Tonight the shopkeeper had had enough and, fly to the woman and sick of losing stock, had left an empty coffee jar and box of teabags on the shelf. The woman had come in and, as usual, made straight for the coffee. She stood, holding the empty jar, trying to understand, holding her coat open ready to pinch it. Finally convinced that the jar was empty, the woman turned to the shopkeeper, dropped the jar, and flew at him, screaming, aiming for the bottles of drink under the cloth.
The shopkeeper claimed he was simply trying to restrain her when a group of young Goths waiting at the bus stop outside the window saw him wrestle the old lady to the ground and rifle through her clothes.
There is no sense of justice quite as uncompromising as drunken nightclubbers’ justice. The Goths ran in and counterattacked the shopkeeper, pulling him off the old woman. A couple of girls sat on him while the rest helped themselves to juice and smokes and packets of crisps, leaving the old woman free to roam at will for the ten minutes it took the police car to arrive.
There weren’t enough officers to arrest the mob so they limited their inquiries to the two main players. Outside, the heavily made-up youngsters in a mess of black and purple, genders indistinguishable, watched shiftily through the window. Littering the pavement around them were half-eaten packets of crisps and biscuits. Incriminating cans of Coke emptied themselves into the gutter.
Paddy came out of the small shop with two pages of shorthand notes but knew it wouldn’t be worth calling it in to the night subs.
Back in the car Sean was mesmerized by the crowd and desperate to hear what had happened inside. “Man.” He smiled, shaking his head in wonder. “You wouldn’t believe these things go on until you’re actually there. Will I find a phone?”
“No point. It won’t make it into the paper.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not a car crash or a murder. They don’t print vignettes, just hard news.”
“Shame.” Sean started the engine. “It was bloody entertaining to watch.”
Sensing that Paddy’s job had taken her away from him, Sean had always been a bit sneery about it, cutting her off when she tried to talk about the sights in the night city. It was affirming to see him so buzzed about it. Suddenly she loved the job she’d been trying to shed for months. By the morning Shug Grant would either know or not know about her fifty-quid kickback, depending on how the leak felt about it. If Shug had been told, everyone at the News would know too. Ramage would call her. She wouldn’t be allowed to take her coat off. Or he might call her at the hotel later and tell her to get out of the room, she was sacked.
“You like this job, then, Sean?”
He pulled the car out to the road. “Don’t tell anyone, but I think I’d probably do it for nothing.”
Sean drove down through the empty town, a high yellow sky with a fat moon hanging low in it. His driving was improving, she had to admit, even in the single night he’d been working.
“You’re less swervy tonight. You’re getting the hang of it.”
“It’s good practice.” He smiled to himself. “It’s great money as well.”
She didn’t want him thinking he was a shoo-in for a permanent job. “This might not be permanent, you know? When you hand in your license they might make an issue out of the fact that you’ve just passed.”
He nodded. And nodded and nodded. She knew him far too well to think it meant nothing. “What?”
“What ‘what’?”
“Why did you nod so much then?”
A pained panic in his eye told her something was wrong. She took a horrified breath and sat forward. “Sean, tell me you passed your test.”
He nodded and nodded again but she knew he was lying.
“Sean, I put you up for this job. If you got it fraudulently I’ll get in trouble.”
“Well, I will pass it now, won’t I? With all this great practice.”
“For Christ’s sake, we’re spending every night chasing police cars. You could lose the license before you get it.”
He looked at her in the mirror. “Even if I had passed, the license wouldn’t come through for months. If I get caught I’ll say you knew nothing about it, okay?”
Paddy didn’t answer. Sean was prepared to get married at seventeen to please his mum. He was a prefect all the way through school. He attended chapel on every Holy Day of Obligation. Breaking the law to get a job was the most audacious thing she’d ever known him to do. She looked at him with renewed interest.
“Okay?” he said again.
She nodded. “Okay,” and watched the back of his head. By now even the emergency rooms would be empty. “Let’s drive up to Killearn.”
II
Radio reception gradually died as they left the city behind, the pip and crackle of calls reducing to a soft, comforting buzz. Rich yellow moonlight played on sparkling frost, coating the tilled muddy fields, and jagged skeletons of deciduous bushes lined the dark road.
This was rich countryside, soft hills dotted with gentle copses of old trees, with picturesque villages strung along the traditional drovers’ road that the highland cattlemen had used for centuries to bring their stock down to the city. The population was growing, the tiny villages spreading into farmland on their outskirts with big new houses built by golfers posing as country folk.
On the approach to Killearn they passed houses set back from the road, new and old, sitting in big patches of lawn and elaborate ornamental gardens, some with boats parked in the driveway, most with big cars.
It was four in the morning, everyone was asleep, and the alert watchfulness that usually hangs over wealthy areas was absent: no dog barked, no expensive cars slowed at the passing places, drivers peering carefully into their cheap car, noting the faces of strangers who were hanging around and might cause trouble.
The driveway to Huntly Lodge looked like nothing at all, a small break in the bushes with a run-down gate, algae-smeared and rotting, held shut with a shiny new chain and a padlock.
Paddy told Sean to pull off the road, keep the lights off, and wait for her.
“Where are you going? I’ll come with you.”
“No,” she said. “I’m just going for a look at something. You wait here.”
She wasn’t dressed for it. She’d been wearing the same pencil skirt since Sunday and her sweater was getting distinctly stale. The pencil skirt was too narrow for climbing but she had her leather on and hiked the skirt up to her hips before clambering over the gate. At the top, when one leg was over, the unsteady gate shifted in the mud below and she felt herself falling backward headfirst. She threw her weight forward and caught her tights on the rough wood, ripping them at the knee. Thick woolly tights cost a tenner, and she cursed Paul Neilson as she climbed down the other side. Her knee was bleeding lightly through the scratch.
She limped along the mud road, pulling her skirt down, following the high ground of a deep rut where heavy cars had passed in and out. The trees closed in behind and over, shifting threateningly in the light wind. Paddy walked slowly, letting her eyes adjust to the dark, rubbing her knee and feeling sorry for herself.
When she turned the corner and saw the huge house she stepped nervously back into the bushes. Someone was very rich.
The house was new and vast, an ill-considered barn of a place with an inappropriately small front door and windows that would have been the right size for a semidetached house. An attempt had been made at dignifying the door by flanking it with plaster lions, but they were too small and only emphasized the cheap look. To the left, built as an extension of the house, was a three-door garage.
Keeping to the bushes, Paddy skirted around to the side, stepping through mud carpeted in dead leaves. The ground was soft under her feet, noisily sucking the rubber soles of her pixie boots. Hoping there wasn’t a dog in the house, she picked her way carefully, stepping on tiptoes, keeping as quiet as possible.