“Well, that’s your responsibility, surely?”
“It’s a tiny amount of stuff. Rubbish. You could bin it.”
Paddy had the impression that he’d had a first scan of the belongings and thought it was all worthless. But he wouldn’t know, and whatever it was, it was stuff Merki wasn’t being offered.
She thought of sitting in the house tonight with Pete playing in his bedroom, listening always for Michael Collins’s soft knock at the door. “OK,” she said. “Where is it?”
“Partick.” He opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a set of keys on a round of dirty string with a paper tag. “ Forty Lawrence Street. Here are the keys.”
Paddy snatched them from his hand. “This is your job, Fitzpatrick. I know it is. Don’t think I don’t know.”
ELEVEN. TERRY’S EFFECTS
The gardens set the street apart. Old trees flourished in the small front gardens, high as the blocks themselves, roots escaping the gardens and bursting up through the pavements like fingers through warm butter. Some of the front gardens were chaotically overgrown, one was graveled, but the one in front of Terry’s close door was a picture book of giant flowers, bushes heavy with vibrant red and blue and yellow. A sun-bleached deck chair sat under a gnarled old tree, a book lying facedown by its side. The gardens were fenced in with functional black railings, replacements for the wrought-iron rails melted down as part of the war effort.
Pete looked out of the car window at the deck chair. “Why do we need to come here?”
“I need to sort through a friend’s things,” said Paddy, reluctant to get out of the car. She was afraid of what she might find in Terry’s flat, afraid he might have photos of her, have written her one last desperate lovelorn missive and not had time to post it.
“Why?”
Dub raised an eyebrow at her from the passenger seat.
“Just promised I would, that’s all.”
Pete looked out of the window again. “Has the friend gone away?”
“Yeah.”
Whatever questions Terry’s flat threw up, they couldn’t be more complicated than the ones in the car. Paddy opened the door and stepped out into the warm street. The high summer sun lifted the soft smell of cut grass and blossom into the air. Beyond the block, cars hurried by on the busy road, but Lawrence Street was sleepy, the warm air trapped in the shallow valley of flats.
Terry’s flat was in a classically proportioned, pedimented block of low blond sandstone. Golden summer sun picked out the dirt on the windows and the shabbiness of the cheap curtains. One of the windows on the second floor had a big dangerous crack across a pane, mended on the inside with masking tape.
The car door next to Paddy opened but she stopped it with a firm hand. “What have I told ye? Always get out on the pavement side.”
Pete mumbled an apology and bumped his bottom along the seat to the other door.
Dub was standing next to her. “Do you get to keep all this stuff?”
“I don’t really know. I think so. I get to keep it until the will’s overturned anyway.”
“Might be worth a few quid. Might be jewelry.”
“Yeah, Terry was always mad for his big gold chains, wasn’t he?”
“Well,” said Dub, reluctant to be wrong, “I saw him wearing a ruby tiara and matching sandshoes once.”
“Oh, yeah.” She smiled away from him. “I remember them. High heels?”
“High heels and a sketch of the Last Supper picked out on the toe. Judas was cross-eyed.”
“A lovely shoe.”
“Two lovely shoes.” Dub nudged her supportively. She turned to look at him and found him smiling at his feet. He was a full foot taller than her, handsome in an odd way. They had been friends for years, since before she ever spoke to Terry Hewitt, and sometimes, like today, she felt so fond of him she wanted to grab him and kiss him. She looked away. “Right, let’s do this.”
Pete waited dutifully on the pavement until Paddy walked over and took his hand, leading him along the street and up the path between the two sets of railings to Terry’s front door. She fitted the key and let them into the close.
It was dark and smelled of damp chalk. A marble-patterned rubberized floor was stained with greasy puddles. As they climbed the wide circular stairs to the top floor, Paddy trailed her hand along the curved oak handrail. Cobwebs hung between the cast-iron banisters.
The front door to the flat was unpainted plywood with a single lock, the tang of newly seasoned wood still hanging off it. On the door frame, peeling Sellotape bordered a list of six names written in biro block capitals. The doormat was filthy. They could hear the squawk of a television inside.
Dub curled his lip. “It’s a bedsit. Why was he still living in bedsits?”
Paddy shrugged and put her arm around Pete’s shoulders. “He always did. I don’t know why. The lawyer said he had a house. Should we knock or just go in?”
Dub shrugged. “Knock, probably.”
“I’ll knock,” said Pete and gave the door a loud, rude thump with the base of his fist.
“Pete! You don’t knock on a door like that-”
Steps preceded the flinging open of the door. A man in a stripy T-shirt opened the door, wiping floured hands on a tea towel tucked into the waistband of his trousers. He looked expectantly at them.
“Sorry about the banging.” Paddy nodded at Pete. “A bit eager.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Um, well, you know about Terry? I’m here to get his things.”
The man wasn’t really listening though; he was smiling at Dub’s trousers. They were made out of ticking, blue and green with a white stripe, like the covering on an old-fashioned mattress.
“I recognize those kegs. You’re Dub McKenzie. I used to see you compering at Blackfriars Comedy Club all the time.”
“Right? Do I know you?”
“Nah.” The man shook his head. “Nah, nah, nah, just a punter. I heard you were managing George Burns.”
“Was, yeah.”
“Did you fall out and tell him to do the Variety Show?”
Dub smirked. “I told him not to do it and then he sacked me.”
“God, it’s shit.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
They grinned at each other for a moment until Pete’s patience ran out and he pushed at the door.
“Pete, don’t,” said Paddy, wishing she could open her mouth without giving him into trouble.
“Ah, come in, wee man.”
The guy opened the door and let Pete in. Seven doors led off the hallway, all of them shut tight apart from the kitchen, which was straight ahead. A red tartan carpet had been laid over a number of other fitted carpets and stood two inches off the ground. A ripped paper shade hung from a flaking ceiling. The warm smell of bacon floated out to greet them.
“Bacon sarnie?” asked Dub.
“Just, eh”-the guy looked embarrassed-“knocking up a quiche.”
“Can ye do that? I thought they were sterile.”
The guy mouthed a drumroll/cymbal clash and the two men smiled.
“Which room’s Terry’s?”
He pointed to the door next to the kitchen. It was sealed with a padlock small enough to fit on a suitcase. The key to it was on the string Fitzpatrick had given her, flimsy as paper. She fitted it in the lock and opened the door into a large room.
