by Denise Mina
The reception area was an open two-storey space with a mezzanine and a newsagent’s and flower stall near the door. She bought a bunch of big, tired daisies padded out with ferns, and followed the signs for Ward G. The lift doors slid back and Maureen stepped in. An elderly man in a felt cap and summer jacket was taking charge of the controls and asked her which floor, pressed the button with a flourish and smiled at her when the doors closed.
Down a number of corridors with polished lino floors and muted echoes, Maureen finally found Ward G. It consisted of a long room with ten beds on either side and three separate rooms for jumpy trauma victims. High windows trapped the warm, fetid air. At the head of the big room, just before the corridor entrance, a small room served as the nurses’ station. A young male nurse with a naval beard was sitting at the desk looking depressed and tired. He didn’t stand up but swivelled towards her on his chair and hung his head lethargically to the side when Maureen asked after Ella. Apparently, she had contusions to both eyes, a broken thigh and bruising to her arms. He pointed her through to one of the private rooms off the ward. ‘Her son’s already here,’ he said.
Ella was propped up against some pillows but seemed to have slipped down the bed. Her eyes were a terrifying red mess of burst vessels, clashing with the blue irises. The left side of her face was black and green and her eyebrows were missing, making her forehead look bald and barren. The sheet, pulled up to her chin, had somehow slipped over her mouth. Under the blankets a small tent held it away from her legs. Her right hand lay on top of the covers, a clear plastic tube taped to the back, a small plaster cupping the flesh between her thumb and forefinger where the bandage had been.
In front of her sat a middle-aged man, dressed in blue slacks and a pale blue shirt. He turned to look at her and Maureen could see traces of Ella everywhere, in the thin lips, the gold-rimmed glasses and the small blue eyes, but Ella’s son was not a bonny boy. His eyes were slightly splayed, not enough to constitute a squint but enough to be disconcerting. His chin was so weak it looked as if he was recoiling from the world in disgust. He was not pleased to meet Maureen. He looked her up and down, hiding his resentment behind heavy hooded eyes.
The atmosphere between mother and son was strained and shocked, as if Ella had just revealed the truth about crop circles and he had countered with pictures of Elvis working as an interpreter at the UN.
‘Hiya, Ella,’ said Maureen, pretending not to notice the peculiar atmosphere. ‘We were all worried about ye at the market so I was sent up to see ye.’
From her reclining position Ella nodded faintly, making the sheet slip off her mouth and shoulder. She was wearing a blue paper nightdress.
‘I brought ye these flowers but I can see we’ve been outdone.’ Maureen gestured at the bedside cabinet and a big bunch of long-stem red roses hanging wildly out of a short vase. The man smiled a little, his lips sliding open over his teeth, his eyes remaining static as he wondered who the hell she was. Ella looked down at the tent blanket over her feet.
‘How are ye feeling?’ said Maureen.
Ella looked at Si for a moment and he leaned forward, giving her a light slap on her elbow. ‘You can speak,’ he said disdainfully. ‘Go on, answer her.’ His accent was middle class and he smiled an apology for his ignorant old mother at Maureen.
Maureen felt her gorge rise. ‘I’m Maureen from Paddy’s,’ she said, and shoved out her hand.
He stood up and shook it. His palm was damp and she had the impression that he didn’t want to shake hands or introduce himself but courtesy compelled him. ‘Si McGee,’ he said quickly. ‘She’s been very quiet today. Maybe you should come back tomorrow.’
Ella looked up at her with startled red eyes and Maureen pulled over a chair. ‘Aye, well, I’m here now.’ She set the chair upstream of Si and sat down. ‘What’s the food like here?’ she asked, for something to say.
Ella seemed to shrink under the sheet a little.
Maureen tried again. ‘What happened to get you in this state, then?’
Ella wasn’t about to answer. Maureen turned to Si. ‘She fell over in the house,’ he said, annoyed that she was still here, ‘and hurt herself.’
Maureen looked to Ella for confirmation but she wasn’t talking. Behind the bloody eyes she looked absent and afraid. If Ella had fallen she would have had to land on both eyes and on the side of her head as well. Barring the possibility of a bizarre trampolining incident, Ella’s injuries hadn’t been caused by a fall. ‘Is she on medication?’
‘Aye, painkillers,’ said Si, adding unnecessarily, ‘for the pain.’
Maureen nodded as though she were a surgeon and understood. She turned back to Ella. ‘Can I bring ye anything up? D’ye want rollers for your hair or anything?’
Ella’s eyes didn’t move. She was staring over Maureen’s shoulder at her son.
Maureen patted her hand and promised to come up again the next day. When she stood up and bent forward to move the chair back behind her, she could see the bottom half of Si’s face. His mouth was a wizened line. She stood up quickly to catch him, but he anticipated her and took her hand in both of his, squeezing a little too hard as he pumped it and thanked her for coming. ‘I’ll get you out,’ he said.
‘No, it’s all right,’ said Maureen. ‘I know the way.’
‘I’m leaving anyway.’ He stood up and smiled at her, trying to seem friendly. ‘I’ve got the car outside. I’ll drive you home, if you like.’
Maureen glanced at Ella but Ella was staring at her son. ‘Thanks, but I’m fine, someone’s picking me up.’
Si smiled with cold eyes. ‘It’s no trouble,’ he said. ‘I’d like to.’
‘No, someone’s picking me up.’
In the lift Si kept catching her eye and trying to smile. ‘Where is it you stay?’ he said, sliding along the metal wall towards her.
Maureen slid along the wall in the opposite direction, distancing herself. She didn’t want to tell him anything about herself. ‘West End,’ she lied.
‘That figures,’ he said. ‘Trendy wee thing like you.’ Maureen looked him in the eye and thought what an arsehole he was. She didn’t like creepy strangers trying to flirt with her. It felt like a grotesquely intimate intrusion. ‘I bet you’ve got a lot of boyfriends.’
She could happily have hit him then but the lift reached the ground floor and the doors opened. She stepped back to let him go first but Si misunderstood and, thinking she was flirting back, insisted that she go first.
‘Is it a boyfriend who’s picking you up?’ he said, catching up with her at the door.
‘It’s my brother,’ she said firmly.
Despite her hearty protestations Si insisted on waiting with her outside the gates until Liam turned up in his Triumph Herald. ‘What an unusual car,’ he said, as Maureen walked away.
11
Peeler
Liam’s Triumph Herald had a soft top, and a back end so rusted that it looked as if it might snap off in a brisk wind. It had been bought as camouflage during his days as a dealer because no one would suspect the driver of being anything but a mug. As Maureen brought the cigarette to her mouth, the wind blew live ash into her hair and she heard the tiny crackle of hairs burning, smelt a whiff of sulphur.
‘Who was that?’ asked Liam.
‘The old lady’s son,’ shouted Maureen, above the noisy engine. ‘What a creep. Has Una been in touch with you?’ ‘Not in the half-hour since ye last asked me, no,’ Liam shouted back. ‘Don’t worry, she’ll be late. First babies are often late.’
Liam spotted the red light up ahead and cursed it. He slowed the car, trying not to reach it before it changed back, but the lights didn’t budge and the engine petered to a coughing stop. He whipped off his shades and looked accusingly at Maureen.
‘Fuck all to do with me,’ she said.
‘Well, you’re sitting there,’ he muttere
d, and began the long ritual of the choke.
The lights changed and impatient cars behind them began to hoot. Eventually the Triumph spluttered to life, taking off just as the lights changed again, trapping the other cars behind it. Liam grinned as they honked. Maureen wished that she’d had the chance to speak to Ella alone. She looked pretty shocked.
Liam coughed next to her and she looked at him. He might not tell her when the child was born. He didn’t know what the birth meant to her: he didn’t know what she was planning for Michael. The only people who knew were Doyle, because she’d told him, and Sheila, because she’d guessed. Liam might decide not to tell her because it would upset her. She hoped she could read it in his face if he was lying. They were gathering speed on the broad road to Dennistoun and he smiled to her and raised himself up in the seat a little, enjoying the warm wind chewing his hair. Maureen smiled back. She’d know if he was lying. She felt sure she would.
Siobhain McCloud opened the door to Liam’s familiar knock. She had sunglasses on, exactly the same model of Ray-Bans as Liam. She didn’t wait to see who it was or even welcome them but walked away wordlessly down the dark hall and back to her beloved outsized television.
‘Hiya,’ called Liam, stepping into the hall. ‘I’ve brought Mauri with me.’
Siobhain didn’t reply. Liam shut the door behind Maureen, nodding for her to go into the living room ahead of him.
Siobhain was sitting on the beige settee watching a Gaelic film about North Uist. She seemed to have taken to wearing her shades indoors a lot because the TV brightness was set so high that both Maureen and Liam had to put on their sunglasses to make sense of the picture. The programme showed a group photograph of islanders from the sixties, a line-up of thick-legged girls in miniskirts with indistinct knees and innocent grins. She turned over suddenly to Montel. A woman in a flowery dress was crying and Montel took her hand.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Liam, sitting down next to her on the settee.
‘She’s crying,’ said Siobhain, ‘and Montel is holding her hand.’
Maureen sat down in the armchair. Siobhain’s house was depressing. The settee was beige, the walls were beige, the carpet was beige, everything inoffensive and inexpensive. The only ornamentation in the living room was a small watercolour of irises and a big oil painting of her younger brother, done from a small snapshot photograph, a little boy standing on a hillside many years ago, squinting into the camera.
As part of a university project, Liam had made a film of Siobhain. She talked to the camera about her people and the Highlands, showing irrelevant pictures cut out of ladies’ magazines. She told the story of her childhood with the travellers, how her brother drowned in a burn and her mother left the land and came to the city to die. It was a peculiar film. It should just have been annoying but it was strangely touching, fat Siobhain barking in her Highland accent at the camera, her stilted delivery seeming affected and mistimed. Liam had written an end-of-term paper on his film, a vague and pretentious piece about the rare beauty of reality. He failed and was having to do a resit exam over the summer.
Maureen would never have thought of them as friends, much less close friends, but since the film Liam had been over at Siobhain’s all the time, watching television, showing her films and asking her what she thought.
Siobhain had been very fat when Maureen met her but it didn’t disguise how beautiful she was. Her nose was a straight arrow, her plump mouth a tidy rosebud and her cheekbones high and proud. Her black hair had started to grey prematurely but in most lights the silver strands looked like a glossy sheen. Angus Farrell had almost broken her. As a senior psychologist at the Northern Psychiatric Hospital he had had unlimited access to the ward where Siobhain was being treated for depression. Farrell had tethered the women with rope, around the ankles, around the wrists. Of the other two victims Maureen knew about for sure, Iona McKinnon had hung herself and Yvonne Urquhart had had a stroke that left her severely brain-damaged.
It might have been the shock of seeing herself on film, or just that she had pals, but Siobhain had changed dramatically in the last six months. She went on a crazy diet of steak and citrus fruit, which caused her to exude a sharp, rotting smell. It also made her fart soundlessly every fifteen seconds although she steadfastly denied it every time Leslie challenged her. She had lost half her bodyweight. Because the weight loss had been so rapid her skin was just catching up with her, contracting around the new shapes and forms. She had had a chicken neck for a month but it had settled back now to show a strong jaw and slim neck. She still moved as if she was obese: swinging her legs around each other clumsily, holding her arms out stiffly to the sides. When she sat down she cleared space for her phantom belly, sitting with her legs wide open as if she still had forty-inch thighs.
She needed new clothes and trawled the charity shops with Maureen and Leslie, choosing a peculiar mixture of old lady flowery dresses, a big yellow anorak, tennis shoes and bright jerseys in blues and oranges. It was the first time she had ever chosen her own adult clothes. She dressed like no one else they had met. Today she was sporting white tennis shoes with red soles, a red skirt and a green shirt with button-down breast pockets.
Maureen could tell she was enjoying her new self and the shades were part of that. She had taken to brushing her hair and making sure her collars weren’t tucked in.
‘Siobhain,’ said Liam, handing her the newspaper, ‘we want you to look at this.’
Siobhain moved her face in the direction of the newspaper. It took them a minute to realize that under her shades she was keeping her eyes on the crying woman and Montel.
‘Siobhain, read it,’ said Liam impatiently, cracking the paper with a flick of his finger. ‘This shit’s on all the time.’ Maureen had never seen anyone swear in front of Siobhain without getting pulled up about it. She looked at Liam curiously. He was sitting forward, watching Siobhain as she looked at the paper, his hands clasped between his knees.
Siobhain finished reading and looked up at Liam, her face blank, her mouth hanging open.
‘He can’t hurt you,’ said Liam quickly, taking his own specs off. ‘He can’t get anywhere near you. We won’t let him.’ He looked to Maureen for confirmation and she nodded.
‘He’s still in prison,’ said Maureen, shedding her cheap glasses. ‘They’re just trying the case.’
Siobhain raised a hand to her face and took her own glasses off, dropping them on to the settee, her hand hanging limp on her lap. ‘Will they let him go?’ she said quietly.
‘No,’ said Liam quickly.
Siobhain looked at him suspiciously. They didn’t really know what would happen. As far as they knew Angus Farrell was just as likely to be sent to a chip shop for life, without the possibility of vinegar. ‘I’m not stupid, Liam,’ she said softly.
‘We don’t know what’ll happen,’ said Maureen, ‘but we do know that the trial’ll go on for a while and he’ll be in all the papers and we wanted to warn you about it.’ ‘He’s in court,’ Siobhain said.
‘That’s right,’ said Liam, leaning into her. ‘But he can’t get to ye.’
Siobhain dismissed him with a look and spoke to Maureen. ‘He’s in court in Glasgow?’ ‘Yeah.’
Siobhain looked at the picture in the paper and slowly lifted her face to Maureen, tipping her chin and taking a deep breath. ‘Will he go to prison for what he did to me?’ Maureen and Liam looked at each other.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Maureen. ‘The paper says it’s just the murders he’s been done for.’ ‘Will they ever try him for the other things?’ Liam shook his head. ‘We don’t know.’
Maureen knew the police had tried to be kind when they questioned Siobhain. She wouldn’t survive a court case. Maureen sat forward a little. ‘Siobhain,’ she said, reasoning that an outright lie was the kindest course of action, ‘he’s being tried for murder and the police don’t think he’l
l get off. He’s just being tried for the murder.’
They fell silent and watched Montel on the giant television. It was the only expensive thing in Siobhain’s house: everything else had been provided by Social Services when she came out of hospital. Douglas had given Siobhain money too, a fat roll of cash that Elsbeth didn’t know anything about.
Montel was trying to coax the woman to speak through her tears by telling her something about his military experience. The woman had been accused of insurance fraud and was facing twenty years in jail.
‘She is going down,’ said Siobhain, and dropped the paper to the floor.
*
Out in the street, two gangs of tired ten-year-olds were fighting about a football. A mum hung out of a window, calling someone in for bed and telling them to learn to fucking behave, for fucksake. Liam tugged the hood up on the car and slapped open a rusted hinge. ‘She’s terrified,’ he muttered, glancing up at the window.
‘She seems okay to me,’ said Maureen. ‘I’ve seen her terrified. She freezes and cries and throws up.’
‘Maureen,’ he said, authoritatively, as if he was the only person who had ever met Siobhain, ‘you don’t know what she’s feeling.’
‘Well, you don’t know either. All you’ve got to go on is what she says.’
He snorted and walked around the car to tackle the roof on the passenger side. ‘I think I know Siobhain,’ he said prissily.
‘Aye, better than she does?’
Liam didn’t answer but pulled up the hood of the car, blocking the sun from her face. Maureen sat in the shadow, waiting patiently as he clipped the hood to the windscreen. She saw him turn and look up to Siobhain’s window, hoping for a final glimpse. She wouldn’t be standing there, Maureen knew she wouldn’t, not while Montel was on. He climbed in next to her and shut his door, pulling out the choke. ‘Liam, do you fancy Siobhain?’