“How are ye, George?”
He hissed at the feeble detour, and took out another cigarette. She tried again. “How’s that nice young man of yours?”
He sucked his teeth, lit the cigarette, and blew thick smoke across the table. It hit her place mat, lifting off it like a morning mist rising from a lake.
“Meehan, we’ve got guys camped outside the prison. We can wait forever. You tell Callum Ogilvy this: we’ll pay top whack for an exclusive. With pictures. Someone’s getting it and he might as well make a few quid off it. Set him up in his new life.”
“Johnny Mac from the Times offered him fifty K and he doesn’t want it.”
“Unless you’re keeping it for yourself, exclusive on the cheap, family connections and all that.” He gave her a sly look. Callum and Sean Ogilvy weren’t members of her family. People forgot that she had been engaged to Sean and that he wasn’t her cousin. She herself forgot sometimes.
“George, what does your man think about you outing gay men in your paper?”
McVie’s face tightened. “The judge was picking up teenage junkie prostitutes and fucking them in his car.”
“Still,” she sipped her mineral water, “it was a bit of a gay bash.”
He excused himself with a wave of his cigarette. “Sells papers. That’s the business we’re in.”
The Standard guys were sniggering at the waitress, who was trying to lift the plates from their table. “Aren’t you frightened those bastards’ll out you?”
“No,” said McVie, but he looked worried.
McVie had left his wife seven years ago and had gradually come out to the industry. Under the unspoken rules of engagement his sexuality had never been mentioned in the press, even when he took over the Scottish Mail on Sunday and became a name, but the Standard’s spite knew no bounds.
“If they decide to out you it’ll be ugly.”
McVie wriggled as if he had a cockroach between his shoulder blades. “Shut up about that.” He took a slice of bread from the basket and then a butter portion, cracking it back and forth in the paper to thaw it. “What did Hatcher say about Terry?”
As luck would have it, the butter was frozen solid and McVie didn’t notice the moment’s pause before she spoke. “Kevin Hatcher?” she said as if she was correcting him.
“Mmm.”
“Nothing much.”
“He must have said something. He left Terry outside the casino.”
Paddy took a slice of bread too, pulled the soft guts out of it and chewed. “Just, you know…” She took a guess. “They lost money.”
McVie unwrapped the butter portion and put it on his bread, trying to spread it with his knife. The frozen butter gathered the soft bread to it, pulling the slice into lumps.
“So,” said Paddy casually, “Kevin was the last person to see Terry? Where is he now, the Express?”
McVie looked angrily at the mauled slice of bread. “Freelance. Got his own agency.” He picked the bread up, used both hands to form it roughly into a ball, and threw it towards the startled waitress, who was taking a pudding order from the romantic couple. The ball of bread hit the curtains and dropped to the floor. He didn’t need to raise his voice: everyone was looking at him already. “I want butter that isn’t frozen fucking solid.”
The couple looked appalled. The Standard boys cheered, because they always cheered bullies, and the Mail clapped halfheartedly because he was their boss.
“You’re an arsehole.”
He sat back and sucked his cigarette. “When’s Ogilvy getting out?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
The waitress brought the plates of haggis and ham over, apologizing for the butter and explaining that the chef had forgotten to take it out earlier but as soon as it was softened she’d bring it right over. McVie grunted an answer. She backed off as soon as she dared, hurrying away to hide in the kitchen.
“Meehan, this is my one night off,” he said when she’d left. “I’m doing you a favor.”
Paddy made him look at her. “George, you know you’ve barely looked me in the eye since you got here. Ye were never very nice to start with, but for Christsake, are ye in there?”
Resting his elbow on the table, McVie poked his fork at her, his scowl lifting. “I’m in here, aye.”
“Good. Remember, you don’t have to be an arsehole to be an editor. It helps, but you don’t need to be. Remember Farquarson? He was decent.”
“Yeah, and where’s he now?”
As far as she knew, their old editor was enjoying a leisurely retirement in Devon, but that wasn’t what George meant. “Every editor gets the bump sometime. It wasn’t because he retained a sliver of humanity.”
“Come on. Give me something. I’ll look like a tit if I come away with nothing.”
She pretended to think about it. “Ogilvy is getting out, you’re right about that.”
“When?”
“In a while.”
McVie tried to read her face. “Two weeks, that’s what everyone thinks.”
“They’re wrong.”
“Three weeks?”
Paddy wobbled her head from side to side and sliced into the soft pink ham.
“Three weeks?”
She tipped her head encouragingly.
“Three weeks then.”
She looked up at him. “I didn’t say that.”
“No, that’s right.” McVie nodded and smiled at his plate. “You didn’t. Thanks.”
II
The night shift were absent from the newsroom, most of them out on assignments or hiding in different secret places around the building. Larry was in his office listening to the radio. She kept her coat on and lifted the phone book from the secretaries’ desk, flicking through the residential numbers for H.
“What are you doing?”
She started and looked up to find Merki standing at the side of the desk, peering at the listings. “Christ, what are you sidling about after?”
Merki stared hungrily at the phone book. “Looking for something?”
Paddy pursed her lips at him.
Merki licked the side of his mouth, trying to think of another move. “The Provos say it wasn’t them.”
“They told you that, did they?”
“Naw.” He craned his neck, trying to read the page upside down. “They didn’t claim responsibility. They have a code word they use to admit responsibility and they haven’t done it yet.”
“Well, maybe they’re all away on training this weekend.”
His eyes were fixed on the phone book listings. “‘H’?”
“How soon do they make the phone call?”
“Usually before the body’s even found. It’s been twenty-four hours now and nothing.”
She stared at him, blank and still, until he sloped off towards the coffee cupboard, glancing backwards at the phone book, wondering.
Paddy found Kevin Hatcher’s name. His address was listed as Battlefield on the South Side.
She looked up to the coffee room and saw Merki’s shoulder. He was waiting in there, ready to come out and check the phone book after her. She could phone Sinn Fein and ask if they’d heard anything about Terry but they’d have to deny all knowledge of IRA activities: the only reason they were legally allowed to exist was that they claimed to be separate from the IRA. She looked up the contacts book on the secretaries’ table and called the Irish Republican News.
The call was eventually answered by a bored copy taker.
“Sorry, not copy, I want to talk to a reporter.”
“Is it a story?”
“Yeah,” she said. Well, it kind of was. She’d be lucky to get a journalist who could be bothered to help her.
A news reporter caught the call and asked her what the fuck she wanted in a thick brogue. She lowered her voice and tried to sound terribly senior.
“Paddy Meehan here, from the Scottish Daily News. Big story over here: suspected execution of a journalist by a soldier of the IRA. Any word on it?”
He covered the phone with his hand. She couldn’t hear any talking at the other end. He might have put the receiver down and walked away, for all she knew. Suddenly he came back on and surprised her. “We’ve heard nothing.”