Denise Mina - Garnethill

She still had her key for the house. She worked it into the lock silently, hoping to avoid Winnie altogether. The lights were on in the living room and the kitchen but the house was quiet. George often went out, he had friends in different pubs all over the city, but Winnie tended to stay close to the house. She must be crashed out somewhere, probably in her bedroom or on the settee in the living room. Maureen tiptoed upstairs to her old room at the back of the house.

Her bedroom had been a beloved refuge during her growing up. When she was thirteen she'd got a Saturday job in a fruit-and-veg shop and bought a Yale lock with her first wage, fitting it on her bedroom door to stop Winnie coming in late at night when she was pissed, reeling at the bottom of the bed in the stark stream of light from the hall, scaring the shit out of her. Winnie changed the lock one day when Maureen was at school. Maureen changed it back. Liam declared his room an independent republic.

Winnie used Maureen's as a box room now. The door still had the scars from twelve screws bored into the same three square inches. Greasy Blu Tack stains on the wallpaper hinted the outline of each of her favorite posters, and the books she no longer wanted were lined up on the shelf, Enid Blytons, Agatha Christies, an O grade math textbook, Dandy annuals. A pile of cuddly toys sat in the corner gathering dust: Winnie had kept giving them to Maureen for birthdays and Christmases, confusing her with Marie, who liked that sort of thing.

She found the shoe box full of photographs under the bed. They had been rifled through recently, photos were bent over and shoved down the side, still springy but resigning themselves to their new position. She stuffed her bag with them, taking all of them, even the ones from when she was small.

The last one was stuck under the fold at the bottom of the box.

She picked and picked at it but it was stuck. She had to unfold the floor of the box to get it out. It was of her and her father. She was sitting on his knee, hugging him. He seemed to be drunk, his shirtsleeves were rolled up – he always did that when he was drunk, they used to look out for it. Maureen remembered the time. It was winter and the abuse had begun. She was adoring to him when other people were there and she knew he couldn't touch her. She thought if she was nicer to him he would stop hurting her when they were alone.

She remembered that it was taken at Christmastime. Liam wanted a chopper bike and Maureen asked for a big doll she'd seen hanging from a stall in the Barras. It had a tartan dress and a big tammy. She got the doll but the minute it was out of the packet she noticed that the stitching was rough and the doll's eyes had been painted on wrong. She cried all day. Liam got his chopper and wouldn't let her have a go on it.

She lifted a copy of The Master and Margarita and a battered hardback, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, stolen from the school library. She put them in her bag and scanned the room. A yellowing picture of Joe Strummer was lying under the bookcase. She shoved it in her pocket. There was nothing else there she wanted.

A bizarre ceramic ashtray she'd made in occupational therapy at the Northern was sitting on a table on the landing. It was round, with a target pattern painted on the face of it in red and white glaze. It was the first thing she had made in the class and Pauline had helped her with the colors and the varnish. When she presented it proudly to Liam in the hospital gardens he had said it was great: when she got out she could make a fortune designing ashtrays for badly coordinated smokers. She picked it up and crept out of the house.

They'd been questioning him for three hours. The officer on the desk told her that he didn't know when Liam would get out, it could be a while.

She bought a lemon tea from the machine in the lobby and was just settling down for a long wait when Liam emerged from a corridor followed closely by McEwan. They both looked exhausted and angry. Liam's expression didn't falter when he saw her. He took the steaming plastic cup from her hand and put it down on a chair. "Come on," he said, taking her hand. "We're going home."

McEwan and Liam parted without saying good-bye.

Liam didn't want to talk about what had happened at the police station. All he would tell her was that Paulsa, the guy he had been to see at Tonsa's on the afternoon Douglas was murdered, had confirmed his alibi. Liam said he definitely wouldn't be allowed to see Maggie again. McEwan had phoned her parents and made them confirm his alibi for the evening. "They asked you about the evening, then?" she said.

"Yeah."

"Me too. It was good of Paulsa to come forward."

"Paulsa needs a lot of mates right now. He's just lost a lot of money."

"How?"

"Bought a job lot of bad acid, sank all his money into it without trying it first."

"Why's it bad?"

"Unsellable. A totally sick trip and everyone knows about it."

Liam parked outside Benny's close but didn't move to get out of the car. The street was quiet, bathed in the warm orange streetlight, like a film set.

Maureen brushed his hair off his face. "You look sad."

"I'm not sad," he said, chewing his lip. "I'm scared."

She had never heard him admit to it and hearing it now frightened her. "Oh, Liam," she whimpered pathetically, "I don't want you to be."

He looked out of the window. "If we get through this in one piece I'm going to sell the house and go to university."

"That's good," she said softly. "And what if we don't get through it in one piece?"

"Then I'll need to see what bits are left over and what can be done with them. I'm never going through that again."

"I'm sorry to have brought this on you," she said, thinking she sounded like Siobhain.

Liam said he didn't want to talk about it and he knew Benny would insist. "Just tell him we've been at Mum's, okay?"

A white Volkswagen was parked on the Maryhill Road opposite the bollards to Scaramouch Street. The two officers watched Maureen and Liam get out of the Triumph and go up the number twelve close. The driver picked up the radio and called in.

The heating was on and the flat was comfortably warm.

"I've been waiting hours for you two," said Benny. He had splashed out and bought three venison steaks for dinner. He banished both of them from the kitchen.

They sat on the settee watching television until Benny brought the dinner in. The meat was sweet and tender and he gave them cream-and-butter mashed potato with caramelized onions through it and steamed leek on the side. When the dinner had gone down a little, helped along by strong coffee, Maureen went down to the Ambassador to buy some ice cream.

The Ambassador coffee bar on the Maryhill Road was famous for its homemade ice cream. Its other claim to fame was the Aquarium Wall: an amoeba-shaped window had been cut into the plywood partition wall and an outsized fish tank had been placed behind it. The tank was empty now; a layer of pebbles sat on the floor of the dry aquarium, covered in a green carpet of algae stain.

No one ever seemed to eat in the cafe: the tables were always empty. It stayed open late at night, selling cigarettes and chocolate to locals. Behind the counter dark wood shelves reached right up to the high ceiling; a small ladder on rollers was fitted to the top one and they all strained under the weight of multicolored sweetie jars.

The man behind the counter was something of a local celebrity: apart from organizing the under twelves' football league he had the most obvious toupee in Maryhill, possibly the whole west coast. His hairpiece sat so high on his head it looked as if he kept his sandwiches under it. He was part of a local rite of passage: boys used to tell the wee kids that his name was Mr. Wig and get them to go in and call him by name.