Field of Blood

Down at the train station they showed their travel passes and took the escalator up to the high platform. There was nowhere to sit in the waiting room at the top of the stairs. It was full of commuters, and the air was uncomfortably moist and warm from their breath. It was dark outside on the platform. From the high vantage point they could see the big sky over the river and the silhouette of short-headed shipyard cranes, once busy but now still, dinosaur skeletons against the orange sky. She wanted to tell Sean what she’d done, confess the arrogance that had led her to set Naismith up, but the words caught in her throat, making her heart race.

The warm train arrived and they took seats near the front, sitting close together, silent and tired, their thighs pressing against each other, their hands touching sometimes when they shared a cigarette. When Sean handed over the cigarette and his lean fingertips touched hers, she wanted to grab him with the other hand and tell him she had done an unforgivable thing to a man, she’d told an awful, world-ending lie. But Naismith had confessed to everything: he had tried to attack her and had followed her to her work. She began to wonder if he did reach for her after all, if they were Heather’s hairs she had seen on the brown towel.

She made him get off at Rutherglen and leave her on the train, but she stood up on the quiet carriageway and saw him to the door, as if it were her home.

“I’ll phone you tomorrow,” he said.

“Go

He leaned down for a hug, holding his pelvis a foot away from her and bending in, as if she would attack him if he touched her. He sighed a pleasured groan into her ear, for an embrace as warm as a poke with a sharp twig.

She stayed on her feet as the train moved, and watched him walk down the cold platform, his hands in his jacket pockets, his head hanging heavy on his shoulders. As the moving train passed him Paddy felt he was sliding into her glorious yellow past; ahead was nothing but the lonely gray devastation she had created. But she still had a glimmer of hope. Maybe, somehow, she was still justified. Callum could be wrong.

THIRTY-FOUR . MR. NAISMITH

I

It was ten o’clock in the morning and the frost still lingered in the shadow of the high-rise blocks. A sniping wind was gathering strength, sweeping down the sides of the buildings, flicking hair and hems as Paddy and Terry picked their way carefully down the long flight of steps, avoiding the icy edges. The housing scheme they were walking through was a low-level offshoot of the Drygate high flats, built for pensioners and sickly people, no children allowed. The modest lawns between blocks were interspersed with giant yellow sandstone, left over from a monumental time.

“That’s all that’s left of Duke Street Prison. See over there?” Terry pointed to the bottom of a bit of yellow wall. “That’s where the condemned cell was. They used to hang them on that patch of grass.”

Paddy looked and nodded, pretending to listen.

“You’re quiet today.”

She hummed an answer. She was afraid to speak. Panic was swelling the back of her throat, gagging her. If she spoke she might just denounce herself.

“And you look knackered.”

“Piss off.”

But she knew he was right. She’d hardly slept the night before. Wide-eyed, she’d lain on her back, tracing patterns in the ceiling plaster, thinking about Callum and what he had said. She’d lain awake looking at it every way she could, willfully misinterpreting what he had said and trying to make it sit comfortably. It was three thirty before she finally admitted to herself that Callum was telling her Naismith was i

“So,” said Terry cheerfully, “Tracy Dempsie: is there anything else you want to warn me about?”

“The carpet in the hall- it’s horrendous.”

He nodded seriously. “Thanks for that. I’d hate to be caught unawares.”

Paddy smiled at the unexpected return. Terry was always slightly sharper than she expected him to be. She glanced over and saw his little belly jiggling under his shirt as his foot hit the step.

“I see ye,” he muttered.

She looked up to find him watching the ground in front of him.

“You see me what?”

“You, giving me the glad eye.”

She smiled and found her eyes filling suddenly. It would be easier to bear if he weren’t so sweet.

Blinking back a tide of guilt, Paddy led him across the crumbling floor of the car park and into the Drygate lobby. Both lifts were out of order: a small, handwritten notice in jagged capitals was pi

They trudged up the grim stairwell, kicking through glue tins and plastic bags on one landing and the loose pages of a pornographic magazine on another. Paddy let Terry lead so that he wouldn’t be staring at her fat behind.

Up on Tracy’s landing the suction weight of wind pulled the landing door so tightly closed that it took both of them to lever it open. The deafening wind flattened her hair and tugged at her heavy coat. Terry clutched the neck of his heavy leather jacket as they crept along the inside wall of the balcony. Paddy knocked heavily on Tracy Dempsie’s door.

She had raised her hand to knock again when Tracy opened it, wearing yesterday’s makeup in all the wrong places. She had taken an extra pill or two, and her housecoat was buttoned one step out. She blinked slowly when she saw Paddy and raised her cigarette to her mouth. The hot ash tip flew into her hair, singeing it.

“You’re not Heather Allen.”

Paddy hoped Terry hadn’t heard.

“I saw her picture in the paper. You’re not her. She’s dead.”

Terry looked curious. Paddy could feel his eyes on her face.

“Tracy, I heard Henry Naismith was arrested.”

At the mention of her ex-man the fight went out of Tracy. Her head dropped forward on her neck and she turned and walked away down the hall. A swirling gust of wind jerked the door open. Paddy wiped her feet before stepping in. Shutting the door carefully behind him, dulling the noise, Terry looked from the busy carpet to Paddy and let off a silent scream.

Following the trail of smoke through the hall and into the living room, they found Tracy slumped on the settee, staring blankly at her knees. The angry wind hissed outside the window.

“Henry,” she said quietly. “They said he confessed to killing Thomas as well. He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t have.”

Paddy sat down on the edge of the settee next to her, their knees almost touching. She desperately wanted to say something kind and helpful, but there was nothing to say. As if she could see it in her eyes, Tracy reached out and took Paddy’s hand, holding it by the thumb, absentmindedly lifting and dropping it as she took a draw from her fag.

“He was a hard man, though, wasn’t he?”

Tracy sucked smoke through clenched teeth and tipped her head back. “Henry’s a good man. He was in the gangs when he was younger, aye, but the gangs just fight each other. And anyway, he’s a born-again Christian now, he’s not going to attack a wean.”

“But he confessed, Tracy.”

“So what?” She looked up at them, pleading, as if they had any authority in the matter. “They could just be saying that.”

Paddy had almost forgotten Terry was standing behind her until he hovered into her line of vision. He cleared his throat carefully before he spoke.

“Mrs. Dempsie, why would he confess if he didn’t do it?”

Tracy shook her head at the carpet and looked bewildered. “They’d mibbe make him?” Her medically dulled eyes slowly traced the dervish pattern on the carpet as she thought back. She blinked slowly at the floor and then blinked again, her eyebrows forming a plaintive little triangle. “Henry won’t kill hisself like Alfred did. He’s got religion.”