Denise Mina - Garnethill

He interrupted her. "No. That's not for the phone really, pal," he said.

She apologized. "Did you think about what I said, the time thing?"

"Yeah, Mauri, it's garbage."

"What about the cupboard thing?"

"I'd tell them about that. Ye don't want them finding that out from someone else. How's your head?"

"Yeah, the usual. Bursting."

Liz came back and it was Maureen's turn for a skive. She locked herself into a toilet and smoked a fag, thinking her way around her flat again, sitting in her bed drinking a coffee, standing in the morning sunlight looking out of the window in the living room. She was coming back into the office by the side door as Liz took the "back in five minutes" sign down and lifted the blinds.

Two men were standing outside, waiting. Maureen stopped. There was something wrong with the picture: they were too close to the window, bending down, looking under the blind as Liz lifted it. The nearest man was wearing a lime green woolen suit under a black overcoat. The second was dressed in a multicolored ski jacket and holding a camera with a long lens. He lifted it slowly to his face, as if he were stalking a nervous bird, and pointed it at Liz. The man in the lime suit shoved a fist holding a dictaphone under the window and barked at Liz, "How do you feel about your boyfriend's murder, Miss O'Donnell?" The photographer was snapping pictures of her. The man with the dictaphone shouted again, "Did you murder him, Miss O'Donnell?"

Liz came to life. She rammed the change tray hard into the soft skin on the journalist's wrist. He yelped but held on to the dictaphone. She slammed the tray quickly backward and forward, cutting bloody parallel ridges into his hand as he tried to pull it out. The second man took photographs of her doing it. She stuck out her tongue and made a mad, angry face at him.

Gathering her wits, Maureen slid along the wall to the window, leaned over, and pulled down the blind. She stood still and Liz sat silently, listening together, afraid to move, as the men cursed and banged on the window and the side door. After a while they stopped.

"They won't really be away," whispered Liz. "They'll be across the road or something."

At Maureen's suggestion they shut up the office, left by the goods entrance and pissed off to the pictures for the afternoon. They saw a miserable film about a man who ran around shooting people.

"That was fucking rubbish," said Maureen, when they got outside.

"Oh, I liked it," said Liz, "I think he's dishy." Liz offered to cover Monday for Maureen, she owed her a shift anyway.

"That'd be great, Liz, I need a couple of days off in a row."

It was getting dark already and the streets were Saturday tea-time quiet, when families gather together to watch crap telly and unpack the shopping. Even Benny's close was silent, she couldn't hear any of the usual noises of TVs or children shouting. It felt dead.

Benny had left a note on the coffee table saying that he was at an AA meeting and would be back later. Maureen turned on all the lights in the flat, put the television on in the living room and tried to think about anything that wasn't Douglas. The house began to close in on her.

She started to make something to eat, not because she was hungry, just to keep herself moving. She found some bread but couldn't see any butter in the fridge.

The phone rang. She dropped the slices of bread and galloped over to it. It was Winnie. She was trying to disguise her drunkenness with a posher accent. Some journalists had been telephoning her.

"Don't say anything, Mum, please, and for God's sake don't give them any photos."

"I did not say anything," said Winnie. "And don't you talk to them either."

"I'm hardly going to, am I?"

"Well, sometimes people do things, things they wouldn't usually do, when things get… a wee bit…" She forgot what she was talking about.

"You're pissed, then?" said Maureen.

Winnie couldn't summon the energy for a fight. "How dare you," she said, and dropped the receiver. She mumbled something about Mickey. Maureen could hear footsteps and then George asking a question in the background.

He picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Hello, George, it's me."

"Oh, did you phone her?"

"No, she phoned me."

"Oh. She's a bit… a bit tired. She was trying to phone you at work this afternoon but couldn't get an answer."

"Oh, there's something wrong with the switchboard. She'd have been put through to the back office," said Maureen. It was a good lie, made up on the spur of the moment, but her voice was too high, she was talking too fast.

"All right, then," said George irrelevantly, and hung up.

She ate some dry bread dipped in milk, the best cure for an acid stomach, and sat in front of the television, flicking from station to station, trying to find something engrossing. The programs were so asinine that not one of them could hold her attention for longer than thirty seconds.

If Benny would come home they could watch telly together. She could phone Leslie but she would have to talk about everything; she couldn't face that right now.

Maureen jumped when she heard the door. It was a polite rat-rat-rat, not a familiar knock. She walked apprehensively into the hallway, hoping to fuck it wasn't the police, and peered out of the spy hole.

She had never seen him before. He was in his midtwenties, dressed in a green bomber jacket and jeans with his hair greased back off his face. He was standing casually at the door, contrapposto, looking directly at the spy hole, as if he knew she was there looking out at him.

Her hand was on the latch when the letter box opened slowly.

"Maureen," he whispered, his voice a smug, nasal drawl. "I know you're there, Maureen, I can hear you moving."

Suddenly terrified, she flattened herself against the wall and slid away from the door.

"I can still hear you moving," he said. "Are you going to open the door?"

"Who are you?" breathed Maureen, a thin film of sweat forming on her upper lip.

"Open the door and I'll tell you." He tried the handle.

"Fuck off."

"Go on."

She heard him stand back and snort. He must be able to hear every move she made: the door was very thin. He tiptoed down the stairs and out of the close. Maureen tried to breathe in properly. She heard steps in the close and he tiptoed back up the stairs.

He leaned into the letter box again. "Still there?" he whispered.

She looked around the bare hall for a weapon and lifted a framed photograph off the wall. She could smash it and shove a bit of glass through the letter box, into his face, into his eye maybe, and then she could phone the police.

"Are you still there?" He tittered and let the letter box snap shut. Maureen dropped the picture. It landed corner down on the carpet and the glass fell out of the frame intact. It was Perspex. "Carol Brady sent me here."

The name took a minute to register.

"She wants to meet you tomorrow."

"Where?"

"Anywhere you like. Why not make it over lunch? That's nice and civilized."

Maureen thought for a moment.

"The DiPrano," she said. It was an expensive seafood restaurant in town. She'd look like an idiot if she suggested somewhere small-time.

The letter box opened again. "What time?"

Maureen didn't know what time it opened. She didn't want to be in the middle of lunchtime rush.

"Two o'clock."

The letter box slid shut.

Maureen could hear him walking lightly down the stairs. She waited in the hall in case he came back. She waited for a long time.

Moving very slowly, she made up the settee bed and climbed in, closing her eyes and pretending to be asleep. It was only after Benny had come home, made himself something to eat and gone to bed that Maureen moved. The right side of her body was numb.