Field of Blood

Paddy had her suspicions but waited until they were sitting in the backseat again. “Who is in there?”

McVie looked out of the window. “Never mind.”

She caught Billy’s eye in the mirror.

“The Baby Brian Boys,” Billy said, starting the engine.

It made them sound like a sinister jazz band. She knew immediately that the name would stick forever.

The street was dark, filled with deep, sharp shadows. As they pulled away Paddy looked up at the tiny cell windows, imagining a child up there in a cell alone with no one to stand up for him. It would have been a terrifying prospect for an adult.

She tried to make it sound casual. “Are they looking for the men behind it?”

“No.” McVie seemed sure. “If they were looking for a grown-up, they’d be charging them with conspiracy to commit murder, not murder.”

“How’s that different?”

“It means they weren’t the brains behind it, they’re not as culpable. In sentencing terms it’s a difference of about ten years.”

Paddy looked out the window and thought of Paddy Meehan being mobbed outside Ayr High Court. Someone had run out of the crowd and kicked him so hard on the shin that they drew blood. She wondered if the person who did that had felt ashamed when they heard that he was i

They passed the brightly lit bus station. Billy was driving along a broad back road to Townhead, around the back of the bus station, skirting the shut and empty town.

“Why’re we going to this story, anyway?” Paddy asked. “The schoolgirl was a better story.”

Neither of them answered her.

Billy crossed at the lights and pulled into the housing scheme. Townhead was on a subtle hill between the city center and the motorway. They were good houses, built with quality materials on a small scale after the city pla

Billy stopped outside the entrance to Patsy Taylor’s block of flats. The stairs were open to the elements. Each flat had a front room window that curled around the corner of the building, a veranda at the side, and a porthole window next to the front door.

“D’you want to see what this shitty city’s about?” asked McVie vindictively. “Then come with me.”

The walls of the open-mouthed entrance were a green and cream, but the steps were cold gray concrete. The flat they were looking for was one flight up, the door flanked by tripod plant-pot holders holding withered somethings. A fake mother-of-pearl nameplate was fastened to the door frame. McVie looked disappointed.

“Well, at least it’s not Sawney Bean again,” he muttered, referring to a famous Scottish ca

McVie took a deep breath and knocked on the door, an authoritative, firm three times. A stocky balding man with a ring of cropped white hair opened the door. He was sucking a freshly emptied pipe and wearing an itchy woollen dressing gown over his day clothes.

“What can I do for you, my friend?”

“Good evening, Mr. Taylor. My name is George McVie and I’m the chief reporter for the Scottish Daily News. I understand there has been an incident here this evening. I wonder if I could have ten minutes of your time to ask you about it?”

Paddy was astonished at McVie’s skill and grace. Mr. Taylor was charmed too, and flattered that the Daily News would send out its chief reporter for his story, a fact that McVie had anticipated when he told the lie.

Mr. Taylor invited them into his formal front room and packed his pipe from a yellowing rubber pouch while his silent wife made tea and grandly offered around custard cream biscuits. The electric fire wasn’t on, but the red light spun slowly under a dusty coal mountain range, regular as a siren.

Mr. Taylor had taken the large armchair for himself and put McVie next to him on the settee. Paddy was relegated to the far end by the door, farthest away from the core of the conversation. Listening over the ticking of the clock, Paddy thought she heard someone down the hall sobbing low and regular, like a boiler ticking down to cool.

Under McVie’s surprisingly gentle prompting Mr. Taylor told how his wife was washing the dishes at the back of eight when she heard a commotion in the street. They both looked out the window and saw a body hanging from the streetlight opposite their house. Mrs. Taylor called the police and ambulance services from the neighbor’s telephone, but the man was dead. They found a letter pi

“Could I see the letter, please?” she asked suddenly. “To check the spelling of Eddie’s name. I’ll get into terrible trouble with the lawyers if we spell it wrong.”

Both men had forgotten she was there. They sat up and looked at her in surprise.

“That’s your bit of the job, is it?” said Mr. Taylor.

Paddy nodded and pulled a notebook out of her bag. It was pristine, a navy-blue hardboard cover with a matching elastic band around the middle. She’d only stolen it from the stationery cupboard that afternoon.

Mr. Taylor hesitated for a moment. “There’s a lot of language in it.”

“That doesn’t bother me.” Paddy smiled bravely. “I’ve heard it all in this job. I just ignore it.”

He reached under his cushion to pull out a pale yellow envelope, handing it to Paddy. “You’re surely not a journalist?”

She glanced at McVie. If he was the chief news reporter, she could be a journalist. “Aye,” she said, “I am.”

McVie drew his attention away, asking him to repeat the story again because it was vital that they get the times right.

Paddy slid the folded sheet out of the envelope and opened it. She moved her pencil across her pad as if she were copying out the name while she read the letter quickly. The sheet of paper was from a small girl’s writing set, a little sister’s maybe. It had a faint picture of a black horse on the face of it, galloping through a misty field. It was obvious that Eddie and Patsy had been more than passing acquaintances. He referred to previous outings, and to her father calling him a bigot. But Eddie was an angry man. He told Patsy she was a bitch and he’d kill himself if she didn’t meet him tonight. Paddy folded the letter carefully and slipped it between the pages of her notebook, putting the empty envelope on the table in full view.

McVie noticed and stood up, gesturing to Paddy to get up too. “Thank you for your time. It’s very much appreciated.”

Mr. Taylor glanced at the envelope, and Paddy knew immediately that he saw it was empty. He knew he had made a stupid mistake. He lurched forwards in front of McVie, grabbing the notebook with one hand and Paddy’s wrist with the other, trying to yank them apart.

“Mr. Taylor, let go of her at once,” said McVie, as indignant as the Pope in a go-go bar. “She’s just a girl.”