Denise Mina - Garnethill

"How long's your break?" asked Maureen.

"I've got another half hour."

"Can I sit with you?"

"I'd be annoyed if you didn't."

Maureen went to get a cup of tea.

"I got a phone call from a woman called Louisa Wishart at the Albert this morning," he said when she sat down.

"Oh?"

"She phoned me in the general office and they had to call me over the Tannoy. She said that you'd be coming back to see the hospital and would I look after you."

"I hope you don't mind."

"No," he said, chewing his last forkful of pie and chips. "I got time off for it. Is she your doctor now?"

"Yeah. She told me she'd worked here, I thought you'd remember her."

"Ah," said Martin, wiping his mouth with a paper serviette, "that explains why she was so pally. They've all worked here at one time or another. She must have been young. You don't pay much attention to the young ones."

"She's got big glasses, they take up half her face and she does this-" Maureen clasped her hands together and stared hard at him in an exaggerated mimic of Louisa. "She looks a bit like a fish."

"Naw, pet, I can't place her."

"Well, she's pretty forgettable."

"She doesn't sound it."

Martin was not a warm man but his natural calmness was so soothing it felt like warmth. He didn't seem as calm as usual today. He kept glancing around the canteen as if he was looking for someone. Maureen sipped her tea with a growing sense of unease. Martin watched her. "I saw you in the paper," he said.

Maureen blushed. "Oh, yeah?"

"That's why you're here, isn't it?"

"Aye."

"It's nothing to do with your treatment, is it?"

"No."

"Why does she think it is?"

"I lie to her. About most things."

"Why?"

"I don't want to tell her. I think she's a twit."

Martin was suddenly interested. "Has she got dark hair?"

"Yeah, loads of it."

"I do remember her. She was here a few years ago, just for six months. You're right. She was a twit."

They smiled at each other across the table.

"Why do you still see her?"

"My family worry about me if I don't, you know, see someone."

"I'm going to get a cup of tea, pet. D'you want another one?"

She didn't. Martin came back with a tea cake for her. It was mallow and biscuit, covered in milk chocolate. It was a child's biscuit. She must seem very young to him, she thought. She didn't know whether he was married or had children. He didn't offer information about himself. He wasn't secretive, he just didn't seem to feel the need to justify his life by placing himself in context. Maureen hoped he was married to a nice woman, that his wife trimmed his hairy ears for him of an evening, and she hoped he was a father. She thought he would be a good one.

"I can only tell you some things, pet," he said. "I can only tell you what I actually know. I'm not interested in the gossip, so I don't know what other people are saying. Okay?"

"Yep."

"There's something very bad happening and I don't want to be involved in it, right?"

"What kind of bad thing?"

"I'll tell you in a bit, but you have to promise me you won't repeat it."

"Promise."

He gave her a hard look. "Listen, this is very important, don't just say it like that. Don't repeat it."

"Right, Martin, I promise I won't."

He looked anxiously around the canteen. "I don't know who's involved in this. They might be here right now, watching us."

"Then don't act suspicious. I'm just here to see the place again and you're a helpful porter who was asked to show me round again. I didn't ask to see you, my doctor phoned you, remember?"

Martin's face relaxed. "Aye," he said, "that's right."

"And if they called you over the Tannoy and told you in the office lots of people'll know about it."

"Right enough. Come and we'll make a show of it, then. I'll take you around the old place again." Martin tidied his tray away to the appointed place and the canteen women thanked him.

He took her to George III ward. She was so engrossed in what he had said that she didn't feel much about being back there. "You remembered which ward I was in," she said.

"Oh, aye," said Martin, as if it was nothing.

When they were standing in the lift she asked him if he knew which ward Siobhain McCloud was in. "George I," he said quickly, as if he had known the question was coming. "They were all in George I."

They visited the dayroom and the patients' canteen. On the way over to the Portakabin counseling suites they passed through the gardens. The flower beds were bare now, sunken patches full of naked lumps of frozen mud, like measles scars on the well-kept lawn. Liam liked to sit here with her. They used to bring Pauline out and give her cigarettes. She wasn't allowed them because they suppressed her appetite but Maureen suspected that the real reason was punitive. Pauline wasn't starving herself to death because she wasn't hungry enough.

They walked past the Portakabin where the joint session with Winnie had taken place and back into the main body of the building. Martin led her into the theater lift. It was big enough to accommodate three trolley beds and their attendants comfortably. Maureen looked around the stainless-steel box. "I've never been in one of these before."

"We're not really supposed to use them," he said, "but they're always free."

The doors closed in front of them and he pressed Lower Basement, taking her to a part of the hospital she had never been to before. The lift slid downward, alighting softly, and the doors opened out onto a shallow lobby. They stepped out, turned right and walked through a set of fire doors, straight into a fork in the corridor. The right-hand side led up a long, windowless ramp; the left led down, deeper into the ground. They took the left fork to a corridor running parallel to the kitchen. One of the strip lights was failing, palpitating nervously. The smell of overcooked meat and synthetic gravy wafted up the corridor in a warm stream. Maureen could feel her mouth watering. Martin opened an old wooden door on the left of the corridor. "In here," he said.

They went into a dark L-shaped room. The foot of the L was obscured by a tall dusty hillock of bin bags stuffed with hospital blankets. Martin led her behind the little hill and down the L's foot to a small door. He pushed it open and flicked a switch. A bare lightbulb lit up the little room. The low ceiling sloped sharply to the left and the walls were bare, crumbling stone. Behind one she could hear a steady, low-pitched thrumming like a ship's engine. It was a warm room, perhaps because it was so close to the kitchen. On the walls hung posters of the Partick Thistle football team dating back to the 1960s. A small hand sink stood at the back of the room with a single cold tap. In front of it was a lonely hospital chair made of metal and cloth, taking up a third of the entire floor space. A pile of discarded tabloid newspapers was stacked unevenly against the wall. Some loose tea bags, a large kettle and a transistor radio were sitting on top of a miniature set of beautifully varnished mahogany drawers, with a polished brass window on the front of each drawer to hold a label in place. Martin saw her looking at it. "They used to keep the medicine in that, back in the olden days."

"Is this your den?" asked Maureen.

"Aye. No one knows it's here except me. This is where I do all my skiving."

She motioned to the Thistle posters. "I didn't know you were a religious man."

He grinned sheepishly. "Oh, aye. Season-ticket holder for my pains."

Partick Thistle FC, known as the Jags, is one of the few Glasgow football teams not associated with either side of the Protestant/Catholic sectarian divide. Their fans are known locally for their passive but exceptional eccentricity and the team are known nationally for being crap.