Field of Blood

Terry’s damp fingers scumbled across the skin on her bare stomach. Her rolls of fat seemed to multiply under his hand. He asked her what she liked, and she said everything was great, lovely, just there, yeah, but she felt nothing but the facts of their movement, the scratching blanket, the fingers hooked inside her. He lay on top of her, leaving a trail of cooling saliva on her neck, and she sighed as she supposed she should, breathing faster when he did, acting and knowing she was acting, wondering if he knew. The blanket slid off them, and her legs and feet were cold. She blankly bided her time until it was over. Terry tensed, suddenly covered in a thin film of sweat, which cooled instantly into a cold wash. She didn’t want to touch him.

“That was great,” panted Terry, slithering out of her.

“Yeah.” She breathed heavily, as if she had been carried away too.

He lay next to her, catching his breath. She tried not to touch him and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing to it. She was relieved. Her virginity was no longer a giant, weighty gift. She didn’t have to find someone to bestow it on. It was gone. Sean was gone.

“Terry?” She nudged him, needing some company. “Hey, Terry, what time is it now?”

But Terry was asleep. Paddy slipped a finger between her legs and looked at it. She didn’t see any blood. Terry didn’t even need to know what had happened.

III

Two deep, vibrant orange bars glowed across the dark room. The electric fire sported little empty ash zeros where they had lit cigarettes against the bars. The curtains didn’t shut properly, and even lying in the bed Paddy could see into the flats opposite, watching as a man readied himself for a Saturday night on the town and a woman made di

Terry slept for twenty minutes like a dead man, and when he woke up he told her a lot of gossip about the people at work. Kevin Hatcher, the drunken pictures editor, was only twenty-eight and had once won an international photography award for a photo essay about nomadic tribes of the Gobi Desert. Richards had stood for election as a Communist Party member. Tony Be

“I’m very fat at the moment,” she said softly, as if the weight was an occasional condition that afflicted her.

“You’re gorgeous. Womanly.” He touched her breast and she blushed.

“I got a real fright today,” she said quickly, “with that guy.”

“We’ll go to the police tomorrow, when things are calmer. They’ll have let most of the marchers out by noon, it’ll be quiet. There’s good material in this, you know. There’s at least one article in it.”

She’d never told anyone before, and her worries spilled across her lips before she could stop them. “I don’t think I can write. I don’t know why, but I can’t think straight when I sit down at a desk. I can see bits of it but I can’t fit them together.”

“That’s just craft,” he said. “No one knows that stuff straightaway. You need to learn all that stuff.”

“Really?”

“You’ll learn. Don’t worry.” He stroked his hand up and down her soft belly. “It’s just practice.”

She could feel him pressing his cock against her leg and knew he was ready to go again.

“Shall we have another smoke?”

“Okay.” Terry helped himself to one of her Embassy Regal cigarettes and climbed out of the bed, shamelessly walking naked across the room to the heater, crouching down to light it on the bars. “Heather Allen used to smoke these.”

“God rest poor Heather.” Paddy imagined her lying on the floor of the grocery van, among the bread dust. “What was she doing up in Townhead that night?”

“It turns out she wasn’t in Townhead at all. When they checked it out, she was at an uncle’s house having di

A sudden drop of pressure made one of Paddy’s ears pop. There was only one of them in the Townhead scheme that night. She’d called herself Heather Allen when she spoke to the shy man in the navy overcoat, and it wasn’t the first time. She’d introduced herself as Heather Allen to Naismith when she first met him, the day the syndicated article was published in the paper. That’s how he knew where she worked.

He’d killed the wrong girl.

TWENTY-NINE . LIFE IN A SCOTCH SITTING ROOM

I

Terry dropped her on the main road and tried to kiss her, but she ducked out of the car quickly. It would be bad enough that she was seen getting out of a man’s car, much less kissing him. She leaned back.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

He mugged hurt at her. “You’ll shag me but not kiss me? That’s a bit Mary Magdalene.”

“Shut up.”

She smiled and slammed the door shut, watching as he drove away. When he turned the distant corner her grin dissolved. She pulled the neck of her coat up around her and headed into the Star. Every house was full tonight; every front room was filled with the blue-and-white shifting flash of the Saturday night television. Paddy’s feet were cold and wet inside her boots. Her bare toes curled against the paper sole, peeling the top layer off, gathering it between her toes. She walked straight past her house, past the Beatties’, taking an overgrown lane out of the scheme and into the next door field. She climbed up to a wild bit of cliff overlooking an industrial valley that stretched for two miles over to the East End. The brae was considered a wild, slightly dangerous place, but Paddy needed to be alone.

It was dark and wet underfoot. She took the less-worn parallel path a couple of feet uphill from the muddy main track, trying to keep out of the mud and puddles. Within twenty feet she had cleared the bushes and trees and was on the bare hillside. The sounds of buses and cars and a lone whining motorbike wafted up the hill. She followed the hill around until she was no longer facing the city. White stars shone from the inky sky.

She looked out over the dying industrial valley. There was an ironworks down there that had given off the sulfurous smell of bad eggs night and day for as long as she had been alive, but now the lights were dark and all the men had been laid off. Smaller factories around it in the valley were closing down, farther down the river the shipyards were laying off, and every morning brought news of brand-new endings. The proud city was dying. Paddy lit her fifth cigarette of the day and blinked back tears as she thought of Sean and Naismith and what might have happened had he managed to grab her.

She was responsible for Heather’s death. She’d wished her harm when she gave her name to Naismith. And what was a wish but a vulgar prayer to whoever else happened to be listening.