Field of Blood

II

He phoned the polytechnic several times, always refusing to leave a message, always asking just for Heather Allen, when would she be in, is she still not there? I’ll ring back, he said. It’s her I want.

It was late afternoon before Heather came into the Poly Times office. She was in a furious mood. She hadn’t told anyone about her dismissal from the News. Even her parents didn’t know. A latent sense of decency had stopped her from telling them about the syndicated piece. She’d known at the time that she would feel rotten for doing it, had weighed up the pros and cons, and decided that in the long term the benefits would outweigh the guilt. But she’d been wrong. She hated herself for betraying Paddy, and she’d lost her job. She felt enough of a shit without having to deal with her father’s disapproval.

The Poly Times was a two-bit operation. Their office was a small room on the first floor of the students union block, furnished with a single table, three chairs, and a phone. Two walls of shelving held four years of back copies and all the financial records and minutes of all the committee meetings there had ever been. Lots of people applied to work on the paper, but they only printed twice a year and there just wasn’t that much to do. They managed to freeze out most of the interested parties by being cliquey, intimidating, and unfriendly, which left them with a core staff of about six. One of Heather’s duties as the editor was trawling through the unsolicited articles students submitted to see if any of them were printable.

Despite posters up all over campus declaring the upcoming deadline, there weren’t very many submissions in the red wire basket. The office wasn’t empty, though: a couple of committee members, both greasy headbangers, both supernaturally ugly, were standing by the telex machine trying unsuccessfully to send something off. Heather ignored them, hoping they’d feel uncomfortable and leave.

She claimed the entire worktable by putting her bag on one side and the red wire basket on the other, using one chair to drape her coat on and another to sit in. One of the metal boys called over to her that a guy had been phoning for her all morning.

“Someone from the Daily News?” she said hopefully.

The boy shrugged. “He didn’t say where he was from.”

On reflection, Heather realized that the call couldn’t have been from the News. If they had wanted her back, someone would have phoned her at home last night. Anyway, they wouldn’t reverse the decision. No one went against the union. She settled back into her black mood and began pulling submissions out of envelopes and folders, piling them up.

She was halfway through reading a second-year’s travelogue about interrailing around Italy when the phone rang.

“Heather Allen?”

“Yeah.”

“I met you last night, do you remember?”

She didn’t. “I meet a lot of people.”

“I know I can trust you.” The caller paused, wanting a reaction.

“Really?” She was still only half listening, balancing the receiver on her shoulder and flicking through the submissions, looking to see if there were any other travel pieces in case she needed to choose between the two.

“Do you want to know about Baby Brian?”

Heather dropped the travelogue and took the receiver in her hand. He must have heard she was the source of the syndicated piece. She covered her mouth with one hand to stop the sound carrying to the headbangers in the corner.

“Can you tell me something about that?”

“Not on the phone. Can you meet me?”

“You name the place and I’ll be there.”

The man explained that he was very nervous, and made her promise to come alone to the Pancake Place at one a.m. He asked her not to tell anyone where they were meeting and said she shouldn’t even write it down, in case she was followed without knowing it.

Heather tore the scribbled address off the corner of the foolscap sheet and dropped it in the bin. “I’ll see you tonight,” she said, and waited for him to confirm before she hung up.

The boys were watching her without looking; she could feel them. She left her things on the table and went out to the lobby to buy a gritty coffee from the machine. She dropped the coins in and looked out the window, over the rooftops of low buildings towards the city chambers, smiling to herself as the machine spluttered and whirred her coffee into the plastic cup. She would skip the Daily News and take her story straight to a national paper. With a good story about Baby Brian and the syndicated piece about the family on her CV she would be able to walk into any job she wanted after graduation. She could go straight to London.

III

Paddy hung around the newsroom and canteen, killing time until McVie came in. The night shift gradually filtered into the newsroom, replacing the manic fussiness of the day. The skeleton staff took up their positions at their desks, setting up for the night, laying out their magazines and books for reading, one guy on the features desk tuning in a small tra

McVie saw her when he came in to check the board for messages. He nodded an acknowledgment but looked a

“Not again,” he said. “I got in enough fucking trouble last time. That wee bastard phoned in and complained about us. I didn’t know you weren’t a journalist.”

“I’m a copyboy.”

“Well, just stay away from me,” he said.

“I just want to ask you something about Baby Brian.”

“Yeah.” He pointed at her nose accusingly. “And that’s another fucking thing. You’re related to that bastarding child and you never told me.”

Paddy raised a finger and did it back. “I didn’t know it then, did I, ye big arse.”

The use of a bad word seemed to placate McVie somehow, as though he suddenly, completely understood the degree of her vehemence.

“Okay,” he said. “Have you got anything ye can tell me about it?”

“Nut. I don’t know anything about him.”

“How can you not know anything about him? He’s a relative.”

“Are you close to your family?” It was a lucky guess. “D’you know what, though?” she added. “That guy JT, he tried to question me about it, and he wasn’t a patch on your technique.”

McVie nodded. “Yeah, but he’d swap his balls for a story. Gives him the edge. I heard he once went to collect the picture of a rape and murder victim from her mother. On his way out the door he told her that her daughter had been asking for it.” He nodded in sympathy with the shock on Paddy’s face. “That way the woman wouldn’t talk to anyone else from the press. Made it an exclusive. He’s an arsehole. What do you want anyway?”

“I wanted to ask you something about Baby Brian. What time did the boys catch the train to Steps?”

“They said it was between nine and half ten at night. Why?”

“Where were they from lunchtime until then?” She lowered her voice. “And JT said no one saw them on the train. I don’t think wee guys with nothing would catch a commuter train to Steps.”

McVie looked unconvinced. “They found their tickets on them.”

“But Barnhill’s full of waste ground and abandoned factories, and these are poor kids. Why would they spend money on a train? Could the police get it that wrong?”

It startled Paddy because she didn’t know what it was: the skin near his eyes and mouth folded over and a bizarre noise gargled up from his throat. McVie was laughing, but his face wasn’t used to it. “Can the police get it wrong?” he repeated, making the noise again. “Your name’s Paddy Meehan, for fucksake.”

“I know it happened then, but could it still happen now?”

McVie stopped doing the scary thing with his face and let it retract back to suicidal. “Most of them wouldn’t fit a kid up. Although…” His eyes dropped to the side and he looked skeptical. “Most of them wouldn’t. If they were convinced they’re really guilty but it’s hard to prove, they might plant evidence. They see a lot of villains walk; you can kind of understand it.”