Field of Blood

It was an abandoned room and kitchen; dirty gray net curtains flapped at the broken window. The walls were lumpy and stained brown by galloping damp. Through the window he could see a swing park, sliced in half by the shadow cast by the building. This is where it was going to end, in a dirty flat with a bad smell and a broken window. He stood and caught his breath, tears itching at his eyes. They might not shoot him. They might talk to him and convince him to give himself up and send him back to pokey for-ever. Or else he might escape and be forced to go somewhere else and start all over again. Waiting, always waiting, for it to go wrong again.

Griffiths pulled up a stool next to the window and, raising his telescopic rifle, started to shoot at the children in the light.

The last thing James Griffiths saw was a gun barrel sliding through the letter box towards him and a tiny puff of smoke and flame. As the bullet flew towards him, his brain sent out a signal to smile. The impulse didn’t have time to reach the muscles of his face before the bullet pierced his heart.

III

Meehan was in the van, being driven back to his remand cell in Barli

The detective chief inspector waited until the van was on the main road to Glasgow and an officer was on either side of Meehan, ready to grab him if he went nuts. He told him that Griffiths was dead, that he had committed suicide after a long shootout with many dead. When they searched Griffiths’s dead body they found paper in his car coat pocket that matched a sample taken from Abraham Ross’s safe.

The officers on either side of Meehan watched for a reaction, ready to jump up and give him a doing if he lashed out. Meehan had to be told three times that his friend was dead. Completely. Not sick, not winged. Dead. He sat back, pressing his head against the wall of the van. The plant of the paper from the safe would convict him, Meehan knew it. It was the Secret Service. They were setting him up because of Russia.

He waited until they got back to Barli

IV

That same su

The boys from her class knelt in front of her in the warm, dusky chapel. They giggled and nudged one another in the pew, growing increasingly bold until spindly Miss Stenhouse walked silently out of the dark side chapel and glared at them, picking one out for a silent finger-point. The boys slid apart in the pew, only seven and still biddable with a look.

The confessional was dark and fusty, like the inside of a cupboard. Behind the trellis window she could see the brand-new parish priest, an old man with hair up his nose whom no one was allowed to laugh at because he was a priest. He was staring at his knees. He waited for a moment before prompting her to begin.

Paddy said her lines, repeating them singsong-style, hearing the rest of the class chant along with her in her head.

“Forgive me, father, for I have si

“And did you own up then?”

Paddy looked up.

“When your brother was blamed for your theft, did you own up then?”

Paddy hadn’t been told about the priest speaking. It was throwing her off. “No.”

He exhaled a whistle through his hairy nose and shook his head. “Well, that’s very bad. You must try to be honest.”

Paddy thought she was honest, but a priest was saying she wasn’t, and priests knew everything. She was afraid to tell him more.

“Are you sorry for what you did?”

“Yes, Father.” Martin always blamed her when he did things. He always did.

“And what other sins have you committed?”

Paddy took a deep breath. She’d peed up a close once and hit a dog on the nose for snarling. She couldn’t tell him those things, they were even worse than blaming Martin. She took a breath and abandoned herself to the terrible sin of not making a good confession. “I can’t think of any others.”

He nodded heavily. “Very well.” He muttered absolution, gave her a penance of five Hail Marys and two Our Fathers, and dismissed her.

Kneeling in the front row of the chapel, Paddy looked at the child next to her. The girl was counting off three fingers as her lips moved through the prayers. Paddy owed God seven fingers. It seemed to her infinitely, grotesquely unjust. Ostentatiously holding up three fingers, Paddy looked around at the moving lips and closed eyes of the other children and smiled sweetly to herself as she began to mutter quickly: One potato, two potato, three potato, four…

After the confession, just before tea, Paddy stood in the front room of their house, swaying to a song on the wireless. Her two brothers were fighting on the settee, while Rory, their ginger dog, tried to join in, his hard pinkie sticking out under his tummy.

The news came on the wireless, and the very first story made them all listen. The north of Glasgow had come to a standstill when a man went around shooting at people. The boys stopped wrestling and listened. Rory’s pinkie retracted. The man had killed two policemen and injured four passersby. The police had shot him dead, and Paddy Meehan had been charged with murder.

The boys sat up and looked at their little sister, mouths dropping open, eyes wide with wonder.

Outside St. Columbkill’s girls were showing off their white dresses, the boys just pleased to be together and outside. Paddy knew she would die. Her mother had dressed her carefully in Mary A

She once saw her father, Con, pick up a frying pan of smoking oil and run a tap into it. The water exploded, carrying particles of scalding oil through the air. Con still had red speckles on his neck. This is how it would be when she took communion in her mouth, Paddy knew it: cold water into hot oil.