Free The Dead Hour by Denise Mina Page A

standing there giving it ho-ho,” he said, and the others chuckled.
    Paddy had seen the guy before. Every time she met him he seemed to be giving a command performance to a group, usually telling a long story that involved a woman taking her top off. He was funny; she’d laughed at a couple of his stories before and she’d meant to tell him about Dub and the comedy club.
    She felt she should announce her arrival. “What’s the story here, then?”
    “Ah, some guy dead in the water,” said the joker.
    Paddy looked around at the empty street and heavy fog.
    “How did anyone know?”
    “A couple coming from a nightclub stopped at a phone box. They saw him splashing about.” He nodded over. “Saw him from the bridge.”
    “Take it to the bridge,” called a stocky policeman, trying to mimic James Brown and failing. There was a small bleak pause.
    “Aye, right enough,” said the funny one, smiling but not laughing.
    The boatman had pinned the bobbing body to the bank and shouted up to them to come and get it out of the water.
    “Ah, Christ,” said the joker, “we’ll be stinking of the fucking river for the rest of the shift.”
    The river was swollen by the heavy rains and the steep cliff was only three feet deep. As they edged gingerly down to the water’s edge Paddy stepped to the side to get a better view. She had never seen a drowning victim before. They were usually found during the day when her shift was finished. Teenagers and disoriented people favored the river—jumping from a bridge was an impulsive act—but this body looked too big to be a young person. The black balloon bumped between the boat’s side and the riverbank.
    The joker and the not-funny one grabbed the wet material with both hands, lifting on a count of three. They rose for a moment and then fell back as the weight of the body came out of the water. One more surge of effort and they pulled him onto the muddy bank.
    The body rolled over onto its back and everyone recoiled at the sight. It was a man in his thirties, clean shaven, eyes open, the bridge of his nose swollen from a blunt hit. His cheek had burst, flesh blooming outward like a meaty flower. The rip was so deep that Paddy could see flashes of his white jawbone. His ear was slack, hanging too low toward the back of his head. It turned her stomach and she was repelled, but found her eyes drawn to it, racing across the mess, doing a mental jigsaw, trying to make sense of it.
    “What do you think?” The joker stood back and looked at him. “Someone put him in there or a suicide?”
    The policemen closed in around the body.
    A stocky policeman who hadn’t spoken yet bent over the body and flicked at the messy tear with the blunt end of a biro, dropping the flap of skin back to where it should have been. The ear twisted like a doorknob coming back to true.
    “Yeah, something in the river got stuck in his face and ripped it open. The nose looks like a straight punch. I’m guessing suicide.”
    Paddy didn’t want to give away her fright so she focused on his eyes. They were open, staring blankly, black speckles of mud filigreed over from the drag up the cliff face. His skin was a terrible vibrant white and, when her eyes strayed back to the cheek again, the face resolved itself and she could make out the messy tear, now just a puffy black crease across the cheek. His nose was swollen between his eyes, the bulbous skin split in a thin crack. He’d lost a loafer and a wet silk sock perfectly outlined his toes. A sharp big toenail was slicing against the material.
    “That’s enough,” said the stocky policeman, stepping back. “I’ll phone it in as a possible murder, just in case.” He pulled away from the crowd and made his way back to the car and the radio.
    Paddy kept looking, memorizing the details for the piece in the paper. The man was in his thirties, a bit pudgy and self-conscious about it: she knew the tricks. He wore a vertically striped shirt under a long