The Dead Hour

Sullivan had stuck his neck out and desperately needed Paddy to pick out Neilson. Driving seven miles into town with the accused man riding in the car in front had to be bad practice: she saw Sullivan watching her in the mirror sometimes, when they stopped at lights or the car in front turned sharply, hoping she’d had a good look at Neilson. But Paddy wasn’t looking at the car in front. She could have picked him out with her eyes shut.

It was warm in the room. Burned dust had turned the lightbulb yellow and brown. It must have hung there for a long time. The room didn’t get used much. Eyewitnesses weren’t called for very often and then it was usually for robberies. She knew from the calls car that most murders were solved by arresting the blood-splattered spouse, holding the knife and standing over the body.

There was a sudden absence of movement outside the door; a reverent silence fell over the waiting men and feet shuffled into place. A final check was called for and she heard a shoulder brush against the waiting-room door.

It opened and she surprised herself by standing up suddenly and finding that her legs were weak with tension. The door slammed shut.

Slowly, the door swung open and an officious uniformed officer looked in. He frowned at her, looked her over, and asked if she was ready. She nodded, nervous and hot. Letting the door fall open, he gestured for her to come out into the room.

Five men were standing up against the wall. The officer walked her along the line, watched by a group in the corner that included Sullivan and a tired-looking lawyer man in a brown suit.

Paddy and the officer walked somberly down the line and she pretended to look carefully at each one, aware of the breathless hush from the audience behind her.

The men were all dressed the same but she could have picked Paul Neilson out just by looking at his clothes. His white shirt was crumpled, an expensive linen shirt, probably discarded when he went to bed and thrown on again when the police came to the door in the middle of the night. The rest of the men had freshly pressed shirts on, made of a hard-wearing nylon blend, police issue, ill fitting, cuffs hanging over their wrists. Some of them had dark hair, some black like Neilson’s.

She walked to the end of the line and turned back, walking to the middle. The men avoided eye contact, staring up at the back wall as if at a urinal, but Neilson still looked arrogant, a smug twist at the side of his mouth, weight resting on one foot. His haircut looked expensive.

Paddy stood in front of him, showing him she wasn’t scared. He looked back at her. Behind him the lawyer coughed anxiously. She stepped toward Neilson, examining him, looking at the hands that had held Vhari Burnett’s door shut, at the neck that was speckled with Vhari’s blood. He looked down and smiled warmly.

“That’s him,” she said.

Paul Neilson gri

The officer pointed at Neilson for confirmation. “Number two?”

Paddy pointed at him, her fingertip three inches from his chest. “This one, number two.”

Neilson’s grin spread until his eyes were almost shut.

Sullivan stepped forward. “Okay,” he said. He took her elbow and steered her to a far door. “That’s it for now.”

III

Ramage had called the station looking for her and Sullivan allowed her to make a phone call from his desk.

She told him what had happened in detail, leaving out the fifty-quid note because that would come out at the trial and by then she would be bathed in glory. Sullivan had dodged every mention of Knox. She guessed that he wasn’t senior enough to go after him, so she didn’t mention him to Ramage. They couldn’t report on Neilson yet, either, and would have to wait for the trial, but Ramage promised her a front page on the scene at the cottage, the lady in peril and the Daily News’s own intrepid reporter. The story would include details of Kate’s attack and the body in the garden, and because Lafferty was dead, they could defame him as much as they wanted.

She was to come in and write it up for the Saturday edition and then she could go home. He sounded pleased with her, a little in awe at the story of the cottage, and she played up Sean’s part in case they found out that their new driver didn’t have a license.

“He was brilliant. Saved the day. I couldn’t have done it without him.”

“Well, you can keep the hotel room until tomorrow, if you want to go out and get pissed tonight.”

Paddy thought of Mary A

“Excellent,” he said firmly. She felt he appreciated her being cheap almost as much as the story.

She hung up and found Sullivan standing across the room, sadly chewing a hangnail, as if he’d just heard Santa wasn’t real. He caught her eye and looked away.

He had heard about herself and Burns. She knew these old guys. They liked women but if they heard any hint of scandal they’d be the first at the front of the mob with a pocket full of stones.

Paddy stood up and walked over to him. “What?”

He shrugged guiltily, avoiding her eye.

“Sullivan, what’s going on?”

He dropped his hands to his sides and his back sagged. “We’ve let him go.”

“Neilson? But I picked him out. He was number two, right?”

“He was number two, but the fifty-quid note-” He bit his finger again, ashamed. “The note’s gone missing.”

THIRTY-FIVE. COLUM MCDAID’S SHAMEFUL EXIT

I

Colum McDaid was on the verge of being sacked from a job he had dedicated his life to, but it didn’t stop him being a gentleman and offering Paddy tea and biscuits.

“They’re sending someone up to replace me now, calling in a retired officer from another area. I’ll be out by lunchtime.”

She watched him move around the room, boiling the kettle, offering sugar, pouring in the milk first so that it didn’t scald. She watched him and noted that at no time did he allow her to be in his blind spot between himself and the evidence cupboard or the safe. The only chair in the room other than his own was bolted to the floor just inside the door.

He handed her the cup with two bourbon biscuits perched on the saucer and took his own seat back behind the desk.

“So it’s gone?”

McDaid nodded into his tea. “I’m here all the time, I check everyone on the way out. I don’t understand… they’ll say it’s because I’m old.”

“It’s just gone?”

“It’s gone. I stayed last night until three thirty in the morning looking for it. It’s gone. It’s not in this room or the next room, there’s no sign of a break-in, and I didn’t leave the room once the day before without locking up.”

“Couldn’t someone just have nicked the key and come in? There must be a spare set of keys in the station.”

McDaid shook his head. “No, see, I do what my predecessor did.” He looked a little shifty. “There’s an element of temptation in this job, you know, for the young men. They’ve got families, wee babies, and the basic pay’s not much. We older ones, we take it on ourselves to guard the young men against that. There’s money about, people who want favors, and so on. It’s harder for a young man to say no. That’s why we have the key.”

“What key?”

“Well, it’s a secret, but there’s no point in not telling you now: I have a key to the safe that I don’t leave at the station. People think it’s here but it’s not. No one can get in there without it, which means they must have taken the note during the day when I was here. Sitting in this very chair.”