Denise Mina - Garnethill

"Because she's got a big hat."

"Exactly, they've all got justifications. They don't say to themselves, 'I'm a bastard and I'm doing a fucking terrible thing.' Rapists do it. Pedophiles do it too. They say, 'They wanted it,' 'They were asking for it."

Maureen rubbed her head. Thinking of Douglas in the same league as a pedophile made her eyes ache. "I don't think he saw himself in the same league as them," she said, sad and disgusted. "He always drew the distinction that I wasn't his patient. I think he believed it. When did you meet him? What day was it?"

"A Monday," said Shan. "Monday's country-and-western night at the Variety. Monday, five weeks ago."

"He didn't touch me after that," she murmured.

"What-like, sexually?"

"Yeah. Never again." She lifted her beer. "Never again before he died."

Maureen drank a throatful as Shan sat back and sighed. "Well, maybe the justification stopped working the night I told him. Maybe he was crying for himself as much as anything."

Maureen looked up at Shan. "Was Douglas crying? "

"Yeah, big-time," said Shan. "He started crying when I told him about Iona, he was sobbing. He hid himself in my bathroom. He was in there for an hour – I could hear him crying through the door."

"Fuck," she said. "I went out with him for eight months and I never saw him crying."

"Well, he couldn't have been more upset if Iona was his own daughter."

Maureen dropped her cigarette onto the floor, stepping on it to put it out. "He withdrew the contents of his account," she said, "and paid Yvonne's nursing-home fees. I think it was to ease his conscience. He gave me money too."

"How much?"

"Too much. It feels like blood money." Maureen picked up her packet of fags. "D'ye want one?"

"Yeah," said Shan pleasantly. "Go on.

"Anyway," Shan went on when he'd lit their cigarettes, "I told Douglas who it was and I told him about the Northern."

"What did he say?" she asked, hoping that Shan would repeat something Douglas had said or say something like he would say it so that she could hear Douglas's voice again.

"He didn't say anything," said Shan. "In the morning he was very serious and we talked about it. He said we should try to prosecute through the courts, for the sake of the victims we might never find. They'd see it on TV and know they were safe. He got the list from the office in the Northern and we started going to see them all."

"But why was he so clumsy about getting the list?" she asked.

"We didn't think anyone would pay a blind bit of notice, to be honest."

"Everyone in the Northern knew," said Maureen.

Shan cringed. "Really?"

"Yeah."

"God." He shut his eyes tight. "Fuck, we thought we were being well fly."

"Maybe he only knew Douglas was involved because of the list. You weren't there when he got it, were you?"

"No. They wouldn't have given it to me."

"That's why he was killed – because he was finding out about the Northern."

"Actually" – Shan held up his hand to stop her – "I know he didn't kill Douglas. I know that for sure."

"How?"

"Well, when the police came to see us they were asking about the daytime, yeah? I was working and he was in the office all day He didn't leave until half-six and then he drove one of the secretaries home to Bothwell and that's miles out on the South Side. He didn't even leave his office to go for lunch-"

Maureen interrupted. "They've been asking about the evening too now."

Shan was stunned. "They've been what…?"

"They seem to think it happened in the evening now. It's a bit of a media myth, the time of death thing, they just have a good guess."

Shan had turned gray. "I was sure it couldn't be him because the only time he left the room was to use the pay phones in the foyer."

Maureen's heart was palpitating. "Why would he use a pay phone? Isn't there a phone in his office?"

"Yeah, but the line's only for domestic calls," Shan said. "Shirley said he was calling abroad or something."

"What time did he use the pay phone?"

"Why do you want to know that?"

"Just…" She shook her head.

Shan shrugged. "I've no idea."

"Can you try to remember?"

He thought about it. "Before lunch, about eleven or twelve the first time. Then after lunch. Early. Early afternoon."

"How many more times?" she asked.

"Only twice that I know of. All before two o'clock, because there was a case conference in his office after that and he was definitely there."

She ran her finger over the spilled coffee on the table, drawing a snake pattern.

"Who was he phoning?" he asked.

"He phoned me," she said. "At work. He wanted to see if I was there. My pal said I wasn't in. He thought I was away for the day."

"Why would he phone to see if you were in?"

"He needed the house to be empty during the day. He did it at night and fixed it to look as if it happened much earlier. He made a half-arsed attempt to frame me. He made footsteps near to the body with my slippers as well. He even got information about me and fitted the scene to look like something I'd done before…"

She shut her eyes and rubbed them hard. If the Northern rapist had killed Douglas to stop him digging up evidence, he would want to make the police think Douglas died in the afternoon. That way they wouldn't try to trace Douglas's movements during the day and they would miss Siobhain. She led straight back to the Northern rapes. And it would explain why Maureen had been left with a cast-iron alibi; the murderer wanted an empty house that Douglas could have been hidden in all day. Fitting Maureen up badly wasn't a mistake at all, it was halfhearted because it was incidental. His real concern was fucking up the time of death and keeping Siobhain out of it.

She opened her eyes. Shan was trying to mask his evident worry under a frown.

"He made it look like something you done before?" he said slowly.

"Naw," she smiled, "I didn't kill anyone. I hid in the cupboard. I stayed there for a few days and I had to be carried out and taken to hospital. It's not important but only certain people knew that. He left something of Douglas's in there after he killed him. I think he thought the police would find out and make some kind of connection to me."

Shan looked relieved. "Right, I thought it was something bad," he said, shaking his head and bringing himself back to the story. "Just wondering. What did you just ask me?"

"Why did Douglas think they were having an affair?"

"Oh, because he'd seen them together before, a long time before. He saw them in North Lanarkshire. They were sitting in a car and he was touching Iona's neck and smiling."

They looked at each other and Maureen could see a sadness creeping in behind Shan's green eyes. He couldn't fake that, she thought, not that level of empathy. De Niro couldn't fake that. "And Iona wasn't smiling?" she said.

"No," said Shan softly, putting his elbow on the table and resting his forehead on it. "Iona wasn't smiling."

"When was this?"

"Two or three years ago."

Shan was bent over the table, his head resting in his hand, his long fingernails parting the thick black hair. Douglas had thick hair, dark brown with an auburn fleck. Finally, he sat back in his chair. "What you going to do? Are you going to the police with this stuff?"

"No," said Maureen, "I'm not. They've already interviewed one of the women and nearly broke her fucking brain."

Shan nodded.

"What are you thinking?" asked Maureen.

"I spoke to the women he raped, and I'd like to start punching him but I don't think I should."

"Why?"

"Don't know if I could stop."

Shan took an early slip road and stopped outside the lightbulb factory. They got out of the car and sat quietly across the road on a concrete slab, under the lip of the motorway, looking up at the glass building, brightly illuminated by the floodlights on the motorway. Red slivers of light raced across the shimmering glass, reflecting the taillights of cars passing above. Maureen lit a cigarette. She offered the packet to Shan but he waved it away.