by Denise Mina
A black-haired policeman in a short-sleeved shirt stepped forward from the back wall. The police had been watching Reception, waiting for her to check in, and now they were coming to arrest her for what she had done. Sweet relief washed over her. It was finished. She could tell someone what had happened, every detail, and hope for absolution. ‘Maureen O’Donnell,’ he said, pulling out a clipboard and ticking off her name. ‘If you’d just like to come with me.’ Maureen smiled a consolation to Leslie, who looked worried, and followed the officer through a wood-panelled room off Reception and to the door of a waiting room. ‘We need you to stay here,’ he said, ‘and give us notice if you have to go to the toilet or anything.’
It seemed like pretty lax security for a murder suspect but Maureen wasn’t going anywhere. The police officer read the ‘porn star’ motif on her T-shirt and looked alarmed.
‘Not really,’ Maureen reassured him, smiling weakly.
He ushered her in and shut the door behind her. It was a small room. Cushioned metal seats were pushed up against the walls and sunshine poured in through a small, high window. He was in shadow at the far end of the room, his skinny ass taking up half of a chair, wearing a wide-necked T-shirt that slid off a shoulder, showing enough skin to be obscene on a woman.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ said Maureen, and Paulsa winced.
‘Same as you,’ he said, moving his mouth too much for the words, as if his lips were numb.
Maureen sat down heavily next to him, wondering why he had been arrested. ‘What have you done?’
Paulsa laughed, high and fast, like a, chimp in distress, and shot to his feet, moving across the room towards the door just as it opened again. The uniformed man stood aside to reveal Shirley, the blonde receptionist from the Rainbow Clinic, clutching a tiny handbag in front of her like a shield. When she saw Maureen, dismay shimmered across her face. The officer stood aside, holding the door open over her head, ushering Shirley into the room. She smiled a polite thank-you, ducked under his arm and sat down on one of the chairs. Maureen hadn’t been arrested after all. She was there as a defence witness in Angus’s trial and so were Paulsa and Shirley.
Paulsa and Maureen watched Shirley take a small crossword book out of her handbag, a pencil and a roll of mints. She opened the book, pressed the pages apart and began to consider an important clue.
Shirley had been friendly when Maureen went to the Rainbow Clinic. They chatted during her visits there and when Maureen went back after Douglas died Shirley had talked to her about it. Something had happened in the interim. Something had happened that made Shirley now think that Maureen was frightening and disgusting. Paulsa, assuming he was spotting an ally in Shirley, went to sit three seats down from her. Too polite to get up and move, Shirley glanced distastefully at Paulsa’s dirty tennis shoes and shifted the angle of her crossed legs away from him in a small, symbolic rejection.
Maureen’s knees felt watery. She sat down, watching the door, and hoped the nausea would pass. Shirley would tell the jury that Maureen had been back to the clinic after Douglas died, asking questions about him, that she’d gone to see Angus. Paulsa would tell them that Maureen got the acid from Liam. Of all the people gathered in the witnesses’ waiting room one thing was abundantly clear: Maureen was the bad guy and everyone knew it.
Nothing happened all morning. No one came to get them. They were allowed to go to the loo, as long as they told someone where they were off to. There were no-smoking signs all over the building but the toilet smelt of stale cigarettes and Maureen waved her lit fags around to disseminate the smoke in case there were hidden alarms.
All morning they sat, trying to find a place for their gaze that wasn’t someone else’s face, chest or groin. The room got smaller as the hours ticked by and Paulsa became increasingly agitated. He kept going to the loo and coming back, sitting down heavily and flicking the heel of a tennis shoe on and off. Shirley finished her crossword and moved on to another one.
Maureen felt sick with exhaustion. Tiny air bubbles made their way up her throat, popping in her mouth. The heat and sunlight in the room created optimum sleeping conditions and suddenly she stopped believing in last night or Michael or even the existence of Gartnavel. She was in the Hermitage wearing a warm fur coat, sitting in front of Matisse’s Arab Coffeehouse, watching the goldfish turn and swirl. Bright colours fanned from their tails, falling through the frame to the floor and ceiling like sparks from a catherine wheel. Every drop of colour sanctified what it touched. She was smiling, smelling sweet cardamom and watching the world being cleansed with colour, when she turned her head and saw a flash. Mark Doyle was next to her, the pointed black tip of his tongue emerged from between red lips, turning into a roaring black cyclone, rushing, growing, opening wide to engulf her.
‘Are you okay?’ The police officer looked worried. She had called out and somehow fallen on to the floor, banging her arm on the chair.
Paulsa had called the police officer rather than touch her himself. A red smut grew on her arm, seeping into her sleeve. Huffing with pain, Maureen looked up and saw Shirley, her legs crossed, a zigzag thread hanging down from the hem of her skirt and she knew this part wasn’t a dream because it was too detailed. ‘I fell asleep,’ said Maureen.
She went to the loo and locked herself in a cubicle. She pulled up her sleeve and peeled back the tissue, ripping off the scabs, making them bleed. She wrapped fresh tissue paper around her forearm, salvaging two strips of not-very-sticky Sellotape to secure the ends.
Back in the witness room, Shirley continued with her crossword while Paulsa stared guiltily at the floor and patted his damp face with a paper tissue, leaving little patches of white fibre on his forehead. When the door opened everyone turned to face it desperately, as if the air supply had been cut off and suddenly restored. The policeman stuck his head into the room. ‘Lunch. Back by one forty-five sharp.’
Everyone else seemed to know where they were going. Outside the room Shirley and Paulsa disappeared through the front door. Maureen stood outside the panelled room, feeling lost, and then she saw them. They were standing in a crowd, Winnie, George and Liam, Leslie and Kilty, Vik and Shan, all introducing themselves to each other and shaking hands. Even Leslie’s cousin, Jimmy Harris, had made the effort to come and raised his hand, smiling. The rest of them turned in unison, beaming at Maureen like a homecoming dream of comfort and joy.
The small café in the basement of the court had been painted a grating shade of howling yellow. Maureen looked down the table at Liam, Vik and Shan, chatting, establishing common acquaintances, and it felt strangely natural. She had studiously kept them all apart in case Vik thought she meant to get serious. None of it seemed to matter any more. Leslie and George were talking, and Winnie was making Kilty laugh.
Liam seemed tired and jumpy. It hadn’t occurred to her before now but there would have been a phone call in the night, bad news, someone needed to identify Michael. Liam was keeping it from her, protecting her. She caught Winnie’s eye and saw the strain there, as if Winnie hadn’t seen enough trouble in her life.
She reached forward to put down her sandwich and felt the twice-used Sellotape on her right forearm peel away from the skin. The tail of the tissue unfurled slowly, resting inside her sleeve. She put her arm on her lap and tried to remember not to use it.
‘Mauri,’ said Winnie, ‘look. See them?’ She dipped her head in a secretive manner, gesturing to a table behind her.
‘That’s his family,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t they look mental?’
Two women in old-lady tweed overcoats were sitting at a nearby table, looking poor and slightly ashamed of themselves, carefully picking the salad out of their sandwiches, laying it aside. One had a small elaborate growth on her chin, a bulbous lump of extra skin with smaller lumps on top. Next to them sat a gangly young boy in his early teens with the same uncomfortable look, dressed in a tracksuit and T-shirt and
highly polished brogues. Maureen could almost hear the conversation in the house before they left, the for-Godsakes, he wasn’t going to wear that, oh, all right, then, but change the shoes at least. As Maureen looked at Angus’s family she could imagine him having miserable Christmas Days in ugly houses, being a teenager and growing his hair long. The two women would have turned up at his every school play, been intimidated and ruined his graduation. She could see Angus trying to shed them as his income crept up and his tastes changed. He had a history, a background and a cause. Liam saw her looking at them and leaned across the table. ‘Bet Hannibal Lecter didn’t have to wave back to a family of hill-billy freaks at his trial,’ he muttered.
Maureen smiled. Two women and no father. In the penny-dreadful version of the story those women would be the monsters who had turned him into a sexual predator and the missing man simply a source of sadness to him. She sat back, looking down the table at all of her friends. Still feverish with exhaustion, she imagined lifting them all away from here, taking them to a clifftop table overlooking a calm sea and having a lovely dinner together, a last supper. Winnie would be funny and George would be dear. Jimmy Harris wouldn’t look so hungry and Leslie would have her baby in her arms. At the end of the night Maureen would retire with Vik and they’d cuddle each other and talk lazily about nothing much as they dozed off into a deep sleep. As she looked at them, Maureen felt she was in an idealized afterlife, where all was love and peace and everyone she cared about was looked after.
Liam finished his sandwich quickly and nodded her outside for a smoke. She was nervous that he might ask her about last night or following Michael. ‘Why are ye wearing a top that says “porn star” on it?’ he said, when they got to the steps.
‘Cheer myself up,’ she said.
‘You don’t look well.’
‘I’m very tired,’ she said, remembering to using her left hand to rub her eye. ‘I didn’t sleep last night at all.’
He looked at her curiously. ‘Ye were asleep at ten o’clock when I phoned.’
‘Oh,’ she said stiffly, ‘yeah, but I woke up then and I couldn’t get back to sleep.’
The steps were busy with smokers. Three uniformed policemen stood at the bottom between the gates, comparing something on their ungainly utility belts. A crowd of well-dressed confident people were standing in a circle and laughing loud. Maureen saw nervous Aggie Grey hanging on the edges of the group and realized why they were happy. They had no interest in the case going either way, they were journalists. Aggie spotted Maureen coming down the steps and averted her gaze, smiling at the ground, making a discreet thumbs-up. Maureen did it back and when she looked again Aggie was smiling up at the building.
Joe McEwan was a couple of steps down from Inness, absentmindedly scraping the arch of his shoe on the stairs as he talked. He looked up and saw Liam and Maureen coming out of the door. He shot them a polite smile, pressing his lips together and looking away. Liam gave the same smile back and sat down a distance away, resting on a pillar to light up. The last time Maureen saw Liam and Joe together they had hated each other. She could tell they had seen each other in the meantime – recently by the looks of things. Joe would have told Liam about Michael. She could see Liam asking him not to tell Maureen, just until the trial is over, please, just until then. Neither of them had any idea that she was involved; Joe McEwan had finally decided that she was a victim of circumstance just when she stopped being one. Liam gave her a cigarette and she took it in her left hand, leaning over the match in his hand to catch a light.
‘Are you Maureen O’Donnell?’ It was one of the men from the group of journalists. ‘No,’ said Maureen.
‘I think she’s still in the canteen,’ said Liam helpfully.
Maureen looked out over Glasgow Green, busy with lunch-time sunbathers. Leslie and Kilty came out and Vik and Shan joined them all, and they sat on the steps of the High Court and smoked and were together.
The afternoon was shorter. Shirley had relaxed a little and answered when Paulsa asked her the time. Maureen went to the loo to have a fag every so often, just to keep herself awake. She found a newspaper tucked behind the cistern as if someone was coming back for it. She read an article about how television was damaging everyone in some indefinable way. Back in the waiting room she soaked up the sun through the small window and planned her night. She was going to have a bath, a long, hot bath, and she was going to drink whisky.
The police officer stuck his head round the door again and told them that the court had finished its day’s business and they must all come back the next day for nine thirty sharp.
When she walked out into the lobby Maureen saw Elsbeth Brady and her mother-in-law walking down a corridor towards her, looking angry. ‘You should be in the witness room,’ said Carol Brady.
Maureen didn’t say anything. She was tired and had no reason to apologize to either of them any more.
‘I suppose you’re enjoying this, are you? Being at the centre of it all,’ said Elsbeth, with an unkind smile.
Again she said nothing but crossed her arms. A long, hot bath, whisky and peace. The women looked her up and down, read ‘porn star’ on her chest and brushed past her, walking down the stairs to the door. Leslie was standing beside her. ‘Was that Carol Brady?’
‘Aye,’ said Maureen. ‘And Elsbeth, Douglas’s wife.’
‘Douglas’s widow,’ corrected Leslie.
‘Her nose has been running all day and she kept sniffing really loudly,’ said Winnie. ‘I think she’s allergic to not getting attention.’
Maureen didn’t think they’d all be able to come the next day but she wanted them all to be together for just a little longer. She insisted that they go across the road to a café. She wanted to go for a drink but was afraid of putting temptation in Winnie’s way. As they went into the café she saw Liam whispering urgently to Winnie. He gathered himself together and came over, telling Maureen that he had to go and get a part for the car. The guy wouldn’t wait for him and he’d see her tomorrow. She knew he was lying. She knew that he had to go and see about Michael.
The Val d’Oro café had small seating booths in yellow, trimmed with red like a child’s toy. They sat in adjoining booths, Leslie and Jimmy Harris with Winnie and George, Maureen and Kilty with Vik and Shan. They ordered drinks and rolls. Shan asked for two egg rolls and a roll with sausage.
‘He eats all the time,’ confided Vik. ‘You’ve never seen a constitution like it. More food goes through him than Safeway’s checkouts.’
Shan smiled, slow and easy, at Kilty. ‘It’ll just get me ready for my dinner.’
‘Your mum’s great,’ said Vik quietly, so Winnie wouldn’t hear.
‘Aye,’ Maureen said cagily. ‘She’s great sometimes.’
‘How d’ye feel about seeing Angus again?’ said Shan.
‘I’m too tired to feel anything. What about you?’
‘I wanted to kill him,’ said Shan, a red flush rising up his neck, settling on his cheeks.
Back at the flat Maureen lay in a hot bath, watching her skin turn red under the waterline and bits of tissue dis integrate on her skin. The cuts were deep and red blood had settled into scarlet blackheads in the cellulite on her thighs. She heard Leslie out in the living room, watching a quiz show on the telly. They were going to have Leslie’s baby together and it changed everything. They’d have to get jobs and stop being pissed all the time. They’d have to grow up. She sipped her whisky and knew she’d be asleep in ten minutes. When she thought about Gartnavel, thought past the shock and horror, she knew she’d done a good thing and providence would bless her for it. If only she hadn’t put Liam in the middle of it.
45
Good One
Paulsa was agitated. He seemed not to have had his medicine that morning and was pacing the stuffy room, watching the door. Spontaneous droplets of sweat popped on to his forehead and top lip. He was l
icking them away, a habit Shirley found disgusting. Maureen could see her across the room, watching him, grimacing when he did it. Maureen wanted to tell him what Liam had told her, that they were defence witnesses, they’d be the last to give evidence, but the more upset he was the better it was for her.
Leslie had bought bandages for Maureen’s arms and put them on her this morning, securing the ends with little elastic clasps. Some of the wounds were open, itching and festering. Leslie had washed them gently in salt water before vomiting in the sink.
Maureen went back to reading a newspaper she had picked up when she was buying cigarettes. It was a local newspaper and she hadn’t noticed that it was a special sports edition. The back page crept towards the front, buffeting the central pages, and there was little for her to read in it. In the ‘News In Brief’ column she saw a headline that caught her eye. A body had been found up at Gartnavel Royal and police were treating the death as suspicious. The paragraph underneath gave scant detail, adding nothing to the headline but times and the fact that Stewart Street were conducting the investigation. Joe McEwan and Liam had definitely seen each other.
Maureen guessed that she wouldn’t be called today. She began reading, dragging her eyes over a long article about football funding, and before she had digested half of it, they were called for lunch.
Kilty and Leslie were waiting in the lobby again with Winnie and George, Liam and Vik. Shan had had to go to work, apparently, but he’d be back in the afternoon. They went down to the canteen and ate sandwiches together. Maureen looked around the table and felt very lucky, having them all here, chatting to each other and getting on well. She saw Liam was looking tired and drawn and wanted to comfort him, but couldn’t until he told her.
They were smoking on the stairs outside, Kilty and Shan were having a good-natured argument about Kosovo with Leslie interjecting supporting arguments for each side, when Liam took her aside. ‘The night before last,’ he said casually, ‘what did you do?’
