If Knox was on the take, the money would show: he’d have a big house, a flash car, or kids at an expensive school. She could find out where he was spending it unless Lafferty found her first. But if Knox was working with Neilson, Lafferty would know she was here.
Quelling her panic, reminding herself that Knox couldn’t do anything while she was in the room, she tried to concentrate.
After gentle prompting by Ferguson, Paddy told them about arriving at the house in Bearsden and finding Gourlay by the car. She repeated the conversation about the BMWs. They brought out a car catalog and let her pick out which models most resembled the cars she had seen. Eventually, when she could put it off no longer, she told them about the man in suspenders pressing the fifty quid into her hand. Knox was genuinely surprised.
“He bribed you?” he said, as if it was Paddy’s fault that he didn’t know already.
“He put money in my hand and asked me to keep it out of the paper.”
“But you printed the story anyway?”
“Well, I’d’ve given it back but he shut the door in my face.”
“So, it was a bribe?” he repeated, looking angrily at her.
Sullivan stepped forward to the table and leaned on his fingertips, looking at no one, and said, “The fifty-pound note was the object from the house that we found Robert Lafferty’s prints on.”
The rosy joiner whose name she hadn’t caught rolled his head in recognition. They’d all heard about the prints but not the note. Sullivan had kept his word not to tell. She watched him withdraw. He seemed no more aware of Knox than he was of the other two senior officers.
“Did you see any money being passed to Tam Gourlay or Dan McGregor?”
“Nothing,” she said, to their evident relief. “I saw nothing.” Then, as if she was just continuing the story, she added, “I walked back toward my car, passing Gourlay and McGregor, and Gourlay said, ‘It’s really important to keep it out of the papers because she’s a lawyer,’ something like that, and McGregor slapped him on the back of the head.”
The committee looked a little stunned. “What do you think he meant by that?”
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you what happened.”
They were pleased that she hadn’t directly accused either of the officers of taking a bribe. Ferguson ’s eyes flickered to the secretary taking the minutes. There were two conversations taking place here, she realized: what was said or inferred, and what was minuted. Only the minuted conversation would be of any consequence in the future.
Ferguson offered her a drink of water and stood up, leaning across the desk and pouring it for her, diverting her attention, breaking up the line of questioning. This was a damage limitation exercise. They weren’t going to ask anything they didn’t already know or pursue a wild-card line of questioning.
Knox looked at her hard. “We’ve seen the notes from the first time you were questioned by DI Sullivan. You didn’t mention the fifty pounds then, did you?”
“No.”
“And despite taking the money, you still printed a story about the incident in the paper the next day?”
“Which part are you objecting to? Taking the money or welshing on the deal? Because I didn’t really take the bribe, he shoved it into my hand and shut the door.”
“But you kept the money?” He was emphasizing the point, knowing it would be minuted.
“I couldn’t give it back. He’d shut the door.”
“Wasn’t there a letter box?” Knox’s despising eyes were gray and half-closed.
To a young policeman his manner would have been frightening but Paddy was a journalist and dealt with cheeky fuckers all day. She sighed impertinently and drummed her fingers on the desk. “We finished here? Can I go now?”
Ferguson sat forward. “Would you say that you left the scene quite content that Miss Burnett was safe?”
This was the crunch question, the one they would be asking of everyone. It was the issue that would decide whether Gourlay and McGregor were guilty of any misdemeanor. The truth was she hadn’t felt Vhari Burnett was safe. She hadn’t cared whether Burnett was safe. As Vhari Burnett and her bloody neck slid back into the living room and out of view all Paddy cared about was how soon she could get back into the warm car. She had assumed things about Burnett that seemed ridiculous now: that she was rich and selfish and slim, that she consented to stay with Neilson, that they were a couple and would sort it out between themselves. There were a hundred selfish, shaming reasons why Paddy hadn’t barged in and insisted Burnett leave with her, and the only way she could avoid admitting them now was to back up Gourlay and McGregor.
“No. I felt she was unsafe. And I still walked away.”
“Why did you do that, Miss Meehan?”
She was too tired to think of a lie. “Same reason McGregor and Gourlay walked away. Because I’m a stupid wee shite.”
Sensing the danger of an unrehearsed conversation, a frisson of panic rippled along the line. The minutes secretary glanced up. Knox wound up her interview as quickly as possible, blocking Paddy from saying anything else untoward.
Sullivan saw her to the door, as if she couldn’t find her own way, and slipped out with her into the waiting room. He checked that Grant wasn’t in earshot. “What you said about her being safe, that was… the right thing to say.”
She looked at him, trembling at the thought that Lafferty might be outside. “I thought you were going to tell me it was stupid.”
“It was that too.”
He smiled down, impressed enough to hold his stomach in for her, and slipped back into the room.
Outside the street was quiet. Paddy hurried along, keeping her eyes on the taxi rank two blocks away, telling herself to stay calm, Lafferty wouldn’t dare pick her up here, not outside the police HQ. A car approaching behind her made her heart leap and she broke into an ungainly sprint, yanking her pencil skirt up over her knees, belting across a busy road, running faster and faster until she leaped into the first taxi in the queue.
“Daily News office in Albion Street,” she said, heading for the only place she felt safe.
TWENTY-NINE. KILLEARN
I
It was three a.m., the dead hour, and Paddy knew she should have slept while she had the chance. Now, standing in the all-night grocer’s, she felt distinctly light-headed and had to sit down to stop the colors fading from everything. The ancient, bedraggled woman being questioned next to her noted the stagger in her step and ignored the police officers talking to her. She leaned over and touched Paddy’s knee.
“Sick?” she asked, and laughed like Mother Death.
Yellow mottled skin hung down over her eyes, her bulbous nose had folds of skin on it, and she had a blackhead on her cheek the size of a thumbprint. By the time Paddy walked in she was sitting on a chair by the door, sipping a half bottle of whisky that she claimed to have brought with her, being questioned about the fight and why the whisky bottle had the same sort of pink price sticker on it as every other item in the shop.
The shopkeeper was being kept away from her, in the stockroom. Paddy could hear him shouting at the officers pinning him in behind the curtain of plastic ribbons that he wasn’t the criminal here. She was a whoor, a filthy thieving old whoor.
Dressed in a number of overcoats, the woman had wandered into the twenty-four-hour shop stinking of drink and TCP antiseptic. She lived not far away and, according to the shopkeeper, came in most nights to steal from him. She was looking for things to sell to buy drink, trying to lift the coffee or teabags. She never went for the few overpriced half bottles of emergency drink, which were kept on shelves next to the cigarettes behind the counter, carefully covered by a cloth out of licensing hours.