Denise Mina - Resolution

Maureen lit the last of her cigarettes and looked out over the south side. Angus had a plan. He was smarter than any of them. Everything she'd done felt as if he had orchestrated it, giving him the acid, meeting Mark Doyle, being here now. She stood up. Being here now. He had planned this. He had written to her and threatened her and talked about her in hospital. He'd threatened her in front of journalists, on camera. He wanted her to know he was coming after her, to think he was coming after her, wanted her to stay in the house and hide, and wanted the police to protect her. She was on her feet, falling into the hallway.

"Leslie!" she shouted, grabbing her jacket and opening the door. "Get the bike."

Kilty and Leslie ran out of the kitchen. Hugh lurched to shut the front door but Maureen blocked it with her body. "We'll take the bike." She pointed at Hugh. "Phone the police. Kilty, phone Liam. It's Siobhain. He's going to kill her. He's going to kill Siobhain."

Angus Farrell had had a pleasant meal. He liked plain food, nothing that would repeat too much in the afternoon. After shaking off his ecstatic mother and Auntie Mima with promises to come straight over after lunch, he had taken Alan Grace to the DiPrano seafood restaurant. He ordered steamed cod with noodles and a fruit salad to finish. Grace ate quickly, Angus noticed, and asked for the bill before Angus had finished his coffee.

They parted on the pavement, pulling up their collars against the heavy rain, agreeing to see each other again soon. And well done, by the way. Grace's face withered into an uncomfortable smile. "Go and see your family," said Grace.

"That's exactly what I'm going to do now," said Angus.

He stepped out into the road and hailed a taxi.

The bike was skidding on the wet road and Leslie managed to slice through two imminent red lights without getting them killed. She took the motorway to avoid going down Duke Street. The splashback from the fast cars was blinding. Maureen wondered how the hell she could see where she was going. Leslie ducked from lane to lane, skipping between the fast cars until she came to a large lorry and sat in the calm, dry vacuum behind it. Maureen held on tight, straining her head over Leslie's shoulder, as if that would get them there any faster. She thought of Mark Doyle and Pauline, thought of the state Siobhain was in when they first met her, thought of Michael and anything else that might make her really fucking angry, but all she felt was scared and weary.

The taxi dropped him outside a pub in Duke Street. It was raining heavily and no one was looking up at anyone else. For the first time Angus was glad of his broken nose, smirked as he thought how well it made him fit in with the hardmen and the bums coming out of the pubs and bookies'. He kept his head down and took a side street, wishing he had worn a mac, hoping he wouldn't get anything on his jacket. It had cost three hundred quid, over three hundred, actually, three fifty or something, and he'd only worn it four times. He took his black leather gloves out of his inside pocket and slid them onto his hands, crossing his fingers over one another, pressing the soft calfskin into his knuckles.

Dennistoun from the motorway was a warren of one-way streets, designed to stop boy-racers from careering off the slip road and taking the small back roads at seventy. Leslie did her best but ended up going the wrong way down a long one-way street for three blocks. She almost overturned the bike when they got to Siobhain's corner. They stopped, taking off their helmets as they sprinted up to the close door, leaving the motorbike unchained in a rough area.

The two concrete steps to the unsecured door were wet with footprints. Maureen ran at the door with both hands out, shoving it open. The damp footprints led upstairs, drying out on the turn to Siobhain's landing. Maureen dropped her helmet and bolted after them. The front door was lying open, a gray metal pick hanging in the Yale lock, still light spilling into the hall from the open living-room door. She listened for a second, knowing she'd hear him if he was there. Somewhere in the house Siobhain exhaled, ending with a tiny, despairing call from deep inside her.

Maureen ran down the hall, tripping over the doorstep, losing her footing and scampering on all fours. Her shoulder smashed into the door frame. She pulled herself up and looked into the living room. Empty. She turned to the kitchen. Empty. She threw herself across the hall against the bedroom door and stopped. The facing wall was splattered with flecks of deep red. On the floor at her feet lay Angus Farrell, face down, staring under the bed, his broken nose in perfect profile against the beige carpet. The back of his head was a flattened, filthy red mess. Under the skin and blood, beyond the splintered brilliant-white skull, peeked a doleful blue. It was watery blue like the baby's eyes. Angus had lived long enough to touch his brain. His bloody hands lay by his ears, desperate handprints smeared on the carpet, grabbing red trails from retracting fingers.

Downstairs, the close door crashed open against the wall and Liam came running, screaming over and over for his Siobhain. The bedroom door next to Maureen quivered, making her stagger backwards in fright, and Siobhain peered around the edge holding a cast-iron frying pan, her hands and face speckled with red freckles.

They sat on the close stairs and waited for twenty minutes for the police to come. Liam held Siobhain on his knee, their foreheads pressed tightly together, their hands intertwined. "I thought I was being burgled," whispered Siobhain.

Liam looked up at Maureen and Leslie, sitting close together, smoking the last of Leslie's fags. "I didn't tell her the verdict was due today," said Liam. "I didn't want to upset her. Is he dead?"

"I don't really know," said Siobhain.

"I think he is, actually," said Maureen, and Leslie agreed, wrapping her arms around her tummy and rocking gently.

"Are you okay?" Maureen asked Leslie.

Leslie nodded over and over.

It took the police twenty minutes to get there because Kilty didn't know where Siobhain lived and couldn't remember her second name. Hugh had to call the police station and get someone to find the address in the files on Farrell's investigation. When they arrived the police made them all get out of the close and cautioned Siobhain.

Leslie waited until they were in the back of the police car and on their way to the station to give statements before she spoke. "Is Siobhain gonnae be charged with murder?" she said.

Hugh turned to look at her. "I doubt that," he said gently.

Leslie sighed. "I'm never gonnae be cheeky to Siobhain again," she said, and looked out of the window. "Never, ever, ever."

There were four figures sitting on the ground, listening to the pipe player. They had no faces, but the angle of a head, the drop of an arm, showed they were immersed in the creamy moment, following the spiral of the music. In the foreground two figures, one lying, one sitting, were watching goldfish turn in a bowl. It was completely flat, the foreground and the background differentiated only by the size of the figures. Her eyes were drawn into the picture by the fish but then swayed through each of the characters, resting on a man with his head tipped back, enjoying.

She had been there for nearly an hour and a camp security guard with slicked-down hair and shiny buttons on his blazer was getting pissed off. She had tried to sit down cross-legged on the parquet floor in front of the painting but he stood over her, looking disdainful, and flicked her upright with an angry forefinger. She had to sit on the banquette by one of the three large windows. Matisse's huge canvas, The Dance , was distracting her from the Coffeehouse . The windows in the Winter Palace had net curtains on them. Every time they rustled behind her she smiled at the inappropriateness of it.