Denise Mina - Garnethill

"Mm," he said, stepping into the cluttered hallway and fingering the locks on the door.

"Want a cup of tea?"

"Naw."

She left him to it and went off to hide in the kitchen. She wanted to finish the living room but she couldn't get in there without him seeing the mess and she didn't feel like explaining. She put the kettle on and opened the door to the cups cupboard. The cups had all been moved around. Rarely used ones had been put to the front of the shelf and several were upside down, the way cups are meant to be stored. She opened the food cupboard and the cutlery drawer: same thing in all of them. The police had been through them and moved everything. They must have been very thorough. Flushed with a sudden shamed panic she went into the bedroom and opened the door to the bedside cabinet. Three broken vibrators had been tidied away in a little triangular pile. The one with the acid burns from the leaky batteries was on the bottom with the red screw-top lid placed neatly beside it. She kept meaning to throw it away but was too embarrassed to put it in a bin, as if all of her neighbors would find it and come to the door en masse demanding an explanation. Both of her Nancy Friday politically correct wank books had been leafed through. She sat down on the bed and tried to minimize it but couldn't. She slumped on the bed, looking at the floor. The Selecter CD was gone, right enough.

She went back to the kitchen, trying to convince herself that once she told Leslie it would become a funny story, and made herself a coffee.

After a long pause in the drilling the locksmith came to the kitchen door. He looked downcast and green.

"Want a cup of tea now?" she said.

"Naw." His voice was wobbly, as if he was about to spew his ring. "Finished."

She paid him in cash and he gave her two copies of the key for the new Yale lock and one for the bolt. When he left she used the new bolt and locked herself firmly in.

Back in the living room she lit a fag, holding it between her teeth as she levered up the rest of the carpet tacks with the hammer. She lifted the edge under the window and dragged it over itself halfway across the room. It was heavy. She let go of the carpet and took hold of the settee arm, pulling it over the fold in the carpet and onto the bare floorboards. The last castor stuck on the fold. She tugged the settee and the carpet started to unfurl. She was kneeling down, trying to lift the castor over the fold, when she happened to glance across the room. A tear-shaped drop of blood had dried on the skirting board, red and glassy against the white paint. She crawled over on all fours and sat down next to it, her head resting on the wall, stroking it with her fingertips, over and over, until it got dark.

She turned on the hall light and opened the cupboard door. The shoe box had been lifted and placed on the high shelf at eye level, leaving the floor of the cupboard empty. In the right-hand corner of the carpeted floor was a bloody oval stain the size of her palm. She crouched down and put her hand on it. It wasn't powdery and thin like the stains around the edge of the living room: it was solid like the space under the chair. The pile on the carpet was completely flattened because the blood spill had been so heavy. It was too heavy to be a splash and the mark was too small to have come from her slippers. Something bloody had been put there.

She stood up, letting her eyes linger on the spot as she tried to imagine what sort of thing could have caused a stain that shape. A bloody rag would have left a stain with uneven edges, so that wasn't it. She tried supposing that the Northern rapist and Douglas's murderer were the same person to see if that would shed any light on the cause of the mark. It could have come from bloody ropes being dumped there but they'd have had to be dripping with blood and, anyway, Douglas had still been tied up when she had found him. She couldn't think what could have caused it.

In the kitchen she opened the door to the boiler and checked the timer for the heating: it was set to go on at five-thirty a.m. and off again at eight. The evening times had been changed too. The little arrows on the dial had been pushed together so that the heating would be off all evening. She changed them back to the previous setting, off in the morning and on from six p.m. until eleven, and shut the door.

The list Martin had given her was still in the condom pocket of her black jeans. If the patients had been raped the only safe approach was through the female members of staff. Starting with the nurses' list, she picked out the three recognizably female names and got the Glasgow phone directory from the kitchen drawer. The first name was Suzanne Taylor. Fifteen Taylors were listed in the book. Maureen worked out that they were arranged alphabetically by the first name. The last one listed was Spen. Taylor: Suzanne had either married or moved away. The second name, Jill McLaughlin, might well have been hidden among the thirty or so J. McLaughlins.

Sharon Ryan was a godsend. She was one of three if she was there at all. Maureen tried the first one. The number had been disconnected. The second number had never heard of Sharon Ryan; the third hadn't either.

She hung up and tried to narrow the margins on Jill McLaughlin. Jill would be somewhere between Jas. and Joseph; that left eight possibles. She lifted the receiver and tried the first one, then the second, then the third. She was losing hope. Five McLaughlins and still no Jill. On the seventh a tiny voice answered: "Hello."

"Hello, could I speak to Jill McLaughlin, please?"

"Who're ye?" said the tiny voice.

It might have been habit or the child's voice but she didn't lie. "I'm Maureen O'Donnell," she said.

The little voice thought about it for a moment before shouting, "Mummy, Mummy, it's a lady."

She could hear the woman at the other end talking the child gruffly away from the phone. "Yes?" she said.

"Am I talking to Jill McLaughlin?"

"Yes," she said.

"Can I ask you, Ms. McLaughlin, are you a nurse?"

"Not now," she said bluntly.

If Jill McLaughlin had left the caring profession she'd done it a big favor.

"Were you a nurse?" asked Maureen.

"Auxiliary."

"Sorry?"

"I was a care assistant," she said. She broke off to tell the child to stop it. Maureen heard a slap and the child started to cry.

"Look, I'm sorry to bother you, I can hear you've got your hands full there."

"Yes, I have."

"Are you the Nurse McLaughlin who worked in George I ward at the Northern?"

McLaughlin paused. Maureen could hear her sucking on a fag. "Who is this?" she said suspiciously, exhaling noisily into the receiver. "Are you with the papers?"

"No, no," said Maureen. "I'm not."

The child was wailing in the background. "You are so with the papers."

"No, honest, I'm not."

"Who are you, then?"

"I'm Maureen O'Donnell-"

"I've seen you in the paper," growled McLaughlin viciously. "I seen you."

There was a click on the line and Maureen found herself listening to the dial tone.

Siobhain's list of women would be harder to trace because they were Highland clan names, and the listings were long for all of them. Siobhain had written "Bearsden" in brackets next to Yvonne Urquhart. It was the name of an upper-class suburb to the northwest of the city. Maureen looked in the phone book for the Urquharts listed with Bearsden codes. There were only three. When she dialed the second number she got Yvonne Urquhart's sister. She sounded quite old and had an anxious, tremulous voice. "My sister Yvonne has moved to Daniel House, out by Whiteinch," she warbled. "She moved there a wee while ago."

"Oh, I see."

"Are you her friend, perhaps? Would I know you?"

"Well, I knew her at the Northern. I wanted to see her again, see how she was getting on."