Billy stopped outside the entrance to Patsy Taylor’s block of flats. The stairs were open to the elements. Each flat had a front room window that curled around the corner of the building, a veranda at the side, and a porthole window next to the front door.
“D’you want to see what this shitty city’s about?” asked McVie vindictively. “Then come with me.”
The walls of the open-mouthed entrance were a green and cream, but the steps were cold gray concrete. The flat they were looking for was one flight up, the door flanked by tripod plant-pot holders holding withered somethings. A fake mother-of-pearl nameplate was fastened to the door frame. McVie looked disappointed.
“Well, at least it’s not Sawney Bean again,” he muttered, referring to a famous Scottish cannibal who had lived in a cave, eaten travelers from England, and interbred with all fifty of his daughters. Bean was fictional, a clumsy piece of anti-Scottish propaganda from the eighteenth century that backfired: the Scots loved Sawney from the moment he was launched onto the international bogeyman scene, taking him to their hearts and private kinky nightmares, extrapolating from his wild and lawless life to develop a national personality.
McVie took a deep breath and knocked on the door, an authoritative, firm three times. A stocky balding man with a ring of cropped white hair opened the door. He was sucking a freshly emptied pipe and wearing an itchy woollen dressing gown over his day clothes.
“What can I do for you, my friend?”
“Good evening, Mr. Taylor. My name is George McVie and I’m the chief reporter for the Scottish Daily News. I understand there has been an incident here this evening. I wonder if I could have ten minutes of your time to ask you about it?”
Paddy was astonished at McVie’s skill and grace. Mr. Taylor was charmed too, and flattered that the Daily News would send out its chief reporter for his story, a fact that McVie had anticipated when he told the lie.
Mr. Taylor invited them into his formal front room and packed his pipe from a yellowing rubber pouch while his silent wife made tea and grandly offered around custard cream biscuits. The electric fire wasn’t on, but the red light spun slowly under a dusty coal mountain range, regular as a siren.
Mr. Taylor had taken the large armchair for himself and put McVie next to him on the settee. Paddy was relegated to the far end by the door, farthest away from the core of the conversation. Listening over the ticking of the clock, Paddy thought she heard someone down the hall sobbing low and regular, like a boiler ticking down to cool.
Under McVie’s surprisingly gentle prompting Mr. Taylor told how his wife was washing the dishes at the back of eight when she heard a commotion in the street. They both looked out the window and saw a body hanging from the streetlight opposite their house. Mrs. Taylor called the police and ambulance services from the neighbor’s telephone, but the man was dead. They found a letter pinned to his chest, addressed to Patsy, Mr. Taylor’s daughter. When the police came to the door Patsy admitted that she had received another letter at work that morning. The hanging boy was Eddie, a lad from her work who was angry because she didn’t want to go out with him. Mr. Taylor kept his eyes on his cup of tea as he explained the background, and Paddy felt strongly that he was lying.
“Could I see the letter, please?” she asked suddenly. “To check the spelling of Eddie’s name. I’ll get into terrible trouble with the lawyers if we spell it wrong.”
Both men had forgotten she was there. They sat up and looked at her in surprise.
“That’s your bit of the job, is it?” said Mr. Taylor.
Paddy nodded and pulled a notebook out of her bag. It was pristine, a navy-blue hardboard cover with a matching elastic band around the middle. She’d only stolen it from the stationery cupboard that afternoon.
Mr. Taylor hesitated for a moment. “There’s a lot of language in it.”
“That doesn’t bother me.” Paddy smiled bravely. “I’ve heard it all in this job. I just ignore it.”
He reached under his cushion to pull out a pale yellow envelope, handing it to Paddy. “You’re surely not a journalist?”
She glanced at McVie. If he was the chief news reporter, she could be a journalist. “Aye,” she said, “I am.”
McVie drew his attention away, asking him to repeat the story again because it was vital that they get the times right.
Paddy slid the folded sheet out of the envelope and opened it. She moved her pencil across her pad as if she were copying out the name while she read the letter quickly. The sheet of paper was from a small girl’s writing set, a little sister’s maybe. It had a faint picture of a black horse on the face of it, galloping through a misty field. It was obvious that Eddie and Patsy had been more than passing acquaintances. He referred to previous outings, and to her father calling him a bigot. But Eddie was an angry man. He told Patsy she was a bitch and he’d kill himself if she didn’t meet him tonight. Paddy folded the letter carefully and slipped it between the pages of her notebook, putting the empty envelope on the table in full view.
McVie noticed and stood up, gesturing to Paddy to get up too. “Thank you for your time. It’s very much appreciated.”
Mr. Taylor glanced at the envelope, and Paddy knew immediately that he saw it was empty. He knew he had made a stupid mistake. He lurched forwards in front of McVie, grabbing the notebook with one hand and Paddy’s wrist with the other, trying to yank them apart.
“Mr. Taylor, let go of her at once,” said McVie, as indignant as the Pope in a go-go bar. “She’s just a girl.”
“Ye devils!” Mr. Taylor pulled the notebook away from her and found the letter inside. “Dirty, lying devils. Out!”
He chased them into the hall, pushing them out the front door and slamming it behind them. McVie looked at Paddy, panting and exhilarated.
“It was the father who split them up, then?”
She nodded.
“Thought so.” He nearly smiled but caught himself. “You didn’t fuck that up too much at all, bint.”
“Thank you,” said Paddy, accepting the compliment in the spirit in which it was intended. “You ignorant shit.”
As they left the mouth of the close and headed down the path, Billy reversed slowly back, letting the car roll to the end of the path. Paddy didn’t want to get back into the car with Billy and all the animosity and unpleasantness.
“It’s a pretty poor thing to do.” She slowed her step to a stroll. “Kill yourself to upset someone.”
“Aye, well.” McVie slowed down alongside her. “That won’t make the page. We won’t publish an article saying ‘Moody wee bastard kills himself.’ It’s the details that tell the real story. The truth is a slippery bastard, that’s what you learn in this game. That, and never trust the management.” He looked up at the streetlight where Eddie had hanged himself, carefully considering whether he had any more important information to pass on to the next generation. “And that people are arseholes.”
McVie’s mood had mellowed, even to the extent of talking to Billy. “Well,” he said as he got back into the car, “there actually was a story in it.”
Billy shrugged. “D’you want to go anyway?”
“Aye, why not.”
“Go where?” asked Paddy.
Neither of them answered her.
Billy didn’t get faster than five miles an hour, crawling along slowly for a couple of streets. At the heart of the housing project they cruised past a dark swing park with mini-chutes and barred baby swings glistening with frost. Billy took a sharp corner a little too fast and drove along for a hundred yards before parking.