Field of Blood

Paddy watched Tracy bring the cigarette to her mouth and knew in a sudden, chilling moment that she was staring at carnage she had created. She was the policeman who had planted paper in James Griffiths’s pocket. She had never in her life wanted to go to confession, but she did now.

She squeezed Tracy’s hand hard. “I’m so sorry for all your troubles.”

Bewildered but touched, Tracy squeezed back, shaking Paddy’s hand awkwardly by the thumb. “Thanks.”

“I mean it.” She clasped Tracy’s hand tightly in both of hers as shame overwhelmed her. “I’m really so sorry. Honestly.”

Tracy Dempsie was on long-term medication and had treated herself to a little extra dose today, but even she was finding Paddy’s behavior odd. She smiled uncomfortably and wriggled her hand free.

Terry stepped forward.

“Mrs. Dempsie, I wonder if you would have a photograph of Henry? We don’t want to use the police photo, we want a nice one for the paper.”

It was a smart lie. The police hadn’t released a photo of Naismith, and they weren’t likely to either, but Terry had guessed that Tracy didn’t know that and would want Henry to look his best in the paper. His professionalism was a reproach to Paddy, who sniffed and dabbed the damp tip of her nose with the back of her hand.

“Aye.” Tracy bumped her bum to the edge of the settee and stood up awkwardly, tottering a step to the side before shuffling out into the hall.

Terry waited until Tracy was out of earshot. “Fucking hell,” he murmured. “What is going on with you?”

She tried to breathe in but her chin crumpled. Terry kicked the underside of her foot and growled at her. “Go to the toilet and sort yourself out.”

She stood up. “Don’t you be cheeky to me.”

“Don’t act like a silly cow, then.”

She kicked him hard on the ankle bone, leaving him panting and cursing her under his breath.

Out in the dark hallway she could hear Tracy raking noisily through papers behind one of the doors. The bathroom had a little ceramic sign on the door, a picture of a toilet with a wreath of roses around it. The room had been decorated in the same era as the hallway. Orange wallpaper was blistered at the edges, pleading to be pulled off. The fixtures were a clashing pink, the bath stained rusty brown where the cold tap had dripped and corroded the plug hole. An orange bar of soap was welded between the sink taps, and the pale lemon carpet smelled of dust and bleach.

Paddy locked the door and pulled down the toilet lid, sitting down and curling over her knees. She tried to think of something Terry had done wrong to mitigate her offense to him. She thought through her night in his bed, this morning, his behavior at work, but couldn’t think of anything. She knew she had to phone the police and take the blame for the ball of hair in the van. She could feel it as a vibration, but every fiber of her being balked at the prospect of owning up. She’d lose everything, but it was right that she should: she’d killed Heather and framed Naismith.

She made herself sit up straight. In the dock at the high court Paddy Meehan had given a dignified speech after his conviction. He must have felt more beleaguered than she was now. She stood up and looked at herself in the cloudy mirror. “You have made a terrible mistake,” she whispered quietly. “I am i

Flushing the toilet for effect, she drew a deep breath, unlocked the door, and stepped across the hall to the living room.

Terry had taken her place on the settee next to Tracy and was smiling dutifully at an open photo album. It was bound in red plastic with gold trim around the edges. She had stored it under something heavy, and some of the cellophane sheets had been flattened the wrong way and were hanging out.

Tracy had a new fag lit and was pointing at a picture. “Me on holiday. Isle of Wight. Good legs, eh?”

“Yeah,” Terry said, looking up at Paddy as she came in and giving her a conciliatory smile. “Look,” he said. “Tracy in a swimming costume.”

Paddy walked over to Tracy’s arm of the settee and looked over her shoulder. The Tracy in the picture was younger and quite pretty, posing carefully on a bank-holiday-busy beach, one foot propped in front of the other like a fifties model. Paddy nodded. “Great.”

On the opposite page Henry Naismith was dressed in drainpipe trousers and a powder blue drape coat. Hanging on his arm was young Tracy in bobby socks and a pink shift dress, her hair in a high ponytail, her eyes accidentally closed at the moment the shutter blinked.

Terry caught Paddy’s eye but she broke off quickly. He touched the face of the photograph.

“Did Henry ever hit the kids when you were together?”

“Me and Henry only had Garry. Alfred was Thomas’s daddy.”

Terry carried on as if he’d known that all along. “And did Henry hit Garry?”

“No. He mostly ignored us until I went with Alfred, and then he went mental, kicking in doors and that, going to Alfred’s work and waiting for him.” She seemed flattered at the memory. Her mouth twitched in an uncertain smile. “Alfred just went out the back way. Course, just after Thomas died Henry got religion. He was so sad about Thomas you’d have thought it was his own wean that died. He tried to make up for how he’d been, tried to be a good dad to Garry. Devoted all his time to him.”

She turned the album page to a photo of herself in a maxicoat and knee-high boots with a baby perched on her hip. The child stared at the camera with an odd intensity.

“What a beautiful baby,” said Terry. “He’s lovely looking. Is he yours?”

“That’s my Garry.” Tracy covered the child’s face with her fingertips. “My wee boy.”

Paddy hardly dared to ask. “Have ye got any more of him?”

Tracy did have other photos of Garry. She flicked through his first Christmas, a neighbor’s wedding scramble, a gra

Paddy couldn’t hear the wind or what Terry was saying about the pictures. All she could hear was her own heartbeat, and all she could feel was the cold sweat on her spine. The shady sexual threat in Callum Ogilvy’s words came back to her as imminent and personal. The night they met, Garry must have followed her from Tracy’s to Townhead. He must have heard from Tracy that a journalist called Heather Allen had been in the house and traced her footsteps, waiting patiently before approaching so that she wouldn’t co

“Does Garry live here?” she asked quickly.

“Naw.” Tracy scratched her thigh through her housecoat. “He stays up in Barnhill with his dad. They’re as close as brothers, those two. Do everything together. Garry does whatever his dad says. This picture”- she pulled back the crackling cellophane cover and peeled the Teddy boy photograph off the glue striations-“this is the nicest one.”