"Slip of the Knife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mina Denise)

II

The light above her was so harsh that Paddy threw her arm over her face and rolled onto her side to get away from it. Aoife was talking a mile away. “She’s fine. No worries. Yez can go about your business now.”

Paddy heard Blane say something. Or was it Kilburnie? Aoife replied and a door clicked shut somewhere.

Keeping her hands over her face, Paddy sat up. She was on a low bed, a leather daybed, covered in a long strip of paper like a gynecologist’s examination couch. She had passed out right in front of policemen while she was wearing a dress. Blane and Kilburnie would have a story to tell now: Burns on the telly, purple hall, and herself on the floor, legs splayed, washday-gray knickers on full show. She cursed to herself and swung her legs over the side of the bed, forcing her eyes open.

They must have carried her in here. It was a small office, cut off from the rest of the mortuary by wood and glass partitions. Gray box files and papers were stacked on every surface. The cheap particleboard desk had a big white computer sitting on it, the screen blinking a green prompt.

Aoife was watching her from a swivel chair, smoking a cigarette she didn’t look old enough to buy.

“Oh, sorry, I’m sorry,” Paddy apologized over and over, trying to think of something else to say. “I’ll go, I’m sorry.” She stood up uncertainly and looked around. “Where’s my coat?”

“Ye haven’t a coat.”

“Haven’t I?”

“Are ye pregnant or anything?”

Paddy stroked the round of her stomach defensively.

“I didn’t mean… Ye don’t look it or anything.” Aoife waved her cigarette up and down Paddy’s body. “Just in case there’s something more than shock going on. I’m a doctor, I’m supposed to ask stuff like that.”

Paddy remembered the harrowing moments before she fainted. She covered her face with her hands and groaned Terry’s name.

“Your friend,” said Aoife simply.

Paddy looked up. “Friend.” The word seemed infinitely tender. She felt like crying. “Who’d shoot him in the head? He was a good guy.” She remembered the hotel room in Fort William. “Good-ish. A good enough guy.”

Aoife considered her cigarette. “While you were out of it the police said he’d been shot by the Provos.”

“Terry was nothing to do with the Troubles. He wasn’t even interested in that.”

Aoife snorted bitterly and crossed her legs. “Doesn’t take much to cross them bastards. I trained in Belfast. Seen some right messes. Most of them’re just thugs with a political justification. Both sides. Wankers.”

She sounded like the child she resembled: small, scatological, odd. Her ponytail had come undone at the side, probably from yanking Paddy’s body off the floor. Her hair was so wiry each strand looked thick and coarse as a horse’s tail.

“By God, ye’ve some head of hair on ye,” said Paddy, letting her Irish phrasing show now they were alone.

Aoife looked at her, sternly at first. Her face broke into a laugh. Paddy laughed along with her.

Aoife pointed to the door. “Hey, that fat fella says you’re a famous person.”

“Aye.” Paddy rubbed her face roughly. “Couldn’t tell ye which one at the minute.”

“Maybe you’re Sean Connery.”

“That’d be a turn-up, wouldn’t it?” Paddy smiled. “And me a mother.”

They laughed together again, softly this time. Aoife pointed at her with the tip of her cigarette. “I’ll tell ye this: the Provos never done for your pal.”

“How do you know?”

“Not how they do it. They shoot through the mouth or the back of the head, usually behind the ear, not through the temple. Doing that ye might just shoot someone’s eyes off and leave them alive to make a statement.”

“Why do they think it was the Provos then?”

“I suppose assassination by a single shot is pretty rare outside Northern Ireland.”

One of Aoife’s lids gave a telltale twitch. She’d given herself away as a Protestant. A Catholic would call the province “the North of Ireland.” And she’d know where Paddy’s own sympathies lay because of her name.

Paddy leaned over and touched her knee. “Hey, I don’t care what you call it.” Aoife smiled weakly. “You’ve a strange name though, for an orange bastard.”

“Aye. Intermarriage. My da chose the name. I think he did it to upset her-they weren’t getting on by then anyway.”

“Quick turnaround?”

“Aye, but they stayed together for the sake of the wee one, bless ’em.” She smiled sarcastically.

“I’m sorry.”

“Aye, well.” Aoife took a deep draw on her cigarette. “D’you and your husband get on?”

“I’m not married.” Paddy stood up and straightened her skirt.

Aoife blinked. “But ye were married?”

Paddy shook her head and looked for her bag. She’d already said she had a child; there was no going back.

When men realized she was a single mother they could be sympathetic, or assume she was a desperate slapper and take it as an invitation to chance their arm. Only women were pitying. Paddy was afraid to look at Aoife. She liked her but knew her background, understood the press of convention in an Irish household and how single mothers were talked about.

“How old’s your baby?” Aoife’s tiny face was a mask of calm but her mouth curled up at one side.

“Five. He’ll be six in a few months.” Paddy picked up her handbag from the floor and made for the door. “He’s called Pete.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Aoife, trying to make up for her disapproving twitch. “That’s a lovely name.”

“Named after an old friend,” said Paddy, letting herself out and shutting the door behind her.