TWENTY-ONE. IN CONVERSATION WITH A FRIDGE
I
A shadow fell over Paddy’s desk and she looked up, expecting to see the Monkey.
The officers who had been at Kevin’s flat yesterday were standing at her elbow.
“Miss Meehan, you’ll come with us.”
“Oh, hello!” She jolted to her feet. “Hello!”
They were very annoyed. The old one grabbed her arm, squeezing tighter than he needed to, his lip curling as he yanked her away from her desk. Instinctively she pulled her arm back. “Calm down, I’m coming with you. I’m pleased to see you.”
“Like fuck,” muttered the young one, yanking her free arm up behind her back with needless force. But they weren’t worried she’d run again, they were just annoyed that she ran the first time.
Two sports guys stepped forward, gentlemen to their bones. “Oi, leave the lady alone.”
“This is nothing to do with you.” The younger one was very angry and she guessed that they’d been given an earful by their superiors for letting her slip their grasp.
The sports reporters were usually fairly mellow, but they were fond of a fight. Whether she liked it or not, Paddy was part of their gang and an insult to one was an insult to all. They took a police officer each and stood in front of them. “Get your fucking hands off her.”
Paddy raised her voice to a volume she usually reserved for warning Pete about fire and oncoming cars: “STOP. RIGHT. NOW.”
The few people in the newsroom who weren’t watching stopped still and stared. Bunty appeared at the door of his office. A copyboy looked in from the stairwell.
“These officers and I are going to leave now, without incident. Am I making myself abundantly clear?”
The sports boys nodded dumbly. The police officers almost apologized. Even Bunty looked as if he’d been caught stealing apples. She’d yet to meet a man who was immune to her angry-mum voice.
Paddy picked up the cuttings envelopes, putting them in her bag. She stood up and smiled at the sports guys. “Thank you.”
Flanked by the police officers, she swept through the newsroom to the doors feeling very important, carrying every pair of eyes in the room with her. Inadvertently, the officers pushed a door each, holding them open for her like footmen. She turned back to the room and spoke to Bunty.
“I’m going to be a wee bit late with that copy. Sorry.”
As the door swung shut behind her, the newsroom erupted into an excited round of applause. Everyone loved a renegade.
The policemen took the stairs in single file, one before her, one behind. She felt rather grand, knowing she’d be on the front page tomorrow and the copy would cast her in a favorable light.
II
The illusion of glamour lasted until they got outside, when the officers took an arm each and shoved her roughly towards the squad car at the curb. Someone must have called down to the Press Bar because a photographer came flying out, loading a fresh roll of film into his camera and snapping away at them.
She looked up and found the population of the newsroom lined up at the window, waving to her, grinning down as if she was heading off on a royal tour.
The rest of the Press Bar emptied into the road. Journalists and editors, hangers-on and specialists all lined the street, still clutching their pints and cigarettes, toasting her and cheering.
She grinned back at them, then stopped abruptly.
The young man looked sheepish, standing behind the gathering crowd as if he had been caught out, keeping his head down, hoping not to be seen. His jacket was open but she could see the black collar and the silver zip of his tracksuit and the neck of his Celtic top underneath.
The officer started the car and pulled away, easing down the busy street to another smattering of applause. As they turned the corner she looked back and saw the man in the black tracksuit slip away in the opposite direction.
Paddy cleared her throat and sat forward. “Did you get into trouble because I ran away?”
“Sit back and put your belt on.”
Every single car on the road gave way to them, let them cut in, slowed down when they noticed the squad car. She watched the driver, saw the expectation of deference and how angry he got when a driver didn’t let them in, noticed how he muttered under his breath that they must be blind.
“You’re not arresting me, are you?”
They didn’t answer.
“How’s Kevin? Is he OK? Where is he? I went looking for him yesterday and couldn’t find a trace of him.”
She looked at the back of their heads, at their shoulders. Neither of them cringed or twitched, they weren’t withholding anything: they didn’t know how Kevin was.
“They haven’t told you, have they?”
Seen in the rearview mirror, the driver’s eyes were heavy. “Shut the fuck up,” he said.
So she did.
III
Squad cars lined the street in front of a modest red-brick office block, built in the thirties, all long lines and big windows. The cantilevered slab over the door had been updated, clad in raw steel and extended so that it covered the entire pavement. Picked out in confident blue letters, the building declared itself to be Strathclyde Police Headquarters. The overall effect wasn’t friendly. It was a public space annexed by the big boys.
They found a parking place in the street, and straightened their uniforms as they got out and came around to her door. They glanced up at the building and Paddy thought they looked intimidated, two constables from the South Side bringing her to their unseen masters. They grabbed her as she got out, holding her elbows too tight, pinching the bones, nasty little bullies as they huckled her towards the glass doors on behalf of their bosses.
“You really don’t need to hold me this tight,” she said, as they pushed the doors open and brought her into reception.
They weren’t in a police station, Paddy could see that straightaway. Reception looked like a corporation’s. There were no holding cells here and the public had little reason to drop in, so leather seats lined the wood-paneled hall, a pretty receptionist looked up attentively, and the phones on her desk weren’t nailed down the way they were in other cop shops.
“I’m not going to run again,” Paddy told the older officer.
He shot her a dirty look. “Be quiet.”
The younger officer came over, settled on her other side, and they waited. She’d have to speak to Sean and tell him they’d been seen picking Callum up. It wouldn’t be as bad for him as it was for her, she thought. He was only a driver for the News and was Callum’s cousin. Sacking someone for not reporting a member of their own family was too Maoist, even for panicky Bunty.
She looked up the slatted wooden stairs. Whoever had sent them to get her was up there, reading about Terry, or Kevin, or her. She’d come back from this with a story about Kevin Hatcher, squeeze something out of the person questioning her and feed it to Bunty to appease him. Whatever Merki was writing, he was still a hundred miles behind her.
“I think I’m being followed,” she said to the officer next to her, “by a wee guy in a tracksuit. I’d suspect the police, but he’s wearing a Celtic shirt and I know you’re all Prods.”
He wasn’t listening though; he was looking past her to the stairs. He stood up, raising an eyebrow.
Paddy turned to see a frumpy woman in a cheap business suit coming down towards them, nodding once at the officer. She spoke as she took Paddy by the upper arm, urged her to her feet, and marched her to the lift. “Miss Meehan, I’m DI Sharon Garrett. Can you come with me, please.”
It wasn’t a question.
Paddy looked at their watered reflection in the steel elevator doors. She was flanked by Garrett and the young officer, the older guy standing behind them, allowing himself a smile. She looked very small in among them, her clothes crumpled. She could smell the smoke off herself.