Field of Blood

“Yes,” he said, still frowning at the street.

“We’re only making them check his van. If they don’t find any other evidence, he’ll walk.”

“He’ll walk.” Terry nodded. “He’ll walk.”

“But they will find evidence. I’m sure they will. They’ll find evidence of the Wilcox baby and Heather as well, I’m sure they will.”

“You’re sure they will.” His nervous nodding grew faster and he began to rock forward slightly on his seat. “Sure they will.”

He threw open the door and stepped out into the street in one seamless move, striding towards the van with his head down. He stayed in the road, keeping the van between himself and Naismith’s front door, stepped up on the chrome-trimmed step on the driver’s side, keeping his balance by resting his belly against the door, flattening himself against the body of the cab.

Paddy was staring straight at the van, but if she hadn’t known Terry was there she wouldn’t have seen him. His elbow rose, and she saw a flash of light from the screwdriver as he pulled it from his pocket. He jacked the window down, working with the winding mechanism, emptied the contents of the green hand towel in through the window, and stepped away from the cab. Then he walked back towards her, his shoulders still up around his ears, his eyes on the ground in front of him. Paddy watched his face and saw that he was gri

VI

She pressed the rim of the receiver tight against her ear, wondering. Terry was watching her from the car. She was certain they were doing the right thing when she was with him, but as soon as she was alone in the call box, dialing the number for Anderston police station, she wondered if the whole idea seemed sensible only because she wanted to show off to him, acting confident of the facts the way she had acted about sex in his bed the night before. Her pulse throbbed in her throat as she blurted out the story to the officer on the other end: She had seen Heather Allen on that Friday night getting into a grocery van outside the Pancake Place in Union Street; she didn’t know whose van it was, but it was purple and old and she’d seen it doing rounds in Townhead. She hung up when he asked for her name and address.

Striding back to the car, she hoped she looked as confident as Terry had when walking away from Naismith’s van.

“Is that it?”

“Done,” she said, catching her breath. “Done and done.”

Terry drove her all the way to the first leg of the Star, and she didn’t care if she was seen with him. Around the Star, front room lights were on as families settled around the telly after Songs of Praise. Terry smiled at the little houses and said he liked it.

“All the houses are facing each other, though. Don’t the neighbors all watch each other?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Paddy. “Everyone knows everything. Even the Prods know who’s skipping mass. Cheers for ru

They looked at each other, a bold, bald stare, and she was dismayed to see a tiny ambivalent twitch on his chin.

“We did a good thing today, Terry.”

“I hope we did.”

They would be forever bound together by what they had done, and they both knew it.

She climbed out of the low car, regretting the fact that her fat arse was the last thing to leave his line of sight, and bent down to look at him once more. She saw him sitting in the sagging seat, his little pot belly straining through his T-shirt, saw herself lingering too long to talk, reluctant to leave his company. If Pete could see what there was between them, then other people could too. Sean would be hurt to his core.

“We’ll hear in the morning, anyway. I’ll see you then.” She withdrew and slammed the car door behind her.

She could see his face as he took the rickety car around the roundabout. He looked scared but bared his teeth in a smile as he came past. She waved back, watching the rusting backside of the car until Terry was gone.

THIRTY-ONE . GOOD-BYE

I

They were still treating her like a walking sack of pitiful contagion. Marty wouldn’t speak or look at her when they were alone together, Con pressed his lips tightly together when they passed on the stairs, as if she were a stranger he had heard unpleasant things about. She had seen them do it to Marty and had happily participated in it herself, but she wasn’t going to let them wear her down.

She sat alone on her bed, looking at the engagement ring on her finger. The ring felt tight and cut into the skin- she had put on weight in the last week or so- but she kept it on. Sean might not help her otherwise. She could hear Marty listening to the radio in the next-door room, John Peel’s droning monotone interspersed with bursts of synth music and thrashing punk vocals.

She jumped up when she heard the doorbell downstairs. She heard her mother greeting Sean in the hall with a loud, cheerful whoop followed by a hundred tittering questions about his week, talking as if he had been away at sea for two years. The voices drew closer, and she heard their soft tread on the carpeted stairs.

They were almost up the stairs when Paddy suddenly fumbled the ring off her finger. She grabbed the little velvet box from the dresser and tried to fit the band back into the foam slit, but her hands were too jittery. She dropped the ring inside the box and snapped the lid shut just before the bedroom door opened.

Sean looked in at her. He was wearing formal clothes, his new shiny bomber jacket over a crisp orange Airtex shirt, troublingly close in tone to Terry Hewitt’s bedsheets. Trisha was standing behind him. “Here’s Sean to see you.” Her voice was manically cheerful.

“Hiya.”

Paddy stood up. “Let’s go, then.”

“Well, we’re a bit early,” said Sean, angling to come into the room for a snog.

“But the buses…”

Paddy looked vaguely at her mother, willing her to move out of the way. She didn’t want to talk to him here, not with her mother creeping past on the landing, downstairs praying to JC for a Catholic outcome, and smiling hopefully every time they came down for a cup of tea.

“Let’s go,” she said, keeping her eyes down stubbornly.

Down in the hall, Trisha helped them on with their coats. She patted Paddy on the arm, signaling a motherly message about compromise and keeping a man: Don’t let him go, perhaps; or, Agree to anything.

Outside in the crisp air Paddy looked back through the mottled glass and saw the outline of her mother standing still with her head bowed in prayer. She wanted to kick the fucking door in.

“Which cinema do you want to go to?” asked Sean, pulling up his collar.

“Can we go up the brae?”

Sean raised a suggestive eyebrow. There was never any evidence of it, but rumors abounded of sexy goings-on up the brae, just because it was dark and out of sight. Paddy didn’t giggle or respond the way he expected.

“I need to talk to you,” she said seriously.

His face tensed. For the first time since he shut his front door on her, Paddy felt that he was on the back foot, not her.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go up the brae.”

They walked to the end of the street in silence, to the raw mud path leading up the hill. It was a long corridor, with bushes on either side. Sean took out his cigarettes to have something to do, and Paddy tapped him on the back.

“Give us a fag, eh?”

He looked surprised: he had never known her to smoke. He held out the packet and she took one, holding it between her lips and tipping her head to the side to take the light from the match in his cupped hand. She didn’t really like smoking. It made her teeth feel dirty and her blood pressure rise, but she liked the idea of being a narrow-eyed, knowing smoker.

“We’re never getting to the pictures, are we?”