G03 - Resolution (40 page)

Maureen half listened, watching Leslie’s face for visual clues about how to react. She kept thinking she was back in the dusty kitchen, watching the fat man running for a Twix, the sour smell of Michael as she caught him under the arms when he stumbled, the crunching underfoot, down by the burn. She understood the urge to drop away from life, walk into a police station and make a confession, to have the confusion and the terror over, to tell someone else, in detail, what had happened. But as she stood over the body she’d made a pact with herself: that her penance for this would be that as long as she lived, she would never tell anyone what she had done. And Sheila was right: it would always be the most important thing that had ever happened to her.

They lay on their beds in the darkness and gradually Leslie’s and Kilty’s breathing deepened. Maureen lay awake, eyes open wide, staring at the ceiling. Headlights from occasional cars going up the steep hill rolled along the ceiling. Drunk people passed in the street, shouting or laughing, or staggered home alone. In the city below, sirens wailed and police cars rushed to avert crimes. Ambulances followed them or ventured out on their own.

She looked at her watch. It was ten to four and the sun was smearing the sky blue, waking the birds. Her arms were itchy, the tape tugging at small hairs. She sat up and lit a cigarette, pulling her knees up to her chin and clasping them tightly. If she didn’t die from this, if the police didn’t catch her, she was going to get away from here. She was going to sell up and go to St. Petersburg and spend a month in the Hermitage, filling her eyes and her head with beautiful things, and never waste a calm hour, never spoil a good meal with worry. The cigarette burned her tongue, stripping it and making her mouth taste of metal tape again. She was getting pain spots in her lungs and couldn’t laugh without coughing anymore. She would go to St. Petersburg and stop smoking and see beautiful things. If she had her time over again she’d stop drinking. In the impossible future she’d strive to be happy.

They woke up when the alarm went off at eight thirty and found Maureen sitting up in her sleeping bag, a thin cloud of cigarette smoke hanging above their heads. They tried to make her eat something but she couldn’t. They nagged her so much that she tried but couldn’t swallow and had to spit the toast out into the bin.

Kilty had brought a crisp white shirt with an open neck and short sleeves for her to wear but her bloody arms would have showed. Maureen said she had already decided to wear a yellow top with long sleeves and the words “porn star” printed on the chest. Leslie was ironing her skirt in the kitchen and shouted through that it was much better than the clean white shirt. Kilty watched them both curiously. Maureen changed in the bathroom. The tissue had dried on the blood, sticking to the wounds, but she didn’t want to change the dressing herself. She put the clothes on and made an attempt with some makeup, using the last of the Dior mascara she had bought when she was flush, rubbing Touche Eclat into every crevice.

They left the house early, tripping down the stairs. The sun was splitting the pavement, filling the city with an unearthly white light. They walked in unison, barely talking, following the quieter streets down to the river. It was half past nine and the traffic was thinning after the rush hour. Harassed-looking women in estate cars drove home after the school run and bus drivers, pissed off after the early shift, jammed the road on their way back to the station. Maureen was so tired she could hardly feel her feet on the ground, hardly see a hundred yards in front of her through the scalding light.

They walked along by the river, sweating gently, picking up the breeze as they passed the Sheriff Court on the far bank and followed the road round to the tail end of Paddy’s. The settee was still under the bridge but the men weren’t there. Maureen half raised a thoughtless hand, waving to where they might have been. Down the lane Gordon Go-a-Bike thought she was greeting him and waved in response, pedaling slowly, going nowhere.

The High Court of Justiciary looked out over Glasgow Green, where junkie prostitutes, too down on their luck to look for drivers, relied on drunken pedestrians for their trade. Flanked by the city mortuary, the front of the building was a neoclassical string of ionic columns surmounting a set of stairs, topped off by a long pediment. Gathered outside on the stairs, four or five clumps of smokers made the most of the opportunity, puffing away and chatting to one another. One group was composed of lawyers, obvious in their expensive suits and easy manner. Another crowd wore cheaper suits and nylon skirts, smiling nervously and inhaling deeply.

Inside, through a revolving door, was a white lobby with a sparkling mosaic floor that ended abruptly in a set of plain, modern fire doors. At the side of the stairs a court official in a gray uniform was standing behind a black marble desk and police officers were dotted around, as if they were expecting trouble. The hall was full of people looking lost, wearing somber outfits. At each side of the hallway, suspended from the ceiling, were television monitors, stuck on vibrant blue screen and Maureen saw the name: HMA v. Farrell. She approached the reception desk.

“Can I help you?” said the uniformed man pleasantly.

“I don’t know where to go,” said Maureen. “I’m a witness.”

“Do you know which case it is?”

Maureen pointed up at the monitor. “That one,” she said, and showed him her citation paper.

A black-haired policeman in a short-sleeved shirt stepped forward from the back wall. The police had been watching Reception, waiting for her to check in, and now they were coming to arrest her for what she had done. Sweet relief washed over her. It was finished. She could tell someone what had happened, every detail, and hope for absolution. “Maureen O’Donnell,” he said, pulling out a clipboard and ticking off her name. “If you’d just like to come with me.”

Maureen smiled a consolation to Leslie, who looked worried, and followed the officer through a wood-paneled room off Reception and to the door of a waiting room. “We need you to stay here,” he said, “and give us notice if you have to go to the toilet or anything.”

It seemed like pretty lax security for a murder suspect but Maureen wasn’t going anywhere. The police officer read the “porn star” motif on her T-shirt and looked alarmed.

“Not really,” Maureen reassured him, smiling weakly.

He ushered her in and shut the door behind her. It was a small room. Cushioned metal seats were pushed up against the walls and sunshine poured in through a small, high window. He was in shadow at the far end of the room, his skinny ass taking up half of a chair, wearing a wide-necked T-shirt that slid off a shoulder, showing enough skin to be obscene on a woman.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” said Maureen, and Paulsa winced.

“Same as you,” he said, moving his mouth too much for the words, as if his lips were numb.

Maureen sat down heavily next to him, wondering why he had been arrested. “What have you done?”

Paulsa laughed, high and fast, like a chimp in distress, and shot to his feet, moving across the room towards the door just as it opened again. The uniformed man stood aside to reveal Shirley, the blond receptionist from the Rainbow Clinic, clutching a tiny handbag in front of her like a shield. When she saw Maureen, dismay shimmered across her face. The officer stood aside, holding the door open over her head, ushering Shirley into the room. She smiled a polite thank-you, ducked under his arm and sat down on one of the chairs. Maureen hadn’t been arrested after all. She was there as a defense witness in Angus’s trial and so were Paulsa and Shirley.

Paulsa and Maureen watched Shirley take a small crossword book out of her handbag, a pencil and a roll of mints. She opened the book, pressed the pages apart and began to consider an important clue.

Shirley had been friendly when Maureen went to the Rainbow Clinic. They chatted during her visits there and when Maureen went back after Douglas died Shirley had talked to her about it. Something had happened in the interim. Something had happened that made Shirley now think that Maureen was frightening and disgusting. Paulsa, assuming he was spotting an ally in Shirley, went to sit three seats down from her. Too polite to get up and move, Shirley glanced distastefully at Paulsa’s dirty tennis shoes and shifted the angle of her crossed legs away from him in a small, symbolic rejection.

Maureen’s knees felt watery. She sat down, watching the door, and hoped the nausea would pass. Shirley would tell the jury that Maureen had been back to the clinic after Douglas died, asking questions about him, that she’d gone to see Angus. Paulsa would tell them that Maureen got the acid from Liam. Of all the people gathered in the witnesses’ waiting room one thing was abundantly clear: Maureen was the bad guy and everyone knew it.

Nothing happened all morning. No one came to get them. They were allowed to go to the loo, as long as they told someone where they were off to. There were no-smoking signs all over the building but the toilet smelled of stale cigarettes and Maureen waved her lit fags around to disseminate the smoke in case there were hidden alarms.

All morning they sat, trying to find a place for their gaze that wasn’t someone else’s face, chest or groin. The room got smaller as the hours ticked by and Paulsa became increasingly agitated. He kept going to the loo and coming back, sitting down heavily and flicking the heel of a tennis shoe on and off. Shirley finished her crossword and moved on to another one.

Maureen felt sick with exhaustion. Tiny air bubbles made their way up her throat, popping in her mouth. The heat and sunlight in the room created optimum sleeping conditions and suddenly she stopped believing in last night or Michael or even the existence of Gartnavel. She was in the Hermitage wearing a warm fur coat, sitting in front of Matisse’s Arab Coffeehouse, watching the goldfish turn and swirl. Bright colors fanned from their tails, falling through the frame to the floor and ceiling like sparks from a Catherine wheel. Every drop of color sanctified what it touched. She was smiling, smelling sweet cardamom and watching the world being cleansed with color, when she turned her head and saw a flash. Mark Doyle was next to her, the pointed black tip of his tongue emerged from between red lips, turning into a roaring black cyclone, rushing, growing, opening wide to engulf her.

“Are you okay?” The police officer looked worried.

She had called out and somehow fallen onto the floor, banging her arm on the chair.

Paulsa had called the police officer rather than touch her himself. A red smut grew on her arm, seeping into her sleeve. Huffing with pain, Maureen looked up and saw Shirley, her legs crossed, a zigzag thread hanging down from the hem of her skirt, and she knew this part wasn’t a dream because it was too detailed.

“I fell asleep,” said Maureen.

She went to the loo and locked herself in a cubicle. She pulled up her sleeve and peeled back the tissue, ripping off the scabs, making them bleed. She wrapped fresh tissue paper around her forearm, salvaging two strips of not-very-sticky tape to secure the ends.

Back in the witness room, Shirley continued with her crossword while Paulsa stared guiltily at the floor and patted his damp face with a paper tissue, leaving little patches of white fiber on his forehead. When the door opened everyone turned to face it desperately, as if the air supply had been cut off and suddenly restored. The policeman stuck his head into the room. “Lunch. Back by one forty-five sharp.”

Everyone else seemed to know where they were going. Outside the room Shirley and Paulsa disappeared through the front door. Maureen stood outside the paneled room, feeling lost, and then she saw them. They were standing in a crowd, Winnie, George and Liam, Leslie and Kilty, Vik and Shan, all introducing themselves to one another and shaking hands. Even Leslie’s cousin Jimmy Harris had made the effort to come and raised his hand, smiling. The rest of them turned in unison, beaming at Maureen like a homecoming dream of comfort and joy.

The small cafe in the basement of the court had been painted a grating shade of howling yellow. Maureen looked down the table at Liam, Vik and Shan, chatting, establishing common acquaintances, and it felt strangely natural. She had studiously kept them all apart in case Vik thought she meant to get serious. None of it seemed to matter anymore. Leslie and George were talking, and Winnie was making Kilty laugh.

Liam seemed tired and jumpy. It hadn’t occurred to her before now but there would have been a phone call in the night, bad news, someone needing to identify Michael. Liam was keeping it from her, protecting her. She caught Winnie’s eye and saw the strain there, as if Winnie hadn’t seen enough trouble in her life.

She reached forward to put down her sandwich and felt the twice-used tape on her right forearm peel away from the skin. The tail of the tissue unfurled slowly, resting inside her sleeve. She put her arm on her lap and tried to remember not to use it.

“Mauri,” said Winnie, “look. See them?” She dipped her head in a secretive manner, gesturing to a table behind her. “That’s his family,” she whispered. “Don’t they look mental?”

Two women in old-lady tweed overcoats were sitting at a nearby table, looking poor and slightly ashamed of themselves, carefully picking the salad out of their sandwiches, laying it aside. One had a small elaborate growth on her chin, a bulbous lump of extra skin with smaller lumps on top. Next to them sat a gangly young boy in his early teens with the same uncomfortable look, dressed in a tracksuit and T-shirt and highly polished brogues. Maureen could almost hear the conversation in the house before they left, the for God’s sake, he wasn’t going to wear that, oh, all right, then, but change the shoes at least. As Maureen looked at Angus’s family she could imagine him having miserable Christmas Days in ugly houses, being a teenager and growing his hair long. The two women would have turned up at his every school play, been intimidated and ruined his graduation. She could see Angus trying to shed them as his income crept up and his tastes changed. He had a history, a background and a cause. Liam saw her looking at them and leaned across the table. “Bet Hannibal Lecter didn’t have to wave back to a family of hillbilly freaks at his trial,” he muttered.