Denise Mina - Resolution

Jim Maliano's door flew open, slapping against the hall wall, and he half leaped into the close. "Get the hell out of here," he said. "There are people in this close who know the police, who can report you for this."

"I just chapped the door, for God's sake," said Grey nervously.

"She's going, Jim," said Leslie.

"Is Maureen in there?" he said, peering behind her, trying to see into the flat.

"Go back in, Jim, she's just leaving."

Jim looked from one to the other, backed off into his hall and shut the door.

Aggie Grey looked at Leslie. "Is she in there now?" she said.

Leslie scowled and blushed a little. "Piss off," she said, and shut the door.

Aggie Grey held the letter box open, calling through it to Maureen, saying she'd pay a lot of money for her story. Maureen and Leslie carried on as normal, going about their business and getting ready for bed as Aggie bawled through to them. At one point Maureen was coming back from the bathroom when, five feet from the front door, she heard Aggie Grey exhale, burring her lips. "Oooh, fuck it," she muttered.

Maureen stopped in the hall.

"What am I fucking doing?" Grey was speaking so quietly she couldn't think anyone would hear her. "How the fuck did I end up here, hassling nutters for fuck's sake?"

The letter box slapped shut and Maureen heard Aggie Grey stand up slowly from the step. She stepped over to the door and watched her through the spy hole. Grey straightened her legs, muttering curses to herself as she held her sore knees. She picked up a polythene bag and walked heavily away down the stairs.

Maureen couldn't move. Hinged at the jaw, her head flipped back like a Faberge egg, opening her tender insides to the elements. It was a sharp rod dropped straight through her, skewering her and passing through her vagina, causing a howling pain in her lower abdomen. She felt the hot wetness on her thighs and woke up with a start, thinking she'd peed the bed. She hadn't. The sheets were wrapped around her legs and she had managed to turn all the way round in the bed.

Maureen lit a cigarette and looked out of the window on a perfect summer's day. Another baby girl had been born to the O'Donnells. The thought made her feel sick. She didn't want to talk about the baby, she didn't want to talk about anything ever again, and Leslie would be sitting staring at her all day. As she pulled on her shorts she found the number from Mark Doyle in the pocket. She looked at it for a while, losing herself in the numbers.

The town was busy, everyone moving fast, like cold-blooded lizards overheated by the sun. She stopped at a large chemist's for some painkillers, walked through the jets of warm air into the cool shop and cosmetics stands. When she had had a lot of money Maureen had come here a lot, buying overpriced vanishing cream and miracle conditioners. She loved them, loved the promise of change, of not being herself anymore after a mere three months of consistent application. The pharmacy was at the back of the shop. It was just after eight in the morning and willowy junkies were already there, handing in used needles and getting doses of methadone. A slow-blinking man with filthy black hair drawled to his pal, "Come on, Jonny, man, it's sunny."

Jonny-Man was not relaxed. The chemist pursed her lips tight and refused to look at him as she placed the small plastic cup on the counter. The thick blue-green liquid inside was as dark and inviting as the loch the night before. The agitated man lifted it and drank, rolling his tongue around the inside, lapping up the last few drops. He put it down on the counter again, watching it ruefully, wishing it full again. He turned and walked away.

The chemist pinched a smile at Maureen and knocked the used cup into a bin with a wooden spatula. "May I help you?"

"Painkillers," said Maureen. "Nothing dissolvable."

She walked back up the hill to the house, chewing on a bitter aspirin, reflecting on the injustice of Una having a girl. Una would use the baby to prove she didn't believe Maureen had been abused. She'd encourage contact, bring Michael over to the house, maybe even leave the baby alone with him. Maureen had often wondered how the horror of her own abuse could have occurred under the noses of neighbors and friends, teachers and doctors, priests and the gang of interchangeable nuns who taught them catechism. She felt sure someone must have seen something, a change, a withdrawal. Some adult somewhere must have seen some small clue and they ignored it, did nothing, sent her home to Michael. She could see the clues now and she wasn't going to ignore them. Angus's trial started on Monday. If she fucked up and got sent to jail, she wouldn't be able to do anything to protect the baby. If she was going to do anything about it she had four days left.

Back at the flat Leslie was still feeling ill and had made an appointment with the doctor for the afternoon. She was fretting about Cammy and so agitated that she didn't notice how tired Maureen was. "God," whined Leslie, "everyone knows he's been living with me and now I've realized that he's such a prick. Everyone must have known-you knew, didn't ye?"

"Yeah."

"It's so humiliating."

Maureen was thinking about Michael and Una and Winnie together, another child fed to Michael to appease him, another girl spending her life getting over him. Leslie was pausing, waiting for her to respond to something she'd said.

"Oh, well," said Maureen.

Satisfied, Leslie launched off again. "I feel like I've made an arse of myself. D'you think I've made an arse of myself?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Leslie," snapped Maureen, "being humiliated doesn't mean you've done anything special, it just means you got out of bed. Life's humiliating."

Leslie stopped still. "What's the matter? Are you embarrassed about last night?"

"No," said Maureen, furiously. "That guy's running a fucking brothel and I should be embarrassed?"

"You were pissed, Mauri. You fell over on the dance floor."

"I don't give a shit. It probably made Kilty's night anyway." She felt it in her stomach. An overwhelming swell of sorrow raced up her throat and she burst into tears.

Leslie sat her down in the living room and brought her a coffee.

"Let's go and see this woman I know," she said sweetly. "She's called Joan and she works with prostitutes. She'll tell us if she's ever heard of McGee. We'll go and see Joan, okay?"

"Who the fuck is she, anyway?" said Maureen, drying her eyes petulantly. "I'm sorry, it's just that guy-what he did to his mother – it's awful."

"Think rationally, Mauri-why would a small-claims case matter enough for him to kill her? It's only seven hundred pounds – that jacket he had on must have cost a few quid. He's obviously not short of cash."

"It might not be about the money. Maybe I'll ask him when I see him – the case is tomorrow."

"You're not going?"

"Yeah, I'm going. I want to show my face for Ella, just to piss him off. Show him I'm not frightened." But she was hoping that Si would mind very much; she was hoping for a fight. She sipped her coffee and thought about Ella. "Kilty said the mortician might have been bribed to lie to me about the cause of death."

Leslie was losing patience. "Why would anyone bother doing that?"

"Because," explained Maureen, trying to be coherent when she wanted to smash the cup off the wall, "if Ella died of her injuries after being battered, the police would be looking for the person who beat her up. They'd get done for murder. If she died from her wounds I could tell the police about her fight with Si and then they could deal with it all."

"So if you think it was a spontaneous heart attack you'll leave it?"

"Yeah."

"Can't we get a copy of her official death certificate from the hospital? They think you're her daughter, don't they? Why don't you just ask the police?"