Garnethill

by Denise Mina

  The smell of old damp clothes lingered in her nose and she couldn’t be bothered getting straight back onto another bus. She nipped into a coffee importer’s and bought a quarter-pound of fresh-ground Colombian coffee. The room smelt of chocolate and warmth. Standing at the back of the shop, the coffee-grinder was a huge brass monster– it dwarfed the woman who was serving. She had to climb up a three-step ladder to put Maureen’s beans into the grinding funnel. Maureen took the warm paper bag from her, paid, and stepped back out the door into the damp day. The coffee shop’s pleasant chocolate smell filled Maureen’s head, and she didn’t want to lose it. She looked down the street and saw the army-surplus sign. She would need a flask and they might have them cheap. She pulled up her coat collar and walked down to the shop. Camouflage army gear and sportswear were hung on tidy racks against the wall. A circular sale rack had been put just inside the door, as if they were desperate to get rid of the stuff.

  A plump woman in her mid-forties was serving at the counter. On the shelves behind her were the smaller items shop-lifters would favour: hats and gloves, pocket hand warmers and mini butane fires for camping.‘Can I help you?’ she asked, in a clipped, nasal Kelvinside accent. She sounded like Elsbeth.

  ‘I’m looking for a cheap flask,’ said Maureen, shaking the rain off her woolly hat.

  The woman bent her legs in a bunny dip and reached into the back of the counter.‘I’m afraid we only have two models in stock at the moment. This one,’ she put a red plastic flask on the counter,‘and this one.’ The second flask had a matt silver body with a black plastic base and handle. Maureen unscrewed the cup and stopper and looked into it. The lip fanned out smoothly. She put her finger in and tapped the inside with her nail. It sounded sturdy enough.‘How much?’

  ‘Eight pounds.’

  ‘Fine, yeah, I’ll take it.’

  As the woman put the flask back into its box Maureen glanced out of the window into the busy main street. Shan Ryan was standing outside the window, looking in at her. He was wearing a full-length black-leather overcoat. He gestured down the street and disappeared. ‘Eight pounds, then?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Maureen.‘Yes.’ She handed over a tenner. The woman gave her some change and a bag with the flask in it.‘Thank you for your custom,’ she called, as Maureen stepped outside.

  Shan was turning into a side-street. Maureen paused in the doorway of the army shop and patted her pocket,finding the beeper. She put the flask into her rucksack, and her fingers found the cold metal handle of her stabbing comb. She relaxed a little. She slid it into her coat pocket with the sharp end pointing downwards. She might need to pull it out quickly and use it.

  When she got to the street corner Maureen stopped and looked around. The lights on a Mini Clubman flashed twice. She walked down the street towards it. Shan reached across the passenger seat and opened the car door for her. A bebop jazz tape was playing quietly on the stereo. She leaned down into the car and looked at Shan. He scowled at the dashboard.

  He had shed his white nurse’s coat and was wearing a faded pair of blue jeans and a black cotton crew-neck jumper with nothing underneath. She could see the impression of a lot of hair trapped under the front of the jumper, and black hair curled over the collar in a Hokusai wave.

  He leaned over the passenger seat and looked up at her. ‘Get in, then,’ he said.

  Maureen sighed and tapped her hand on the roof of the car.

  ‘Are ye getting in?’ he said, not seeming to understand her reluctance.

  ‘Why would I get into a car with a man I don’t know?’ she said.

  Shan frowned and looked hurt.‘I’m not trying to abduct you,’ he said.‘I thought you wanted to talk to me. I’ll go away if you want me to, I didn’t mean to scare you.’ He leaned over to shut the door but Maureen caught it with her foot.‘No, really,’ he said firmly.‘I’d really rather ye didn’t get in now I’ve scared you.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Maureen, feeling she had insulted him.

  ‘I’ll get in.’

  ‘I left my work to come and talk to you. I don’t want to hurt you.’

  Maureen opened the door and clambered into the car. Shan reached for the ignition key and paused.‘You can still get out if you want,’ he said, watching the parade of slow moving traffic passing in front of them.

  ‘No,’ said Maureen, squeezing the comb in her pocket.

  ‘Really.’

  Shan pulled the Clubman into the traffic and crawled along the main street, stopping every three hundred yards at red lights. He turned the car left onto the motorway. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘Away somewhere,’ said Shan.‘Somewhere we won't be seen talking together.’ ‘Why?’

  He gave her a you-know look. ‘Do you think I’m a policewoman?’

  ‘I know exactly who you are,’ he said, and turned the music up.

  They were on the motorway headed out to the flat Renfrew plain and the airport. The rain had cleared up and darkness was falling quickly, as it does in mid-autumn in Scotland. The big sky was a sudden pink smear.

  They passed the light-bulb factory, Maureen’s favourite building in Glasgow. It starts as an inauspicious concrete rectangular base with broad, square windows, and then soars into a glass-brick attic with a turret. Many of its windows have been smashed but, like one of the mystical secrets of geometry, it’s still appealing. Shan saw her looking at it as they passed.‘Do you like it?’ he said, smiling as if it was his.

  ‘Aye,’ said Maureen.

  ‘Me too.’

  Further along he took the slip-road for the airport, drove under the motorway fly over and into the huge empty car park. He pulled up in a space directly across from the terminal doors.‘Why did we have to come all the way out here?’ asked Maureen.

  ‘Paki guy with green eyes talking to a white lassie? There aren’t many places in Glasgow where that wouldn't be noticed.’

  Shan locked the car and they took the zebra crossing, over the empty road to the airport terminal. The automatic double doors opened in front of them and they stepped inside. The illuminated signs and posters lent the building an all-pervasive melancholy yellow light. Straight in front of them were the check-in desks, manned by heavily made up women wearing silly hats. Above their heads the check boards told the number and destination of the next flight.

  A group of tall adolescent boys with Scandinavian Airlines stickers on their rucksacks were standing aimlessly in front of one of the desks. An electric cleaning cart trundled past, driven by a fat guy in overalls.

  Shan veered off to the left, taking the escalator up to the first floor where the big café was and Maureen followed him. It was a large space with about fifty tables arranged round a well-defended serving area in the middle. The tables were partitioned off into user-friendly spaces by flimsy white trestle walls with plastic vines hanging off them. At the centre was an oval self-service island offering breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same time. The place was almost deserted.

  Shan bought Maureen a coffee and chose a can of Irn Bru for himself. She noticed that he didn’t look up at the woman tending the till.

  They sat down at a table next to a glass wall overlooking the car park and the fly over. Shan opened his can and took a mouthful.‘Jill McLaughlin phoned me,’ he said. ‘Right,’ said Maureen.

  ‘She said you phoned her on Sunday.’

  ‘Oh?’She blew on her coffee. It had been boiled and smelt of burnt plastic. A bing-bong overhead call announced a flight to Paris, Orly.

  ‘I’m sorry about Douglas,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Shan sat back and looked at her, scratching his hairy forearm softly. His nails were long, yellowing and horny. He must play acoustic guitar.‘D’you not want to talk about this?’ he said sharply, bending his neck to catch her eye and bringing her gaze back up to his face.‘I’m only here
because I got the impression that you did.’

  ‘Ido,’ she said formally, wondering who the fuck this guy was.‘I’m sorry. Do you or Jill know why Douglas was killed?’ ‘I’m not spillin’ my guts,’ he said sternly.‘This is heavy stuff and I want to know who you are.’

  ‘I thought you knew who I was,’ said Maureen.‘You said you knew in the car.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said.‘I know your name, that’s all. I want you to tell me what you know about this before I start talking about it.’

  ‘Fair enough. What is it you want to know?’ Shan sucked a tut through his big front teeth and drew a sharp breath.‘I left my fucking work to come after you, yeah? I didn’t need to do that.’ ‘But you did.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said indignantly,‘I fucking did as well.’

  ‘Because I asked about Iona.’

  He nodded sadly.‘Because of Iona.’

  Shan could have taken her to a field and slit her throat. No one had seen them, and he had no reason to bring her to the airport where they might be seen together. There was no reason for him to talk to her, and he’d been so sweet when she didn’t want to get into the car.

  ‘I know Iona was at the Northern,’ she said.‘I know she was on the George I ward during the incidents—’

  ‘They were rapes,’ said Shan flatly.‘Not incidents.’

  ‘Right, I wasn’t sure about that. I know she was having an affair with someone at the Rainbow. Then she killed herself.’

  Shan waited, expecting more. When he realized there wasn’t any more he dropped his can heavily onto the table. ‘That’s what you know?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maureen, after a long pause.‘That’s what I know.’

  Shan watched his can as he turned it round on the table top with the tips of his fingers, tapping his long nails on the thin aluminium surface. He smiled unkindly at the can. ‘And you wanted to know who she was having an affair with? You were jealous in case it was Douglas?’

  ‘No. I don't give a shit who she was seeing,’ Maureen said, pissed off at the suggestion that her motive was so puerile.‘I just thought she might have been raped at the Northern and people seem to have known her. I thought she might have said something, given someone a clue about who did it. The rest of them can’t seem to talk.’

  Shan looked up suddenly.‘The rest of them?’ he said softly.‘Who have you seen?’

  Maureen felt a rush up the back of her neck. She couldn’t name them, she didn’t know who Shan was, he might be the rapist, could be why he took the time to talk, he wanted to find out who she’d spoken to. He was sweet so she’d get into the car, that’s why he was like that, he’d done this before. Her mind had gone blank, she couldn’t think of a single lie. She felt inside her pocket for the beeper. McEwan said that it might take a few minutes for the police to arrive. She could be dead by then. She slid her hand into the other pocket, feeling for the stabbing comb. She found it and looked past him, scanning the second floor, looking for the café exits and ways out of the airport. No, stay in the fucking airport. She was on the bare, dark Renfrew plain with no car, little money and a comb to protect her. She looked out at the shadowy cars speeding past on the fly over, their pinprick lights leaving glimmer trails in the heavy dark, and squeezed the comb in her pocket. She felt one of the teeth break the skin on her palm. Shan was watching her. ‘Dunno.’ She clenched her teeth.‘Dunno.’

  Shan frowned, his black eyebrows casting a dark shadow over his piercing eyes.‘You won’t tell me,’ he said.‘You won’t tell me their names?’

  Maureen shook her head and squeezed again, breaking through another bit of skin. A Tannoy call announced the shuttle flight to Manchester. Shan leaned on the table, bringing his face close to hers. She would have moved back and away from him but she was so tense she couldn't be sure that she was capable of slipping casually backwards in the chair– she might look as if she were about to scarper. ‘Iona wasn’t having an affair,’ said Shan quietly.‘You heard it from the cleaner, right? Susan with the big mouth?’ Maureen nodded. It was a lie but if she tried to speak her voice would sound high and shaky and she didn’t want him to know how scared she was.

  ‘Susan saw Iona being raped. She saw it through a chink in the blinds. She was being raped in a therapist's office and because she wasn’t kicking and screaming Susan decided they were having an affair.’ Still frowning, he jerked the can to his mouth, took a long drink and dropped it back down on the table.‘You don’t happen to smoke, do you?’ he said.

  ‘Um, yeah.’ She sounded like a chipmunk.

  ‘Have you got some fags on ye?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She had to take her left hand off the comb to get her bag. Her palm came away from the metal surface uneasily, like bare thighs from a plastic car-seat left in the sun. She lifted the rucksack to her hand, trembling with a jittery post adrenal rush. She took the packet out, dropping it on the table rather than handing it over in case he saw her hand shake. The packet slid across the polished surface of the table and hit the side of her cup of coffee, sloshing brown liquid on the white table top. Shan reached out quickly, coolly, and grabbed the packet away from the coffee spill. He took a cigarette and lit it with a new brass Zippo he produced from his pocket.

  Casual smokers don’t have brand-new Zippo lighters, Zippos are expensive and cumbersome to carry. Shan must have cigarettes. He might have seen her take the comb from her bag, he might be asking for the fags so that she would let go of it, so that she would be undefended. She jerked her hand into her pocket and grabbed hold of it again. He watched her.

  He inhaled the first smoke and held it in his lungs, tapping the ash from the cigarette under the table, watching the cigarette as he did, being precious with it. Shan had a Zippo because he smoked a lot of hash. He looked at her and his face softened.‘You don’t need to be afraid of me,’ he said.‘I’m going to tell you everything I know and then you can leave before me, after me or with me. Whatever makes you feel safe.’ ‘’Kay,’ said Maureen.

  ‘I’m sorry if I gave you a fright, I forgot about what’s happened to you. You don’t even know who I am. I suppose I could be anyone to you.’

  ‘I don't know if we can smoke in here,’ she said, changing the subject.

  ‘Yeah, well, fuck it,’ said Shan, quietly unperturbed. Maureen took the packet and pulled one out for herself. Shan gave her a light from his Zippo.‘Go on, then,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Shan, turning to the window, looking out at the motorway, following the lights of the passing cars with his eyes.‘Iona and the George I rapes, it was the same person . . .’ He said it in an undertone, but Maureen caught the name.

  She gasped, sucking smoke so deep into her lungs that it hurt.‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Shan, calmly flicking the ash from his cigarette under the table.‘Do you believe me?’

  ‘Why do you think it was him, for God’s sake?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ he said.

  Maureen squashed her fag out and stood up.‘I need a drink,’ she said.‘I’m getting a beer. D’ you want one?’

  Shan lifted his head and looked at her.‘What, an alcoholic drink?’ ‘Yeah.’

  He put his hand in his jacket pocket.‘No, no, I’ll get it,’ said Maureen.‘What d’ye want?’

  ‘Any whisky? Auch, naw, that’s bad, actually, I’m driving.’ Maureen shrugged.‘It’s up to yourself. You’re allowed one, aren’t you?’

  ‘Auch,’he said, clearly gasping.‘Auch, aye, get us a whisky if they’ve got it.’

  Maureen negotiated her way through the tables and around the trestle walls to the deserted island of food in the centre of the café. She bought a whisky miniature and a cold can of Kerslin, an extra-strong lager with a bitter taste caused by the artificially heightened alcohol content. As she passed the till she picked up two plastic cups and four sugar sachets, which
she tucked deep into her pocket under the beeper.

  Shan was slumped over the table, chin in hand, watching the traffic on the motorway. He took the whisky from her, poured it into the plastic cup and sipped carefully. Maureen smiled and sat down.‘You don’t drink much, do you? I’d have walloped that back in a oner.’

  Shan looked at her can of lager.‘How the fuck can you drink that stuff? It tastes like ethanol.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said.‘That’s why I like it. How do you know this, Shan?’

  ‘Like I said, it’s a long story,’ he said, his head bent over the glass of whisky, enjoying the smell. He whistled a sigh and looked out of the window.‘It wasn’t long ago, I went to work one day and before I got changed into my uniform one of the cleaners came running into the staff room.

  Someone was crying in the toilets. I went in.’ Shan was talking quickly, quietly as if he were giving a case report.‘It was Iona. She was in a cubicle. I couldn’t get her out. I climbed over the wall. She was sitting on the floor with her knickers around her ankles. She was scratching at herself, at her fanny. I got her to stop it and said come upstairs and see a doctor. She started scratching herself again.’ He took one of Maureen’s fags without asking her and lit it, downing the rest of the whisky before he exhaled. ‘When was this?’ asked Maureen.

  ‘Eight . . .’ he said, scratching his forehead and thinking about it.‘Eight? No, nine weeks ago—’

  ‘Seven weeks before Douglas was killed?’ said Maureen.

  ‘Yeah. I knew Iona from the Northern. I was working in George I when the mysterious rapes were happening, yeah? We were all moved, even the female staff. The agency nurses were sent home and never employed again. Jill McLaughlin was agency. She was up for a full-time job at the Northern. Never worked again.’

  ‘That’s why she was so jumpy when I phoned.’

  ‘Yeah. Only the senior staff weren’t moved, they weren’t even stigmatized. We didn’t know Iona had been raped then. She didn’t have a rope mark on her, no one suspected. I take it you know what I’m talking about when I say rope marks?’