“Did Mark give Vhari’s new address to the person who beat him up?”
Bernie looked at her imploringly but said nothing.
“And then he killed himself? Because he felt he’d got her killed?”
He shook his head. Paddy felt he’d tell her if he could.
“I’ll find out, you know, I will find out and tell the police. Can’t you give me anything?”
His eyes wandered slowly around her face, considering what she said. “I can’t do anything that’ll hurt her.”
“Kate?”
He nodded at the dashboard. “We can’t involve the police.”
“Why? Has Kate done something illegal?” He didn’t answer. “I’ll protect her as much as I can, Bernie, but you need to give me something to go on, a name or a place or something, please? For Vhari.” Bernie shook his head. “For Mark?”
He drew in a deep breath and looked around the garage. “I don’t even know who he is but he’s important.” He worked his fingernail into the seam of his chair. “It’s Knox. Look for someone called Knox.”
TWENTY-EIGHT. INQUIRY
I
The clippings library was a pocket of calm order in the chaos of the newspaper. Helen, the chief librarian, dressed like a real librarian would, in tweed pencil skirts and jerseys. Her glasses hung on a red beaded chain around her neck. Paddy had never liked her when she was a copyboy but Helen seemed to have mellowed since Paddy got her promotion. Paddy sometimes dropped in for a chat when she was feeling beleaguered, a fellow female in the middle of a gang of nasty men. The rumors about Burns would be all over the newsroom by now and she wanted to linger in the safety of the library.
Helen dropped an envelope onto the counter and smiled at Paddy. “Here’s one set of Robert Lafferty clippings. We’ve got Neilson the musician but nothing for a Paul Neilson.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Not as much as a birth announcement. There’s so many clippings for the name Knox I’d need to let you in here to trawl through them yourself. Will I give you the first twenty sets?”
“Uch, no, Helen, I don’t have time this morning.”
“Yeah, I heard you’re going in front of the police inquiry into the Bearsden murder this afternoon.”
Paddy flinched. “Who told you that?”
“Shug Grant was in. He’s covering the inquiry.”
It was bad. Shug Grant already hated her for her Margaret Mary jibe and he was a loudmouthed bastard. He once slept with a sub ed’s wife after a party and came in the next day and told everyone. If he was reporting on the inquiry half of Scotland would know about the fifty quid before the first edition went to press.
The doors opened behind Paddy and a copyboy came in and stood next to her, his hands on the partition, looking around expectantly, but Helen ignored him.
“I heard,” she said quietly, “that the squad car took twenty-five minutes to get to the house. Someone’ll get their books.”
“I thought it was a closed committee?”
“It is, but Grant knows someone on it.”
Paddy smiled nervously and lifted the envelope. “Shug knows someone everywhere, doesn’t he?”
“Seems to.”
She hesitated on the stairs but climbed them slowly, making for the newsroom. She couldn’t dodge them forever or they’d know she was scared.
Slipping gingerly through the doors, she settled on the nearest seat, at the edge of the sports desk, and took the Lafferty clippings out of the envelope.
She was listening with half an ear to what was happening around her and sensed a murmur of something strange, a kind of hysterical edge to the atmosphere in the newsroom. Men were smiling fixed grins, looking busy, moving fast and typing, working unashamedly hard. At the epicenter of the oddness was a man she had never seen before, a dark, small, hairy man, simian, square-shouldered and no-necked, typing hard and looking pleased with himself, an awkward, angular smirk on his blue-shadowed face.
She nudged a fat sports boy sitting two seats away. “Who’s that?”
He glanced over, averting his eyes immediately. “JT’s replacement. From London. Famous hound, apparently. Going to make us all get our act together.” He dropped his voice. “Spy.”
“Did JT come back?”
He shook his head. “Not even having a drink out for him. He was told by phone. Don’t come in. Two subs got the bump yesterday and Kevin Hatcher as well. Fair enough. They’re keeping a book on how long it’ll take Kevin to drink himself to death.”
Paddy hadn’t seen Kevin sober since she started on the paper. He was the picture editor and miraculously managed to do an adequate job while so drunk he could hardly form consonants. The old soaks used Kevin as a measure to justify their own drinking: if they got as bad as him they’d stop, but no one ever was as bad as him.
She looked around the room at the fixed grins of fifty people moving around a room trying to look unaffiliated. When news of her fifty quid trickled back she’d be nothing more than a whisper under the breath too.
Sweating with nerves, she tried to still her mind by getting lost in her reading. Lafferty was a graduate of the Christian Brothers reform school, a brutal regime that created a common background for the most violent men in Glasgow. Bad boys from all over the region were sent there at twelve, their well-being and moral development left to monks who were not much more than spiteful, frustrated boys themselves. It was Lord of the Flies without table manners.
The cases against Lafferty tended to be assault charges for pub fights or extortion rackets. There was an unproven murder charge: a prostitute had been thrown off a multistory car park, according to one witness, because she wasn’t kicking back enough money. Lafferty was pictured outside the court, younger but no less wired than he had been when she saw him being questioned, pleased at the outcome, his tiny eyes making him look like an angry pig about to charge.
Paddy thought about the fifty-quid note Neilson had given her. Ramage would be perfectly justified in sacking her: he wouldn’t even need to pay her a severance package.
She looked up at the newsroom, at the men walking back and forth, delivering copy to their subs, typing hard on the heavy machines. Shug Grant was sitting at a desk, watching her from across the room, chewing gum with his mouth open. Fluorescent light glinted off his oily forehead. He raised his hand and pointed a long finger, jabbing the tip at her, and stood up, holding her eye as he walked across the newsroom toward her. “Just back from the inquiry. Typing up my notes.”
“Aye.” She affected unconcern. “Great.”
“You’re up today, yeah? Ye nervous?”
“Why would I be nervous?”
“Tam Gourlay was there this morning. Came over very badly. He contradicted you about the cars. Said they weren’t BMWs.” She hadn’t told anyone but the police about the cars. Shug was letting slip the unimportant details to let her know he was connected. It would suit the police case if she was discredited.
“So, you know someone on the inside?”
He pressed his lips together in a mock smile. If he had known about the money, he would have hinted at it. Sullivan had kept his word. The thought of being unceremoniously sacked was awful, but the idea that it might give Shug a good story stung even more.
“Who is it, Shug? It’s not Sullivan. The minutes secretary? Is it the woman taking notes?”
Targeting the secretarial staff was the obvious move. Journalists would find out where they drank or shopped or danced, mine their weaknesses and pump them for information. Shug smiled enigmatically.
She waggled a finger at him. “No, it can’t be the seccy. Your information’s very specific.” She picked her teeth in a way she hoped looked casual.
Perturbed, Shug frowned down at her. “How do you mean, ‘specific’?”