Resolution

Chapter 25

Maureen couldn't move. Hinged at the jaw, her head flipped back like a Faberge egg, opening her tender insides to the elements. It was a sharp rod dropped straight through her, skewering her and passing through her vagina, causing a howling pain in her lower abdomen. She felt the hot wetness on her thighs and woke up with a start, thinking she'd peed the bed. She hadn't. The sheets were wrapped around her legs and she had managed to turn all the way round in the bed.

Maureen lit a cigarette and looked out of the window on a perfect summer's day. Another baby girl had been born to the O'Donnells. The thought made her feel sick. She didn't want to talk about the baby, she didn't want to talk about anything ever again, and Leslie would be sitting staring at her all day. As she pulled on her shorts she found the number from Mark Doyle in the pocket. She looked at it for a while, losing herself in the numbers.

The town was busy, everyone moving fast, like cold-blooded lizards overheated by the sun. She stopped at a large chemist's for some painkillers, walked through the jets of warm air into the cool shop and cosmetics stands. When she had had a lot of money Maureen had come here a lot, buying overpriced vanishing cream and miracle conditioners. She loved them, loved the promise of change, of not being herself anymore after a mere three months of consistent application. The pharmacy was at the back of the shop. It was just after eight in the morning and willowy junkies were already there, handing in used needles and getting doses of methadone. A slow-blinking man with filthy black hair drawled to his pal, "Come on, Jonny, man, it's sunny."

Jonny-Man was not relaxed. The chemist pursed her lips tight and refused to look at him as she placed the small plastic cup on the counter. The thick blue-green liquid inside was as dark and inviting as the loch the night before. The agitated man lifted it and drank, rolling his tongue around the inside, lapping up the last few drops. He put it down on the counter again, watching it ruefully, wishing it full again. He turned and walked away.

The chemist pinched a smile at Maureen and knocked the used cup into a bin with a wooden spatula. "May I help you?"

"Painkillers," said Maureen. "Nothing dissolvable."

She walked back up the hill to the house, chewing on a bitter aspirin, reflecting on the injustice of Una having a girl. Una would use the baby to prove she didn't believe Maureen had been abused. She'd encourage contact, bring Michael over to the house, maybe even leave the baby alone with him. Maureen had often wondered how the horror of her own abuse could have occurred under the noses of neighbors and friends, teachers and doctors, priests and the gang of interchangeable nuns who taught them catechism. She felt sure someone must have seen something, a change, a withdrawal. Some adult somewhere must have seen some small clue and they ignored it, did nothing, sent her home to Michael. She could see the clues now and she wasn't going to ignore them. Angus's trial started on Monday. If she fucked up and got sent to jail, she wouldn't be able to do anything to protect the baby. If she was going to do anything about it she had four days left.

Back at the flat Leslie was still feeling ill and had made an appointment with the doctor for the afternoon. She was fretting about Cammy and so agitated that she didn't notice how tired Maureen was. "God," whined Leslie, "everyone knows he's been living with me and now I've realized that he's such a prick. Everyone must have known-you knew, didn't ye?"

"Yeah."

"It's so humiliating."

Maureen was thinking about Michael and Una and Winnie together, another child fed to Michael to appease him, another girl spending her life getting over him. Leslie was pausing, waiting for her to respond to something she'd said.

"Oh, well," said Maureen.

Satisfied, Leslie launched off again. "I feel like I've made an arse of myself. D'you think I've made an arse of myself?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Leslie," snapped Maureen, "being humiliated doesn't mean you've done anything special, it just means you got out of bed. Life's humiliating."

Leslie stopped still. "What's the matter? Are you embarrassed about last night?"

"No," said Maureen, furiously. "That guy's running a fucking brothel and I should be embarrassed?"

"You were pissed, Mauri. You fell over on the dance floor."

"I don't give a shit. It probably made Kilty's night anyway." She felt it in her stomach. An overwhelming swell of sorrow raced up her throat and she burst into tears.

Leslie sat her down in the living room and brought her a coffee.

"Let's go and see this woman I know," she said sweetly. "She's called Joan and she works with prostitutes. She'll tell us if she's ever heard of McGee. We'll go and see Joan, okay?"

"Who the fuck is she, anyway?" said Maureen, drying her eyes petulantly. "I'm sorry, it's just that guy-what he did to his mother – it's awful."

"Think rationally, Mauri-why would a small-claims case matter enough for him to kill her? It's only seven hundred pounds – that jacket he had on must have cost a few quid. He's obviously not short of cash."

"It might not be about the money. Maybe I'll ask him when I see him – the case is tomorrow."

"You're not going?"

"Yeah, I'm going. I want to show my face for Ella, just to piss him off. Show him I'm not frightened." But she was hoping that Si would mind very much; she was hoping for a fight. She sipped her coffee and thought about Ella. "Kilty said the mortician might have been bribed to lie to me about the cause of death."

Leslie was losing patience. "Why would anyone bother doing that?"

"Because," explained Maureen, trying to be coherent when she wanted to smash the cup off the wall, "if Ella died of her injuries after being battered, the police would be looking for the person who beat her up. They'd get done for murder. If she died from her wounds I could tell the police about her fight with Si and then they could deal with it all."

"So if you think it was a spontaneous heart attack you'll leave it?"

"Yeah."

"Can't we get a copy of her official death certificate from the hospital? They think you're her daughter, don't they? Why don't you just ask the police?"

"Because they think I'm a mental case."

Paddy's was busy but not at their end of the tunnel. News of Ella's death had reached the market and several people came up to offer their condolences to Maureen, as if she were Ella's family. She saw the women whispering about her, talking to one another, telling one another that, despite slumming it here, she was a good sort after all and had been kind to that Ella. Everyone asked her when the funeral was but she didn't expect a big turnout. The service was on a working day and Ella hadn't been popular. Maureen couldn't even go herself; the court case started that day.

The heat from outside trickled down the tunnel on a breeze, warming the damp, making the tunnel feel clammy. Maureen was too miserable to take turns going for walks outside and Leslie couldn't sit still. Every shadow in the doorway was Cammy coming in to make a scene. They swapped seats so that Leslie could watch the door but that just made her more jumpy. She kept going for walks, coming back, sitting down, getting freaked out and going away again. Maureen's sympathy was threadbare. By the time Leslie left for her doctor's appointment Maureen was glad to see the back of her.

She was keeping an eye on the wheelie bin and watching Peter's stall while he went to get lunch when she saw Mark Doyle coming down the tunnel towards her, wearing his overcoat on the hottest day of the decade. He kept his head down as he walked towards her. She smiled up at him. "You've not phoned me," he said abruptly.

"I haven't done anything yet," she said.

He nodded, nervous and tired, wrapping his arms around his middle as though his stomach ached. "I thought ye'd decided not to phone." His voice was so quiet she could hardly hear him.

"I've had a lot on," she said. She nodded him onto Leslie's stool but he shook his head.

"Ye don't seem busy," he said, looking down the quiet tunnel.

She smiled. "You don't read the papers, do you?"

Doyle frowned quizzically, not understanding the connection.

"I looked at your number this morning," she said. "I was thinking about phoning ye. It's just… I think I should make my mind up first."

Doyle sagged at this, glancing out towards the bright door. "Hen," he said, suddenly, "you don't know about this… kind of thing. You'll get done."

"Ye won't change my mind, Mark," she said firmly, "not once I've decided."

"Ye want to go tae jail?"

She stared at her feet. "There's a baby, it's not just about me." She looked up at him. The edges of his mouth had turned down, the muscles on his jawbone twitching as he ground his teeth.

Doyle dropped his voice. "I can help ye. I can tell ye… stuff. Where to go, how to get away. Ye'll get done otherwise. Phone me, whatever ye decide."

He made her nod before he turned and walked away, passing Leslie unnoticed at the mouth of the tunnel. Maureen shivered in her seat. He'd help her get away. At a stroke Mark Doyle had robbed her of her best reason for not doing it.

"I've got a bug," said Leslie. "Doctor gave me antibiotics."

Maureen watched Doyle squinting against the sun, deciding which way to go. He disappeared down the lane.

"It's boiling out there," said Leslie, crouching into her seat. "An old woman fainted in the lane and had to be carried into the cafe so she didn't get sunburned while she waited for the ambulance."

"Did you see that guy pass you on the way in?"

"What guy?"

"The tall guy with the overcoat on."

"What guy?"

Back at the flat Leslie boiled some pasta, stirred in a bit of pesto and dropped cheese on it. Maureen listened to her speculate about what Cammy would be doing right now. The pasta was bland and rubbery and the cheese tasted rancid. Maureen moved it around her plate a bit and emptied some of it back into the pot when Leslie went to the toilet. She couldn't stop thinking about Michael and the baby. A rage was growing inside her belly, a white-hot fury snowballing in her chest, taking from her to feed itself. The thought of spending a night listening to Leslie ramble about Cammy made her head ache.

"What'll we do tonight, then?" said Leslie cheerfully, sitting down at the table.

"I've got my meeting," said Maureen.

"Oh, it's Thursday, isn't it?" said Leslie, disappointed.

"Never mind. You get a video and fall asleep watching it – I'll be back late." Leslie looked at her curiously. "Sheila said she wants a chat," added Maureen. She'd have to tell her about the baby soon, otherwise Leslie would think she hated her for moving in, but the truth and what she could safely tell anyone were getting confused in her mind. When she thought about killing Michael she couldn't remember if she needed to or wanted to, if she would be doing something useful or indulging herself like Angus.

Leslie was sorry to see her go out but she settled back on the settee with a cup of tea to watch some crap telly. As Maureen stood in the hall and looked at the back of her head she knew Leslie'd phone Cammy within the hour. "Why don't you phone Kilty and get her to come over?" she suggested.

"Yeah," said Leslie, without turning round. "I might well do that."

Maureen opened the door and stepped out into the cool close, knowing she should have stayed with her sad pal.

In Sauchiehall Street a drunken crowd of sensibly dressed women were waiting at the taxi rank, howling a gentle ballad. She passed a team of teenage boys, hanging about in a pedestrian precinct, kicking a bin. When the rain and the darkness returned, all the office workers and teenagers would look back on this time, some from jail cells, some from maternity units, and wonder what they'd been thinking of. Maureen crossed the river, passed the Sheriff Court and Ella McGee's high-rise. She knew it was a rough area, not one for walking through alone, but she almost hoped that someone would jump out at her, attack her, so she could vent her fury. She walked on into the south side, walking until the soles of her feet hurt.

It was a good area, full of architectural finds, large cars and delicatessens. The houses had burglar alarms outside, flashing red or blue high on the walls. As she turned the corner and approached the house, she knew that Una was inside because her pride and joy, her green Rover, was parked in the street under the shade of an old tree. It was a company car, a symbol of her success, and the leather seats and walnut dash reassured her that she was making it.

Una's house was the bottom floor in a squat three-story tenement. The large three-bedroom flat had two reception rooms and a big kitchen that led into a sliver of private garden, most of it concreted over. The reception rooms were at the front and, as she approached, Maureen saw that the lights were on in the living room.

In the street in front of the flat was a small fenced-in island garden. It was thirty feet across and a hundred yards long, with signs on the gates reserving use of the garden for key holders and residents. A driver had crashed into the fence and the replacement chicken wire hadn't been soldered yet. Maureen pulled out the overlap, climbed through, and sat on a bench directly opposite Una's front room. She watched and waited.

In the course of an hour and a half no one came into the room but as the light began to fade she noticed movement through the open door in the hallway. She waited until she could be sure of what she was seeing, worked out the geography of the house, and slipped out of the garden, following the lane round to the back of the flat.

Una would have done up the garden for the baby coming; she was too organized and controlling to let a major consideration like that slip by, but when Maureen got there and peered through the thin hedge, she discovered that nothing had changed. The concrete was still there; three white plastic garden chairs were still sitting out, uncleaned after the grimy winter. Maureen was so self-involved she'd forgotten about Una's troubles, hadn't really considered how hard Alistair's affair with the upstairs neighbor must have hit her sister.

Crouching down, keeping her head below the hedge, she looked into the brightly lit kitchen. The windows were barred with Venetian blinds and she had to concentrate hard to see, screwing up her eyes and disciplining herself to stare at one slit of light despite movement in others.

Una had changed her hair. It was a relationship-breakup hairdo, a radical change, chosen in a state of upset. She'd cut it short, above her ears, and had streaked it different hues of blond. She was sitting at the table with her back to the window, her hands busy in front of her. Alistair came and went from the room, bringing things, taking a nappy bag away. He kept his eyes down, only looking at Una's chest, smiling when she wasn't talking to him. Una must be holding the baby, feeding it. The television news flickered blue and gray on the worktop. Una was usually meticulous about the house but dirty plates and baby bottles were stacked on the counter, and the table was strewn with wipes and a blanket.

Una tugged at her jumper and lifted a bleary-eyed baby to her shoulder. Maureen couldn't see its face – the blind was in the way-just a tiny red mouth and chubby jowls. The mouth opened and a slick of white sick dripped down Una's shoulder. It took her a moment to feel the wetness of it. She looked at the baby, as if demanding an explanation, and sat it in a plastic carry-chair, folding the handle back. Then she turned and spoke to what Maureen had assumed was the top of a gray soft toy before leaving the room.

The man stood up unsteadily, looking at the baby, and turned to the window, his face red, sweat stains on his collar, and Maureen knew him immediately. It was Michael.