by Denise Mina
‘Tops, Shirley.’
Shirley relaxed, resting her back against the wall in the dimly lit corridor.
‘Okay,’ said Maureen.‘First thing, how did the police find out I was here for treatment? I didn’t tell them.’
Shirley paused, forming her answer cautiously.‘All I know is that the police phoned security early on Sunday morning and got them to let them into the offices.’
‘Did they know what they were looking for?’
‘Yeah, they logged into the system, called up the right file and printed it out. I checked. It was the only file they called up.’
‘What would the file be called?’
‘Name and date.’
‘Would it have been filed under Helen?’
‘Yes.’
‘They couldn’t have used a different field to call it up?’
‘No, it’s the old DOS system. Those are the only fields we use. We were sold the system before any of us knew what it was like.’
‘So they not only knew I’d been here, they knew what name I used when I was here?’ ‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t tell a soul what name I’d used,’ said Maureen, putting her ID cards back into her wallet.‘What sort of information would be on that file? Would it have notes from the therapy sessions?’
‘No,’ Shirley said, definitely.‘It’s just an admin file. It’s only got the appointment times, who saw you, where you went, things like that.’
‘How could they know I was here, Shirley?’
‘I assumed that someone working here had seen the picture in the paper, remembered the girl’s face and telephoned them but I suppose it couldn’t be the case if you’re the Maureen they’re talking about.’ ‘I am, Shirley, honestly.’
‘Well, that makes more sense,’ said Shirley.‘I couldn’t understand how the girl in the picture could have been attending the clinic last January without me meeting her.’
‘Yeah, well, she wasn’t.’
‘Was she ever here?’
‘No, never been anywhere near.’ Maureen picked her lip. Someone already knew her but they were pretending they’d recognized her picture in the paper.
‘I heard that someone was having an affair with a patient,’ Shirley murmured.
‘Who told you that?’ said Maureen, feeling embarrassed, as if she had disgraced Douglas.
‘One of the cleaning staff.’
‘Right,’ said Maureen, anxious to move the conversation on.
‘Said she walked in on them. They were at it.’ Shirley suddenly noticed how uncomfortable she was making Maureen. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘it’s not important now, I suppose. I just thought it was someone else.’
Maureen was incredulous.‘They were fucking in the clinic?’ she said.‘She walked into them in the clinic?’
Shirley bit her thumb and thought about it.‘I thought her name was Iona but that could have been a false name.’
‘That wasn’t me.’ Maureen snorted.
Shirley stiffened and stood up straight.‘Actually, I don’t really know who you are, I don’t want to talk about this any more.’
‘Okay, whatever,’ said Maureen, surprised that Shirley wasn’t more shocked by the story.‘Um, how many people work here?’
Shirley thought for a minute.‘About fifty-ish, including job shares and cleaning staff.’ ‘God,fifty people?’
‘Yeah. Could be more actually, I’m just guessing.’
‘Another thing,’ said Maureen.‘The police seem to think that I saw Douglas instead of Angus. Do you know how they could have got that idea?’
‘Well, they questioned nearly everyone here. To be honest, everyone was looking at the paper in the staff room and remembering the girl in the picture. One of the nurses said she’d tried to hit her once.’
Maureen smiled.‘So, basically, God alone knows what they’ve been told.’ ‘Basically, yes.’
‘Surely it would say I saw Angus on my file?’
‘Well, yes, it would, now you mention it. I don’t know how they got that idea.’
‘And would it say who I was referred to in the file?’
‘Yes, it would.’
‘Cheers, Shirley, you’ve been a great help.’
‘Would you go in and see Angus? He’s been hit terribly hard by this. He’d be delighted to see you. You could take his coffee in to him.’
‘He’d be delighted to see me now that I'm involved in a murder investigation?’
‘Helen, you left here and never came back or ended up across the road in Levanglen. As far as we’re concerned you’re a success.’
They went back into the waiting room. The combat girl looked up.‘Won't be long now,’ Shirley said to her.‘The doctor’s just finishing off his lunch.’ She stirred three sugars and a drop of cream into one of the mugs of coffee and handed it to Maureen.‘I take it you can remember where the office is?’ ‘Sure.’
Maureen walked down the corridor, passing Douglas’s door and feeling slightly guilty, as if he might step out any minute and give her trouble for coming back here. She knocked on Angus’s door and he called for her to come in.‘Hello,’ he said, looking at her. He didn’t seem to know her. He stood up and came over to greet her.‘I haven’t seen you for a while,’ he said,fishing for clues, ‘have I?’
Maureen said he hadn’t.
The room was dark and comfortable and stank of fags. It should have been bright but was kept in perpetual dawn by the pall of smoke and the half-closed vertical blinds. Against the near wall stood two leather armchairs with high backs, a rickety coffee table sat between them with an ashtray and a box of tissues on it. Behind the furthest armchair stood a six-foot rubber plant.
Angus was in his mid-forties. His hair was greying and receding pleasantly, just enough to make him look a little weatherbeaten. He dressed like a down-at-heel laird, in worn tweed jackets and balding corduroys. He chain-smoked and his love of tobacco had created an immediate bond between them. During their sessions they’d sat in the armchairs, leaning forward, huddled together, puffing hard, as Maureen talked him through the worst of her childhood, giving one another lights and passing the ashtray to and fro. Angus held his fag between his teeth, pushed his steel framed glasses back up his nose and smiled a confused, expectant little smile, waiting for her to introduce herself. Maureen grinned and handed him the mug of coffee. ‘Shirley asked me to give you this.’
He took the mug and put it down on the coffee table, turning back to her and shaking her hand.
The tall rubber plant had been flourishing when she had been here before but its leaves were speckled with ominous crisp brown patches.‘Your lovely plant’s not well,’ she said. ‘Oh, I know, I can’t think what’s wrong with it. I’ve tried pruning it back and everything. I thought it might be the cigarette smoke but I wash it once a month. I suppose they just die sometimes.’ He stroked one of the healthy leaves with his fore finger and suddenly looked up her.‘Helen!’ he said.
She laughed.‘You couldn’t place me there for a minute, could you?’
‘No, no, I couldn’t but I remember you now!’ He put out his fag in the ashtray and held her hand in both of his, shaking it warmly.‘Helen, how are you?’ ‘Not bad.’ She smiled.
‘You look fantastic. Hey, look, sit down, sit down.’ He bustled her backwards into one of the armchairs.‘I’m embarrassed, I wouldn’t have forgotten any other time but just now . . . Did you hear about Mr Brady from across the hall?’
‘He was murdered.’
‘He was.’
She could see baby tears nestling on the rims of his eyes. He sat down and lit another fag, inhaling deeply.‘It’s been a nightmare,’ he said softly. ‘Were you close?’
He nodded.‘We’ve known each other for years and years. It’s unthinkable. Even for his clients . . . The last thing the long-term patients need is to
have to go over their case histories to a locum . . . We’re trying to cover them ourselves but we’re not exactly at our operational best . . . None of us can take it in.’ He smiled unhappily.‘We had to cancel the grief-counselling group Dougie used to take. We didn’t want to tell them what had happened but we had to.’
He saw that her hands were empty and pushed his packet of cigarettes across the table. She took one out and looked up as she was lighting it. Angus was watching her.‘You see,’ he smiled,‘I do remember you.’
‘Actually, that's why I'm here. Because of Douglas.’ He looked at her, not quite understanding.
‘My name isn’t Helen. That was an assumed name I used for coming here. My real name is Maureen O’Donnell. Does that mean anything to you?’
‘God’s sakes, I read the papers. But there was a photograph.’
‘Yeah, it’s a girl I work with. They took a picture of the wrong person.’
He gave a wry smile.‘It’s not like the papers to get things wrong, is it?’
‘I didn’t know they were that incompetent.’
‘They’ve been harassing the staff and the clients,’ he said indignantly.‘The bloody clients.’ ‘They’re wild, aren’t they?’
‘So, you’re Maureen. I wanted to see you about this affair you were having with Douglas. It was highly unethical of him, it was very wrong. I wanted you to know that.’
‘Well, it was kind of mutual, really.’
‘Did you meet here?’
She told him the story about waiting at the bus stop and Douglas picking her up, leaving out the vigorous sex and skewing the story so that Douglas seemed guilt-free.
Angus shook his head.‘No, you were vulnerable. We had a duty to care for you and Douglas breached that.’ He squeezed her hand.‘It was wrong.’
She could smell the smoke on his breath. He let go of her hand and leaned back.‘They found him in your house then?’ he said.‘How are you coping?’ ‘I’m invincible since I saw you.’
He blushed a little and tapped his fag.‘No one’s invincible to the shock of something like this,’ he said sadly.‘Are you still seeing Louisa Wishart at the Albert?’ ‘Yeah.’
‘She treating you well? Can you talk to her?’ Maureen nodded.‘Fine,fine. Listen, Angus, can I ask you something?’ ‘Fire away.’
‘The police seem to think that Douglas was my therapist. Do you know why they might think that?’
‘Aye,’ he said.‘They asked whether you were my patient but I didn’t recognize the picture from the paper so I said you weren’t. The files aren’t always complete and they’re kept on computer now so we can’t even go by the handwriting on the notes the way we used to. I hope you told them it was me.’
‘No, I didn’t but I will.’
‘Good. That’ll make a difference to the way Douglas is remembered.’
‘Angus, do you have any idea who could have done this?’
‘Do you know something,’ he said, sighing heavily as his eyes brimmed over,‘I haven’t got the first fucking idea who’d do this.’ She’d never heard him swear properly before. He looked at her and paused.
‘Do you know who did it?’ His voice was higher than usual: it sounded like an accusation. ‘I’ve no idea either,’ she said quietly.
They finished their cigarettes quickly and in silence. Maureen wished she hadn’t come here.
I’ll have to get on,’ said Angus.‘I have a patient coming in ten minutes and I haven’t been over her notes yet.’
He stood up, moved to the door and opened it for her. ‘Any time you want to come and see us again phone Shirley, okay?’
She wanted to shout at him or cry or something but she couldn’t think of anything to say. As she slipped past him into the corridor she muttered to him,‘I didn't do it, Angus.’
‘I know,’ he said, unconvincingly.‘I didn’t mean that.’ He stepped back into his office and shut the door, leaving her alone in the corridor.
The bus stop to the town was directly across the dual carriageway facing the main hospital gates and the long, high wall. Concrete blocks of flats loomed at the top of a grass embankment behind it. It was the bus stop Douglas had picked her up from on the first night they had slept together. A sweet old lady in full makeup was waiting in the shelter. She caught Maureen’s eye when she came in and smiled pleasantly.‘Oh, this rain,’ she said.
‘Aye,’ said Maureen, hoping it wasn’t going to lead to a full-blown conversation.‘’S miserable.’
The dual carriageway was deserted in front of them. A figure appeared across the road at the gates of the hospital, a fat, bespectacled woman with short, dirty, flat hair. Her blue plastic jacket flapped open showing a glittery gold halter-neck top worn without a bra. She needed one. Her large breasts washed fluidly around her middle. She was trying to get across the road but was stuck at ‘look left, look right’.
Maureen stepped out of the shelter and called to her. ‘Suicide, come on!’
Suicide Tanya stared across at her.
‘Come over the road now,’ shouted Maureen.
Tanya walked halfway across and began to look left and right again.
‘It’s clear, Tanya, you can come over.’
Tanya came to life, belted across the road and stopped on the grass verge behind the bus stop. She turned, looked at Maureen through her rain-speckled glasses and pointed a tobacco-stained finger an inch away from her nose.‘I know you,’ she shouted.‘Helen!’
Suicide Tanya was an ageless, grizzled woman with, as her nickname suggested, a habit of attempting suicide. She was known as Suicide Tanya all over the city: all the emergency services knew her, or of her. She was forever being dragged out of the Clyde at low tide, having her stomach pumped clean of bizarre substances and being made to get off the railway tracks at main-line stations. They met in the yellow waiting room at the Rainbow. Maureen was in a state on her second visit to the clinic. She had been having panic attacks all morning, had misread her watch and turned up an hour early. Tanya came in and sat next to her, shouting her life story. She was unhappy and kept doing bad things so they gave her pills that made her simple and fat but she preferred it that way because they can’t arrest you for being fat, Tanya. It was one of her many strange habits of speech: she repeated things other people had said to her without having the wit to plagiarize properly and change the wording or the intonation. She had to come to the Rainbow once a week to see Douglas and get her medication from the psychiatric nurse– she couldn’t be trusted with more than a week’s supply at a time.
She huddled into the shelter and spoke to the waiting lady.‘I couldn’t see right,’ she shouted,‘because my glasses got rain on them.’
The lady realized that Tanya was a bit mental–it wouldn’t have taken a hardened professional to spot it: she had a booming voice and the concentration span of a spliffed gold fish. The lady turned away and walked, as if casually, out of the shelter to stand in the drizzling rain.
‘Did you see that?’ shouted Suicide, pointing at the nervous woman through the glass.‘Snobby!’
‘Just leave it, Suicide,’ said Maureen.
‘You rude cunt!’
‘Don’t shout at her, she might be very shy.’ Tanya processed the idea for a minute.‘Hello. Are you very shy?’
Maureen tugged at her, sleeve.‘Don’t, now, Tanya. Leave it, eh?’
‘It’s a shame if she is shy. She’ll get lonely. You have to make your own fun, ya fat mug, ye.’
The bus into town pulled up out of nowhere. Tanya got on and showed her pass to the driver, explaining that she got a pass because she didn’t keep well. The driver said he could see that and she was to go and sit down. The lady from the bus stop declined the offer when Maureen stepped back to let her on first. She waited until they were seated and chose a place as far away from Tanya as possible.
Tanya spotted
the lady as the bus pulled away.‘She’s her from the bus stop.’
‘Aye, right enough, Suicide.’
‘Hello!’
‘Aye, leave it now, Tanya. You’ve already said hello.’
‘Have I?’
‘Aye.’
‘Sorry!’
The lady looked out of the window, her neck stiff with alarm. Tanya arranged herself next to Maureen, straightening the rumples out of the gold lame top, pulling it over her flat breastbone and down over the large breasts sitting on the roll of her belly. She scratched at some food stuck on the front.
‘I like your top, Suicide. Where did you get it?’
‘In a shop. Douglas is dead,’ she said.
‘I know.’
‘His mum is an MP.’
‘MEP.’
‘Yes, and I couldn’t see him.’
‘When you went for your appointment?’
‘Yes. He was gone.’
‘What time is your appointment?’
‘Tuesday at eleven, Tuesday at eleven, new time, try to remember.’
‘What time was it last week?’
‘It’s always the same because I can’t remember.’
‘Yeah, I know, but what was the old time, before the new time?’
‘Wednesday at one, Wednesday at one.’
‘So you didn’t get to see him last week, then?’
‘Yes. The police said it was because he was dead. I was there for ages because Douglas didn’t come.’
‘That’s a shame, Tanya.’
‘My neighbours banged on the wall all weekend and I needed to tell him that.’
‘That’s a shame. Did you get to tell someone?’
‘I told the police. They don’t listen. They asked me about Douglas but they don’t listen.’ ‘How don’t they listen?’
‘They just don’t. They think I’m daft. He said thank you but I saw him laughing at me. He had a moustache.’ ‘I know that policeman. He was rude to me too.’