She didn’t. “I meet a lot of people.”
“I know I can trust you.” The caller paused, wanting a reaction.
“Really?” She was still only half listening, balancing the receiver on her shoulder and flicking through the submissions, looking to see if there were any other travel pieces in case she needed to choose between the two.
“Do you want to know about Baby Brian?”
Heather dropped the travelogue and took the receiver in her hand. He must have heard she was the source of the syndicated piece. She covered her mouth with one hand to stop the sound carrying to the headbangers in the corner.
“Can you tell me something about that?”
“Not on the phone. Can you meet me?”
“You name the place and I’ll be there.”
The man explained that he was very nervous, and made her promise to come alone to the Pancake Place at one a.m. He asked her not to tell anyone where they were meeting and said she shouldn’t even write it down, in case she was followed without knowing it.
Heather tore the scribbled address off the corner of the foolscap sheet and dropped it in the bin. “I’ll see you tonight,” she said, and waited for him to confirm before she hung up.
The boys were watching her without looking; she could feel them. She left her things on the table and went out to the lobby to buy a gritty coffee from the machine. She dropped the coins in and looked out the window, over the rooftops of low buildings towards the city chambers, smiling to herself as the machine spluttered and whirred her coffee into the plastic cup. She would skip the Daily News and take her story straight to a national paper. With a good story about Baby Brian and the syndicated piece about the family on her CV she would be able to walk into any job she wanted after graduation. She could go straight to London.
III
Paddy hung around the newsroom and canteen, killing time until McVie came in. The night shift gradually filtered into the newsroom, replacing the manic fussiness of the day. The skeleton staff took up their positions at their desks, setting up for the night, laying out their magazines and books for reading, one guy on the features desk tuning in a small tranny to a Radio Four program about the silent age of cinema.
McVie saw her when he came in to check the board for messages. He nodded an acknowledgment but looked annoyed when she came over to speak to him.
“Not again,” he said. “I got in enough fucking trouble last time. That wee bastard phoned in and complained about us. I didn’t know you weren’t a journalist.”
“I’m a copyboy.”
“Well, just stay away from me,” he said.
“I just want to ask you something about Baby Brian.”
“Yeah.” He pointed at her nose accusingly. “And that’s another fucking thing. You’re related to that bastarding child and you never told me.”
Paddy raised a finger and did it back. “I didn’t know it then, did I, ye big arse.”
The use of a bad word seemed to placate McVie somehow, as though he suddenly, completely understood the degree of her vehemence.
“Okay,” he said. “Have you got anything ye can tell me about it?”
“Nut. I don’t know anything about him.”
“How can you not know anything about him? He’s a relative.”
“Are you close to your family?” It was a lucky guess. “D’you know what, though?” she added. “That guy JT, he tried to question me about it, and he wasn’t a patch on your technique.”
McVie nodded. “Yeah, but he’d swap his balls for a story. Gives him the edge. I heard he once went to collect the picture of a rape and murder victim from her mother. On his way out the door he told her that her daughter had been asking for it.” He nodded in sympathy with the shock on Paddy’s face. “That way the woman wouldn’t talk to anyone else from the press. Made it an exclusive. He’s an arsehole. What do you want anyway?”
“I wanted to ask you something about Baby Brian. What time did the boys catch the train to Steps?”
“They said it was between nine and half ten at night. Why?”
“Where were they from lunchtime until then?” She lowered her voice. “And JT said no one saw them on the train. I don’t think wee guys with nothing would catch a commuter train to Steps.”
McVie looked unconvinced. “They found their tickets on them.”
“But Barnhill’s full of waste ground and abandoned factories, and these are poor kids. Why would they spend money on a train? Could the police get it that wrong?”
It startled Paddy because she didn’t know what it was: the skin near his eyes and mouth folded over and a bizarre noise gargled up from his throat. McVie was laughing, but his face wasn’t used to it. “Can the police get it wrong?” he repeated, making the noise again. “Your name’s Paddy Meehan, for fucksake.”
“I know it happened then, but could it still happen now?”
McVie stopped doing the scary thing with his face and let it retract back to suicidal. “Most of them wouldn’t fit a kid up. Although…” His eyes dropped to the side and he looked skeptical. “Most of them wouldn’t. If they were convinced they’re really guilty but it’s hard to prove, they might plant evidence. They see a lot of villains walk; you can kind of understand it.”
A night editor came over to the table with a coffee and a cigarette, settling into a seat near them.
McVie leaned into her. “I know Paddy Meehan, by the way. He’s an arsehole.”
Paddy shrugged awkwardly. “Well, that’s something, coming from you. D’you know anything about a guy called Alfred Dempsie?”
“Nope.”
“He killed his son.”
“Good for him. I heard the morning boys chased Heather Allen because of what she did to you. Don’t mistake that for popularity.”
“I won’t.”
“They’d hunt you for sport just as easy.”
“Hunt me for sport? What are ye talking about? I’m going to report you to Father Richards for using creative language.”
McVie was trying not to smile, she could see it. He checked his watch. “Right, piss off, bint. I’ve got things to do before I go out.”
She stood up. “Well, thanks anyway, ya big swine.”
He watched her tug her pencil skirt down by the hem. “Get fatter every time I see ye.”
She couldn’t let him see she cared. “That’s right,” she said, dying inside. “I get fatter, and you get a day older in a job ye hate.”
IV
Paddy walked slowly down to Queen Street, aiming to get there after nine. It was a quiet Friday night in the black city; the heavy rain had lasted for most of the evening, and even now the air felt damp and threatening. Outside a hotel on George’s Square she passed a crowd of women in cheap dresses and wedge shoes, alert and frightened as a herd of deer; nearby, their drunk men shouted at one another. She tried not to look at them directly, and in her mind’s eye the women became a soup of fat arms in cap sleeves, of ringed fingers patting perms as sleek as swimming caps, and raw heels persevering in razor-edged shoes.
Queen Street station was a cavernous Victorian shed with a fanned glass roof spanning five platforms. Only the pub and the Wimpy bar remained open. Reading the railway timetable plastered to the wall, she saw that the trains left for Steps every half hour and it would have taken the boys seventeen minutes at most to get there. The ticket office was off to one side of the station, and Paddy noticed that the barriers were not guarded at night like they were in the rush hour. It would have been easy for the boys to sneak onto the train without paying.
The ticket office was empty and the man serving at the ticket window was reading a newspaper.
“Hello,” she said. “Can ye tell me how much a half return is to Steps?”
The man frowned at her. “You’re not a half.”
“I know. I don’t want to buy one, I just want to know how much it costs.”