by Denise Mina
Leslie made some coffee and listened as Maureen told her everything that had happened.
Two hours had passed and they were both tired. Leslie poured them a glass of beer each and heated up a pot of stew made with slices of onion and fifty-pence-shaped carrots.
‘It’s not like you to cook, Leslie,’ said Maureen, buttering four slices of bread and putting them on a plate.
‘Mrs Gallagher across the close made it.’
‘And how did you get it? Did ye steal it from her?’
‘No,’ said Leslie,‘she brought it across. She always does that, makes too much and gives ye some.’
‘Una does that sometimes, when she bakes.’
‘How is Una? Up the duff yet?’
‘No, it’s a sin. She was over the other day. Mum’s telling everyone I’m crazy. She said I might have killed Douglas and not remembered.’
Leslie ladled the stew into bowls.‘I think you should stay the fuck away from her. No offence, I know she’s your mum and everything but she’s—’
‘I know, Leslie, you don’t have to say it out loud.’
‘You should, though.’
‘I know, but she’s the only parent I’ve got and you need at least one.’
It was a fine night and Leslie liked eating hot food in the open air so they put their jackets on and took the stew out onto the veranda, sitting in the dark on old stained deckchairs, knee deep in a forest of dead plants. The stew was thick and salty. The veranda overlooked a patch of wasteground with irregularly undulating hillocks, bald and strewn with litter. Children were shouting and chasing each other around, apparently without purpose, as a flamingo pink sunset bled into the navy blue night.
Maureen finished her stew. The wasteground was emptying, most of the children going home to their tea. Three or four hung around, silhouetted against the dying light, kicking at the ground and talking to each other. She huddled inside her big overcoat, wrapping her hands around the glass of beer as though it would warm her, and lit a cigarette. ‘What are you going to do about the shelter then, if the appeal fails?’
Leslie dunked a folded slice of buttered bread in the hot gravy in her bowl.‘I have not one fucking clue,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a meeting with the subcommittee next week. We should’ve got a lawyer in the first place but the action committee were against it, said we’d save a week’s running money if we did it ourselves. What are you going to do about Douglas?’
‘I dunno either,’ said Maureen.‘The police don’t seem very sharp. They totally missed Suicide Tanya and the photograph in the paper. They must have missed other stuff too, things I didn’t stumble across.’
‘Yeah,’ said Leslie, combing through the thick gravy with her fork, looking for the meat.‘I bet they did.’
Maureen sipped her beer and watched Leslie biting a lump of meat off her fork.‘Do you think I should leave it to the police?’
Leslie chewed a space in her mouth.‘No, I don’t. They’ll charge you and if they don’t get you they’ll get Liam.’ ‘That’s what I think.’
Leslie swallowed.‘The police don’t have an infinite amount of time to spend on anything. They just go with the most obvious answer. You’re both so dodgy-looking. Think about it, the two people who could get into the house. You’ve got a psychiatric history which you’ve already lied about, you were his mistress—’ ‘I wasn’t his mistress.’
‘That’s what they’ll call it and they probably can’t conceive of a woman who doesn’t want to get her man and keep him. And Liam, heavy guy, dealer, public enemy number one, wee sister seeing married older guy. Gets protective and kills him.’
Maureen slumped in her deck chair.‘They’d planted footprints with my slippers and they did something in a cupboard. It’s the cupboard Liam found me in before he took me to hospital.’
‘In the same cupboard?’
‘Yeah, same one.’
‘Who the fuck knew that? I didn’t even know that.’
‘No one did. Just me and Liam.’
‘Which means one of you told someone else. Did Douglas know? Could he have told someone?’
‘Not that I remember. Christ, I’m really fucked. Whoever did this really knew how to pick a winner.’
Leslie wiped her plate clean with a slice of bread.‘He’s not daft, is he? You need to find him in case he finds you first. You should carry something in your bag to protect yourself.’
‘What, like a knife?’
‘Oh, for Christ sakes, no. The police could arrest you if they found it.’ She lit a cigarette.‘Hair-spray, you can spray it in his eyes, or one of those metal combs, you know, the ones with the pointed ends. I’ve got one.’
She collected the dirty plates and clambered over Maureen’s legs to get into the house. When she came back she had the comb with her. She handed it to Maureen. It was stainless steel with a long tapered handle ending in a rounded point.‘Once you’ve sharpened that end rub it with oil to make all the metal the same colour.’ Maureen took it.‘I think I'd freeze.’
‘No, you won’t,’ said Leslie.‘Just remember what he did to Douglas. He’s a vicious bastard so don’t flinch and don’t wait for him to hurt you first.’ She climbed back over Maureen’s legs, the tip of her cigarette leaving a glowing crimson trace against the dark sky, and sat down in her deck chair.
‘I don't understand why they’d plant footsteps with my shoes and maybe even fix the timer but do it while I was at work.’
‘Yeah. Maybe it was just a mistake.’
‘It’s a bit of a big mistake.’
‘Yeah, that doesn’t mean it isn’t one. Remember Benny told us that story about the gangsters who killed the guy in the woods? They burnt the face off to stop him being identified, cut off his hands and took a hammer to his teeth. When the police found him the guy had his rent book in his back pocket. Remember that?’
The night and the punch-line floated through Maureen’s memory like a warm breeze. It was Benny’s first AA birthday and they didn’t know how to help him celebrate. They couldn’t take him to a bar. It was in the height of the sticky summer and they drove up to Loch Lomond with the roof down on Liam’s Herald. The sun was setting and Leslie built a fire by the water as the sharp night came on. They ate Marks and Spencer’s sandwiches, drank ginger and told their best stories as giant, glistening dragon flies hummed and swooped between them.
‘I was thinking about the three phone calls to my work. Liz doesn’t know Douglas’s voice particularly well. It might’ve been them trying to see if I was there.’
‘And she said you weren’t there?’
‘Yeah. But, then, just because I wasn’t there doesn’t mean I wasn’t anywhere that would give me an alibi.’
‘Yeah.’ Leslie drew on her fag and looked out over the wasteground, surveying her land.‘Like I said, the guy could have made a number of daft mistakes. Why do they all think he was giving you money?’
‘Some money’s gone missing, I think, and they’re assuming he gave it to me.’
Maureen sat forward in the deck chair and drew deeply on her fag, flicking the ash over the edge of the veranda. Leslie leaned over and pulled her back into the chair.
‘Don’t do that,’ she said.‘Sometimes the weans hide under here.’ ‘Why?’
‘’Cause they can't go home.’
‘Sorry.’
‘’S all right. So why’s your mum talking about Michael?’
‘Fuck,’ said Maureen slowly, scratching her scalp hard enough to hurt.‘I don't know, I don’t want to think about what Winnie’s been up to. That makes me more nervous than the fucking murder.’
‘Fair enough, doll,’ said Leslie, patting her on the knee.
‘We’ll not talk about that. I’m freezing.’
Maureen stood up, eager to change the conversation.‘I’ll get the whisky out, then, yeah?’ ‘Aye.’
She went into the kitchen and took the bottle from under the sink. None of Leslie’s glasses matched. Maureen lifted a stolen half-pint glass and a plastic Barbie Doll tumbler from the draining board. She poured four fingers into the half-pint and swallowed it in two gulps, the warm whisky aftershock floating up her nose. Back out on the veranda she gave Leslie the Barbie glass and poured a generous measure.‘There you are, in your favourite glass as well.’
‘Great, Mauri. I hope you’ll be getting me another one for my birthday this year.’
‘By the time ye retire I promise you’ll have the whole dinner set.’
They settled down in the deckchairs, sipping their whisky and smoking cigarettes.‘I’m drinking all the time,’ said Maureen.
‘I don't think alcohol abuse is a bad way to cope with short-term traumas.’
Maureen laughed with surprise.‘That’s the worst advice you’ve ever given me.’
Leslie thought about it.‘Oh, well, fuck it, then.’ The kitchen gulp hit Maureen’s head and she felt a wave of purposeful clarity coming on.‘I don't want to sit about holding a comb and waiting for them to come for me. How would you go about finding the person who did this?’ Leslie puffed the last of her fag and thought about it. ‘You’re doing all right so far,’ she said.‘It’s just a logic problem.’
‘But suppose their behaviour isn’t logical. If the murderer’s mental it isn’t a logic problem, is it?’
Leslie dropped her cigarette into a space between the dead plants and stepped on it, twisting it with her foot, scattering fiery red sparkles among the plant pots.‘He can’t be a maniac, it’s all too carefully organized. He brought the rope and the cagoul, he got in and out of the flat without being seen, all that stuff. It's not the work of a crazed mind, is it?’
‘No, I suppose, but that might mean they’re really crazy.’
‘Uff.’ Leslie sat forward.‘People talk about murder as if it’s nothing to do with anything else that happens in the world. It’s just part of the big picture. Sometimes killing someone is rational, sometimes it’s the most rational thing to do. What about all the crazy people you’ve met, were they all capable of murder?’
Maureen thought her way around her ward-mates in the George III beds in the Northern.‘Naw,’ she said.‘Most of them weren’t capable of anything very much.’
‘I’ve met more sane people who were capable of murder than nutters.’ Leslie downed the whisky in her glass and poured herself some more.‘Doing a shitty thing doesn’t make you mental, it just makes you a shit, and Douglas wouldn’t have opened the door to a psychotic nutter, would he?’
‘Well,I can't see Douglas answering my door and letting anyone in. He shouldn’t have been there in the first place. He wouldn’t even answer my phone when he was alone in the house.’ Maureen sat forward, deeply glad to be sure of something.‘I bet you that’s what happened. They came in together. They must have.’
‘So who would he bring to your house?’ Maureen thought about it.‘Uh, no one actually.’ ‘If he wouldn’t bring anyone to your house,’ said Leslie, ‘someone else might have brought him to the house. They might have threatened him somewhere and made him take them to your house.’ ‘Right.’
‘See?’ said Leslie.‘It is a logic problem. Why wouldn't he answer the phone?’
‘I dunno, he was just, sort of . . . secretive, you know.’
‘Yeah, sort of married?’ Maureen rubbed her neck uncomfortably.
‘Anyway,’ said Leslie,‘I still think this was a rational action by a rational man. We can work it out.’
‘But I don’t know half of the facts, though. I don't even know what was in the cupboard.’
‘Then we’ll have to find out somehow,’ said Leslie, with the reassuring certainty she brought to everything she did. Maureen ran her fingers hard through her hair.‘I’m frightened, Leslie.’
‘He’s just a guy, Maureen.’
‘It might be a woman, right enough.’
‘Nah,’ said Leslie.‘Women don’t do things like that. It’s men who do that sort of shitty, vicious stuff. With us it’s about important things like love and kids and not getting your face kicked in. With them it’s for big motors, younger birds or a bit of a tug.’
‘It might be about love or kids, we don’t know. The woman at the Rainbow said someone was fucking a patient in one of the offices.’ ‘In an office?’
‘Yeah. She didn’t even seem shocked about it. She thought it was me.’
‘Could he be having an affair with someone else at the same time?’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Maureen.‘We hadn’t shagged each other for weeks.’ ‘That’s it, then. God, men are pigs.’
‘Anyway,’ said Maureen,‘I don't think men and women kill for different reasons. Logically, it could have been a woman who murdered Douglas.’
Leslie pulled her collar up around her neck.‘But I bet you it wasn’t,’ she muttered.
They defied the cold and stayed on the veranda until midnight, kicking the facts backwards and forwards, huddled in their coats, watching their smokey breath in front of them.
14
Siobhain
Leslie shook Maureen out of a heavy sleep at nine. Her shift at the shelter started at ten and Maureen would need to get up now if she wanted a lift back into town.
They pulled into a lane next to the shelter. The reserve funding was running out rapidly now and the house looked shoddy in comparison to its neighbours. It stood out in the elegant street of terraced houses like a meatball in caviar. Leslie let Maureen in and pointed her to the pay phone in the front hall.
She dialled the number for the Dennistoun day centre and asked the receptionist if Tanya was there. Without replying to her question the receptionist lowered the phone and spoke to someone.‘Hello?’ said Maureen, conscious that her money was running out and she didn’t have any more change.‘Hello?’
‘Yeah?’ said the bored receptionist.
‘I asked if Tanya was there.’
‘She’s here.’
The pips went and Maureen put down the phone without bothering to thank her.
The walk only took twenty minutes but it felt like an hour. One week ago none of this had happened and Douglas was still alive, smooching about the city, lying to his wife, listening kindly to his patients and making silly jokes.
She thought about the two of them tumbling over each other in bed. Douglas had a smell about him, the smell of many women past. At first she didn’t notice particularly but gradually she began to see the unfocused look in his eyes when he spoke about his feelings for her, like an invisible shutter coming down. His lines were empty and over rehearsed. Latterly, when they had sex, she longed for the ghosts of the other women to come and keep her company because Douglas was so far away.
She remembered an evening a month ago: she had asked him calmly why he didn’t want her to touch him any more. He wouldn’t answer. She got more and more angry and ended up shouting at him to fuck off back to Elsbeth. He left the house and came back four hours later, as drunk as she had ever seen him, declaring his love for her with slurred hyperbole. If he had left it for a little longer her annoyance might have subsided but it hadn’t. All she could think was what an arse he was, how he was looking for comfort and not for her. As he stroked her face softly with his big hands, paying attention to every line, every detail as though mesmerized, she noticed that his fingers smelt of fags and piss. She plied him with drink until he fell asleep. She watched him as he lay snorting and twitching in her bed and realized that she’d be disappointed if she spent much more of her life with him.
After that night they no longer argued and Maureen avoided mentioning Elsbeth. Douglas misread it as a good sign: he thought it meant they were getting on better, but Maureen was storing her grievances for a time when she was ready to be without him.
The Dennistoun
day centre was in a small converted kirk built before the Second World War in a narrow space between two tenements. The front was a squat rectangle with a triptych of arched windows. An acute triangular roof sat on top like a party hat. The proportions and shape of the façade were echoed in the little doorway, sitting on the side like an afterthought. Inside, the floor and ceiling had been covered in yellow pine, and the sloping roof had been inset with windows, making it bright and cheerful. Behind the high reception desk sat a miserable young woman.
Maureen walked up to her. She didn’t move. Maureen drummed her fingers on the desk. The girl inhaled a ‘tut’. ‘Yeah?’ she said.
‘Oh dear,’ said Maureen, sympathetically.‘You’re not having a very good day, are you?’
The girl tutted again.‘I don't even know what you’re talking about,’ she said obnoxiously.
‘Please yourself,’ said Maureen, tutting back.‘Tanya about?’
‘Tanya who?’ said the girl, pulling a form out of a half open drawer and picking up a pencil.
Forms mean time and Maureen couldn’t be arsed. She rubbed her nose.‘Toilets?’ she said.
The girl lifted her hand slowly and pointed to the signboards hanging overhead.
‘Thank you very much,’ said Maureen, warmly.‘But for you I might have got lost in this labyrinth.’ She followed the signs into the day room. A middle-aged Down's syndrome man with dark panda circles around his eyes was standing in a doorway smoking a fag. He was listening to a football match on a red plastic tranny pressed tightly against his ear. She asked for Suicide Tanya. He turned round quickly, nearly scratching her face with the retractable aerial, and pointed to the television room.
The chairs were plastic in case of incontinence, and a thick, greasy cloud of smoke sat an inch above the residents’ heads, blocking out the natural light from the skylights. The chairs radiated around a loud television against the back wall. A small bare kitchenette had been built just inside the door.
Suicide Tanya spotted her from across the room. She stood up and screamed her hellos. No one paid any attention. She beckoned Maureen over. You sit with me and we can watch the telly. This is Siobhain.’