Garnethill

Chapter 16

Liam parked the car around the corner, out of view of the police station. They walked through the front doors, telling the policeman on the desk their names and who they were there to see.

Almost immediately a gang of four appeared at the top of the stairs. McEwan, Inness, Hugh McAskill and the Seedy Man. They seemed purposeful, certain, as though the outcome of the meeting was already set.

"We were just about to come and find you," said McEwan, letting them know who was in charge.

The Seedy Man said he was going to caution both of them at the same time. He recited it in a British Rail announcer's monotone. McEwan looked smug. He kept looking at Maureen, smiling inadvertently and looking away quickly, as if she would know what was making him smile if she saw it flourish. McAskill was standing three steps back from Inness and the Seedy Man, his hands in his pockets, his eyes darting around the lobby, avoiding Maureen. Liam looked at Maureen, he seemed worried. She meant to make an encouraging face but she couldn't stop thinking about Winnie and Marie and Una. She crumpled her chin and raised her eyebrows, looking blaming and distant.

The Seedy Man finished his recital and Liam shot Maureen an abortive smile. Inness took his arm, leading him away through the double doors on the ground floor. The Seedy Man followed them. Liam didn't look back at her: he walked off with his head bent to his chest like a man about to be taken to a place, there to be hanged by the neck until he was dead.

McEwan watched the door swing after them. "You want to watch the company you keep," he said.

"How do you mean?" she said innocently.

"Your brother and that Benny pal of yours."

"Benny?"

"He's got a record, didn't you know?" He pointed upstairs. "You know the way by now."

They walked up the first flight of stairs. "Naw," she said. "Benny's studying law, he couldn't get into uni if he had a record. You're mixing him up with someone else."

"It was a no pro," said McEwan.

"A what?"

"That means they didn't prosecute."

That made sense of it: he'd have been arrested for pissing up a close or something. "Not worth the hassle?"

"He was diverted."

"I don't know what that means either," she said, tired of his smug jargonizing manner.

"He got a psychiatric referral for alcoholism instead."

"Oh, right, I didn't know about that. We must look like a right bunch of nutters to you."

McEwan smiled enigmatically and opened the door to the interview room. Maureen sat down at the far side of the table and crossed her legs, swinging her foot in manic rhythmic kicks. Something important was about to happen and she couldn't concentrate for thinking about Winnie. They had been in such a hurry to caution both of them.

McAskill slipped into the seat next to the wall and started the tape recorder. McEwan took the outside chair.

"How are you, Maureen?" said McEwan, as if for the benefit of the tape.

"I'm fine, Joe," said Maureen, wishing he'd get to the fucking point. "How are you?" fine.

They paused and looked at each other. Joe McEwan was savoring the moment. Maureen shifted in her chair, sitting sideways and re-crossing her legs. "Are you going to ask me questions or are we going to sit here and look at each other all day?" she said.

"Yes," he said serenely. "I do have some questions to ask you. First, I want you to tell me, in as much detail as you can, what you did from nine in the morning until ten p.m. the day before Mr. Brady was found dead."

She repeated the story, telling him the details about the Pizza Pie Palace and Leslie again, wondering why they were asking about the evening. McEwan asked her if she was sure about a couple of the times she had given them and then sat back confidently, looking her up and down.

"Anything else?" she said rudely.

"Yes," he said. "A number of things. I want to talk to you about your harassment of Mrs. Carol Brady."

"My what?" Her voice was straining high. She made a mental note to calm down.

"Mrs. Brady told me that you'd contacted her and insisted that she meet you. She wouldn't be specific about the nature of the meeting-"

"It was lunch."

"I meant what was said."

"I'll tell you what was said." She sat forward. "Same thing as Elsbeth said-"

"And that's another thing," he interrupted, "stay away from her too."

"Look, they both approached me, I didn't go looking for either of them. You were there when Elsbeth asked me to wait and you gave bloody Carol Brady the address I was staying at."

"I most certainly did not."

"Well, she told me she got it from the police. Her assistant turned up at the door and nearly scared the living shit out of me." She was talking very fast, very angry.

McEwan looked at McAskill. McAskill looked confused and shook his head.

"We'll look into that," said McEwan.

"And you told her that my family were unsavory." She was glad to be on the offensive, glad she had something to pull him up about. "We're as savory as any other family in this city…" She sounded ridiculous.

"As I said," McEwan reiterated, "we'll look into it. If someone did give her the address it was against my express orders. Anyway, I made it perfectly clear I didn't want you to wait for Elsbeth. Why did you talk to either of them?"

"Look," she said, "I'm a failed Catholic woman, I feel guilty all the time anyway. I was shagging her husband and Carol Brady's son died in my living room. What the fuck am I going to do when they ask me to speak to them? Spit?"

McEwan warmed at the mention of Catholicism. McAskill didn't look up. He might be a Protestant. He might not give a shit. Maureen hoped it was the latter.

"When did Carol Brady approach you?" asked McEwan.

"Urn, Saturday night. She sent her assistant to Benny's to tell me I was having lunch with her the next day. I was freaked enough as it was. Those bloody journalists had been at my work-"

"Did you give them the picture that was in the paper yesterday?"

She moved her chair back and recrossed her legs. "No, my mum did."

"Did you tell her to do it?"

"No," she said, uncrossing them.

"Why did she, then?"

Maureen held up her hands. "The ways of Winnie are many and varied."

McEwan suppressed a derogatory snigger. "I spoke to your mum."

"Oh, yeah?" she said, wanting to slap him for implicatively slagging her mammy. "I heard she was in here. She's a bit of a live wire."

McEwan grinned unkindly. "Yeah," he said. "She is."

"Unsavory," said Maureen. "Anyway, both Elsbeth and Carol were asking if Douglas gave me money."

"Did he give you money?"

She noticed that the conversation was getting faster and faster and she was wiggling about in her chair. Slow, slow, she told herself, slow. "No," she said, probably too slowly. "No. He tried to pay my mortgage a couple of times but I wouldn't take it."

"He 'tried'?"

"Yeah, but I wouldn't let him."

McEwan was perplexed. "Why?"

"I didn't want to be beholden to him."

He frowned, tried to understand for a millisecond and then gave up. "I thought that was one of the good things about being a woman," he said flirtatiously.

"But nothing's for nothing, is it?" she said, puzzled by his attitude. And it hit her. That was how certain he was: he was talking fast and flirting with her, letting his guard down every which way. He didn't give a shit what she thought anymore. They'd cautioned Liam, too, and McEwan thought he had them.

She faked calm and glanced at the tape recorder. Her eyes fell on McAskill's hands, one on top of the other, resting on the table. He lifted a finger, signaling to her to look up. His face was sad and soft. He blinked his blue eyes slowly and when he opened them again he was looking at the table.

"Are you a feminist?" asked McEwan, acting surprised and dragging her back to the game.

"Yeah," said Maureen, feeling genuinely calm, as if she'd absorbed some of Hugh's tired dignity.

McEwan laughed. "I thought you liked men," he said.

"Yeah, feminists don't like men and Martin Luther King picked on white people. You don't know many feminists, do you, Joe?"

"No," he said, oblivious to her supercilious attitude, "but I know what they look like and they don't look like you." He pointed openly to her large tits and looked away, leaving Maureen – and McAskill – aghast. He knew he'd offended her but he didn't give a shit. "Still, your political beliefs would allow you to accept cash."

"What are you talking about?"

"He gave you cash, though. You were happy enough to accept that from him, weren't you?"

"No. Where did you get that idea from? I didn't take money from him. I didn't want his money. I don't make a lot of money but it's mine and I manage."

McEwan reached into his pocket and pulled out a bank statement. Maureen recognized the red and blue type on the heading. He unfolded it and pushed it across the table to her.

It was a statement of her account. The last entry was a deposit of £15,000. It had been paid in on the day Douglas died. "That's a lot of money to you, isn't it, Maureen?"

"It's a lot of money," she whispered. "I didn't know…"

"Did he pay you not to tell his wife about your affair? Was that it?"

"I didn't know it was there."

"But you paid it in yourself."

"No. I didn't. Why did you say that?"

"It says your name on the paying-in slip."

"I didn't pay it in."

"As I said, Maureen, your name is on the paying-in slip."

"I was at work that day. I wasn't out of the office. How could I have paid it in?"

"The slip was signed 'M. O'Donnell.''

"I always write Maureen," she said very quietly. "Not 'M.''

McEwan made great play of taking out his notebook and reading something, rolling his lips over his gums. He looked up suddenly. "I heard about something that happened to your brother yesterday."

"Which particular thing?" said Maureen, her heart sinking.

"A police search? I take it you know about it?"

Maureen made a noncommittal noise and looked away.

"Your brother's a drug dealer, isn't he?" His voice was low now, a happy growl.

There was no point in denying it. They'd found the scent everywhere. Maureen looked back at McAskill's hands. His nails were short and clean; deep ridges were scored into the finger joints. "I wouldn't know anything about that," she mumbled.

"He doesn't tell you anything, is that right?"

"Absolutely." She nodded emphatically. "He tells me nothing."

McEwan smiled. "I expect he wants to protect you."

"I don't know why he doesn't tell me, he just doesn't."

"Is your brother very protective of you, Maureen?"

She could smell it coming, the accusation, and she didn't know how to sidestep it. "Not especially," she said.

"Oh?" said McEwan, feigning surprise. "But when you needed to go to hospital it was your brother who took you, wasn't it?"

"How is that protective?" she said, irritated by his stupid game and witless patter. "He found me sitting in a cupboard in a puddle of my own shit. What was he supposed to do?"

"I'm not saying what he did was wrong," said McEwan, uncomfortable with the image.

"No," she said. "But you're suggesting it's evidence of pathological protectiveness and I'm saying it was just ordinary decency."

McEwan leaned back and looked at her shrewdly. "I didn't say anything about pathological anything. Why did you say that?"

"I know what you're getting at," she said, a sick, hopeless panic rising from her belly. "Right? I know Liam and I know he didn't do it."

"Why would you think I was going to say that?"

"Because you mentioned the raid and then started talking about his relationship with me."

McEwan leaned forward over the table. His gestures were so assured, so certain, that Maureen wanted to punch him.

"Don't try and guess what I'm about to say, Maureen," he said carefully.

"So, I have to wait until you've finished the pantomime. Even though I know exactly what you're going to say."

She had ruined his big moment. "You don't know what I'm going to say," he said churlishly.

"Yes, I do."

"No, Maureen," he said, enunciating the words slowly. "You don't know what I'm going to say, you just think you do. I was asking about your brother's relationship with you. He is protective of you."

"Oh-no-he-isn't," chanted Maureen.

McAskill snorted a laugh.

McEwan was finally getting annoyed. "Just answer the questions, Miss O'Donnell. Don't try and get smart with me."

"You're a fucking arsehole."

McAskill lifted his head.

"I beg your pardon?" whispered McEwan.

"I said, you're a fucking arsehole. You're bullying and smug and patronizing and I don't like you."

McEwan spluttered, "Well, I'm sorry you feel that way."

"Yeah, so am I," said Maureen, taking out her fags and lighting one. She saw McEwan looking at the packet. She flicked it across the table to him. "Just take one, for fucksake, you make me nervous."

McAskill kept his eyes on the cigarette packet as McEwan pushed it purposefully back across the table and looked at Maureen defiantly. "You know, I really think if you wanted us to find the person who murdered your boyfriend-"

"You already said that."

"-you'd cooperate a bit more fully."

"You're not asking me to cooperate," she blurted. "You're asking me to be servile and accept intrusions into my life and tell complete strangers all my private business and my friends' business. It's horrible. I hate it."

McEwan took a packet of ten Super-delux low-tar cigarettes out of his pocket and put one in his mouth. Maureen watched him light it. "It still counts as smoking," she said, "even if you don't enjoy it."

McEwan snatched the fag out of his mouth, stood up and threw open the door, telling someone outside to bring tea. Now. He sat down. He was very annoyed. "We have to ask you questions," he said. "How are we going to find the person who did this if we don't ask any questions?"

"I know you have to," she said. "But I don't have to like it, do I?"

"I don't care whether you like it or not. I'm going to ask you questions and I want you to answer them honestly."

She nodded impatiently, rolling the ash off her cigarette against the inside of the pie-tin ashtray. McEwan looked her in the eye for too long. "Do you think your brother is a violent man?"

"No," she said.

"Well, we have evidence from a witness who said he beat her up two years ago." He sat back and watched Maureen's face fall.

"I don't believe you."

"You'd better believe me. She's downstairs now, I could bring her up if you like."

"Who?"

"A woman called Margaret Frampton. Do you know her?"

"Maggie?"

"Is she called Maggie?"

"Liam's girlfriend Maggie?"

"No, she may have been his girlfriend at one point but she isn't now, I don't think. Her nickname is Tonsa."

"Fucking Tonsa?" said Maureen, relieved and annoyed that it was the vacant crack courier. "You must know Tonsa, she's so wasted. Would you take her word against anyone's? She can't tell New York from New Year."

"She knows when she's being beaten up. She told us all about it."

"Yeah, and what did you tell her all about? The two years she'd get in Cornton Vale if she didn't say it?"

McEwan was genuinely insulted. McAskill had a curious look on his face, like a warning that she'd gone too far. It touched her, she respected him.

"All right," she conceded. "Look, Tonsa might have said that but there's no doubt in my mind that it isn't true. Ask her if she shot Kennedy, that's all I'm saying."

A knock on the door signaled the arrival of tea. A man in a startlingly white shirt came in, put down the tray and lifted the cups onto the table. Maureen took her tea weak and black without sugar. The young man had given her sugar and milk but she took it anyway, knowing that McEwan hadn't intended her to get a cup.

Still smarting from the insult, McEwan drew heavily on his super low-tar fag and stubbed it out.

"Did your brother know Douglas Brady?"

"He met him once."

"When?"

"Four months ago, I suppose. Liam came round to my house and Douglas was there."

"How long were they together for?"

"About fifteen minutes. Douglas was late for an appointment or something, he had to go."

"Was anyone else there?"

"No. Just the three of us."

"Right." McEwan wrote something down in his notebook. "Did you know Douglas was married when you got involved with him?"

"No."

"When did you find out?"

"Just recently."

"When?"

"I don't know. Recently." She picked up the cup of tea and took a sip. The milk in it left a cheesy coating on her tongue.

"We found this in your house." McEwan pushed a letter toward her. It was Douglas and Elsbeth's marriage certificate, the copy from the General Register, still inside the creamy envelope. "It's a copy of Douglas Brady and Elsbeth McGregor's marriage certificate ordered from the General Register," he said, for the benefit of the tape. "The envelope is postmarked two days before the murder. When did you receive it?"

"The day after it happened."

McEwan slapped his open hand hard on the table. "THAT WAS A STUPID LIE," he shouted. "DON'T LIE TO ME."

The letter had been addressed to her work. She had left it sitting in her handbag on the bedroom floor and McMummb had handed her the keys and wallet out of the bag. They knew she hadn't been in the bag since she found Douglas. It had to be before she found him. She sipped her cheesy tea. "Yes," she said. "It was a lie, I'm sorry."

She inhaled the last of her fag and put it out, wondering where the fuck Liam was and what they were saying to him and why.

McEwan wasn't questioning him. His boss might be questioning him, if he had a boss.

"When did you receive this letter?" asked McEwan.

"The day it happened. The day before I found him."

"Did you show it to your brother?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I didn't see him that day."

"So you've said."

"Ye didn't find his fingerprints on it, did ye?" she said triumphantly. "Did ye?"

"We haven't taken your brother's fingerprints yet. Why would you send off for a marriage certificate, I wonder?"

It was meant to be rhetorical. She decided to get in his face. "He told me he wasn't married. I thought he was lying so I sent off for a search on the Register. I'm sure the Registrar'll have a record of the request. I asked for a fifteen-year search."

"And that's how you found out he was married?"

"Yes."

"And what did Douglas say when you told him?"

"I didn't tell him. I never saw him alive again."

"That's right," said McEwan. "You didn't see him that day, did you?"

"No, I didn't."

"You've been consistent about that one point, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"As consistent as you were about not having been to the Rainbow for treatment." He turned the page on his notebook. "How did you feel when you found out he was married?"

"I kind of knew. That's why I wrote to the Registrar in the first place."

McEwan leaned over the table and repeated the question firmly. "How did you feel when you found out he was married?"

"Well, Joe," she said loudly, "I felt a bit stupid and then I felt tired and then I felt stupid again, all right?"

McEwan pointed at her. "Don't be cheeky," he said, his voice lowering an octave. He composed himself. "You didn't feel angry, at all?"

"Uff, if you get involved with men who are already spoken for, you deserve all you get, don't you?"

McEwan sat back and looked down his nose at her with a mean, lopsided smirk. "Is that right? And you weren't expecting him to leave his wife?"

"Look, I was four months out of psychiatric hospital when I met him, I was in a state. Even I knew I wasn't fit to pick a life partner."

"What do you mean? You didn't really like Douglas?"

Whatever she said sounded incriminating. She decided to come clean. "Look, Douglas was a sad middle-aged guy who couldn't keep his knickers on. I liked him and he was nice to me. I should never have got involved with him but I did because I was lonely and horny. I didn't want to see him anymore and the wedding certificate was the final straw. I wasn't upset about it. I wasn't pleased but I wasn't angry either."

McEwan was suddenly interested. "You intended to end the relationship?"

"Aye, but I wouldn't kill him or harm him in any way or have him harmed by anyone else. He was as nice to me as he knew how to be. That's all you can ask, isn't it?"

"Did you tell anyone you were going to finish the relationship?"

"Yeah, I told my pal Leslie and I told Liz at work."

"You didn't tell your brother?"

"No. Liam and I don't talk about things like that. He knew Douglas was living with someone else and he never asked much about him because he didn't take it seriously."

"Someone thought it was a serious relationship," he said pompously, folding his arms. "Serious enough to kill him in your house."

The conclusion didn't follow from the observation. Maureen told herself just to leave it. The sooner it was over the sooner she could see Liam.

McEwan raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "Here's what I think happened, Miss O'Donnell." This was what he had been building up to, this was his trump. "I think you were very upset when you received the letter telling you he was married. I think you threatened to tell his wife and he tried to pay you off but the money wasn't enough. You wanted him to leave her and come and live with you. I think you phoned your brother and told him."

"No, I didn't-"

"You invited Douglas to the house and let him in. Your brother came to the house. Maybe he just meant to threaten Douglas, make him think seriously about leaving his wife, and it just went too far."

"Oh, fuck. You're so wrong. You've no idea."

"We'll call you in if we need to speak to you again," he said. "Thank you, Miss O'Donnell."

Maureen was surprised. She looked at McAskill but he was looking at the tape recorder, away from her. "What are you going to do to Liam?" she asked.

"We're not going to do anything to him, we're going to talk to him. Is there anything else you want to tell me?"

McEwan looked at her as if he knew something. He was bluffing.

"I can't think of anything," she said innocently. "Who's questioning Liam?"

"We'll go and speak to him now," said McEwan.

"Is it worth me waiting?"

"No." He stood, leaned across McAskill and pressed the Off button on the recorder.

As soon as the tape was off McEwan's face turned a livid shade of purple, swollen, throbbing veins suddenly visible on his temples.

He leaned close to her, so close she could smell the lemon tang of his aftershave. "Don't you ever speak to me like that again," he whispered.

McAskill stood up, keeping his eyes down, and put his hand on McEwan's chest as if moving him back so that he could get up from the table. But there was plenty of room behind his chair – he could have pushed it backward. He was holding McEwan back, he was reminding him not to.

Joe McEwan wouldn't be the best man to cross, she thought, not the best at all.

Maureen walked across town. She didn't notice the tall man walking a hundred yards behind, following, carefully keeping himself out of sight, varying the speed of his walk. He followed her along Bath Street and up Cathedral Street. He held back when she got to the well-lit cathedral forecourt, staying in the shadows and watching as she took the side entrance into the Albert Hospital. He waited for a few moments and skirted the bright forecourt, creeping into the lobby. The lift stopped at eight. He read the board. "Level eight – Dr. Louisa Wishart." He wrote it down in his notebook, checked the time and jotted that down too. He left the building and waited across the road for her to come out.

She locked herself into a toilet cubicle and smoked a furtive fag before going into reception and checking in with Mrs. Hardy. She was worried about setting off the smoke alarm and had to keep waving her fag about to dissipate the smoke. Fifteen thousand pounds. Siobhain said he had given her money to make himself feel better about the hospital: Maureen cast her mind back, trying to remember something about her stay in the Northern that was worth £15,000. And now they had Liam. Liam had never been in trouble with the police before. Joe McEwan seemed to have his heart set on him and, like Leslie said, the police don't have an infinite amount of time. She had known that they'd come for him eventually and she'd been fucking about, wasting time, idly guessing who did it.

She had a sudden urge to phone Leslie and ask her to come over and sit with her. She'd still be at work. Leslie had her own work to do and Maureen couldn't keep leaning on her.

She wondered about them asking about the evening: they'd seemed so sure it had happened during the day. Winnie leaped to mind. False memory syndrome, a get-out-of-jail-free for anyone who didn't fancy tuning in to the dark side.