G03 - Resolution (32 page)

Maureen and Leslie followed the road past the shopping center and around to the side of the station. The hill was steep and they were both damp by the time they stopped outside the Holy Cross community hall, across the road from a disused, blackened kirk. The complex of rooms centered on a gravel square with a concrete slab path running around it. Two plain women waited outside on the steps, one in a navy blue summer dress with short sleeves, the other in a white blouse and peach skirt. As Maureen and Leslie approached, the women turned and their faces fell a little: Maureen smelled of stale drink, and they both looked tired and crumpled.

“Hello,” said Maureen, ignoring the implied snub, taking an outstretched hand and shaking it. “I’m Maureen.”

Leslie took the other hand. “Hiya,” she said, and pumped the hand. “We’re looking for Maddie?”

“Inside,” said the summer dress.

The small room was unadorned and empty, apart from a couple of microphones on a raised stage and about twenty chairs set out in rows in front of it. An elderly black woman sat alone one row back from the front, dressed in an overcoat and matching hat with her handbag on her knee. A spindly young man was tuning up his electric guitar at the side of the stage and another man was standing in front of three adoring women, chatting and nodding, blinking slowly and holding photocopied sheets of paper. He saw them and broke away from the group, coming over with his hand outstretched, his eyes contracting in a practiced smile that hid everything beneath. “Hi,” he said, closing his eyes like a smug cat as he shook their hands. “I’m Jack Gibb. I’m the pastor. I lead the services around here, not that that makes me anything — anyone.” He had a Sheffield accent. It had escaped neither Maureen’s nor Leslie’s attention that, despite thinning brown hair on top, Jack Gibb had a scrawny wee ponytail. Alone, neither would have objected ferociously to it but in their collective consciousness a ponytail on a man was the greatest fashion crime of all.

“We’re looking for a girl called Maddie who comes here,” said Leslie stiffly, trying not to look at Maureen.

“Has she spoken to you?” said Jack Gibb, pastor and nobody. “About the church?”

“Oh,” said Maureen, “no, not really, it was a separate thing.”

Jack wasn’t pleased but he nodded none the less. He pointed them to a small underweight woman sitting on the stage listening, enraptured, to the guitarist tuning up, swaying back and forth. “She may not want to talk just now — the service is about to start.”

Maddie had short brown hair, cut in a functional style, and was dressed with great reserve: a long-sleeved nylon blouse with a modest vest underneath, an A-line black skirt that came below the knee and moccasins with flesh-colored soles. She looked like a foreigner who had been misinformed about the dress code.

She looked up as they approached her, hopeful at first. She had large brown eyes with slashed wrinkles under them like tidemarks. In her ears she wore small gold hoops, sitting loosely in long drooping holes used to far heavier earrings.

The guitarist stopped tuning up and watched Maureen and Leslie approach. Maddie stood up as if she were in trouble. Maureen introduced herself and asked if they could have a word. Maddie bristled, making it clear that people had been having words with her for a long time and it was never to tell her she had been voted Queen of the May. She shuffled to the side, moving away from the guitarist. “What’s it about?” Her voice was low and quiet.

“A lassie called Alison told us about you,” said Maureen. “She wears bunches?”

“We’re not the police,” said Leslie.

“Who are ye, well?”

“It’s a long story. Look, can we talk to you?”

Maddie wasn’t sure.

“I know you’re not doing that now,” said Maureen, “but we’re trying to find out about something and you’re the only person who might know about it.”

“What is it?”

“It’s about a lady called Ella the Flash. She worked the Gorbals for years and years.”

It was as nonthreatening a story as Maureen could think of and Maddie nodded. “How d’you know Ella?” she asked.

“We work in Paddy’s, her stall’s near us.”

Maddie nodded again. Behind her the service was starting. The expected deluge of sinners and converts hadn’t come and the seven members took their places, only three in the audience, most of them on stage. No one seemed to have spoken to the black woman.

“If ye stay for the service we could talk afterwards?” Maddie smiled. Leslie and Maureen agreed reluctantly and followed her into the front row of seats.

Jack Gibb led the singing from the photocopied sheets, accompanied by the inappropriate electric guitar. Although there were plenty to go round, Maddie offered to share her hymn sheet with Leslie and Maureen and leaned in so that they couldn’t avoid singing along. It was a poor rendition of whatever the song was. The black woman behind them sang with gusto but the Scots, unused to singing without libation, muttered and stumbled along to the tune. Jack Gibb shut his eyes and sang loudly but not well. The song petered out and they all put down their sheets as Gibb raised a hand on either side of his head, swayed from side to side, and started telling them in a strange, strangled voice that Jesus was a good guy.

The Jesus-is-a-good-guy stuff went on for some time and Maureen, not quite recovered from the night before, dearly wanted to sit down. She was feeling distinctly faint when Maddie broke away from her side and clambered up on the stage, a glassy look in her eye, and took the microphone from Jack. She gave a speech in the same strangled voice as Jack, rocking back and forth, egged on by the rest of them shouting intermittent encouragement. Maddie’s speech went on for a good five minutes and Jack had to ask her to give someone else a chance but the gist of it was that Maddie used to be unhappy and selfish but now she wasn’t and it was great. Thank you, Jesus. She didn’t mention a life of sin or shame or guilt but Maureen supposed that those were Catholic conventions anyway. Some other people said they had been wee shites as well, but that they weren’t anymore, and then they all prayed that hundreds of people would come to their service. Amen. Another song, badly mauled, ended the service and Maureen was never so glad to be a heathen as when the doors opened at the back of the room and let in the air. How anyone could do this every Sunday morning was beyond her.

Maddie was making the refreshments and they had to wait around while everyone sipped tea and ate chewy scones someone had made, chatting about how great the service had been and how nice the scones were. The middle-aged black woman left as soon as the service was over, leaving a grand total of seven worshippers and two people who wanted to talk to Maddie.

“Why do you put so many chairs out?” asked Maureen, to be sociable.

“Faith,” said Jack, and they all smiled as if they were in on the secret.

“You should try it,” said a woman with rolls of fat where her neck should have been. “It works wonders.”

They all smiled again. Maureen tried to eat a scone to kill the time but couldn’t work through the parched starch. Squeaky bicarbonate clung to the back of her teeth.

Finally Maddie was ready to leave and waved off her holy pals with a promise to meet them at a prayer meeting later in the week. The neckless woman made a great show of hugging her warmly and told her to live in Jesus in the meantime.

“I thought she lived in Springburn,” muttered Leslie as they crossed the gravel to the street, and it seemed like the funniest crack in history because everything else was so alien and dreary. Hands on her belly, Maureen bent back and guffawed at a clear blue sky. Maddie spun round and glared at her distrustfully.

Maddie never really got back into pliable Jesus-loving mode again. She didn’t want to take them to her house and there wasn’t a cafe open so they bought cans of juice and stood in the freezer-center car park next to three bell-shaped bottle banks. It was midday and the tar was soft beneath their feet. Shimmering heat rose from the ground, melting the high-rise flats and wetting Maddie’s vest. They lit cigarettes and offered one to Maddie. She took it guiltily and enjoyed it.

“Can’t afford these anymore,” she said, and giggled, a little excited. “No harm in a wee treat.”

Leslie stood back, rolling her cold can on her forehead, and let Maureen do the talking.

“Maddie,” said Maureen, wishing they were somewhere more private, “I respect your new life and what you’re doing for yourself—”

“Aye, get on with it,” said Maddie. Her skin was hard and tough: she looked less as if she was aging than desiccating.

“We knew Ella,” said Maureen. “She’s dead now—”

“Ella’s dead?”

“Aye.”

Maddie took a sip of her fizzy orange and a trickle of sweat rolled down the side of her face, dripping from her sharp chin. She must have been boiling in her vest. “D’ye know her son, then?” she said.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about.” Maureen decided not to mince her words. “I think Ella tried to warn me about him, tell me what he was up to, about the health club at Kelvingrove, but she died before she told me straight and I think he killed her.”

Maddie nodded.

“I liked Ella,” said Maureen.

“That’s ‘cause ye didn’t know her.” Maddie took a long drink and finished her can. “She was an evil cow. God forgive me, but she was. Cruel.”

“How was she cruel?”

Maddie put the can down on the Tarmac. She shut her eyes and Maureen could see her lips moving in prayer. Her hair was wet around the nape of her neck. Maureen let her finish and Maddie looked up again.

“Are there Polish women in there?” asked Maureen.

Maddie coughed, agitated and angry.

“Look, Leslie and I both used to work at the Place of Safety Shelters,” said Maureen quickly. “We’re concerned about that place. No one knows that Si McGee’s involved in it, apart from folk like you, folk who’ve been there—”

“I don’t know nothing about him,” said Maddie, her voice high, her eyes wide.

“Maddie,” Maureen said, “I sat outside and watched that place and someone came out and told me to move on. That’s not normal, even for a sauna. Ella told me that he was involved there—”

“She told ye?”

“She got me to submit a small-claims form to the Sheriff Court with the health club as his place of work.”

Maddie snorted and looked away to the high flats, then back at Maureen, her mouth open, tongue moving, glistening as she thought of things to say but stopped herself. She opened her eyes wider. “Did ye send the forms in?” she said.

“Yeah, but Ella died just before the case came up.”

Maddie snorted again. ” ‘S a bit suspect, innit?”

“Look, Mauri,” said Leslie suddenly, “I’m fucking dying here. Can we go and get a cup of tea at least?”

Maddie turned away, her blouse stuck to her back, articulating a knobbled spine and razor-sharp shoulder blades. “Come to mine,” she said, and led them up the hill to the high flats.

A crowd of young neds were hanging about in the shadow of the tall block. Dressed in tracksuit bottoms and vests, they lay around on the bald grass lethargically, cursing one another and smoking rollies made to look like spliffs. They called to Maddie, shouting that Jesus loved her and so had everyone else in Springburn. One boy ran over and tried to pull up her skirt. Maddie skipped out of his way, muttered at him to fuck off and pulled open the door into the lobby.

It was cool in the lift and they pulled at their damp clothes, getting air to their suffocating skin. The flat was a small studio — a bathroom off the hall on the way in, a living room with a sofa bed in it and a galley kitchen off to the side.

The front room looked out onto another set of high flats and the sharp sunlight glinted off the windows across the way, glaring into Maddie’s flat like a searchlight. The window was open, letting fresh cool air filter in. There was no television in the room, just a lone shelf on the wall with a few books sitting on it: a Bible, a prayer book and a couple of Scott Pecks. Maddie called from the kitchen over the noise of the gurgling kettle, “D’yees want tea?”

“Please,” said Leslie.

She brought in a tray with three mugs, a fourth with milk in it and a stack of paper sugar sachets on the side. “I haven’t stolen them,” said Maddie, indicating the sugar. “I only take them when I’ve bought a tea in a shop. I’ve paid for them.”

Maureen smiled at her concern and Maddie grinned back, the yellow light softening her face. They sat down, Maddie and Leslie on the sofa and Maureen on the floor in front of them, sipping their tea and enjoying the breeze. Maureen lit up and offered the packet around. Maddie took a pie tin down from the window ledge so that they could use it as an ashtray.

“What can ye tell me about the health club?” said Maureen finally.

Reluctantly Maddie shrugged her shoulders. “I was there for a year and a bit. Then they chucked us all out. How’s Alison with the bunches?”

“She’s okay,” said Maureen.

“I tried talking to her,” said Maddie, “but what can I say?” She gestured around her bare room. “Ye sleep better?”

“Are there Polish women in the club?”

“I don’t know where they’re from. They’re foreign. They only know a few words in English.” Maddie looked at her cigarette. “They’re not always there. They move them on.”

“Are the women brought into this country by Si McGee?”

“Dunno,” said Maddie unsteadily, her faint voice fading. “They move them to a different city every couple of weeks so the punters don’t get to know them. They chuck the Glasgow girls out when they’re coming, don’t want us there at the same time. I think they come from Newcastle. I don’t know where they go.”

“Why don’t they want the punters to get to know them?”

Maddie looked out of the window, a haunted, guilty shadow in her eyes. ” ‘Cause they’ll try to help them,” she said.

“Help them how? Get them out of prostitution?”

Maddie looked from Maureen to Leslie. “Ye don’t know anything about this, do ye?”

Not knowing how they’d given themselves away, they couldn’t bullshit their way out of it. Maureen shook her head. “Actually, no. All we know is that he’s got an employment agency in Poland, that Ella got beaten up and died after she’d submitted the small claim and you used to work there.”