The Field of Blood (17 page)

Helen looked up again, sucked in her cheeks, and raised an eyebrow before dropping her eyes to the paper.

“I’m here for Mr. Farquarson. I need a set of clippings for him.”

Helen looked up for a third time and chewed her cheek for a moment before pushing the chair back violently and coming to the counter. She pulled out one of the small gray forms and put it on the countertop, staring Paddy out as she reached underneath for a pen. Paddy didn’t want a form that could be referred to later if she got into trouble.

“Search word ‘Townhead,’ ” she said quickly. “Full-time search.”

Helen sucked her front teeth, sighed, and put the form away grudgingly, as if Paddy had insisted that she get it out in the first place. She turned and walked over to the gray steel wall and thumb-punched some letters into the keypad. The heavy drum wound itself up and turned. It ground to a stop and Helen glanced back at Paddy for one last cheeky prevarication before opening the postbox flap, reaching in, flicking through a number of files, and pulling out a brown envelope. As she ambled back to the counter Paddy could see that the envelope was full.

Helen leaned into Paddy’s face. “Straight back,” she said, slapping the envelope on the counter.

Paddy picked it up and left, stopping on the stairs to tuck it into the waistband of her skirt on her way to the newsroom toilets, hoping Heather was hiding in a different toilet altogether.

She pulled out the chunk of clippings, unfolding the papers on her knees. There were a lot of them. She put half back and balanced the envelope on the toilet-paper holder. The cuttings on her knee were pristine and crisp, folded around one another like dead leaves. Paddy took the time to prise them apart gently, carefully flattening the legs and arms.

Flicking through them randomly, she saw stories about accidental deaths, about the library being knocked down to make room for the motorway, about a street robbery and a scout troop winning a prize for raising money. There were optimistic proclamations from city councillors about the new housing scheme and reports of a bit of gang trouble in the sixties.

She folded the clippings back together, swapping them for the second batch still in the envelope.

A building in the Rotten Row collapsed while occupied, sliding down the steep hill like a knob of butter in a hot pan. Two injured but no one killed.

The rubbish buildup was averted during the bin-men strike because the maternity hospital had an incinerator.

A three-year-old local boy, Thomas Dempsie of Kennedy Road, had been abducted from outside his home and found murdered. The child’s father, Alfred Dempsie, had been charged with his murder but pleaded not guilty at the trial. In a clipping dated five years later, Alfred was reported to have hanged himself in Barlinnie Prison. The paper had republished a grainy picture of his wife at young Thomas’s funeral. Tracy Dempsie had dark hair pulled up tight in a high ponytail. She looked as lost and dazed as Gina Wilcox.

Paddy made some notes on the back of a receipt and returned the clippings to the envelope as tidily as she could, following the original creases. She checked the date at the top. Brian had gone missing eight years ago to the day of Thomas’s disappearance. Thomas was the same age as Baby Brian and from the same area. No one seemed to have noticed the parallel between the cases. They could have been completely different for any number of reasons, but it seemed strange that she had never even heard of Thomas Dempsie before.

Downstairs in the library, Helen was sitting at the desk, glancing through a late edition. Paddy stood there for a full minute, and although Helen tightened her forehead she refused to look at her. Finally Paddy put the envelope on the counter and shoved it forward so that it was hanging over the far edge.

“Don’t leave them there.” Helen stood up casually, coming over as slowly as she could. “If they went missing you’d be made to pay for them. I doubt you make enough in three months to pay for these.”

Paddy smiled innocently. “Follow-up: Dempsie, Thomas, and ‘murder.’ ”

Helen looked over her glasses and sighed heavily. Paddy really hoped she was still there if she ever got a promotion. She’d remember what she was like and pull her up about it.

She had been sitting on the bench for ten minutes before it occurred to her that no one was laughing at her anymore. Someone in features called her over using her name, not just calling her boy. Someone else picked her over Keck from the bench, something that never happened because Keck could find everything and knew where everyone was at all times. A sports desk journalist even looked her in the eye and asked if she, Meehan, would get him a coffee. It was worrying.

Paddy was starting to wonder if she was getting the sack and everyone knew but her when Keck stopped picking his fingernails with an unraveled paper clip and leaned over. “Seen your pal Heather this afternoon?”

Paddy shook her head, reluctant to get into it.

“Aye, ye won’t see her tomorrow either.” He pointed into the middle of the room. “Farquarson told the morning boys, and they got Father Richards down here and told him her card wasn’t right and she was to get out and not come back. She was crying and everything.” He sat back.

Paddy looked around the room at the serious men at the news desk, at the mess of clippings piled up on the features and sports desks, where they were all gathered around one end of the table smoking Capstans and eating a box of cream cakes, and she wondered how these graceless, ruined men had come to be her only allies.

The Drygate flats looked like lost American tourists. Painted and peeling Miami pink, they were topped with jaunty little Frank Lloyd Wright hats and banded with balconies. The designer had overlooked the setting: a brutally windy Glaswegian hillside facing the Great Eastern Hotel, a soot-blackened doss-house for lost men.

Thomas Dempsie’s mother had been transferred by the council shortly after her husband was convicted of murdering Thomas. It was less than half a mile away from the old house, just down the hill from Townhead. Paddy guessed that she would have been moved by the council for her own safety. The News had published her new address when Alfred killed himself in prison.

Paddy waited for five minutes in the lobby, watching the red digital display above the steel doors tell her that the lift was moving exclusively between floors four and seven, before accepting that she would have to walk. She didn’t like running or hills or walking up stairs. She didn’t like the feeling of pockets of fat jigging on her stomach or hips. She didn’t believe thin people ever got sweaty or out of breath and felt she was drawing attention to her size when she did.

Everything in the urine-stained stairwell that could be broken was broken: rubber had been torn off the handrail, leaving a filthy black substance that stuck to the skin; tiles on the floor had been lifted, leaving bald, tacky splats of adhesive. Several landings were littered with glue-filled plastic bags, the discarded tins often lying nearby, some still giving off a detectable tang. Paddy had to stop a couple of times to get her breath on the way to the eighth floor, and each time she stopped she could hear people’s lives clattering and murmuring through the walls around her, smell the evening meals being prepared and the moldy rubbish blocking chutes. She reached the eighth floor and paused in front of the gray fire door, taking another breath and reminding herself why she was there and what she wanted to ask about. She had a job to do, she was a reporter. Thrilled by the game, she pulled the open door and stepped out onto the windy balcony.

The row of front doors were painted a uniform pillar-box red. Between each was a living room window for the neighbors to peer into and a smaller, mottled bathroom window. As she stood waiting in front of 8F for an answer to her knock, Paddy noted that the net curtains in both were gray and tired. An empty bottle lay on the blurred bathroom sill, next to a pool of what looked like dried toothpaste. She felt her lip curl in disgust but checked herself. She shouldn’t be small-minded about how other people lived, it was none of her business. She stared hard at the door and could see that the wind on the landing had brought hairs and dust and grit to it when the paint was still wet, giving it a textured microbe-safari finish. The door opened cautiously and a strange woman looked out at her.

“Oh.” Paddy let out a little startled exclamation, surprised by the woman’s odd appearance. “Hello?”

Tracy Dempsie had gone to great lengths to disguise any natural advantage she had ever had. Her hair was dyed aubergine and pulled up in a tight ponytail that dragged her face back into an unflattering mask. Her black mascara and eyeliner were thick and migrating under her eyes. Her pupils were so dilated that the blue iris was little more than a halo. Tracy blinked slowly, cutting out the scary world for a delicious moment, knowing that all the sharp edges would be waiting for her if the prescriptions ever ran out.

“Hello, Mrs. Dempsie? I’m Heather Allen,” said Paddy, half hoping it would all go sour and Tracy would phone the paper and complain about her, compounding her dismissal. “I’m a journalist with the Daily News.”

Reluctantly, Tracy opened the door, and the wind shoved Paddy into the hall. The decor was as garish as Mrs. Dempsie herself. The swirling carpet looked like an abstract representation of an argument between red and yellow. The walls were covered in jagged yellow plaster. Tracy shuffled back, walking off to the living room. Paddy paused in the hall and then guessed that she had been invited to follow.

A black-and-white portable television was on in the corner, showing a nature program about otters, their little silvery pelts slipping in and out of water. Around the set, lost in the same loud carpet as the hall, were cigarette packets and dirty plates. A saucer at the side of the settee had a bit of toast and three dog ends stubbed out on it. Two wire clotheshorses were arranged around the burning fire with sheets draped over them, sending wave after wave of wet heat into the living room.

Tracy saw her looking at it. “That’s the high flats. No lines for washing. Ye can’t leave a washing out on a line ’cause someone’ll nick it.”

“You used to have a house, didn’t ye?”

“Aye, Townhead. Up the hill, know?” Tracy lifted her hand slowly and lowered it again, indicating over there, where the badness was. “Council moved us here after Alfred got the jail. Then your mob published this address.” She frowned bitterly, looking at Paddy as if it had been her decision.

“They have to do that, by law,” said Paddy, “to identify ye. In case people think it’s someone else of the same name.”

“Well, everyone knew where we’d got moved to. We lost the Kennedy Street house for nothing, know?”

They were standing facing each other, Paddy still wearing her duffel coat and scarf, her underclothes damp after the exertion of the stairs. Tracy blinked again, oblivious to her guest’s discomfort, and her eyes fell on the television.

“We got moved?” said Paddy. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“Me and the wean.”

“I didn’t know ye had other kids.”

“I had a boy before. I was married before I met Alfred. I can’t manage much, so he’s with his dad now.” Tracy nodded heavily. “Ye can sit down if ye like.”

They looked at the settee together. Tracy had left some damp clothes sitting on one end of it, and they were smelling faintly sour.

“Thanks.”

Paddy took off her coat and sat it on her knee, taking care to stay away from the source of the smell. Tracy sat next to her, her knee lazily pressing into Paddy’s thigh. She didn’t seem to notice. She kept her eyes on the telly and lifted a silver packet of Lambert and Butler off the coffee table.

“Smoke?”

Paddy could see exactly where she sucked her fags: her two front teeth had a dirty little sunrise impressed on them.

“No thanks,” said Paddy, taking the empty notepad out of her bag and leaning back so Tracy couldn’t see the paper. She flicked elaborately through to the middle, as if the pages were choked with vital information from other cases.

Tracy took a cigarette out of the packet with a slack hand, lit it with a match, and took three consecutive draws, tilting her head back to expand her lungs.

“So, ye said on the phone ye wanted to see me about Thomas?”

“That’s right.” Paddy positioned her pen. “Because of the Baby Brian case—”

“Tragic.”

“It was.”

“Those wee bastards should be hanged.” Tracy touched her mouth in self-reproach. “’Scuse me, but I blame the mothers. Where were they? Who lets their boy do that to another woman’s wean?”

“Well, because of it we’re doing a series about past stories, and your son Thomas was one of the names that came up. Would you be all right talking about it?”

Tracy shut her eyes tight, squeezing the lids together. “It’s not easy, know? Because first I loss my baby and then I loss my man. Alfred was innocent.” Tracy shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “He always said that. He was at the pitch-and-toss that night. That’s how he didn’t have an alibi.”

The pitch-and-toss were illegal gambling schools, impromptu affairs run by gangsters in pubs and sheds and open-air waste grounds all over the city. Men could bet away their family’s weekly wage on the turn of a few coins.

“Surely someone would come forward?”

“No one remembered him at the pitch-and-toss. Gamblers don’t notice ye if ye don’t have a big stake.” Her eyes deadened. “He wasn’t a man you’d remember, Alfred.”

The misery was vivid in Tracy’s eyes, and suddenly Paddy didn’t feel like a junior scoop, she felt like a fat girl cheering herself up by quizzing a bereaved woman about her private business.

Tracy nursed her fag, letting it dawdle on her lips. “You wouldn’t notice him. He was a good dad, though, a really good dad. Loved his weans, handed his money in, know?” Her eyes were brimming, threatening to flood her face with mascara.

Paddy dropped her notebook into her lap. “I feel terrible coming here bringing this all up for you again.”

“Never mind.” Tracy flicked her cigarette ash into a dirty saucer on the floor. “I don’t mind. It’s always with me anyway. Every day.”