She gathered her papers and worked her way out of the seat, standing on tiptoes to get past the back of his chair. JT was the best they had, but Paddy knew she could do better than that. She could take his job in a few years.
IV
The clippings library was a corridor-shaped room blocked off by a counter four feet inside the door.
The librarians were strict enforcers of demarcation and guarded their tasks and spaces as ferociously as blood-sodden borderlands. No one who was not a librarian was permitted behind the counter. They were not allowed to lean their hands over the counter or even to shout down into the library space. Paddy suspected that they were so defensive because their job was easy and involved nothing more than cutting out paper with blunt scissors and filing.
Beyond the counter, running along a fifty-foot wall, was a gray metal filing system containing clippings from all the past editions of the Daily News. The clippings were arranged alphabetically by subject and stored in cylindrical drums like metal Rolodexes. Against the other long wall was a large, dark wooden table. All three of the librarians were sitting at it doing the cuttings, subject by subject, of every article in the paper that day. Part of the copyboys’ responsibilities was to bring a bale of each new edition down to them.
Helen, the head librarian, dressed smartly in twin sets, tweed skirts, and shoes with a token heel. She wore her brown hair pinned up at the back, lacquered solid so that the individual hairs were hardly discernible to the naked eye. Although Helen Stutter was graceful and well dressed, Paddy thought she was a torn-faced bitch obsessed with the hierarchy of the paper who treated anyone beneath the level of editor with bald contempt. The management loved her and genuinely couldn’t understand why no one else did. Paddy dearly hoped that Helen was still working there if she ever got promoted.
Helen glanced over the top of her reading glasses towards the counter, seeing that someone was there but that it was no one important. She ignored Paddy, casually twisting the red plastic beads on her glasses chain. Paddy drummed her fingers, not loudly or for attention, just because she was tense and about to tell a lie.
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.
V
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.