Garnethill

Chapter 26

The station noises died down and the office became still. The hissing stopped and the heating was turned off. As the oppressive heat of the afternoon seeped away the wooden desk and chair contracted, creaking low groans and snapping loudly. It was growing dark outside the window.

The door opened suddenly and McEwan came in. He stood at the edge of the desk playing with part of a broken pencil, picking at the frayed end. "You can go now," he said, his voice low and slow. "I want you to cooperate with us. We need to provide some protection for you. This is a panic button." He put a small gray box the size of a cigarette packet on the table. "It operates like a beeper. If you press this button it alerts us and we can have a patrol car there in a few minutes. Take it." He pushed it across the table toward her.

"What did Siobhain say?" asked Maureen.

"And I want you back here first thing tomorrow morning."

"Where is she?"

McEwan worked a strip off the pencil with his fingernail. He looked upset. "She's in the foyer." He said it as if it were a question.

Maureen lifted the beeper and brushed past him.

The sparkle in Siobhain's eyes was gone and she was trembling. She was walking slowly, shuffling tiny geisha steps. Maureen got her as far as the main road and hailed a cab. She walked Siobhain to the door and opened it but Siobhain just stood, staring at the pavement in front of her feet. Maureen asked her if she wanted to get the cab home but she didn't answer. The driver leaned over and slid the window down. "Come on," he said impatiently. "You hailed me."

Maureen walked Siobhain forward two steps and got her to hold on to the leather strap inside the cab. She tapped the right leg and, holding her ankle, stood it on the taxi floor. She tapped the left leg and shoved Siobhain's bum with her shoulder as she placed the left foot next to the other. Siobhain was frozen in a crouch in the cab door. Maureen pushed Siobhain's hip gently, working her around to the seat, and climbed back out. The red patent-leather handbag was sitting on the pavement. She rummaged under the roll of twenty-quid notes and found an envelope with Siobhain's address on it. "Fifty-three Apsley Street, please, driver."

But the driver refused to take Siobhain alone. "No way," he said. "She's jellied."

Maureen climbed into the cab beside her.

A blue Ford followed the cab at a less than discreet distance.

The address on the envelope was the second floor of an old tenement in Dennistoun, just two blocks from the day center. The close was dark and miserable, littered with free newspapers and flyers for takeaway dinner shops. An acrid blend of piss and cat spray loitered by the back door. They climbed the stairs to the second floor slowly. Maureen found the door key in Siobhain's pocket, a lone Yale on a chipped Shakin' Stevens key ring.

When she shoved the door open, a wall of heavy heather scent wafted out at her. A large jar of it was sitting on the hall table. The sweet smell crept all through the house, hinting at a landscape, broad and brutal, a hundred miles away from the poky flat with low ceilings and cheap fabrics. The furnishings were goodnik castoffs; the walls in all the rooms were painted mushroom. The only personal item in the living room was sitting on top of the television, a small framed watercolor of purple and yellow irises. Tucked into the corner of the frame, obscuring the picture, was a photograph of a small boy. He was wearing shiny red plastic Wellingtons, long gray shorts and a sky blue jersey. He was standing on a windy green hillside, self-conscious in front of the camera, smiling sadly a long time ago.

Maureen sat Siobhain in an armchair and lit the gas fire. She made two cups of tea in the galley kitchen and took them through, turned an armchair round and sat down opposite her. Siobhain wasn't moving.

"Siobhain," said Maureen. "Siobhain, can you speak?"

Still she didn't move. Maureen touched her hair. Getting no response, she waved her hand in front of her face and Siobhain blinked. "Siobhain, I'm so sorry, I didn't know they'd ask you about the hospital. I'm so sorry."

Siobhain sighed the deepest sigh Maureen had ever heard, like all the Mothers of Ireland breathing out at the one time. Maureen's resolve snapped. She couldn't find a telephone in the house so she took the Shakin' Stevens key ring and went to look for a phone box.

"Leslie," she said, when Leslie answered. "Leslie, I've done a terrible thing."

Leslie tried to introduce herself but she couldn't get a response either. Maureen pointed her through to the kitchen. "Why are you here with her?" whispered Leslie urgently. "She should be in hospital."

"No, Leslie, I can't take her to a hospital, that's her worst nightmare."

"Why didn't the police deal with it?"

"If I'd left her in the station they'd have sent her to hospital for sure."

They stood in the kitchen and Maureen explained what had happened.

"Let me call her a doctor," said Leslie. "She might need some medication."

Maureen wasn't sure but Leslie swore on her mother's life that she wouldn't let them take Siobhain to a hospital.

Maureen searched the bathroom and Leslie looked through the drawers in the kitchen but they couldn't find anything with a doctor's name on it.

"Try the bedroom," suggested Leslie.

They opened the door and, past the bed, saw an old-fashioned lady's dressing table with three angled mirrors. In front of them, on the surface where the cosmetics should have been, sat an army of pill jars arranged into squads of five. The three mirrors reflected them, swelling their numbers. The same doctor's name was printed on all of the labels.

Leslie went down to the phone box. She came back up and said that Dr. Pastawali didn't want to come out. He had told her that Siobhain had these turns sometimes and she'd be fine in the morning. Maureen took the number and went down to the phone box herself.

She had been so short with him on the phone that she expected Dr. Pastawali to be annoyed with her but he was sweet and courteous. "Good evening to you, ladies," he said when they opened the door to him. "Where is Miss McCloud, please?"

He was a tall Asian man in his fifties, with dark sad eyes. He crouched down next to the armchair and took Siobhain's pulse and blood pressure. He muttered to Siobhain all the time he did it, explaining what he was doing and why, asking her little questions about her health, moving on to another query when she didn't answer. Eventually, he managed to get her to look at him.

Maureen hung about in the doorway as he got Siobhain to move her hands and wiggle her toes. He held her hand and muttered something unintelligible.

"I'm very tired," murmured Siobhain.

He took Maureen into the kitchen.

"You're not going to send her to hospital, are you?"

"No," said the doctor. "I'm sending her to bed."

Siobhain wouldn't help Maureen undress her. After half an hour of asking and cajoling and finally trying to wrestle her out of her trousers Maureen gave up and put her to bed fully clothed. She turned off the light, shut the door quietly and crept back into the living room.

Leslie had turned on the television to the evening news. Douglas and Elsbeth's wedding photograph flashed onto the screen. The picture had been treated so that the vicar and Elsbeth were in a dark shadow and Douglas's face was highlighted. The supercilious expression on his face made him look smug and unkind. "Bad picture," said Leslie, as Maureen sat down next to her on the settee.

Carol Brady was being interviewed outside the front door of a house. She was chalk white and quivering with fury. She complained about the Strathclyde police force's incompetent handling of the investigation, saying they should concentrate on bringing charges against the person who had killed her son. They knew who had done it and so did she. She read out a prepared speech about the disastrous consequences of Care in the Community and the danger of it, not only to the public but to those people released into the community and unable to cope. Anyone familiar with the case would appreciate the implication that Maureen had done it.

Leslie leaned over and turned it off.

"Nae luck, Mauri," she said.

"Do you mind if we stay here tonight?" asked Maureen. "I just want to be here in the morning in case she's the same."

"No," said Leslie. "I don't mind."

They took the cushions off the settee and armchairs and made beds on the floor. Leslie turned out the light and they settled down to sleep in the drafty living room. Maureen put the police buzzer on the floor next to her, touching it when she lay down to make sure it was within easy reach.

Leslie had her leathers on but Maureen only had her overcoat for cover. She took the place nearest the gas fire and left it on but it just accentuated the damp cold creeping over any part of her body not directly in the path of the heat. A streetlight just outside the drizzle-splattered window suffused the room with a warm orange glow. Maureen lay on her back, watching the light dance on the ceiling as the steady rain fell. "If I hadn't been to see Martin he'd never have been killed and if I hadn't told them about Siobhain they'd never have questioned her. I'm fucking up people's lives."

"Shut up, Mauri," Leslie murmured sleepily. "It's nothing to do with you."

"Yes, it is, it's my fault. I'm playing at this and I don't know what I'm doing. I could be putting you in danger, or Liam, or anyone. Or even Siobhain."

"Maureen, please, shut up and go to sleep."

"I can't, I feel like such an arse. I was there just a couple of hours beforehand. I was the last person to see him alive-"

"You can't have been, Maureen," said Leslie, her voice irritated and loud. "They wouldn't have let you go if you had been."

"D'ye think so? D'ye think someone else saw him after me?"

"Yeah. Why's that important?"

"Dunno. Do you think I've got a good memory?"

"What, for details and stuff?"

"Aye."

"It's fine, Mauri. Can we go to sleep now?"

"I should never have gone to see Martin in the first place, and going back a second time, I don't know what I was thinking about or why I was trying to find the person who did this. There's nothing I can do even if I do find them."

"Why?"

"Well, if it has got anything to do with the Northern the police'll want to talk to Siobhain and all the other women about it, and look at what this afternoon did to her. It could kill her."

Leslie rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling.

"So you're giving up?"

"Fuck, I'll have to. Everyone at the Northern knew about the list from that Frank guy. I mean, I might have been just as clumsy about other things."

"He isn't coming after the people the police are talking to, is he? He's coming after the people you're talking to. That means you're on the right track."

"But even if I do find out who did it I can't take them to the police. They'll need witnesses and they'll have to question the women. God knows what kind of damage they could do."

Leslie rolled onto her side and looked at her. "You can't just stop." She sounded angry. "It doesn't matter a toss that you can't take him to the police, Maureen, for fucksake. We have to take responsibility about this and do something to stop it."

"But the police-"

"Never mind the fucking police. The point is, you know more about this than anyone else now. We can't just throw our hands up and walk away, for Christ's sake. We have to stop him from hurting other people."

"But I wouldn't know what to do."

"Well," she said sarcastically, "let's mount a poster campaign or something. How about letters to the papers?"

"Auch, Leslie-"

" 'Auch, Leslie' nothing. This is it, Maureen, this is the big crunch. Do you genuinely give a shit or do you just like fighting about politics?"

"No, but-"

"If you do give a shit we have to find this man and put him out of action."

"I'm not killing anyone."

"I'll do it if you don't." Leslie rolled onto her back again, crossing her arms and tucking her hands under her armpits, grunting with annoyance.

"We still don't know it's a man who did it," said Maureen carefully. "We don't know that the rapes at the Northern were done by the person who killed Douglas or Martin. For all we know those murders could have been done by a woman."

"Of course it's a fucking man," snapped Leslie. "You just don't want to be wrong."

"Maybe we'll never know…"

Leslie sat up impatiently. The back of her head was in a shaft of light from the street, obscuring her face. She pointed her finger at Maureen, poking it aggressively. "You have to find this fucker, not just for yourself but for that Martin guy and Siobhain in there and all the other women, 'cause you can bet your arse the bastard wasn't caught out every time. Do you think he got this brutal at a knitting bee? He's been working up to it, practicing on other people, he's been busy and I'll fucking bet you any money that there are women all over this city who can't live in their skin because of what he did to them. And when we find him we need to stop him, not try and educate him or get the police to sort him out, just fucking stop him."

She took her finger out of Maureen's face and tugged at the pockets in her jacket. She found a packet of cigarettes, flipped it open, and shoved one in her mouth.

"Christ, Leslie, man," said Maureen, holding tightly on to the edge of her coat/blanket and pulling it up a little. "Calm down."

"I'm sorry," she said sharply, rummaging in her pocket for matches.

"You should be," said Maureen. "What was that about?"

"I hate that, I hate it."

"You hate what?"

"Just that when we act so powerless, like there's nothing we can do, they smack us and we say please stop, they smack us and we say please stop. We should smack them fucking back."

"But if we use violence how are we different from them?"

"Morally?"

"Yeah, morally there'd be nothing to separate us."

Leslie shook her head. "God Al-fucking-mighty, Maureen, have you thought about this at all? It's all right for you and me to worry about our moral standing – neither of us are getting our faces kicked in every night in the week. These women are treated as if they were born on the end of a boot and we set up committees and worry about our moral standing. It's a fucking joke, the movement's turning into the WRVS, it pisses me off. We're not fucking helpless, we're fucking cowards."

She lit the cigarette and Maureen saw her face in the match's flare. She was frowning angrily, her eyebrows knitted tightly together. "Specifically in what context does it piss you off?" said Maureen, now sure that it was nothing she'd done.

"It just does, okay?"

"Tell me the story, though."

She drew heavily on her cigarette. "I don't really want to," she said and exhaled.

"All right, then," said Maureen.

The smoke swirled above Maureen's head.

"Do you remember the woman who was raped by the three men in the West End?" asked Leslie quietly. "They threw acid in her face afterward."

"I read about it in the paper. It was a while ago."

"It was two and a half years ago. She was called Charlotte. She'd been in the shelter for a while."

"I didn't know that."

"Yeah." She puffed at the cigarette.

"Give us some," said Maureen, holding her hand out for the fag. As Leslie passed it to her their fingertips touched momentarily and Maureen felt how cold Leslie was.

"Her husband had been beating her and she came to us. She had these facial scars-you know, the kind that make you shudder when you first see them. Her nose was flattened and one of her eyes was higher than the other. Ina said it was a cheekbone fracture that hadn't been set, it'd just been left. You could see the bone sticking out sometimes when she was eating. She'd scars all over her cheek, there." She gestured to her left cheek, drawing a circle on it. "The really vicious ones cut across cuts so that the doctors can't sew it up. There's nothing to sew it onto, just bits of skin hanging off. They can't patch it up, they just have to let it scar. That's how out of control these fuckers are, they've got the presence of mind to go over the cuts a second time." She took the cigarette from Maureen and sucked it hungrily.

"Anyway," she said, "she started getting it together, really together. She went on a course and got a job doing landscape gardening. She was going to set up her own business, once she'd saved some money, went to see the bank manager with a business plan and everything. She got herself a wee flat and moved out.

"Four months later I read in the paper about a rape. They dragged this woman off the Byres Road in the early morning and took her to a house and raped her for eight hours. Then they threw acid in her face. She crawled out into the hall after they left and managed to get into the close. They said she was in a critical condition. We were all talking about it in work and Annie came in and said it was Charlotte."

Leslie paused uncharacteristically and rubbed her eye hard with the ball of her palm. Her long slim neck was bent and the wispy hairs and bumpy vertebrae were lit in stark relief by the streetlight.

"She was on her way to work out in Lanarkshire when they got her. I knew it was the husband, we all fucking knew. He used to rape her, he'd dragged her off the street and everything – he'd even got his pals to rape her before. So we phoned the police and told them we thought it was him. Anyway, Charlotte died and the police said they couldn't do anything about it, no evidence or witnesses to any of it.

"The husband knew we'd told them and he started coming by the shelter and d'you know what we did? We hid. He was out there every day for fucking weeks. We phoned the police and they picked him up and gave him a doing but he came straight back, standing across the road at a bus stop with a black eye and his arm in plaster, staring in the window, looking at everyone who came out of the house. Three women left the shelter because they couldn't take it anymore. We hid and I'm never fucking doing that again."

"But that was the responsible thing to do," said Maureen. "There was nothing you could do without harming the shelter."

Leslie wasn't buying it. "Yeah. Right."

"What happened then?"

Leslie slumped. "It gets worse. One of the women used to wait at the bus stop across the road and he started talking to her. We warned her about him, we fucking told her. Then she left. The last time I saw her she had scars on her face." She motioned to her cheek again. "Same mark, like he was branding his cows or something. Her eyes were empty, way past scared. I tried to talk to her but she ran away from me."

Leslie stared into the dark room for a few moments. "You can't just stop now because he's getting closer and scarier, Mauri. This Martin bloke, he was a good man, wasn't he? He'd want you to get the guy."

"Yeah, he was a good man but he didn't want any trouble and I brought it to him."

"I'll be there, Mauri, I promise."

Maureen lay down next to Leslie, her hand resting on the beeper, and tried to sleep.

Leslie was right, she couldn't walk away. Whoever it was knew she'd been to see Martin, they'd been following or watching or something. Any one of them could be killed at any time and Maureen couldn't be ready for it always. If she could flush out the killer, make him come to her when she was expecting it, when she was ready.

She couldn't have blood on her hands, not a rapist's, not anyone's. And yet when she thought of Yvonne's snakeskin anklet, she knew that she didn't just want to stop the man who'd put it there, she wanted to hurt him, to make him feel a little of what the women had felt. It wasn't enough to stop it happening again. She fell asleep with the image of Martin's hand resting on his stomach, pointing at nothing.

She woke up at nine and went in to see how Siobhain was doing. She was lying on her back with her hands and chubby arms resting on top of the bedspread. Her head was sunk deep into the pillow, her mouth and eyes were open but she wasn't moving.

Maureen sat down softly on the side of the bed. "Siobhain?" she said.

Siobhain didn't move. Maureen reached up and brushed a hair off her face. "Did you sleep?"

Still Siobhain didn't move. Maureen had a sudden surge of adrenaline and grabbed Siobhain's shoulders, shaking her and shouting into her face, "Wake up! Siobhain, wake up!"

Siobhain raised her hand slowly. "Stop doing that," she said, lowering her eyes and looking at Maureen. "Help me out of the bed."

Maureen pulled the blankets back and lifted Siobhain's feet onto the floor.

Siobhain got out of bed and took off her clothes slowly, stripping down to her pants and vest. She took a gray V-neck jumper out of the chest of drawers and put it on. It was washed-out and flared at the bottom. She put on a pair of purple nylon trousers and a blue windcheater. The sleeves were elasticized at the ends and dug into the fat on her wrists.

"Where are you going?" asked Maureen.

"The center," replied Siobhain. "It's where I want to be."

"I'll come with you," said Maureen. It was said out of a sense of duty: she had no real desire to spend a day sitting on a plastic chair in a smoky room.

"No." Siobhain was very firm. "I can't get on with my business if you're there." She shambled down the hall, as purposeful as a golem, and went into the kitchen. She opened the fridge door, took out a carton of milk and filled a pint glass, spread margarine on five slices of bread, stacked them on top of one another and carried the lot through to her bedroom. She sat down at the dressing table and began opening jars of pills, taking out her medication and laying it in front of her.

Leslie was stirring in the living room. She rolled onto her back and saw Maureen standing in the dark hall. "All right, Mauri?" she said, rubbing her face and stretching. Her eyes were red and puffy.

"Maybe you should get up, hen," said Maureen. "Siobhain's on the move. She's going out."

"Oh," said Leslie, sitting up. "She's okay, then?"

"Seems to be."

Siobhain had finished taking her pills. She had replaced the lids on the jars and was working her way through the slices of bread and margarine. Maureen went into the living room and helped Leslie put the cushions back on the settee. Siobhain appeared in the doorway and Maureen looked up. "Are you off, wee hen?"

Siobhain nodded and walked down the hall. They could hear the front door opening. Maureen picked up the beeper and they grabbed their coats, scanning the living room to make sure they hadn't left anything. They followed Siobhain out of the house, down the stairs and onto the street, catching up with her at the corner. Leslie touched Siobhain's arm. "Where are we going?" she asked.

Siobhain didn't seem to register the touch.

"Siobhain's going to the day center," said Maureen, adding, "we'll just walk round with ye," to Siobhain, in case she thought she was talking over her.

They got to the main door and Siobhain walked in without looking back at them.

"Is she all right, Mauri?"

"I don't know," said Maureen. "She seems better but I don't know what she's like normally."

She waited for a minute and slipped into the day center after her. The sullen receptionist was behind the desk again. Her face lit up a flicker when Maureen walked in. "Heya," said Maureen. "See that lassie that just came in?"

"Fat lassie?" said the girl disparagingly.

"Aye. She's had a bad shock and I was just wondering if you could keep an eye on her. Just see she doesn't get ill or something."

The girl sighed. "Well, okay," she said reluctantly.

"I'll phone later and check up on her," said Maureen when she got outside.

"Listen," said Leslie, "I've got a few days owing. I could skive off and drive you about a bit if you like."

"Naw, I've got to go to the police station. I might be a while."

The blue Ford followed Maureen to the bus stop and cruised around the block, waiting for her bus to arrive.