G03 - Resolution (17 page)

“Look.” Liam leaned over her shoulder, pointing to an italicized paragraph at the bottom of the article. Marie had sold her story to the paper.

“How fucking dare she?” breathed Maureen. “She wasn’t even there—we haven’t spoken to each other for fucking years.”

“I know. She’s a shit.”

Maureen was staggered. “She wouldn’t even know I’d gone out with anyone called Douglas if he hadn’t been killed.”

“I know.”

“Let’s see,” said Kilty, and took the paper from Maureen.

Maureen looked at Liam furiously, demanding some sort of response, but Liam just shrugged. “They offer a lot of money, Mauri, and she’s bankrupt, ye know. Winnie’s furious with her.”

“That’s rich,” said Maureen. “She gave them that picture of me in Millport.”

“Yeah,” grinned Kilty. “I like you in that picture.”

“But,” said Liam, “Winnie was blacked out at the time and doesn’t remember doing it.”

“Thank fuck it’s a Tory rag. At least no one in Paddy’s will have seen it.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Kilty. “It’s funny seeing you in the paper.” She leaned across and poked Liam in the tummy. “And you’re still driving us up to the wedding?”

Liam sat down at the kitchen table. “Aye, yeah.” He held the cigarette between his teeth, sliding the freezer bags across the table and dropping them into his bag. “Haven’t ye got any other hillbilly pals ye can frighten your family with?”

“No,” said Kilty seriously. “You’re the roughest people I know.”

Liam rubbed smoke out of his eye. “Do you get out at all?”

“I don’t want to know real rough people,” said Kilty, going back to read the paper, “just slightly rough ones like you.”

Liam smiled at Maureen. “Isn’t that a nice thing to say?”

“She’s got the patter right down,” said Maureen, draining her coffee cup.

“Is it two o’clock we’re picking you up at?” asked Liam.

“Yep,” said Kilty. “Outside my house.”

Liam looked around the table curiously. “Mauri, don’t you always get pissed on Monday nights? Why are you two drinking coffee?”

“We’re going out,” said Kilty.

“Yeah,” said Maureen, “we’re going out.”

The Glasgow underground system has two concentric tracks, one running clockwise, the other anticlockwise. The trains are painted orange, hence the nickname the Clockwork Orange. Through a peculiarity of design, the Bridge Street underground station sucks down air from ground level, and halfway up the short flight of stairs is a windy vortex. Kilty and Maureen left the cold platform, battled through the buffeting Arctic wind and walked out into a calm, sunny Gorbals evening, just south of the river.

The monolithic high flats stood gray and black across a dusty lawn of wasteground. Not a single car was parked outside. Eighteen stories up three empty window sockets had black smoke smeared above the lintels. The same bossy blue signs that had pitted the front of Sheila’s block were here too, ordering residents to do this, stop that and get your bloody hand out of there.

Number fifty-four had a security door and they couldn’t get in. Kilty pressed the buzzer for the concierge but got no answer. They were standing about for a couple of minutes, trying to think of something to do, when a small man behind them pressed his key to a pad and the door buzzed open. They stood back, thinking it would be rude just to push in after him, but the man held the door open for them.

“We could be desperate robbers, ye know,” said Kilty, once they were safely inside.

“Aye, ye look like right villains.” He smiled and walked away to a stairwell.

The lobby was in good nick — no graffiti, no burn marks anywhere, and the lifts appeared to be working. The floor was covered in large black rubberized tiles that would have been trendy in a loft. A janitor sat behind a glass wall in a small room to the side, watching television under a sign that read “Concierge.” Maureen found the lift that stopped at the even-numbered floors and pressed the button. The doors opened and they stepped into a smog of piss and detergent. Maureen used the hem of her T-shirt to press the button for Ella’s floor.

“God, fuck,” said Kilty, choking and covering her mouth. “Why? Why piss everywhere?”

Maureen held her nose and tried not to breathe in. The lift stopped and they staggered out onto the landing. On either side of the lift shaft, flights of stairs led up and down, the reinforced glass on the outside wall filling the stairwell with a pissy yellow light. Maureen and Kilty looked up and down the corridor at the rows of gray doors. The place was deserted. Buzzing strip-lights flickered at the far end. A sudden brutal clang behind their heads made them jump. The noise continued, falling away from them. The bag of rubbish finished its journey down the chute and Kilty grinned at her. “I’m not tense,” she said, opening her eyes manic-wide.

Maureen found Ella’s flat three down from the lift. The door frame was covered in a sheet of raw plywood, nailed into place. It looked so final, as if everything about Ella was being blocked up because she was dead.

“Did someone kick the door in?” asked Kilty.

“I dunno,” said Maureen. “They wouldn’t do that because she’s dead, would they?”

“No, doors still lock after you’re dead. It looks as if the door’s been kicked in. Can’t have been her son who attacked her, then. She’d’ve let him in, surely.”

“He didn’t look the sort to kick a door in anyway. Let’s ask the neighbors. You ask up there” — Maureen pointed to the next door and swiveled on her heels — “and I’ll ask down here.”

Kilty walked away, trying to effect a Robert Mitchum swagger but looking as if she’d pissed herself and sprained both ankles. Maureen knocked on a nearby door. No one answered but she could hear a television inside. She banged again. Still no answer. Kilty wasn’t having any more luck. They moved across the corridor and tried the doors opposite Ella’s but still couldn’t get an answer.

“No one’s in,” said Kilty.

The noise of a lock cracking open made them turn to the end of the corridor. An old woman stepped out into the silence. She locked her door carefully, picked up the plastic bag at her feet and walked towards them, looking past them, pretending they weren’t there. Her footsteps echoed around the corridor. She was wearing a bandage around her calf under thick support tights. As she approached Maureen and Kilty, the old woman’s path veered steeply to the opposite wall and she kept her eyes down.

“Excuse me?” said Maureen, stepping towards her.

The woman looked skittish and twitched to a stop, glancing at Maureen’s shoes.

“I’ve been up seeing Ella McGee at the hospital,” said Maureen, hoping to attract her attention with the promise of gossip.

The woman looked up at her. “She okay?”

“She died, I’m afraid,” said Maureen. “What happened to her door?”

The woman seemed startled and glanced at the wooden slab. “It got broke,” she said.

“Did someone break in?”

The woman looked uneasy and dropped her voice. “From the inside,” she said. “It was all smashed out the way.”

“Gee-so,” said Kilty.

Apparently offended by the use of a bowdlerism, the woman stumbled back a step and stared at them dumbly.

“Do ye know her son? Si McGee?” asked Maureen.

The old woman shook her head and looked at Kilty.

“Sorry,” muttered Kilty, and Maureen stepped back against the wall to let the nervous woman pass.

She scuttled off down the corridor, pressed the button for the lift, looked back at them again and hobbled off down the stairs.

“Look at that granny go,” muttered Kilty. “I don’t think anyone here’ll talk to us.”

“I think you’re right,” said Maureen.

They heard the whine of the lift approaching and went over to it. The doors opened on a bare knee, a naked thigh, a smoking cigarette. A very drunk man was loitering in the lift, propped up against the side, smoking casually. He was naked, his tired little belly sagging in perfect semicircles, like Gothic drapery. He raised his cigarette, opening his mouth wide, as if he were going to bite an apple, and let his lips slowly alight on the filter. “What are you doing?” said Kilty indignantly, jamming the doors open with her foot.

“Eh?”

“What are ye doing in there? There might be children getting in that lift.”

The man’s gaze slid around the floor then bounced over to Kilty. He shut his eyes and pointed at her with his smoking hand. “You don’t even live here,” he drawled, his lips sliding freestyle across his teeth.

“Children might get into this lift and you’re naked. And you’ve got half a hard-on.”

The man felt his stomach. He clearly didn’t know he was naked until Kilty told him. From his mild discomfort Maureen guessed that things like this happened to him quite often. “No one takes the lift,” he said.

“You shouldn’t take the lift and then maybe someone else could.”

Maureen stepped in front of Kilty. “Hey, did you hear about the lady on this floor who was attacked?”

He shook his head, and kept his eyes shut. “Ella the Flash. Are you the polis?”

“No.”

“Well, tell her hello from me.”

“Does she know ye?”

“Ever’b’dy around here knows me.” He opened an eye but the other one seemed to be stuck shut. “I’m famous.”

“What for?” asked Kilty, and Maureen looked at her incredulously as the door slid shut.

It was ten o’clock and still as bright as noon. Traffic lights ordered ghostly legions around the empty roads.

“What does Ella the Flash mean?” said Kilty.

“Dunno,” said Maureen.

As they walked across the deserted car park Kilty flapped her T-shirt to disperse the memory of the smell from the lift. She was completely unperturbed by the naked man. As a social worker she saw things Maureen couldn’t conceive of. She was never shocked at horror stories of deprivation and seemed to know all the names of the big men in the city.

“Have you ever heard of Si McGee?”

Kilty shrugged. “I know the name.”

“How much force would it take to smash a door from the inside?”

“The other doors looked pretty sturdy. I don’t think Benny Lynch Court would be the most sensible place for the council to make big savings on front doors.”

“Why could he possibly be that angry with her?” Maureen mused.

“Maybe it was bringing the small-claims case.”

“Naw,” said Maureen. “Whatever went on in there happened on Thursday night and he couldn’t have received the letter about the small claims until Saturday morning at the earliest.”

“He got the letter for the small claims on Saturday morning and then, suddenly and out of the blue, she died?”

“Yeah,” nodded Maureen. “Suspicious, isn’t it?”

“It is a bit,” said Kilty, biting her lip.

They walked to the mouth of the underground and bought their tickets. Kilty stopped at the turnstile. “Look, is this any of your business, Mauri? Are you sure you’re not just worried about Una’s baby and looking for a morbid distraction?”

“She asked me to get her out, Kilty — she asked me and I said she’d be fine.” Maureen flushed, shoved her ticket into the slot and pushed through the turnstile.

Kilty got halfway down the stairs and turned, the wild wind flattening her thin hair hard against her head, making her look like dead Ella. “I’ve definitely heard that name somewhere,” she said, as if that would console Maureen.

It didn’t make her feel any better. The platform was empty. Through the dark tunnels on either side they could hear a rumbling. The train clattered into the station and they got into a deserted carriage, sitting next to each other. As the train took off Maureen leaned across to Kilty. “How could ye get into a lift and not even notice you’re naked?” she shouted over the noise.

“He’d be blacked out,” she said and left it.

It struck Maureen that her drinking was taking over her life. Whatever course she took in her life there would be no dignity in it.

She could only see two options: ugly cells or a life of perpetual streaking. Kilty read the concern on her face. “You don’t black out a lot, do ye?”

“No.”

Kilty smiled. “You answered that awful quick. Are you sure?”

“What is a blackout?”

“That’s when you can’t remember hours of what happened last night. They get worse if your drinking escalates. It can go on for days.”

Maureen smiled for her. The drinking was getting worse: she could dress it up as a crisis, she could call it Michael, but she knew deep down that it would have happened anyway, that she was like Winnie.

Kilty leaned over and tapped her leg. “Blacking out for days is pretty extreme, Mauri — it means your brain’s shriveling. I don’t think you’ll get that bad.”

Maureen nodded.

“You should cut down, though,” she said, once again displaying her inability to understand the siren call of drink. “I’ve said that to you before.”

Maureen looked at kind Kilty’s pretty wee face and would have sold her to the devil for a double there and then.

She stayed on the train to Kilty’s stop, passing Garnethill, knowing if she got off she’d run upstairs and take a drink. Kilty talked about her brother’s wedding most of the way home, how she couldn’t stand his friends and knew the feeling was mutual. They thought she was a loser freak for working in a children’s home. Maureen asked her what sort of work they did.

“Sell things, buy things,” said Kilty. “Like you and Leslie but from offices.”

She looked and saw that Maureen was only half listening. Her responses were shallow and a beat too late. Una’s baby was due soon. She must be worried sick.

It was dark outside Hillhead underground. The big sky was as yellow as a wolf’s eye. Kilty tried to convince her to come up for a cup of tea but Maureen said she needed a walk and had to get up early for work the next day. They kissed and Maureen thanked her for coming to Benny Lynch Court with her. Their parting felt strange and formal, like a Judas kiss.

Maureen planted her hands in her pockets and walked down the street. The students were away and the area was quiet in the lull before closing time. It was still warm. She wanted a drink: her mouth wanted a fresh drink, her gut wanted a searing drink, her fingers wanted to cradle a precious glass, her heavy heart wanted succor. The watchful yellow sky hung close and she heard a high breeze rustle the dark trees in Kelvingrove Park. She wouldn’t drink, wouldn’t stop at a bar and order a triple. She’d just go straight home. But she had whiskey at home in the cupboard. She slowed down.