Garnethill

by Denise Mina

  ‘Hello to you,’ said Siobhain.

  Maureen sat sideways in the empty chair, pressing her knees into Siobhain’s fleshy thigh. Siobhain reached slowly into her pocket and pulled out a packet of Handy Andys. She folded one around her finger and dabbed the tears from Maureen’s face, barely touching her skin with the tissue. Maureen shut her burning eyes and felt Siobhain’s milky breath on her lids.

  ‘There,’ said Siobhain. ‘Now I can do you a good turn.’

  She lifted her hands slowly to either side of Maureen’s head and took hold of her ears, shaking her head softly from side to side, and grinned at her again.

  Maureen smiled despite herself, but her eyes began crying again. ‘Tell them where I was on Saturday afternoon.’ She sniffed.

  Siobhain turned to McEwan. ‘She was visiting me.’

  ‘What time did she arrive?’ asked McEwan.

  ‘She came to see me while Columbo was on the television, just after the Hollywood star had ruined the party. She stayed until Howard’s Way was over.’

  McEwan sent Inness to check it out. Maureen noticed that he hadn’t turned off the recorder.

  ‘This is the most interesting thing that has happened to me in many years,’ said Siobhain, to a thoroughly uninterested McEwan.

  Inness reappeared and McEwan ordered Maureen back downstairs to the grim office.

  She had been there for what felt like an hour when McEwan came in for some papers. He still wouldn’t look at her.

  ‘Could you eat something?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ll need to talk about protecting you, Maureen. There’s every chance that you’ll be targeted now. I’d like to offer you a panic button. You can—’ ‘Why am I still here?’ she said.

  ‘We want to talk to you after we’ve questioned Miss McCloud.’

  ‘Why are you still questioning her?’

  ‘She was a patient in the George I ward at the Northern Hospital.’

  ‘You can’t ask her about that, Joe.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You just can’t. She won’t talk to you, will she? She can’t talk about it. It’ll make her sick.’

  ‘Well, she seems to be talking. I’m not questioning her, Sergeant Harris is. Harris is a woman.’

  ‘You don’t understand. It doesn’t matter that it’s a woman.’

  McEwan was impassive. ‘Why don’t you just leave it to us. Are you hungry?’ ‘No, I’m not fucking hungry.’

  26

  Acid

  The station noises died down and the office became still. The hissing stopped and the heating was turned off. As the oppressive heat of the afternoon seeped away the wooden desk and chair contracted, creaking low groans and snapping loudly. It was growing dark outside the window.

  The door opened suddenly and McEwan came in. He stood at the edge of the desk playing with part of a broken pencil, picking at the frayed end. ‘You can go now,’ he said, his voice low and slow. ‘I want you to co-operate with us. We need to provide some protection for you. This is a panic button.’ He put a small grey box the size of a cigarette packet on the table. ‘It operates like a beeper. If you press this button it alerts us and we can have a patrol car there in a few minutes. Take it.’ He pushed it across the table towards her.

  ‘What did Siobhain say?’ asked Maureen.

  ‘And I want you back here first thing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  McEwan worked a strip off the pencil with his fingernail. He looked upset. ‘She’s in the foyer.’ He said it as if it were a question.

  Maureen lifted the beeper and brushed past him. The sparkle in Siobhain’s eyes was gone and she was trembling. She was walking slowly, shuffling tiny geisha steps. Maureen got her as far as the main road and hailed a cab. She walked Siobhain to the door and opened it but Siobhain just stood, staring at the pavement in front of her feet. Maureen asked her if she wanted to get the cab home but she didn’t answer. The driver leaned over and slid the window down. ‘Come on,’ he said impatiently. ‘You hailed me.’

  Maureen walked Siobhain forward two steps and got her to hold onto the leather strap inside the cab. She tapped the right leg and, holding her ankle, stood it on the taxi floor. She tapped the left leg and shoved Siobhain’s bum with her shoulder as she placed the left foot next to the other. Siobhain was frozen in a crouch in the cab door. Maureen pushed Siobhain’s hip gently, working her around to the seat and climbed back out. The red patent-leather handbag was sitting on the pavement. She rummaged under the roll of twenty-quid notes and found an envelope with Siobhain’s address on it. ‘Fifty-three Apsley Street, please, driver.’

  But the driver refused to take Siobhain alone. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘She’s jellied.’

  Maureen climbed into the cab beside her.

  A blue Ford followed the cab at a less than discreet distance.

  The address on the envelope was the first floor of an old tenement in Dennistoun, just two blocks from the day centre. The close was dark and miserable, littered with free newspapers and flyers for takeaway-dinner shops. An acrid blend of piss and cat spray loitered by the back door. They climbed the stairs to the first floor slowly. Maureen found the door key in Siobhain’s pocket, a lone Yale on a chipped Shakin’ Stevens key-ring.

  When she shoved the door open, a wall of heavy heather scent wafted out at her. A large jar of it was sitting on the hall table. The sweet smell crept all through the house, hinting at a landscape, broad and brutal, a hundred miles away from the poky flat with low ceilings and cheap fabrics. The furnishings were good-nick cast-offs; the walls in all the rooms were painted mushroom. The only personal item in the living room was sitting on top of the television, a small framed watercolour of purple and yellow irises. Tucked into the corner of the frame, obscuring the picture, was a photograph of a small boy. He was wearing shiny red plastic wellingtons, long grey shorts and a sky blue jersey. He was standing on a windy green hillside, self-conscious in front of the camera, smiling sadly a long time ago.

  Maureen sat Siobhain in an armchair and lit the gas fire. She made two cups of tea in the galley kitchen and took them through, turned an armchair round and sat down opposite her. Siobhain wasn’t moving.

  ‘Siobhain,’ said Maureen. ‘Siobhain, can you speak?’ Still she didn’t move. Maureen touched her hair. Getting no response, she waved her hand in front of her face and Siobhain blinked. ‘Siobhain, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know they’d ask you about the hospital. I’m so sorry.’

  Siobhain sighed the deepest sigh Maureen had ever heard, like all the Mothers of Ireland breathing out at the one time. Maureen’s resolve snapped. She couldn’t find a telephone in the house so she took the Shakin’ Stevens keyring and went to look for a phone box.

  ‘Leslie,’ she said, when Leslie answered. ‘Leslie, I’ve done a terrible thing.’

  Leslie tried to introduce herself but she couldn’t get a response either. Maureen pointed her through to the kitchen. ‘Why are you here with her?’ whispered Leslie urgently. ‘She should be in hospital.’

  ‘No, Leslie, I can’t take her to a hospital, that’s her worst nightmare.’

  ‘Why didn’t the police deal with it?’

  ‘If I’d left her in the station they’d have sent her to hospital for sure.’

  They stood in the kitchen and Maureen explained what had happened.

  ‘Let me call her a doctor,’ said Leslie. ‘She might need some medication.’

  Maureen wasn’t sure but Leslie swore on her mother’s life that she wouldn’t let them take Siobhain to a hospital. Maureen searched the bathroom and Leslie looked through the drawers in the kitchen but they couldn’t find anything with a doctor’s name on it. ‘Try the bedroom,’ suggested Leslie.

  They opened the door and, past the bed, saw an old fashioned lady’s dressing table with
three angled mirrors. In front of them, on the surface where the cosmetics should have been, sat an army of pill jars arranged into squads of five. The three mirrors reflected them, swelling their numbers. The same doctor’s name was printed on all of the labels.

  Leslie went down to the phone box. She came back up and said that Dr Pastawali didn’t want to come out. He had told her that Siobhain had these turns sometimes and she’d be fine in the morning. Maureen took the number and went down to the phone box herself.

  She had been so short with him on the phone that she expected Dr Pastawali to be annoyed with her but he was sweet and courteous. ‘Good evening to you, ladies,’ he said, when they opened the door to him ‘Where is Miss McCloud, please?’

  He was a tall Asian man in his fifties, with dark sad eyes.

  He crouched down next to the armchair and took Siobhain’s pulse and blood pressure. He muttered to Siobhain all the time he did it, explaining what he was doing and why, asking her little questions about her health, moving onto another query when she didn’t answer. Eventually, he managed to get her to look at him.

  Maureen hung about in the doorway as he got Siobhain to move her hands and wiggle her toes. He held her hand and muttered something unintelligible. ‘I’m very tired,’ murmured Siobhain. He took Maureen into the kitchen.

  ‘You’re not going to send her to hospital, are you?’

  ‘No,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m sending her to bed.’

  Siobhain wouldn’t help Maureen undress her. After half an hour of asking and cajoling and finally trying to wrestle her out of her trousers Maureen gave up and put her to bed fully clothed. She turned off the light, shut the door quietly and crept back into the living room.

  Leslie had turned on the television to the evening news. Douglas and Elsbeth’s wedding photograph flashed onto the screen. The picture had been treated so that the vicar and Elsbeth were in a dark shadow and Douglas’s face was highlighted. The supercilious expression on his face made him look smug and unkind. ‘Bad picture,’ said Leslie, as Maureen sat down next to her on the settee.

  Carol Brady was being interviewed outside the front door of a house. She was chalk white and quivering with fury. She complained about the Strathclyde police force’s incompetent handling of the investigation, saying they should concentrate on bringing charges against the person who had killed her son. They knew who had done it and so did she. She read out a pre-prepared speech about the disastrous consequences of Care in the Community and the danger of it, not only to the public but to those people released into the community and unable to cope. Anyone familiar with the case would appreciate the implication that Maureen had done it.

  Leslie leaned over and turned it off. ‘Nae luck, Mauri,’ she said.

  ‘Do you mind if we stay here tonight?’ asked Maureen.

  ‘I just want to be here in the morning in case she’s the same.’

  ‘No,’ said Leslie. ‘I don't mind.’

  They took the cushions off the settee and armchairs and made beds on the floor. Leslie turned out the light and they settled down to sleep in the draughty living room. Maureen put the police buzzer on the floor next to her, touching it when she lay down to make sure it was within easy reach.

  Leslie had her leathers on but Maureen only had her overcoat for cover. She took the place nearest the gas fire and left it on but it just accentuated the damp cold creeping over any part of her body not directly in the path of the heat. A street-light just outside the drizzle-splattered window suffused the room with a warm orange glow. Maureen lay on her back, watching the light dance on the ceiling as the steady rain fell. ‘If I hadn’t been to see Martin he'd never have been killed and if I hadn’t told them about Siobhain they’d never have questioned her. I’m fucking up people’s lives.’

  ‘Shut up, Mauri,’ Leslie murmured sleepily. ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Yes, it is, it’s my fault. I’m playing at this and I don’t know what I’m doing. I could be putting you in danger, or Liam or anyone. Or even Siobhain.’

  ‘Maureen, please, shut up and go to sleep.’

  ‘I can't, I feel like such an arse. I was there just a couple of hours beforehand. I was the last person to see him alive—’

  ‘You can’t have been, Maureen,’ said Leslie, her voice irritated and loud. ‘They wouldn’t have let you go if you had been.’

  ‘D’ye think so? D’ye think someone else saw him after me?’

  ‘Yeah. Why’s that important?’

  ‘Dunno. Do you think I’ve got a good memory?’

  ‘What for details and stuff?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘It’s fine, Mauri. Can we go to sleep now?’

  ‘I should never have gone to see Martin in the first place, and going back a second time, I don’t know what I was thinking about or why I was trying to find the person who did this. There’s nothing I can do even if Ido find them.’ ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, if it has got anything to do with the Northern the police’ll want to talk to Siobhain and all the other women about it, and look at what this afternoon did to her. It could kill her.’

  Leslie rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. ‘So you’re giving up?’

  ‘Fuck, I’ll have to. Everyone at the Northern knew about the list from that Frank guy. I mean, I might have been just as clumsy about other things.’

  ‘He isn’t coming after the people the police are talking to, is he? He’s coming after the people you’re talking to. That means you’re on the right track.’

  ‘But even if I do find out who did it I can’t take them to the police. They’ll need witnesses and they’ll have to question the women. God knows what kind of damage they could do.’

  Leslie rolled onto her side and looked at her. ‘You can’t just stop.’ She sounded angry. ‘It doesn’t matter a toss that you can’t take him to the police, Maureen, for fucksake. We have to take responsibility about this and do something to stop it.’

  ‘But the police—’

  ‘Never mind the fucking police. The point is, you know more about this than anyone else now. We can’t just throw our hands up and walk away, for Christ’s sake. We have to stop him from hurting other people.’ ‘But I wouldn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Well,’ she said sarcastically, ‘let’s mount a poster campaign or something. How about letters to the papers?’ ‘Auch, Leslie—’

  ‘“Auch, Leslie” nothing. This is it, Maureen, this is the big crunch. Do you genuinely give a shit or do you just like fighting about politics?’ ‘No, but—’

  ‘If you do give a shit we have to find this man and put him out of action.’ ‘I’m not killing anyone.’

  ‘I’ll do it if you don’t.’ Leslie rolled onto her back again, crossing her arms and tucking her hands under her armpits, grunting with annoyance.

  ‘We still don’t know it’s a man who did it,’ said Maureen carefully. ‘We don’t know that the rapes at the Northern were done by the person who killed Douglas or Martin. For all we know those murders could have been done by a woman.’

  ‘Of course it’s a fucking man,’ snapped Leslie. ‘You just don’t want to be wrong.’ ‘Maybe we’ll never know . . .’

  Leslie sat up impatiently. The back of her head was in a shaft of light from the street, obscuring her face. She pointed her finger at Maureen, poking it aggressively.

  ‘You have to find this fucker, not just for yourself but for that Martin guy and Siobhain in there and all the other women, ’cause you can bet your arse the bastard wasn’t caught out every time. Do you think he got this brutal at a knitting bee? He’s been working up to it, practising on other people, he’s been busy and I’ll fucking bet you any money that there are women all over this city who can’t live in their skin because of what he did to them. And when we find him we need to stop him, not try and educate him or get the police t
o sort him out, just fucking stop him.’

  She took her finger out of Maureen’s face and tugged at the pockets in her jacket. She found a packet of cigarettes, flipped it open, and shoved one in her mouth.

  ‘Christ, Leslie, man,’ said Maureen, holding tightly onto the edge of her coat/blanket and pulling it up a little. ‘Calm down.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said sharply, rummaging in her pocket for matches.

  ‘You should be,’ said Maureen. ‘What was that about?’

  ‘I hate that, I hate it.’

  ‘You hate what?’

  ‘Just that when we act so powerless, like there’s nothing we can do, they smack us and we say, please stop, they smack us and we say, please stop. We should smack them fucking back.’

  But if we use violence how are we different from them?’ ‘Morally?’

  ‘Yeah, morally there’d be nothing to separate us.’ Leslie shook her head. ‘God Al-fucking-mighty, Maureen, have you thought about this at all? It’s all right for you and me to worry about our moral standing – neither of us are getting our faces kicked in every night in the week. These women are treated as if they were born on the end of a boot and we set up committees and worry about our moral standing. It’s a fucking joke, the movement’s turning into the WRVS, it pisses me off. We're not fucking helpless, we’re fucking cowards.’

  She lit the cigarette and Maureen saw her face in the match’s flare. She was frowning angrily, her eyebrows knitted tightly together. ‘Specifically in what context does it piss you off?’ said Maureen, now sure that it was nothing she’d done.

  ‘It just does, okay?’

  ‘Tell me the story, though.’

  She drew heavily on her cigarette. ‘I don't really want to,’ she said and exhaled.

  ‘All right, then,’ said Maureen.

  The smoke swirled above Maureen’s head.

  ‘Do you remember the woman who was raped by the three men in the West End?’ asked Leslie quietly. ‘They threw acid in her face afterwards.’