The Dead Hour by Denise Mina Page B

come in. It’s about the thing in Bearsden.”
    Murdo gave her a look, as if the home team were under attack, and stood up, opening the door into a corridor behind the desk. He leaned through, leaving his feet in the waiting room, and called to someone that she was here about the Bearsden Bird. The name sounded like a character from a children’s TV show. Paddy had noticed an inverse relationship between the silliness of names and the brutality of the cases. “The Razor Attacks” was a spate of knife fights between drunks in pubs which usually resulted in cuts to hands and fingers. “The Bunhouse Guy” was a vicious rapist who operated in or around the waste ground on Bunhouse Lane and bit his victims until they bled.
    Murdo came back to the desk and smiled at her, thumbing over his shoulder. “In you go, Sullivan’s waiting on you.”
    Paddy took the steep steps up at the side of the desk, feeling as if she was climbing onto a stage, and opened the door behind Murdo.
    Behind the partition wall was a rickety wooden corridor running parallel to the desk. The wooden walls had been painted white, giving a nautical impression. The floor was painted black, peeling and chipped so that the splinters of bare wood were visible below. There were three windowed doors in the facing wall. She guessed which one Murdo could have leaned into without leaving reception and, pushing it open, she peered into a small office.
    Down three steps, the small, gray office had a large window looking straight out onto a wet brick wall. At a desk in front of the window sat two men in loosened ties and shirtsleeves, smoking and staring perplexed at a form. They looked up when she came in.
    “I’m Paddy Meehan.”
    “Ah.” The younger man stood up, smearing his short brown hair back with the flat of his hand. He had blotchy skin and a square face with hands and body to match. His partner was tall, white haired with sun-leathered brown skin. He had been slender once, before middle age. His frame was slim but odd pockets of fat sat on his chin, his belly, and the tops of his legs. He still moved like a young man, leading with his hips as he stood up to greet her.
    “Here, sit down.” The younger man pointed at a chair on the other side of the table and the older man tipped his chair back, leaving the group, giving his colleague room to do the questioning.
    Paddy sat down and shed her coat carefully over the back support. “Paddy Meehan.” She leaned across the table to shake hands, to make them introduce themselves and look her in the eye. It was a trick she had learned from long experience. No one would look her in the eye unless she made them: she was short and looked younger than her twenty-one years. She reached toward the older man first, making him right his chair.
    “Gordon Sullivan,” he said, letting his eyes disengage from hers as soon as he could.
    The geometric younger man held her gaze for longer. “Andy Reid.”
    “Pleased to meet you. I’m from the Daily News.”
    Gordon Sullivan wasn’t letting her tip the balance of power in her favor. “We know where you’re from.” He suppressed a smile. “We told you to come in.”
    Paddy suppressed a smile back. “Just introducing myself, being polite. Having manners. You remember manners?”
    He tilted his head. “That was a sixties thing, wasn’t it?”
    “’S that the last time you were civil?”
    Reid watched Sullivan and Paddy playing, inexperienced and sensing, but not quite understanding, what was going on.
    “Well, then.” Sullivan took over the questioning and Paddy liked to think it was because he was going to enjoy it. “Miss Meehan. It is ‘Miss,’ is it?”
    “No,” said Paddy. His eye flickered to her ring finger. “It’s ‘Ms.’”
    Sullivan laughed in her face. “‘Ms.’?”
    “Yeah. Are you married, Mr. Sullivan?”
    Sullivan had a paunch and an ill-defined chin but his white hair was thick and carefully quaffed into a late Elvis bouff. He’d