Slip of the Knife

I

Pete had only ever been in Paddy’s office once before, when he was one and a half, teething molars and refusing to sleep unless it was light. Her mother was at some dead friend’s rosary with Caroline and BC and she’d had no option but to take him with her. It was late at night, at that quietest moment in the twenty-four-hour culture of the place, when she took Pete in to pick up a folder and some telephone messages from her pigeonhole. She hoped he would fall asleep in the car but he didn’t; expected him to cry in the office but he didn’t do that either. He sat on her hip, watching everything, smiling for everyone and pointing everywhere, shouting a string of consonants at a desk and dribbling on her shoulder.

The night came back to her as she pushed in through the double doors. She would love to hold Pete like that again, wrap her arms around him and have him reciprocate. She was his world then and he was still hers now.

The few journalists who hadn’t stayed at Terry’s party downstairs or passed out or gone home were at the desks, burrowing away. Only the secretaries sat up at the sight of the little boy standing in the door looking around with honest interest.

Two of them came over and made a fuss, told Paddy that he looked like her and asked Dub if he was the daddy. Pete smiled up at him until Dub said kind of, aye. Pete punched Dub’s thigh, narrowly missing his balls, insisting that he wasn’t his daddy, his daddy was his daddy, but smiling all the same.

Paddy led them over to a desk on the fringes of News with a big space behind it for Pete to play in, found him some paper and pencils, and asked him to do some drawings of the police station with Dub while she worked.

She laid out the photocopies and Joan Forsyth’s list of names and addresses in front of her. It was long but she crossed off all the men and called international inquiries to get telephone numbers for all the other addresses. The operator would only give her three at a time so she kept having to phone back until she had the full fourteen. Then she called again, because she was in the swing of it, and got three Irish numbers as well. None of the names on Forsyth’s list sounded African or even West Indian so she began at the top of the list.

Two no answers and one reply, a man, said that the woman she was looking for, Fransy, was at “woyk.” Call later.

“I’m trying to trace someone, it’s quite urgent. I hope you don’t mind me asking but is Fransy black?”

The man stalled. “Who is this?”

“The woman I’m looking for is black. Is she black?”

“No, but I am.”

A yappy dog began to bark in the background.

“Right? But she’s white?”

The dog gave a sudden yowl and the speaker came back on the phone. “The fuck are you getting at?”

He sounded ready for a fight so she thanked him and hung up.

Two more calls and two more answers, both of whom were offended when she asked them about the color of their skin. Evidently, the question meant something over there that it didn’t mean over here.

“Hello?”

“Can I speak to Karen, please?”

“Speaking.” Her voice was a sexy southern-belle drawl. She sounded as if she was lying down, or at least walking around looking super in nice underwear.

“Karen, I wonder if you can help me. You had your photo taken last summer by a photographer-”

“Kevin? Sure, I have the form here, right in front of me. Sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry. “I’ll sign and send it back.”

“Well, the thing is-”

“How is Kevin anyway? Is he coming back? Do you know Terence?”

Paddy touched her funeral skirt, thought about telling her, and then realized it was far too long a story to go into. “Fine. See, the thing is we don’t know which photo is yours. I’ve offended a lot of people by asking this, but are you black?”

Karen laughed. “Well, sweetheart, I’m not surprised they were offended. It’s a issue over here.”

“Right. But are you?”

“As a midnight river.”

They smiled at each other down the phone. “Lovely,” said Paddy.

“I am that,” said Karen and let out a frank, dirty cackle that made Paddy want to meet her.

“You’ve got your hair in braids with yellow through them?”

“No,” she said sharply. “Not anymore.”

“But you did when the photo was taken?”

“Yeah. That was last year. No one does that anymore.”

Odd clunks in the background and the sound of the receiver being pinched between her shoulder and chin made Paddy think she was fixing breakfast.

“Karen, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this… Kevin died, that’s why I’m chasing up his notes for him.”

Karen gave out a sad “oh,” like the final breath from a deflating balloon.

“Yeah, he, well, he was killed by somebody.”

“Tssh. They’re animals.” She didn’t sound very concerned.

“Yeah. But you got the photograph?”

“Yeah.” Voice suddenly high, a little defensive, Paddy thought. “I didn’t really look at it, just saw my own face. Listen, could you leave me out of it? I do not look good in that picture. That’s kind of why I didn’t send the form back, you know, that old hairdo and all. Very unstylish now. They’ll be laughing about me from here to Union Square.” She laughed with her tongue clamped between her teeth, an obligation laugh. Now that she was talking Paddy could hear the phoniness in her U.S. accent, the way it slid up and down the East Coast, the occasional flat vowels creeping in to match Paddy’s own Scottish accent.

“Karen, Terry’s dead too.”

Down the line, metal clunked against metal. She heard a hiss and “plouf” as the gas was lit.

“I see… Really?” She paused as if Paddy was talking and then replied, “Great, baby, so you can leave me out of it?”

Karen wasn’t alone. She was putting on a show for someone. Paddy flattened the close-up of McBree and the car, touching the corner of Karen’s face that she had included in the enlargement.

“The book won’t come out now, Karen. You’re quite safe.”

“Well, that’s great… Yeah, I’m making coffee.” She laughed again, for a long time. The sound of her voice seemed to pivot away from the receiver and back, as if she was watching someone moving. Suddenly they were alone. “Listen, you see that picture doesn’t come out, right? I’ll get my fucking arse felt if it does.”

Flat Glasgow South Side accent, undisguised.

“Karen, I’ve known both Kevin and Terry since I was eighteen. I need to know why.” She looked at the photocopy of McBree, at the fat man turned away from the camera, a hand on the driver’s door handle. “Who’s the suit?”

Karen drew a breath, muttered, “In the bathroom now.”

“Who is he?”

“British.”

English people were English. Scottish people were Scottish. The only people who called themselves British worked for the military or the government and he was too fat to be a soldier.

“I, um,” Karen was whispering, sounding tearful, “I liked my picture. I’m sorry.”

Paddy found herself listening to a flat dial tone. A small hand landed on the soft inside of her elbow.

“Mum, I’m hungry.”

II

Dub remembered where the canteen was. They no longer made hot food but the room was furnished with fizzy drink and food vending machines, selling all the crap adults tried to keep children away from. Paddy asked him to pick the least appalling thing and promised Pete a proper meal when they went to his granny’s.

They walked up the stairs and Paddy went back into the office, considering her next move.

Back at the desk she put her notes, one photocopy, and the list into an internal mail envelope with a note to Bunty, asking him to get Merki to write it up. She found some small satisfaction in the thought that Merki would have to contradict himself in print. She jotted notes on the meaning of the picture, and slid the clippings envelopes in with it, folded the envelope shut, opened the wire butterfly clips, put her name on the front as the sender, and slipped it in Bunty’s pigeonhole.

She kept thinking about her dad. Couldn’t shove him to the back of her mind the way she usually did, but his company felt comfortable today, as if he was supporting her elbow, helping her.

She needed to be alone when McBree came. Eriskay House was blighted by death already but Callum was there, eating dry bread, enjoying the countryside. She could get Dub to drive out with her and make him come back to the city with Callum. She could tell him she was meeting a contact from British Security, top secret, ask him to come out and get her the next day. If Dub promised to stay with Pete and her mother and she made sure McBree knew where she was, they should be safe enough.

She had one last thing to do, though. She could do it on the way out to Ayr. Garrett’s suggestion. She smiled when she thought about the taciturn police officer. Decent woman.