The dead hour

Paddy Meehan, Glasgow's youngest aspiring journalist, cruises the dark city on a perpetual night shift, chasing police calls for a story to promote her out of a twilight existence that makes Mars bars and coffee a medical necessity. With her father and brothers unemployed, and her upright Roman Catholic family perilously short of money, she needs the work.

The domestic dispute at a house in a wealthy suburb seems like nothing unusual - at first. The blonde in the shadows bleeding from a head injury doesn't want any help; and the well-dressed man at the front door tells Paddy everything's fine, and that she should leave.

And then he slips her a crisp [pound]50 note to keep the story out of the paper.

By the next morning the woman is dead; she's been tortured first, beaten, and left to die. The untraceable man was neither her boyfriend nor her husband, and Paddy can't understand why the woman passed up the chance to walk through the door and live.

Paddy's found the story she's dreamed about, but she'll lose all credibility if word gets out about her bribe. The police who attended the call are twisting the evidence for reasons of their own. Only Paddy cares enough to pursue a dark and brutal truth that could make her career - or kill her.