The Dead Hour (14 page)

Outside, Archie turned to her, pressing his face an inch from hers. “Go away. I never want to see you here again.”

She dipped her chin down and looked up at him coquettishly. “Don’t be a meanie, Archie, I’ve had a rotten couple of days.” She ran her finger down the buttons on his shirtfront. “Be nice to me.”

“He’s after you, you know that?”

“I know, I know, it’s a misunderstanding. He thinks I did a naughty but I’m only naughty in a good way.” She smiled up at him, hoping he would get the sexy hint and take her home with him, look after her. She didn’t care that he was old tonight. She didn’t care that hair grew wildly out of his nose and the neck of his shirt. She didn’t care that he only had a restaurant. She wanted to touch someone and be touched. She needed human contact and a place to go.

“Archie.” Her hand slid up his shirt to the shoulder. It was a cheap shirt, she could hear the nylon fibers letting off a rip-zip sound as her fingertips slid across it. “You like me a lot, don’t you?”

He put his hairy fingers over hers and peeled her hand off his chest. “You know, Kate, I don’t like you. I think you’re a vacant twat. But there was a time when I’d have fucked you.” He held up his finger, drawing her attention to the salient point. “See, that’s different. I’d have fucked you because you were with him. But now—” He flicked his finger up and down her. “Now, I wouldn’t let you pay to suck my dick.”

It was the rudest anyone had ever been to her. Kate stepped back and stared at him. He was fat and old and wore cheap shirts and had hair everywhere. She was the prettiest girl in her year, the best-looking woman at the Marina Club, the biggest prize at each and every ball she had ever attended. She made a face like a little fist, knowing it suited her, playing her best card, and swung an open hand at his great fat head.

Archie grabbed her wrist and held her arm high. He was utterly unmoved. “Fuck off and don’t come back.”

Kate bit her lip. “You’re rude and vulgar,” she said and turned away, walking along the row of shut and shuttered shops, a designer clothes shop, a tobacconists’ that sold excellent cigars, an estate agents’. Lovely shops. She should come back here when they were open.

She felt Archie’s fat puffy eyes on her back all the way to the corner but she didn’t look back. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

She retained her composure until she climbed back into the car and locked the door. No one had ever spoken to her like that and she couldn’t believe he’d had the nerve. Rude, fat man. She let him touch her breast once, slip his fat, hairy hand into the silk blouse she was wearing and give her a squeeze.

She flipped down the sun shade over the passenger seat and turned it toward her, to check her hair and makeup in the mirror. She was far enough away from the strip of mirror to see the reflection of her whole face in it.

Kate gasped. It was too dark for color but she saw black tendrils coming from her nose, a thin black mess with bits, like an octopus climbing out of her nose legs first, a black string across her cheek into her hair, black into her mouth, black all over her chin. Her hair had black in it, in a lump over her ear. The skin under her eyes was puffy and blackened, as if she had been punched. She smiled hopefully at herself, a thin, nervous parody of the glorious smile she habitually gave herself in the mirror. She was missing a tooth, next to her front tooth. She didn’t even remember losing it. She looked like a tramp.

No wonder Archie had told her to leave. She looked awful, and she was awful, and in a sudden moment of clarity she knew Vhari was dead because of what she had done. Unable to take it anymore, she looked away from the mirror and saw the car slice down the empty street, not seeing her tucked in neatly behind the van. A BMW, a big model, with two men inside.

Paddy sat in silence at the kitchen table with her oldest sister. Caroline was openly smoking a cigarette, watching through swollen black eyes as their brother Marty chased Baby Con around the tall grass in the back garden.

None of the Meehans knew anything about gardening, they were a bit afraid of the countryside and nature in general, and the garden was usually used for visitors for smoking in or for storing broken furniture or washing machines. Only the choking plants survived, eating up all the color. Their other brother, Gerard, had moved the washing poles nearer the house so that Trisha wouldn’t need to wade through the grass to hang up wet clothes.

No one smoked indoors at the Meehans’, yet Caroline sat smoking in full view of her mother who stood over the cooker, tending the broth she was making for the tea. Her eyes were puffed shut, bruised black, so swollen that the skin had split on her right cheekbone.

Paddy watched her mum at the cooker, stirring in a cheap gammon cut and potatoes for bulk and wondered how the hell they were going to manage now, with only her small wage to feed another two mouths, for the time being anyway, until Caroline went back to John and made her marriage work.

Nervous but curious to hear about the new editor, Paddy was two hours early for her night shift.

She found a letter in her pigeonhole by the door, a formal letter typed onto creamy gray paper with a watermark on it, informing her that the official police inquiry into the Drymen Road call was being convened to start its investigation on Friday and she was being summoned to give evidence next Tuesday at two thirty in the afternoon. After Tuesday everyone would know about the bribe. She refolded the letter, running her nails hard across the seam, trying to seal it shut as she looked around her.

The newsroom was bustling with fake activity: everyone was reading furiously with big frowns, or walking around, holding bits of paper, nodding during phone calls to friends or family. Farquarson’s office door was lying open and Paddy could see that the filing cabinets were empty, the walls cleared of pictures, the big long desk he had used for the editorial conferences had been moved out. She looked into the empty room, taking in the dents in the carpet where the massive table had stood for all the years she’d been there.

“Where’s it gone?” she said almost to herself.

A copyboy, skinny as a match, who watched her often and blushed when she looked back, stood up off the bench. “New ed’s called Ramage.”

Ramage had come in, introduced himself, and announced that there would be changes, big changes, the first raft of which had been announced that morning. Four new editors and a sub were being drafted in from other papers. Which meant four old editors were being demoted. One of them had accepted it and the other three were leaving. The new printing presses they had been promised were being canceled and they’d have to limp along with the equipment they had. The presses themselves weren’t as important as the promise of a future that they represented. The day shift had already dubbed the new boss Random Damage.

She spotted McVie across the room and nipped over to him.

“Have you ever heard of a thug called Lafferty?”

“No,” he said curtly. “Did you hear about this guy? He’s moved his office downstairs in editorial. He’s got three rooms to himself.”

“He’s not going to be in the newsroom?”

“He was up and gave us a talk earlier about how he’s here to make us profitable. He’s changing the tone of the paper and anyone who doesn’t like it can fuck off. No one walked, though. He’s trying to outrage us into leaving so he doesn’t have to shell out the severance pay. They’ve canceled the orders for the new presses.” He dropped his voice. “He’s from the News of the World.”

Paddy dropped her mouth open. “Bloody hell.” It was a rag, a scandal sheet tabloid, as different from the Daily News’s dry, fact-laden style as shit to a sheet.

“He’s coming to see you lot later. You’ve all to be here at nine thirty. You’ll be all right though, you’re crime.”

She’d be all right if they didn’t hear about the fifty quid. Her long-despised calls car shift was suddenly one of the few secure places in the office. If a light-fingered policeman had walked with the note everyone would want to cover up the fact that it ever existed.

She went over to a news desk and picked up a phone, calling Partick Marine and asking for Colum McDaid.

“Hello, Constable McDaid, Paddy Meehan here. I met you the other day.”

“And I was delighted!” he interjected.

“Any word about the friend I left with you?”

“Ah.” She could hear McDaid smiling. “Yes, there is indeed. Our friend has come back from her short holiday in the fingerprint lab. She traveled by car, escorted by myself, and is now back at home enjoying the facilities.”

“What sort of facilities would that be?”

“A cozy safe, my company, her own plastic bag.”

“Lucky her.”

“Yes, she’s very snug and happy so you don’t need to worry about her at all. Now, you don’t need to phone after her all the time because she’s tucked up tight here and won’t be going out until a court case.”

“PC McDaid,” she said miserably, “thanks.”

She hung up and looked around the office. Her future was falling away from her, a cliff sliding into the sea. McDaid was a man of integrity. She was fucked.

A late train rumbled across the high Victorian arch, following the rail line along to the west. Behind Kate cars flashed past on the busy motorway. The road in front of her was quiet; the occasional passerby tended to come from the concrete block social club down the road, wild-kneed small men staggering home, passing her car, oblivious.

Kate had the fears badly now. Every person in the street or shadow that shimmered across the road was the first sign of an imminent attack, foreshadow of a gang, a team of Archies, men over whom she had no pull and no power.

Without her looks and the good regard of every man she met to play on, she was nothing but a sad cokehead, past her prime. For the first time in her life she would have to look after herself.

The social club was a gray concrete box with a red-and-white brewery sign hanging outside like a red cross. Three old men in baggy trousers and dirty suit jackets helped each other along the road and up to the red tenements.

Kate waited until the street was empty before opening the car door and stepping out, daintily fitting the strap of her handbag over her shoulder. The exposed metal heel of her shoe skidded on the wet cobbles and she almost lost her footing but grabbed the car door to steady herself, leaning all her weight on it. Two days ago she would have stopped and checked the door, make sure she hadn’t damaged it by grabbing it like that or pulling at it, but now she didn’t care what happened to the stupid car. It belonged to a different Kate. She leaned into the backseat, lifted out the blue-handled bolt cutters she had found in the boot, shut the door as quietly as she could, and stood to listen.

Beyond the darkness of the railway arch was a waste ground. Jagged muddy hills were punctuated with tufts of grass and beyond that a red tenement, dark windows and a bright light at the close opening.

Somewhere in the far distance a dog yelped in pain and stopped abruptly. Fired by the sound she slipped her shoes off and left them by the car, walking to the end of the arch, keeping close to the wall. The frost on the cobbles numbed her soles but she hardly felt it. She’d tried to have another wee sniff after Archie. God, she needed it, but it stung too much to sniff so she resorted to rubbing it on her gums. It wasn’t as pleasant but it worked: it woke her up a bit and took the edge off.

Bernie’s garage had a sign above it. It was cheaply done and badly hung. No logo, no design consultant or marketing manager, just BERNIE’S MOTORS in black paint, handwritten. It was so simple and plain and like Bernie that she smiled as she walked along the shadows toward it. She’d love to see Bernie now, to sit in the garden in Mount Florida and drink Pimm’s or something delicious, Bucks Fizz, something summery. Normally a thought like that would lift her spirits. Normally she would taste the drink, her skin would warm with the sun and she would feel Bernie nearby, but it wasn’t working tonight. She knew what was real tonight. She felt the weight of the bolt cutters hanging at her side, her bare feet and numb toes on the time-smoothed stones, the cold spittle of rain on her ruined face.

Bernie’s arch had been bricked up with gray breeze blocks and petrified gray mortar oozed like ice cream between wafers. In the center of the high bricked arch were two red metal doors padlocked together with a chain so that they swung a few inches either way but wouldn’t open. She lifted the bolt cutters and fitted them around a hoop of the chain, spinning the screw tightly into place and squeezing the hands together. The metal held out for a moment and then snapped open.

Grinning, Kate pulled the big doors from the handles, opening them just enough to step inside, and pulled them shut behind her.

The darkness was absolute. She had never visited but if she had been blindfolded and shoved in here she would have known Bernie’s scent, the smell of motor oil and builder’s tea. A little frightened of the oily black dark, she felt inside her bag for her lighter and broke into a sweat of sheer relief when she found it.

The ceiling above her was cavernous, a red-and-yellow brick patchwork with shadows flickering over it. A train passed overhead and the arch shuddered like the belly of a brooding animal. Kate hurried over to the wall and flicked the light on.

The strip light hung on two chains, swaying at the memory of the last train. She spotted a sink over in the corner, a plastic framed mirror above it, and hurried across. No plug. She let the tap run—even the water smelled of motor oil—and used a bit of orange towel to wash her face. She took a deep breath and looked in the mirror.

Her nose had flattened at the bridge. A glacial deposit of scarlet and white skin sat on her top lip, dried and hard. She prodded it with a fingertip. Solid. No wonder she couldn’t sniff or breathe out of her nose. She turned sideways and looked at her profile. Flat as a wall. She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She’d get a nose job later, when things got ironed out. They could do amazing things now.