G03 - Resolution (18 page)

She was approaching the Indian Trip, thinking about the lager she’d had with her dinner there — she could almost taste the cool sweet tinge of it—when she realized that she was close to the business address Ella had given for Si. Becci Street or something. She cut down a narrow street of tall gray tenements.

The road opened out into a dark, run-down square with failing trees in a bald central island. To her left stood an old church with antifascist slogans painted in five-foot letters. It looked like a cross between a Masonic hall and a synagogue, with four outsize columns and fussy rotunda looming on the roof. The doors were painted pale blue. The Church of Scotland seemed to have bought a job lot of the paint from somewhere and all their doors were the same color, regardless of a building’s style or period.

She looked at the road signs on the corner. It was the junction between Coleworth and Becci Street. Thinking it was a dark area for a health club, she followed the line of the square round towards the park. Past the church, she came to a Georgian yellow sandstone block of grand windows and imposing doorways with broad sets of stairs leading up to them. The corner flat of the block had a broken window, boarded over with wood stamped “Hurry Brothers, Emergency Glaziers.” The other windows in the flat were covered in inappropriate burgundy plastic. A brass plaque on the wall announced it as the Park Circus Health Club. It didn’t look like a health club. Maureen was looking at it, puzzling, when the door opened and a man came out, walking down the stairs with his hands in the pockets of his anorak. He didn’t have a sports bag with him and he wasn’t wearing sweats. He caught her eye and glared at her, as if she’d done something awful, turned on his heel and hurried away down the street.

Maureen walked across the square and sat down on a set of stairs opposite, facing the health club, wondering about it. She lit a cigarette and watched as night fell.

One and a half cigarettes later her mouth tasted foul. She chewed her tongue to force out some saliva and was swilling it around her mouth as a black cab pulled up across the road. The light flicked on as the door opened and a woman stepped out, pulling a shoulder bag after her. She trotted up the steps and Maureen recognized her, somehow, from the straightness of her back and the hair pulled carefully into a tidy chignon. Glaswegian women tend to dress wishfully, in clothes they’d like to suit — in short skirts because they want long legs, in vest tops because they want thin arms — but the woman on the steps was dressed beautifully, in clothes that fitted her and suited her shape, like a French woman. She turned on the top step, saw the red tip of Maureen’s cigarette flare against the dark and looked across at her carefully, keeping her head down before opening the door and slipping inside. Maureen watched the door and wondered if she was the foreign woman Ella had mentioned, the one she had fought with her son about, and the wife who was at the hospital with Si when poor old Ella died.

A car drew up at the bottom of the steps and a man climbed out of his car, locked it, jogged up the steps to the door and pressed the buzzer. The door opened and Maureen saw into the lobby — a shot of thick blue carpet, pea green wallpaper, a yucca plant against the wall — and the man disappeared inside. Maureen smiled at her own naivete: it had taken her twenty-five minutes and two cigarettes to realize it was a brothel. She stood up, grinning, dropped her cigarette and ground it into the pavement, thinking of all the fucking miserable lives in Glasgow. Poor women on their backs to ugly men for shit money, and nothing in her life seemed that bad. Fuck it. She’d go home and have a drink.

Across the square the door opened again and a bodybuilder in a suit came out. His neck was thick, his arms stuck out to the side like stabilizers on a bike; his thick thighs rubbed against each other, gathering the material in his trousers at his crotch as he walked across the square to her. He stopped fifteen feet away, stood in the road and raised his eyebrows at her. He seemed to be panting. “What ye doing?” he said aggressively. His voice was high to be coming from such a manly body.

Maureen pointed up to the front door behind her. “Waiting for my pal,” she said.

He saw that she wasn’t angry or obviously up to something, and dropped his hostile stance. “Ye locked out?” he said softly.

“Naw, I don’t live here. I just came to see someone but she’s not in. Did ye come over to see if ye could help?” she said, and smiled. They both knew why he had come over.

“Huh, aye,” he said, looking back at the health-club door. “Sometimes we get women waiting, you know, outside.”

“What are they waiting for?”

He looked away. “For their man. To catch him.”

“Is it expensive?”

“They’re not always bothered about the money.”

She had the feeling he was reluctant to go back in. “Is that what happened to the window?” She pointed to the Hurry Brothers board.

“Aye.” He gave a small smile.

They stared at the ground for a bit, listening to the wind hissing through the dead trees.

“I’m gonnae go anyway,” said Maureen, dropping her foot to the next step. “I think my pal’s out for the night.”

“Mibi she got lucky,” he said, as if that’d never happened to him.

“Mibi,” said Maureen.

She tipped her chin good-bye and walked off down the street. She was almost at the corner when he spoke. “Safe home,” he said gently.

She was walking up the hill to her house, feeling low about the drink and Michael and everything, when she saw a gray Saab with silver trim idling in the street outside her house. It wasn’t parked, just stopped in the street, and the driver was looking up at the building. She walked close to the buildings, keeping in the shadows, and stopped outside Mr. Padda’s, hiding in the dark doorway as she looked into the car. Si McGee was gazing at her house, his mouth open a little, making his weak chin look even weaker than it was. He was smoking a small cigar, driving around and checking out her house the day after his mum died. He must have seen her address on the small-claims form. Maureen stood still and waited for him to drive away, watching the red taillights until they turned the corner.

Maureen awoke to the insistent sound of someone banging loudly on her door, over and over. She covered her head with the thin sheet, as if that would make them go away. They continued to bang, stopping for short rests and starting again, rhythmically, like a nervous tic. Maureen got up and went to the spy hole, pulling on a T-shirt.

He was wearing a suit, his shirt a little crumpled. Behind him stood a photographer, ready and waiting with a large camera trained on the door. Maureen recognized the journalist. He had come to the Apollo Theatre when she worked there, just after Douglas’s murder, and refused to leave. She was tempted to pull open the door and tell the men to piss off but she realized, just in time, that the incessant banging technique was designed to make her do exactly that. She made a coffee to the accompaniment of the journalist’s knuckles getting shredded on the badly planed door.

After forty minutes it became clear that the man was not using his bare hand to knock. The banging stopped and started again, a few minutes between bursts but never less consistent or loud. Maureen pulled the phone into the kitchen, shut the door and phoned Leslie to tell her she was trapped.

“Just come when ye can,” Leslie whispered back. “I’ll set up the stall without ye. Listen, gonnae bring my money?”

“I will, I will.”

After an hour the journalist gave up and by the time he and the photographer had left the close Maureen had gone through fury and indignation, annoyance and numb surprise to something like awe at the man’s persistence.

She was sitting on the settee, sipping a coffee and pulling on her trainers when an image of Michael came into her mind. He was sliding behind her, just out of her line of vision, and he was close. She drew on her cigarette to make him go away but he was still there, just behind her ear. She ignored him, taking deep breaths and looking out over the city. He was still there. She had three strategies for dealing with flashbacks: Angus had told her to change the ending. She reached down to the side of her chair and pulled up a shotgun, firing blindly over her shoulder. It used to work sometimes but he was still there. He was smiling at her: he wasn’t afraid at all. The skin on the back of her neck warmed with fright. The other two strategies were to wash it away with alcohol or live through it. She walked into the kitchen and looked at the bottle. Michael was still at her ear. She had made a deal with herself in the past few months: she could drink as much as she wanted at night and during the day as long as she didn’t drink in the morning. The day started at eleven thirty and it was only ten forty-five. Forty-five minutes off target. Fuck it. She lifted the bottle and swallowed a mouthful, the cheap whiskey burning her gums and teeth, stinging her throat on the way down, making Michael dissolve. She lit a fag with a soggy hand and carried the bottle back into the living room. Fuck it.

As the whiskey did an inside job of warming her, she drew on her fag. The coffee in her hand tasted particularly sweet and dry. She felt good. She felt better than good, she felt great, and she sat back and wondered why she had worked so hard for so long to resist a morning drink.

With the benefit of a drink inside her she considered trying to stay off the whiskey for a while at some point in the future, just to prove to herself that she could. Perhaps she’d try brandy: it seemed medicinal and easier to justify than rum. She couldn’t think of drinking vodka because Winnie used to drink vodka. If she started drinking vodka she’d definitely have a drink problem. It was five past twelve. She had meant to phone Liam and wish him good luck in his exam. She called his house and found him home. “How did the exam go?”

“Dunno. I stayed till ten minutes before the end, so that’s a good sign. You sound a bit strange.”

“I am strange,” she said, feeling giggly because of the whiskey. sorry.

“Look, come over here and we’ll talk about it.”

“I can’t. I’ve got to go to work; I’ve got Leslie’s wages.”

“Will ye come over tonight, then?”

“Aye. Have you ever heard of a guy called Si McGee?”

“Nut. Promise ye’ll come over tonight?”

When she opened the door a white envelope dropped into her hall. It was the same size as the other one and the paper was warped at the back. She hesitated before opening it. It was another picture, of a small boy, eyes uncovered this time, taken from the waist up. He was lying down, the picture taken from above him, naked and laughing, oblivious to the meaning of the leather-studded shackles on his wrists with the chain between them. Maureen put it back into the envelope and sat it in the hall cupboard on the floor. She was going to tell the fucking police about this and get the bastard who was leaving these things at her door.

She was locking the flat when she heard a noise across the close. She turned and looked at Jim Maliano’s door. He was watching her through the spy hole. She stomped across the close and banged on his door. He waited for a moment before opening it, pretending he’d been elsewhere in the house. “Oh, hi, Maureen.”

“Stop fucking watching me,” she said, pointing at him. “You fucking weirdo freak.”

Jim mugged at her, his face a guilty giveaway. “I don’t know—”

“Are you leaving weird shit on my doorstep?”

Jim looked insulted. “Am I leaving what?” he said, having misheard and thought she’d accused him of defecating.

“Are you leaving fucking envelopes on my doorstep?”

“No,” he said, looking bemused.

Maureen walked away down the stairs.

“You’re a rotten neighbor,” called Jim, leaning over the banister to half shout, half whisper at her. “The police were never in this close once before you moved here.”

Maureen stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at him. “Stop fucking watching me, ya weird wee bastard.”

Outside, the dreary sun was doing its thing and office workers in heavy shirts and skirts ambled along the road, reluctant to go back inside after their chores were done.

Leslie was pleased to see the carrier bag full of money and pushed it under the stall where she could keep an eye on it. She looked at Maureen with big insecure eyes and wanted to know all about the night before with Kilty and whether they had had a good time. Maureen didn’t tell her about the trip to Benny Lynch Court. She said they had had a good laugh but it would have been better if Leslie had been there and left it at that.

“I’m stuck, Mauri,” said Leslie quietly. “He’s like shite on my shoe — I just can’t get rid of him.”

“What can I say?” asked Maureen, feeling cocky. “Every fucking time ye say stuff like this you’re pissed off with me later for hearing it.”

“I want shot of him. I want nights with you and Kilty. I hate going home.” Leslie hung her head. “I’m thinking about asking for a transfer.”

“You can’t move out of Drumchapel, that’s your bit. All your family are there.”

“But I can’t keep living there if this goes on. He can see my veranda from his mum’s house.”

“The Drum’s your bit. Fuck him.” Maureen punched her arm. “Look, give him his stuff, change the locks and come and stay with me for a couple of weeks.”

Leslie thought about it for a moment. “You sure you wouldn’t mind?”

“Naw,” she lied. “And if I do your head in,” she said, hoping she would, “Kilty’ll put you up for a bit. And if she does your head in, Liam’ll take ye in. Everything’ll be great.”

Leslie sat up straight for the first time in ages. “I’m going to do it,” she said.

“Brilliant,” said Maureen, punching the air and laughing.

“I’ll tell ye what’s really scary.” Leslie gestured to her to come close. They leaned in until their faces were inches apart, Maureen excited, expecting a big, juicy, derisory secret about Cammy. “It’s half twelve in the morning,” said Leslie gravely, “and, hen, you’re fucking pissed.”

They sat on their little stools, staring at each other’s feet and smoking. Maureen had sobered up during the day and her stomach was clawing for a drink. She stayed on her stool, afraid to go outside in case she ended up in the pub.