Denise Mina - Resolution

Maureen ran on tiptoe back into the kitchen and pushed the sleeves of cigarettes into the bottom of a cupboard, shoving empty poly-bags in front of them. The front door banged again. Panting, she stood up, shut the cupboard door and looked at it. The man chapped again, faster this time, more impatient. She picked up a chair carefully, trying not to make a noise, and sat it in front of the cupboard door, stepping back to look at it, hoping it looked natural. She couldn't tell. She couldn't remember what natural looked like. He knocked again.

"Coming," she shouted, trying to sound casual. She could say the fags were for her own consumption, that she'd been abroad recently and had bought them. Calmer, she brushed her hair from her face, stepped out to the hall and opened the door. "Can I help you?" she said, remembering that she didn't know where the fags were from. If she said she'd been to Greece and they were from France he'd know she'd lied.

"Miss Maureen O'Donnell?" he said suspiciously.

"Yes." Maureen stepped out onto the landing and pulled the door closed behind her, realizing, too late, how shifty it made her look.

"You took your time," he said, giving her a sidelong glance.

She looked straight at him. "It's my time to take," she said stiffly, and wondered what it meant.

The man looked puzzled for a moment. "I'm here to deliver this," he said, handing her the envelope.

Maureen took it. It wasn't sealed at the back so it came open easily and she took out a small sheet of paper. It had her address on it but it didn't seem to be a warrant. "What is this?" she said.

"It's a witness citation."

She read the letter. She was invited to appear for the prosecution at HMA v. Farrell. The start date was only a week away. Maureen couldn't bear the thought of seeing Angus again. She imagined him standing up in the dock, shouting across the court to her, something about Michael that only the two of them would understand, something calculated to fuck her up for months afterwards. She shook her head, trying to hand it back, but the man held up his hands. He said she couldn't give it back now that she had it. When she asked why, he smirked at her. "Because it's a citation, "he said.

He was laughing at her and she had no idea why. "What is a citation?" she asked.

"Don't ye know?"

"Don't you?"

"It means that ye have to come to court on the day it says." He jerked his head at the sheet. "Just turn up and wait and you'll get called."

"What if I don't want to?"

"Ye have to." said the red man. "You'll go to prison if ye don't."

Maureen's heart sank. "Prison?"

"Aye," he said confidently. "They'll do it as well – they sent a woman last week."

"For not wanting to go? What if you're scared?"

"Still send ye," he said, as if he didn't approve either.

They stood in the chilly close, Maureen imagining herself in black and white, raising birds and fashioning chivs out of spoons, the peeling man wondering if he was cut out for this job or should go back to filing at the DSS. She looked at his forearm. "Ye shouldn't use Vaseline," she said, pointing at the pink patch. "Use aftersun. It'll cool the skin down."

"What's wrong with Vaseline?"

"Too heavy-your skin can't breathe."

The man looked at his raw arm. "Is that right? What about cala-miner?"

"Aye, calamine's good but messy on your clothes. Aftersun's better."

"Aye, cheers, anyway," he said, and walked away downstairs.

He stopped on the first landing. "By the way, Joe McEwan says he'll see ye there."

Maureen shut the door and dropped the letter to the floor, taking the whiskey bottle back into the living room, thinking of all the different sides to Angus. Angus the kind therapist who had made her think for the first time since hospital that she might have a life and a future. Angus as Douglas used to talk about him, the competitive edge, the small defeats and gains between them. The aftermath of Angus, dead Douglas in the living room, his blood everywhere, and Martin Donegan on the floor of his little cupboard hidey-hole, his blood black and silky beneath her feet. And then the epiphany: Angus turning up on the ferry to Millport, coming for Siobhain, coming to kill her to tidy up the details of his rapes in the Northern Psychiatric Hospital. She didn't want to see him because of what he had said to her in the room, about Michael, about the dreams. But if she didn't turn up they'd send her to prison and Una's baby would have no protection from Michael.

She sat on the windowsill, drinking from the bottle, felt the warm sun on her face, a gentle breeze licking her hair. She had been deferring the decision about Michael and now the possibility of going to prison made it more urgent. She had to make up her mind and do it within the next week. It was all coming to an end. She knew now that deferring was just a game. These undecided days had been the most content and precious she could remember. She remembered sitting in the garden of the Northern Psychiatric Hospital with Pauline, pressing the flat of their palms together as they passed a lit cigarette from one to the other, Pauline's hands larger than Maureen's but stick-thin. Her skin was see-through.

Maureen turned her face to the sun, letting golden glory tears roll down her face. She wasn't going to abandon the child to fate, whatever happened, whatever Sheila said.

Her head was aching at the back, a dull hangover pain reminding her that there were good things in life, like drink and more drink. While washing her face, she found a painful inch-long bruise under her chin and a parallel bruise on her forehead, just above her eyebrows. She was trying to remember the night before and work out where on earth the bruises could possibly have come from when the postie's tired feet tramped up the stairs. She heard him stop, flick through some letters, and watched one slip through and drop onto the mat. Maureen picked it up and opened it.

It was a cheap brown envelope containing a small printed sheet telling her when and where to turn up for the small-claims case. It was due to be heard the following Friday at two thirty in the afternoon. Ella McGee's name wasn't even on the letter. Maureen tutted. She knew she'd filled in the bloody form properly. If she met creepy Si McGee again he'd think she was suing him, implying a relationship between them, suggesting the necessity of contact. She decided to go to the hospital that afternoon and tell Ella when the case was, then have nothing more to do with either of them.

She looked around the tiny hall. She wanted to get out of the flat. She was pulling the front door open before she had finished her first fag of the day. A small white envelope that had been sitting against the door flopped onto the toe of her trainer. She picked it up. There was no address on it. It was sealed at the back, the paper warped in a wide rim around the seal, as if it had been wetted with a brush or a cloth. She shut the door and stood in the hall looking at it. She ripped it open.

Inside was a laser-printed image in smudgy black and white on photocopy paper. It was a picture of a child of about eight, standing in a hallway. The girl's eyes had been blanked out with a thick black line. She was crying, mouth open, lips and cheeks wet with tears, crying and looking up at the person taking the photograph of her. She was naked and cupping her little fanny protectively, her arms taut, her chest hunched nervously. Maureen shuddered and dropped the picture to the floor, stepping back to get away from it. The picture landed face up and the eyeless child was in her hallway, crying up at her.

Maureen looked into the envelope again but it was empty and it occurred to her that DNA could be taken from saliva. She crouched down and turned the picture over but there was nothing written on the back. The child was almost the same age she had been when she was abused. Angus Farrell would know that. It had been hand-delivered but she knew it had come from him: he was the only person who sent her threatening letters. Angus probably knew a whole network of freaks and weirdos in the city, people he would have met through his work, through his patients and through his own personal interests, any one of whom could have sent it. He was trying to upset her and he was succeeding.