G03 - Resolution (30 page)

When he was dealing Liam had left the downstairs of the house dirty and unaltered to discourage his sometimes desperate clients from trying to rob him. Since enrolling as a student he had become obsessed with renovating it. He used all his spare time to strip the flock wallpaper, bare the scored plaster and woodwork, filling the rooms up with a lot of chairs he bought in auctions. His obsession with chairs was getting to be too much: the place was beginning to look like a Quaker meetinghouse. He had left the garden and kitchen until last and had just started making inroads on them. Maureen had never known him to have any interest in gardening, much less skill at it, but the long, dry stretch of mud had sudden thin grass growing on it. Just outside the kitchen window a small herb bed had been planted with cuttings and sticks with pictures on them, proclaiming the potential. A seemingly ready-made shrubbery was flourishing at the far end.

They were sitting in the second-floor sitting room, above the noise of the traffic. The floor-length windows clipped the top of the roofs opposite but mostly they were filled with blue sky, textured with occasional puffs of white cloud, like living paintings. It was a blue room, kept plain and empty apart from the Corbusier lounger, the cracked leather chesterfield and the telly and video.

Liam handed her a mug of tea and pointed at the Jiffy bag on the floor. “It might be completely innocuous,” he said.

“I know.”

“It’s probably a promo for Disneyland or something.”

“Probably.” Maureen didn’t move to put the video into the machine but sat looking at the envelope, sipping her tea.

“But you don’t think it is?”

“No.” She sipped again. “He’s the only person who sends me anonymous mail.”

“It’s not from the hospital, though, is it?”

“No. It was hand-delivered. He must know people on the outside.”

“Okay,” said Liam, slapping the back of the sofa. “I’ll watch it.”

SHE WAS ON STRICT orders to wait downstairs but found herself hovering in the hall, smoking a fag and trying to hear anything from upstairs. It would last about an hour, she guessed, from the big reels, or maybe even just half an hour. She could hear the floorboards creak as Liam walked to the video, the click of the tape being sucked into the machine. He walked back to the sofa and pressed play on the remote. She listened. There was no sound for about five seconds then suddenly Liam scampered out of the room and leaned over the banister. She looked up at him, turning a little circle on the stairs to see his face properly. His mouth was open and he seemed to be swaying. “Liam?”

He fell back heavily against the wall. Maureen put down her tea and ran up the stairs to find him hunkered on the floor.

“What is it?” she said, rubbing his back.

Liam coughed hard. Maureen fed her cigarette to him, holding it against his lips, and Liam inhaled a full centimeter. “Pauline Doyle,” he said, exhaling thick smoke as he spoke. “On a bed.”

“Pauline alive?”

Liam hung his head. “On a bed.”

She had never thought of herself as more hardened than Liam but she could watch it and he couldn’t. He was sitting downstairs in the front room, chain-smoking and sipping medicinal bourbon while Maureen watched Pauline on a Bed.

It was a small room with girlie curtains in flowery peach and a single bed. The bedstead was green velour. There were two people in the shot. Outside the window cars and lorries sped past on a distant dual carriageway. It was homemade, the date and time stamped in the corner of the screen, four months after Maureen’s discharge from hospital. Pauline had been in the hospital recently, that much was clear, because she was over six stone. It didn’t look like a rape. To anyone who didn’t know Pauline, it was a normal, grubby homemade porn tape. Pauline sat on the single bed wearing a dirty red nylon bra and pants with scratchy lace trim, looking at the man’s face apprehensively, trying to catch his eye, glancing occasionally at the video camera. A casual viewer, chugging along to the action, wouldn’t notice the similarities between the skinny bird on the bed and the guy doing her, wouldn’t notice that behind the apprehension she was asking him, please, not to hurt her.

Pauline’s father touched her here and there, pointing her at the camera, showing it her flower and her wee tits, touching her in a way that communicated disrespect tinged with disgust. He did things just because he could do them, slapped her leg really hard with a belt buckle, showing how compliant she was. Pauline, unmoved by indignities she had experienced many times before, watched his face, looking for signals that it was all about to get much worse.

The father was talking to the camera but there was no sound on the tape. He seemed to be asking for encouragement, pausing with a knee on the bed and nodding at the viewer, turning Pauline over as if this were what had been requested, checking back for reassurance. He got his spindly old cock out and fucked her up the arse, flashing a smile at the camera. He didn’t even have a full hard-on. Pauline was on all fours, her bony wee bum two-thirds to the camera, shuddering when his pelvis banged against her, absently watching the cars pass on the dual carriageway.

Maureen was on her third cigarette in twenty minutes. She was sitting forwards, her hands holding her face, tears spilling from her eyes as if they were trying to wash grit away. The father finished, pulled out, and while he was standing there, pointing at her, the shot zoomed in on Pauline’s bum. The father lifted her by the hips and moved her a few inches across the bed like a dog being shown, so the camera could get a better shot of her genitals. Pauline didn’t struggle, didn’t even bend in the middle. This had happened before. Her hole was as dilated as a fifty-pence piece. The screen went blank.

Maureen didn’t know much about video cameras but assumed the zoom wouldn’t be remote. There had been another man in the room watching all of this, a man working the camera. Pauline’s other brother was there and the father had been talking to him, nodding to him, asking him things. Maureen sniffed hard and wiped the hot tears from her face. Mark Doyle had grown up with these people. No wonder his skin was trying to rot away.

She stayed in the room for a while, watching the sunlight flicker on the varnished floor, the fervent blue sky over the rooftops opposite. She hadn’t stayed in touch with Pauline after she got out of hospital and this was what had happened. Maureen should have had Pauline to stay in her flat, sleep on her floor, take her bed, even — she would have given her the bed if she’d known. But she had known, Pauline had told her: her father and brother had been raping her anally for years. She just hadn’t bothered to imagine it. Pauline had refused to tell the police because she was afraid it would have killed her mother. Maureen knew now that she was right.

Liam called from downstairs. “Is it finished?”

It took her a while to find her voice and when she did, it was weak and cracked. “Aye. Finish.”

He climbed the stairs slowly and paused before he opened the door. “Is it off?” he said, staring at her face.

“Yeah.” She pointed to the blank television screen. “It’s off.”

Liam sat down sideways on the Corbusier lounger, bending over his knees, looking small. “It’s not from Farrell, then, is it?”

Maureen rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “Aye,” she said finally, “it is.”

“But how could he know about Pauline?”

She was in shock, she knew that, and it was taking her a while to answer. “He worked at the Northern for eight years. Pauline was in there for ages before I went. Farrell’s a predator. He’d’ve read through case notes, found her in there, probably.” She flicked her cigarette into the ashtray. “If he was asking about me he’d have heard she was my pal.”

Liam was trying not to look at the television, as if the image were still up there. “Why would they make a video like that, condemning themselves?”

Maureen shook her head. “They didn’t just make that video for themselves. They made it for other people to see. There’s networks of these people, ye know. They swap videos of things they do. There was a pedophile gang, UK-wide, got done last month for swapping films of themselves on the Net. It’s a status thing among them. Farrell probably got to know that network. Any vicious pervert in Glasgow could have sent that.”

Liam leaned over, took a cigarette from her packet and lit it. He pointed to the video machine. “Will we take it to the police?” he said.

“For what?” The final image came to Maureen’s mind again and she bent over her knees, wishing she could be sick. “Both of the people in it are dead.”

“The dad’s dead?”

She nodded.

“How do you know that?” he said.

“Know her brother.”

“Not the brother?”

“No.” She shook her head. “The other brother. His dad and the other brother are dead, he told me.”

“Poor guy,” he said, and it occurred to Maureen that Liam and Mark Doyle probably had a lot in common. “What’s he like?”

Maureen didn’t know how to describe Doyle. She stopped for a minute and thought about him, growing up with that, maybe not knowing the details but aware of the atmosphere, the implications.

“He’s … I dunno what he’s like. He’s covered in sores and he walks about as if he’s dead already. Can a zoom on a video work remotely?”

“Yeah, if there’s a button on a lead.”

“What about without a lead?”

“Nut,” said Liam.

“It zoomed in at the end,” she said. “The other brother was in the room.”

“But why would Farrell get it sent to you now?”

She sat back and took a deep breath. “He must have heard I’m giving evidence — he wants me to lose it again.”

They sat for a while, Maureen looking out at the perfect sky, Liam bent double, picking at a loose strip of plastic on his trainers. “Ye know what’s really disturbing about that video?” he said eventually. “It looks like other pornography, but I know Pauline didn’t want to be there and I know that’s her dad and I know she killed herself because of it.”

“So?”

“Makes ye think about other porn, doesn’t it?”

Maureen sniffed hard. “Not just a bit of saucy fun when it’s your hole, is it?”

Three men were sitting on the pavement outside and smiled up at them as they walked past. The Wayfarers’ Club was a soup kitchen serving out of the cavernous Gothic arches under the Central Station bridge. The entrance was a gray metal door built at the far end of a glorious blond tricept. Uplighters filled the dome and the structure quivered and hummed as a train passed overhead.

Maureen rang the bell and stepped back. They were dressed for the Polish Club, in conservative skirts, makeup and jackets, all of which felt ludicrously inappropriate down by the river.

“God,” said Kilty looking up, “it’s beautiful. Why doesn’t someone do something with this space?”

“Well, they are doing something with the space,” said Leslie, ringing the bell again.

“But there must be more suitable spaces for a soup kitchen than a Gothic cathedral.”

The giant steel door scratched open a little and a stocky wee man in glasses looked out, assessing their clothes. “Aye?” he said quickly.

“Hello,” said Kilty. “I wonder if you could help us. We’re looking for someone who used to work here, her name’s Candy?”

He thought about it. “Nut,” he said, and started to shut the door.

“That might not be her name,” said Maureen, stepping forward and putting her foot in the door. “She worked here and she was very religious.”

“She’s not working here now.” The man’s voice was a nasal squeal. “We’re shorthanded and I’ve got twenty loaves to butter.”

“Why don’t we give ye a hand?” said Maureen, and realized immediately that she should have kept that bargaining tool as a last resort.

The man was about to open the door but stopped. “Are you the police?”

“Naw, we’re just looking for our pal.”

“If she’s your pal how come ye don’t know her name?”

Kilty stepped forward. “She was a prostitute and she got out of it. We want her to come and talk to someone we know, see if she can help them get out of it as well.”

He looked quite interested and glanced at Leslie’s long, bare legs. “Are yous all prostitutes?”

“No,” said Leslie.

“No,” said Maureen. “We’re just trying to help someone.”

The man’s eyes slid back to the hall behind him and all the work he had to do. He opened the door. “Come in, well.”

The hall was gigantic, a vast rectangle. At the top of the room stood a small rostrum, above which hung a shakily hand-painted sign inexplicably declaring, “Wayfarer’s — Are Go.” Along each of the windowless walls leaned high stacks of chairs and folding tables. A blond man with his sad past written in the droop of his shoulders stopped setting up the serving table at the top of the hall and stood, staring, as if he had never seen women before.

“Hiya,” said Kilty, raising her hand.

The man raised a hand, bewildered, and turned back to what he was doing, suddenly self-conscious.

“Yous can set up the chairs and the tables along the way.” The nasal man gestured sideways with his hand.

“D’ye want an aisle down the middle?” asked Maureen.

“Aye. Just fill the hall halfway.”

“And after this you’ll talk to us?”

“Aye.”

He scuttled away down the length of the room, disappearing through the door at the side of the rostrum. Kilty dropped her handbag by the wall and they set about laying out the chairs and the tables in rows. Above them a train rumbled out of the station, gathering speed, filling the hall with a hissing groan. Maureen nodded to the handwritten sign. “D’ye think that’s supposed to read ‘Wayfarers Are Go!’?” she asked when the train had passed.

“Or ‘Wayfarers’ Argot’?” muttered Kilty. She nodded at the kitchen door. “That guy’s taking the piss. He doesn’t know who we’re talking about.”

“Yeah,” said Maureen, swinging two plastic chairs from the stack to the floor.

Kilty picked up some chairs and carried them over to the blond man. He was setting up the sturdy serving tables at the top of the hall, grabbing handfuls of plastic spoons out of a cardboard box and laying them on the table, spreading them wide to avoid a crush of bodies when the hungry men came to grab them. Maureen could tell from the tension in the man’s neck and shoulders that he felt Kilty’s approach.