wanted to get away from the politics of the News on a Friday and drank in the Press Club a mile away, where the drink was union subsidized and the staff from other papers gathered as well.

A thin smattering of drinkers were hanging around the bar or sitting at the tables, reading or staring. No one was talking much. Behind the bar, McGrade was cleaning glasses and greeted her with a welcoming nod.

McVie was alone at a small table and Paddy was relieved that Patrick Meehan hadn’t turned up. She stood up straighter and walked over to the table. “Did you get a dizzy?”

“Eh?”

“A disappointment. Did Meehan not show?”

McVie nodded behind her and she turned to see him walking back from the toilet, checking his fly as an afterthought. He was small and dressed in a heavy black overcoat. His skin was acne scarred and yellow and he looked pissed off. He arrived at the table, looking down his nose at Paddy.

“Hiya,” she said.

“You’re just a girl.”

She couldn’t really argue with that. “I am, aye.”

McVie intervened. “This girl’s one of the brightest young journalists in Scotland.”

Patrick Meehan stuck his tongue in his cheek. He looked Paddy over again and put his hand out to her.

Given that he had just come from the lavatory, she didn’t really want to take his hand but she forced herself. He squeezed it a little too hard, letting her know he was strong. His shortness and arrogant demeanor, the russet hair and short legs, suggested that he had never been very attractive to women and she suspected he had the resentment she met all the time from men like that, as if she was responsible for every knockback and slight every woman had ever given him.

“I’m Paddy Meehan too,” she said.

He nodded at McVie. “He said that. You’ve got the same name as me,” he said, picking a stubby cigarette from the packet on the table and lighting it.

“Aye.”

He looked her over. “Meehans from Eastfield? Where are your people from?”

“Donegal, I believe, around Letterkenny.”

“We’re from Derry.”

“Most of the Meehans are, eh?”

“Aye.”

He seemed to trust her more, now that they had established which Irish county their great-grandparents had fled from. “Will we sit?”

“Aye.” She shook herself awake. “Let me get you a drink, Mr. Meehan.”

Appreciative of the courtesy, Meehan pulled a chair out and sat on it. “I’ll have a half and a half.”

Paddy looked at McVie but he frowned, indicating that he’d like to make the meeting as short as possible, or duck out before it finished.

The barman, benign McGrade, smiled as she came toward him. “See you’re interviewing a local notary over there?”

Paddy smiled and ordered. “I think I’ve been pipped at the post by just about everyone else in the paper business.”

He put the large whisky and half of beer down next to each other. “Ah, there’s always something new to say, isn’t there?” he said, letting her know that even he knew the Meehan story was dead in the water.

The round cost her more than four pounds.

They sat and smoked and Meehan talked, telling his story. He started when he was arrested for the Ross murder. She didn’t want to hear about that but he wanted to talk about it.

“I was particularly interested in your time behind the iron curtain,” Paddy said at last.

He gave her a slow, warning blink. “As I was saying, the lineup was a fix.” And he continued from where he’d left off. By the time of the trial McVie got up and left, leaving Paddy to listen to the end.

During her painfully earnest childhood Paddy had read and reread every article and book ever printed about the Meehan case. She recognized some of his phrases from articles. He’d clearly given the speech often before. His eyes clouded over, and at times, even he didn’t seem very interested.

Finally he came to a stop and they looked at each other. His beer glass was half-empty. It would have been polite to offer him another but she didn’t have enough money.

Paddy explained that she wanted to write a book about the case, not focusing on the Rachel Ross murder, but on his time as a spy, the year and a half behind the iron curtain and his part in the Blake escape.

“I told them how to do it-”

“I know.”

He gave her a slow blink, a curl in his lip that meant it would be a bad idea to interrupt again.

“Yeah, I told them the way to get the radio in to him. You knew that, did ye?”

He was a man used to being listened to and Paddy spent her professional life appeasing men like that. “I did, kind of, but I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me again.”

He had drunk half his beer and taken a sip from his whisky. He picked up the shot glass and dropped it into the beer glass. It was a perfectly measured maneuver: the beer fizzed a little, rising to the brim of the glass and bulging over, threatening to spill but contracting back down again.

“Old man’s drink,” said Paddy thoughtlessly.

Meehan liked that. He smiled at her. “I was in a prison in East Germany. They wanted me to tell them how they could get a two-way radio in to a prisoner and I thought about it, mulled it over in my mind. I’d drawn them maps of every prison I knew. It’s easier to get about in a prison than most people think, you know. A lot of screws are corrupt, you can move around all you like. But the problem is high-security prisoners, and that’s what they were talking about.

“I told them: send a radio to the high-security prisoner. Just a normal radio, nothing to attract attention.” He leaned across the table. “Get a radio that looks the same in to a low-security prisoner but make it a two-way radio. They wouldn’t check it, he’s low-security, see? Do you see?” He waited, making her say yes. “D’you know what a pass man is? A pass man is someone the screws trust, a prisoner who’s an inside man.” She thought of Tam Gourlay. “Get two radios into the prison, then swap them. That was my idea. Get the pass man to swap them, see what I mean?”

She did see. She understood perfectly.

“When George Blake escaped from prison what d’ye think they found in his cell?”

Paddy nodded. “A two-way radio.”

“A two-way radio,” Meehan agreed, “hidden in a tranny. And they’d checked the tranny’s insides the week before.”

Paddy stood up abruptly. “I’m sorry. I have to go. I need to call someone.” She shuffled out from behind the table.

Meehan looked up at her, offended.

“Mr. Meehan, I want to write a book about you.”

“There’s been enough books about me.”

“No, not a trashy book about the Ross murder, just a book about you. About the Communist Party and the agent provocateur who sent you to East Germany and the life of a professional criminal in the fifties. A good book. Will you let me buy you lunch one day next week and we can talk about it?”

He hunched his shoulders. “But I’m here now.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve got to make a call.”

Meehan looked at his half-empty glass. “I don’t know about that. Maybe I’ll write my own book.”

“I’ll phone ye.” Paddy pulled her coat on as she opened the door to the street. “I’ll call ye.”

II

She took her place at the news desk and lifted the phone, calling McCloud at the Marine.

“Cloudy? I need to talk to Colum McDaid.”

“Ah, wee Meehan, is it yourself?”

“Aye, it is. Any chance I could get his home number?”

“McDaid’s? Here, he’s not your boyfriend, is he?” McCloud laughed at the thought until someone came to the desk to ask him for something. “Aye, aye. Not now, no. Hello? Meehan?”

“Still here.” She had her pen poised above the page.

McCloud gave her the number, a local Partick number.

She called it and got Mrs. McDaid. “Aye, he’s here, dear.”

She called out in Gaelic and McDaid came on the phone.

“PC McDaid. Paddy Meehan here. The note’s still in the safe.”

“Eh?”

“Gourlay didn’t take it out at all. It’s in the safe and I’ll bet it’s tucked inside another production.” She could hear him grunting. “What are ye doing?”

“Putting my coat on. I live around the corner from the station. Can ye wait by the phone for an hour or so?”

“Aye.”

“I’ll call ye back.”

III

The newsroom was busier on a Friday. The calls car relief shift were playing cards over by the picture editor’s office, eating fish suppers and drinking indiscreetly from a half bottle of whisky. When she first started everyone drank at the News but she hadn’t seen a bottle in the office since Farquarson left. She read a book while she waited, aware that Dub would be introducing the open spots now, that Burns would be sweating at the back of the dark room, nervously running over his set.

McDaid phoned back on the direct line after forty minutes. He didn’t even greet her. “Got it. The bugger tucked it in the back of another envelope. The shits were going to wait until I’d given the keys over and tidy up the cupboard themselves.”

“Will you phone Sullivan?”

“I would be delighted.”

“Have a good night, PC McDaid.”

“And yourself, Miss Meehan.”

IV

The club seemed busier than usual. Lorraine wasn’t guarding the door and it had just been pulled shut, not secured at all. Paddy slipped down the stairs and watched the stage. Dub was on and the atmosphere was bristling; his voice was high and he was talking fast, pointing at the audience, riding a wave of love.

Lorraine was standing by the bar and sidled over, forgetting to pretend she didn’t recognize Paddy.

“He stormed.”

“Dub?”

“Burns. He absolutely fucking stormed.”

Dub came off to a roar of applause, running down the fifteen-foot aisle too fast and coming to a gangly stop at the back wall. He was sweating with joy.

When he saw Paddy he threw an arm around her neck, pulling her roughly over to the far end of the bar. She grinned, despite the wet on the back of her neck from his armpit, and staggered across with him to the four square feet that counted as backstage.

He let go of her and she stood up. Burns was standing at the bar with his long, suburban policeman’s drink, smug and wired at the same time.

“You did well?” said Paddy.

Burns looked her up and down. “I looked for you, in the crowd. You weren’t here.”

Paddy waited for a punch line that never came. Finally she muttered, “Sorry about that. I had a lot of work on.”

He poked her in the chest, and let his finger linger there, making a slow climb up her long neck. “I wanted you to see me, could have done with your support.”

She took hold of his hand and pushed it away. “I’m not much support, Burns. I’m a jinx for open spots anyway, you didn’t want me here.”

“That’s right.” He fell back a step. “You’re a headliner, not a sideshow, are you?”

A member of the audience came over and took Burns’s elbow. “You were brilliant, pal. That was the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages and I come here all the time.”

Burns’s eyes lingered on Paddy’s neck until Lorraine fought her way through the crowd and stood by him. Swaying, she began to bump her tits on Burns’s arm. Burns put his hand around Lorraine ’s waist, watching Paddy for a reaction.

She grinned at him. “Oh, I wish I’d come now. You’re making me so jealous.”

Dub draped his arm over Paddy’s shoulder so they were standing in a foursome. “We were all great tonight. It was so fluid. Perfect night, one act just built on the previous one. There were no shifts of tone, no break in the atmosphere, you know, like there normally is? None of that.”

“Yeah?”

Burns shot her a dirty look and steered Lorraine away by the waist, leading her over to a table. Paddy watched them canoodling and shook her head.

“That guy is an out-and-out prick.”

“You think so?”

“He’s a fucking arsehole.” Burns was looking straight at her and she hoped he could lip-read.

“He’s fucking funny, though, Paddy. If we get him as a regular it would do the club’s rep a ton of good. Anyway, where were you tonight?”

She told him about Loch Lomond and Meehan and whispered about McDaid and the note. They drifted away from the crowd over to the audience chairs, sitting on the stage when the barman took their chairs to stack them up with the rest of them by the wall. Between them and Burns’s table the audience pulled on coats and finished drinks, talking too loudly because they sensed the excitement in the place.

Dub listened intently, his face inches from hers, and she was loving talking to him. She didn’t feel worried when Dub was there. She never felt fat or naive or imperfect with him.

He was leaning close, the better to hear her, and she looked at his big nose and the swirl of his ear, at his powdery white skin. She didn’t know why, it was nothing to do with Burns being there, but she wanted to kiss his cheek. He sat back and looked at her, his eyes clear and appreciative. “You’re fearless. I don’t know anyone like you.”

She was shocked by how much she wanted to kiss him. It would be easy, all it would take was for her to lean forward a few inches and her mouth would dock with his. Their eyes locked. He was her only friend. She sat back and slapped his leg. “God,” she said, focusing on his knee, “I feel as if I haven’t seen you forever, Dub.”

“And you. Even if he is a prick, thanks for bringing him here.” Dub smiled wide, glancing at her. For the first time she saw a trace of disappointment in his eyes. He had looked at her like that before, she realized now. She had seen him with that look many times over the years they had known each other and never understood it before.

She smiled back, glad she hadn’t kissed him. “You’re my best friend, Dub.”

Dub nodded at his feet. “I am.”

“Going to walk me to the station?”

Dub glanced over at Burns. Lorraine was almost sitting on his lap, her mouth firmly clamped over his. Burns had his hand halfway up her T-shirt. “Aye, I’ll walk ye.”