Denise Mina - Garnethill

Elsbeth saw her looking at it. "An extraordinary woman." She smiled. "I keep meaning to cut these others out, except, of course, Jacques Delors. I don't think he would take kindly to being cut out." And she laughed a tinkling, luncheon laugh. Maureen laughed too because she was sorry she had shagged this woman's husband and that woman's son.

It was becoming clear that Maureen hadn't been asked back to engage in a frank exchange of fond remembrances. She climbed onto a tottery stool at the breakfast bar and steeled herself like a good penitent. Elsbeth sat down opposite her and took a deep breath. She wanted Maureen to know that Douglas had had a series of affairs and she knew all about it. He had told her that he had taken on private work at an addiction clinic in Peebles, hence the Monday sleepover, but he had never been interested in that sort of work. They had a combined income of sixty-five K a year anyway, so it wasn't as if they needed the money. "So you see," said Elsbeth, a kindly veneer over her vindictive intent, "you're just the last in a long line of women."

"Yeah," said Maureen flatly, "I guessed. Am I the first one you've met?"

"Oh, no," she said, casually unaware of the pitiful picture she was painting of herself, "no, you're not."

And what the fuck were they doing, thought Maureen, having this petty, bland conversation, as if any of it mattered, as if Douglas hadn't been sliced up and killed hours before? She stopped herself. This is Elsbeth's time, she thought, this is her triumph. Let her have it. Be kind. Maureen tried to imagine what it would be like to be the wife of a philanderer, how likeable she herself would have been after a decade of hanging on to Douglas.

She had a sudden vision of him on the second night they had spent together. He had come over, ostensibly to apologize, but had stayed. Maureen had come back into the living room with a glass of water and had seen him lying on his side where she had left him, the image of Manet's Olympia, with his trousers around his knees and his shirt rumpled up around his chest, nonchalantly displaying his fervent hard-on. His dick wasn't round but strangely rectangular, like his buttocks, curiously geometric. But what she remembered most fondly was the unashamedly lewd look he had given her. She had knelt down next to him and leaned forward, pressing her face into the soft skin on his warm, hairy belly.

Sitting opposite Elsbeth, trying to retain her composure, she could feel Douglas's chest hair brushing her face, up and down, up and down.

Elsbeth had a great job. She worked in the graphics department in the BBC. She talked about the Corporation as though it was a beloved family friend. "What do you do?" she asked. The smile behind her eyes suggested that she already knew.

"I work at the ticket office in the Apollo."

"Oh?"

Maureen had smoked two cigarettes without as much as a cup of tea and her mouth was foul. A decade of petty humiliations and a faithless, murdered husband couldn't make Elsbeth sympathetic.

On her way out Elsbeth asked whether Douglas had ever given Maureen money.

"No," said Maureen quickly. She thought Elsbeth was trying to shame her further until she noticed the anxious expression on her face. There was something more behind the question. Elsbeth was looking for something. She was looking for some missing money.

"Well," said Maureen, as if she was thinking about it, "like when?"

"Couple of days ago?"

"Fifty quid," lied Maureen.

"Just fifty pounds?"

"Yeah, do you want it back?"

"No, no. Not important."

Maureen left the flat with the feeling that she had unwittingly been involved in a suburban wife-swapping circle. The thought depressed her beyond measure.

She walked the three blocks to the Byres Road with her mind full of Douglas, Douglas gliding around his tasteful West End apartment, Douglas in her kitchen eating a roll and bacon, Douglas dead, tied into the chair, his neck slashed open. She stopped walking suddenly and shut her eyes, rubbing them hard with her fingers, trying to scrub away the image.

If she had taken the phone calls at work the day before he might have told her why he wasn't at work, he might have mentioned someone, something that would make sense of it. She thought about it realistically: he'd have lied and said things were fine. He'd have asked her about going to see Louisa and been pissed off at the mention of Leslie. But she couldn't dismiss it completely. It troubled her that he had called from a pay phone and it bothered her that he had phoned three times. He should have been at work.

The phone box on the Byres Road was in mint condition. It accepted three kinds of payment and the digital display had a French and a German option. She listened to the empty ring at Benny's house for a while and then, in a moment of weakness, called Leslie.

She let it ring until it cut out and then pressed the redial button, hanging up after two rings. She couldn't talk to Leslie without being needy and that would make her feel worse. Leslie had to work on the appeal, she told herself, get a grip. She phoned McEwan at the police station. The receptionist put her through to an office. A distracted man told her that DCI Joe McEwan wasn't available.

"I'm Maureen O'Donnell. Um, I was… A man was killed in my house and I need to get some clothes from the house."

"I'm Hugh McAskill." He seemed to think she'd recognize his name.

"Right," she said.

"From this morning. I was in the car with you. I was there when you were interviewed. I've got red hair."

"Oh, yeah," she said eagerly, "I remember you."

"The team are still at the house. You can get in okay."

"Smashin'."

"Are you going up now?"

"Aye."

"Tell them who you are when you get to the door-"

She interrupted him. "Mr. McAskill, can I ask you something?"

He thought for a moment. "Depends," he said tentatively.

"What was in the cupboard?"

McAskill didn't answer.

"It wasn't just slippers, was it?"

She could hear him exhale away from the receiver. "You don't want to know, pet," he said softly. "I'll phone your house and let them know you're coming."

"You're very kind," said Maureen, and meant it.

As she walked up the stairs in her close she looked out of the landing window. Eight or so uniformed officers were searching the back court; three of them poked around the spilled contents of the big communal wheelie bins.

A uniformed policeman was standing guard outside her front door. She told him she was expected. He asked her to wait and slipped inside, shutting the door in her face. He opened it two sighs later. Something McMummb was in the living room with two men from the Forensics team, still shuffling around in their white paper suits. He peered out at Maureen. "That's her," he said.

The officer on the door warned her that they would have to examine anything she wanted to take away and she wouldn't be allowed into certain parts of the house.

The heat had evaporated and it was cooler. The door of the hall cupboard was sealed shut with thick strips of yellow tape. She could see the first browning footprint in the living room. McMummb stepped lightly to the side, blocking the doorway, letting her know that she wasn't allowed to go in. Maureen lowered her eyes and went straight into the bedroom. McMummb hung back, talking to someone in the hall.

Everything was exactly as she had left it: the duvet was thrown back off the bed, the shift dress she had worn for work lay crumpled on the floor, half covering her handbag, and her watch was sitting on the bedside cabinet next to a lidless jar of cold cream. She stood next to her bed on the unaccustomed side. She wanted to sit down and rub her sore feet but she knew she shouldn't touch anything until McMummb came in to supervise. She reached out and touched the rumpled cotton sheet. The pillow showed an imprint where her sweaty head had been.