“So you don’t want me to know about him?”
He was sitting forward now, his face just inches from hers. His eyes were quite brown, chocolate, the lashes long and thick, but they were open a fraction too wide, a threat in them. “What do you think of me?”
She looked back at Sean but he was examining the crumbling rubber seal around his window, flicking it with a finger. “Dunno.”
“I’m not interested in your son.” Callum leaned forward. “Wonder what I think of you?”
As if sensing an impending explosion, Sean snapped, “Sit back.”
At once Callum threw himself back in his seat, sliding into the corner behind him.
Sean turned around to face Callum. “You’re only out four hours and already you’re threatening people.”
“I never.”
“You did so.” He looked at Paddy, angry at her too but trying not to let it show. “Apologize.”
Callum cowered, eyes flickering from one to the other as he kneaded his hands on his lap. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Sorry.”
“I’m overprotective of my son,” she said, quietly. “Callum, I don’t know you, I don’t know what you’re like but you just got out of prison for hurting a boy-what would I think?”
“Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry.” She reached across to him, touching his knee with her fingertips.
Callum looked at Sean, found him looking away out of the window. He looked back at Paddy and moved his leg a fraction, towards her and away, towards her and away, so that her fingertips were brushing his knee. She whipped her hand back as he slid down the seat; if she hadn’t her hand would have been on his thigh. He was smiling.
Her mouth was open in shock but Sean was oblivious. Callum had checked that Sean wasn’t watching before he did it. He knew it was wrong.
“You creepy wee prick,” she shouted, throwing the door open and stepping out into the street.
“Oi, wait.” Sean leaned over to look at her. “What the hell happened there?”
“Ask your fucking cousin.”
She stormed off up the road, her feet warmed by the hot pavement, her face flushed with panic and disgust, desperate to get away, not quite believing that a nineteen-year-old murderer had just tried to get her to feel him up.
She turned to look back at the car and saw Sean pulling out slowly and joining the line of traffic heading down the Gallowgate to the river. God help Elaine, trying to sleep under the same roof as him. Paddy wouldn’t sit next to him on a bus.
II
She walked up through the busy Cross, ducking across the road at the lights, aware that her shoulders were aching from tension. She had to hand one thing to Callum: he was wise to refuse an interview. She hoped for his sake that when the first photo was taken of him, he wouldn’t know. She could only imagine how mad he’d look otherwise. It was worth it, taking the money from Burns. Humiliating, but worth it to move Pete away from Rutherglen, where Callum would be staying.
As she walked up the road she could see busy shadows at the window of the Press Bar and hear a rumble of noise coming from inside. The presses were still; a dry dust was rising from the car park opposite the News building.
Paddy took the stairs, feeling relieved to be back where the fights were familiar and playful, back among her pack. She thought more calmly about Callum. He was nineteen. How many women would he have met in his adult life? Two? Three? Still, the parole board shouldn’t have released him, even if they’d run out of legal justifications to keep him in.
Upstairs, a crowd, back from an early lunch and full of patter and drink, had gathered inside the newsroom doors. As she pushed through, they greeted her warmly; a sub-ed put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a couple of hearty squeezes.
News of Paddy coming in in the middle of the night to write the copy about Terry had got around and everyone was assuming she’d done it out of decency and fellow feeling. Even being greeted on the basis of a misunderstanding felt warm and welcome. She wanted to turn to someone and tell them that she’d just met the most famous criminal in Scotland, and he was a car crash waiting to happen. But she didn’t. She stood with them, smiling sadly as they talked about Terry, letting the sub-ed squeeze her shoulder again, drop his hand and try for the waist before she pulled away, saying she needed to get something out of her pigeonhole.
“I have that trouble all the time,” said someone and everybody laughed.
She turned to the guy nearest her, a short, bald veteran. “Who’s our Home Secretary?”
“Billy, over there.”
Billy Over-There had his coat on and was smoking a cigarette with such robotic precision he was almost certainly very, very drunk.
“Billy, who can I talk to about the IRA?”
Billy’s eyes weren’t focusing properly. He blinked at her several times before rolling his mouth around a name: “Brian Donaldson.”
“Short, dirty blond hair, specs?”
He shook his head. “Five eleven, brown crew cut, fat, no specs.”
“Where could I get hold of him?”
“Shammy’s.”
She hesitated. “Are you drawling ‘Sammy’s’ or saying ‘Shammy’s’?”
Billy Over-There took an elaborate draw on his cigarette as he considered the question. A finger of ash tumbled down the front of his coat. “The shecond one.”
Paddy left him to his smoke and returned to the group. “Is there a pub called Shammy’s?”
A sports-desk guy raised his arms triumphantly and shouted yes to jeers from everyone else. Shammy’s was short for the Shamrock, a Celtic pub over in the Gallowgate. Glasgow had three football teams: Catholic Celtic, Protestant Rangers and Partick Thistle, for supporters who eschewed sectarianism and liked their football tinged with disappointment and hardship.
Paddy found the number in the phone book and asked the barman for Brian Donaldson. He asked who was calling, as if that was any kind of a security check, and Paddy wondered at the wisdom of it as she told him the truth. If journalists were being targeted maybe she should have used a pseudonym. But it was too late. Donaldson came to the phone.
“Wha’?” His voice was smoky and warm.
“Ah, Mr. Donaldson, I wonder if you can help me. A man came to see me at my home last night. He said he spoke for your organization and wanted to tell me that Terry Hewitt’s death was nothing to do with you-”
“Neither it was.”
“He was quite threatening. Can you tell me if it’s deliberate policy to target members of the press?”
“It is not. I’m sorry if you were troubled. Who was it?”
“He said his name was Michael Collins.”
Donaldson laughed softly at the other end.
“I know,” she said, “daft, I know it’s not his name. He’s wee, fair hair, wore steel-rimmed glasses and a blue jumper.”
“Right? OK, right.” She could tell by his voice that he knew who she was talking about. “I’ll, ah, ask around and see what I can do. Sorry, Miss Meehan, if you got a fright or wha’.”
He hung up.
Paddy made her way over to the pigeonholes.
The stack of wooden shelves was divided up into small squares, each with a name underneath. Those who had been at the paper since the sixties had their names picked out in italic calligraphy, while those who had joined in the seventies had a sticker with their name printed on it. Recent recruits had blue tickertape with their name
