Denise Mina - Garnethill

"Right," she said, her heart sinking at the thought of Drunk Winnie's propensity to talk and talk and talk. She couldn't be with her all the time and Drunk Winnie's very favorite subject was family secrets and how shitty her kids were.

She gave him Benny's name, address and telephone number. They wouldn't allow her into her own house unescorted; if she wanted to go home to get anything she would need to phone in advance and they would arrange for an officer to be present.

"Why?"

"In case you disturb any evidence we haven't collected yet."

"You surely don't suspect me?"

"We don't know who did it yet," he said, looking at his pencil in a manner that strongly suggested he did.

As he was showing her out they ran into Elsbeth in the lobby. She was petite with a sharp blond bob, sharper features and a tidy figure. Her eyes were red raw. Poor Elsbeth had been the focus of gut-gnawing guilt over the past eight months: Maureen's sense that they were doing a very unkind thing indeed had snowballed as her feelings for Douglas changed. Seeing the picture of Elsbeth in the newspaper had made it worse: she had a face to put to the guilt. Douglas didn't seem to think about it. He didn't flinch when Maureen reproached herself; he acted as if she was making a big something out of nothing; it was as if Maureen was being unfaithful to Elsbeth and not Douglas. Seeing Elsbeth in the flesh for the first time made Maureen feel sick and hot. She tried to slip past her but Elsbeth caught her arm. "Did you do it, Maureen?" she asked.

Maureen was startled. Elsbeth shouldn't know who she was. "No," she said, guilty and uncomfortable.

"Neither did I," said Elsbeth. Her face sagged suddenly and she shuffled over to Joe McEwan, who was standing at the foot of the stairs. Panicked and shaky, Maureen turned stiffly toward the door.

"Maureen?" Elsbeth's voice was fraught and cracked. "Will you wait for me?"

"If you want me to," said Maureen, resisting the urge to scream and run away.

McEwan smiled at her but when Elsbeth turned her back he frowned and motioned for her to leave. She watched them climb the stairs together. Elsbeth was wearing the Aran jumper Maureen had bought for Douglas's last birthday.

She left the police station and crossed the main road, walking two blocks to the shops. She'd decided to cook a meal for Benny as a thank-you for letting her stay. She chose some baby corncobs, zucchini and a green pepper to pad out a tomato sauce. The garlic looked old and sprouty. She asked an assistant if they had any more at the back of the shop and looked through it slowly. Her heart began to palpitate at the checkout. She abandoned her trolley in the queue and ran the two blocks, darting across the main road and getting into Stewart Street just in time to see Elsbeth coming out of the main entrance of the station. Elsbeth didn't seem surprised that she was there: she assumed people would do what she asked and Maureen resented her for it.

"Let's go to my house," she said, without looking up, and Maureen followed her into a waiting black cab.

The driver turned onto the broad Great Western Road and headed west. The traffic was heavy for early afternoon and the taxi got caught at three red lights in a row.

Elsbeth and Maureen sat as far apart as the backseat would allow, looking out of their respective windows in silence, watching the pedestrians going about their business.

"How did you know who I was?" asked Elsbeth, her sharp voice shattering the heavy silence between them.

Maureen turned to her and tried to catch her eye but Elsbeth was looking out of the window. "I saw a picture of you in the paper," she said softly, "at the last election. It was you and Douglas in front of a hotel."

Elsbeth looked at her lap and ground her jaw. She lifted her head and stared out of the window again.

"How come you recognized me?" asked Maureen.

"I saw a photograph of you," said Elsbeth. "It was in Douglas's briefcase. You were wearing a party hat."

Jesus Christ, the party-hat photo. Douglas had borrowed it because he thought it was so funny. Maureen was pissed and spliffed and guffawing and wearing a purple pointy hat with streamers coming out of it. The thick string of elastic was under her nose, pulling it back into a piggy snout. It must have been the ultimate insult for pristine Elsbeth, cuckold to a vulgar red-faced drunk.

The West End is Glasgow's student quarter and centers around the Byres Road, a broad street down the hill from the neo-Gothic university. Every third shop is a deli or bar. When Maureen was at university she worked in a West End bar and was often mistaken for an out-of-work actress. She was young at the time and thought it was a compliment.

As they neared the university the driver turned the cab off the Great Western Road into a crescent street. It was lined with elegant blond sandstone tenements on one side; on the other ornate cast-iron railings barred the steep drop to the river Kelvin. He pulled over to the pavement and stopped the meter.

Elsbeth stopped outside one of the blocks and took out her keys. She opened the security door into a close with shimmering green tiles up to shoulder height topped off with a border of pseudo-Mackintosh roses. The fancy tiling ceased abruptly on the first floor, replaced by green gloss.

They stopped on the second floor and Elsbeth unlocked her front door, letting it swing open into a huge hallway with stripped-pine floorboards. It was the biggest hallway Maureen had ever seen. "Come in," said Elsbeth, wrestling her key out of the door, relishing Maureen's surprise. "I'll show you around."

Elsbeth took her into all the rooms, pointing out unusual pieces of furniture and favored ornaments. The ceilings in the flat were high and ornate, the furniture sparse and expensive. The framed pictures in the living room were all Miro prints but Maureen suspected that this was a decor decision rather than a passion.

Elsbeth was trying hard but she was doing a bad job of covering her upset: her consistently indignant intonation was exhausting. Maureen had been impressed when Elsbeth had spoken to her and asked her back: she thought perhaps they were really going to talk to each other, but now Elsbeth was treating her like a new neighbor and she was behaving like one.

They settled in the large, bright kitchen. Elsbeth took a bottle of mineral water from the fridge and opened a wall cupboard full of glasses. For just a moment her hand hovered over the plain ones. She stood on her tiptoes and reached to the side, chose an expensive red and green goblet from a set of six, poured herself some mineral water and put the bottle back in the fridge without offering Maureen any.

Hanging on the wall next to the breakfast bar was a glass-covered montage of photographs. Groups of friends grinned across tables strewn with the wreckage of dinner parties past. The sun shone in various holiday destinations while Douglas sat alone reading or eating.

There were only two pictures of Douglas and Elsbeth together. One had been taken on a distant Christmas Day: they were sitting next to each other on a brown settee looking at a shiny new toaster on Douglas's knee. A lonely string of tinsel hung on the wall behind them. The other had been taken at their wedding. It was an informal photograph: they were standing on a lawn, chatting to an elderly man in a dark suit, he could be a vicar. Elsbeth was laughing and looked delicate and pretty in her plain ankle-length white dress. She had her arm around Douglas's waist. He wasn't holding her; his arms were hanging at his side, his expression a familiar mixture of disapproval and supercilious amusement. He looked at Maureen like that sometimes when he had a couple of drinks inside him; it made her feel as if she'd done something unbelievably stupid. The largest of the color photographs was of Douglas's mother. The plethora of surrounding dignitaries were frowning at something to the left of the photographer. She was holding a bunch of flowers and staring into the camera, her face creased into a glassy, go-ahead-punk smile.