Field of Blood

She had never run so fast in her life, never been more completely in her body. Her wet feet squelched in her boots, toes pushing her forwards against the wet ground, heading down into the town. When the feeling came back into her knee there was a burn and a sharp, shooting pain that ran up to her hip. When she felt tired or her lungs began to sting, she felt the rain hitting her ear. She imagined it was Naismith’s fingers and ran on, heading towards the only human sound she could hear: the chanting in George Square.

She bolted past the side entrance to Queen Street station and down, turning the corner and finding herself behind a line of policemen forming a cordon against protesters on George Square. Their black woollen tunics had soaked up the rain, and they glistened like beetles’ shells. The marchers had just arrived in the square, a mixture of angry militant Republicans and frightened civil rights marchers, flowing along the metal barriers like cattle at market, hemmed in by a black fence of policemen linking arms. At the far end of the square she could see a line of mounted policemen cutting off an exit road, their rain cloaks tented over the horses’ bodies. She ran over to the line of policemen and touched the back of one of them.

“Please, help me.”

He turned and looked at her, letting go of his neighbor and grabbing her elbow, tugging her in front of the line. His eyes were open a little too wide. He seemed frightened and excited in equal measure.

“I’ve been attacked.”

He leaned into her and shouted in her face, “Get in front of the barrier.”

She was in front of him and moving in the direction he had asked her to go when he quite u

The rain had slowed to drizzle as she circled back towards the office, coming at it from the unlit back of the car park. Ahead of her she could see that the canteen was dark and the newsroom lights were only on at one side of the room. The brightest of the beacon lights were outside the Press Bar. A guy in a sports jacket and slacks came out the door and paused to look up at the unfriendly sky. He could have been any one of the ugly, ridiculous men, but she’d never been more pleased to see anyone. He wrinkled his nose at the threatening sky, carefully checked the change in his pocket, and turned back, going inside for just one more, until the cold rain went off a little more.

Paddy limped after him, smiling as she stepped onto the dirt edge of the car park. Her knee was burning, not just the skin now but the bones. She stopped. She was suddenly cold, subconsciously aware of a blackness, a shape in a space that was rarely filled. The grocery van was parked in the dark far corner of the car park, all its lights off.

She backed off into shadow and looked. He was sitting back in the cab, his face in shadow, his arms crossed, watching the front of the building. He knew where she worked.

II

Paddy saw the white Volkswagen parked outside and knew Terry was in his flat. The knowledge that she was about to see a friendly face made her cry as she limped hurriedly past the third floor. When Terry opened the door her dignity crumpled and she stood, hands limp by her side, sobbing with fright.

He gave her a warm sweater to put on and a dry towel for her hair. He pulled off her boots and tights, cleaned the dirt out of her cut knee with a warm fla

Instead of braving a city-center police station on this evening of evenings, they decided to phone and tell them about Naismith, but the pay phone in the hall wasn’t working, and the public box six floors down was broken too. They decided to go and see Tracy Dempsie, to ask if the grocery van had been anywhere near her house when Thomas had disappeared, but they didn’t do anything about that either. They decided to write a long article about Thomas Dempsie, but stayed sitting on the side of Terry’s bed, sipping black tea, Paddy’s damp thigh pressed against his.

Terry put the black-and-white portable on, and they watched the news. A red-faced presenter a

“Truth’s a rare commodity these days,” said Terry, his knee pressing sharply against her thigh.

“It’s justice that’s rare,” said Paddy. “Truth’s relative.”

They were sitting, pretending to look at a scar on his hand, when Terry suggested lying down. Paddy had guessed what he was going to say and got nervous, interrupting him to point to a pile of car magazines and say something sarcastic about them. She had to wait for another ten minutes of irrelevant small talk before he suggested it again.

They lay on their sides facing each other because the bed was too small to do otherwise. Paddy gathered her hands in front of her chest defensively, and Terry lay with his head propped on one arm, the other resting along the line of his body.

‘Hello, Mary Magdalene,” he said softly.

She cringed at the cheesiness of his approach and raised her hand, waving as if to someone twenty feet away. “Hiya!” she shouted. “Hiya, how’re ye?”

She saw a flash of a

He was tugging her sweater over her head when she thought of Sean sitting on the back step to her mother’s kitchen. She thought of him looking down their garden to the lonely, windswept tree. She saw his hand land gently on hers. The skin on his knuckles was perfectly smooth, that’s how young he was.