Denise Mina - Garnethill

Martin motioned for her to sit down in the chair, took the tea things off the mahogany drawers, put them on the floor, and crouched down on it. He looked uncomfortable so low with his big knees tucked under his chin. His feet were an inch away from hers.

He began to talk. He said that several years ago there had been some sort of problem in George I. The women in the ward were all getting much worse. It turned out that someone was interfering with them sexually. They changed all the staff and the problem cleared up but a lot of the original patients had never recovered. Martin's voice had dropped so low Maureen had to lean forward to hear him above the throbbing hum of the engine behind the wall. "I never knew about this," she said. "Did they prosecute someone?"

"Have you been to George I?"

"No."

"Oh, God, the poor souls can hardly talk. They couldn't go to court – half of them don't know their own names."

"How did they find out, then?"

He looked at a distant place somewhere through the wall and hugged his knees to his chest. "Burn marks. They'd been tied up or something. They'd burn marks on their bodies from the rope. And they were hurt…" He motioned downward.

"Where?"

"Their flowers – their flowers were cut."

"With a knife?"

"I don't know. You don't like to ask questions about things like that. I always thought it might be just that they were scared and they were dry." Martin was crying, his face impassive.

"Didn't they think to DNA test the semen and compare it with possible suspects?"

"There wasn't any semen," said Martin. "He'd wore a rubber. He knew exactly what he was doing."

His voice took on a peculiar timbre, halfway between a cry of despair and a growl. "I was there every day while it was going on. I didn't even notice. I keep my eyes open now."

"Oh, Martin, who would think to look for that?"

He coughed hard and wiped his face dry with his hand. She wanted to touch him. She could reach her hand out just a little and touch his brown cheek, but she didn't think he would like it. It would be done to console her, not him. He pulled his knees tighter to his chest and looked farther through the wall. "If any of us had noticed we could have stopped it."

She reached out and touched his hand with the tips of her fingers. He looked up, startled by the intrusion, and relaxed the grip on his knees. She shouldn't have touched him.

"Anyway," he said, stretching his legs out in front of him, "it doesn't much matter what I feel about it."

"Do they know who it was?" she asked.

"No, but your boyfriend was tied up, wasn't he?" Maureen nodded. "With rope?" She nodded again. "Did you know he was here?" asked Martin.

"Douglas was here?"

"You didn't know, then? I thought that's why you came back. Two weeks ago he asked Frank in the office for a list of patients' names from George I. He said he was doing a follow-up study about how they got on. Frank's a stupid bastard. He told loads of people that Dr. Brady d been in. Frank isn't even authorized to give out that sort of information, so he was telling on himself as much as anyone.

Brady seems to have been a bright man. I'm surprised he hadn't the good sense to use a different name."

"Well…"

"Anyway, those of us who've been here for a while knew what it was about because he'd only asked for the George I names and he'd only asked for that time. Was he daft?"

"Not really. He wasn't very good at being secretive. You think he was killed because he got the list, don't you?"

"Aye," said Martin.

"Did you tell the police about this?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't know." He looked at his feet. "That's a lie. I do know. I don't want to be involved in this. It's finished now and I'm too frightened to get involved." He didn't try to excuse himself but left the statement hanging in the air between them. "Was Douglas Brady married?" he asked.

"Aye."

"What were you doing going out with a married man?"

"God, Martin, I can't remember anymore." She'd taken up his time, reminded him of a deep hurt and touched his hand. She stood up. "I'd better be going," she said.

Martin had to stand flat against the wall to let her by. He came out after her and turned off the light, pulling the door to.

"That's a lovely wee den. How long have you had that?"

"Years," he said, leading her through the L-shaped room and back to the kitchen corridor. "Years and years and years. Don't tell anyone. It's my secret."

He walked her down the gravel path to the road and along to the bus stop. She knew fine well where the bus stop was and said Martin needn't bother but he said that he didn't need to do any work as long as she was with him and to shut up. The pavement was littered with dead leaves from the trees in the hospital grounds, helpless little carcasses, unable to defend themselves from the breezy wash of fast-passing cars.

"I think it's kind of you to keep seeing that stupid doctor so as not to worry your family," he said.

"I only do it so they won't hassle me."

"Aye, well, lots of people do good things for the wrong reasons. It's still a good thing."

He waited with her until the bus came and bade her take care.

She got off the bus outside a large chemist's shop in the town center. It was on three levels and sold everything from face cream to home electrolysis kits. Maureen had a weakness for cosmetics, even the pseudoscientific face creams that made mad claims. She knew that surgery couldn't really come in a tub, that cream would have to be sold as a medicine if it did anything but moisturize, but still, when she felt bad, a good temporary solution was a face mask and a new tub of miracle face cream or a hair dye.

She wandered up and down the aisles, pausing at displays, reading packets, and settled on a dark hair dye that would condition and moisturize, and a face mask she'd used before. The mask was too harsh for her skin, it left it red and sore, but the cream came out of the tube black and turned bright orange as it dried. It always gave her a buzz.

Back at the house Benny had left a note on the coffee table in the living room to say he was speaking at an AA meeting and would be back at eight. Maureen started the bath running, took two clean white towels from the linen cupboard in the hall and locked the bathroom door. She stripped off, pinned her hair on top of her head and put the face mask on, spreading the black cream evenly over her face and neck. It had a pleasing rubbery texture. She sat on the edge of the toilet seat as she waited for the bath to fill and rubbed her lingers together, gathering the residue of the face mask into a gluey lump, rolling the warm black grape into the soft hollow of her palm.

She thought about Douglas, not shoddy, lying Douglas but the kind, compassionate man she'd been training herself to forget. She could understand him giving Siobhain money because of the Northern but Maureen hadn't been raped when she was there. Apart from Winnie, nothing bad had happened while she was in there. She thought about Shirley's suggestion that Douglas had been fucking someone in his office at the Rainbow. It seemed wildly out of character for Douglas. He had been so concerned with differentiating their relationship from that of a therapist who fucked his patient. He used to talk about it a lot. But, then, he hadn't mentioned that recently either so it could have been him. The bath was full. She turned off the taps.

Her face was rubbery and orange. Rolling her fingertips up her neck, she gathered the edge of the mask and pulled it off whole. Every pore on her face was tingling. The bathroom was foggy with steam as she slipped into the deep bath, sliding down until only her nose and tits were sticking out of the water, thinking of poor Ophelia. The scratches on the back of her neck bristled as the water hit them.