G03 - Resolution (42 page)

“This is the prosecution waiting room,” said the officer, as if that meant anything to any of them. Maureen and Paulsa nodded to each other, trying to show they weren’t completely out of their depth. Shirley, who wasn’t out of her depth, didn’t bother trying to convince anyone of it.

It was a larger, windowless room with seats bolted to every wall. Overhead lights were muffled by a dropped panel. On each of the four walls hung an indistinct impressionist print in a thin gold frame. A smaller door at the back of the room had a stern notice on it, prohibiting unauthorized entry.

One hour into the afternoon Shirley was called to give evidence, leaving Maureen alone in the small room with fraught Paulsa. This, she suspected, was exactly what he had feared. As the door shut behind her Paulsa sniggered like a teenager on a frightening first date. Maureen pretended not to notice and went back to making up words that would fit into the spaces of the crossword. He sniggered again. “Are you trying to get my attention?” she said, without looking up.

“Nut,” he said petulantly.

“What are they going to make you say out there?”

“In the court?”

“Yeah, in the court.”

Paulsa lifted his bony shoulders past his ears.

“Won’t be good for me, though,” she said, “whatever it is.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Paulsa said, in a high voice. “You’re not on trial, are ye?”

“No,” she said, “I’m not. Are you going to tell them Liam gave me the acid?”

“God, shit, no.” Paulsa moved across the room, sitting one chair away from her, leaning over confidentially “They’re going to ask me about the acid you bought from me.”

Maureen lowered her paper. “You’re not mentioning Liam in your evidence?”

“No. Just about the acid you bought from us. They’ve got me on another charge. I haven’t got a choice.”

She smiled at him, relieved. “I understand that, Paulsa, I won’t hold it against ye.”

“Liam will but.”

“Paulsa, Liam’s retired.”

“But you’re his sister. He’ll fucking kill me.”

They were let go at half four and Maureen watched Paulsa slope off out of the building. Liam was in the clear, they weren’t even going to mention him.

Minutes ago Angus had been no farther away than through that door. Maureen remembered him listening to her describe the incidents with Michael, giving her cigarettes and tissues, telling her how not to die five times a day, handing her a future. He was a pragmatist, wasn’t interested in connecting or empathizing, just focused on practicalities and problem solving. He was through the door and it meant nothing to her. She went outside for a cigarette.

As the door opened to the green, Maureen smelled the sweet grass and saw the yellow sun dancing across the roofs of passing cars. The soft breeze caressed her face, brushing her hair back like a kind mother; the sun warmed her itchy arms and loosened her tired neck. Here she was, she thought, content and enjoying whatever she could, living her dream.

A man walked along the dark road at the top of the hill and turned into the park, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched around his ears. Ten yards past the gates he disappeared into a thicket of bushes. A big moon hung over the blue city and Kilty, Leslie and Maureen were sitting very still, heavy hearts beating quickly, wishing they could smoke or drink or leave.

Liam had phoned Maureen at home, telling her that something had come up and he might not be in court tomorrow morning. He sounded stiff and strange but she didn’t want to press him. It would be a complication to do with Michael and she didn’t want to take in another shred of information. She couldn’t stop thinking about Liam now, wondering where he was and what had happened, wondering whether she should have asked.

“That’s forty minutes,” said Kilty, under her breath. “Maybe they’re not coming at all.”

Neither Maureen nor Leslie answered. They had both decided that they weren’t coming but didn’t want to leave yet, just in case.

“What if we—”

“Ssh,” said Leslie. “Another twenty and then we’ll go.”

“I need the loo,” said Kilty.

“Just wait,” said Maureen.

Another ten minutes passed and they were wriggling around, shuffling their numb buttocks on the cold step, when three cars and a large white van came round the corner, lighting up the Park Circus Health Club with their headlights. They stopped in the street and all the doors opened, everyone piling out and running up the stairs to the door. They didn’t bother to knock — they had a big metal bar with handles on it and smashed the door open at the first try, shouting that they were the police and to stop.

In the hall a woman turned and ran, the yucca plant got knocked over and everyone was shouting, women screaming, doors being smashed in, orders to stop. All around the genteel square lights went on and people came to windows to watch the furor, squinting out into the darkness. A woman at a third-story window was holding a baby. She smiled and said something to a man standing at her shoulder. Two neighbors spotted each other at their windows across the square and waved.

Aggie Grey had tipped them off. The police had informed her of their timetable so she could get there with the photographer and do their media department’s job for them. When she had passed it on she told Maureen it was top secret and she had to sit somewhere that the police wouldn’t see her. She told Maureen to sit in the dark, not to move, smoke or do any bloody thing that would draw attention to herself. Everything Maureen had told her had checked out, from the agency in Warsaw to the Newcastle connection. Aggie said she had even found a file interview with an anonymous woman who had been through the network and managed to get away while she was in Dublin. She was still trying to source the interview but they had enough confirmation to run the story anyway.

Aggie was standing at the bottom of the stairs, a photographer at her side. He raised his camera in readiness and waited, setting off flashes as the police began to filter out of the club’s smashed door, bringing with them skinny women in thrown-on clothes, one holding a bandaged hand in front of her. The bodybuilder had a surgical collar on and his massive arms cuffed behind his back. Two or three men were hustled into the back of the van, covering their faces or looking away.

When all the noise and bustle was done, when the cars had shut their doors and driven away and the van had left the square, when the neighbors had finished waving and shrugging to one another, the three women were left alone on the stairs. Leslie lit a cigarette. “Good one,” she said.

Maureen was alone in the witness room. Paulsa had been called to give evidence and had been in there for forty minutes already. He had arrived this morning in slow-blink, tiptoeing mode. She couldn’t imagine anyone managing to sustain a conversation with him for longer than three minutes — he seemed pretty off it and she didn’t suppose he would make a very good witness. She was the last one, knew she would be the final witness and hoped she would be left until the afternoon. She didn’t want the jury to come up with a verdict before Monday.

She was wearing a long-sleeved black shirt with trousers she had bought that morning, and felt grown-up and ready for them. She hadn’t seen Liam before she came to the witness room, didn’t know if he was out there or not. She suddenly thought that he might have been arrested for Michael, or something to do with Michael, but it was nonsense. She knew it was nonsense.

There was only an hour left until lunch when the door opened and the police officer gestured for her to come with him. She stood up, gathering her newspaper, breathless with nerves. He led her through the back door, along a narrow passageway and into an antechamber with an intimidating large oak door at one end. Next to the door stood a bald man in a black gown and bow tie. He nodded to the uniformed man, acknowledging acceptance of the package. He took the newspaper from Maureen, set it down on a chair at the side and opened the door.

It was very bright in the court, lit from above by windows in the ceiling. The body of the room was hidden behind a large wooden wall but she could hear a thundering silence, a man coughing, someone whisper. The usher pointed her up a small, steep set of wooden stairs and, as Maureen climbed, the room came into view.

It was grander than the small-claims court. The judge was sitting in a duck egg blue alcove above her, between two pillars and below a symbol of the crown, all ribbons and unicorns. Below the witness box, sitting at a large table, were the lawyers in their funny costumes facing the judge with their backs to the public. The overhead windows didn’t extend to the public gallery and the benches were in shadow. Liam’s face caught her eye. She went to wave, delighted to see him, but stopped her hand at her waist. Liam was looking worried and sitting next to Winnie. He seemed to be holding her hand. Winnie, she noticed, had not brushed her hair.

Straight across the room sat the jury, a mess of color, body shapes and hairdos, a welcome injection of reality in the pantomime. They were in a little wooden pen, facing her on three benches of five, like a roller coaster train dipping into the courtroom. She could tell by their expectant faces that she was billed as the finale. They were sitting forward, waiting voraciously. It was hot in the room and, high up in the booth, Maureen was hotter than most. She began to sweat furiously.

Angus was sitting to her left, in a wooden gallery, flanked by guards. He opened his eyes a little, like a pleasured child, and mouthed one word: Pauline. Maureen grinned at him and gave him a cheeky little wave. She saw the confusion and fear in his eyes and looked away.

The bow-tied man swore her in, holding out a Bible for her to put her hand on, and she found herself taking the oath to someone else’s God very seriously. The man told her to sit down on the wooden seat and went off, clambering down into the body of the court and up another small set of stairs into the judge’s booth, standing slightly behind him.

A lawyer from the table went to stand up but hesitated with his knees half bent as the judge checked his watch. The judge nodded to him and he got up. He had a little black goatee beard, and wore a white wig and a gown. He walked all the way across the room and stood next to the jury, one arm laid along a dividing wall, his head tipped back affectedly. Beneath his gown his suit was expensive, his shirt well pressed. “Missss O’Donnell.” It was a long hiss, a theatrical attempt to get everyone’s attention and, she felt sure, malign her as unmarried. “Could you tell us how you met Douglas Brady?”

Maureen cleared her throat and leaned nervously towards the microphone. “I met him—” The microphone gave off a high-pitched crackle.

The bow-tied man came galloping over to her, leaning over the wall of the box. “Don’t lean in so far, stay back a bit,” he said. She sat forward a little and he winked at her. “Super,” he said, his eyes twinkling. She watched him go back to the judge’s box. His was the only friendly face she could see in the room and she wanted him to come back.

“Again, Miss O’Donnell.” It was the advocate, posing at the other end of the room. “How did you meet Mr. Brady?”

“I was leaving the Rainbow Clinic,” her voice echoed around the sound system, every syllable sounding legally significant, “and I was waiting at a bus stop. He stopped his car and offered me a lift back into town.”

The advocate nodded, as if she were following his script. “You were, were you not, a patient at the Rainbow Clinic?”

They were going to ask about her psych history, she fucking knew it — they were going to make her discuss it in front of all these people. She paused and caught her breath. “I was, yeah.”

” Why were you a patient?”

It was a big question. She paused to think about it and another man in a gown and a wig stood up, saying something about the question, and the judge nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I think you have to narrow that question down.”

They were all unbelievably posh. Maureen had never actually heard accents like that before, the wide vowels and rolling 7?s. She had always thought she sounded plummy but compared to the lawyers she could be selling cockles and mussels from a barra.

“Very well,” the standing advocate resumed. “Miss O’Donnell, how did you come to be attending the Rainbow Clinic?”

She decided to be straight about it. “I had a nervous breakdown a year after I finished my degree,” she said. “I was admitted to the Northern Psychiatric Hospital. After I left there I went to the Rainbow Clinic as an outpatient.”

The standing man was not pleased with this. He raised his eyebrows and furrowed his brow. She suspected that he had hoped she’d sound like more of an arse. “But you weren’t actually referred there, were you?” he said.

“No,” she said. “I didn’t like the psychiatrist I was referred to so I stopped seeing him and asked the Rainbow if I could see someone there.”

“What was wrong with the psychiatrist you were referred to by your doctors?”

He had been cold and disinterested but Maureen didn’t want the lawyer to think she could be intimidated. “He was a plummy twit,” she said.

On the back bench of the jury box a plump man in a purple shirt and a small red-haired woman snickered as though they had been trying not to laugh all day. The lawyer frowned. It took him a second to realize that the jury were enjoying it. Then he smiled as if this was a great joke they could all enjoy together.

“You certainly are quite a feisty young woman,” he said, objectifying her and robbing her of her dignity, “aren’t you?”

He waited for an answer, compounding the insult. If she agreed she’d look like a nutter, if she disagreed she’d look passive, so she compromised. “Dunno.”

“Well,” he sounded sarcastic, “you seem quite feisty to me, Miss O’Donnell, really quite feisty.” He paused to look through his papers.

“Is that a bad thing?” The voice echoed around the tinny sound system. It was Maureen, speaking when she hadn’t been spoken to. The lawyers at the table looked at one another, the snide advocate looked at the judge for backup and the judge leaned forward. “You’re here to answer questions, Miss O’Donnell,” he said sternly, “not to make conversation.”