Denise Mina - Resolution

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.