The Field of Blood (40 page)

“He’d wipe his cunt with you anyway,” he whispered.

She turned back and reached out to pat his knee under the blanket, but Callum whipped his leg away, repulsed. She let her hand land on the bed near him and patted that instead.

“Thanks, son. It can’t be nice being asked about that.”

Callum casually turned a page on his comic and murmured, “Stinky cunts.”

The way Sean stood in the lift made Paddy think of an old, sad man: he hung from his bones. She leaned against the opposite wall, wishing she hadn’t asked Callum about any of it. Naismith didn’t have an earring. A Teddy boy would never have an ear pierced. If Callum was telling the truth, she’d set Naismith up for something he didn’t do. Terry Hewitt’s career would be ruined. Frightened, she reached over to slip her hand into Sean’s, but he shook her gently off.

Outside in the bitter evening air Sean took out his cigarettes and gave her one. They lit up in the shadow of the dead hospital. He dipped at the knee and took her hand again, squeezing kindly, but still unable to look at her.

Sean thanked her dutifully for making him go to see Callum. He was going back, he said, he was going back and, God help that boy, Sean knew he was innocent. The wee soul hadn’t done anything wrong.

“But they found his fingerprints on the baby and everything.”

“They could have been planted. I know he didn’t do it.”

“How can you know?”

“I know he didn’t do it. He just said, ‘I never did it.’ I’m going to start a campaign for him.”

It was more of a loyalty test than a matter of abstract truth.

“I don’t think he is innocent.”

“Did you just meet the same child as me?”

“Sean, there’s a difference between a hunch and a wish,” she said sharply, preoccupied with her own catastrophe.

Sean kept hold of her hand but slackened his grip. Each alone, they walked down to Partick, keeping to the back roads and the dark places.

Down at the train station they showed their travel passes and took the escalator up to the high platform. There was nowhere to sit in the waiting room at the top of the stairs. It was full of commuters, and the air was uncomfortably moist and warm from their breath. It was dark outside on the platform. From the high vantage point they could see the big sky over the river and the silhouette of short-headed shipyard cranes, once busy but now still, dinosaur skeletons against the orange sky. She wanted to tell Sean what she’d done, confess the arrogance that had led her to set Naismith up, but the words caught in her throat, making her heart race.

The warm train arrived and they took seats near the front, sitting close together, silent and tired, their thighs pressing against each other, their hands touching sometimes when they shared a cigarette. When Sean handed over the cigarette and his lean fingertips touched hers, she wanted to grab him with the other hand and tell him she had done an unforgivable thing to a man, she’d told an awful, world-ending lie. But Naismith had confessed to everything: he had tried to attack her and had followed her to her work. She began to wonder if he did reach for her after all, if they were Heather’s hairs she had seen on the brown towel.

She made him get off at Rutherglen and leave her on the train, but she stood up on the quiet carriageway and saw him to the door, as if it were her home.

“I’ll phone you tomorrow,” he said.

“Gonnae?”

He leaned down for a hug, holding his pelvis a foot away from her and bending in, as if she would attack him if he touched her. He sighed a pleasured groan into her ear, for an embrace as warm as a poke with a sharp twig.

She stayed on her feet as the train moved, and watched him walk down the cold platform, his hands in his jacket pockets, his head hanging heavy on his shoulders. As the moving train passed him Paddy felt he was sliding into her glorious yellow past; ahead was nothing but the lonely gray devastation she had created. But she still had a glimmer of hope. Maybe, somehow, she was still justified. Callum could be wrong.

MR. NAISMITH

It was ten o’clock in the morning and the frost still lingered in the shadow of the high-rise blocks. A sniping wind was gathering strength, sweeping down the sides of the buildings, flicking hair and hems as Paddy and Terry picked their way carefully down the long flight of steps, avoiding the icy edges. The housing scheme they were walking through was a low-level offshoot of the Drygate high flats, built for pensioners and sickly people, no children allowed. The modest lawns between blocks were interspersed with giant yellow sandstone, left over from a monumental time.

“That’s all that’s left of Duke Street Prison. See over there?” Terry pointed to the bottom of a bit of yellow wall. “That’s where the condemned cell was. They used to hang them on that patch of grass.”

Paddy looked and nodded, pretending to listen.

“You’re quiet today.”

She hummed an answer. She was afraid to speak. Panic was swelling the back of her throat, gagging her. If she spoke she might just denounce herself.

“And you look knackered.”

“Piss off.”

But she knew he was right. She’d hardly slept the night before. Wide-eyed, she’d lain on her back, tracing patterns in the ceiling plaster, thinking about Callum and what he had said. She’d lain awake looking at it every way she could, willfully misinterpreting what he had said and trying to make it sit comfortably. It was three thirty before she finally admitted to herself that Callum was telling her Naismith was innocent.

“So,” said Terry cheerfully, “Tracy Dempsie: is there anything else you want to warn me about?”

“The carpet in the hall— it’s horrendous.”

He nodded seriously. “Thanks for that. I’d hate to be caught unawares.”

Paddy smiled at the unexpected return. Terry was always slightly sharper than she expected him to be. She glanced over and saw his little belly jiggling under his shirt as his foot hit the step.

“I see ye,” he muttered.

She looked up to find him watching the ground in front of him.

“You see me what?”

“You, giving me the glad eye.”

She smiled and found her eyes filling suddenly. It would be easier to bear if he weren’t so sweet.

Blinking back a tide of guilt, Paddy led him across the crumbling floor of the car park and into the Drygate lobby. Both lifts were out of order: a small, handwritten notice in jagged capitals was pinned to the lift doors.

They trudged up the grim stairwell, kicking through glue tins and plastic bags on one landing and the loose pages of a pornographic magazine on another. Paddy let Terry lead so that he wouldn’t be staring at her fat behind.

Up on Tracy’s landing the suction weight of wind pulled the landing door so tightly closed that it took both of them to lever it open. The deafening wind flattened her hair and tugged at her heavy coat. Terry clutched the neck of his heavy leather jacket as they crept along the inside wall of the balcony. Paddy knocked heavily on Tracy Dempsie’s door.

She had raised her hand to knock again when Tracy opened it, wearing yesterday’s makeup in all the wrong places. She had taken an extra pill or two, and her housecoat was buttoned one step out. She blinked slowly when she saw Paddy and raised her cigarette to her mouth. The hot ash tip flew into her hair, singeing it.

“You’re not Heather Allen.”

Paddy hoped Terry hadn’t heard.

“I saw her picture in the paper. You’re not her. She’s dead.”

Terry looked curious. Paddy could feel his eyes on her face.

“Tracy, I heard Henry Naismith was arrested.”

At the mention of her ex-man the fight went out of Tracy. Her head dropped forward on her neck and she turned and walked away down the hall. A swirling gust of wind jerked the door open. Paddy wiped her feet before stepping in. Shutting the door carefully behind him, dulling the noise, Terry looked from the busy carpet to Paddy and let off a silent scream.

Following the trail of smoke through the hall and into the living room, they found Tracy slumped on the settee, staring blankly at her knees. The angry wind hissed outside the window.

“Henry,” she said quietly. “They said he confessed to killing Thomas as well. He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t have.”

Paddy sat down on the edge of the settee next to her, their knees almost touching. She desperately wanted to say something kind and helpful, but there was nothing to say. As if she could see it in her eyes, Tracy reached out and took Paddy’s hand, holding it by the thumb, absentmindedly lifting and dropping it as she took a draw from her fag.

“He was a hard man, though, wasn’t he?”

Tracy sucked smoke through clenched teeth and tipped her head back. “Henry’s a good man. He was in the gangs when he was younger, aye, but the gangs just fight each other. And anyway, he’s a born-again Christian now, he’s not going to attack a wean.”

“But he confessed, Tracy.”

“So what?” She looked up at them, pleading, as if they had any authority in the matter. “They could just be saying that.”

Paddy had almost forgotten Terry was standing behind her until he hovered into her line of vision. He cleared his throat carefully before he spoke.

“Mrs. Dempsie, why would he confess if he didn’t do it?”

Tracy shook her head at the carpet and looked bewildered. “They’d mibbe make him?” Her medically dulled eyes slowly traced the dervish pattern on the carpet as she thought back. She blinked slowly at the floor and then blinked again, her eyebrows forming a plaintive little triangle. “Henry won’t kill hisself like Alfred did. He’s got religion.”

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 innocent of this crime and so is Jim Griffiths.” She sniffed hard and straightened her duffel coat, ruffling her black hair to make it stand up again. She looked herself in the eye and saw nothing but guilt and fear and fat. “You have made a terrible mistake.” She had integrity. She wouldn’t sacrifice a man’s life for her career. She might contemplate it, and she knew that was terrible, but she wouldn’t do it.

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.”