Denise Mina - Garnethill

"No, not really. Shall I give ye peace until it's finished?"

"No," said Siobhain, keeping her eyes on the screen. "They put the same one on again in the evening. I watch it both times."

"What list was your name on?"

"Your Douglas had a list of us."

"Of who?"

"Of the women. He said there were others, I thought I was the only one. He knew about the hospital. I don't know how. I have never told. He gave me this."

She reached down by the side of her chair and pulled a handbag onto her lap. It was an old-lady-style handbag, red patent leather with hoop handles and a gold clasp. She snapped it open and showed Maureen the inside. It was empty except for a brown envelope and a bundle of new twenty-pound notes rolled up with an elastic band. Maureen couldn't calculate how much was there: she had never seen so many. The roll was as thick as a man's fist. Siobhain shut the bag and dropped it carelessly onto the floor.

"What was the money for?" asked Maureen.

"He thought giving me the money would make him feel better."

Maureen was confused. "Had he harmed you in some way?"

"No, he didn't harm me. He was upset about the hospital. I can't tell you. I never told."

"Can you tell me where and when you were in hospital?"

"Yes, I can tell you that."

Maureen wrote as Siobhain told her that she had been in the Northern for three years, between 1991 and 1994. "I was in the Northern," said Maureen, "nineteen ninety-six. George III ward. I hated it."

Siobhain looked miserable. "It was finished by then," she whispered.

"What do you mean?"

Siobhain's face flushed with panic and her breathing became sharp and shallow.

"That's fine," said Maureen, patting her hand. "Don't tell me. Don't think about it."

The blood drained slowly from Siobhain's face and she began to breathe regularly again. If the police came to see Siobhain they'd ask about the hospital and the money and they wouldn't stop just because she lost her breath. "Have the police been to see you yet, Siobhain?"

"No. Will they come?"

"I don't know. I expect they will. I'd like you to avoid talking to them."

Siobhain lifted her hand slowly and stroked the back of her hair three times. She laid her hand in her lap again and looked at Maureen. "Then I will," she said. "They say I'm sick but I'm not. My heart is broken."

Maureen smiled warmly. "You're living in the wrong time, Siobhain," she said. "Broken hearts are a bit too poetic for doctors to understand."

"That's it," said Siobhain. "It's the poetry they can't understand."

They bent their heads close and looked one another in the eye, as intimate as lovers.

"Can I come and visit you again?" said Maureen.

"I would like that."

"We could go to the shops," said Maureen, as she stood up, "and you could buy some nice clothes with the money in your bag."

"I don't want nice clothes," Siobhain said flatly, and turned back to the television. "I got that money because I wore nice clothes."

The receptionist had evidently decided she was all right. She took the trouble to lift her head and say cheerio as Maureen passed on her way out.

The Triumph Herald was parked outside the Dennistoun day center. Liam was sitting inside with the window rolled down, watching the door and smoking a fag. He hooted anxiously and waved her over, opening the passenger door as she walked up to the car, letting it swing wide over the pavement. Maureen bent down and looked inside. "Hello," he said coyly, "I's a bit pissed off last night. I thought I might have annoyed you."

"No, no," she lied. "How did you know I'd be here?"

"Leslie said. Joe McEwan's looking for both of us. We've to go down to the station again."

"Did he seem annoyed?"

"I don't know, I didn't see him. Benny said he phoned this morning."

Maureen threw her bag into the backseat and got in, shutting the door behind her and taking his fag off him. "What's happening about Maggie?" she asked, and took a draw.

"I dunno," he said, and half smiled. "I bumped into Lynn yesterday."

Lynn was Liam's ex-girlfriend. They had dated each other adamantly for four years and then split up suddenly after a petty fight. Two months later Liam was going out with bland Maggie. At the time Maureen and Leslie gave the relationship a month, tops, but that was over a year ago now.

"Did you bump into her by accident?"

"Yeah."

"Is that the first time you've met her since ye split up?"

Liam grinned. "Aye."

"So… what?"

"So nothing," he said innocently, and started the car. "You hungry?"

"Starvin'."

"What do you want to eat?"

"Any variation on the theme of red meat."

It was a brisk, sunny day. The light in Scotland is low in the autumn, gracing even the most mundane objects with dramatic chiaroscuro. Deep hard shadows from the tall buildings fell across the streets, litter bins stood on the pavement like war monuments, and pedestrians cast John Wayne showdown shadows as they stood at the traffic lights, waiting to cross the road. They drove west up Bath Street, passing alternately through withering puddles of shade and warming blasts of sunshine, heading up to a drive-through burger place at the poor end of the Maryhill Road.

Maureen hadn't been there for a few months and the area had suddenly become desolate. Subsiding buildings had been bolstered up or else abandoned, their windows and doors boarded up with fiberglass. The city surveyors had always known there was an ancient mine there; they thought it was safe, but the medieval miners had left weaker struts in it than they had supposed. Maryhill was falling into a five-hundred-year-old hole.

The drive-through was busy with thrill-seeking lunchtimers. Liam parked and Maureen ran across the road into the burger bar.

When she crossed back to the car Liam had nodded off. She knocked on the window. He opened his eyes and sat up slowly, grinning as if he'd had a dirty dream, and opened the door for her.

"Nothing happened with Lynn, then?"

"Ahh, well." He rubbed his red eyes.

They ate with the windows down and the radio on. Maureen asked him what time he'd left Paulsa's house. "About two-thirty."

"Where did you go then?"

"Went to Maggie's to pick her up and we went to the town to get flowers for her mum. Why?"

"Were you with her all day?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Because," said Maureen, "I met someone who saw Douglas alive and well at three-thirty that day."

"Very good," he said, and nodded. "Very good indeed."

"I'd prefer it if the police didn't speak to her, though. She's a bit vulnerable."

"We'll keep her as a last resort, then," said Liam.

He tried to squash her burger into her face every time she went to take a bite. They ended up throwing chips at each other and giggling childishly. Whatever it was he and Lynn did when they were alone it suited Liam well. With Maggie he had been precious and moody but when he was with Lynn he recovered his gleeful spontaneity. They went for a coffee in a nearby shopping arcade to calm themselves before going to the police station.

Given that arcades are the poor precursor to shopping malls, this was a poor arcade: it was full of fancy-goods stores, 99p shops, with window displays of discount toilet rolls, and frozen food shops. Many of the units were empty or to let. A small central space was furnished with benches and fake trees stuck in large pots. The pots had been used routinely as ashtrays and were full of cigarette ends and greasy ash. Above, a clear Perspex roof lit the resting shoppers in an unflattering splat of light.

Liam needed razors so they went into the supermarket, then walked back to a baker's shop with a cafe. It was a grimy, self-service joint. The pile of trays at the counter hadn't been washed properly and the cups were stained. Dirty dishes sat uncollected on all the tables.