Garnethill

by Denise Mina

  Hillhead Comprehensive’s catchment area covers a middle-class area and a profoundly deprived one. Benny came from the latter. He had been expelled in third year for setting fire to a toilet but Maureen and Liam stayed in touch with him because he was mental and a good laugh.

  Benny drank like his father. Consequently his early life was a series of Dadaesque adventures: he woke up in a meat factory, he got engaged to a woman whose name he couldn’t remember, he fell into a quarry on a Saturday night and didn’t manage to get out until the men came to work on Monday morning. When he was twenty he said he was sick of getting his face kicked in all the time and started attending Alcoholics Anonymous and got sober. He was homeless at the time and Maureen let him sleep on her bedroom floor at home. He talked about nothing but the joy of AA for two months. Winnie came to hate him.

  His alcoholic family disowned him when he moved in with Maureen’s family and got sober. He did some exams at college and got into Glasgow University to study law. His family owned him again. He was in senior honours studying corporate law and had a series of traineeship interviews lined up with high-flying companies. His bank manager kept writing to him, asking him to take out more loans.

  *

  They drew up into Scaramouch Street. It was short, only four closes long, with bollards blocking off the end from the Maryhill Road. The street used to be a handy cut-off before the lights. When the bollards first went up several drivers, thinking they’d be cute and save a couple of minutes, swerved straight into them and wrote their cars off. They climbed the stairs to the first floor and knocked. Benny opened the door. He wasn’t bad-looking: he was dark with long eyelashes and kind grey eyes, six foot something tall and had a solid muscular frame, but his close association with Liam and the rest of her family made Maureen squeamish about fancying him. He looked Maureen up and down and burst out laughing. ‘What the fuck are you wearing?’ he squealed. ‘You look like a ned!’

  Maureen pushed her way in through the door. ‘I’ve had a bit of an eventful day,’ she said, and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Benny was a dirty bastard: the kitchen was filthy. Dishes, bits of food and packaging were sitting on the work tops and table, the sink was full and smelt faintly of mildew.

  She could hear them in the hall, Liam mumbling the story in a monotone and Benny whispering exclamations back. Liam called to her that he was going to drop Maggie home and would be back in half an hour.

  Benny stayed in the living room for a few minutes before coming into the kitchen. His face was grey. ‘Jesus, Mauri,’ he said, ‘Jesus. I don’t know what to say.’

  Maureen dropped into a chair and covered her face with her hands. She wanted to cry but nothing seemed real.

  Benny sat next to her, putting his arms around her, holding her close and kissing her hair. He was trembling. ‘Oh, Mauri,’ he whispered, ‘Jesus, Mauri, it’s so shockin’.’ She sat up and asked him for a fag. ‘Haven't you got any?’ She explained what had happened to hers and he insisted that she take his packet.

  He gave her a lemonade and an ashtray and sat at the table with her, leaning close and listening intently. She told him about the cagoul and the shoes and the rope. How could they get into the house, she kept saying, how could they get in the front door without making a noise? ‘Did Douglas have his own key?’ asked Benny.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And there was no sign of forced entry?’

  ‘Not that I noticed.’

  ‘Well, Douglas must have let himself in and, either then or later, let in the person who did it. Unless they picked the lock. What kind of locks have you got?’ Maureen described them.

  ‘They’d have to know what they were doing,’ he said.

  ‘Chances are he let them in so ye can conclude that he knew them.’

  ‘Aye.’ She was impressed by the logic of his deduction.

  ‘Aye, that’ll be it. You’re good at this.’

  ‘This is awful. I suppose they think it was one of his clients from the clinic. Or could it be the woman he was living with?’ ‘Elsbeth?’

  ‘Yeah, Elsbeth. It’s kind of poetic, killing your unfaithful man in the other woman’s house.’

  ‘It didn’t look very poetic,’ said Maureen.

  ‘Oh, fuck, I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry, it’s hard to take in.’

  ‘I know,’ said Maureen. ‘It’s so shocking it almost isn’t.’ Her bum was numb again. She stood up and rubbed it with her palms. ‘I’ve had a very fucking strange day,’ she said, as if the fact had just occurred to her.

  ‘How’re ye fixed? Did you leave your wallet at home too?’

  He took a tenner out of his pocket and pressed it into her hand.

  ‘I don't need any money, Benny. I’ll get my wallet from the police.’

  ‘Just take it in case, okay?’

  ‘I’ll give it back as soon as I get my wallet.’ Benny quirked an eyebrow playfully. ‘Give it back to me when you give me that Selector CD back.’

  Maureen rolled her eyes. ‘God, not again, Benny, I gave you that back months ago.’ ‘Ye never did.’

  ‘Benny Gardner, I’ll buy you a replacement but you’re going to find that CD in this filthy house and ye’ll have to crawl to me.’

  ‘It’s been discontinued and, Mauri, I’m telling ye, you’ll find it in your filthy house and you’ll have to crawl to me.’

  Maureen finished her lemonade. ‘Can you think of anything else about Douglas, Benny? Any more elementary-my-dear-Watsons?’

  Benny smiled, pleased at being asked. ‘Not off the top of my head, no.’

  Maureen slumped over the table. ‘I’m worried they’ll think I did it.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ he took her hand and squeezed it tightly, ‘they won’t think that. They won’t. Anyone who knows you could tell them it wasn’t you. When you went into the living room, did you see a murder weapon?’

  Maureen thought her way back through the room, censoring Douglas’s body out of the picture. ‘I dunno, um, no. But I didn’t get a good look, really.’ She blinked and saw a blood-soaked curl of hair behind his ear, and below that his poor broken neck, sliced open like a raw joint. She got up, washed her hands over the dirty dishes in the sink and tried to blink away the image.

  ‘I’m just asking because it’d be good if they didn’t find one,’ he said.

  She splashed cold water on her face. ‘Find one what?’

  ‘A murder weapon.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, if you were in the house all the time and the weapon’s found somewhere else that means someone came in, did it and then went away again. That’ll be good for you.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Maureen, having trouble seeing how any of this could be good for her. She sat back down at the table. ‘It turns out they were married, after all. I feel like such a mug.’

  ‘Douglas was married to Elsbeth?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He touched her forearm and spoke softly. ‘I thought ye’d decided he was an arse anyway.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said miserably, ‘but he was my arse.’ Benny scratched his head and looked at her shirt. ‘You look mental. Let’s find you something to wear.’

  They went into the bedroom and Benny dug out a red T-shirt with ‘The Broad Left Anti-Capitalist Dynamos F.C.’ printed on the front. The Anti Dynamos were a football team Benny used to play for. Maureen had been openly coveting the shirt for years and she appreciated the gesture. Benny was over six foot and Maureen was only five two so they couldn’t find her any trousers. ‘You’ll have to keep those joggers on.’

  ‘I hate these things,’ she said. ‘They always make me think of fat guys with free-range bollocks.’

  He gave her a key to his house. Maureen could sleep on the sofa bed in the front room until she wanted to go home. The arrangement was perfect: Winnie would never come here.

/>   ‘Can I ask another question about it, Mauri?’

  ‘God, please, Benny, anything you can think of . . .’

  He bit his lip and looked at her. ‘It’s a bit of a rough one, though.’

  ‘I can take it.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Did you notice whether there were a few cuts or just one?’

  ‘What, on his neck?’

  ‘Yeah, were there a few cut marks and then a big one?’ She blinked. ‘Naw, from what I saw there was just one big one.’

  He exhaled slowly. ‘Fuckin’ mental,’ he muttered.

  Maureen asked him what he meant.

  ‘It means whoever killed him just tied him up and did it, no threat to do it, no first go. It means they didn’t hesitate.’

  4

  Elsbeth

  As soon as Joe McEwan appeared at the top of the stairs Maureen could tell he was still pissed off with her. He held her eye as he walked steadily down the steps and came straight up to the desk, standing too close to her, looming over her so she had to bend her neck to look him in the face. ‘Did you contact your brother?’ he said abruptly. ‘Yeah,’ said Maureen. ‘And here he is.’

  Liam stepped forward and smiled McEwan recognized him as the scruffy man who had been waiting in the lobby, the man who had driven Maureen O’Donnell up to Maryhill in the red Triumph Herald. He glowered at her. A double door next to the stairs opened and Inness and the red-haired man appeared, greeting McEwan with conspiratorial nods.

  McEwan looked out of the glass doors. ‘You go with them,’ he ordered. Neither Maureen nor Liam knew which of them he was talking to. The red-haired man tapped Liam on the shoulder and jerked his head to the doors by the stairs, signalling for him to move. Liam looked back at his wee sister, still standing at the desk, looking underfed and brittle in the shadow of the tall policeman. He gave her a nervous thumbs-up and she waved him a silly cherrio.

  ‘You come with me,’ growled McEwan, and stomped up the stairs, taking her back to the narrow corridor.

  The high midday sun shone in through the miserly window in the interview room, hitting the wall inches above the tape-recorder in a glowing yellow smear. A gangly young officer was sitting at the table waiting for them. He smiled up at Joe McEwan as he came into the room. McEwan grunted back. Disconcerted by McEwan’s filthy mood, the young officer turned shyly and introduced himself to Maureen. He spoke so quietly that she couldn’t make out his name. It sounded like Something McMummb. His hair was mousy brown and he had a matching mousy brown mole on his left cheek. Three coarse hairs stuck out of it like the legs on a tiny milking stool. He was dressed in a brand new suit.

  Maureen took her seat at the other side of the table, away from the door. McEwan sat down and took a slim leather bound notebook out of his pocket, placed it on the table and slid a skinny pencil out of the spine. He turned on the tape-recorder and leaned into it, telling it who was present this time. She listened for McMummb’s name but McEwan’s intonation dipped at the end of the sentence and she was left none the wiser.

  ‘Did you check the heating in the house?’ she asked. McEwan lifted his notebook and began to look through it. ‘The heating switch was on a timer,’ he said. ‘Yeah, but it wasn’t set for—’

  McEwan interrupted her. ‘Were you drunk when you came home last night, Miss O’Donnell?’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ she said, surprised by his adversarial tone.

  ‘You don’t seem very sure now. You were sure this morning when you said you didn’t see the body because you went straight to bed. Were you or weren’t you drunk?’

  ‘What has me being drunk got to do with the central heating?’

  ‘Is it possible that you came home and put it on?’

  ‘I know I didn’t,’ she said meekly.

  He ignored her and wrote something in his pad. She decided to try again. ‘When I come home drunk I’ve got better things to do than fiddle about with the heating.’ ‘Like what?’

  ‘I dunno.’ She smiled, trying to get them on to a friendly footing. ‘Like pass out.’

  McEwan looked at her, thinly masking his disapproval. ‘You were that drunk, were you?’ he asked.

  They weren’t going to have a friendly conversation, she could tell that now. McEwan leaned his arms on the table and meshed his fingers together. He looked her in the eye as he worked the tip of his tongue into his wisdom tooth. ‘You said Douglas worked at the Rainbow Clinic,’ he said suddenly. Was he your therapist?’

  ‘No,’ said Maureen, emphatically, defensive at the implied slight on Douglas’s honour. ‘Never.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, a petulant edge to his voice, ‘your mother said you have received psychiatric treatment in the past.’

  ‘Um, yeah,’ said Maureen, uncomfortably. She knew he was launching straight into the psychiatric questions to disarm her and it was working. Most people with no experience of mental illness don’t see it as part of a continuum, it’s them and us, the nutters and the whole people. ‘I was in the Northern for five months in nineteen ninety-one,’ she said, ‘and I’ve seen a psychiatrist. Not for anything special, really, just in case.’

  McEwan wouldn’t speak or break eye contact. He was much better at it than Inness. Maureen focused on the bridge of his nose.

  ‘In case what?’ asked McEwan finally.

  ‘I had a breakdown. That’s why I was in the Northern. The psychiatrist was just a follow-up thing, in case it happened again. Not that it’s likely . . . just in case . . . you know.’

  ‘No, I don’t know,’ said McEwan unpleasantly. ‘What were you being treated for?’

  Maureen looked at them. Something McMummb seemed impressionable, probably just out of training. He watched McEwan intently, his face reacting to Maureen’s answers as if he were conducting the interview himself, glancing at McEwan every so often, desperate for some sign of approval. And McEwan sat there between them, his hands clasped together, his face smug and confident, a fight looking for a venue. Fuck him, she thought, if he's so fucking smart he can find out for himself. ‘Depression,’ she said. It wasn’t a lie exactly, it was more of a half-truth, and holding information back from him made her feel empowered and confident, as if it was still her life even if McEwan was legally entitled to rake through it. She put her hands on the table, playing with an old bus ticket she had found in the pocket of Jim Maliano’s jogging trousers. ‘And who is your current psychiatrist?’

  ‘I don't have one,’ she said, enjoying the sense of control. McMummb looked surprised.

  ‘Your mother said you had a psychiatrist,’ said McEwan.

  ‘My mother drinks too much too often. She’s in tune with the moon a lot of the time.’

  A hint of a smile floated across McEwan’s face. ‘How would you know if you were having a breakdown?’

  ‘I’m not having one, if that’s what you meant. When depressives have a breakdown it’s pretty obvious. We can’t function or get ourselves out of the house. If I was having a breakdown you’d be able to tell.’

  McEwan looked at McMummb, who must have done a two-day course in psychology. He nodded his confirmation and McEwan turned back to her. McMummb sat back and blushed with delight at McEwan’s deference.

  ‘So,’ said McEwan, oblivious to his protégé’s glee, ‘you said Douglas worked at the Rainbow Clinic?’ ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve never been there?’

  ‘I went a couple of times to meet him but never as a patient.’

  She had been to the Rainbow to see Angus, Douglas’s colleague, for two sessions before being referred on to Louisa at the Albert but she knew the lie would hold up. When she first came out of the Northern they had referred her to an arse of a psychiatrist at a small clinic in the Great Western Road. He sat across a desk from her, looking unhappy and bored as he asked her leading questions about th
e most painful events in her life. He took the pause-and-prompt technique too far, refusing to accept that it wouldn’t work with Maureen. They spent most of their sessions staring at each other in a gloomy, adversarial silence. Maureen began to phone other clinics, looking for someone else.

  She found the Rainbow’s number in the Yellow Pages. The clinic ran an outreach scheme for victims of sexual abuse and they let the patients use an assumed name if they wanted to. Maureen had called herself Helen and no one but Douglas knew her real name. The only way Joe McEwan could find out she had been to the Rainbow was from Louisa Wishart at the Albert.

  Maureen got talking to Shirley, the receptionist at the Rainbow, the first time she went there and Shirley introduced Douglas to her when he came into the waiting room to check his appointment times. Maureen didn't give it a second thought. She was four months out of hospital and was afraid she was losing it again. Her mind was full of other stuff. After her last session with Angus Farrell she was standing at a bus stop across the road from the clinic when Douglas stopped his car and offered her a lift back to town. She was upset, stuck in the middle of nowhere with an hour to wait for the next bus. They got talking in the car and went for a drink. She topped herself up with triples while he was in the toilet. She woke up at ten past four in the morning, her face in a puddle of hot moonlight, just in time to see Douglas struggling into his trousers at the end of her bed.

  ‘Now,’ said McEwan, reaching down to a brown cardboard file box at the side of his chair and lifting a clear polythene bag onto the table. ‘Is this yours?’

  The yellow plastic cagoul was folded neatly inside the open-ended bag. Most of the blood had been washed off but the white drawstring on the hood was stained an uneven pink. A long number was typed onto an envelope address label and stuck on the corner of the bag. McEwan muttered something into the tape-recorder.

  She didn’t want to touch it – she didn’t even want to touch the bag. She took her hands off the table, resting them on her lap. ‘Not mine,’ she said.