Denise Mina - Garnethill

It was a statement of her account. The last entry was a deposit of £15,000. It had been paid in on the day Douglas died. "That's a lot of money to you, isn't it, Maureen?"

"It's a lot of money," she whispered. "I didn't know…"

"Did he pay you not to tell his wife about your affair? Was that it?"

"I didn't know it was there."

"But you paid it in yourself."

"No. I didn't. Why did you say that?"

"It says your name on the paying-in slip."

"I didn't pay it in."

"As I said, Maureen, your name is on the paying-in slip."

"I was at work that day. I wasn't out of the office. How could I have paid it in?"

"The slip was signed 'M. O'Donnell.''

"I always write Maureen," she said very quietly. "Not 'M.''

McEwan made great play of taking out his notebook and reading something, rolling his lips over his gums. He looked up suddenly. "I heard about something that happened to your brother yesterday."

"Which particular thing?" said Maureen, her heart sinking.

"A police search? I take it you know about it?"

Maureen made a noncommittal noise and looked away.

"Your brother's a drug dealer, isn't he?" His voice was low now, a happy growl.

There was no point in denying it. They'd found the scent everywhere. Maureen looked back at McAskill's hands. His nails were short and clean; deep ridges were scored into the finger joints. "I wouldn't know anything about that," she mumbled.

"He doesn't tell you anything, is that right?"

"Absolutely." She nodded emphatically. "He tells me nothing."

McEwan smiled. "I expect he wants to protect you."

"I don't know why he doesn't tell me, he just doesn't."

"Is your brother very protective of you, Maureen?"

She could smell it coming, the accusation, and she didn't know how to sidestep it. "Not especially," she said.

"Oh?" said McEwan, feigning surprise. "But when you needed to go to hospital it was your brother who took you, wasn't it?"

"How is that protective?" she said, irritated by his stupid game and witless patter. "He found me sitting in a cupboard in a puddle of my own shit. What was he supposed to do?"

"I'm not saying what he did was wrong," said McEwan, uncomfortable with the image.

"No," she said. "But you're suggesting it's evidence of pathological protectiveness and I'm saying it was just ordinary decency."

McEwan leaned back and looked at her shrewdly. "I didn't say anything about pathological anything. Why did you say that?"

"I know what you're getting at," she said, a sick, hopeless panic rising from her belly. "Right? I know Liam and I know he didn't do it."

"Why would you think I was going to say that?"

"Because you mentioned the raid and then started talking about his relationship with me."

McEwan leaned forward over the table. His gestures were so assured, so certain, that Maureen wanted to punch him.

"Don't try and guess what I'm about to say, Maureen," he said carefully.

"So, I have to wait until you've finished the pantomime. Even though I know exactly what you're going to say."

She had ruined his big moment. "You don't know what I'm going to say," he said churlishly.

"Yes, I do."

"No, Maureen," he said, enunciating the words slowly. "You don't know what I'm going to say, you just think you do. I was asking about your brother's relationship with you. He is protective of you."

"Oh-no-he-isn't," chanted Maureen.

McAskill snorted a laugh.

McEwan was finally getting annoyed. "Just answer the questions, Miss O'Donnell. Don't try and get smart with me."

"You're a fucking arsehole."

McAskill lifted his head.

"I beg your pardon?" whispered McEwan.

"I said, you're a fucking arsehole. You're bullying and smug and patronizing and I don't like you."

McEwan spluttered, "Well, I'm sorry you feel that way."

"Yeah, so am I," said Maureen, taking out her fags and lighting one. She saw McEwan looking at the packet. She flicked it across the table to him. "Just take one, for fucksake, you make me nervous."

McAskill kept his eyes on the cigarette packet as McEwan pushed it purposefully back across the table and looked at Maureen defiantly. "You know, I really think if you wanted us to find the person who murdered your boyfriend-"

"You already said that."

"-you'd cooperate a bit more fully."

"You're not asking me to cooperate," she blurted. "You're asking me to be servile and accept intrusions into my life and tell complete strangers all my private business and my friends' business. It's horrible. I hate it."

McEwan took a packet of ten Super-delux low-tar cigarettes out of his pocket and put one in his mouth. Maureen watched him light it. "It still counts as smoking," she said, "even if you don't enjoy it."

McEwan snatched the fag out of his mouth, stood up and threw open the door, telling someone outside to bring tea. Now. He sat down. He was very annoyed. "We have to ask you questions," he said. "How are we going to find the person who did this if we don't ask any questions?"

"I know you have to," she said. "But I don't have to like it, do I?"

"I don't care whether you like it or not. I'm going to ask you questions and I want you to answer them honestly."

She nodded impatiently, rolling the ash off her cigarette against the inside of the pie-tin ashtray. McEwan looked her in the eye for too long. "Do you think your brother is a violent man?"

"No," she said.

"Well, we have evidence from a witness who said he beat her up two years ago." He sat back and watched Maureen's face fall.

"I don't believe you."

"You'd better believe me. She's downstairs now, I could bring her up if you like."

"Who?"

"A woman called Margaret Frampton. Do you know her?"

"Maggie?"

"Is she called Maggie?"

"Liam's girlfriend Maggie?"

"No, she may have been his girlfriend at one point but she isn't now, I don't think. Her nickname is Tonsa."

"Fucking Tonsa?" said Maureen, relieved and annoyed that it was the vacant crack courier. "You must know Tonsa, she's so wasted. Would you take her word against anyone's? She can't tell New York from New Year."

"She knows when she's being beaten up. She told us all about it."

"Yeah, and what did you tell her all about? The two years she'd get in Cornton Vale if she didn't say it?"

McEwan was genuinely insulted. McAskill had a curious look on his face, like a warning that she'd gone too far. It touched her, she respected him.

"All right," she conceded. "Look, Tonsa might have said that but there's no doubt in my mind that it isn't true. Ask her if she shot Kennedy, that's all I'm saying."

A knock on the door signaled the arrival of tea. A man in a startlingly white shirt came in, put down the tray and lifted the cups onto the table. Maureen took her tea weak and black without sugar. The young man had given her sugar and milk but she took it anyway, knowing that McEwan hadn't intended her to get a cup.

Still smarting from the insult, McEwan drew heavily on his super low-tar fag and stubbed it out.

"Did your brother know Douglas Brady?"

"He met him once."

"When?"

"Four months ago, I suppose. Liam came round to my house and Douglas was there."

"How long were they together for?"

"About fifteen minutes. Douglas was late for an appointment or something, he had to go."

"Was anyone else there?"

"No. Just the three of us."

"Right." McEwan wrote something down in his notebook. "Did you know Douglas was married when you got involved with him?"

"No."

"When did you find out?"

"Just recently."

"When?"

"I don't know. Recently." She picked up the cup of tea and took a sip. The milk in it left a cheesy coating on her tongue.

"We found this in your house." McEwan pushed a letter toward her. It was Douglas and Elsbeth's marriage certificate, the copy from the General Register, still inside the creamy envelope. "It's a copy of Douglas Brady and Elsbeth McGregor's marriage certificate ordered from the General Register," he said, for the benefit of the tape. "The envelope is postmarked two days before the murder. When did you receive it?"