The Less Dead
Page 25
She doesn’t know what’s going on and it makes her uneasy. She has her back to him but is aware that he is standing quite close behind her. She shuffles forward to get some space between them and sees something hidden behind the window blind. A white and blue pastel porcelain figurine, a lamb sitting at a shepherdess’s feet and around its neck is a yellowed-glue garrotte. It’s exactly like the one Janette fixed, the one in her collection.
‘So nice to have you.’ Barney’s voice is thick with emotion.
Coming here was a mistake. He’s too close. Margo spins around and shuffles back, pointing at the laptops. ‘What’s that about?’
‘Auch,’ he says, ‘pirate DVDs. Just some daft old movies and that. Sell them cheap. OK, it’s not legal but–wee bit of pocket money…’ His cover story is wrong. He doesn’t seem to know that people don’t buy pirate DVDs any more, they just download films for free. She doesn’t want to know what’s on the DVDs but she can guess.
‘Why are you burning them three at a time?’
‘Everybody wants the same ones, don’t they?’
Barney is different in here, he’s standing steady on his feet now, too close, his expression is off. It’s not anything specific, she just knows that this isn’t safe. Barney, this Barney, is why Susan gave Margo up. She wanted to get her away from him.
‘D’you like films?’ He’s looking at her mouth.
‘Some.’ He is standing between her and the door.
‘I’ve got some films you can watch…’ His hand darts out and touches her neck and she jumps back.
‘Fuck are you doing? Don’t touch me.’
Barney smiles as if the last two seconds didn’t happen. ‘And were you a happy wee girl?’
‘What?’
‘Growing up: were you a happy girl?’ He’s smiling and tilting his head. ‘Because, me and Susan, that’s all that mattered to us. That you were happy.’
‘What’s on those DVDs?’
‘You can take one, if you like.’ He smiles, ‘Or we could watch one together.’
She needs to keep him talking. ‘Who said it was McPhail?’
‘Hey, listen: have you seen your Auntie Nikki?’
‘Nikki?’ She’s shuffling around, edging towards the door.
‘Aye,’ he’s grinning. ‘Your wee Auntie Nikki. You seen her?’
‘Was it Nikki who told you it was McPhail?’
‘Nikki’s doing good these days, eh? She’s did well, eh? Living wi’ Betty and that.’
‘Have you been following her too?’
‘As if! Dirty whore –’ He’s smiling and nods at the DVDs. ‘You can take one of they wee films, see if you like it…’
Margo doesn’t want to leave her fingerprints on them. She doesn’t want to touch anything in here. ‘Who said it was McPhail?’
‘Diane Gallagher. She telt me. She said he’d killed Susan. Gallagher telt me that herself.’
Margo looks at him and remembers Diane saying he was the most pathetic man she’d ever met. Gallagher would never have seen this version, no one with any power would. Just Susan and the other small people.
‘That’s a lie. Gallagher knows it wasn’t him. She’s always known.’
‘A lie, is it?’
‘Diane Gallagher would never say that.’
‘You were there were you?’ He’s suddenly angry and, somehow, profoundly different. The skin on her neck prickles.
And then he stands with his mouth hanging open, stands still for too long. His eyes are hooded, his expression blank. There’s something really wrong here. She doesn’t know what it is.
Margo’s eyes flick back to the base of the porcelain figurine on the windowsill. She picks it up, holding it in her hand, looking at it. The garrotted lamb gazes up at her, trusting, loving. This is Janette’s figurine.
‘Have you been in my house?’
‘Wha’?’
‘Have you been in my house?’
‘What the fuck are you saying?’
‘Did you break in and piss in my kitchen? What’s on those DVDs?’
Barney Keith looks her in the eye and straightens up. Suddenly, she’s not taller than him. He holds her eye and reaches down, picking up the walking stick by the stem, pointing the four rubber-tipped feet at her.
‘Smart bitch.’
Barney lifts the stick over his head and smashes it down on her face. Margo hears a crack as the bridge of her nose snaps. White lights burst in her eyes. She lashes out blindly at Barney and her fist hits something. A snap, she thinks it’s her finger but it isn’t: she’s still holding Janette’s ornament. She panics, drags it along something and then reels back as the pain roars through her eyes. It takes the breath from her. Her knees sag. The pain doesn’t register in her nose but her whole body and she’s suddenly afraid she’s going to faint or vomit.
She does neither.
She stands still, panting and blinking until she can see blurred shapes in the bright room.
Barney is gone. The room is clear. The doorway is empty. Shocked, she steps forward, hands out, and her foot lodges on something heavy.
She looks down, blinks hard and sees Barney on the floor. He isn’t moving. She staggers away to the door and looks back but she can’t see.
She wants to leave but she’s a doctor. She can’t just leave. She has to help.
She stands, panting, shaking–here come the shock shakes she’s seen in other people–and shuts her eyes to clear them.
Barney has fallen, smashed his temple off the concrete block and rolled onto his side. She keeps blinking hard and each time, in the second before her vision clouds over again, she sees him clearly, in snapshots. His skull is fractured, deeply compressed above his left eye. He’s dying. Time is limited. She needs to call an ambulance. The shepherdess lies shattered on the floor, and a deep scratch from it gouged into Barney’s cheek. His eyes are flickering, the lamb’s body is stuck in his eye. But she’s shocked and shaking. She should call an ambulance on her phone. But the police will come and she’s already in trouble because of Jack and Lilah and Richard. She staggers out to the hallway. She should fix it. Fix this situation. Tidy this situation. Sort things out. Sort Janette’s house, tidy up. She’s so sorry.
Out in the hall she falls against the cupboard door, frightened and repentant, knowing she should do something, she lifts the blue poly bag from the cupboard handle and takes it outside.
She shuts the front door behind her, pulling it tight. Her eyes are swelling up, she can feel them starting to narrow.
She’s a doctor. Time is of the essence. She should phone.
The cold rain is a salve on her hot face. Her face is swelling, she can feel it, and she looks up at the flickering lights of Glasgow glittering through the rain, red and yellow and white. Taking her phone out of her pocket, she taps in the security code and dials 999.
She can hear it ring out on the other end and sees her situation through a stranger’s eyes. This does not look good. Just act normal. Tell the truth. But it looks bad. She finds the blue bag of Barney’s rubbish in her hand: why did she take that? She drops it into the open wheelie bin, hears it splash in the gathered water. That seems suspicious as well, binning bags of his rubbish, what’s she doing? Flustered and confused, she slaps the bin lid shut.
‘Emergency services,’ says a small voice from her phone, ‘which service do you require?’
Margo stares at the bin lid.
‘Hello, caller? Are you there?’
Cold rain patters on her head, worming through her hair to her scalp, running down her neck.
‘Caller, I can hear you breathing… Are you unable to speak?’
A sign is taped to the lid, a message to the neighbours. She stands still, knowing that Barney is dying through the wall next to her.
‘Hello, caller? Do you need police, fire or ambul –’
Margo hangs up. She doesn’t need an ambulance. She slaps her hand flat on the bin lid and scratches at the tape, peeling the sign off.
She’s taking it with her. She walks away. She’ll never tell anyone she was here. She gets into her car and drives back towards the city.
Three miles away she stops at a red light and looks at the wet sign sitting on the passenger seat.
It’s handwritten:
PLEASE folks keep this lid shut.
The hand is distinctive. The letters slant forwards, as if they’re in a hurry to get to the edge of the paper. The ‘t’s and the ‘f’ are all small and straight.
Acknowledgements
A great many thanks, as ever, to my editor Jade Chandler, for pretending to be surprised that this whole thing ended up being a bit more complicated than it was when I initially suggested it and ably pretending I don’t say that about every fucking book. Also to Jon Wood and Henry Dunow for all of their support. Thanks, as always, to my family: Steve and Owen and Edith for the dinners and shoulder punches during the long days. Special thanks to the many people who took the time to talk to me about their experiences and for their grace in allowing me to use bits of those interviews in a fictionalised story. I tried to understand and be kind but where I failed please know it was never deliberate. And a huge thank you to Nanette Pollock and Routes Out Of Prostitution for all their time, patience and help in researching this book.
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About the Author
DENISE MINA is the author of fourteen novels, including the Reese Witherspoon × Hello Sunshine Book Club pick Conviction, as well as The Long Drop, winner of the 2017 McIlvanney Prize for Scottish crime book of the year, and the Garnethill trilogy, the first installment of which won the John Creasey Memorial Award for best first crime novel. Mina has twice received the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. She lives in Glasgow.
Also by Denise Mina
Conviction
The Long Drop
Deception
Alex Morrow Novels
Still Midnight
The End of the Wasp Season
Gods and Beasts
The Red Road
Blood, Salt, Water
Paddy Meehan Novels
Field of Blood
The Dead Hour
Slip of the Knife
Garnethill Trilogy
Garnethill
Exile
Resolution