Slip of the Knife Read Free Page B

peanut butter sandwiches before his dinner, snacked on entire packets of biscuits, and was still rake thin. Paddy felt the hefty roll of fat on her middle bulge as she sat down. It was just unfair.
    A slow knock echoed out from the deep hall. Paddy sighed as she stood up again. “Tell him to get lost,” Dub said.
    But it didn’t sound the same, didn’t sound like a journalist’s jaunty, faux-friendly beat. “I’ve told him to fuck off.” She brushed her hands clean on her pajama trousers. “I’m just after telling him that.”
    As she stepped back over the boxes the knock was still going, a rhythmic, steady tap on wood, slow and grave. Paddy’s heart jolted a warning.
    Her hand hesitated on the handle. It could be a lost drunk who’d wandered up the close, or a journalist from a serious paper looking for news of Callum Ogilvy’s release date. Or George Burns on a downer. Or Terry fucking Hewitt. God, not Terry, please.
    She slipped the safety chain on noisily, hoping it sounded more substantial than it was, and opened the door an inch.
    Two unfamiliar police officers, a man and a woman, stood shoulder to shoulder, wearing full uniform and looking grimly back at her.
    Paddy slammed the door shut in their faces.
    Alone in the hall, her knees buckled. She had shadowed the police often enough to know what a death knock looked like: two uniformed officers, stony faced, one of them a woman, turning up at an unexpected hour.
    When Paddy was on night shift she’d arrived at the door with them, faked sympathy along with them, never once thinking they would come to her. With them, she kept her face straight during the interview and sniggered at the jokes in the car afterwards, laughing at the clothes and the décor, at the family setup and undercurrents, dead wives found in a boyfriend’s bed, car crashes caused by drink, once a husband found dead in a ladies’ changing room at a department store, trying on girdles. They laughed, not because any of it was funny, but because it was sad.
    Someone close to her had died. They had died violently, or she would have been called by a hospital, and they had died alone, or a family member would have phoned her. It had to be Mary Ann.
    “Dub?” Her voice was high and wavering. “Could ye come out here a minute?”
    Dub took his time. When he appeared he stood in the doorway; he was still looking back at the TV. “What?”
    “Two police. Outside. I think something’s happened.”
    They looked anxiously at the door, trying to read an answer in the lumpy yellow paint.
    Dub came over, standing too close, even jumpier than she was. “Couldn’t be a noise complaint? A mistake? The journalist, the wee guy, was he noisy on the way out?”
    Paddy pressed her hand to her mouth.
    “It could be Mary Ann.”
    “Let them in then.” Dub reached over swiftly, slipped the chain off, and pulled the door wide.
    The male officer was a big shed of a man, fat and broad, blue shadow on both his chins, his chest still heaving from the effort of lumbering up the stairs. The woman was blond, hair scraped back so tight it looked as if it had been painted on. She was birdlike: a pointy nose, beady eyes, thin lips. Family Liaison. They always sent out a woman from Family to hold the person’s hand when they sobbed.
    The policewoman attempted a smile but it withered on her lips and she slipped Paddy’s eye. She hadn’t done many death knocks, hadn’t yet developed the cold skill of looking heartbreak in the face.
    “Hello.” The portly officer took charge. “I’m PC Blane and this is WPC Kilburnie. Are you Paddy Meehan?”
    They waited for an answer but Paddy was stiff with fright. She couldn’t seem to get the air to the bottom of her lungs.
    “I know it’s you actually.” He half smiled at Paddy. “I recognize your face from the newspapers.”
    Paddy did what she always did when a fan approached her. She bared her teeth politely and mumbled an irrelevant “thank you.”
    Dub moved in