Garnethill

by Denise Mina

  ‘Hello, could I speak to Jill McLaughlin, please?’

  ‘Who’re ye?’ said the tiny voice.

  It might have been habit or the child’s voice but she didn’t lie. ‘I’m Maureen O’Donnell,’ she said.

  The little voice thought about it for a moment before shouting, ‘Mummy, Mummy, it’s a lady.’

  She could hear the woman at the other end talking the child gruffly away from the phone. ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘Am I talking to Jill McLaughlin?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Can I ask you, Ms McLaughlin, are you a nurse?’

  ‘Not now,’ she said bluntly.

  If Jill McLaughlin had left the caring profession she’d done it a big favour.

  ‘Were you a nurse?’ asked Maureen.

  ‘Auxiliary.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I was a care assistant,’ she said. She broke off to tell the child to stop it. Maureen heard a slap and the child started to cry.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry to bother you, I can hear you’ve got your hands full there.’ ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘Are you the Nurse McLaughlin who worked in George I ward at the Northern?’

  McLaughlin paused. Maureen could hear her sucking on a fag. ‘Who is this?’ she said suspiciously, exhaling noisily into the receiver. ‘Are you with the papers?’ ‘No, no,’ said Maureen. ‘I’m not.’

  The child was wailing in the background. ‘You are so with the papers.’

  ‘No, honest, I’m not.’

  ‘Who are you, then?’

  ‘I’m Maureen O’Donnell—’

  ‘I’ve seen you in the paper,’ growled McLaughlin viciously. ‘I seen you.’

  There was a click on the line and Maureen found herself listening to the dial tone.

  Siobhain’s list of women would be harder to trace because they were Highland clan names, and the listings were long for all of them. Siobhain had written ‘Bearsden’ in brackets next to Yvonne Urquhart. It was the name of an upper-class suburb to the north-west of the city. Maureen looked in the phone book for the Urquharts listed with Bearsden codes. There were only three. When she dialled the second number she got Yvonne Urquhart’s sister. She sounded quite old and had an anxious, tremulous voice. ‘My sister Yvonne has moved to Daniel House out by Whiteinch,’ she warbled. ‘She moved there a wee while ago.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘Are you her friend, perhaps? Would I know you?’

  ‘Well, I knew her at the Northern. I wanted to see her again, see how she was getting on.’

  ‘Oh, dear me, I’m afraid you’ll find she’s terribly changed. She got much worse in the past few years. She isn’t well at all now,not well at all,I’m afraid.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Could you give me the number for Daniel House?’

  ‘Certainly, certainly. May you hold?’

  Maureen phoned the number and was told she could visit Yvonne until eight o’clock but not after that. It was half-five already. She put on her coat hurriedly, straightened her makeup in the bathroom mirror and made for the door, patting her pockets to check for money and the new keys.

  The phone rang out abruptly, startling her so much that she fumbled with the receiver and dropped it. The woman at the other end was giggling and embarrassed. ‘Um, hello, um, you rang here about half an hour ago? Looking for Sharon Ryan? I rang one four seven one and got your number because I thought you might actually be looking for Shan instead of Sharon.’

  The name was written down on Martin’s list as Shan Ryan. Maureen had assumed it stood for Sharon. ‘Is Shan a nurse?’

  ‘Yeah, but he isn’t in right now.’

  ‘Um, did he work at the Northern between ’ninety-one and ’ninety-four?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure of the dates but I think it's definitely him you want.’

  ‘I’ve got him down as Sharon.’

  ‘It’s a mistake lots of people make,’ said the helpful woman, ‘but he’s not in just now.’

  ‘Do you know what time he’ll be back?’

  ‘No idea, I’m just his flatmate, he doesn’t tell me anything. He’s probably in the Variety Bar in Sauchiehall Street if you want to go down there.’ ‘Well, it’s not that urgent, really.’

  ‘Or you could call him at work tomorrow. He’s in the dispensary in the Rainbow Clinic on the South Side. If you phone Levanglen they’ll put you through.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Maureen, and put the receiver down as if it had burned her.

  She could feel tiny Jim’s eyes on her back as she locked the front door behind her. Out in the dark street the policemen in the car nudged one another awake and waited until she was halfway down the hill before starting the engine and turning the lights on.

  Maureen tried to come up with a good justification for wasting money on a cab instead of hanging about and waiting for a bus. If she ran out of her own money she could use some of Douglas’s, but she didn’t want to. It was Sunday and there wouldn’t be many buses about. She might have to wait for ages; she might miss the visiting time. She walked down the hill to the main road and hailed a cab, asking the driver to take her to the far end of Whiteinch.

  The driver began a monologue about his daughter's wonderful exam results and kept it up all the way down Dumbarton Road. Maureen asked him to stop at a newsagent’s and nipped out, blowing more money on an unhappy bouquet of dying flowers and a box of chocolates to take to Yvonne.

  *

  Daniel House looked like any of the other detached brownstone houses in the street. Only the economy-model cars in the driveway marked it out: the other houses had Mercedes and BMWs parked outside. A discreet brass sign screwed into the low garden wall, identified it as Daniel House Nursing Home. The storm doors were open and folded back against the porch; the doorstep had been replaced with a short ramp. The inside door was enormous and had a four-foot-tall glass panel, etched with an elaborate Grecian vase design.

  Maureen pressed the white plastic door-bell and stepped back. A young nurse opened the door. She wore a white pinny over a blue candy-striped uniform. ‘Hello?’ she said.

  ‘I phoned earlier, about Yvonne Urquhart.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, and opened the door wide, welcoming Maureen in.

  Maureen felt the heavy-duty nylon carpet squeak and drag on her rubber-soled boots. The heating in the nursing home was very high and she started sweating as soon as she stepped through the door. Twin oak doorways on either side of the hall led into large communal rooms. Directly opposite the front door a broad oak staircase swept up to the first floor. A stainless steel rail had been screwed onto the elegant balustrade and a folded lift chair nestled idly at the foot of the stairs. In the shadow of the graceful staircase stood a grey medication trolley with the lid down.

  The nurse saw the box of chocolates in Maureen’s hand and flinched. ‘It’s a while since you saw Yvonne, isn’t it?’ ‘Yeah,’ said Maureen.

  ‘I don't think you should give her those,’she said, pointing at the box. ‘She could choke.’

  Maureen put them in her bag. The nurse smiled apologetically and led her up the staircase to the first floor.

  She pointed to a half-open door with a brass number five screwed onto it and trotted off down the stairs. The doors marked three and four were thinly shut so Maureen guessed this was the right one. She pushed it open with her fingertips.

  The room was smaller than the big door suggested. It had been partitioned badly: the window consisted of a two foot off-cut from next door’s window, the ceilings were too high and the new walls looked patched on and flimsy. The only light came from a pink-shaded lamp sitting on top of the chest of drawers, giving off a dull pink glow – it was a night-light for a frightened child. There didn’t seem to be any personal effects in the room. The pictures of flowers on the wall had been ch
osen because the red plastic frames matched. On top of a locker next to the sink sat an unopened matching set of soap and talc and a glass of weak orange squash with a toddler’s feed lid on it.

  A painfully thin elderly nurse was dressing a woman sitting in a chair. She was wearing the striped uniform, and thick support tights over her varicose veins. She kept her back to the door as she wrestled Yvonne’s limp body into a washed-out nylon nightie. The nightdress was frantic with static and clung to Yvonne’s face and arms. It was split up the back like an incontinence dress. The nurse muttered soft words of encouragement as she popped Yvonne’s head through the neck and buttoned it up. Maureen coughed notice of her presence and the nurse turned on her heels.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said, annoyed and surprised.

  ‘I’ve come to visit Yvonne.’

  ‘Will you wait outside until she’s dressed, please?’ she said crossly.

  Maureen stepped out and stood like a scolded child on the landing until the nurse came out. ‘You may go in now,’ she said, as she passed on her way downstairs. Maureen held the flowers in front of her and went into the room.

  Yvonne’s hair was honey blonde, turning brown through lack of sun and cut into a short, manageable, hospital style. She was sitting in an orthopaedic armchair; cushions had been placed between her hips and the chair sides to stop her slipping over. A freshly puffed pillow in a transparent plastic cover lay in front of her on the table attachment. She was slumped over it, her hands in her lap. Her glassy blue eyes were half open, her cheek was resting on the plastic covered pillow in the slick of warm saliva dribbling horizontally out of her mouth. She was forty at most. The skin on her face was loose, sagging to the side, folding against the pillow but devoid of wrinkles. It was a long time since Yvonne had had an expression on her face. Both her hands were curled shut like a stroke victim’s and swatches of heavily talcumed cotton wool had been worked between the fingers to stop her getting contact sores.

  Maureen put the flowers in the sink and pulled a chair round to Yvonne’s left side so that she could see her face as she spoke to her. She asked her whether she had been at the Northern, did she remember Siobhain McCloud, had she seen Douglas, Douglas with the dark eyes and the low voice? Maureen found herself describing him slowly and softly, her voice dipping so low that she could only have been whispering to herself.

  She waited with Yvonne for ten minutes to make it look good. When she stood up to leave she noticed Yvonne’s feet. They were curled over the arch like a ballerina’s point. Someone who cared about her had knitted little pink booties with a white drawstring around the ankle. The light from the hall shone under the table, illuminating the dry, flaky skin on her skinny legs. An inch above the ankle the skin colour changed. It was a ribbon of pink shiny skin, like snakeskin, running all the way around her calf. And then Maureen realized it was a scar. From a rope burn.

  She went back downstairs. The young nurse was sitting in the day room, watching TV and holding a woman’s hand. The patient was nodding and twitching in a vain attempt to resist medication-induced sleep. The nurse saw Maureen standing in the hall and waved her in. The colour on the TV set was turned up too high: the actors’ faces were orange and their red lips were blurred and undefined. Six or seven empty identical brown orthopaedic armchairs were arranged around the television. A folded wheelchair and a zimmer frame were tidied away against the wall. There were no pictures on the walls and the glorious windows were defaced with beige nylon curtains. It was a desolate, functional room. Maureen sat down in a chair. The nurse reached over with her free hand and touched Maureen’s arm. ‘Are you okay there?’ she said, whispering so as not to disturb her sleepy companion. ‘You look a bit shocked. You haven’t seen her for a while, have you?’

  ‘How long’s she been like that?’Maureen whispered back.

  ‘Long time. Where do you know her from?’

  ‘From before she went into the Northern.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said the wee lassie. ‘She went downhill there, apparently. She had a bit of a stroke.’

  ‘What’s that mark around her ankle?’

  ‘No idea. She’s had it since I’ve known her.’

  ‘Did a guy come to see her recently? About five ten, in his forties, soft voice?’

  The nurse’s face lit up. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Guy called Douglas. He was a relative of Yvonne’s. He came on business.’

  ‘On business?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the nurse. ‘He saw Jenny in the office and paid Yvonne’s costs for the next six months. Do you know him?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ said Maureen.

  The sleepy patient gave up the fight and slumped sideways. ‘I better get Precious to bed,’ whispered the nurse.

  She couldn’t face the bus. She hailed a cab and got the driver to drop her at Mr Padda’s, the licensed grocer’s around the corner from her house. Mr Padda had been questioned by the policemen: they’d asked him whether he had seen anyone covered in blood walking down the road a week last Tuesday. ‘Did you, Mr Padda?’

  ‘No, dear,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Saturdays, yes, often, Tuesdays, no.’

  She bought a half-bottle of whisky and some fags. When she got into the kitchen she unscrewed the lid of the whisky bottle and then shut it again without taking a drink. She didn’t want it.

  Back in the living room she levered out the few remaining carpet tacks and rolled up the carpet, wrestled it upright and leaned it against the wall. Even the underlay was covered in Douglas’s blood. She took two black bags from the kitchen drawer and filled them with bits of underlay, ripping it up in raw angry handfuls.

  It was eleven o’clock before the floor was bare. She brought the whisky and a glass in from the kitchen and sat in the dark living room with her back resting against the wall, looking at all that was left of Douglas: a ten-foot stretch of blood-soaked rug.

  She drank the whisky too fast and dipped into Yvonne’s box of chocolates as she held a maudlin, solitary wake to the memory of Douglas, chronologically recalling all that she knew of his life. She celebrated his first day of school when he cried for three hours until Carol took him home again, his exchange trip to Denmark in fourth year where he met a German girl and fell in love for the first time, his father’s death, over which he felt nothing, his first degree and his place on the coveted clinical psychology course, his marriage to Elsbeth, his first night in Maureen’s bed when poor Elsbeth would have been lying awake alone, wondering where her husband was until four in the morning, guessing right and crying to herself, his lost weekend in Prague, his petty dislike of the people he worked with and his numerous illicit affairs.

  She poured the last of the whisky into the glass and held it up, toasting the rolled-up carpet against the wall, ‘To Douglas and his miserable, grasping life,’ she said, and cringed. In polite company talking like Bette Davis always means it’s time to put the glass down and go to bed. She did.

  25

  Thistle

  They put her through to the back office. ‘Liz?’

  ‘Maureen! God, you’re in so much trouble, why didn’t you put the sick line in?’

  Maureen had forgotten. She’d been off her work for a week and a half without remembering to send the note from Louisa.

  ‘He’s going to sack you,’ said Liz. ‘I kept phoning you to try and tell you. If you’ve got a line you can still put it in.’ The last time she had seen the sick line was in Benny’s house, the night he cooked the venison steaks. ‘I’ve left it somewhere,’ said Maureen. ‘I’m not even sure whereabouts.’ ‘Well, find it,’ said Liz.

  ‘Right, I will, Liz. How are you, anyway? Are you going to sue the papers?’

  Liz said she couldn’t be arsed. She’d phoned the paper and they had printed an apology on page twelve. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘put the sick line in. If you get the sack because of something you’ve done they won’t let you sign on for ag
es.’

  Someone banged heavily on Maureen’s front door. ‘Fuck, really?’ she said, holding the receiver between her ear and shoulder and leaning over to look out of the spy-hole.

  McEwan and McAskill were standing in the close. Mc

  Askill was frowning and shaking the rain off his mac, flapping the front panels open and shut. McEwan was wearing a full-length black woollen overcoat and a black trilby.

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Liz, ‘I’ll tell him you’re mental again and we’ll see what he does, okay?’ ‘Good one, Lizbo.’

  She checked her trousers were done up and straightened her hair before opening the door. McEwan took his hat off and told her officiously that Martin Donegan had gone missing from the Northern Hospital in the middle of his shift on Saturday. A security breach at the hospital was under investigation, they thought Martin’s disappearance might have something to do with it and Maureen had been seen there.

  She opened the door wide, letting them into the cluttered hall. Something must have happened to make Martin disappear. Something must have frightened him. Or worse. She tried to remember what Martin had told her and what she had promised not to repeat.

  McAskill was actively avoiding her eye. He stepped carefully across a pile of books and took up the space in the living-room doorway.

  ‘You’ve taken the carpet up, then?’ said McEwan, looking past McAskill into the living room. His eye fell to rest on the indulgent still life sitting on the floor, an empty half bottle and the box of chocolates.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Maureen, ‘I just lifted it out.’

  ‘You’d have to do that anyway,’ said McAskill, timidly. ‘It doesn’t come out very well. Usually leaves bad stains.’ He shuffled past McEwan in the hall, keeping his eyes down and his back to the wall. He was aware of Maureen watching him and blushed a little.

  Martin was missing and she didn’t know what to do. If she could just be alone for ten minutes she might be able to work it out.

  Will you have to keep the carpet until the insurance see it?’ asked McAskill, pointing back into the living room.