The window at the side of the garage was too high for her to look through properly. She could see the inside of the sloping roof and three skylights in a row, one over each section, but couldn’t see down to the cars.
She glanced around for something to stand on but the narrow lane was tidy. Creeping around to the back of the house, she saw a large gray concrete base with a glass conservatory perched on it, plonked in the middle of a large sloping lawn. Moonlight shimmering on the underside of the glass told her that it housed a swimming pool. It was not a routinely inhabited back garden: there were no old lawnmowers or toys abandoned by the back wall, no boxes left over from plants or seed, not even a broken washing machine like the Meehans had in theirs. There was nothing for her to stand on.
She skirted back around to the garage window again and, checking the ground beneath the window, jumped several times, piecing together the layout and content of the garage from what she could glimpse. There were only two cars in the three-car garage, a big one and a small one, exactly the shape and size of the BMWs she had seen outside Vhari Burnett’s house.
A sudden rustle in the bushes made her think of Lafferty. She turned and hurried back down the drive, reckless of noise, pulling her skirt up over her waist, and climbed quickly back over the gate. She caught her breath when she saw Sean still parked where she had left him, speeding up as she approached the car. She felt so relieved as she climbed back into the warm car that she almost slammed the door on the frightening night but remembered herself and stopped, shutting it quietly.
“Let’s go.”
“Why have you taken your skirt off?”
“Let’s go, Sean, and leave the lights off.”
III
Larry Gray-Lips, the night editor, was looking at her regretfully. “Meehan, you’ve to wait on.”
Paddy was standing by the pigeonholes with one arm in her leather and her scarf around her neck. “Why?”
He flapped a yellow memo sheet at her. “Got this last night after you went out: Ramage wants to see you when he gets in.”
Her last vestige of courage left her. Knox had told Shug about the fifty quid. Ramage was going to sack her.
Larry and Paddy had never liked each other but he saw how hard she was hit by the news and reached out to her, then thought better of it and withdrew. “Might not be that.”
She thought of her mother and covered her face with her hand as frustration welled up in her. “I’m the only one working.”
“Aye, well.” Alarmed by the display of emotion, Larry moved away sharpish. “Sorry.”
She kept one arm in her coat and slid into a chair by the door. Shug fucking Grant. Years she had given to this job, years of waiting for it to get better and now it had come to nothing. She’d never wanted to do anything else. She didn’t have the exam results to go to university. All she could see in her future was an infinity of sitting in the damp garage at home, staring at an aching blank page. She felt so defeated she couldn’t even face walking across to the tea room to make a coffee or get some biscuits from the tin.
The office filled up quickly with the morning shift, the casual timekeeping of Farquarson’s reign being long past. Journalists and subs poured through the door in twos and threes. Paddy hadn’t been in on a day shift for five months and had forgotten the look of the office when it was full. Copyboys were kept busy fetching teas and coffees, journalists organized their workspaces for the day, setting ashtrays by their smoking hand, feeding paper into the typewriters, while subs scanned copies of the morning edition for follow-up stories and section editors issued orders.
Shug Grant arrived three minutes late with a fat editor from international news. He didn’t acknowledge Paddy but stopped near her to laugh ostentatiously at his companion’s joke. She didn’t look up.
She stayed at the end of the desk, dully aware of the sharp scratch on her knee, hands folded across her stomach, nursing the pains she hadn’t been able to shake off for days until a copyboy was at her elbow. “Ramage wants to see you.”
She looked around the office for anything she wanted to take with her. They might not let her back in. She had a big mug in the tea room but couldn’t be bothered walking the full length of the room and passing Shug Grant to get it.
She stood up slowly and shoved her other arm into the coat. “Downstairs?”
The copyboy nodded sadly. “Downstairs.”
She paused at the door and looked back into the bustle and confusion. It was a sunny day outside. Shafts of golden morning sunshine sloped in through the wall of windows, settling on the dirty blue carpet. No one looked back at her. She hadn’t even been told she was being sacked and already she was nothing more to them than a sad shrug, a rumor. She wouldn’t be the last.
She dragged her heels downstairs and along the quiet corridor, knocking twice and slumping against the wall. Ramage called for her to come in and she found him behind his big desk, leaning back smugly in his chair. There wasn’t a single sheet of paper on his leather desk blotter but there was a small brass cafetiere next to a dark green cup and saucer trimmed with gold. The rich chocolate aroma of real coffee filled the room.
“Sorry to keep you on after your shift.”
She stayed near the door and shrugged. “’S okay.”
Ramage examined her for a moment. “It was only twenty minutes, Meehan, you don’t need to sulk.”
Afraid she would cry when he said it, she bit the side of her mouth hard.
Ramage pressed the flat of his hand on the brass plunger and pushed it down slowly, watching as the wheel crushed the coffee grains against the bottom of the glass. “Come over here.”
She shuffled over to the desk.
“What happened to your knee?”
“Cut it. Climbing over a gate.”
He poured himself a black coffee, lifted the saucer and cup and sipped noisily, his pinkie crooked to the side. “What’s happening with the police corruption story?”
Paddy looked at Ramage’s face. He sipped the coffee again and watched her expectantly, waiting for her to speak. He wanted to talk to her, not sack her.
She perked up. “Well, I’ve found the guy who owns the cars that were parked around the back of the Bearsden house. He went out with Burnett’s sister but she’s disappeared. I think he’s looking for her, he’s desperate, and I don’t think it’s because he loves her, either.”
“He thought her sister was hiding her?”
“Probably. Vhari Burnett had just moved house and the dead guy in the river knew her new address.”
“So he went through him to find her?”
“I think so.”
“What about the police?”
“Well, the two officers who were at the door call in Bearsden aren’t saying anything that could lead to him; they’re being very careful about that, which suggests they’re on the take. But more importantly, they’ve both just been transferred to the station the Burnett investigation’s based in. Everyone knows they’re bent, it’s highly irregular, and I think I know which senior officer okayed it.”
“He’s bent too?”
She shrugged. “I’m guessing. I don’t know for sure, but his name came up a couple of times.”
“Good.” Ramage leaned back again. “Any evidence yet?”
“Some fingerprints of a heavy who ties them all together.”
“The one who attacked the car?”
“Yeah, the firebomb guy. He’s the link but I’m the only thing that ties him to the Bearsden Bird’s house. I can witness that a piece of paper came out of the house that night and they’ve found his prints on it.”