Denise Mina - Resolution

Kilty and Leslie looked at each other again and Maureen wondered just how close they were.

"For how long?" asked Kilty.

Maureen shrugged. The court case was this week and she'd have to decide about Michael before she ended up in jail. "A week," she said, randomly.

Kilty and Leslie looked at each other. "A week," agreed Leslie.

They sat with Maureen for a while to show her they were sorry for talking about her drinking. Eventually Kilty stood up and picked up her bag. "We going to look for Candy III at the Wayfarers' Club tomorrow, then?"

"Yeah," said Maureen. "Can we talk to your dad about Si McGee?"

Kilty smiled uncomfortably. "I dunno. He's not very keen on you at the minute."

Kilty promised to meet them the next evening and left, shutting the door quietly behind her. Leslie waited until Kilty's last footfall had finished echoing around the close. "Mauri," she said, "why are you so afraid of Angus Farrell?"

"Nothing."

Leslie, not known for affectionate gestures, reached out and touched her arm. "You've been freaked by him since Millport. What happened there? I know ye didn't just feed him the acid, I know something else happened."

Maureen sighed into her chest. She wanted to speak, wanted to say it out loud, but it stuck in her throat and swelled. "You know the dreams?" she said. "About the fingernail and the blood?"

"Yeah," said Leslie, filling in the hesitation.

"He said…" She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. "… Angus said Michael raped me."

Leslie sat back against the sofa and together they looked out at the black sky. "He said this in Millport, right?"

"Yeah."

"After you'd given him the acid? After you'd tied him up?"

"Yeah. But he was my therapist, he was astute, he knew things."

"Mauri, that's a lot of shite. He said it to hurt ye, to frighten ye. If ye'd been raped at that age ye wouldn't get a wee nick inside the wall of your fanny. It would be split all the way up."

"But he said-"

"Mauri, I think Angus Farrell probably said a lot of things to a lot of people."

Maureen looked into the deep swirling amber in her glass. "I feel as if I'm losing it again," she said, in the quietest voice.

Leslie was afraid she was right.

Without meaning to, they slept on the floor in the living room. It was the breeziest room in the house with the biggest windows and everywhere else was unbearably hot. When they woke up it was eight o'clock and they were already late for the market. Outside the window a pitiless sun glared over the city and they both wished it would rain.

The market was busy and the Saturday crowd of buyers were waiting impatiently for them. They served the backlog and settled on their wee stools, glad to be in the cold tunnel.

"There was guys here looking for the two of you earlier," said Peter.

"There was a gang of men when we got here," said Leslie.

"Two guys looking for you." Peter pointed at Maureen. "One of them had a suit on and the other one had a camera. Guy in a Celtic shirt was asking for you, Leslie."

After little discussion Maureen and Leslie decided to pack up for the day. They told Peter to spread the word that they wouldn't be back for a week or so.

Leslie didn't want to go to the country but she had promised to humor Maureen for a week and, anyway, she had nowhere else to go. Maureen lit two cigarettes and handed her one as she rattled the old van down the slip road from the motorway and stopped at the roundabout.

Lanarkshire is fine countryside. Lush old trees hung over the road or sat softly on the rolling hills. Past the concrete sprawl of Motherwell, residents had paid enough to relish the luxury of privacy and there were few houses near the road. Behind hedges and trees, the hills were scattered with new bungalows and solid old houses built when the area was farming land, before its proximity to Glasgow made it commutable. The road was narrow and busy at weekends. The only set of traffic lights in the area caused tailbacks of up to half a mile on Sundays, when the car-trunk sale was open. As the van passed a field with opaque Nissen huts cloaked in rippling cellophane, Maureen spotted a signpost. "There," she said. "Dreyloan." She checked the address in the phone book on her lap. "That's it. Left up here."

Leslie turned the van over the old stone bridge. Far below they heard the sound of cool water splashing through a rocky crevasse.

Dreyloan village was picturesque and litter free. The cars parked in driveways were new and expensive. Even the Saturday visitors from the city looked healthier than average and certainly better dressed. Their shoogly van attracted interested glances as they parked by the green. Leslie pulled on the hand brake and turned off the engine, pocketing the keys. She waited for Maureen to get out so she could shut the passenger door from the inside but Maureen didn't move. "Will we get out?" said Leslie.

Maureen was smiling straight ahead, her head tipped to the side. In front of the windscreen, on the edge of the village, a small office in a pretty pink cottage had a large to-let sign nailed above the door. It was McGee and McGerty, estate agents.

"That doesn't mean anything, really," said Leslie, worried by how pleased Maureen seemed. "There could be a lot of other explanations."

"Aye," said Maureen. "Could be."

The village green was a long, bumpy stretch of grass. In the center, at the intersection of two diagonal paths, stood a solemn monument to the war dead from the village. Around the perimeter of the green, villagers and visitors were catered to by a cake shop, a camping-equipment store, a curry house and an olde authentiky coach house pub, doing three-course meals for a fiver. Around and about, visiting families climbed out of cars after long drives in hot weather; a couple of men in obscenely clinging Day-Glo outfits stood next to fancy racing bikes drinking from water bottles and panting, wiping sweat from their necks. Maureen and Leslie headed straight for the estate agent's.

The cottage was a squat single story, with deep windows and a step down to the entrance. McGee and McGerty had one window of the cottage; the other was occupied separately by a small post-office-cum-newsagent. The window display only showed six houses for sale but they were laid out tastefully on gray cards, without prices. They were cottages, a barn conversion and a manse, photographed in perfect sunshine and with bare, expensive graphics laying out the details. Maureen looked at them and it occurred to her that she could sell her house, take the money and just piss off.

"Posh," said Leslie.

Inside the front door the two businesses had built their own entrances, diagonal doors facing the main entrance like a moral choice. Maureen pushed the door, setting off a tinkling bell, and stepped into a small room with plush carpeting and a single desk. The man behind the desk, elderly, in a pink and baby blue Pringle sweater and gray flannels, was on the phone. He looked as if he had been pulled off a golf course and made to sit there. He clearly wanted the person at the other end of the line to think he found them hilarious. With sorrow-sodden eyes he laughed and nodded, texturing his laughter with high and low intonation, rocking back and forth in his chair. Maureen and Leslie sat down across the desk from him. He mouthed at them that he'd just be a minute and laughed some more before hanging up and looking sadly at them. "What can I do ye for?"

"We're interested in the lease for this place," said Maureen.

He smiled insincerely and looked at them. "Can I ask what you do?"

"We're Web designers," said Leslie.

He frowned at his papers. "Really?"

"Yeah," said Maureen.

The man didn't know what else to ask them because he didn't know anything about Web design, which was just as well because they didn't know anything about it either.