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time Trisha wouldn’t have anything to offer.
    She was gibbering about last week’s newspaper awards and JT’s prize, when the news came on. The Bearsden murder was the first item. The police had attended a call at the house earlier in the evening. An inquiry was being called to investigate why the officers left Vhari Burnett in the house. Trisha was right: Vhari was from an aristocratic family; the villa had recently been left to her by a grandfather and she had only just moved in. She was an active member of Amnesty International and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
    “There,” said Trisha, “you should go and ask about her, get a story. Then they wouldn’t be able to keep you back.”
    In a paranoid morning of exaggerated despair, Paddy had confided in her mother her conviction that the editors hated her and wouldn’t print any story she phoned in anyway so it was all pointless. It was really just the tiredness talking but Trisha took it literally. Paddy suspected that Trisha had told some of her lady friends about it: she often asked about the conspiracy and suggested reporting them to the union. Paddy didn’t know how to take back the allegation without making herself look foolish.
    “It’s political.” Trisha pointed at the radio. “You wait and see. She knew something important and they killed her. You should question the folk she was in the CND with.”
    “CND don’t meet that often. Amnesty do but everyone else’ll think of it first. They’ll be out this morning.”
    “Well, go earlier then. Go today. Go just now.”
    “I need to sleep, mum.”
    “Fine.” Trisha stood up and began to wash her mug without pouring the last bit of tea out.
    Con smiled quietly into his mug. Paddy knew she was cheating her mother of a triumph. She finished her tea quickly and sloped upstairs to sleep.

FOUR
CLOSING CREDITS

I
    It was like watching the closing credits to an action movie. Every time Paddy came in to work on the night shift she had the feeling that everyone exciting and interesting was floating out of the door. At every desk people were gathering their coats and cigarette packets, turning off lights, looking relieved and happy that it was home time.
    An air of damp disappointment clung to the night shift workers. It was so all-pervasive they didn’t even really want to associate with each other.
    Paddy kept her flattering coat on as she walked across the floor to the blacked-out office door. The long copyboy bench seemed very low to her now. When she first started at the paper she used to take her place on the bench and run her thumbnail along the grain of the wood, gouging little channels into the soft pulp, and imagine herself seeing the marks in the future, when she had reached the heights of a junior reporter, and remembering her former self. Seeing the marks never gave her the buzz she had expected. They made her feel disappointed and despise her naïveté in hindsight.
    Behind the bench a glass cubicle had black venetian blinds covering the windows and door, the plastic turning gray from a decade of being wiped with abrasive solutions, looking as if gray mold was creeping over it at the edges.
    The paper’s editor, Farquarson, had big hair. His pomade had worn off during a long day of head holding and his hair had risen like warm white dough. The skin below his eyes was very blue. He had his coat on and was pulling his office door shut just as she caught up with him.
    “Boss, can I talk to you?”
    “Not again, Meehan.”
    “It’s important. And personal.”
    Reading her face and seeing that she wouldn’t shut up and piss off, he opened the office door again and flicked on the light, dropping his briefcase and holding out his hand to invite her in.
    The messy office charted a long day shift, from the cups abandoned during morning and afternoon editorial meetings to page plans scattered all over the floor. The filing cabinet next to the door had an open bottom drawer and Paddy could see