by Denise Mina
She sips her tea and puts her cup down.
‘Betty, who do you think killed Susan?’
She gives a sad shrug. ‘Could have been anyone.’ She nods at the toilet door. They can hear the faint hiss of Nikki spraying air-freshener. ‘I remember one of the punters was on the radio at the time, anonymously, he was from Birmingham and they asked him why he came up here to see prostitutes and he said “because up here we can do anything to them. The cops don’t care”. I heard him. That’s what he actually said. Are you a gay?’
‘No.’
‘No, me neither.’ Betty frowns at the table. ‘I wish I was. D’you ever wonder about men? About men and sex? The dark side of it? What’s going on there? Animals and children, grabbing at people, violence and all that mad pornography stuff… I mean, what’s wrong with them?’
Betty is genuinely asking but Margo doesn’t know the answer. ‘Baffles me, to be honest.’
‘I don’t know either. Nikki wants it to be a monster that killed her. Loads of folk do. Know that bit when everyone is surprised he was quiet and kept himself to himself? It’s cos they want it to be special but it’s not. It’s part of normal. It’s careless. I think it was someone’s dear old grandad. I think an ordinary man killed her and then went off and got on with his life and they’ll never find him.’
‘Maybe you’re right. It’s so long ago.’
‘I’ll tell you one thing: if you sat him down and showed him a film of him doing it he wouldn’t remember. He’d see it differently. They always talk about how victims can’t remember properly, don’t they? I bet the men who do those things push it right to the back of their minds. All the unsolved murders, the men who did them, they’re all out there, wandering about, having Christmas Days and living with themselves.’ She nods to the window, as if the men are gathered on the lawn outside.
The door opens and Nikki comes out of the bathroom. A synthetic stench of flowers trails after her and assaults them at the kitchen table.
Betty wrinkles her nose and waves her hand in front of her face. ‘For fucksake, Nikki, you’re the only person I’ve ever met who shits roses.’
43
HEAVY RAIN IS FALLING when she opens the door to leave. They bid each other a fond farewell and arrange for them to come over to Janette’s for Sunday lunch this coming week. Margo offers to come and get them so they won’t be too nervous walking in and meeting Joe and Thomas. They’re all living together while they clear Janette’s house and have decided to stay on there for a while. Tracey’s going to buy the house but she’s more than happy to wait until they’re all ready. Margo wants Nikki and Betty in Janette’s house when she tells them about the baby. If it’s a girl she wants to ask them if she can name her Susan. Having arranged a time on Sunday, Margo insists that Nikki and Betty stay inside as she runs to the car. She knows a doorstep goodbye could take an hour and the rain is fierce and cold, sweeping across the beam of street lights in blustery waves.
She runs to her car, gets in, turns the engine on and pulls the seat belt on. She’s about to switch the headlights on when she glances at the rear-view mirror and sees the Honda.
She freezes.
The bonnet is long, the beam of the front lights probe around the edge of the garden wall. Margo slides down in her seat.
The Honda pulls out into the street behind her, drawing slowly down the road, coming past her. The rain is too heavy and she’s too low in her seat for the driver to spot her. But she can see the back of a head as they cruise slowly past, head inclined towards the bungalow, looking at the window. Hardly breathing, Margo watches the car turn right and drive slowly away around a side street. Is the car parking? Does the driver live here? She considers getting out to go and look for it but her hand rises to the car door and locks her in.
She’s sitting low, trying to decide what to do, watching sheet rain on the windscreen, when she feels the rumble of an engine at her back. The Honda has come full circle around the house. It’s passing her again. The driver checks Betty’s window more boldly this time, turning their head to look up and Margo can see the face. She recognises them. The Honda passes, gets a hundred yards ahead, missing the right turn they took last time, speeding up as they head for the busy Baillieston Road.
Margo sits up, takes the handbrake off and follows.
She has learned from their mistakes and she stays well back and leaves her lights off until they hit the main road. The rain helps, visibility is diminished, but she keeps her small car tucked neatly behind 4x4s and vans. They’re a careful driver, cautious, but they clearly know this route well. They indicate long before they approach a turn, slide into turn-off lanes before the road signs are readable. They have done this drive often.
They’re on the M8, slipping past unpretty housing schemes hidden from view by thin trees, bypassing windowless shopping malls, sliding through Glasgow city centre to join the four lanes heading for the Kingston Bridge.
They cross high over the Clyde and Margo stays in the wrong lane, knowing that they’ll be checking their mirror on the long straight bridge. She stays in the airport lane as they peel off into the left-hand lane that feeds into the M77. Half a mile along she changes lane, staying far behind, tucked in tight to the back of a supermarket lorry. She follows the Honda for two miles until she sees it slow down for the slip road. They leave the motorway together.
She knows, long before they get to the address, who she is following. They take a roundabout, turning towards Nitshill, driving slowly and carefully along broad, potholed roads, turning corners, crossing more roundabouts, following the path to Barney Keith’s house.
He parks in a disabled space outside what looks like a terrace of modest houses. Margo has done home visits to houses like this. She can see down the open arch that runs through the middle of the building. There are four front doors inside the alley, a white plastic handrail runs along the close and a concrete ramp leads up to it for wheelchair access. This is two-up two-down social housing, good quality, single level housing for people with access and additional needs. It’s run-down though. Litter is stuck in the scrawny hedges and communal wheelie bins stand sentry outside, lids open, one lying drunkenly on its back in the scrub grass.
Barney Keith opens his car door and gets out. He’s carrying a steel walking stick with four feet, an aid for the unsteady, holding it in the middle like a spade. He locks his car, and, hunched against the heavy rain, hurries across the pavement, through the gate, and up the path, glancing at the toppled bin as he gets into the shelter of the close. She doesn’t see which door he goes into but after a moment a bright light snaps on in a ground-floor window. The blind is down but she knows he’s ground floor, left.
Margo waits, watching the street warp through the rain on the car windows, listening to the hiss of the heavy downpour as it bounces high off the pavement. She sits, clutching the steering wheel, getting angrier and hotter, until she throws the car door open, gets out in the cold veil of rain and trails Barney Keith up to his front door, skirting the fallen wheelie bin, hearing the open one filling up with rain.
Nitshill is on high ground, ten kilometres from Glasgow. Barney’s close is open at both ends and the bright lights of the distant city glint warmly through the open arch at the back, blurred and inviting through the curtain of rain.
She does not want to be here. She doesn’t want to meet him but she knows there’s no avoiding this moment. She’ll be afraid until she tells Barney Keith to fuck off and stop following her. This is why she rings the door bell.
At this point she doesn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.
44
SHE HEARS THE SHARP electric buzz of the doorbell zapping in the hallway. Feet shuffle around inside. The spyhole on the door darkens but Margo steps to the side so that she can’t be seen from inside.
‘Who is that?’ The voice is high-pitched and anxious.
She doesn’t answer but reaches over and presses the buzzer again.
After a moment the fron
t door opens a crack. It’s fastened inside with a chain. Warmth floats out to the cold concrete close carrying the sweet smell of curry.
Barney Keith peers out at her, recognition flaring in his small eyes. ‘Who’re you?’
‘You know who I am,’ she says.
He looks her up and down and shuts the door, slips the chain off and opens it wide. He’s using the walking stick now, leaning heavily on it.
Barney is thin and hunched and bald. His eyes are deep-set like Margo’s and she sees faint traces of herself in the narrow set of his jaw. He’s seventy but still wiry, with a watery paunch. He has dry, yellowed skin, his liver hasn’t been functioning well for a long time, and his gestures seem uncertain.
Feeling himself seen, he smoothes a tense hand over his head, as if shielding himself, and his fingers tremble a little.
He has changed out of his rained-on clothes into a T-shirt and grey jogging trousers, greasy around the pockets. His feet are bare and she notices that the toenails are clipped. That’s telling in a man of his age. Most geriatric patients aren’t agile enough to care for their feet but Barney is able to bend down. He’s keeping up the impaired act though, leaning heavily on his stick, shuffling from foot to foot as if his legs hurt.
She’s instantly glad she followed him here. She’s four inches taller than him. She’s younger than him. She’s a doctor and has never raped a thirteen-year-old. This man is nothing.
‘What’d you want?’ he says.
‘You’re following me. I’ve told the police but I’m giving you a warning: stop.’
He titters, incredulous, ‘I don’t even know –’
‘I’ve got photos of your car outside my house,’ she lies. ‘The police’ve got your name, your car registration and this address. Stop following me.’
‘Oh… They know you’re here, speaking to me, do they? Because you’re not supposed –’
‘No, they don’t know. I’m just warning you to leave me alone.’
‘OK,’ he smiles faintly.
This is the moment when she should turn and leave but she doesn’t. She’s waiting for something, an admission that he’s her father, for him to show he’s not an arsehole, she’s not sure what, but she hesitates.
He slumps, looks hurt and says, ‘Are you Susan’s baby? Are you Patsy?’
But she’s sure that he knows perfectly well who she is.
‘Stop following me. The police know who you are.’
He opens his mouth to speak but stops. He looks her up and down. The rain at either end of the close is suddenly heavier, a loud shushing in the street.
Barney whispers at her feet, ‘You look like her.’ He covers his eyes with his free hand and sobs, exhaling so hard that his knee buckles. He staggers sideways, almost losing his footing and Margo has to resist the reflex to reach into the hall and steady him. Barney doesn’t need support. He’s a fake. She stands looking in, wringing her hands as he corrects himself. He drops his hand from his face and she sees that his eyes and face are dry. Barney Keith is full of shit.
‘It’s… I’ve–osteoarthritis.’
‘Huh?’ It’s a crippling condition, a painful inflammation of the joints, mostly diagnosed by self-reporting, perfect for the mendacious malingerer.
‘Aye. You’ll maybe have to watch out for that… I think I might be your dad?’
Margo shrugs. ‘Someone said that, yeah.’
‘… Someone said that?’
‘Someone, yeah.’
‘Wow! Me, a daddy. Imagine that.’ He mutters, almost to himself, ‘I’m actually in a lot of pain.’
‘Right?’
‘Aye. Painful,’ he says, looking past her, his eyes hooded, his mouth drawn tight. It’s an odd, expressionless kind of look. She doesn’t know what it means.
His eyes trace her face and it’s not wrong, exactly, but it’s odd and uncomfortable. She considers the possibility that he’s on heavy medication and maybe she’s reading too much into everything.
She looks behind him into the hall. It’s clean. The walls have been painted recently, not very well and in a dull battleship grey, not very nice but he has made an effort. A blue poly bag hangs off the hall cupboard handle, filled with empty foil food containers. He has eaten a take-out curry and left the bag there as a reminder to bin it and stop the smell lingering. Margo has done house calls to people who were not coping and the signs are clear: Barney is able. He’s painting his house, enjoying food, having a life. She finds him looking straight at her, a faint smile flits across his eyes.
‘You’re my Susan’s double. I have been following you, I’m sorry but I seen you at court that day. I just wanted to look at you again.’
She thinks about the bean growing inside her. If she had to give up her baby and then saw them as an adult, she might follow them around. She might scare them with the ferocity of her interest. She might seem this pathetic.
He opens the front door wider and looks hopefully into the living room. ‘Come in for a minute?’
She shakes her head.
He holds up a staying hand. ‘Fine, no, it’s fine. Don’t want to make you. Just you do what feels right…’
They stand there, looking at each other.
‘What I want you to know,’ says Barney, ‘is this: I didn’t want to give you up. Susan did. I want you to know that.’
He thinks Margo is angry about being given up, he’s wrong, she’s not, and he’s blaming Susan when she isn’t here to defend herself and it seems like a cheap move.
‘Well,’ says Margo, ‘she did me a favour. It must have been difficult but it was the right thing. It worked out well for me.’
‘Yeah, I didn’t–wasn’t my idea. She didn’t think she’d be a good mum. Didn’t like herself very much. I told her you’d love her anyway but–well, she was hot-headed, Susan, strong-willed.’
Margo smiles. ‘I’ve heard that.’
Barney smiles back, looking shy. ‘Yeah, she was something else. Something else again.’
And they both nod softly, Margo at the scared and proud girl with nothing to lose, Barney at whatever he thought Susan was.
‘I wish you could have met her instead of me.’ He drops his chin to his chest and whispers, ‘I didn’t think you’d want to meet a person like me. I’m sorry for following you… Nothing went right for me since McPhail killed her.’
‘Barney, who told you it was McPhail?’
‘I worked it out.’ Barney tips his chin defiantly. ‘Cops barely investigated Susan’s death. The girls would only talk to one of their own and they all knew me, knew Susan, knew how much I loved her. They talked to me.’
‘Someone told you, didn’t they? Was it Jack Robertson?’
‘No!’ he laughs. ‘No! I told him. It was me that told him and he put it in his book. I mean, I don’t mind, I just want justice for Susan. Jack’s a great guy. Have you met him?’
‘Yeah.’ She doesn’t want to tell him that Jack has been charged with culpable homicide. ‘Jack’s unbelievable.’
‘The girls trusted me, most of the journalists wouldn’t listen to a low-life like me, scum like me.’
He leaves a pause for Margo to contradict him. Maybe he is scum, she doesn’t know. ‘But who told you it was McPhail? Was it one of the women?’
‘I don’t like… it’d break a promise to someone.’ He looks down the close. ‘But it was a woman, yes.’
The weight of the rain is causing a cold draft at either side of the close and the warmth from the overheated flat seeps out and seems to stroke her cheek. Barney shivers. ‘It’s awful cold out there. Sure you don’t want to come in?’
She half wants to but she knows too much about him. She blurts, ‘You got her pregnant when she was thirteen. You were thirty-two.’
‘She was fifteen.’
‘No, she wasn’t. She was thirteen.’
‘She had nowhere else to go.’
‘She was in a childrens’ home.’
He leans heavily on the door fram
e and looks desolate: ‘Susan was planning to kill herself when I met her. She wasn’t safe. They were at her every night in there. She came to me. Where should she have gone? No one cares. It’s happening right now and no one cares. People only care after, when they’re growed up and there’s nothing to do, then they’re all sad about it but it’s happening right now and no one cares. But I did because it happened to me. I cared. I was the only one. She wanted to be wi’ me. Someone that loved her. We were happy. We loved each other until that bastard McPhail killed her.’
‘Who told you it was McPhail?’
He hesitates, almost answers but then says, ‘You can come in if you like… I won’t bite.’
Margo looks behind him into the hall and he takes that as a yes. He shuffles back, making space for her. Wary, she steps into her father’s house.
He shuts the door behind her. ‘’Scuse the mess,’ he smiles and points her into the living room.
It’s a strange room, wide and broad with a large picture window onto the street and a paper blind drawn down over it. He has painted this room the same dull grey colour as the hall. There’s a brown sofa, worn flat and shiny where he has been sitting, with a small concrete breeze block next to it for a table. An empty beer can sits on it. But the whole situation feels odd and wrong: the bulb in the central fitting is too bright, the light is blue and forensic and a row of three old laptops are open and lined up on the floor. They all have external DVD burners and power leads snaking around them. At the side wall sits a full cardboard box of unmarked DVDs. Some of them are in yellowed sleeves, some dusty, some clean. These are the DVDs he is copying, not the ones he’s making.