Denise Mina: Resolution

The Third Book in the Garnethill Trilogy, 2001

It was quiet in the gray corridor. high summer shone through the consecutive windows, lighting the lazy dust; window bars cast chilly shadows onto cracked plaster. They were waiting in the corridor-in-between for the door to be opened to the visitors' block. The police were out there. Angus didn't know what they were going to charge him with yet. He guessed the murders and not the rapes. They didn't have any good witnesses for the rapes. A guard at the far end watched them lethargically, standing on one leg.

The sour smell of disinfectant was making Angus's battered sinuses ache again; he was sure he had a fragment of bone stuck in there. He sat forward suddenly, hanging his head between his knees. Henry, the burly nurse sitting next to him, shifted his legs out of splatter range.

"Are you gonnae be sick?" he asked.

"No," said Angus, bending lower. "My head hurts."

Henry grunted. "Tell them at meds."

Medication was four hours away. "Thanks, Henry," said Angus, "I will."

He looked between his legs. The wooden bench was bolted to the wall, the mysterious point of attachment plastered over so that no one could wrench it off and use it as a weapon. Angus had understood the rationale of institutional vigilance during his career as a psychologist. It wasn't until he became a patient that he began to appreciate the psychic impact of static furniture, of lukewarm food and blunt knives. The minor amendments caught his attention every time, making him speculate about the behavior being deterred.

Henry shifted his weight forward, straining the bench from the wall. He had deodorant on, an acrid, hollow smell. Angus shut his eyes and remembered. It had been so dark outside the window that night. His most searing sensual memory was a light lemony aftershave billowing out towards him as Douglas opened the front door of Maureen O'Donnell's flat. He'd whispered angrily to Angus, asking him what he wanted, what was he doing there. Angus had stepped into the hallway, clicked the door shut behind him and, in a single fluid movement, grabbed Douglas by the hair and pulled him down, kneeing him sharply on the chin, knocking him off his feet. He held on to him by the hair, letting him down slowly to the floor, dropping him quietly. There was so much blood at the end, running off the rim of the chair. Angus had stood at the bedroom door, looking in at her through the crack in the door. Maureen was snoring lightly and it made him smile. Her clothes were on the floor by the bed, a stepped-out-of dress, kicked-off shoes. So much blood. Angus couldn't remember the first cut properly, just the buildup and the outcome. Disappointed, he sighed.

"Don't worry," said Henry. "You'll be fine."

Angus sat upright, making a brave face and nodding.

"They're just going to charge ye," said Henry. "They're not even going to question ye today."

Angus had been here for almost a year. For the first eight months he had been deluded and terrified, hadn't known where he was, what was real or imagined. Reality came in snippets at first and he began quickly to yearn for the alien confusion. The noise and the smell of the hospital were unbearable. Two men on his block were nocturnal, a moaner and an idiot who tapped on the pipes all night. Angus listened for two months, using his experience of crosswords, trying to decipher the message. There was no message, just a rhythm, over and over, as if the man was trying to tell a careful listener that he was still alive and almost sentient.

Henry was picking his nose. It was a straightforward, unceremonious flick, an index finger rammed up his nostril, searching for congealed mucus. The doctors here picked at their arses, nurses swore, domestic staff stared with openmouthed amusement at the patients and stopped working when supervisors left the room. It didn't matter how many social conventions they breached, they still felt better than their charges because state mental patients were credited with no opinions, no judgment. They were empty vessels. Angus knew that being in here superseded everything else he had ever been.

No one had thought that he might be familiar with the criminal-justice process, not his lawyer, not Dr. Heikle, his psychiatrist, not even the police. It astonished him. He had worked in the health service for seventeen years but he'd also done court reports and diversions. They had forgotten his career because he was a patient now, a nothing.

He looked up and down the bleak corridor. Maureen O'Donnell had brought him to this and she was going to get him out.

Hugh McAskill and Joe McEwan sat side by side on Maureen O'Donnell's settee. They were tall men. Joe would have been attractive if he hadn't been such a prick. He had blond hair, turning white in the recent wave of sunshine, a deep tan, and he was always smartly dressed, in chinos and well-fitting shirts and jumpers. When Maureen first met Joe, his tan looked as if he'd just come back from a nice holiday somewhere Mediterranean. In the past year the tan had become more orange and sunbed-ish but it might have been her jaundiced view of him: they had an unhappy history. Hugh looked far more Scottish. His hair was a russet red, flecked with silver at the temples. His eyes were blue and his skin flushed red or white depending on the season. The living-room window was pushed right up and the evening was cooler than the day but men were still sweating into their collars.

Usually, Glasgow 's weather vacillates between freezing rain and not-so-freezing rain but sometimes, on a five-to-ten-year cycle, the weather turns and the city doesn't know itself. This was such a time. Unconditional sunshine had arrived one week ago. Virulent, fecund plant life had sprung up everywhere: trees and bushes were heavy with deep green leaves, growth appeared on buildings, between cracks in the pavement, on bins. The city burst into life and everyone began to farm their skin. Water-white cheeks and necks withered and puckered with relentless exposure. Casualty departments heaved under the strain of sunburn and heat stroke. Everyone in the unaccustomed city was dressing as if they'd woken up naked in a bush and had to borrow clothes to get home: old women wore young women's summer dresses, vest tops were stretched over belly rolls, short sleeves showed off straps from industrial bras. Every night felt like Friday night and parties went on too long. Fantastic blood-alcohol levels were attained by conscientious individuals. Everyone was dangerously out of character.

Hugh sipped the coffee and Joe lit a super-low-tar cigarette.

"Are ye sure I can't get you anything, Joe?" said Maureen.

"Just sit down," said Joe impatiently. "We need to talk to you."

"I'll just go to the loo," she said, and Joe rolled his eyes.

Maureen sat on the toilet and held her head in her hands. The timing couldn't have been worse. Her big sister Una was expecting a baby any day now, her father Michael was back in Glasgow, floating around like a toxic cloud, and the dreams and flashbacks were getting worse and worse. When she thought of Michael in her city the air caught in her throat, the light stung her skin and scratched her eyes. She would rather have been dead than share the air with him. And now Joe and Hugh were back up at her door asking about Angus Farrell again.

Joe had never liked her much but he treated her with frank contempt now. She'd lied about Angus writing to her from the hospital and had kept all the letters back from them for as long as she could. She couldn't have handed over those letters. Angus had written them to make the police think he was insane, to give himself a defense, but she read between the lines and knew that he wasn't. The irrationality was too ordered, too carefully set. Angus had a plan.