by Denise Mina
‘No,’ said Maureen. ‘It’ll take too long, I’ll just chuck it out.’
‘We’ll carry it downstairs for you, if you like, get it out of the way.’
‘Thanks, Hugh,’ said Maureen, and touched his elbow but he still wouldn’t look at her.
McEwan was less eager to help. ‘But I’ve got my good coat on,’ he said.
‘I’ll help you to take it off,’ muttered McAskill. They looked at each other for a moment.
‘Come in here,’ she said, breaking it up and leading them into the kitchen. Martin had been so adamant when he made her promise not to repeat the stuff about the George I ward. The only reason he’d discussed any of it was because she insisted it would be safe to. She shook the kettle to check the water level and turned it on, praying to a bleak void that nothing bad had happened to him, that he was sitting in his little den reading the paper and listening to a football match.
McEwan sat down on the most comfortable chair, splaying his meaty legs around the little table and taking up more room than he need have. Maureen’s kitchen was even smaller than Jim’s: it was cramped with three in it and McEwan and McAskill were big people. She gestured for McAskill to sit down on the only other chair at the table. He shook his head and remained standing behind McEwan, leaning his backside against the worktop. For a terrible moment the image of the wank books came into her mind, but he would have been embarrassed before now if that was it. The incest survivors, of course. She kicked him discreetly and winked when he looked up, letting him know it was all right. He looked at his shoes and grinned with relief.
‘Why were you there?’ asked McEwan.
‘At the Northern?’
‘Yes,’ he said, blinking slowly with forced patience. ‘At the Northern.’ He seemed to feel the need to be particularly unpleasant to Maureen when they were in her house, as if his authority was threatened by being on her patch.
‘I went back as part of my therapy and Martin was asked to show me around again. You can check with Louisa Wishart. She phoned the hospital and asked him to meet me.’ She picked her cigarettes up from the table and lit one.
‘Worst time to smoke, in the morning,’ said McEwan.
‘Then don’t,’ said Maureen. ‘What time did Martin go missing?’
‘He was last seen at two o’clock on Saturday. He wasn’t seen for the rest of the shift and he hasn’t been home.’ ‘His wife’s worried sick,’ added McAskill.
His wife hadn’t seen him, he hadn’t been home. He couldn’t sit in his den for twenty-four hours, no way. ‘Two o’clock . . . That was a couple of hours after I left.’
‘What time did you leave?’
‘About noon.’
‘Where did you go afterwards?’
‘I went to visit a pal.’
The kettle boiled and she took a mug down from the cupboard, filled it with water and shook in some coffee granules straight from the jar. She had assured Martin that it would be safe to tell her. She had talked him into it. She swirled the mug around to mix the coffee with the water and sat down opposite McEwan.
‘Did Martin say anything to you about going away?’ he asked.
Of course, the Jags. ‘Oh, God, he was talking about a Thistle game in France yesterday – Meatis? Meatpiss?’
McAskill corrected her. ‘Metz,’ he said, and smiled the fond way men do when they’re talking about their team.
That’s why he didn’t give a shit when she said she was Catholic. McAskill was a Thistle fan.
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Martin said the bus left two hours before his shift finished so he couldn’t go. Maybe he changed his mind.’
McEwan used his mobile and got the number off Directory Enquiries. He phoned the Partick Thistle office, asked for the secretary of the supporter’s club running buses to Metz. They gave him the guy’s work number and he phoned, looking out of the kitchen window as he waited in a telequeue for his call to be answered.
It was a grey day outside the window. The cloud was so low that Maureen could see above little puffs of mist clinging to the roofs below.
‘It’s quite a view you have from here,’ he said.
‘Yeah, ’s nice,’ said Maureen, sipping her coffee happily.
The secretary said he’d check the passport list for Martin’s name and phone McEwan back.
Maureen smiled to herself. Martin could be sitting on a bus in France somewhere, singing Jags songs, surrounded by old friends and red and yellow scarves and hats and jerseys. She sketched the image in detail, trying to convince herself that it was a possible explanation, maybe even a probable explanation, but she knew it wasn’t. Martin had made her promise not to tell anyone.
It was lunch-time for McAskill and McEwan, and Maureen’s breakfast-time. At her suggestion they agreed to go down the hill to the Equal Café for something to eat. She wanted to stay near McEwan until the call came through from the supporter’s club. ‘Let’s get that carpet downstairs then,’ said McAskill, pushing himself forward from the worktop. He stepped carefully over the piles of books in the busy hall and went into the living room. ‘You get that end,’ he said, wrapping his arms around the roll and letting it slide horizontally onto the floor.
McEwan’s defiance was under-spoken. ‘No.’
‘It’ll only take a minute.’
‘I’ve got my good gear on.’
McAskill held onto the end of the roll and dragged it across the living room and out to the front door, leaving a brown trail of blood dust. Maureen nipped into the bedroom and put on her boots. She dropped her money and the new keys into her overcoat pocket, handing the coat to McEwan as she stepped over the rolled carpet and lifted the free end in the living room. McAskill opened the front door and stepped out into the close. ‘You shouldn’t have to do it,’ he said.
McEwan muttered a curse and moved to take off his coat. ‘Let go,’ he said to Maureen.
‘I can manage, Joe,’ said Maureen.
‘Let go of it,’ he said firmly.
‘’M fine,’ said Maureen. ‘I’ve lifted things before.’ But the carpet was much heavier than she thought it would be. It was rolled up loosely and was difficult to get a hold of.
McAskill was standing pressed up against Jim Maliano’s door and still the end of the carpet was inside the front door.
‘Can we bend it?’ said Maureen.
‘Aye,’ he said, bracing himself. ‘Give it a shove.’ Maureen pushed hard, getting the carpet to bend slightly in the middle. She moved sideways onto the first step.
‘Look,’ said McEwan, following them out onto the landing, ‘I’ll get it.’
‘’M fine,’ she said, trying not to sound breathless. ‘Lock the door after ye. The key’s in the pocket.’
McAskill and Maureen struggled down the stairs, negotiating the landing turns by bending the roll and shuffling sideways. McEwan locked the door and followed them sullenly. The carpet was beginning to buckle of its own accord, the belly sagged downwards, dragging on the ground, making it heavier, and Maureen was losing her hold on it. The weight was bending her fingernails back.
They turned slowly on the bottom landing and carried it out of the back door. They were both sweating when they got outside. A cool rain speckled Maureen’s hot forehead as she staggered the last few steps to the midden. McAskill’s face was blotchy and red. He bent over to put the carpet down and his head inclined close to hers; his eyelashes were dark and long, the pores on his nose were open.
‘I found a stain in the cupboard,’ said Maureen, shaking her sore hands.
‘Yeah?’ puffed McAskill.
‘Yeah.’
He brushed off the front of his coat and rubbed his hands together.
‘What was it, Hugh?’
‘What was what?’
‘What was in the cupboard?’
‘I can't tell you
that, Maureen.’
‘Why?’
‘We’ll need it to identify the killer. If it leaks it’s useless.’
‘There must be other facts you could use. I wouldn’t breathe a word. I know how to shut up, hand on heart.’
McAskill looked at her suspiciously. ‘Why’s it so important?’
McEwan appeared in the doorway carrying Maureen’s coat. ‘Come on!’ he shouted.
‘It’s important because I live there,’ she said. McAskill sighed and wiped his hands clean. ‘Because it’s my house,’ she said.
He turned to the close. ‘I can't tell you,’ he said under his breath. ‘I’m sorry.’
He walked back to McEwan, head bent against the damp weather, leaving Maureen standing next to her bloody carpet, both of them growing soggy in the spitting rain.
McEwan peered out at her. ‘Come on,’ he shouted unpleasantly. ‘We haven’t got all day.’
‘You are a fucking arsehole,’ whispered Maureen to herself.
Maureen and McAskill both ordered the all-day breakfast and McEwan asked for a salad. When the waitress brought the wrong things he sent her back for the right things. Her limp and her depression got visibly worse every time she returned to the table and McEwan got more and more annoyed. When it finally arrived it was a very Scottish salad: limp garnish stepped up to the size of a meal. McEwan looked at it miserably for a long moment before attempting to eat it.
His mobile phone was sitting on the table, swaddled in soft black leather. Maureen kept looking at it, willing it not to ring and tell her she was wrong, tell her that Martin wasn’t sitting on a coach with his pals, drinking lager and laughing his head off.
The all-day breakfast consisted of a runny fried egg, a potato scone, black pudding, Lorne sausage, mushrooms, fried tomato and bacon. Maureen worked her way silently through various combinations, egg yolk over sausage, scone and crumbling black pudding, egg white and mushrooms but nothing sat comfortably in her mouth or her stomach. Martin’s wife was worried. He hadn’t phoned to tell her he was going to Metz. It felt like a long time since she’d enjoyed a meal.
The call came through as they were finishing off. Martin hadn’t been on any of the four buses. He had genuinely disappeared.
Maureen relented and told them about the George I ward and what had happened there. McEwan was furious. ‘I thought you said you’d tell me anything as and when you came across it,’ he said.
‘Martin said he didn’t want me to repeat the story. He’s got a wee den in the hospital basement.’
‘I don't give a fuc– monkey’s what he told you to do,’ said McEwan, correcting his language mid-sentence. ‘You should have told me about this the other day.’
‘You wouldn’t talk to me about anything the other day. Can we go and look there?’
McEwan leaned heavily on the table and stared at her, his blood pressure showing in his eyes. ‘I would have spoken to you about this,’ he said slowly.
‘Yeah,’ said Maureen, a lot less interested in McEwan’s mood than he was. ‘Well, I’m telling you about it now. See, there are parallels between the way Douglas was killed and the way the women were hurt. He was tied up like the women and he had been asking people about the assaults on the women. It was all over the hospital, everyone knew.’
‘Why was Douglas asking questions about it?’
‘I dunno,’ she said, putting her overcoat on, anxious to get to the Northern. ‘Maybe he was outraged.’
McEwan put his cutlery carefully on the half-empty plate, balancing the fork on top of the knife, and dabbed tiny touches around his mouth with his napkin. Maureen hadn’t noticed how anal he was until she saw him eat. He caught the waitress’s eye and motioned for the bill. ‘And what has this got to do with Martin Donegan disappearing?’ ‘Martin knew about it. He was the one who said there were parallels.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ said McEwan, narrowing his eyes and sitting back to look at her. ‘You went back to the Northern as part of your therapy and, quite spontaneously, Martin Donegan tells you a potentially vital piece of information about Douglas Brady’s death.’ ‘Aye. Can we go and look for him?’
McEwan sat forward. ‘Miss O’Donnell,’ he said quietly, ‘if I find out you’re messing about and interviewing witnesses before we get to them I will be very, very angry, do you understand me?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, impatiently.
‘You could face criminal prosecution.’
‘Aye, I know.’ She stood up. ‘Please can we go?’
McEwan stared at her for a moment. ‘Where do you think Martin Donegan went?’
‘Dunno,’ she said impatiently. ‘He’s got a secret place in the hospital. I think he’ll have left me a note.’
They took the passenger lift down to the lower basement. Maureen turned left when they stepped out of the lifts and they ended up in the cavernous hospital kitchen. Ten women in blue hair-nets and white coats were arranged around a moving conveyor belt with plates on it. As each plate came past the women took an individual portion of food from metal tubs and slapped it on. They looked over as Maureen and the two burly policemen came in through the double doors. The two groups stared at each other for a moment. Trays of empty plates skimmed past; only one woman was paying attention, frantically throwing boiled potatoes at the belt.
‘I took a wrong turn,’ mumbled Maureen, backing out. She retraced her steps to the lift and took them down the sloping ramp. She found the right corridor, recognizing it from the direction of the breeze carrying smells from the kitchen. It was dark, the failing strip light had given up.
Only the overspill of light from round the corner split the blue dark. Guessing, she opened a wooden door and found herself in the L-shaped room. She could hear the humming engine behind the far wall. ‘This is it,’ she said.
McAskill followed her as she felt her way over to the little hill of bin bags at the back. McEwan was standing uncertainly in the doorway, watching them.
‘Come on,’ she called back to him. ‘Come on, it’s quite safe. There’s a wee door here.’
McAskill waved him over and they followed her around the bags, their eyes adjusting slowly to the damp dark. She tried to push the den door open but it wouldn’t give. ‘It wasn’t locked before,’ she said.
McAskill pushed the door hard with the flat of his palm. The top of it opened four inches, springing back as soon as he let go but the bottom didn’t give at all. It seemed to be bolted from the inside. He shoved with both hands and felt it give. ‘Something’s stuck behind it,’ he said, and kicked the bottom. He pushed hard but the door jammed half open. Maureen stood at ninety degrees to the door and slid her arm along the wall, it felt warm and powdery, like talcum-covered skin. She found the light switch and flicked it on.
Martin was lying on the floor. His feet had been barring the door and McAskill’s shoving had pushed them to the side making his legs lie at a crazy, broken angle. She thought he was face down, that she was looking at the back of his head, until she saw his copper bangle. His left hand was resting on his stomach, the fingers rolled back into a fist except for the casually extended index finger. His face and upper chest were unrecognizable, a mess of rips of skin and dark red contusions. Martin’s face had been ripped apart. The concrete floor was black and silver, awash with syrupy blood.
Maureen’s eyes went into spasm, opening wide, making her stare at the worst of it. She rasped, struggling to breathe until McAskill grabbed her roughly by the back of her neck and pressed her face into his chest.
She couldn’t stop crying. Someone had given her some pills but they just paralysed her face and made her mouth hang open. Tears spilled from her eyes like fruit from a cornucopia. They weren’t going to let her go until she spoke again. She sat behind the desk in the miserable ground floor office at the Stewart Street station, with the wall plans and grey filing cabinets, and
stared at the door. Hot air was being pumped noisily through a vent by her chair, warming her calves, she could hear it hissing into the room. The skin on her legs began to get angry. She waited until it stung before moving out of the path of the heat.
She didn’t know how long she had been there but gradually the tears slowed down and she thought she could talk. She stood up, shaking slightly, and walked across the room, opening the door and looking outside. A uniformed policeman was sitting in a chair just outside the door. ‘McEwan?’
McEwan came in, ashen and angry. ‘Come,’ he said, and gestured for her to follow him out of the office. He walked in front of her, leading her up the stairs and through the fire doors to the disorientating corridor with the hideous linoleum. The uniformed officer followed at her back. McEwan opened the door to an interview room and stepped back. ‘In,’ he said, and Maureen went into the room.
Something McMummb was sitting next to the tape recorder. McEwan nodded at him and he started the tape rolling. ‘Where were you on Saturday after two p.m.?’ asked McEwan.
It took a tremendous effort for her to speak. The words swirled endlessly around in her head before she could summon the energy to move her mouth and say them. ‘With a friend,’ she said finally.
‘Who was it and where are they?’
‘Siobhain McCloud. At the Dennistoun day centre. I’ll need to speak to her first, I asked her not to talk to the police.’
‘Oh,’ said McEwan. ‘She’ll talk to us.’
‘She won’t.’
‘I think she will,’ said McEwan, and Maureen started to cry again.
Inness came into the grey office. He wouldn’t look at her. ‘You’ll have to come and tell her to talk.’
He took her up to the narrow corridor again and into an interview room she hadn’t been in before. It was identical to the others but the window was bigger. Siobhain was sitting on the far side of the table. She looked enormous out of the day centre: she was wearing the red nylon slacks that cut into her waist and a Mr Happy ‘Glasgow’s miles better’ T-shirt. Her eyes were open wide and she was grinning. She seemed strangely present: Maureen had only ever addressed the back of her head or the side of her face. It was the first time they’d met without being chaperoned by a noisy television.