Slip of the Knife Read Online Free PDF Page B

Ref 2372/90,” reading from his notebook.
    Aoife listened, dismissed him with a blink, and looked at Paddy again, shedding all her awkwardness now she was in her professional role. “And is this someone close to you?”
    “Not really. A friend. He hadn’t anyone else.”
    “OK.” She nodded. “Well, I’ve been here for two days and haven’t had the time to dress anyone up. I don’t know what kind of state your friend is in but we can do this two ways: I can tidy him up but that’ll take time, or I can just bring you to him. How’s your constitution?”
    Paddy shrugged. It was shite, actually, but she wanted to get to the office and file the story before the final edition went to press. “Fair to middling.”
    Aoife smiled. “Beckett,” she said, catching the reference. “Right, come on now you with me and we’ll find your friend.”
    The police trailed after them as Aoife led Paddy through a small passageway to a big steel door. A gauge on the wall next to it showed the temperature. Paddy had looked at a body here before, a long time ago, as a favor to an old friend.
    “Don’t you use the drawers anymore?”
    “Bloody thing conked out ages ago. Heads need banging together in this place.” Using all her slight weight, Aoife yanked the big door open. A gust of frost and alcohol burst into the corridor. Brutal white strip lights flickered awake in the walk-in fridge, casting inky shadows under the sheeted trolley beds. Inside, the fridge was crowded. Aoife had to wiggle sideways between the beds to make her way to the back of the room.
    “What number did ye say?” Her voice echoed back to them.
    Blane looked at his notebook again and repeated it.
    She checked a couple of toe tags, muttering “Here we go” to herself when she found Terry. She looked back across the full fridge and sighed a white cloud. “Hell. We might need to empty the whole place to get him out.”
    There were fifteen, eighteen bodies in the place. It would take ten minutes to wheel all the beds out and then they couldn’t very well piss off and leave her with the bodies in the corridor.
    “Tell you what, I’ll come in,” said Paddy, bracing herself and stepping into the cold. She slid between the shrouded shapes, holding her hands high, trying not to touch anything.
    “Me too,” said Kilburnie. Family Liaison. Elbow holder. Empathy in uniform. She followed Paddy’s path through the trolleys, keeping close, until they were gathered on the other side of the bed from Aoife, exhaling smog over the cold white sheet.
    Paddy looked down. Terry was under there. A Terry-shaped piece of meat. Naked. Rotting. Suddenly, death wasn’t a long holiday. It was real.
    Aoife McGaffry sensed her tension. “Was he a relative of yours?”
    “No.” Paddy couldn’t stop her eyes from mapping the mountains and valleys of the sheet in front of her. “No, no. We’ve just known each other for a long time, that’s all.”
    It wasn’t all. They had known each other for nine years and she thought about him all the time he was away, wondered after him, imagined his absent opinion of her actions. Terry Hewitt had been her touchstone for nearly a decade. He was a marker of how she was doing, a spur to action, a call for decency. She wished he’d never come back to Glasgow.
    Aoife was talking. “. . . pull the sheet back slowly. You’re better just looking at him once the sheet’s away and not while it comes off. It’s easier to look then. And stand back a wee bit, there.”
    Dumbly, Paddy took a step away, her bum banging into the trolley behind her. She started, imagined a dead hand grabbing her arse.
    “Don’t get freaked out, just step back. It’s good to have more in your line of vision than just the deceased. Keeps perspective. If it gets too much, look up at me. Ready?”
    She had her hands on the top end of the sheet. Paddy stared hard at Aoife’s face and nodded.
    “Right, here we are now.”
    Against orders, Paddy watched as Aoife