Denise Mina - Resolution

Maureen settled next to her. "Well, I'll get to the point, then. Have you heard of the Park Circus Health Club?"

Candy nodded.

"What do ye know about it?"

"It's a house up by the park. They've got a lot of rooms, maybe ten. They've got a dungeon for hitting them." She nearly smiled. "That's it."

"Who owns it?"

Candy looked at her bruised knees. "Dunno," she said. She didn't sound convincing but Maureen could hardly blame her.

"Do you know anyone who works there?"

"Nut." Candy was looking around them, at Leslie's thick hair and good skin, at Kilty's silly trainers with the lights in the heels.

"Anyone who's ever worked there?"

"Nut."

"Doesn't everyone know everyone else?"

Candy looked at her, annoyed. She had suddenly seen herself in relation to the other women there and she couldn't stand it. It was unbearable, the power differential between them. "We're not in a union," she said, pulling back her lips and baring her gums, shaking her head in Maureen's face. "We don't have Christmas fucking parties."

If it came to a fight Candy could probably take them all on and walk away without making her limp any worse. Maureen held up a hand in surrender. "Sorry," she said.

"Aye, ye fucking should be sorry." Candy stood up, shouting, and her voice bounced off the near walls in the lane. "Ye fucking should be."

"I didn't mean to insult ye," said Maureen, standing up to meet her.

"Fuck ye!" shouted Candy. "Ya fucking cunts, the lot of ye!"

She turned to all of them, shouting unreasonably, calling them names and trying to frighten them. She reached out to push Kilty, the smallest, and Maureen and Leslie went for her instinctively, standing next to Kilty before the hand reached her.

"Too far," breathed Leslie, holding up one finger.

Candy backed down.

"Come on, I'll walk ye back." Maureen said it as if nothing had happened but they were both breathing heavily. Candy looked wildly from one to the other and tripped after Maureen making her way out of the alley and into the bright street. "Thanks for talking to us, Candy, that was good of ye."

Candy said nothing but limped along angrily. Maureen slipped her another tenner and Candy tore it from her hand. Maureen liked it that she was angry, that she didn't just accept her place. It was no place for anyone, so shunned she couldn't even go into a pub for a piss.

A car slowed next to them, the man leaning across the passenger seat. He was handsome, with short brown hair and a fine jaw, small eyes and nice teeth. "Show us your cunt," he said.

"Fuck off," said Maureen.

"Forty," said Candy.

"Not you," said the man, "her," and he pointed at Maureen.

"You can fuck right off, son," said Maureen venomously.

"She's not working," said Candy. "Thirty."

The man looked at them and assessed the situation. He glanced down the road to the gangly woman standing on the street corner and slid back reluctantly into the driver's seat. "Twenty-five," he said.

Candy broke away and got into the car, slamming the door shut behind her. Maureen watched the car pass and, through the back window, saw Candy and the man ignoring each other, a canyon of space between them, already behaving like an unhappy couple. The car turned up a side street and disappeared out of sight.

Back on the corner the smallest woman was missing. Her gangly pal was bleary-eyed and trying to make sense of a cigarette.

"Are ye all right to walk?" asked Maureen, and she followed her along the road. Suddenly, a fast car full of young men screeched past, crossing the grid, bravely defying the give-way sign. The windows were down and they hung out screaming "Cunt," and "Bitch," and "Slit" at the women, whooping and laughing uproariously as they passed. Maureen had a sense that in a few years' time one of the boys in the car would be back here, harassing the women, raising a hammer to someone's head in a dark alley. And no one in the car would connect the two incidents because it was just a bit of fun.

"God," said Maureen, "it's fucking horrible here."

"Tell me about it," said the woman sagely.

"I'm Maureen, by the way."

"I'm Candy," said Candy II, and Maureen smiled.

Candy II was less fraught than Candy I, principally because she was so off her tits she could hardly remember where she was. She sat on the wall, blotchy legs drifting out in front of her, her head sagging into her chest, and Maureen thought they should get the questions over and done with. "Do you know the Park Circus Health Club?"

Candy II pressed her lips tightly together and held out her hand. Kilty put a tenner into it. Candy II clenched her fist and retracted her hand, closing her eyes and nodding. "No," she said. "I've never heard of it."

"Have you ever heard of Si McGee?"

"Oh, aye, yeah." Maureen was afraid to believe her.

"Where do you know him from?"

"Gorbals. His ma lives in Benny Lynch Court. I was at primary school." She looked up and seemed startled, as though she wasn't where she had supposed she was.

"Have ye heard of him being in this business?"

"No." Candy II was certain. "He went to St. Aloysius. He's a businessman." She smiled slowly. "He used to sit next to me in assembly. D'ye know his sister?"

"Tonsa?" said Maureen.

"Aye. She's mental."

And then a strange thing happened. The inside of a Kinder-egg, an orange and white plastic capsule, dropped from nowhere and rolled on the ground. It was wet and glistening. The sun trickled down the lane, lighting up the egg and shining through it. Inside, a little rectangle of something settled against the side. They all stared at it, apart from Candy II.

"You've dropped your…" Kilty trailed off, not knowing what to call it, and Candy looked to where Leslie's reluctant finger was pointing.

"Oh, aye." She fell forward from the waist like a rag doll, picked up the wet thing and wiped it clean on her leg. She opened her knees, lifted her bum off the wall, pulled the crotch of her pants aside and fitted the thing back into her vagina. She sat down again and looked at them expectantly.

"I can't think of anything else to ask ye," said Maureen.

"Excuse me for that," said Candy II, knowing she had breached the formal rules of etiquette.

Maureen had to ask: "You're not using that as birth control, are ye?"

Candy II laughed a high, happy laugh, wrinkling her nose and squeezing her eyes tight. She looked like she'd be a good laugh if she was at herself. She held her hands up. "No pockets," she said, looking down at her bra. "They'd steal this if it was their size."

"Why would they steal from ye?" asked Kilty, smiling. "They must have money to come to ye in the first place."

"Oh, they love ye till they shoot it. Then they fucking hate ye, like ye made them come looking for ye. They want tae hurt ye, a lot of them."

"Why is that?"

"Shamed," said Candy II nodding sadly. "They're all ashamed." She stood up abruptly and Maureen took an extra tenner out of her pocket and handed it to her. "Ye haven't asked me why I do it," said Candy, suddenly coherent.

"Do what?" asked Maureen.

" This, " she said, pointing at the ground. "That's what everyone wants to know. How did we get started, why we do it."

Maureen shrugged. "I'm not bothered about that, Candy, everyone's got their reasons."

"I do it for my weans," said Candy II, talking to the far wall, her eyes wetting, her mouth drooping at the corners, "because I love them. I never wanted this. I want them to have all the things I never had."

The line sounded heavy and hollow, like the words from an old song. Maureen and Leslie looked at the ground, embarrassed. Kilty watched Candy, enjoying the performance.

"I love my weans." She looked at the two tenners in her hand and wept.