Slip of the Knife (34 page)

His right hand circled the handle of the blade. His left took hold of the door handle, his wrist moving awkwardly, pressed it down, releasing the catch.

“What are you doing here?”

McBree spun on his heel. He hadn’t even heard footsteps, hadn’t heard a door open, no padding feet or steadying hand brush a wall. A woman, good-looking, blond hair pillow blustered, eyes heavy with sleep, standing in the doorway to the master bedroom in a long white nightie, the ties at the neck lying open, exposing the curve of her breasts. He lunged with the knife but she fell back into the room and he only nicked her skin, carving a wide crescent on her left breast. She fell to the floor, scrambling backwards on all fours like a spider, blood gushing, panting and whimpering at the same time.

The man snoring in the bed sat up very suddenly, threw the duvet off and got to his feet, staggering sideways, facing the wrong way. He was six foot two, three maybe, and broad, much bigger than McBree.

McBree’s combat-hardened mind gave him two options: kill them all, stage it like a break-in, or run.

The man stumbled to where he had begun as the woman rolled her head back to let out a ripe, earsplitting scream.

McBree bolted down the stairs, threw open the door, and was gone.

TWENTY-NINE

VERY TERRY

I

It felt like the first day of school. Everyone was wearing black and looking neat and scrubbed. Men she hadn’t seen looking clean in years were standing around in groups, hair smeared flat, dressed in whatever formal clothing they could find, chatting on the forecourt of the cathedral.

There was Merki and Keck and Bunty and his Monkey. All of the Standard guys were there, none of whom could possibly have known Terry more than in passing. McGrade, the manager from the Press Bar, was there, together with his tiny, bearded sidekick, which meant the bar was shut for the first time in living memory. Sean was standing with the drivers and gave her a wink and turned away.

McVie had called everyone in the business and they had all come because it was about more than Terry Hewitt: it was a celebration of who they were. Terry would have loved it.

Paddy’s eyes prickled. Tipping her head back to stop her mascara running, she looked up at the Gothic spires of the cathedral and the green Necropolis hill beyond, Victorian death monuments choked with ivy. She was getting Pete withdrawals, a tightening in her stomach because she hadn’t spoken to him before he went to school, didn’t know what he’d eaten or if he’d slept at all. She’d call Burns after the ceremony and ask Sandra what he’d had. At least she knew how to make toast.

Glasgow Cathedral dated largely from the end of the thirteenth century. It was saved from destruction during the Reformation when a gang of the city’s tradesmen armed themselves and fought off a mob of treasure seekers in a pitched battle. The squat building was blackened during the Industrial Revolution and sat at the top of the High Street like a fat toad draped in a mourning mantilla.

McVie was greeting mourners like a maitre d’, working the crowd, certain that the Mail on Sunday would be mentioned in all the coverage. He spotted Paddy and Dub coming towards him, did a spot check of her clothes and saw she was dressed smartly.

“You’re up first then,” he said. “Set the right tone.”

“But I haven’t got anything prepared.”

He saw the panic in her eyes. “Just do it off-the-cuff. Since when could you not talk? Did you see Merki’s exclusive?”

“Where did he get that from?”

It was a rhetorical question but McVie looked irritated. “The fuck should I know?” He slipped away to talk to someone else.

A hand landed hard on her shoulder and she turned to see Billy, her first-ever driver, standing behind her, grinning. Billy had beefed up in the intervening years. He had left the News after a firebomb attack on her car, using the payout to buy a burger van so he could continue working nights. His hands were badly scarred, the skin smooth and watered; the little finger of one hand had been removed after a graft didn’t take. He’d had long hair then but it was shaved now, tight into the wood, like Terry’s when she first knew him. His wife, Agnes, was at his side, as warm as a tank. She looked away as they greeted each other with kisses and slaps to the arm.

“And is this your young man?” asked Billy of Dub.

“Oh no, this is Dub McKenzie. D’ye not remember Dub?”

Billy said he didn’t, so they told him about Dub’s time as a copyboy at the News, gave dates and outlined a couple of stories: Dub getting caught hiding in a café when he was supposed to be death-knocking a widow, Dub stapling prawns to the underside of an editor’s desk before he left. Billy still didn’t remember but pretended to and that did well enough.

Paddy and Dub moved away.

“Why are we a secret?” asked Paddy under her breath.

“I can’t remember,” said Dub, pretending he hadn’t seen Keck waving to him. “Let’s body-swerve that tit for a start. Will Callum be all right out there on his own, do you think?”

They had left him back at the cottage with three cans of juice and a loaf of bread, promising to come back later or send Sean. He was happy to stay there, said he had never been to the countryside and wanted to know what all the trees were.

“Not gossiping, dears? Naughty, naughty.” It was Farquarson, Paddy’s first-ever boss, the last editor any of them had known who stood up to the board for them. Paddy had hero-worshipped Farquarson, who’d taken an interest in her, given her writing assignments when she wasn’t due them. He had aged badly since she last saw him. He was wearing a trilby hat but she could still see that his hair had thinned. His ears were long, drooping, the skin loose where they were attached to his skull, and his face was livered and jowly.

He pointed at Paddy, couldn’t locate her name, and then it occurred to him. “Monihan!”

Paddy grinned at him. “Meehan, you mad old bastard.”

McVie was persuading everyone inside and nipped her elbow, muttering, “You’re next to me at the front.” Then he turned to greet Farquarson. “You look a hundred years old.”

McVie didn’t like Farquarson. He had languished on night shift under him and only got out of it by convincing a grieving mother to let him document her son’s death from a heroin overdose.

She was worried that McVie was picking on a faded old man but Farquarson answered, “And I hear you’re a nancy now.”

Insults met and meted, everyone settled into the company and headed towards the chapel doors.

A big chauffeur-driven car pulled up suddenly at the curb. They watched as the driver leaped out and ran around the car to open the door. Out stepped Random Damage, the short, overbearing editor who had turned the News from a dull-as-dust broadsheet into a tabloid success. He was dressed in a beautifully cut gray suit and was carrying a small black box. Paddy realized it was a portable telephone. Why Damage would need a telephone at a memorial service was obvious to anyone who knew him: he was obsessed with image and wanted the world to know he had a portable telephone. Second out of the car was his slim, six-foot-tall wife, who straightened her black velvet overcoat and stood, willowy, at his side. Paddy heard that he had left the press to run his wife’s chain of luxury hotels.

“Is that a walkie-talkie?” asked Farquarson.

Damage held it up. “Portable telephone.”

McVie looked sullen. “Not that portable, though, is it?”

“Can you only phone other portable telephones with it?” asked Paddy.

Damage laughed at her. “No. You can telephone any other phone. Soon they’ll have faxes on them as well. That’s the new thing.”

“And you’ll have to lug tons of paper around,” said McVie, jealous and not making a good job of hiding it.

Paddy reached out. “Can I have a go? I need to make a two-minute call.”

“Be my guest.”

“Fucking hurry up,” said McVie.

Paddy dialed Burns’s number.

“Hello?” Burns sounded a long way away. The line crackled and spat.

“Oh, hi, George.” She was shouting, her voice lost in the big open space, so she turned away from the crowd of people and shouted into the street. “Just wondered if Pete got away to school OK?”

Burns was quiet.

A fist tightened around Paddy’s heart. “What?”

“Paddy, Pete—”

“What? Is he ill? Is he there?”

“He’s here, he’s fine but the house is full of policemen. We got broken into last night. Sandra went to the loo at three in the morning and found a guy on the landing heading into Pete’s bedroom with a knife.”

“Fuck!”

“Wearing a balaclava. He cut Sandra’s tit open and ran away but he was definitely headed for Pete.”

“I’m coming now.”

“No, look, the house is full of CID and they’re taking us to the station so they can tape our interviews. Come later. Come and get us at Pitt Street.”

“How’s Pete?”

“I’ll put him on.” Burns opened a door and called Pete.

Her son’s tinny voice came on, distorted, sounding far away and electronic. “Mum? We got burgled! A man came in in the night and tried to steal Sandra’s jewelry.”

Paddy fought back choking tears, kicking at the ground, nodding. “Gosh. That’s mad. Are you OK?”

“It’s exciting. He broke a window and climbed in.”

“I need that back now.” Damage was standing next to her, holding his hand out to the phone, deliberately ignoring the tears in her eyes and her evident panic.

“Son, Dad’s going to take you to the police station, won’t that be something?”

“I can see where he used to work. He knows everybody.”

“Come on,” shouted McVie, waving her over.

Damage had circled her and was in her face. “The battery’ll run out. Give it to me.”

“I’ll come and see you this afternoon, darlin’, OK?”

“Mum, a man said he’s going to show me the cells.”

“Meehan, give it.” Damage lunged forward to grab the phone but she clung on.

“I love you, son.”

But Pete had hung up.

Damage was saying something about the battery life. McVie came over and took her elbow, dragging her towards the church.

McBree had come for Pete, with a knife. She felt very cold, her breathing deepened, every muscle in her body was loading itself with oxygen, ready to coil and spring. She felt as if she could outstare the sun.

McVie dragged her into the cathedral. The internal walls were as black and forbidding as the façade of the church but it opened up to an arched oak ceiling and tall needled windows, jeweled with blue and red glass. McVie had gone to a lot of trouble. Big bouquets of lilies and white chrysanthemums, strung with red and blue ribbons, were hanging on both sides of the aisle with a giant wreath in white, red and blue sitting at the base of the altar. They were the colors of Ayr United, Terry’s football team.

Feeling nothing but cold, blind anger, Paddy followed McVie into the front pew. Ben, his precious, queeny boyfriend, was waiting for them. McVie would never admit to Ben, but here he was in plain sight, standing at the front of the massed mob of the Glasgow journalistic mafia. In a show of support, Paddy leaned over and kissed Ben’s proffered cheek, settling back in the pew and realizing that her lips were coated in face powder.

A minister came in and everyone stood up. The organ struck up a short tune, drowning out the sound of the singing, which was very ragged and rambling. The minister talked for a bit about life and death and why it was a shame, but not really, because of Jesus, and then, without warning, he stepped aside and looked at McVie, who looked at Paddy. Ben looked at Paddy. Everyone in the church looked at Paddy.

She wanted to drop her head back and scream but instead stepped out into the aisle, began to genuflect and then remembered it was a Protestant cathedral, getting a laugh when she bolted upright again.

She didn’t even know where to stand, but the minister held his hand out and guided her up the winding staircase to the pulpit.

The wooden platform groaned beneath her feet as she looked out at the expectant faces. Shug Grant, Keck, JT, Merki, McVie, a hundred and fifty men, some arseholes, some good souls, most both depending on the occasion.

She leaned into the microphone.

“Terry Hewitt was a friend of mine.” The words echoed around the hollow church.

It felt strange to say his name, to think of anything but Pete. He was safe at the moment and this was for Terry. Terry. Terry who wasn’t at all who she’d thought he was. He was an ordinary man who’d done his best with a lot of bad luck. But she’d made him into a paragon and then hated him for not living up to it. She couldn’t talk about that Terry, the real Terry, who came from a small home and belonged nowhere. She started again.

“Terry Hewitt was my hero. I was a copyboy at the Daily News and he was a junior reporter. He had a leather jacket.” That got another laugh. “He lived alone.” If anyone didn’t already know she came from a big Catholic family the aborted genuflection had told them, and they laughed at that too. “I didn’t know then why he lived alone, just that his parents had died in a car crash. He told me but you don’t really hear those things when you’re young. They died thirty yards from the house and Terry was the first on the scene. He was seventeen.” The pathos of the moment overwhelmed her. She paused, swallowing hard, getting a grip. “We spent a lot of time together when we were starting out. Well, most of you know,” she looked up again, “we went out together. But all we talked about was our work, what we wanted to do in our work, and Terry was going to change the world.”

She looked down and saw Shug Grant whispering to the man next to him. They both sniggered and avoided looking at her. A sexual slur about her, not thinking about Terry or who he was or what he meant his life to be, just there because everyone else was, and there would be drink afterwards.

“Some of us are here because we loved Terry. Some of us are here because our editors said we could get the morning off.” A nervous titter rolled around the church. They could see she was looking stern, staring down at Shug. She was famous for losing her temper and going beyond what was appropriate, and they could see that she was angry. “But I’m here because of what Terry represented to me. He worked on a bigger scale than most of us here. He went to war zones, conflict zones, did hard reporting on a world stage.”