She opened the door to the Press Bar. A wall of mildly manic cheerfulness met them. Farquarson was drinking in the middle of the room, surrounded by concentric circles of jolly men, all raising glasses and making loud, happy noise, their eyes sad and frightened.

Paddy felt the emotion catch in her throat. A great man had fallen and no amount of chirpiness would make it anything but another fucking economic tragedy. She pushed Reg in front of her. Farquarson looked to the door and saw her there, his face a little lost, unsure.

Paddy grinned a big cheerful lie for him and he returned the kindness. She pushed through the crowd.

“Boss,” she said, slapping his arm as hard as she could. “Did they sack ye ’cause you asked for my move?”

He nodded. “Aye, so you owe me a drink.”

She hit him again and pushed her way to the bar, concentrating so hard at getting through the crowd of men that she washed up between Father Richards and Half-Assed Willie, a notoriously pedantic editor who was having the arse bored off him by Richards ranting about Tony Benn’s leadership bid in a hustings-steps haranguing bawl. Half-Assed sipped his beer, increasingly desperate for a break from Richards’s tub-thumping. True socialism, the great promise of the Benn candidature, a return to nationalization and full employment.

Paddy stepped back to see if she could skirt around one or both of them but found herself penned in. Richards was the head of the union but was rarely in the office anymore. He spent most of his time off on union junkets, planning a new socialist republic. People were hungry and disgusted at the callous government of grasping capitalists. Revolution was inevitable now.

Half-Assed, usually a mild man, snapped quite suddenly, reaching across Paddy and punching Richards in the face. She jumped back as the two men tumbled off their bar seats to the sticky floor, pulling at each other, a jumble of flailing hands and legs. The crowd gathered around, delighted at the drama.

As Richards rolled past him on the floor Farquarson aimed a toe tap at his back and started a game so that soon everyone was kicking Richards, some joking, some vicious. Paddy watched Farquarson and saw that he was happy his party was going so well, pleased that it had that essential, slightly brutal tone that the newsroom had. It was more than fitting.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to find McVie’s miserable face behind her. They nodded to each other. He had a clean starched shirt on.

“You never came to see me at my new flat,” he said.

Paddy wasn’t sure she wanted to be alone with McVie but he’d given her the address and been quite insistent.

All pretense of playfulness had gone from the kicking game. Richards was getting quite badly hurt. He shouted at them to stop it and tried to sit up to defend himself, but Half-Assed was enjoying the fight and pulled him back down again, eliciting a cheer from the audience.

Farquarson looked over at Paddy, a big jolly grin on his face, and nodded her toward the door. She thumbed back to the bar, that she hadn’t bought him a drink yet. He held up a whisky in each hand and nodded her away again, still her editor, knowing that Billy would be waiting for her by the car.

It was only because she knew she would probably never see him again, but Paddy did something very out of character: she covered her mouth with her hand and blew him a kiss. Farquarson did something very out of character too: he accepted it graciously, as a friend would, with a slow blink and a big grin.

Paddy made her way to the door and looked back at the circle closing around the fight. Farquarson’s hair rose above the line of men like a puff of smoke from an encampment. She smiled sadly and pushed the door open, stepping out into the bitter cold.

Billy had worked under Farquarson for four years and was expressing his indignation through the art of bad driving. He veered the calls car around roundabouts, speeding toward yellow lights, letting the world know he wasn’t happy. A thick smog of radio hung between them in the car, making consolation impossible. She didn’t really want to talk or rehash the injustice. She had enough worries of her own.

They were sliding through the wet town, the deserted streets washed clear of litter and dust. It had been raining in the city for two weeks now. Paddy liked the rain, the privacy of everyone walking with their heads down and the wild wind skirling in back streets and alleys.

Thillingly wasn’t the man she had seen at Burnett’s door but she wondered if he could have been the man in the second car. She imagined him, wet and chalk faced, sitting in Vhari Burnett’s brightly lit living room staring at her malevolently, his limp fingers dripping foul river water, rising up to touch the raw ripped flesh on his cheek. It didn’t feel right. She might have been prejudiced in Thillingly’s favor because he was fat, but viciously torturing an ex-fiancée didn’t seem in keeping with his chairmanship of Amnesty.

Billy pulled the car to a stop at a set of lights and the radio noise dipped, blocked off by the valley of high office buildings.

“Billy, how did your boy get on in his tryout for the Jags?”

Billy nodded sadly. “Wee bastard passed an’ all. He’s joining the junior team.”

“Isn’t that good?”

He looked at her, sadder than before. “I’m a Gers fan. I saw ye take money off that man.” He slipped the comment in at the end, blindsiding her. “Have ye done that before?”

“I didn’t really take it. He pushed it into my hand and shut the door.”

The lights changed and Billy pulled away, swaying his head sideways, only half-believing her. They passed through a valley spot and the disabled radio blurted sharp cracks and waves of noise into the cab. Paddy sat forward and touched his shoulder, making him flinch.

“I handed it in to the police this morning. I could just have kept it.”

He nodded heavily, avoiding her eye, checking the mirror. She was going to spend as much time as possible out of the car tonight.

The Marine looked warm and inviting as they pulled up outside. Yellow light from the windows cut through the rain needling puddles in the street. Paddy had the door open before Billy pulled on the hand brake.

Her boots were squelching by the time she reached the door of the police station. The suede was developing a salt rim because she kept getting them wet. As she brushed the rain from her hair she saw McCloud at the desk again. The waiting room was empty. The warmth from the radiators had had a chance to build up without the door being opened over and over again and it was cozy inside.

Two officers came through the door from the back offices, one slapping McCloud on the shoulder as he passed him, calling him “Cloudy, ye old shite” and making him laugh. Still tittering, he spotted Paddy and called to her as he flipped open the incident book. She was heading for the space on the floor below his desk but he gestured to her to come up the side stairs so that she could see the book entries for herself. It was a mark of respect. She jogged up the steps, her footsteps cracking loudly on the wooden stairs.

McCloud was talking her through all the gimcrack calls of the night, shavings from other people’s lives, when the door behind them opened and out of the door came Sullivan, still in his shirtsleeves, clearly not expecting to get home for a while anyway. He was surprised to see Paddy and pointed at her significantly.

“You,” he said, as if she had just been in his mind.

Together, McCloud and Paddy gawped at him for a moment.

“And you,” replied McCloud on her behalf.

A sharp crack from the wooden floor made all three of them start. Newly awakened, Sullivan waved her into the white wooden corridor behind him.