The blonde punched the numbers in lazily, sensing that Paddy was anxious and in a hurry, so taking her time. Eventually the machine swallowed the sheet and spat it back out, gave off a whirring-beeped burp, and a short slip of paper slid out of the underside.
“And I’ll take a couple of Snickers bars as well.”
Paddy checked the transmission report as she waited for her change. It was number perfect. It would take some time, she felt sure, for the word to get out, be checked and double-checked, and finally for someone to believe Martin McBree was working with the security services. But one day he’d get a knife in his neck and he’d know it was because of her.
He was coming to get her and, she realized, she didn’t even have a pocket knife.
The shop assistant held out the change to her, looking at her hand and noting the tremble in her fingers.
“Sorry,” said Paddy, “do you sell kitchen scissors?”
III
She stood by her Volvo, cramming the second Snickers bar into her dry mouth, hardly tasting it on the way down but aware of the stringy caramel sticking in her throat. She looked at her hands, at her chocolate-coated fingertips. She was too full even to lick them clean and they were still shaking.
She rapped on the window and Dub rolled it down. “Could you drive, Dub? I wouldn’t mind just looking out of the window.”
They got back onto the motorway, took the bridge across the river, and followed the signs for Ayr. Before long the lanes narrowed, then converged, and they were in a drag race with the late commuters who had missed the rush hour and were desperate to get home.
Dub wasn’t used to driving. The dark, the sweeps and turns through the hills and the aggressive locals made him lean forward in his seat, hanging over the steering wheel, neck craned, cursing under his breath every time a car or a van shot past him. When they reached a broad stretch to the south of the city he relaxed a fraction and sat back.
“Now,” he said, “this meeting: you’re just going to hand over the photos to the McBree guy? Are you sure you’ll be all right out here on your own?”
“Yeah.” She drew on her cigarette, keeping her hand close to her face so he couldn’t see her shaking. “He won’t approach if there’s anyone there.”
An articulated lorry overtook them at an alarming speed, clearing the side of the car by less than a foot, the canvas straps whip-cracking at Dub’s window. He panicked and hit the brakes hard, slowing down to thirty, panting and leaning over the wheel again until he’d calmed himself down. His eyes kept flickering to the darkness in the rearview mirror as if he expected another assault. “The crying at the house, what was all of that about?”
“Mum called the boys up to come and batter Mary Ann’s boyfriend and I said Dad wouldn’t want that.”
“Quite right, neither he would.”
Outside the window the gentle hills of Ayrshire rolled softly away to a darkening sky. I may not come back this way, she thought. I may never come back.
She looked at Dub, memorizing his face. She could think about him when the time came. Not Pete, because she’d sob and struggle and lose it, but if it came to it, if McBree got her, in her final moments she could think about Dub and smile. She’d remember walking home with him late at night, eating sticky pasta in the flat, the warm toasting smell of him ironing behind her while she watched TV and his hand finding hers under the duvet in the dark night. They should have gone on holidays. They should have dated each other.
Like bubbles rising from a mile under water, the words found her lips: “I love you.”
Dub slowed down to thirty again and looked sternly out at the road. “I don’t think this is the time or the place…”
She smiled at his discomfort. “Yeah, yeah.”
“We talked about this before.”
“Yeah, your fat arse, Dub McKenzie.”
He turned his head but was afraid to take his eyes off the road. “Meehan, it was you who said we shouldn’t try to pin it down, not me.”
“Shut up and drive. You wanker.” She grinned out of the side window. “And I do love you. I don’t even love you as a friend, I’m in love with ye. I think everything you do is brilliant. So ye can shove that up your arse. Fucking Proddy twat.”
When she glanced back he was smiling at the road, sucking his cheeks to stop his face splitting in half.
“Happy now?” she said seriously. “You’ve trapped me with your wiles and sexual trickery.”
Chewing his lip, he slapped her leg with the back of his hand.
Paddy threw her hands up in mock exasperation. “And now the violence.”
IV
Their headlights left the road and sliced, waist high, through the dark around the cottage. They could see that Callum had been busy.
The sturdy grass pressing up against the façade had been flattened, roughly cut away under the windows and the door. An orange-rusted rotary-action lawn mower stood indignantly upright in front of the house.
Dub parked and Paddy got out, looking around for Callum. She felt Dub behind her and his fingertips found hers, squeezed them, and then retreated. “He’s round the back,” he said and walked off.
Paddy took a step and the tip of the kitchen scissors needled her thigh. They weren’t very sharp.
She felt a front of cool air sliding up the hill from the sea, heard the bushes whisper beyond the orchard wall and the old house groan at the weight of its history. The crack across the front looked deeper in the dark. She followed Dub’s shadow.
The lawn mower’s last act had been to chew the grass off around the side of the house. Callum had cleared a path along the side wall, down to moss-covered paving slabs underneath. The thick, spongy surface was waterlogged and her trainers squelched as she stepped across them.
They found Callum sitting on the ground by the kitchen door, his back to the wall, looking out and enjoying the night view of the hills. He was eating dry white bread, squashing slices into hard dough and biting chunks off. “It’s so quiet here, I heard you two a mile away.”
“You’ve been busy enough,” said Dub.
Callum smiled and stood up. “I’m going to live in the country one day. Come on in.”
Though the light was failing outside, they could see that he had cleared the whole kitchen floor, found some cleanish water in the water tank on the far side of the house and used a bucket with a hole in it to drag it into the house. He’d managed to wipe the thick layer of dust off the worktop and the range, but he didn’t have a mop so the floor looked not so much cleaner as dirty in a different way.
Dub was at a loss. “Lovely.”
Glassy-eyed with pride, Callum grinned and swept an arm around the filthy kitchen. “But this didn’t take half as long as the other job did.”
He planted his hands on his hips and waited for them to ask. Paddy didn’t have time for this. She needed to get him the fuck out before McBree turned up.
Dub obliged. “What other job?”
Gleefully, Callum made them stand by the back wall, clearing a space on the floor. “Ye can sit down if you like.”
“Callum, I need you to go with Dub. You can stay at his mum and dad’s tonight. I have to meet someone here.”
“Two minutes.”
He disappeared into the front room. Dub looked at Paddy and smiled the warmest smile she had ever seen. She took his hand, dropping it abruptly when Callum reappeared holding cardboard flattened like a pizza box, carrying it carefully in front of him, holding the lid down.
Callum looked coyly at Dub. “I did this for you. So you can sleep.” He lifted the lid.
Paddy was expecting a drawing, pressed flowers, something creative and asinine. But Callum hadn’t made a drawing.
Dub slid along the wall, rolling his shoulder to the doorway, half muttering “fuck” before staggering outside. They could hear him vomiting.