The Field of Blood (43 page)

He kicked her hard in the back. “Get up.”

She twitched at the blow but kept her eyes shut. He leaned down, crouching over her. She could smell soap on his skin. He felt her blood-encrusted hair, touched the cut on her scalp with a fingertip; she could hear the wet sound. He pressed to provoke a response, but Paddy kept her face slack. The skin was numb anyway.

“It’s about time,” he told her softly, “that you learned who’s in charge here.”

Fitting his hands under her arms, he lifted Paddy, yanking the dead weight of her half onto the mattress before walking around to the other side and pulling her on properly.

He was going to pull off all her clothes under the harsh light and look at her and touch her. He was going to kill her, and she hadn’t done anything yet, had never been out of Scotland or got thin or lived alone or made any kind of mark on the world. She couldn’t stop herself crying. Her face contorted and she sobbed aloud, keeping her eyes shut because she was too afraid to open them.

“That’s good,” he said, climbing onto the bed, tucking himself in behind her so he was lying along the length of her, not touching. “Keep it up, make it loud. I like it.”

He leaned his face over her from behind and, as he whispered, his soft lips brushed her earlobe, his hot breath tickled the tiny hairs in her ear canal, making her raise her shoulder defensively. He saw girls like her all the time. All the time. He knew she wanted it— is that what she was crying for? Because she wanted it so much. She had to take what she could get because she was fat.

As Paddy heard him say that, a hot flush ran up her spine. It was too much, to be called fat at her last moment on earth. She kept her eyes shut and swung her face around to meet his, opening her mouth as wide as she could, and bit down hard. She squealed a furious wet gurgle and locked her teeth on a loose piece of flesh. The metallic tang of blood flooded her mouth. She opened her eyes. She was biting his lower lip. Garry yelped and pulled away far enough for the side of his face to be in focus. One green eye was wide open, the white showing all around, like the eye of a frightened horse. He was hitting her again, and she knew from the wet heat on her face that she was bleeding, but she was too afraid to open her mouth and let go. She would have to eventually, but when she did he would kill her. Before then she would mark him, such a deep mark that they couldn’t fail to find him.

Garry’s hand came down again and again, thumping her on the side of the head, but she held on, shaking her head to deepen the cut, breathing out and spluttering his blood into his eye. She felt the tips of her front teeth touching through the last membrane of skin. The chunk of lip was coming away.

A deafening crack shook the far wall as the door exploded inwards, crashing off the wall and snapping one of the hinges. A thousand hands landed on her legs and arms, pulling her by the arm, the wrist, the rope binding her ankles. As they tore at her she felt the tips of her incisors touch and tear. Garry Naismith was kneeling on the bed, an arm around his neck and a policeman on either arm, a torrent of blood falling onto his father’s bed. His bottom lip was hanging off, baring his lower teeth.

The policemen helped her up and undid the ropes around her wrists and ankles, all of them shouting and calling to one another, a mess of nerve-jangling noise after the silence. Paddy vomited a stomachful of blood and saliva onto her boots.

When she stood back up she found Patterson watching her, his arms crossed, his face taut with disgust.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw herself in the dressing-table mirror, blood trailing across her face like the fingers of a hand, wet blood running from her mouth, her chin cupped in scarlet. For the rest of her life, every time she looked over her shoulder and accidentally saw her face in a mirror, that would be the image she was expecting to see.

“Mother of God,” she panted, watery blood flecking from her mouth. “Mother of fucking God.”

She was afraid to ask anything for fear that she’d give them more material against her than they already had. They sat her downstairs in the sparse living room. The pink carpet followed through from the hall, and the walls were still gray. A big stone-clad fire surround overstated the case for a small two-bar fire. It was a cold room. There was no settee, and the two armchairs were far apart, both facing the television. The ornaments on the fire surround were tokens of hominess: a mouse climbing out of a brandy glass, a small china house. Nailed to the wall was a series of school photos of Garry, as a child in a mustard sweater, in a uniform, with and without his front teeth.

A fat constable had to pull a chair all the way across the room to talk to her. Someone had phoned the News repeatedly, asking for her and reporting her missing, until Dub alerted the police. They retraced her steps to the Royal and found her yellow canvas bag on the pavement. She listened and nodded, wondering how they could possibly have known she’d been at the Royal. She’d stormed away from Terry and hadn’t told him where she was going. The constable told her that they now knew someone had falsely reported seeing Heather get into Naismith’s van, so they thought it was possible someone else was responsible for the murders. She hardly dared ask how they knew but slumped in the chair, touching the cuts on her head to cover her face.

A younger constable had been watching her from the door and stepped across, touching her gently on the shoulder.

“We should get you to the hospital, miss.”

“I’m fine, really.” She tried to look up, but her head ached too much.

“Let me wash some of the blood off and we can see what’s under there.”

Paddy kept her head down and followed him meekly down the busy hall and into the kitchen, where he boiled a kettle on the cooker for some warm water and, bending her over the sink, gently sponged the bloody clots from her hair. He had to wash slowly to get the most from the frugal amount of warm water, scooping it onto the back of her neck and softly shoving it over her scalp, avoiding contact with the open wound just behind her left ear. Her knees were a little wobbly with shock, so he rested his hand on her back to keep her standing steady. She thought it the most intimate moment she had ever experienced with a man.

“There now.” He patted her shoulder, signaling for her to stand, and handed her a towel to dab her hair with. “I’ve done a first-aid course and I know this much: we need to get you to hospital and get that checked out.”

“Okay,” she said, feeling that she wouldn’t mind being arrested if he was there. “Will ye let me go home afterwards?”

“No, the doctors’ll want to keep you in if you lost consciousness,” he said, misunderstanding the question. “Did you pass out?”

“No,” she lied. “Not for a minute.”

The constable stopped someone in the hall to tell them where they were going and asked the fat constable to come with him. He led her through the open front door into the street. Four police cars were lined up outside, one with its headlights still on, the flasher blinking lazily on the roof. The wind chilled her wet hair, contracting her scalp, making it sting, and almost bringing feeling back to the cut behind her ear. Paddy stood upright and breathed in the afternoon air. She could handle it. If they arrested her and ended her career at the News and Sean wouldn’t talk to her, she would manage.

She caught his eye and smiled before she realized it was him. She had been blinded by the flasher, but between red waves she saw Dr. Pete sitting in the back of the police car, looking calmly at her through the window. He was wearing a beige raincoat over his blue pajamas. She waved at him, and he raised his hand balletically, motioning her down the path towards him and miming the fact that he couldn’t get the door open from the inside or wind the window down. The first-aider opened the front door and let her speak to him across the back of the seat.

“I told them that I planted the hair in the van and made the false call.” Pete held on to the headrest with a hand that still had the tube taped to it. The same soft drawl in his voice was more pronounced than before. “The operator said I sounded like a woman when I phoned. Do I sound like a woman to you?”

They looked each other in the eye for a moment, until the policeman took her elbow. “We need to get you checked out,” he said.

“Pete, I’m awed by ye. I don’t know what to say.”

“Buy me a drink sometime.”

The policeman pulled her away. Paddy touched Pete’s yellowed fingertips. They were warm and as dry as dust.

Paddy could feel the atmosphere as she approached on the street. It wasn’t a loudness so much as a manic trill carried on the cold air. Every one of the frosted windows in the Press Bar had a mess of bodies behind it.

Paddy touched the bandage with her fingertips, checking to see if the wound was as sensitive as she’d remembered. The doctor had given her a few stitches on her head, and the nurses had put a gauze over it, taping it onto her ear and hair like a jaunty hat. The young policeman had taken a statement while they waited and, after asking over his car radio, said she could go home if she went straight to Anderston police station in the morning. He offered to drop her home, but she refused. This was where she wanted to be.

She opened the door, sucking a cloud of warm, smoky smog out into the street. It was a bacchanalian scene. There were women in the bar tonight, quite a lot of women, and the mood of the crowd was wildly happy. The sports boys were singing a song so tuneless it might have been a series of different songs. Richards was at the bar, laughing loudly, his head tipped back like a supervillain, making the man next to him very angry indeed. Purple-topped Margaret Mary was standing side on to Farquarson, laughing and banging her tits off his arm. The news desk boys were conducting a relay whisky-drinking competition, and there, in the middle of them, was Dr. Pete, his eyes as bright as morning stars, his skin a deep and resonant yellow under the harsh lights.

She raised her hand to wave, but he didn’t see her. Instead of demanding his attention she went to the bar and bought him a double of the best malt McGrade stocked. She watched McGrade carry the drink over and put it down on the table in front of him, whispering what it was and who it was from. Pete didn’t look up to thank her but sipped the drink reverently instead of throwing it to the back of his throat, and smiled at it as he turned the glass with his thumb and forefinger.

She walked around the entire room looking for Terry and noticed that the men were ignoring her to a pronounced degree. It was a mark of respect. Terry wasn’t among the men playing the whisky-drinking game by the toilets, and he wasn’t propped up anywhere along the length of the bar. Dub was sitting on a bench behind the door with a crowd of printmen, arguing about German bands and whether “O Superman” qualified as music.

“Hiya.” She slid onto the seat next to him, and Dub grinned and moved up to make room for her.

“That,” he said, pointing at her bandage, “is a new look for you, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I thought I’d experiment with some brain-surgery themed outfits.”

“Suits ye. Makes you look like someone with interesting things to say.”

“ ‘Ouch’?”

“Yeah, and ‘argh.’ ”

Paddy gestured at the scene in front of them. “Is it me or is this madder than usual?”

“Settle back,” Dub answered, handing her someone else’s half-pint off the busy table, “and I’ll tell you a story.”

The way Dub told the story, the evening had started off with Dr. Pete arriving at the newsroom door, released on police bail and still wearing his hospital pajamas. He announced that he was fucked if he was going to take a minute more of this shite. He was leaving to write his book about MacLean; it would make anyone sick the way the fucking staff were treated in this place, and all because of McGuigan. A more reflective analyst would have noted that McGuigan was in no way responsible for Dr. Pete’s complaints, but the newsroom loved a ruckus. He swept down to editorial, and they followed behind him like a crowd of angry villagers. Even Farquarson went with them, half laughing while ordering them to return to their desks at once, protesting as effectively as a jolly octogenarian being tickled by his favorite grandchildren.

Pete burst into McGuigan’s office and shouted a lot of rubbish, pulling him around by a lapel at one point and telling him he had a mouth like an arse. He resigned and said he’d never be back.

Pete’s reckless excitement had spread and multiplied— emotional loaves and fishes— and the atmosphere in the Press Bar felt less like a damp Tuesday in February and more like a lonely sailor’s millennial Hogmanay shore leave.

Paddy laughed at the story, enjoying herself, occasionally touching her hand to her sore head to see if the feeling had come back to the skin. She lifted the drink to sip a couple of times but couldn’t get past the image of a sweaty man slavering over the lip of the glass.

The door opened next to them and Terry Hewitt stepped in, looking around the room. Paddy cringed and leaned over, tugging on the hem of his leather jacket to get his attention. He nodded when he saw it was her, acting as if they had arranged to meet there, and came to sit by her, forcing Dub to slide up the bench even further so that he was jammed uncomfortably into the corner. He stood up, offering to get a round in but failing to ask Terry what he wanted.

“Wild night,” said Terry softly.

“I’m so sorry.”

“’S okay. I’ve just finished a draft for tomorrow with Garry in.”

“No, I’m so sorry I convinced you it was Henry, I had no business—”

“You realized it was Garry when we were at Tracy’s, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“You should have said something to me.”

She’d been ashamed of being wrong, but tried to dress it up. “I wanted to protect you,” she explained, her voice trailing off weakly at the obvious lie.

Terry nodded and muttered “Fair enough” under his breath, letting her off with it.

“Will I get credited for the story?”

Terry looked a little reproachful. “I gave you first credit in the morning edition.”

“I did nearly die for the story.” She sounded defensive.