Field of Blood

Finally, Farquarson asked her to submit eight hundred words on Dempsie before Friday and give him the interview material as and when. “On a personal note,” he added, sitting back in his chair and scratching his balls happily, “let me say I hate precocious little bastards like you two and I hope you burn out in your twenties. Get out.”

When the door was shut behind them Terry punched her arm and told her well done in full view of everyone in the newsroom. Embarrassed but grateful, Paddy glanced around and a features sub caught her eye, a little accepting smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, as if he had never noticed her before but was now interested in things she might have to say. Kat Beesley raised a congratulatory eyebrow. Paddy looked for Dr. Pete, hoping he would have heard about her good work, but couldn’t see him.

She felt silly taking her seat on the bench again. Dub said he was pleased but moved away from her, catching any calls that came up and avoiding her eye. Keck smiled at her, but they could both feel that she didn’t belong there anymore. She traced the give of the wood with her thumbnail and found it hard to believe that all this good was coming to her after the many small betrayals she had committed in the past week.

II

Paddy could feel it: she was halfway off the bench already. Editors were looking straight at her when they asked for teas, journalists were talking to her, passing comments, acknowledging her existence. Keck was acting sucky. It felt like a repeat of the time in school when she gave a rousing talk about the Paddy Meehan case to her English class, implying that Meehan had been victimized because he was Catholic. The suggestion had had a particular attraction for the students at Trinity, and the talk had shifted her status from a fat nothing to a someone regarded as a profound thinker and defender of their future freedoms. As she matured she thought the reason they had set him up was because he was a committed socialist; later still she realized that they chose him because he had a record and no alibi. However false the premise for her social success at school, she had still enjoyed it, and she did so now. Neither thoughts of Heather Allen nor Sean’s new freedom could dampen the warming shiver of ambition. She could see herself walking past the bench at night, looking at the grooves from her nails, on her way to somewhere amazing. She saw herself in the morning, spotting them as she came into work from her own flat in the city, from a lover’s bed, from an important story.

At lunchtime, instead of skulking around the town she made straight for the canteen and found Terry Hewitt sitting at a busy table by the window. He waved her over.

“I saved you a place,” he said, excited to see her.

“How did you know I’d be going on lunch now?”

“Keck said you’d be going about one.”

Asking Keck when she was going on lunch seemed a bit clingy and subservient, but Paddy tried not to frown or say anything snide. It was the culture of the place to use any advantage to bully one another, but she’d promised herself she wouldn’t be like that.

“Can I get ye a tea?” she said.

Terry cocked his head, not understanding. “Aye. A tea’d be nice.”

She waited in the queue like everyone else, cooling her hot hands on the cold metal railing in front of the food display cabinets. A journalist she had brought tea a hundred times turned around when he saw her standing behind him.

“Oh, it’s you.”

Paddy nodded modestly.

“I always thought you were a daft bint.”

She knew he meant it as a compliment. She looked around to see who else was admiring her and found Dub standing behind her.

“Hiya,” she said. “I never saw you there.”

Dub lifted his chin as a greeting.

“What’s been happening with you today?” she added, hoping to prompt him into asking her back.

“Nothing,” said Dub, looking over her head to the lamb bridies drying out on a tray.

“Terry and me are at a table by the window- why don’t you sit with us?”

It was an invitation to the big table, and they both knew it.

“Nah, I’m all right. Got stuff to do in town.”

“Oh.” She was disappointed.

“Well done, anyway. I heard.”

“Cheers, Dub. I’m celebrating, that’s why I wanted you to sit with us.”

Dub shrugged, still reluctant.

She didn’t want him to stop being her friend just because she’d had a bit of luck. She pointed to the vat of hot custard. “I’m only having a pudding today.”

Dub mock-snarled at her. “What am I, your biographer? Shut up about yourself.”

They laughed together at his cheek, and Scary Mary hit her tray with the soup ladle because it was Paddy’s turn and she wasn’t paying attention. While she ordered two teas and a sponge in custard, Dub skipped ahead of her in the queue. She turned to speak to him again, but he was gone.

Terry was sitting against the window, on the inside of a long table, jealously guarding the seat opposite him. She gave him his tea and a warning look when she caught him glancing at her body.

“Sorry,” said Terry, the excitement catching in his throat. “So, what’s our plan now?”

“Well, we need to go back to Tracy Dempsie and get a photo of Naismith.”

“We could go after work today.”

“I can’t. I’ve promised to do something.”

He made big, sad eyes at her. “But we’ve got to plan the interview, work out a schedule of questions.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry. I promised to be somewhere. I’m on a late tomorrow, we could go in the morning.”

“Why can’t you do it today?”

“I just can’t.”

“It’s to do with that ned builder, isn’t it?”

She could see he regretted the comment as soon as it was out of his mouth.

“You don’t know Sean,” she snapped. “He’s not a ned. He’s a lovely person.”

Terry held up his hands in surrender. “Okay.”

“He’s a good man,” she repeated.

He nodded. “Right.”

But his eyes were smiling, and she knew she had betrayed Sean. It was as if the sex were a matter between him and Terry and she was just a little fat prop.

The newsmen at the table smiled fractiously as they left, sliding into the spare seats.

“By the way,” he said on their way downstairs, “did you hear about Pete?”

She hadn’t thought about Pete once since this morning’s excitement and felt a guilty pang as she realized she had him to thank for it all.

“What about him?”

“He’s in the Royal.” Terry frowned. “An ambulance was called to the Press Bar last night after hours.”

THIRTY-THREE . CALLUM

I

Paddy could feel the wind gathering on the platform, a small gust of excited air. The feeling increased as she climbed the stairs, and the other commuters pulled their coats around them, knowing it was coming. She turned the corner and struggled into the push. Five feet beyond the corner it was calm again, the wind gone as suddenly as an imagined symptom.

The underground exit was between two high tenements, in a dingy alleyway where shopkeepers dumped foul-smelling rubbish and men relieved themselves on the way home from the pub. At the end of the alley she could see Sean waiting for her in a shaft of light, looking very far away. A hopeful little smile tickled his lips when he saw her coming. He had defied his mum to contact Callum, and Paddy knew how hard it would have been for him to do that.

He swung his brown roll bag into his left hand, reflexively reaching out for her coming towards him, remembering too late that he wasn’t allowed to touch her. He patted her shoulder awkwardly. She remembered Terry Hewitt’s nipples suddenly and smiled, squeezing her eyes tight to hide tiny tears.

“Hiya,” she said, mirroring Sean’s awkward gesture by patting his shoulder back. “Thanks for this, Seanie.”