Field of Blood

“Did the baby die in an accident? Were the boys just playing with him?”

“No, it was murder. They killed him.”

“How do they know?”

“Do you really want to know the details?”

She nodded.

Reluctantly, Farquarson rolled his head back and then just told her. “They strangled him and smashed his head in with stones.”

“Jesus.”

“It was brutal. They stuck things up him. Sticks. Up his backside.” Farquarson looked down at the sweet in his hand, suddenly disgusted, and laid it down on the table.

“Could they have the wrong boys?”

“No. Their shoes matched the marks on the ground where the body was found, and his blood was on their clothes.”

Paddy was shaking her head before he had even finished the sentence. “Well, blood could get on them any number of ways. It could have been put there. Someone could have put it on them.”

Farquarson wasn’t entertaining the possibility of a mistake. “He ran for it, the Ogilvy boy. When they went to his school, before they’d even mentioned the baby, he tried to run away.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s guilty,” she said, thinking of Paddy Meehan’s arrest and James Griffiths’s wild run. “He could have run for any number of reasons. He might just have been frightened.”

Farquarson sat back, suddenly tired of tolerating the bolshie copyboy. “Right.” He pointed to the pile of macaroon bars. “Take one for your journey and tell me this: Are any of the early-shift boys in yet?”

“A couple,” said Paddy, wondering what possible use he could have for them. They never seemed to do any work. “Which ones were you after?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Farquarson. “They’re all interchangeable.”

TWELVE . NO GOOD REASON TO RUN

I

Paddy Meehan heard the mob from half a mile away, chanting in a low, slow bray, getting faster and faster, until he began to sweat with panic, adding to the stench of piss and worry inside the police van. It was nine thirty on a weekday morning, but three hundred people had found the time to gather outside the court to see the bastard charged with old Rachel Ross’s murder.

He kept thinking that the van was in the middle of them, that the noise was as loud as it could get, but then another second would pass, the van would move another few feet, and the crowd outside would get louder. When they finally rolled to a stop the sound was deafening. The two uniformed policemen glanced at each other nervously, one holding the door handle, the other holding Meehan’s arm. They turned to the plainclothes CID men sitting near the back of the van, looking to them for the signal to go.

“Right, boys,” one of them shouted at the uniforms. “You two stay in front, we’ll follow up and watch his back. On three. One, two…” The blanket went over Meehan’s head, and in the darkness his face convulsed with terror. “Three.”

The rear doors to the van flew open and the two officers on either side pulled Meehan into the road. He could see the pavement below him, the glint from the coppers’ shiny shoes, and the first step up to the court. Stumbling in darkness, he heard men’s voices and women screaming, children shouting that he should hang, that he was a bastard, a murderer. The CID men grabbed the back of his jacket, reckless of skin, shoving and pushing, hurrying him up the stairs. The policemen were frightened. Tightening their lock on his elbows, they lifted him off his feet. In the sudden darkness beneath the gray blanket, he heard the fast slap of feet ru

Every time Meehan had ever been in court before, he had waited patiently in the holding cells, but not this time. When they pulled the blanket off him he found himself in a witness room a

Meehan fell back into a chair and looked down. His trouser leg was soaked with blood from the brown shoe.

This was all wrong. He was a safecracker, a professional for Godsake, a peterman. He learned his trade with Gentle Joh

II

At the same time that Paddy Meehan’s van set out for Ayr High Court, five officers of the Glasgow Criminal Investigation Department were pulling up in a Ford Anglia outside the address Meehan had given them for his alibi, James Griffiths.

Holyrood Crescent was a graceful curve of town houses facing onto private central gardens. Griffiths had a couple of outstanding warrants for car theft, but the officers weren’t interested in them. They wanted to know if he would corroborate Meehan’s story about the night of Rachel Ross’s death.

It was midmorning on a gorgeous summer’s day, and the generous trees in the central gardens of Holyrood Crescent were lush and full, rippling in the warm wind. The house had been built as a single dwelling, chopped up into apartments for let to commercial travelers and decent families who were down on their luck but wanted to keep a good address. Detectives had done a reco

Now the officers were led by their superior up the three flights, following the red stair carpet worn threadbare in the middle. Griffiths’s room was on the attic floor, in the old servants’ quarters, where the stairs were narrow and listing.

It was a small landing with a single four-paneled door. The first officer to reach the top of the stairs banged on it sharply, shouting, “James Griffiths, open up. It’s the CID.”

A chair scratched against the floor inside. They glanced at one another.

“Come on, Griffiths, open up or we’ll open up for you.”

A floorboard squeaked. Griffiths was messing about in there, taunting five officers. The detective inspector pointed to a detective constable and then at the door, motioning for the other officers to back down the steps and give him room. When everyone had finished noisily rearranging themselves around the tiny hall, the DC shouted at the door, “Step back, Griffiths, we’re coming in.”

He ran at the door, shoulder first, aiming for the lock but hitting and breaking one of the panels, pushing it in so that it flapped open into the bright room, then snapped shut. They saw him for less than a second, and not one of them believed it. Griffiths was sitting on a wooden chair facing the door, a blank expression in his hooded eyes. He wore bandoliers of bullets across his chest, and resting in his lap was a single-barreled shotgun. The DC had had his head bowed against possible splinters from the wood and had seen nothing. He backed up and ran at it again. This time the door panel cracked and snapped off, dropping inside the door.

Framed in the splintered opening, James Griffith rose from the chair, lifting the nose of his shotgun. The first blast hit the DC in the shoulder, spi