Denise Mina - Resolution

"What for?" asked Kilty, and Maureen looked at her incredulously as the door slid shut.

It was ten o'clock and still as bright as noon. Traffic lights ordered ghostly legions around the empty roads.

"What does Ella the Flash mean?" said Kilty.

"Dunno," said Maureen.

As they walked across the deserted car park Kilty flapped her T-shirt to disperse the memory of the smell from the lift. She was completely unperturbed by the naked man. As a social worker she saw things Maureen couldn't conceive of. She was never shocked at horror stories of deprivation and seemed to know all the names of the big men in the city.

"Have you ever heard of Si McGee?"

Kilty shrugged. "I know the name."

"How much force would it take to smash a door from the inside?"

"The other doors looked pretty sturdy. I don't think Benny Lynch Court would be the most sensible place for the council to make big savings on front doors."

"Why could he possibly be that angry with her?" Maureen mused.

"Maybe it was bringing the small-claims case."

"Naw," said Maureen. "Whatever went on in there happened on Thursday night and he couldn't have received the letter about the small claims until Saturday morning at the earliest."

"He got the letter for the small claims on Saturday morning and then, suddenly and out of the blue, she died?"

"Yeah," nodded Maureen. "Suspicious, isn't it?"

"It is a bit," said Kilty, biting her lip.

They walked to the mouth of the underground and bought their tickets. Kilty stopped at the turnstile. "Look, is this any of your business, Mauri? Are you sure you're not just worried about Una's baby and looking for a morbid distraction?"

"She asked me to get her out, Kilty – she asked me and I said she'd be fine." Maureen flushed, shoved her ticket into the slot and pushed through the turnstile.

Kilty got halfway down the stairs and turned, the wild wind flattening her thin hair hard against her head, making her look like dead Ella. "I've definitely heard that name somewhere," she said, as if that would console Maureen.

It didn't make her feel any better. The platform was empty. Through the dark tunnels on either side they could hear a rumbling. The train clattered into the station and they got into a deserted carriage, sitting next to each other. As the train took off Maureen leaned across to Kilty. "How could ye get into a lift and not even notice you're naked?" she shouted over the noise.

"He'd be blacked out," she said and left it.

It struck Maureen that her drinking was taking over her life. Whatever course she took in her life there would be no dignity in it.

She could only see two options: ugly cells or a life of perpetual streaking. Kilty read the concern on her face. "You don't black out a lot, do ye?"

"No."

Kilty smiled. "You answered that awful quick. Are you sure?"

"What is a blackout?"

"That's when you can't remember hours of what happened last night. They get worse if your drinking escalates. It can go on for days."

Maureen smiled for her. The drinking was getting worse: she could dress it up as a crisis, she could call it Michael, but she knew deep down that it would have happened anyway, that she was like Winnie.

Kilty leaned over and tapped her leg. "Blacking out for days is pretty extreme, Mauri – it means your brain's shriveling. I don't think you'll get that bad."

Maureen nodded.

"You should cut down, though," she said, once again displaying her inability to understand the siren call of drink. "I've said that to you before."

Maureen looked at kind Kilty's pretty wee face and would have sold her to the devil for a double there and then.

She stayed on the train to Kilty's stop, passing Garnethill, knowing if she got off she'd run upstairs and take a drink. Kilty talked about her brother's wedding most of the way home, how she couldn't stand his friends and knew the feeling was mutual. They thought she was a loser freak for working in a children's home. Maureen asked her what sort of work they did.

"Sell things, buy things," said Kilty. "Like you and Leslie but from offices."

She looked and saw that Maureen was only half listening. Her responses were shallow and a beat too late. Una's baby was due soon. She must be worried sick.

It was dark outside Hillhead underground. The big sky was as yellow as a wolf's eye. Kilty tried to convince her to come up for a cup of tea but Maureen said she needed a walk and had to get up early for work the next day. They kissed and Maureen thanked her for coming to Benny Lynch Court with her. Their parting felt strange and formal, like a Judas kiss.

Maureen planted her hands in her pockets and walked down the street. The students were away and the area was quiet in the lull before closing time. It was still warm. She wanted a drink: her mouth wanted a fresh drink, her gut wanted a searing drink, her fingers wanted to cradle a precious glass, her heavy heart wanted succor. The watchful yellow sky hung close and she heard a high breeze rustle the dark trees in Kelvingrove Park. She wouldn't drink, wouldn't stop at a bar and order a triple. She'd just go straight home. But she had whiskey at home in the cupboard. She slowed down.

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.