She sat up, blinking and brushing fibers and dust from her cheek, resisting the urge to rub her eyes. It was one of the copyboys.
“Is JT about?”
“Naw.”
“Is he out on a job?”
“Naw.”
He retreated back to the bench, leaving the door swinging open.
Pleased about the hotel room, Paddy brushed her clothes clean and stepped out into the busy room. The morning conference had apparently taken place in Ramage’s suite downstairs: editors and significant journalists were pouring back in through the double doors, some scowling, some buzzed up, depending on who had been lauded and who lampooned for the morning edition. She peered at them until the last few trickled back in and settled at their desks. JT wasn’t among them.
She sidled up to Reg at the sports desk. “Where’s JT?”
Reg shook his head. “Got the bump.”
She opened her eyes properly. “But he’s just won a Reporter of the Year.”
“Aye.” Reg nodded miserably at his typewriter. “Wages were too high, though. I heard you’ve got a hotel room.”
“Aye.” She looked at her feet, wondering if she’d been wise to ask for anything but a chance to prove herself.
TWENTY-THREE. UGLY THINGS
I
The furnishings were all perfunctory and worn, gleaned from cheap secondhand shops. The gray sofa and a wooden chair, the smoked-glass coffee table, all ugly things, and Bernie’s living room was full of bits of engines and oily rags and tools. Kate hated the room. She was glad she had never been here before and yet Bernie’s company was a comfort in itself. Just the sight of his square face and cheap barber flattop made her feel safe, as if it were another time, as if they were still children and were back before this all began, long before it went bad.
Kate sat her second cup on the coffee table. She didn’t drink tea, usually. She knew what it did to the color of people’s teeth and had convinced herself that she didn’t like it, like ice cream and chocolate. Now she drank it down to try to warm herself up, and then asked for more from the tarnished metal pot. Bernie brought out a packet of digestives and handed her a couple.
“Try to eat them. You’re so skinny, honestly, your legs look like strings with knots in.” He pointed to her knees under the laddered blue tights and silently hoped the dried brown stuff flecked all over the back of her calves was mud.
Kate smiled softly, eyes focused somewhere far off. She sucked an edge of the biscuit and pretended to eat, indulging him. She used to get that look in her eye when she wanted to leave home but couldn’t just say so. “Have you got my pillow?”
He wouldn’t have known what she was talking about if he hadn’t been waiting for her to ask for it. “Pillow?”
She smiled. “My ‘comfort pillow.’”
Bernie smiled back but stopped when he looked at her. “You’re killing yourself.”
She stared at him wearily. She wasn’t well enough to cope with a scene. Her head was bursting and she had shooting pains in her stomach. “You take everything too seriously, Bernie, you always have, ever since you were little.”
She was saying that to make him angry, to stop him admitting he cared. Being emotional was a crime to the Burnetts. But Bernie wasn’t a Burnett, he had chosen not to be, and he did care.
“Look at you,” he said, shouting suddenly. “Look at the state of you. What he’s made of you.”
She picked up the cup and sipped again. “Has he been to see you?”
“What the fuck do you think, Katie? Would my fucking skull still be intact if he’d been here? He battered Vhari to death.”
She looked down, holding her hands together to stop them trembling. “I want my pillow,” she said when her shallow reserve of remorse had run out.
“Katie, you’re going to die if you keep taking that stuff.”
He was right and she knew it. She had felt her heart weaken up at the cottage, the rhythm of it change at times, straining like the Mini’s engine to keep going.
“Bernie, I’m not an idiot. I’m going to get help, but this isn’t the time.”
Bernie rubbed his face roughly with a hand. “Katie? Look at me.” But she couldn’t so he raised his voice. “Look at me, Katie. Fucking look at me. You won’t live to get help. They’ll kill you for taking that bag of coke.”
Kate could hear singing in her left ear. It was the low murmur of the dead man. He was faint, barely perceptible, singing a hymn, she thought, some old Protestant dirge about sins and sinners.
“Katie. Can you hear me?”
She didn’t know if Bernie was talking to her or the dead man, so she waited.
“Katie?” Bernie, it was definitely Bernie, his mouth was moving. “Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you, darling.”
“They’ll kill you like they killed Vhari.”
“No they won’t. I’ve got a plan.” She was beginning to shiver.
Bernie leaned forward and cupped her chin roughly. “Listen to me.” He held her face and made her look at him. His eyes were wild with fright. “Listen.” Kate lifted her chin to get away but he held on, digging his fingers in. “Listen.” Seeing it was hopeless she sat still and looked at him. “Katie, you’re a feckless tit. Your plans are stupid. You couldn’t think your way out of a newsagents’. You’ve got to go to the police.”
She laughed in his face, a genuine, sensible, spontaneous laugh and Bernie loosened his grip and smiled back. She was like herself again and Bernie felt a wash of relief, as if he was meeting an old friend in a hostile crowd.
“But I am planning to go to the police,” she said.
Bernie watched her, reading her face, and he believed her. “God, Kate, fucking hell, I’m so glad. If you lay low and go to the police and just don’t mention the coke, everything’ll be fine. Tell them you went missing and about Vhari and even if they press you, don’t mention drugs of any kind. Promise?”
She pouted, and looked up at him. “Bernie, dearie, I need my pillow to lay low.”
Bernie frowned, annoyed again that she had brought it up. “You’ve no idea how serious this is. Mark Thillingly killed himself the other night because of this.”
“Fat Mark?”
“He’s not fat, Kate. He’s dead.”
“For God’s sake, I’m not responsible for every death in Scotland.” She wanted the pillow. She needed the pillow. The thought of living through the next ten minutes without knowing whether she could get it back scratched at her brain. “Can I have it back?”
Bernie looked at her sadly, noting that she hadn’t asked about Mark or even why he killed himself. “Katie.”
“Give it to me right now or I’ll cut myself.”
“Tell me your plan.”
The dead man giggled in her ear and she hesitated. “Knox. Knox.” She stared into the distance as she repeated the name like a prayer keeping her safe. “Knox’s the out. Paul would do anything to protect him. If I get Knox to talk to him he’ll definitely leave me alone.”
Bernie leaned in and prompted her softly. “But who is Knox?”
“Give me my pillow and I’ll tell you.” She smiled coquettishly, as she used to, but her flattened nose made the look grotesque.
“You’re a fucking nutjob. And you look like a tramp.”
“Piss off.”
He stood up and began to tidy, picking up the biscuits plate, sweeping crumbs from the table onto it. Kate loathed him suddenly. She knew then that she would do anything, literally, the worst she could think of to hurt him and make him give it back. “I’ll phone my parents.”
He looked down at her, the color bleeding from his cheeks until his face was gray.
“I’ll phone them and tell them your home address and where you work. They’ll come and see you.”
The muscles on his face tightened. He looked a little sick, like he had when he was a boy and felt trapped, which was most of the time when he was at home. He looked at his watch. “Phone your parents if you like. I haven’t got a telephone and I’ll be out when you get back. If they see the mess you’ve made of yourself you’ll be in a sanatorium by teatime.”