Field of Blood

TWENTY-FOUR . IMPOSSIBLY SOPHISTICATED SOUP

The waitress brought her over a mug of tea and two poached eggs on toast. It was a café no one from the News ever used because it was up a very steep hill, next to Rotten Row maternity hospital. The plates were chipped, the mugs were stained, but the place was clean in the corners and the pattern on the Formica worktops had been worn away with endless scrubbing and bleaching. Paddy liked the warm room, liked it that they used butter instead of margarine, and that the eggs were freshly made to order. The large window onto the street was always steamed over, reducing the outside world to passing ghosts. Paddy had chosen poached eggs on toast because it was a bit like the Mayo Clinic Diet: eggs was eggs after all.

She took the clippings envelope out of her pocket and slipped two fingers in, pulling out the folded, yellowing newspapers to read while she ate. The articles hadn’t been opened for years and had dried around one another in a tidy little package. She flattened them carefully and flicked through, finding an interview with Tracy Dempsie from the time just after Thomas was found dead but before Alfred was accused. Tracy said that whoever did this to her boy should be hanged and it was a shame that they weren’t hanging people anymore because that’s what she’d like to see. Even in sanitized quotes she sounded a bit nuts.

Another story made it clear, through aspersion and innuendo, that Tracy had run away from her first husband to be with Alfred. They seemed to have met at the ballroom dancing, which was a fancy way of saying that despite being married, Tracy was hanging around a meat market looking for a man. The photographs showed her looking not a minute younger than she had when Paddy went to visit her. Her hair was pulled up in exactly the same style, but the skin on her face had less give. She was sitting in a living room strewn with toys and clutching a photograph of her young son. Thomas had big eyes and blond hair that curled at the tips. He grinned at the person holding the camera, squeezing tight every muscle on his tiny face.

As she reread the text of the long articles, she was struck by how beautifully written they were. The language was so crisp that wherever her eye landed it skidded effortlessly to the end of the paragraph. She looked for the byline and found that they were all written by Peter McIltchie. She was staggered: she had never known Dr. Pete to produce anything like usable copy. He wasn’t even trusted to churn out holiday cover for the Honest Man column, a despised weekly opinion piece cynically shaped to chime with the readership’s most ill-informed prejudices. Being saddled with the column was more than a sign that a journalist’s star was sinking, it was the professional equivalent of a tolling bell.

Paddy carefully dried the grease off her fingers with a paper napkin before folding up the clippings along their well-established creases, setting them on top of one another in chronological order, and slipping them carefully back into the stiff brown envelope. She finished off her last bite of buttery toast and stood up to put on her coat.

Terry Hewitt was standing in front of her, wearing his black leather with the red shoulders. If Sean had been drawn with a ruler, Terry was a sketch, all crumpled shirt and uneven skin. His fingertips were balanced nervously on the back of a chair. He looked away and wrinkled his forehead, as if they were at the end of the conversation instead of the beginning, and twitched a one-second smile, more of an entreaty than a greeting.

“What are you doing here?”

“Having my lunch.” She was about to extrapolate into a joke or a gibe about how fat she was but stopped herself, remembering his calling her a fat lassie in the Press Bar. She picked up her bag and pulled on her coat. “I’ll leave you my table.”

She turned to go, but Terry reached across and tugged at her sleeve. “Wait, Meehan.” He blanched, embarrassed at the intimacy of using her name. “I want to talk to you.”

Paddy bristled. “What about?”

He smiled at her, his lips retracting across his teeth again. She liked that. It made him look so hesitant. “Baby Brian. I heard you talking to Farquarson.”

She stopped and crossed her arms. “You’re not going to try and steal my story, are you? Because I’ve had enough of that for one week.”

“If I was going to steal it from you I’d hardly be here, would I? I’m interested.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked at her chair, inviting her to sit with him. She dropped her resentment for a moment and imagined that maybe her crush could be reciprocated, just a little. But boys like Terry Hewitt liked girls from houses, girls with slim necks and thick hair who went to uni to study theater.

Her temper flared up again. “I heard you asking Dr. Pete who I was.”

He looked puzzled. “I don’t remember that.”

“In the Press Bar. I heard you ask who the fat lassie was.”

He blushed deep into his shirt collar. “Oh,” he said meekly. “I didn’t mean you.”

“Right? Was Hattie Jacques in the bar that day?”

He rolled his head away from her. “I just wanted to know who you were. I’m sorry.” He cringed. “It was the morning-shift boys, you know? I couldn’t very well-”

“It’s no excuse for being fucking rude.” She sounded more angry than she meant to.

He raised an imploring hand. “If you wanted to know who I was, what would you ask them? Who’s the handsome guy with the perfect figure?” He saw her waver. “If you give me ten minutes I can stretch to a Blue Riband.”

It was as cheap as chocolate biscuits came. She smiled and upped the ante. “Plus a mug of tea.”

He stroked his chin. “You’re a hard woman, but okay.”

Feigning reluctance, she let her duffel coat slip from her shoulders and took her seat again. Terry sat across from her, putting one palm flat on the tabletop as if he was going to reach forward and take her hand in his. The waitress took their order for two cups of tea, a bowl of soup, and a chocolate biscuit. Paddy thought he was having a three-course meal.

“I can’t wait long.”

“It’s just a bowl of soup.”

He was only having soup. She had never known anyone sit down to soup as a meal. Soup was a watery precursor to a meal, a poor man’s filler to stop the children eating all the potatoes. She looked at Terry with renewed admiration. He seemed impossibly sophisticated.

He did the reticent smile again, and she realized that he was working her. She wondered if other women had weaknesses for bonny men. They never seemed to talk about it.

“Did I hear that you were related to someone in the case?”

Now would be a good time to mention her fiancé, but she wasn’t sure if she still had one. “How would I know what you’ve heard? We’ve never spoken to each other before.”

“I know, and it’s a damn shame,” he said, and made her smile.

The waitress came straight back over with two mugs of tangy brown tea and his soup. Terry used his spoon, scooping the soup away from himself, impeccably mannered.

“I wanted to ask if we could work together on the article about the previous case.”

“It’s my idea, why would I want you to work on it with me?”

“Well, I thought about that: I could help you write it up. If you want to move up from the bench you’d want Farquarson to use a substantial chunk of your unaltered copy. Otherwise they’ll just think you’re a researcher. It’s harder than you think, and I’ve got experience of writing long articles.”

She knew he was exaggerating his experience a bit. She’d taken his copy to the print room once or twice and read it on the stairs. It was good, but it wasn’t that good. Still, he would be able to organize the ideas at least, show her how to get from one paragraph to another and keep herself out of it. It was a chance to get her name on something.

“I could be Samantha, your lovely assistant.” He patted his hair. “Add a bit of glamour to the act.”

Paddy smiled despite herself. Terry was arrogant. She saw him allying himself with certain people in the newsroom, the smart guys who picked the right stories and knew what was going on. He was blatantly ambitious, eager to make a space for himself in the world. If he kissed a girl he wouldn’t be prudish about it. He wouldn’t do self-effacing voluntary work with the poor or refuse to have sex until his wedding night. He was the anti-Sean.

“I know where one of the boys lives. I’ve been to his house.”

“So, he is a relative?”

Paddy didn’t want to mention Sean to him. She wanted to keep them separate. “A distant relative.”

“Is that why you’re interested in the case?”

“No, I’m interested because the police are making a lot of jumps. The boys disappeared for hours. Then they took the baby past Barnhill, which is where they live. It’s got acres of overgrown waste ground, but they took him miles away to Steps. Then, supposedly, they crossed over a live rail, did the deed, and got a train back into town, but they weren’t seen on the train or in the swing park or walking back to Barnhill. They could have been helicoptered in for all anyone knows.”

“They were seen, on the train. A witness came forward last Friday.”

Her heart sank a little. “Witnesses can be wrong.”

“This seems pretty solid. It’s an old woman. She’s not an attention seeker. The police must be pretty sure or they wouldn’t be telling anyone about her.”

“Aye, well.” Paddy sipped her tea. “Just because they’re sure…”

They watched the echoes of cars and buses blur past the steamed-up window. Paddy wanted to tell him about Abraham Ross, how the police made sure he picked Meehan out of a lineup. Mr. Ross was certain Meehan was the man. He fainted at the lineup he was so sure, but then he changed his mind before the trial. Witnesses could be swayed, they could change their minds. The woman might be an idiot.

“I’ve got a car,” Terry said suddenly, hesitating because it sounded as if he was boasting.

They looked at each other and laughed.

“Good for you,” said Paddy. “I can eat my own weight in boiled eggs.”

She had meant it half as a reference to her miracle diet, half as a hollow boast. Terry didn’t understand either but found it terribly funny, so funny he lost his tentative smile and opened wide, laughing loudly. For a first conversation with the object of a month-long crush, it was going incredibly well.

“No,” he said. “I wasn’t just boasting about the car. I meant, d’you want to come to Barnhill with me and have a look? I’m busy tomorrow, but we could go on Friday after work.”

She hesitated. Valentine’s Day fell on the Saturday, and she would want to stay in on Friday waiting for Sean’s reconciliatory call.

“I could do with the protection,” he continued. “It’s a bit rough up there, and I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

It was the first time Paddy had ever heard a Glaswegian man admit openly that he couldn’t beat anyone in a fight at any time.

“You’ll need protection. It’s a bit grim up there. Could you make it Saturday afternoon instead?”

“Excelente,” Terry said, toasting her with his mug. “If we work well together, maybe we could do a couple of paragraphs about the hunger strikers’ march as well.” The march was due to take place on Saturday, and everyone in Glasgow knew there was going to be trouble. If they had been talking to each other, Trisha would have forbidden her to go. “You could bring your Papish eyes and tell me what you see.”

“How do you know I’m a Pape?”

“Is Patricia Meehan your undercover name?”

“No, my undercover name’s Patricia Elizabeth Mary Magdalene Meehan.”

He grinned. “Mary Magdalene?”

“My confirmation name,” she explained. “You get to choose a saint you like or want to emulate.”

“You wanted to emulate a prostitute?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t know what she did for a living. She was the only woman with a job.”

They smiled at each other.

“Saturday’s fine.”

“During the day,” she said, in case he thought she meant anything by it.

“Great,” he said.

She made up an elaborate lie: she would meet him, but she had urgent business in town on Saturday and could only meet him at the far end of King Street, at a bus stop that was far enough away from the paper to ensure they wouldn’t be seen together. Terry flashed his smile at the table as she made the arrangement, knowing why she was doing it. Even the suspicion of spending free time with a man from the paper would be tantamount to civil death.

Outside the café the harsh light was bright. The lunchtime buses rattled past, full of mums with young kids and students from the poly. Paddy looked up the quiet road and back at the café. It was in a siding to a main road, and it didn’t have a hanging sign. It was well hidden from passersby. She only knew about it because of the time Caroline was in Rotten Row having Baby Con.

“How did you find me up here?” she asked.

“You come here a lot, don’t you? I’ve seen you.”

The words hung between them, as shocking as an inadvertent kiss on the lips, and Terry seemed suddenly flustered.

He punched her arm. “See you later, then,” he said, and spun around, heading down the hill like an angry speed walker.