Denise Mina - Garnethill

"Yeah, it's a girl I work with. They took a picture of the wrong person."

He gave a wry smile. "It's not like the papers to get things wrong, is it?"

"I didn't know they were that incompetent."

"They've been harassing the staff and the clients " he said indignantly. "The bloody clients."

"They're wild, aren't they?"

"So, you're Maureen. I wanted to see you about this affair you were having with Douglas. It was highly unethical of him, it was very wrong. I wanted you to know that."

"Well, it was kind of mutual, really."

"Did you meet here?"

She told him the story about waiting at the bus stop and Douglas picking her up, leaving out the vigorous sex and skewing the story so that Douglas seemed guilt free.

Angus shook his head. "No, you were vulnerable. We had a duty to care for you and Douglas breached that." He squeezed her hand. "It was wrong."

She could smell the smoke on his breath. He let go of her hand and leaned back. "They found him in your house, then?" he said. "How are you coping?"

"I'm invincible since I saw you."

He blushed a little and tapped his fag. "No one's invincible to the shock of something like this," he said sadly. "Are you still seeing Louisa Wishart at the Albert?"

"Yeah."

"She treating you well? Can you talk to her?"

Maureen nodded. "Fine, fine. Listen, Angus, can I ask you something?"

"Fire away."

"The police seem to think that Douglas was my therapist. Do you know why they might think that?"

"Aye," he said. "They asked whether you were my patient but I didn't recognize the picture from the paper so I said you weren't. The files aren't always complete and they're kept on computer now so we can't even go by the handwriting on the notes the way we used to. I hope you told them it was me."

"No, I didn't, but I will."

"Good. That'll make a difference to the way Douglas is remembered."

"Angus, do you have any idea who could have done this?"

"Do you know something," he said, sighing heavily as his eyes brimmed over, "I haven't got the first fucking idea who'd do this." She'd never heard him swear properly before. He looked at her and paused.

"Do you know who did it?" His voice was higher than usual: it sounded like an accusation.

"I've no idea either," she said quietly.

They finished their cigarettes quickly and in silence. Maureen wished she hadn't come here.

"I'll have to get on," said Angus. "I have a patient coming in ten minutes and I haven't been over her notes yet."

He stood up, moved to the door and opened it for her. "Any time you want to come and see us again phone Shirley, okay?"

She wanted to shout at him or cry or something but she couldn't think of anything to say. As she slipped past him into the corridor she muttered to him, "I didn't do it, Angus."

"I know," he said unconvincingly "I didn't mean that."

He stepped back into his office and shut the door, leaving her alone in the corridor.

The bus stop to the town was directly across the dual carriageway facing the main hospital gates and the long, high wall. Concrete blocks of flats loomed at the top of a grass embankment behind it. It was the bus stop Douglas had picked her up from on the first night they had slept together. A sweet old lady in full makeup was waiting in the shelter. She caught Maureen's eye when she came in and smiled pleasantly. "Oh, this rain," she said.

"Aye," said Maureen, hoping it wasn't going to lead to a full-blown conversation. " 'S miserable."

The dual carriageway was deserted in front of them. A figure appeared across the road at the gates of the hospital, a fat, bespectacled woman with short, dirty, flat hair. Her blue plastic jacket flapped open, showing a glittery gold halter-neck top worn without a bra. She needed one. Her large breasts washed fluidly around her middle. She was trying to get across the road but was stuck at "look left, look right."

Maureen stepped out of the shelter and called to her. "Suicide, come on!"

Suicide Tanya stared across at her.

"Come over the road now," shouted Maureen.

Tanya walked halfway across and began to look left and right again.

"It's clear, Tanya, you can come over."

Tanya came to life, belted across the road and stopped on the grass verge behind the bus stop. She turned, looked at Maureen through her rain-speckled glasses and pointed a tobacco-stained finger an inch away from her nose. "I know you," she shouted. "Helen!"

Suicide Tanya was an ageless, grizzled woman with, as her nickname suggested, a habit of attempting suicide. She was known as Suicide Tanya all over the city: all the emergency services knew her, or of her. She was forever being dragged out of the Clyde at low tide, having her stomach pumped clean of bizarre substances and being made to get off the railway tracks at main-line stations. They met in the yellow waiting room at the Rainbow. Maureen was in a state on her second visit to the clinic. She had been having panic attacks all morning, had misread her watch and turned up an hour early. Tanya came in and sat next to her, shouting her life story. She was unhappy and kept doing bad things, so they gave her pills that made her simple and fat, but she preferred it that way because they can't arrest you for being fat, Tanya. It was one of her many strange habits of speech: she repeated things other people had said to her without having the wit to plagiarize properly and change the wording or the intonation. She had to come to the Rainbow once a week to see Douglas and get her medication from the psychiatric nurse – she couldn't be trusted with more than a week's supply at a time.

She huddled into the shelter and spoke to the waiting lady. "I couldn't see right," she shouted, "because my glasses got rain on them."

The lady realized that Tanya was a bit mental – it wouldn't have taken a hardened professional to spot it: she had a booming voice and the concentration span of a spliffed goldfish. The lady turned away and walked, as if casually, out of the shelter to stand in the drizzling rain.

"Did you see that?" shouted Suicide, pointing at the nervous woman through the glass. "Snobby!"

"Just leave it, Suicide," said Maureen.

"You rude cunt!"

"Don't shout at her, she might be very shy."

Tanya processed the idea for a minute. "Hello. Are you very shy?"

Maureen tugged at her sleeve. "Don't, now, Tanya. Leave it, eh?"

"It's a shame if she is shy. She'll get lonely. You have to wake your own fun, ya fat mug, ye."

The bus into town pulled up out of nowhere. Tanya got on and showed her pass to the driver, explaining that she got a pass because she didn't keep well. The driver said he could see that and she was to go and sit down. The lady from the bus stop declined the offer when Maureen stepped back to let her on first. She waited until they were seated and chose a place as far away from Tanya as possible.

Tanya spotted the lady as the bus pulled away. "She's her from the bus stop."

"Aye, right enough, Suicide."

"Hello!"

"Aye, leave it now, Tanya. You've already said hello."

"Have I?"

"Aye."

"Sorry!"

The lady looked out of the window, her neck stiff with alarm. Tanya arranged herself next to Maureen, straightening the rumples out of the gold lame top, pulling it over her flat breastbone and down over the large breasts sitting on the roll of her belly. She scratched at some food stuck on the front.

"I like your top, Suicide. Where did you get it?"

"In a shop. Douglas is dead," she said.

"I know."

"His mum is an MP."

"MEP."

"Yes, and I couldn't see him."

"When you went for your appointment?"

"Yes. He was gone."

"What time is your appointment?"

"Tuesday at eleven, Tuesday at eleven, new time, try to remember"