Resolution

Chapter 30

The man pressed the buzzer and waited on the dark stairs. He saw a glint of light from the spy hole and smiled at it automatically, as if for a photograph. The door opened and Kevin welcomed him in. The man had been here many times, so often that now he almost got hard at the sight of green wallpaper or a blue carpet. He smiled to Cindy behind the desk but she looked away, knowing what he was here for. Kevin was standing at the top of the stairs to the basement, wearing the same cheap evening suit he always wore.

"All right, Kev?" said the man, handing over his three hundred quid in fresh twenties.

"No bad," said Kevin, holding the banister, bulky and ungainly on the shallow steps. "How are ye yoursef?"

"No bad, no bad."

The decor stopped at the bottom of the steps. The basement walls were a glossy gray, the floor bare concrete, adding a frisson of solemnity. Kevin led the man along the long corridor to a room at the end. "Oh," said the man nervously, "I've not been in this room before."

Kevin smiled as he took out his keys and looked through them. A lot of the punters liked to make small talk before they went in, to chat and make it all seem normal.

"Aye," he said. "It's a nice room. Soundproof."

The man was tense but attempted a tight smile. "Good," he said, and wiped his damp lips. "Good."

Kevin swung open the door. She was skinny as fuck, dressed in cheap knickers and a bra with a see-through dress pulled over it, sitting on a double bed with a nylon flowery cover. She looked surly. The man looked in at her. "Hello. Speak English?"

She didn't answer. The man walked into the center of the room, nodding and pulling off his belt. He called out as Kevin shut the door, "It's okay, isn't it?"

Kevin glanced back at the sulking Polish bitch on the bed. "Anything," he said, knowing she couldn't understand. "Anything at all."

In the six months since they had started the business, Si McGee had never seen his sister so worried. She was flicking the ash from a pink cocktail fag with a gold tip over and over into the bin, kept going over the same details and wouldn't go home even though she had nothing to do here. For Margaret emotional behavior of any kind constituted a full-blown panic attack.

"I'm telling ye," she said. "I'm telling ye, she was there and she was noising up the sheriff. We don't need this. We don't need this now. Charlie'll go fucking spastic. He'll make his move if there's a squeak of trouble."

"There won't be trouble," said Si. "Calm down. There won't be trouble."

Margaret squashed out the cigarette against the side of the metal waste bin and took out her handbag, clipping it open and lifting out the black and gold fag packet.

"Why did you put it out if you're going to light another one?" he said, trying to get her off the subject.

Margaret flicked back the gold paper and selected a green cigarette this time. "The bit near the filters gives ye cancer." She lit up and began flicking it into the bin interminably. "You don't know the Adams family like I do. You've never met them. Nothing stops business. A bit of trouble and they'll wipe us."

"They'll move on us soon anyway," Si pointed out. "You said so yourself. As soon as we're up and running, they'll wait for us to move on them, and if we don't they'll move on us."

"It's the worst time for this shit to fucking happen, I'm telling ye." She was frightened, and Si knew from his management course at university that now was the time to take charge, show leadership. "Look." He lifted her bag off his desk and handed it to her. "Put that on the floor." On the desk between them was a copy of a newspaper, open at a picture of Maureen. "We've got her picture," he said. "We both know what she looks like. We took care of Ella and we can sort her out too. It's a problem, I grant you, but it's a fixable problem. Tell me it's a fixable problem."

Margaret glared at him resentfully.

"Tell me it's a fixable problem," he repeated slowly, trying not to smile.

She didn't smile at him, but that didn't mean she didn't get it. Margaret rarely smiled. She swallowed and puffed her cigarette.

"It's a fixable problem," she said obediently. "But I cannae fix it. And you cannae. The court case'll finger us both."

"We'll just have to delegate, then," he said patiently. "What about Kevin?"

Margaret tutted under her breath. "Fuck off. He's fucking useless. Charlie Adams'll go fucking mad if anything happens here. He'll say he was coming in tae get his dough back and wipe us out, take the whole fucking thing over."

"You think I don't want rid of her too? She shouted at me in front of my school friends" He blushed at the memory. The kind regard of the St. Al's old boys was all he had left now the estate agent's business was closing up, and Maureen O'Donnell had tried to humiliate him, to take even that away from him. He took a deep breath. "We'll take care of it. Stop worrying."

Margaret stubbed her cigarette, sending a cloud of orange flecks into the bin. "Will we ever be big enough to fuck Charlie Adams over?"

"Maybe," Si said, lifting the edges of a file and slapping it shut. "Soon. And the minute we're big enough to pay him off and clean our own money, he'll try and fuck us."

"Just keep him sweet," she said, nodding to the fire exit.

"I will."

"Charlie sets a lot of store by him."

"I will," Si repeated. "I will."

He had to stop and catch his breath. He wasn't young anymore. The combination of everything – the woman, the warm room and the flecks of blood – it was too much. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, put his feet flat on the floor, and hung over his knees, breathing in deeply. Behind him he heard her panting and moaning. "D'ye like that, do ye?" he said, wiping the sweat from his face with an open hand. "Yeah? You fucking like it, don't ye?"

"I'm love you," she said.

He thought he had misheard her, thought the heat and the exertion were making him imagine words, but she said it again. "I'm love you."

He laughed, disbelievingly, and looked up at her. She was tied to the wall, her hands together above her head, her feet chained to the bedposts. Her naked back and buttocks were swollen with red welts from his belt and bloody scratches where the buckle had cut her. "You love me, do ye?"

She twisted on her shackles, bending her head over her shoulder so she could see him out of the corner of her eye. Her eyes were dark and open wide, looking around at such a sharp angle that she resembled a frightened cow. "I live your home?" she said.

"You'll leave my home?"

"I live you? You out me, I live you?"

He understood what she meant. "You wantae come and live with me?" he said, climbing onto the bed.

"I live you," she said, turning back to face the wall.

He took hold of her ankles and yanked her legs farther apart on the bed. "You wantae live wi' me? Is that it?" He stood up behind her, resting his chin on her skinny shoulder, running a fingernail across her ripped back. "What makes ye think I'd have a cheap cunt like you in ma fucking house?"

Kevin was at the door. "Mr. G.?" he said softly, nodding to Si. "Spot of bother. Complaint from a punter."

Si beckoned him to come in. "What sort of complaint?"

"One of them's speaking English, asking him to get her out of here."

Margaret picked up her handbag and pulled out her Swiss army knife. "Show me," she said.

Kevin led her down the corridor to the far room, fumbling to find the key. Kevin didn't like being alone with Margaret and she knew it. He had seen too much of her to think she was harmless.

"Are ye a bit nervous, Kevin?"

He pressed his lips together and pushed open the door. The woman was still on the wall, slumped and hanging from her wrists, her legs buckled beneath her, bent at the knees, the tops of her feet flat on the pillow. Margaret ordered Kevin to bring her down off there and he held the woman up by the waist as he undid the straps, trying not to hold her so close that he got blood on his suit. He put the woman down on the bed, not roughly but not gently either. Her exhausted arms rose of their own accord, settling by her ears, folding over the top of her head. She had been punched on the nose and it looked fat and broken. Her eyes were swelling up. She tried to look up and see who was there.

"Awake?" said Margaret softly.

The battered woman nodded.

Margaret pointed to the door. "Get out?" she said.

The woman looked around, tried to work out who was there and what was going on. She tried to sit up but couldn't bring her arms to her sides. She cringed and lay back on the bed, folding her arms over her head again, letting the fingers of one hand flop over her eyes.

Margaret leaned forward and took the hand in her own. She yanked it away, making the woman cry out. "Out?" she said loudly. Kevin saw a glint of silver and a sudden spill of blood coming from the back of the woman's hand. "Ye want out?" Margaret held the tip of the knife in the open wound, twisting, letting the weight of the penknife press down into the open flesh. The woman was crying like a child, and coughing, her skinny back arching off the bed. Margaret lifted her hand and, just before she brought it down on the woman's sore face, Kevin saw an expression on it. Her eyes were open a little wider than usual. He didn't know what it meant. He'd never seen any expression on her face at all. For the first three months here he'd wondered whether she had Parkinson's.

As he was locking the door he asked her about using the knife. "Why's it always on the hands?"

"We don't need their hands."

At exactly eight o'clock they heard a single soft rap at the fire door. Si McGee checked the gray CCTV monitor on top of the filing cabinet and saw who it was. He flicked off the fire alarm and stepped across the room, pressing the bar down and opening the door.

Mark Doyle swung the bag in front of him, sitting it on the desk as Si shut the door behind him. He sat down, clicking his knuckles before zipping open the bag and taking out a wedge of laundered twenties. "Is it all here?" Si said, his greedy little eyes lighting up.

"Ye say that every time," said Doyle. "D'ye think Charlie Adams is ripping ye off?"

"Not at all," said Si, staring into the bag. He knew a single remark out of place would be reported back to Charlie Adams. Doyle was his eyes and ears, the sole protector of Adams's investment. "I don't mean that at all."

Doyle's glance fell to the table and the open newspaper. "What's this?" he said, tapping the picture of Maureen O'Donnell with a finger.

Bewildered, Si looked up. "Oh, her." He saw Doyle looking at it intently. "Do you know her?"

"She works in Paddy's," Doyle said, his face impassive. "I've bought fags from her."

Margaret slithered over to the desk and picked up the paper. "She's trouble. We need someone to sort it out. D'you know anyone?"

Doyle scratched at a raw patch on his cheek and Tonsa looked away. "It'll cost ye," he said.

"Much?"

"Ten."

Si frowned at the bag. "Ten's a lot." But he knew he had thirty thousand in clean notes in the bag and was due the same again in a month's time.

"Ten's what it takes to get it done right," Doyle said. He picked up the paper and looked at the picture of Maureen's close.

Si knew how important Doyle was to Adams. One word from Doyle and they'd be gone. He would be the best person to deal with O'Donnell. It was just a question of convincing Margaret.

Doyle shut the paper and put it down on the desk. "Forget it." He was at the fire exit, his hand pressing down on the bar, when Margaret spoke. "Wait."

A mile away, standing in a dark lane, Mark Doyle folded the newspaper and tucked it under the lid of a dustbin. She was his only remaining link with Pauline and no fucker was going to touch her.