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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.
    III
    The Daily News office wasn’t far from the mortuary. A committed journalist would have run the three blocks to file her exclusive. Whatever the truth of it, Terry’s assassination would make a great, fat, scaremongering story. The press would embrace it because it suggested they were involved in a noble, life-threatening venture, and the Scottish public would follow it to find out if they were really about to be plunged into a war. She could break the story as an anonymous news item, then quash the rumor furiously in her column on Wednesday and still turn out to be right.
    But instead of hurrying to the office, Paddy drove numbly around, taking corners that led her away from the office, slowly circling the city center and heading down