Resolution Page 2

  Hugh held up a hand and spoke to both of them. ‘I’m not refereeing.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Maureen, and Joe sat on the settee. She didn’t know anything about the police but she knew that Joe was too senior to be here. He had chosen to come, knowing it would be incendiary, knowing it would affect the quality of information Hugh could get for the prosecution. ‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘I’ll be good. Ask me anything.’

  ‘I was gonnae,’ said Hugh flatly, letting her know that he didn’t need her permission.

  ‘Well, go on, then.’ She smiled, getting the last word.

  ‘When I’m ready,’ said Hugh, grinning at his notes. Maureen nodded at his notebook. ‘Shoot,’ she said.

  On the way out she stopped Hugh by the door, letting Joe jog down the stairs ahead of him. ‘Hugh,’ she said, ‘what are the chances Angus’ll get off?’

  ‘Oh,’ Hugh frowned, ‘hard to say until the defence case is submitted.’

  ‘If he does get off,’ she said quietly, ‘he’ll come for me, won’t he?’

  ‘If he gets out we’ll protect you,’ said Hugh seriously. ‘Don’t worry about that. If he gets off the murder charge we’ll get him on the rapes.’

  Downstairs Joe pulled the close door open to the street and called back up to Hugh to come on.

  ‘If it goes to a rape case,’ said Maureen, ‘would Siobhain McCloud need to give evidence?’

  ‘Sorry. She may not be a good witness but she’s the best we’ve got,’ Hugh replied.

  Siobhain was one of the patients Angus had raped in the Northern Psychiatric Hospital. Maureen had been with Siobhain when she was questioned about it by the police. She hadn’t talked for days afterwards – she could hardly walk from the station to the taxi. Hugh saw how downcast Maureen looked. ‘Listen, there’ll be fifty policemen in this close if he gets out. We’d have to protect you because of the threats in his letters.’ He reached forward and rubbed her arm. ‘If he gets out, I promise we’ll be here.’

  Maureen sat alone on the settee. They were going to bring up Liam’s history of drug-dealing in court. If the university found out they might even chuck him out. She wouldn’t tell him. She’d wait and see what happened. Everything was coming to an end.

  Sunshine lingered in the living room, puddled in a corner of the bay window. It was ten o’clock and the sun would be going down soon. Taking a glass from the kitchen, she stood by the living room window and poured herself a large whisky, rolling it in her mouth before swallowing. The sunshine gilded the city below. Shards of glass in the yellow and burgundy sandstone glinted against a blue sky backdrop. In the street below, excited midges caught the sun, shimmering like animated flecks of gold.

  She watched the high summer sun set quickly, like an orange rolling off a table, and suddenly found herself sitting in a blue gloom, holding an empty glass, looking out over the street at closing time. Dispensing with formalities, she drank straight from the whisky bottle, the tiny vacuum in the neck kissing the tip of her tongue. At the foot of the dark bill a string of orange street-lights flickered awake. It was a beautiful city and Maureen was glad she had lived here.

  3

  Ella McGee

  ‘No,’ said Cindy, watching her lift the upright hoover out of the cupboard.

  Ella McGee ignored her, unwound the flex and carried the plug to the wall socket. ‘I said no.’

  Ella crouched down and punched the plug into the wall.

  ‘She’s right, Mrs G,’ said Kevin. ‘He said not tae.’

  ‘Well,’ Ella smiled up at the bouncer, ‘I think I know a wee bit more about cleaning than he does.’

  ‘Look, you,’ Cindy came around the desk and stomped towards her, moving gracelessly in her high heels and miniskirt, ‘don’t fucking . . .’ She tried to bend down to take out the plug but her tight skirt stopped her so she shouted instead, ‘Not when there’s punters here, ya daft old cow. He’s fuckin’ telt ye.’

  And it was then that Ella made the worst mistake of her life. She elbowed Cindy in the leg, hitting her hard on the shin. Cindy reached for the desk on her way down, pulling the cheap table over, knocking the phone on the floor. Ella stood up and looked at her. Her skirt had ripped at the side, showing her baggy off-white knickers. Ella had never liked her – she thought she was something.

  Cindy looked up at the old woman in the tracksuit, grinning down at her. ‘You fucking cunt,’ she screamed. Kevin stepped towards them. ‘Girls, enough.’

  They heard steps on the stairs and Si appeared from the basement, hurrying up to the hallway when he saw Cindy on the floor. He helped her to her feet, saw the ripped skirt and sent her off to get another one.

  ‘I want paid for it,’ said Cindy, looking at Ella.

  ‘You’ll get paid for it,’ he said. ‘Go to the back office and see if Cath’s got one.’

  Cindy tottered down the hallway, huffing as if she’d hurt herself. Si righted the desk and picked up the phone, sitting the receiver in the cradle. He wouldn’t look her in the eye and Ella knew it was bad. ‘Put that Hoover away,’ he said.

  ‘That carpet needs going over, it’s a right state.’ Margaret’s head appeared at the mouth of the stairs to the basement. She looked at her brother and Si turned to Ella. ‘Look, we need to talk to you.’

  It was his own office, not the place’s office, and no one was allowed in but Margaret and Si. It annoyed Ella. She’d tried to get in to clean it a couple of times, once when he was there and once when he was out. He wouldn’t let her in and Cindy swore she didn’t have a key. It wasn’t anything special, just a dark room at the back of the basement, bars on the window, a fire escape leading to the alley, a desk with an open newspaper on it and a locked safe he must keep the money in. He could have trusted her, she would hardly have robbed him.

  Margaret sat on the desk and Si took the chair. They seemed quite tense, the two of them, glancing at each other and looking away quickly, as if they’d been discussing her. Sometimes she felt she didn’t know them at all. ‘That daft cow,’ she said. ‘She was trying to pull the plug out of the wall and she fell over. Did ye see her, Magret? Split her skirt right up her arse, so she did.’

  Margaret ignored her and looked at her brother. He sighed at the desk. ‘Look, Mum,’ he said heavily, ‘ye can’t work here any more.’ Ella was stunned. ‘How no?’

  ‘’Cause you’re a fucking trouble-causer,’ sneered Margaret. She’d a nasty, coarse manner about her sometimes.

  Si touched his sister’s arm, telling her to shut up. ‘Mum, ye can’t get on with any of them, you’re always doing things we ask you not to do.’ He had a nicer voice, a cultured voice.

  ‘Like what do I do?’ said Ella.

  Si pointed up to the ceiling. ‘Like hoovering when there are men in—’

  ‘That carpet was a state.’ She nodded adamantly. ‘Ye want the place to have a bit of class, don’t ye?’

  ‘You don’t listen,’ he said, shutting his eyes. ‘You don’t listen to me.’

  ‘Simon,’ Ella laughed indignantly, ‘I don’t need you to tell me when a carpet needs cleaned—’ ‘Get out now,’ said Margaret flatly.

  ‘I will not get out,’ said Ella, looking to her son for support. Si blinked, cutting her off, and when he opened his eyes again, he was looking at the paper. Ella poked a finger at him. ‘You owe me my wages.’

  ‘Don’t fucking pay her,’ said Margaret, and turned back to her mother. ‘Get out.’

  ‘I won’t leave till yees give me what I’m owed.’

  ‘Don’t fucking pay her, she’s a waste of money.’

  Margaret and her brother looked at each other, smiling a little, enjoying humiliating their old mother, even now, in their thirties, savouring the power shift.

  ‘I’ll tell the polis about ye,’ said Ella, casting up a familiar threat they had used against her when they were children.
Si and his sister sniggered at her impotence. ‘They know about us,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a licence for this place. D’ye think they really believe we’re giving saunas until three in the morning?’

  ‘They don’t know about they foreign women, do they?’ said Ella, and their smug faces fell. ‘They don’t know ye keep them locked up through the wall there, do they?’ She had expected them to react, maybe shout at her, but when she saw Margaret’s hand coming out and the overhead light glint on the shaft of metal she knew she’d overplayed her hand by a mile. She lifted her hand to defend herself and the knife caught on her palm, sliding easily through the bridge of skin between her thumb and fore finger.

  It was a deep cut, right through the flesh on her hand. Margaret laughed and watched Ella’s hand bleeding on to the desk. Si pulled the newspaper under it, protecting the desk. Without saying sorry or even offering Ella her money, Si took down the first-aid box, covered the cut in cotton wool and wrapped a bandage round it. When he had finished he told her it would be best if she went home.

  Cindy smirked at the appointments book as Ella walked past the desk. She had a red miniskirt on now, with zips up the side, and looked as cheap as the rest of them. She’d put the Hoover away and the carpet was still filthy. Kevin muttered that he was sorry as he opened the door for her. She kept it together until she got out into the dark street, and then Ella McGee cried all the way home.

  4

  Hot

  Outside the kitchen window the morning sky was as clear as a baby’s conscience. Below, at the base of Garnethill, the slip-road to the motorway was clogging up and the heat began to rise from the dawning city. Maureen sipped her coffee and shuddered compulsively, remembering the sleepy vagueness in her limbs just before the alarm. She looked out at the blackened silhouette on the horizon. It was the jagged tower of an old fever hospital, built a mile away from the city. Around it, peering over the shoulder of the hill, she saw the smashed onion domes on the smaller buildings, looking like caved-in heads.

  Maureen had been dreaming about her stomach splitting open again, about Michael being in the room, touching her with razor fingers, making her bleed between her legs. It was getting worse – it was getting worse because he was out there somewhere. Acknowledging the fear tripped her mind to the image of Michael lying on the floor.

  She kept thinking of a dark room. She shut her eyes. He was lying on his side ten yards from her, his breathing laboured. Maureen’s face was sore down one side, smarting from a punch or fall. She walked over to him, raised an arm for balance and brought the heel of her boot down on his head, again and again, felt the cracking of bone shudder up her leg, again and again, until Michael was dead.

  She opened her eyes and looked at her trembling hands. She could try to imagine what it would feel like, to see if she could do it, but she would never know before the time came. She stopped herself, rubbing her eyes hard, reminding herself that there had been no phone call in the night: her sister Una’s baby wasn’t born yet. She had one more day of grace before the wars.

  She took her coffee into the living room and put the telly on to drown out the noise in her head. An earnest local news reporter was standing in a park, sweating in a heavy woollen suit. He warned the public to stay indoors or use a high-factor sun cream. The piece must have been filmed at lunchtime. The grassy hillside behind him was carpeted with pink and red bodies slathered in baby oil. Over his left shoulder a team of sunburnt topless men, lying on the grass, raised their lager cans to the camera, waving fags and laughing, the living embodiment of a uniquely Scottish cavalier disregard for health.

  As she watched the morning news, Maureen’s bare feet felt the powdery dust on the floorboards and her toes recoiled, pressing the flaking grit against the soft skin. She had left the stains from his blood unpainted, hoping somehow that it would help her assimilate Douglas’s death. It hadn’t. Before she could begin to take in what had happened she was forgetting Douglas’s face and his manner, forgetting what she’d seen in him, forgetting everything but the shock and revulsion when she found his body. His eyes were the last image to slip her memory. When she saw him now, smiling and blinking slowly, she didn’t know if she was remembering him or the memory of him. The heat was lifting his blood out of the wood, forming a brown dust that gathered in the still corners. Everything that was ever Douglas was slithering away.

  In the bedroom, she pulled on a fresh T-shirt and a pair of baggy jungle shorts that hung low on her hips, pressing and wriggling her blood-dusty feet into a pair of trainers. Hearing her brother’s soft, familiar knock at the door, she walked out to the hall. Liam would be the first to know if the baby was born and, although she was expecting him, she looked out through the spy-hole for clues about Una. Liam was standing on the landing, his sports bag in one hand and his college bag in the other. His shades couldn’t hide a face still puffy with sleep. She opened the door and let him in.

  ‘All right, Mauri?’ he said, his voice taut with sleep and flecks of morning phlegm. He pulled off his glasses and followed her through to the kitchen, sitting the sports bag on the table.

  ‘D’ye want a coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘Naw,’ he said, ‘I’m going to the library. I’ll just sort ye out and go.’

  Unzipping the bag, he lifted six boxes of duty-free Embassy Regal cigarettes on to the table. ‘I haven’t got any Superkings just now but I’ll bring some tomorrow.’

  Maureen nodded. ‘This sleeve’s a bit battered,’ she said, lifting one box and looking at the smashed corner.

  He took it back and tutted at it. ‘Fuckers,’ he said lethargically. ‘They shouldn’t give me shit like that. If ye can’t use them, give them back to me on Monday and I’ll refund the difference.’

  ‘No, no, don’t worry,’ said Maureen, conscious that she was already getting the cigarettes at cost price as a special favour. ‘I’ll smoke them. When’s your exam?’

  ‘Tuesday morning,’ he said, taking out a cigarette and lighting up.

  ‘That’s handy, then, because the wedding’s on Wednesday.’

  ‘Oh, God, yeah,’ he said. ‘I forgot about that.’ He pulled some blue pouches of rolling tobacco out of his bag but Maureen waved them back in. ‘We’ve got loads of those. There’s a guy up the lane selling them fifty pence cheaper.’

  ‘How can he afford that?’

  ‘Well,’ said Maureen, ‘he’s not on a stall, he’s got no overheads.’

  ‘He’s a wee bastard whatever his story is,’ said Liam. Tired, they gave each other token smiles.

  ‘No word about Una, then?’ said Maureen quietly.

  ‘No,’ said Liam, clamping the cigarette between his teeth as he zipped up the bag and walked out to the hall.

  ‘Do you want that table?’ she said, pointing to the telephone table by the door. It wasn’t nice, the wood was cheap and the varnish was chipped, but it was tall and thin and perfect for a telephone in an unobtrusive corner.

  Liam tilted his head and looked at it. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Nothing. There’s just too much stuff in here.’

  ‘Ye sure?’

  ‘Aye.’Maureen lifted the phone on to the floor and kicked the dusty phone books out of the way.

  Liam hooked his arm underneath, lifted the table and struggled backwards out of the front door. The leg got caught in a stray strap from the sports bag and yanked it off his shoulder. He climbed over the bag, smashing the table off the door frame. The sharp sound ricocheted off the close walls.

  ‘Keep it down,’ whispered Maureen. ‘It’s only half eight.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Liam smiled, closing an eye against the stream of smoke from his cigarette. He bent down to lift the bag and cracked the leg off the concrete floor. ‘Shit. I’ll see ye later,’ he said, and walked down the stairs, inadvertently banging the table top off the iron banisters, leaving a trail of smoke behind him.

&n
bsp; Back in the kitchen she finished her coffee and filled her cycle bag with the sleeves of cigarettes. She packed in as many as she could and hoped it would be a busy day at the market. Maureen needed to sell a lot of sleeves: she owed the Inland Revenue six thousand pounds’ inheritance tax.

  The day before he died Douglas had deposited fifteen thousand pounds in her bank account. Their brief and pointless affair had weighed heavily on him and the money was a tainted apology. It was an uncomfortable legacy, making Maureen feel like Douglas’s deepest regret. She had spent it as quickly as she could, buying clothes and takeaways, handing lumps of it to anyone who’d take it and finally paying off a chunk of her mortgage. She was down to her last grand when Douglas’s wife, Elsbeth, got in touch. She was settling his estate, and because it had been given within the seven years before his death, the money was liable to inheritance tax. Elsbeth wasn’t about to pay it for Maureen. If Maureen didn’t pay the six thousand, the tax man could sell her house from under her. In the two months they had been selling the cigarettes Maureen had managed to save two and a half thousand quid. They’d have made more if they weren’t smoking so much of the stock.

  An irresponsible driver out in the street hooted the horn three times, waking up anyone not keeping time to their clock. Maureen nipped into the kitchen, looked out of the window and saw a dirty white van in the street. Leslie was riding the clutch impatiently, sliding the van up and down the hill. Maureen picked up the cycle bag, pocketed her fags and sunglasses and locked the front door on the way out.

  The close was quiet and cool. Radios and televisions murmured behind the doors as everyone breakfasted and got ready to meet the day. Maureen pulled the close door open and a wall of heat hit her, making her hair prickle to attention. She slid on her shades. They were a cheap RayBans imitation and sat so close to her face that her eyelashes brushed the glass. She opened the back door of the van and put the bag in, slamming the door shut and pausing to make sure it didn’t fall open again. Then she clambered into the front seat and did up her belt, tying the long strap and the short strap together in a knot. It was an old van. ‘Hiya,’ she said chirpily.