Field of Blood

Paddy made some notes on the back of a receipt and returned the clippings to the envelope as tidily as she could, following the original creases. She checked the date at the top. Brian had gone missing eight years ago to the day of Thomas’s disappearance. Thomas was the same age as Baby Brian and from the same area. No one seemed to have noticed the parallel between the cases. They could have been completely different for any number of reasons, but it seemed strange that she had never even heard of Thomas Dempsie before.

Downstairs in the library, Helen was sitting at the desk, glancing through a late edition. Paddy stood there for a full minute, and although Helen tightened her forehead she refused to look at her. Finally Paddy put the envelope on the counter and shoved it forward so that it was hanging over the far edge.

“Don’t leave them there.” Helen stood up casually, coming over as slowly as she could. “If they went missing you’d be made to pay for them. I doubt you make enough in three months to pay for these.”

Paddy smiled i

Helen looked over her glasses and sighed heavily. Paddy really hoped she was still there if she ever got a promotion. She’d remember what she was like and pull her up about it.

She had been sitting on the bench for ten minutes before it occurred to her that no one was laughing at her anymore. Someone in features called her over using her name, not just calling her boy. Someone else picked her over Keck from the bench, something that never happened because Keck could find everything and knew where everyone was at all times. A sports desk journalist even looked her in the eye and asked if she, Meehan, would get him a coffee. It was worrying.

Paddy was starting to wonder if she was getting the sack and everyone knew but her when Keck stopped picking his fingernails with an unraveled paper clip and leaned over. “Seen your pal Heather this afternoon?”

Paddy shook her head, reluctant to get into it.

“Aye, ye won’t see her tomorrow either.” He pointed into the middle of the room. “Farquarson told the morning boys, and they got Father Richards down here and told him her card wasn’t right and she was to get out and not come back. She was crying and everything.” He sat back.

Paddy looked around the room at the serious men at the news desk, at the mess of clippings piled up on the features and sports desks, where they were all gathered around one end of the table smoking Capstans and eating a box of cream cakes, and she wondered how these graceless, ruined men had come to be her only allies.

SIXTEEN . MICROBE SAFARI

I

The Drygate flats looked like lost American tourists. Painted and peeling Miami pink, they were topped with jaunty little Frank Lloyd Wright hats and banded with balconies. The designer had overlooked the setting: a brutally windy Glaswegian hillside facing the Great Eastern Hotel, a soot-blackened doss-house for lost men.

Thomas Dempsie’s mother had been transferred by the council shortly after her husband was convicted of murdering Thomas. It was less than half a mile away from the old house, just down the hill from Townhead. Paddy guessed that she would have been moved by the council for her own safety. The News had published her new address when Alfred killed himself in prison.

Paddy waited for five minutes in the lobby, watching the red digital display above the steel doors tell her that the lift was moving exclusively between floors four and seven, before accepting that she would have to walk. She didn’t like ru

Everything in the urine-stained stairwell that could be broken was broken: rubber had been torn off the handrail, leaving a filthy black substance that stuck to the skin; tiles on the floor had been lifted, leaving bald, tacky splats of adhesive. Several landings were littered with glue-filled plastic bags, the discarded tins often lying nearby, some still giving off a detectable tang. Paddy had to stop a couple of times to get her breath on the way to the eighth floor, and each time she stopped she could hear people’s lives clattering and murmuring through the walls around her, smell the evening meals being prepared and the moldy rubbish blocking chutes. She reached the eighth floor and paused in front of the gray fire door, taking another breath and reminding herself why she was there and what she wanted to ask about. She had a job to do, she was a reporter. Thrilled by the game, she pulled the open door and stepped out onto the windy balcony.

The row of front doors were painted a uniform pillar-box red. Between each was a living room window for the neighbors to peer into and a smaller, mottled bathroom window. As she stood waiting in front of 8F for an answer to her knock, Paddy noted that the net curtains in both were gray and tired. An empty bottle lay on the blurred bathroom sill, next to a pool of what looked like dried toothpaste. She felt her lip curl in disgust but checked herself. She shouldn’t be small-minded about how other people lived, it was none of her business. She stared hard at the door and could see that the wind on the landing had brought hairs and dust and grit to it when the paint was still wet, giving it a textured microbe-safari finish. The door opened cautiously and a strange woman looked out at her.

“Oh.” Paddy let out a little startled exclamation, surprised by the woman’s odd appearance. “Hello?”

Tracy Dempsie had gone to great lengths to disguise any natural advantage she had ever had. Her hair was dyed aubergine and pulled up in a tight ponytail that dragged her face back into an unflattering mask. Her black mascara and eyeliner were thick and migrating under her eyes. Her pupils were so dilated that the blue iris was little more than a halo. Tracy blinked slowly, cutting out the scary world for a delicious moment, knowing that all the sharp edges would be waiting for her if the prescriptions ever ran out.

“Hello, Mrs. Dempsie? I’m Heather Allen,” said Paddy, half hoping it would all go sour and Tracy would phone the paper and complain about her, compounding her dismissal. “I’m a journalist with the Daily News.”

Reluctantly, Tracy opened the door, and the wind shoved Paddy into the hall. The decor was as garish as Mrs. Dempsie herself. The swirling carpet looked like an abstract representation of an argument between red and yellow. The walls were covered in jagged yellow plaster. Tracy shuffled back, walking off to the living room. Paddy paused in the hall and then guessed that she had been invited to follow.

A black-and-white portable television was on in the corner, showing a nature program about otters, their little silvery pelts slipping in and out of water. Around the set, lost in the same loud carpet as the hall, were cigarette packets and dirty plates. A saucer at the side of the settee had a bit of toast and three dog ends stubbed out on it. Two wire clotheshorses were arranged around the burning fire with sheets draped over them, sending wave after wave of wet heat into the living room.

Tracy saw her looking at it. “That’s the high flats. No lines for washing. Ye can’t leave a washing out on a line ’cause someone’ll nick it.”

“You used to have a house, didn’t ye?”

“Aye, Townhead. Up the hill, know?” Tracy lifted her hand slowly and lowered it again, indicating over there, where the badness was. “Council moved us here after Alfred got the jail. Then your mob published this address.” She frowned bitterly, looking at Paddy as if it had been her decision.