Garnethill

Chapter 9

Maureen had never been happier to see a bottle of whisky. She ordered a large Glenfiddich with ice and lime cordial. The barman asked her if she was joking. She had to give him step-by-step directions. "Put a large Glenfiddich in it, that's it, now fill it up with ice, now put the lime cordial in it."

"How much lime?"

"Same again."

The barman looked at the drink as he put it on the bar. "If the bar manager came in and saw me serving a malt whisky with lime juice I just-I don't know what he'd say."

"Aye, right enough," said Maureen, drinking it in three gulps and wishing Leslie was with her.

The whisky slid down her esophagus, kissed her stomach lining and sent a radiant wave rolling up her spine. The warm glow nestled in the nape of her neck. She put a tenner on the bar. "And again, please."

The barman made the simple drink with elaborate gestures. He put it down and asked what the drink was called.

"Whisky with lime in it," said Maureen, and moved to a table.

The interior of the DiPrano was original art nouveau, the decor was organic and slightly haphazard, the way art nouveau is supposed to be. The lighting was warm and the space snaked through the concave chrome-lipped bar, around a convex walnut reception desk and into a restaurant decorated with muted peach seashell frescoes.

Maureen was underdressed for the restaurant. The other customers in the oyster bar were in wools and linens. She had on the Anti Dynamos T-shirt and her black jeans. She picked up her drink and moved nearer to the ubiquitous German tourists, unabashed in their Day-Glo casual wear.

Carol Brady was two large whiskies late. She swept straight through the bar and walked into the restaurant. The greasy-haired man trotted at her heels. Brady walked up to an empty table, waited for her assistant to pull out the chair for her and sat down facing the bar. The maitre d' smiled at her from behind his desk and bowed slightly.

Brady's sniggery messenger was much shorter than Maureen had supposed. He was dressed in a cheap blue suit and slip-on brown shoes with white socks. He looked out at the bar and saw Maureen watching them expectantly. He motioned for her to join them.

"Hello," said Maureen, standing uncertainly at the edge of the table clutching what was left of her whisky.

Brady gazed up at her. "Yes," she said. "Hello." She looked Maureen over. Her displeased eye settled on Maureen's chest. She read the T-shirt. "Won't you sit down?" she said.

Maureen did.

Carol Brady didn't have an attractive face. She was very wrinkled but didn't look like she'd got that way having fun. Her eyelids were drooping, resting on her stubby eyelashes and pushing them down. Behind the little curtains of skin her eyes were raw with the shocked despair of a recent death in the family. Her brown hair was thinning and meshed together with hair spray like a lacy crash helmet.

The waiter brought them leather-bound menus and Mrs. Brady ordered a large bottle of mineral water. When he had gone, Brady said that Douglas had never spoken about Maureen. "How did you come to know him?" she asked.

"We met in a pub," said Maureen weakly, feeling that her presence here was enough of a blight on Douglas's character.

Brady pretended to read her menu. "Not through his work, then." She said it as if it were a statement of fact but waited, wanting Maureen to say no.

Maureen looked uncomfortably at her menu. Joe McEwan might tell her if Maureen didn't. "He wasn't my therapist," she said.

"He wasn't your therapist then? Or ever?"

"Never."

"I see," said Brady quickly, turning a page.

Maureen closed her menu and put it on the table. "Mrs. Brady," she said, "I'm so sorry about your son."

Carol Brady ground her teeth as her eyes turned a sudden shocking pink and filled up. She blinked quickly, trying not to cry. For a tense moment Maureen thought Brady was going to start sobbing uncontrollably.

"I'm sorry," said Maureen again. "I shouldn't have said I'd meet you here. You could have come to the house."

Brady inhaled unsteadily and her grief subsided. "I'm glad we met here," she said, dabbing her nose with a linen handkerchief. Maureen waited for her to say why she was glad or why this was better than an alternative venue but she didn't.

"Let's order some food," said Brady finally. "Why don't you have the langoustine? It's very good here."

"Okay," said Maureen, eager to please. She ordered langoustine and Brady chose the finnan haddie, and the mussels for her silent PA.

"I heard that you were in Brazil," said Maureen.

Brady made a nippy face and launched into a speech about the bad flight. Both the climate and the food were too hot for her. The conference was a waste of time. She talked about her trip, detailing dull events and characters all the way through the arrival of the food and most of the way through the meal. She didn't tell the stories very well and judging by the PA's glazed expression she had told them several times before. But the purpose of the speech was not to enthrall her audience, it was to calm Carol Brady. As she talked she managed to pull herself back from a chasm of grief and got lost in a series of petty annoyances.

Maureen wasn't required to speak: all she had to do was eat and listen, but her mind kept wandering back to the bottle of Glenfiddich at the far end of the gantry. She could see it in her mind's eye, lit up from behind like a holy vision.

They were finishing the meal when Brady moved on to the press. They had hassled her mercilessly at the airport and had called her office repeatedly. "Jackals," she said angrily. "Bloody jackals, most of them."

Maureen told her about the cameraman at her work and the phone calls to her mum. Brady looked at her. "I heard that your mother is… unwell," she said.

"Yeah, she is unwell," said Maureen, grateful for the euphemism. "There's a thick streak of Celtic melancholia in our family. It's the Irish blood."

"Celtic melancholia?" Brady looked at her blankly.

"Alcoholism."

"I see," said Brady. "They said you were from an unsavory family."

Maureen dropped her fork. It clattered onto her plate. "Who said that about my family?"

"The police," said Brady, and smiled at her in a way that was oddly insulting. "What is an 'unsavory family'? Are they all drunks?"

"The police told you that?"

Brady placed her cutlery on the plate and dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin.

"Did the police tell you I was staying with my friend in Maryhill as well? Is that how you found me?"

"I needed to see you," Brady said, as if that explained it.

"They had no business telling you about me," said Maureen, feeling picked on.

"Keep your voice down, dear," said Brady, and motioned to the waiter. "I'm assuming you want coffee?" She gestured to Maureen's glass. "Or would you rather have more whisky?"

The question was laughable. Maureen couldn't go home, her boyfriend was dead, she was having a shitty fucking lunch with his snotty mother and it was Sunday lunchtime. Of course she'd rather have a fucking whisky.

"Coffee would be fine," she said. "Thanks."

Brady gave the order and tapped the PA on the arm. "Go to the bar and wait." When he was out of earshot she leaned forward. "How could you seduce Douglas knowing he was married?"

"I didn't know he was married."

"Were you planning to take Douglas away from Elsbeth?"

"I didn't 'plan' to take him away. Douglas was an adult, he made his own decisions."

"Douglas was a child. If you knew him better you would have known that," she said, hinting at a familial subtext that was none of Maureen's business.

They regained their composure while the coffee things were placed on the table.

Brady poured a touch of cream into hers and stirred it quickly, rhythmically. "Did Douglas pay for your flat?"

"No," said Maureen indignantly.

"I suppose he gave you money?" continued Brady. "Is that why you never bothered to get a decent job?"

"Look, I'd only known Douglas for the past eight months. I've had that job for three years."

"But you have no ambition," said Brady disparagingly. "You've never sought promotion."

"It isn't everyone's ambition to become an authority figure."

Brady looked skeptically at her. "Oh, come on now." She sipped at her coffee with a tiny drawstring mouth.

Maureen was tired of Brady's relentlessly genteel hostility. She put her coffee cup down, shoved it away and lifted what was left of her whisky. She took a generous mouthful, watching over the rim of the glass as Brady sneered at her. "I can understand that you're angry, Mrs. Brady," she said softly, "and I'm sorry for what you've been through, but that doesn't make me responsible for Douglas's behavior."

"Did he give you money?"

"Why do you keep going back to that?"

"Why won't you answer that?"

"He didn't give me money," she said. "He never gave me money."

Brady looked across the table with her sour eyes and Maureen suddenly wanted to get the fuck away from her and never see her again.

Brady softened her voice. "You're lying to me. You've lied to the police and now you're lying to me. Were you drunk the night Douglas was killed?"

"Is that why you're so angry with me?"

"Did you kill him?"

Maureen sat back in her chair and stared at Brady. "Do you think I killed him?"

"Yes," she said certainly, meeting Maureen's gaze. "I do."

"How could you sit here with me if you thought that?"

"I wanted to meet you, just once, to see."

"Do you think I'd come here if I did it? Do you think I could eat food with you if I did it?"

Brady broke off eye contact. "People don't always remember what they do when they're drunk."

Maureen put down her glass. "I think I should leave," she said.

Brady grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her closer so that their faces were inches apart. "They'll catch you, you know," she said. "They'll get you, and if they don't get you, I'll get you."

"Are you threatening me with something?"

"What do you think?"

"Look," said Maureen, "I'm nobody and I have nothing. There's nothing you can do to hurt me." She twisted her wrist and freed it, threw some money on the table and walked out of the restaurant.

She went straight to a phone box in Buchanan Street and phoned around for Liam but she couldn't find him anywhere. Finally she left a message on his machine telling him to clean the house from top to bottom and take the rubbish out because his father-in-law might come for a visit. If he didn't he'd be in a lot of trouble. It was urgent. She hoped the message was obtuse without being obscure.

She bought an overpriced bottle of whisky from a pub near the station, went back to Benny's house and fulfilled Carol Brady's worst expectations by drinking it neat from the bottle and passing out on the settee in front of Songs of Praise. She woke up at three in the morning with a spinning head and had to sit in an armchair for over an hour, sipping milky tea and wishing the nausea away before she managed to fall asleep again.