G03 - Resolution (24 page)

“Only answer questions from the sheriff and only speak through the sheriff. Do not speak to each other while the sheriff is dealing with your case, is that clear?”

They nodded dumbly, and the blue man went off through a side door. The tarty girl giggled about something and her mother huffed in dismay. Maureen was watching them when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a tall, slim woman slip in from the corridor and sit three benches back. She was wearing a smart gray trouser suit with a pale slate scarf. She settled her expensive leather handbag on her knee, her gaze focused on air. It was Tonsa. She didn’t look around, didn’t try to find anyone among the crowd, but Maureen knew that Tonsa was there to warn her.

The usher came back out of the side door, told them all to stand up and the sheriff came in. He walked along the back row and sat down. The usher told them all they could sit down now, and they did.

Maureen looked around at the public benches. Everyone was frightened and apprehensive, not knowing what was going to happen next or what was expected of them. The sheriff called the first case and they relaxed back into their chairs as they realized it wasn’t them. Two of the lawyers in the central pen stood up and told the sheriff that they were representing the respective parties to the case. They all muttered to one another and the sheriff read for a bit and told them to come back later. The bobbed clerk read through her papers and gave them a date. After a short read the sheriff called another case. The nervous mother with the tarty daughter leaped to her feet and turned this way and that, looking terrified. The usher beckoned her through the little partition and she stood at the table with the lawyers and waited expectantly while the sheriff read through the notes. The woman was shaking. Even the skin on her back seemed to be trembling under her nylon blouse. Behind Maureen the woman’s tarty daughter giggled unhelpfully and told the man next to her to look, look at the state of her. When the sheriff finally asked her a question the nervous woman looked as if she might go into spasm. The sheriff asked if the other party was represented. One of the lawyers said he was there on behalf of someone or other. The sheriff told them to come back later and the clerk gave them a date.

This long and tedious process continued. Maureen was getting increasingly anxious. Tonsa wasn’t looking at her: she was staring blindly ahead, not fidgeting like the other members of the public, sitting still like a snake laying a trap. Maureen looked her over. Her face was blank. She blinked, making Maureen jump and turn back to the court, afraid she had been spotted.

As she watched it became obvious that the sheriff hadn’t read any of the papers and was so disinterested that all he could do was put the cases off for two weeks. Another set of disappointed people came back to their seats in the public benches, and she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. Kilty was standing behind her, nudging along the bench to sit down. “Hiya,” said Maureen, unreasonably excited in the circumstances.

“I skived off my work,” whispered Kilty.

“I’m glad,” said Maureen, happily looking around now that her pal was with her.

Ella’s case was called. Maureen looked at Tonsa, expecting her to stand up and go to the table. Tonsa didn’t move. The case was called again and Maureen stood up, trembling, and made her way through the partition to the table, embarrassed because Tonsa was watching her. One of the lawyers sidled up next to her with an impressive bundle of papers and leaned on the table with his fingertips, turning the knuckles white. The sheriff looked up at Maureen over his glasses and through force of habit she smiled at him. He did not smile back. He went back to reading the papers. “Are you representing Mr. Simon McGee?” he asked eventually.

The lawyer next to her nodded. “Yes, Your Honor.”

“And you,” — he looked at Maureen again — “are you Mrs. Ella McGee?”

“No,” said Maureen, and found her voice ridiculously nervous and squeaky. “I’m a friend of Mrs. McGee. I’ve come to tell you that Mrs. McGee—”

“Wait, “interrupted the sheriff, “until! ask you.”

“But she can’t be here because—”

“You will wait until I ask you, “said the sheriff.

Maureen shook her head in frustration and looked at the lawyer next to her. “She’s dead,” she whispered to him. “What’s the point in him reading the papers?”

The lawyer gestured for her to wait. After pointedly reading the notes for an inordinately long time, the sheriff looked up at Maureen as if it were she who had kept him waiting.

“I’m afraid Mrs. McGee’s dead,” said Maureen. “She died earlier this week.”

“You cannot bring an action if Mrs. McGee has died,” said the sheriff, with forced patience. “The action falls with her death.”

“I don’t want to bring the case,” said Maureen, angry at his patronizing manner. “I just came here as a courtesy to tell you that she was dead.”

The lawyers around the table smiled. The sheriff smirked at them, then turned sternly back at Maureen. He nodded back to the public benches. “Sit down.”

“There’s no need to be rude,” snapped Maureen.

At this the sheriff sat up straight and glared at her. He was, Maureen suspected, not a man used to being challenged by members of the plebiscite.

“Out,” he said, and the blue-uniformed man stood up and approached her, as if he’d physically eject her if she didn’t do his master’s bidding.

Kilty stood up behind her. “Come on, dolly,” she said, her voice rich and fond.

“DOESN’T EXACTLY BODE well for the trial on Monday, does it?” said Maureen. “I’ve only ever met one judge and he chucked me out of his court.”

She handed Kilty the burning cigarette. They were on the sloping bank outside the court, looking onto the river. Maureen hadn’t told Kilty that Tonsa was there. She was too afraid to say it, but she thought they would be safer sitting on the grass in full view of the security guards than skulking around in a dark tunnel in Paddy’s. She heard people walking behind her, to and from the court, and every single one might have been Tonsa.

“Still,” said Kilty, “I think they have to be cheeky or no one’ll do what they say.”

“Yeah,” said Maureen. “That level of rudeness does my tits in.”

Kilty took a puff of the cigarette, and exhaled immediately. Maureen often wondered why Kilty bothered smoking cigarettes at all. All she did with them was make her teeth dirty. Kilty rolled nearer to her. “I’ve been thinking about McGee, Mauri,” she said quietly. “He’s a member of the Polish Club — I asked my dad about it, and the fees there are about six hundred a year. If he can afford that he’d hardly kill his mum over seven hundred, would he?”

Short, sharp footsteps approached them from behind, clipping across the concrete, coming straight for them. They didn’t sound like high heels but Maureen couldn’t be sure.

“Think about it,” said Kilty. “Doesn’t make any sense for him to do that, does it, really?”

The person was ten yards away and closing. Maureen cringed, rounding her back, and turned to see a suited body. The man walked straight past her and sat down heavily on the grass next to Kilty. “You were great in there,” he said to Maureen. It was Si McGee’s lawyer.

“But I got chucked out.”

“I know,” he said, grinning as he took out a packet of cigarettes, “but you fundamentally undermined his authority. It was a bit of a shambles after you left.”

He offered them a cigarette each and Kilty took one, even though she was sharing with Maureen. He was the same age as them with fat red lips and a single dark eyebrow that dipped to a widow’s peak in the middle of his nose, setting his face in a perpetual frown. He would be amazing looking when he got older and filled out, when his lips lost some of their luster and his eyebrow bushed up and turned gray.

“Kilty Goldfarb.” Kilty held out her tiny hand, and as he took it Maureen understood why he had approached them.

“Josh Menzies.”

Josh and Kilty grinned at each other, got embarrassed by what they were both thinking, and looked away sharply. Maureen couldn’t handle the tension of sitting on the grass waiting for Tonsa to attack her for a minute longer. “It’s an interesting building, the Sheriff Court,” she said.

“Yes,” Josh nodded, “it is interesting.”

Kilty and Josh smoked in silence.

“Maybe you could show us around it,” said Maureen.

“Yes!” Josh exclaimed. “I could show you around the building. There’s a cafe, we could have a coffee together.”

“Oh. My. God,” said Kilty, as if he were offering unlimited access to Jesus, Tom Jones and the Crown Jewels. “That would be brilliant.”

Josh and Kilty simultaneously threw away their barely touched cigarettes and got up, brushing themselves down and grinning widely at the river. Maureen hadn’t finished her cigarette but felt it would be churlish to insist. She already felt superfluous as they walked back to the Sheriff Court and up the steps. Josh and Kilty weren’t talking to each other but they were smiling coyly, weaving back and forth towards each other as they walked up to the door.

Josh took them on a dull tour of the building, which consisted mostly of him pointing at different doors and saying that there was a court in there. Throughout the tour Kilty simpered and Josh basked. When their interest in each other got too blatant or they got stuck looking into each other’s eyes, Maureen asked a question. Josh was a lawyer and he came from Edinburgh. His dad was a bus driver and his mum ran a newsagent’s. He lived in Glasgow now, in the West End.

“Just like me!” squealed Kilty.

“So, do you know Si McGee, then?” said Maureen, keen to change the subject before Kilty had a public orgasm.

“No,” said Josh. “We just get the papers for small claims, we don’t get briefed.”

“His sister was in there, did you see her?”

“No, was she? I don’t know either of them.”

He took them to the cafeteria. It was a large room, running the full length of one side of the building. Only the lawyers and court staff were allowed to use it. Suits and gowns and uniforms clustered around tables, keeping with their own kind. Because it was late on a Friday afternoon the cafe had run out of sandwiches. There were only crisps and biscuits left. They ordered three tasteless coffees in orange plastic cups. Josh insisted on paying for them, winking flashily as he took out a twenty and waved it at Kilty, who giggled.

They were sitting down at a long table, sipping coffee, when Maureen became aware of someone standing just behind her at the limit of her line of vision, like Michael. The person was looking at her and, sure it was Tonsa, Maureen spun round to catch her. Benny Gardner was staring at her.

Benny Gardner had been Liam and Maureen’s mutual best friend at school. As stamp collectors find one another at church fetes, as pedophiles meet at bus stops, the children of alcoholic families know the signals and find their own. Benny had been expelled from school for being pissed in class and setting fire to a toilet. At the tail end of his drinking, Benny was blacking out so much that his stories started to sound like other people’s dreams. One day he woke up in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and miraculously, against all bets, got sober, went to university and did a law degree.

He had changed in the year since she had seen him. He was dressed in a conservative suit, a white shirt and a dark tie. He was balder and had two long parallel white scars on his jawline below his ear. His shoes were highly polished. He looked at her helplessly, opened his limp hands towards her, pleading.

“Hey, Benny,” said Josh, “come here.”

Benny approached the table, circling Maureen as if he was afraid of her. Josh tried to start some showy banter with him, teasing him about his team, but Benny didn’t respond. He was looking at Maureen. “Can I speak to you?” said Benny quietly, his teeth clenched tightly.

“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” said Maureen, looking at her coffee.

Maureen and Liam didn’t see Benny anymore, not since Angus Farrell had blackmailed him, threatening his golden future, using him to inveigle his way into Maureen’s house and plant evidence. Liam beat up Benny so badly he spent two weeks in hospital. They lied to each other now and said they didn’t miss Benny, didn’t wonder what he was up to or think about him. There was some suggestion that Winnie had met him at AA but Maureen was afraid to ask Liam about it.

“I need to talk,” said Benny. “It’s about Monday.”

Maureen looked at him. Benny had grown up. He had dips in his cheeks, under his eyes, Al Pacino pouches that made him look old. The last time she had seen Benny was after Liam beat him up: he had been lying in a bed at the Albert, his eyes purple and swollen like tennis balls, his wrist broken and his jaw wired together. She’d poked him in the eye and walked away. Had it been any other time, even a couple of days ago, she’d have snubbed him but now everything was coming to an end and Benny felt like part of a happier past. He knew Angus, had fucked her over for him before, and as far as she knew he was probably the source of the video and the pictures, but she wanted to talk to him. She wondered if Liam would see it that way. He probably missed Benny just as much as she did but he’d never admit it. She stood up slowly, and followed him to a nearby empty table, clutching her coffee and sitting down opposite him, waiting for him to speak.

“How have ye been?” he asked.

“Okay.”

Benny looked around the tabletop. “I heard about Farrell’s case coming up on Monday, I saw you in the papers.”

“You’ve got scars.” She gestured to his jaw and he raised his hand, touched the ridges of skin on his face.

“Aye,” he said sadly. “Long-term reminder of the fact that I’m a skank.” He tried to smile at her but she wasn’t having it. He put his hands on the table, sitting one on top of the other. “Mauri, I’m so sorry. I know ye can never forgive me.” He looked up to see how he was doing but she glared back and he dropped his eyes to his hands again. “I can’t defend what I did. I didn’t think Farrell was that smart, I didn’t think he’d get away with what he did. He threatened to make my record public if I didn’t help him. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me, Benny, ye put me in terrible danger—ye discussed aspects of my psychiatric history with a man so he wouldn’t spoil your chances of a good job. Do you know why he killed Douglas?”