Denise Mina - Resolution

Leslie shook her head. "How can this even be happening in this day and age? It's un-fucking-believable."

"Yeah," said Kilty. "They count on that, like the child prostitution racket. I read today that lone child immigrants seeking asylum routinely go missing in the UK. The cops think they're being prostituted and used to make pornography by organized gangs but they can't find them. Who'd believe that?"

"No one," said Maureen.

"No one," said Leslie miserably. "And even if they did they'd roll their fucking eyes and do nothing."

Sitting on the back of the bike, holding on to Leslie's waist, Maureen shut her eyes and wished herself anywhere else. She felt sick and dizzy, and suddenly aware of her bare legs and arms and the danger of the night traffic. If they crashed and skidded on the Tarmac she'd be skinned alive. The possibility still seemed more inviting than their destination. Leslie had agreed to help her watch Michael but had no idea what Maureen was planning. She pulled up at a junction, flicking the bike into neutral and kicking down the stand. Her voice was muffled through the helmet. "Ye're hurting me," she said, working her fingers into Maureen's clenched fists, making her relax her grip. Sorry.

"Just loosen it a bit."

The front of the house was dark again and Una's Rover was parked outside the front door. They stood behind the strip of communal garden in the street for twenty minutes, watching the lights in the hall through the open living-room door, but saw no movement. "Let's go round the back," whispered Leslie.

"Wait here a bit." Maureen was afraid she'd be sick again and shame herself in front of Leslie, who'd just KO'd a brick shit-house.

Leslie elbowed her hard. "There's nothing going on here."

Maureen pushed her elbow down. "Wait a bit, though."

Leslie, still bristling with adrenaline, pushed her arm. "What's the point in us standing here -"

The close door opened and Una stepped out into the street, followed by a small bald man. Maureen froze, holding on to the chicken-wire fence. Una had gained a lot of weight since they had last seen her, and her haircut was worse from the front than the back. It stuck up at the top and hung over her ears. She was wearing purple leggings and a giant pink T-shirt. She raised her hand and pointed at the car. The lights flashed and beeped and she walked round to the driver's seat. Michael was shuffling and looked as if something demeaning had just happened to him. As he reached forward to open the door Leslie grabbed Maureen's arm and pulled her away to the bike parked on the corner. She had to lift Maureen's leg to get her on the bike and slammed the helmet on her, banging the top of her head so hard it rang and buzzed. They took off, following the Rover at a distance.

Maureen shut her eyes, leaning her head on Leslie's shoulder, trying to take herself back to Vik. They were crossing the river at Jamaica Street when the anger in her belly stirred awake, swirling around her gut, mustering allies among the hormones. She sat up. They were on the Maryhill Road, heading up to where she knew he stayed. They passed Benny's house and she tried to see if his lights were on, but they were doing forty and whizzed under the railway bridge marking the boundary with Ruchill.

Three cars in front, Una took a left, disappearing off the road. Leslie followed her round the corner and suddenly came to the Rover, parked at the back of a shop. Leslie passed by just as Una opened her door, flicking on the internal light. Michael had on a white T-shirt with a Nike tick across the front, the soft material articulating his drooping belly and rounded back. Maureen wanted to lean across and grab him from the bike, forgetting who he was, thinking he was McGee or Angus or someone else. She wanted to grab him and drag him along behind her, skin him alive on the potholed road.

Leslie turned the block and rejoined the main road, following it back to the town. At a set of lights she wrestled with Maureen's clenched hands again, loosening them, digging at them with her nails unnecessarily.

Back in Garnethill, Maureen cracked the lid off a brand-new half bottle of whiskey and drank it. Leslie said she only had another couple of days on the antibiotics and watched her enviously, sipping a cup of tea. They hadn't bothered to put the lights on in the living room and the dark orange sky filled the window.

"Maureen," she said, "ye have to remember that the baby isn't you. It could be different this time. I mean, he's a hundred and ten years old and Una doesn't trust him to get a taxi home on his own. I don't think she'll be leaving him alone with the baby."

"I've seen her leave him with the baby," said Maureen. "I've seen her do it."

"Can't you be patient?" said Leslie quietly.

"Why would I be patient?"

"He's not going to live long, Mauri, he was having trouble walking."

Leslie nodded off on the settee and Maureen tiptoed into her bedroom. She sat on the end of her bed, drinking from the bottle as she looked out over the city to the blackened Ruchill Tower, drinking and thinking about skinning Michael.

“You didn't even know her," said Leslie, watching Elsie Tanner sniff at a stained lamppost.

"I knew her as well as you did," said Lenny, defensively, tugging at the itchy collar of his dark jacket. It was chafing his neck red raw.

"But my pal did know her." Leslie pointed at Maureen. Behind her sunglasses Maureen's eyes were burning. A yearning for sleep made her blink every two seconds, dragging her eyelashes back and forth across the lenses of her shades like a boa on a burlesque stage. She had woken up with a familiar inch-long bruise under her chin, a parallel bruise on her forehead between her eyebrows, and she could not work out where on earth they had come from.

"You've got something on your head," said Lenny helpfully, leaning in to see better.

Maureen raised her hand and touched it self-consciously. "I know, it's a bruise and I don't know where it's come from. I've got another under my chin again as well."

"Pull your fringe down," said Leslie, flattening hairs over it so that it looked like a big horizontal bruise with hairs stuck to it.

Despite being hungover and bedraggled, Maureen, Leslie and Lenny were one of the more glamorous parties at the small funeral. The family had yet to arrive but a couple of other groups had gathered by the door to the church. Three elderly men with withered, pinched faces stood in front of it, smoking fags held in cupped hands and laughing at one another's jokes. Two casually dressed young women sat on the church steps, offering their already brown faces up to the sun. Maureen guessed that they had come in lieu of someone else.

They were in Partick, down by the river at a small Catholic church. The building across from the chapel had been knocked down, leaving a stretch of wasteland, currently being used as a makeshift car park. Behind the church, on the banks of the slow river Kelvin, stood an old sandstone mill recently converted into flats.

The small church was unassuming; an arched wooden door was set at the gable end, flanked by small flying buttresses and two long windows of brightly colored glass. To the side of the door, a ragged lump of granite with a large brass shield attached stood on a concrete plinth. Etched with the Madonna crowned with stars and a stiff heraldic spread eagle, it was a thank-you gift from the Polish servicemen and -women who had attended mass there during the war.

The arched chapel doors opened. A young priest with sandy hair the same color as his skin greeted everyone, inviting them inside on the condition that they were part of the McGee party. The old men finished their fags and the young women stood up. Maureen, Leslie and Lenny walked towards the door, Lenny shouting back to Elsie Tanner to stay, Elsie, stay. Elsie sat down suddenly and started licking her fanny. As the priest walked away down the aisle to the vestry, every single person present climbed into the back row, knowing they hadn't been central to Ella's life.