G03 - Resolution (10 page)

“Who was that?” asked Liam.

“The old lady’s son,” shouted Maureen, above the noisy engine. “What a creep. Has Una been in touch with you?”

“Not in the half hour since ye last asked me, no,” Liam shouted back. “Don’t worry, she’ll be late. First babies are often late.”

Liam spotted the red light up ahead and cursed it. He slowed the car, trying not to reach it before it changed back, but the lights didn’t budge and the engine petered to a coughing stop. He whipped off his shades and looked accusingly at Maureen.

“Fuck all to do with me,” she said.

“Well, you’re sitting there,” he muttered, and began the long ritual of the choke.

The lights changed and impatient cars behind them began to hoot. Eventually the Triumph spluttered to life, taking off just as the lights changed again, trapping the other cars behind it. Liam grinned as they honked. Maureen wished that she’d had the chance to speak to Ella alone. She looked pretty shocked.

Liam coughed next to her and she looked at him. He might not tell her when the child was born. He didn’t know what the birth meant to her: he didn’t know what she was planning for Michael. The only people who knew were Doyle, because she’d told him, and Sheila, because she’d guessed. Liam might decide not to tell her because it would upset her. She hoped she could read it in his face if he was lying. They were gathering speed on the broad road to Dennistoun and he smiled to her and raised himself up in the seat a little, enjoying the warm wind chewing his hair. Maureen smiled back. She’d know if he was lying. She felt sure she would.

Siobhain McCloud opened the door to Liam’s familiar knock. She had sunglasses on, exactly the same model of Ray-Bans as Liam. She didn’t wait to see who it was or even welcome them but walked away wordlessly down the dark hall and back to her beloved outsize television.

“Hiya,” called Liam, stepping into the hall. “I’ve brought Mauri with me.”

Siobhain didn’t reply. Liam shut the door behind Maureen, nodding for her to go into the living room ahead of him.

Siobhain was sitting on the beige settee watching a Gaelic film about North Uist. She seemed to have taken to wearing her shades indoors a lot because the TV brightness was set so high that both Maureen and Liam had to put on their sunglasses to make sense of the picture. The program showed a group photograph of islanders from the sixties, a lineup of thick-legged girls in miniskirts with indistinct knees and innocent grins. She turned over suddenly to Montel. A woman in a flowery dress was crying and Montel took her hand.

“What’s happening?” asked Liam, sitting down next to her on the settee.

“She’s crying,” said Siobhain, “and Montel is holding her hand.”

Maureen sat down in the armchair. Siobhain’s house was depressing. The settee was beige, the walls were beige, the carpet was beige, everything inoffensive and inexpensive. The only ornamentation in the living room was a small watercolor of irises and a big oil painting of her younger brother, done from a small snapshot photograph, a little boy standing on a hillside many years ago, squinting into the camera.

As part of a university project, Liam had made a film of Siobhain. She talked to the camera about her people and the Highlands, showing irrelevant pictures cut out of ladies’ magazines. She told the story of her childhood with the travelers, how her brother drowned in a burn and her mother left the land and came to the city to die. It was a peculiar film. It should just have been annoying but it was strangely touching, fat Siobhain barking in her Highland accent at the camera, her stilted delivery seeming affected and mistimed. Liam had written an end-of-term paper on his film, a vague and pretentious piece about the rare beauty of reality. He failed and was having to do a resit exam over the summer.

Maureen would never have thought of them as friends, much less close friends, but since the film Liam had been over at Siobhain’s all the time, watching television, showing her films and asking her what she thought.

Siobhain had been very fat when Maureen met her but it hadn’t disguised how beautiful she was. Her nose was a straight arrow, her plump mouth a tidy rosebud and her cheekbones high and proud. Her black hair had started to gray prematurely but in most lights the silver strands looked like a glossy sheen. Angus Farrell had almost broken her. As a senior psychologist at the Northern Psychiatric Hospital he had had unlimited access to the ward where Siobhain was being treated for depression. Farrell had tethered the women with rope, around the ankles, around the wrists. Of the other two victims Maureen knew about for sure, Lona McKinnon had hung herself and Yvonne Urquhart had had a stroke that left her severely brain damaged.

It might have been the shock of seeing herself on film, or just that she had pals, but Siobhain had changed dramatically in the past six months. She went on a crazy diet of steak and citrus fruit, which caused her to exude a sharp, rotting smell. It also made her fart soundlessly every fifteen seconds although she steadfastly denied it every time Leslie challenged her. She had lost half her body weight. Because the weight loss had been so rapid her skin was just catching up with her, contracting around the new shapes and forms. She had had a chicken neck for a month but it had settled back now to show a strong jaw and slim neck. She still moved as if she were obese: swinging her legs around each other clumsily, holding her arms out stiffly to the sides. When she sat down she cleared space for her phantom belly, sitting with her legs wide open as if she still had forty-inch thighs.

She needed new clothes and trawled the charity shops with Maureen and Leslie, choosing a peculiar mixture of old-lady flowery dresses, a big yellow anorak, tennis shoes and bright jerseys in blues and oranges. It was the first time she had ever chosen her own adult clothes. She dressed like no one else they had met. Today she was sporting white tennis shoes with red soles, a red skirt and a green shirt with button-down breast pockets.

Maureen could tell she was enjoying her new self and the shades were part of that. She had taken to brushing her hair and making sure her collars weren’t tucked in.

“Siobhain,” said Liam, handing her the newspaper, “we want you to look at this.”

Siobhain moved her face in the direction of the newspaper. It took them a minute to realize that under her shades she was keeping her eyes on the crying woman and Montel.

“Siobhain, read it,” said Liam impatiently, cracking the paper with a flick of his finger. “This shit’s on all the time.”

Maureen had never seen anyone swear in front of Siobhain without getting pulled up about it. She looked at Liam curiously. He was sitting forward, watching Siobhain as she looked at the paper, his hands clasped between his knees.

Siobhain finished reading and looked up at Liam, her face blank, her mouth hanging open.

“He can’t hurt you,” said Liam quickly, taking his own specs off. “He can’t get anywhere near you. We won’t let him.” He looked to Maureen for confirmation and she nodded.

“He’s still in prison,” said Maureen, shedding her cheap glasses. “They’re just trying the case.”

Siobhain raised a hand to her face and took her own glasses off, dropping them onto the settee, her hand hanging limply on her lap. “Will they let him go?” she said quietly.

“No,” said Liam quickly.

Siobhain looked at him suspiciously. They didn’t really know what would happen. As far as they knew, Angus Farrell was just as likely to be sent to a chip shop for life, without the possibility of vinegar. Tm not stupid, Liam,” she said softly.

“We don’t know what’ll happen,” said Maureen, “but we do know that the trial’ll go on for a while and he’ll be in all the papers and we wanted to warn you about it.”

“He’s in court,” Siobhain said.

“That’s right,” said Liam, leaning into her. “But he can’t get to ye.”

Siobhain dismissed him with a look and spoke to Maureen. “He’s in court in Glasgow?”

“Yeah.”

Siobhain looked at the picture in the paper and slowly lifted her face to Maureen, tipping her chin and taking a deep breath. “Will he go to prison for what he did to me?”

Maureen and Liam looked at each other.

“I don’t think so,” said Maureen. “The paper says it’s just the murders he’s been done for.”

“Will they ever try him for the other things?”

Liam shook his head. “We don’t know.”

Maureen knew the police had tried to be kind when they questioned Siobhain. She wouldn’t survive a court case. Maureen sat forward a little. “Siobhain,” she said, reasoning that an outright lie was the kindest course of action, “he’s being tried for murder and the police don’t think he’ll get off. He’s just being tried for the murder.”

They fell silent and watched Montel on the giant television. It was the only expensive thing in Siobhain’s house: everything else had been provided by Social Services when she came out of hospital. Douglas had given Siobhain money too, a fat roll of cash that Elsbeth didn’t know anything about.

Montel was trying to coax the woman to speak through her tears by telling her something about his military experience. The woman had been accused of insurance fraud and was facing twenty years in jail.

“She is going down,” said Siobhain, and dropped the paper to the floor.

Out in the street, two gangs of tired ten-year-olds were fighting about a football. A mum hung out of a window, calling someone in for bed and telling them to learn to fucking behave, for fuck’s sake. Liam tugged the hood up on the car and slapped open a rusted hinge. “She’s terrified,” he muttered, glancing up at the window.

“She seems okay to me,” said Maureen. “I’ve seen her terrified. She freezes and cries and throws up.”

“Maureen,” he said, authoritatively, as if he were the only person who had ever met Siobhain, “you don’t know what she’s feeling.”

“Well, you don’t know either. All you’ve got to go on is what she says.”

He snorted and walked around the car to tackle the roof on the passenger side. “I think I know Siobhain,” he said prissily.

“Aye, better than she does?”

Liam didn’t answer but pulled up the hood of the car, blocking the sun from her face. Maureen sat in the shadow, waiting patiently as he clipped the hood to the windscreen. She saw him turn and look up to Siobhain’s window, hoping for a final glimpse. She wouldn’t be standing there, Maureen knew she wouldn’t, not while Montel was on. He climbed in next to her and shut his door, pulling out the choke. “Liam, do you fancy Siobhain?”

He turned stiffly to face her, a pale pink blush spreading over his neck and face. “No,” he said, his eyes open wide, his bottom lip twitching.

“Has Una had her baby yet?”

Liam looked confused and the blush receded. “No. What’s that to do with anything?”

Maureen smiled to herself. “Never mind,” she said. She’d definitely know if he was lying. “Ye know, that sort of poetic sorrow can be very seductive. If you like Siobhain at least make sure you fall for her, not just her tragic past.”

“Maureen, I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” said Liam, and pulled out very fast into the street.

As she climbed the last weary flight of stairs Maureen felt certain she could hear Jim Maliano watching her through the spy hole in his door. It was a horrible habit of his. She turned around and stared at the door, looking straight into the spy hole, mouthing, “Fuck off.” She had said it ten times when she heard him creeping, tippy-toed, along the carpeted hall, a hand brushing the papered wall as he steadied himself. Inside her own door the answering machine blinked at her. She went into the kitchen, unscrewed the lid from the whiskey bottle and drank. It tasted like a longed-for deep breath. She was going to get dead drunk tonight. The answering machine had a message from Hugh McAskill, asking her to call him at home, and one from Kilty checking in to say hello. The last was the usual forlorn weekly message from Winnie.

When Winnie was drinking she had been a shameless phone pest. Since Maureen had cut contact with her Winnie could phone six, sometimes seven, times in a day. Her personal best was a round and magnificent fifteen. Each time she rang she’d be at a different stage of drunkenness and sounded like a completely different person. Her moods ranged from heart-wrenching sadness to apocalyptic anger, and every call was aimed at getting Maureen to phone her back. Maureen had cut off nearly a year ago, when it had become clear that the family no longer believed that Michael had abused her. Winnie had gone to AA and got sober in the intervening period and now phoned once a week, every Friday at five o’clock when Liam would have told her that Maureen was still at work, and repeated the same three sentences: “I love you, I miss you, I want you to contact me.” Maureen appreciated the kindness of phoning when she would be out. She found herself wondering about sober Winnie, fantasizing about talking to her, the two of them reminiscing about the good times. Liam was closer to Winnie now that he had softened and she was sober. He said she was deeply sorry for all the grief she’d caused but really didn’t understand the extent of it. Winnie was the funniest person Maureen’d ever met. She found herself imagining an idealized mother in place of Winnie and it became hard to remember what was true and what was fantasy. Liam told her that Winnie was almost prepared to consider the possibility that Michael had abused Maureen, and knew at least that it wasn’t a deliberate, malicious fabrication.

A sudden unfamiliar, officious-sounding knock at the door made her jump. She looked out of the spy hole, expecting to see Aggie Grey, the woman with ŁŁs to spare. It was a man, dressed formally in slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, holding a brown envelope. He was slim with dyed blond hair and a badly sunburned face. The brown skin was peeling off his chin and neck, leaving patches of brilliant pink. His forearms were going as well and, as he waited for her to answer the door, he pulled a tin of Vaseline out of his pocket and rubbed it on his forearm. The skin came away beneath his fingers, rolling into greasy, gray little cigars. He made a disgusted face and brushed it onto the floor, picking at the bits stuck in the hairs. Maureen frowned at the door, wondering why Aggie Grey would send someone who looked like a courier. Suddenly it hit her: the illegal fags. It might be a warrant to search the house.