Denise Mina - Garnethill

"It's a bit of a big mistake."

"Yeah, that doesn't mean it isn't one. Remember Benny told us that story about the gangsters who killed the guy in the woods? They burnt the face off to stop him being identified, cut off his hands and took a hammer to his teeth. When the police found him the guy had his rent book in his back pocket. Remember that?"

The night and the punch line floated through Maureen's memory like a warm breeze. It was Benny's first AA birthday and they didn't know how to help him celebrate. They couldn't take him to a bar. It was in the height of the sticky summer and they drove up to Loch Lomond with the roof down on Liam's Herald. The sun was setting and Leslie built a fire by the water as the sharp night came on. They ate Marks and Spencer's sandwiches, drank ginger and told their best stories as giant, glistening dragonflies hummed and swooped between them.

"I was thinking about the three phone calls to my work. Liz doesn't know Douglas's voice particularly well. It might've been them trying to see if I was there."

"And she said you weren't there?"

"Yeah. But, then, just because I wasn't there doesn't mean I wasn't anywhere that would give me an alibi."

"Yeah." Leslie drew on her fag and looked out over the waste ground, surveying her land. "Like I said, the guy could have made a number of daft mistakes. Why do they all think he was giving you money?"

"Some money's gone missing, I think, and they're assuming he gave it to me."

Maureen sat forward in the deck chair and drew deeply on her fag, flicking the ash over the edge of the veranda. Leslie leaned over and pulled her back into the chair.

"Don't do that," she said. "Sometimes the weans hide under here."

"Why?"

" 'Cause they can't go home."

"Sorry."

" 'S all right. So why's your mum talking about Michael?"

"Fuck," said Maureen slowly, scratching her scalp hard enough to hurt. "I don't know, I don't want to think about what Winnie's been up to. That makes me more nervous than the fucking murder."

"Fair enough, doll," said Leslie, patting her on the knee. "We'll not talk about that. I'm freezing."

Maureen stood up, eager to change the conversation. "I'll get the whisky out, then, yeah?"

"Aye."

She went into the kitchen and took the bottle from under the sink. None of Leslie's glasses matched. Maureen lifted a stolen half-pint glass and a plastic Barbie doll tumbler from the draining board. She poured four fingers into the half-pint and swallowed it in two gulps, the warm whisky aftershock floating up her nose. Back out on the veranda she gave Leslie the Barbie glass and poured a generous measure. "There you are, in your favorite glass as well."

"Great, Mauri. I hope you'll be getting me another one for my birthday this year."

"By the time ye retire I promise you'll have the whole dinner set."

They settled down in the deck chairs, sipping their whisky and smoking cigarettes. "I'm drinking all the time," said Maureen.

"I don't think alcohol abuse is a bad way to cope with short-term traumas."

Maureen laughed with surprise. "That's the worst advice you've ever given me."

Leslie thought about it. "Oh, well, fuck it, then."

The kitchen gulp hit Maureen's head and she felt a wave of purposeful clarity coming on. "I don't want to sit about holding a comb and waiting for them to come for me. How would you go about finding the person who did this?"

Leslie puffed the last of her fag and thought about it.

"You're doing all right so far," she said. "It's just a logic problem."

"But suppose their behavior isn't logical. If the murderer's mental it isn't a logic problem, is it?"

Leslie dropped her cigarette into a space between the dead plants and stepped on it, twisting it with her foot, scattering fiery red sparkles among the plant pots. "He can't be a maniac, it's all too carefully organized. He brought the rope and the cagoul, he got in and out of the flat without being seen, all that stuff. It's not the work of a crazed mind, is it?"

"No, I suppose, but that might mean they're really crazy."

"Uff." Leslie sat forward. "People talk about murder as if it's nothing to do with anything else that happens in the world. It's just part of the big picture. Sometimes killing someone is rational, sometimes it's the most rational thing to do. What about all the crazy people you've met, were they all capable of murder?"

Maureen thought her way around her ward mates in the George III beds in the Northern. "Naw," she said. "Most of them weren't capable of anything very much."

"I've met more sane people who were capable of murder than nutters." Leslie downed the whisky in her glass and poured herself some more. "Doing a shitty thing doesn't make you mental, it just makes you a shit, and Douglas wouldn't have opened the door to a psychotic nutter, would he?"

"Well, I can't see Douglas answering my door and letting anyone in. He shouldn't have been there in the first place. He wouldn't even answer my phone when he was alone in the house." Maureen sat forward, deeply glad to be sure of something. "I bet you that's what happened. They came in together. They must have."

"So who would he bring to your house?"

Maureen thought about it. "Uh, no one, actually."

"If he wouldn't bring anyone to your house," said Leslie, "someone else might have brought him to the house. They might have threatened him somewhere and made him take them to your house."

"Right."

"See?" said Leslie. "It is a logic problem. Why wouldn't he answer the phone?"

"I dunno, he was just, sort of… secretive, you know."

"Yeah, sort of married?"

Maureen rubbed her neck uncomfortably.

"Anyway," said Leslie, "I still think this was a rational action by a rational man. We can work it out."

"But I don't know half of the facts, though. I don't even know what was in the cupboard."

"Then we'll have to find out somehow," said Leslie, with the reassuring certainty she brought to everything she did.

Maureen ran her fingers hard through her hair. "I'm frightened, Leslie."

"He's just a guy, Maureen."

"It might be a woman, right enough."

"Nah," said Leslie. "Women don't do things like that. It's men who do that sort of shitty, vicious stuff. With us it's about important things like love and kids and not getting your face kicked in. With them it's for big motors, younger birds or a bit of a tug."

"It might be about love or kids, we don't know. The woman at the Rainbow said someone was fucking a patient in one of the offices."

"In an office?"

"Yeah. She didn't even seem shocked about it. She thought it was me."

"Could he be having an affair with someone else at the same time?"

"That's what I thought," said Maureen. "We hadn't shagged each other for weeks."

"That's it, then. God, men are pigs."

"Anyway," said Maureen, "I don't think men and women kill for different reasons. Logically, it could have been a woman who murdered Douglas."

Leslie pulled her collar up around her neck. "But I bet you it wasn't," she muttered.

They defied the cold and stayed on the veranda until midnight, kicking the facts backward and forward, huddled in their coats, watching their smoky breath in front of them.

Leslie shook Maureen out of a heavy sleep at nine. Her shift at the shelter started at ten and Maureen would need to get up now if she wanted a lift back into town.

They pulled into a lane next to the shelter. The reserve funding was running out rapidly now and the house looked shoddy in comparison with its neighbors. It stood out in the elegant street of terraced houses like a meatball in caviar. Leslie let Maureen in and pointed her to the pay phone in the front hall.