Garnethill

Chapter 31

Maureen rolled over uncomfortably and felt the strains and bruises from another night on a floor. Siobhain was standing over her head like a colossus, looking down at her.

"Siobhain," Leslie called softly from the kitchen doorway. "Come away from there, hen. You'll scare the shit out of her."

Siobhain turned around and waddled into the kitchen. Maureen rubbed her face and sat up. She had a tremendous amount of crusty sleep in her eyes. Leslie brought out a coffee for her and sat on the settee watching her drink it. "So, what's the deal today, then?"

"Just hang around here with Siobhain and don't answer the door without checking it first. When we get to Millport all you have to do is sit tight and I'll take care of everything."

"Right," said Leslie quietly. "Maureen, you're not going to stab him, are you?"

"Nah." Maureen climbed out of the sleeping bag and rolled it up. "All being well I won't even touch him."

Leslie nodded soberly and patted her knees with her open hands.

"Are you losing your bottle, Leslie?"

"Yeah," Leslie said. "To be honest I think I am."

"Why?"

"Dunno. I just don't feel like attacking anyone at the moment. You losing your bottle, Mauri?"

"No," said Maureen certainly. "I'm not. I'm getting angrier."

"Maureen, what are you going to do to him?"

Maureen didn't want to tell her. It would be better if no one else knew and she didn't want to have an ethical debate about it. "I'm going to stop him," she said, picking up the phone book.

"Brush your teeth before that, eh?"

Maureen found the number and phoned the Isle of Cumbrae tourist board, asking for information about three-bed flats in Millport. The man on the other end of the phone spoke in a strange transatlantic drawl and kept trying to make personal conversation, asking her if she'd ever been there before. She said no in an attempt to guillotine the conversation but he launched off into a speech about the sights on the island. She finally managed to get contact numbers for five addresses from him. Two of the flats were in the same close – the close they had stayed in the last time they were in Millport, the time Liam and Leslie had taken her, the time of the photograph in the papers. It would be best to get the flats in the same close, in case he found them before she found him.

She called one of the contact numbers and booked the flat for a week starting tomorrow. She hadn't planned it but when the young woman at the other end asked her for a name and contact phone number she found herself making things up, lying so fluently she felt completely in control, she didn't even hesitate when the woman asked her to spell her false surname. Then she rang Liam, gave him the phone number for the other flat in the close and asked him to book it for her. "What for?" he said. "Are you trying to get away from the police for a bit?"

"Yeah."

Minutes later he phoned back to tell her he'd done it. "She asked for my number. I just made it up off the top of my head, is that all right?"

"Should be," said Maureen. "Unless they call to check it."

She wanted him to talk about something, anything, get him to tell her a long story so that she could listen to his voice for a while because there was a chance that she wouldn't come back from Millport. "Has Benny been in touch?"

"No. I had to phone him eventually. He said the police had questioned him and taken his prints. He wanted to know if they'd asked me about him."

"What did you say?"

"I said no. Listen," Liam said, "you know Marie's home this week?"

"Yeah, Una said the other day."

Liam paused. "Did you see her?"

"Yeah."

"For fucksake, Mauri, I told you not to go near them, I told you-"

"I know, I know, I'm not going to."

Someone rang Liam's front doorbell and he had to go. "Stay away from them."

"I will, doll, I will," she said. "You take care. Good-bye."

The insistent caller rang Liam's door again. "Yeah, Maureen," said Liam, bewildered by her solemn tone. "You take care as well."

She took a shower and used Leslie's damp toothbrush, scrubbing hard, making her gums bleed at the sides. She glanced at herself in the mirror. She looked rough. Her skin was gray, her eyes were pink and she had dark shadows under her eyes.

Back in the kitchen Leslie handed her a plate of buttery toast and another coffee. "And where are you going today?" she asked.

"South Side. We're going to Millport tomorrow. Can you get the time off okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, no bother. Is that where it's going to happen?"

"Aye."

"Right," said Leslie, nodding gravely. "Right."

Siobhain was sitting on the veranda, staring at the bald hills out the back.

"I haven't heard her speak yet," Leslie said.

"She's a beautiful voice," said Maureen. "You'll hear her one day."

Maureen went out to the veranda and sat down on the deck chair next to Siobhain, holding her hand and talking about the games the children were playing down below. It was rainy and they wore jackets and hats and wellies. She remembered from the hospital how important it had been to her when people took the time to talk. She explained that they were going to Millport the next day, and, although she couldn't be sure, she thought Siobhain squeezed her hand a little.

She picked up the beeper, put her overcoat on, borrowed Leslie's woolly hat and went downstairs to get the bus over to Levanglen.

Maureen pulled the hat down over her forehead and followed the signs straight to the dispensary. It was a small hole in the wall with sliding frosted-glass windows and a bell next to a handwritten sign telling her to ring for attention. She pressed it and stood away. A honey blond nurse wearing a white uniform and cerise lipstick slid the frosted window back. "Can I help you?" she said, and smiled the most uncomplicated smile Maureen had seen in a long time.

"Yeah, I wonder if you can. I'm looking for Shan Ryan."

"Shan's having his lunch."

She stepped back to let Maureen see him. He was sitting at a desk with his feet up, dressed in a nurse's white button-over jacket with a big ID badge hanging from the breast pocket, eating salad from a Tupperware container. She had guessed that he was half-Asian from his name and she was right. His skin was dark and he had shiny black hair but his almond eyes were khaki green. When he stood up to come to the window Maureen could see that he was at least six foot tall. He stood noncommittally behind the honey blond nurse and looked at Maureen expectantly. His front teeth were large and straight and white, his broad lips seemed unusually red.

"Urn, listen, I just wanted to ask whether you used to know Douglas Brady?"

Shan ignored the question and let the honey blond nurse answer. "The guy who got killed?" she asked.

"Yeah. He used to work upstairs as a therapist."

"I heard about that. His mum was an MEP, wasn't she?"

"Yeah," said Maureen. "Did you know him?"

"No," she said, "I never met him myself, I've just started here, but-"

She turned to Shan Ryan. "Me neither," he said, turning and walking back to his seat at the desk. He picked a cherry tomato out of his salad and sat down, looking Maureen in the eye as he bit the tomato between his front teeth, slicing it in half.

Maureen watched him. "Did you know Iona McKinnon?"

Shan glared into his lunch box.

"Sorry," said the nurse, filling in the silence, "I didn't know her either. Shan?"

Shan looked faintly surprised and shook his head. The nurse turned back to Maureen. "Sorry 'bout that," she said, smiling her delicious smile. "Are you a policewoman?"

"I think the answer to that question is quite obvious," said Maureen.

The nurse smiled at whichever obvious answer she was going with.

Maureen caught Shan's eye once more before thanking them and stepping back from the window. He seemed shrewd, as though he recognized her from somewhere and was trying to place her.

It was only two o'clock: she might as well go back to Leslie's. She had hoped her visit to Levanglen would take longer. All she had left to do was a bit of shopping and, apart from that, it would be a straightforward wait until the next day when she made the phone call to Benny and they caught the train to Largs.

The bus took a long time to come. Maureen stood in the shelter, staring down the dual carriageway in unison with the other damp passengers. The drizzle was intrusive today, swirling into Maureen's collar and up her sleeves. A brisk wind swept under the glass wall of the shelter, freezing her ankles. When the forty-seven finally arrived she climbed on board, bought her ticket and went upstairs, sitting at the back. The bus was a little too warm. Damp rose from thick, wet coats, making the atmosphere muggy and tiring. By the time it got to the Linthouse the smell on the top deck was fetid.

A blue Mini Clubman left its parking space in the Levanglen Hospital car park and drove out of the gates, following the bus through Linthouse, through the town and up the Great Western Road all the way to Anniesland.

Maureen had to change to a sixty-two bus at Anniesland to get to the Drum. She stood up as the bus pulled under the railway bridge and carefully worked her way down the stairwell to the door.

The Clubman driver saw her get up and struggle to the door. He stopped the car under the bridge, waited for the lights to change, then took a sharp left and parked in a side street.

The smell of old damp clothes lingered in her nose and she couldn't be bothered getting straight back onto another bus. She nipped into a coffee importer's and bought a quarter pound of fresh-ground Colombian coffee. The room smelled of chocolate and warmth. Standing at the back of the shop, the coffee grinder was a huge brass monster – it dwarfed the woman who was serving. She had to climb up a three-step ladder to put Maureen's beans into the grinding funnel. Maureen took the warm paper bag from her, paid, and stepped back out the door into the damp day.

The coffee shop's pleasant chocolate smell filled Maureen's head, and she didn't want to lose it. She looked down the street and saw the army surplus sign. She would need a flask and they might have them cheap. She pulled up her coat collar and walked down to the shop. Camouflage army gear and sportswear were hung on tidy racks against the wall. A circular sale rack had been put just inside the door, as if they were desperate to get rid of the stuff.

A plump woman in her mid-forties was serving at the counter. On the shelves behind her were the smaller items shoplifters would favor: hats and gloves, pocket hand warmers and mini butane fires for camping. "Can I help you?" she asked in a clipped, nasal Kelvin-side accent. She sounded like Elsbeth.

"I'm looking for a cheap flask," said Maureen, shaking the rain off her woolly hat.

The woman bent her legs in a bunny dip and reached into the back of the counter. "I'm afraid we only have two models in stock at the moment. This one" – she put a red plastic flask on the counter – "and this one."

The second flask had a matte silver body with a black plastic base and handle. Maureen unscrewed the cup and stopper and looked into it. The lip fanned out smoothly. She put her finger in and tapped the inside with her nail. It sounded sturdy enough. "How much?"

"Eight pounds."

"Fine, yeah, I'll take it."

As the woman put the flask back into its box Maureen glanced out of the window into the busy main street. Shan Ryan was standing outside the window, looking in at her. He was wearing a full-length black leather overcoat. He gestured down the street and disappeared.

"Eight pounds, then?"

"Oh," said Maureen. "Yes." She handed over a tenner.

The woman gave her some change and a bag with the flask in it. "Thank you for your custom," she called as Maureen stepped outside.

Shan was turning into a side street. Maureen paused in the doorway of the army shop and patted her pocket, finding the beeper. She put the flask into her rucksack, and her fingers found the cold metal handle of her stabbing comb. She relaxed a little. She slid it into her coat pocket with the sharp end pointing downward. She might need to pull it out quickly and use it.

When she got to the street corner Maureen stopped and looked around. The lights on a Mini Clubman flashed twice. She walked down the street toward it. Shan reached across the passenger seat and opened the car door for her. A bebop jazz tape was playing quietly on the stereo. She leaned down into the car and looked at Shan. He scowled at the dashboard.

He had shed his white nurse's coat and was wearing a faded pair of blue jeans and a black cotton crew-neck jumper with nothing underneath. She could see the impression of a lot of hair trapped under the front of the jumper, and black hair curled over the collar in a Hokusai wave.

He leaned over the passenger seat and looked up at her. "Get in, then," he said.

Maureen sighed and tapped her hand on the roof of the car.

"Are ye getting in?" he said, not seeming to understand her reluctance.

"Why would I get into a car with a man I don't know?" she said.

Shan frowned and looked hurt. "I'm not trying to abduct you," he said. "I thought you wanted to talk to me. I'll go away if you want me to, I didn't mean to scare you." He leaned over to shut the door but Maureen caught it with her foot. "No, really," he said firmly. "I'd really rather ye didn't get in now I've scared you."

"It's all right," said Maureen, feeling she had insulted him. "I'll get in."

"I left my work to come and talk to you. I don't want to hurt you."

Maureen opened the door and clambered into the car. Shan reached for the ignition key and paused. "You can still get out if you want," he said, watching the parade of slow-moving traffic passing in front of them.

"No," said Maureen, squeezing the comb in her pocket. "Really."

Shan pulled the Clubman into the traffic and crawled along the main street, stopping every three hundred yards at red lights. He turned the car left onto the motorway.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Away somewhere," said Shan. "Somewhere we won't be seen talking together."

"Why?"

He gave her a you-know look.

"Do you think I'm a policewoman?"

"I know exactly who you are," he said, and turned the music up.

They were on the motorway headed out to the flat Renfrew plain and the airport. The rain had cleared up and darkness was falling quickly, as it does in midautumn in Scotland. The big sky was a sudden pink smear.

They passed the lightbulb factory, Maureen's favorite building in Glasgow. It starts as an inauspicious concrete rectangular base with broad, square windows, and then soars into a glass-brick attic with a turret. Many of its windows have been smashed but, like one of the mystical secrets of geometry, it's still appealing. Shan saw her looking at it as they passed. "Do you like it?" he said, smiling as if it were his.

"Aye," said Maureen.

"Me too."

Farther along he took the slip road for the airport, drove under the motorway flyover and into the huge empty car park. He pulled up in a space directly across from the terminal doors. "Why did we have to come all the way out here?" asked Maureen.

"Paki guy with green eyes talking to a white lassie? There aren't many places in Glasgow where that wouldn't be noticed."

Shan locked the car and they took the zebra crossing over the empty road to the airport terminal. The automatic double doors opened in front of them and they stepped inside. The illuminated signs and posters lent the building an all-pervasive melancholy yellow light. Straight in front of them were the check-in desks, manned by heavily made-up women wearing silly hats. Above their heads the check boards told the number and destination of the next flight. A group of tall adolescent boys with Scandinavian Airlines stickers on their rucksacks were standing aimlessly in front of one of the desks. An electric cleaning cart trundled past, driven by a fat guy in overalls.

Shan veered off to the left, taking the escalator up to the second floor where the big cafe was, and Maureen followed him. It was a large space with about fifty tables arranged round a well-defended serving area in the middle. The tables were partitioned off into user-friendly spaces by flimsy white trestle walls with plastic vines hanging off them. At the center was an oval self-service island offering breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same time. The place was almost deserted.

Shan bought Maureen a coffee and chose a can of Irn Bru for himself. She noticed that he didn't look up at the woman tending the till.

They sat down at a table next to a glass wall overlooking the car park and the flyover. Shan opened his can and took a mouthful. "Jill McLaughlin phoned me," he said.

"Right," said Maureen.

"She said you phoned her on Sunday."

"Oh?" She blew on her coffee. It had been boiled and smelled of burnt plastic. A bing-bong overhead call announced a flight to Paris, Orly.

"I'm sorry about Douglas," he said.

"Thanks."

Shan sat back and looked at her, scratching his hairy forearm softly. His nails were long, yellowing and horny. He must play acoustic guitar. "D'you not want to talk about this?" he said sharply, bending his neck to catch her eye and bringing her gaze back up to his face. "I'm only here because I got the impression that you did."

"I do," she said formally, wondering who the fuck this guy was. "I'm sorry. Do you or Jill know why Douglas was killed?"

"I'm not spillin' my guts," he said sternly. "This is heavy stuff and I want to know who you are."

"I thought you knew who I was," said Maureen. "You said you knew in the car."

"Aye," he said. "I know your name, that's all. I want you to tell me what you know about this before I start talking about it."

"Fair enough. What is it you want to know?"

Shan sucked a tut through his big front teeth and drew a sharp breath. "I left my fucking work to come after you, yeah? I didn't need to do that."

"But you did."

"Yeah," he said indignantly, "I fucking did as well."

"Because I asked about Iona."

He nodded sadly. "Because of Iona."

Shan could have taken her to a field and slit her throat. No one had seen them, and he had no reason to bring her to the airport, where they might be seen together. There was no reason for him to talk to her, and he'd been so sweet when she didn't want to get into the car.

"I know Iona was at the Northern," she said. "I know she was on the George I ward during the incidents-"

"They were rapes," said Shan flatly. "Not incidents."

"Right, I wasn't sure about that. I know she was having an affair with someone at the Rainbow. Then she killed herself."

Shan waited, expecting more. When he realized there wasn't any more he dropped his can heavily onto the table. "That's what you know?"

"Yes," said Maureen, after a long pause. "That's what I know."

Shan watched his can as he turned it round on the tabletop with the tips of his fingers, tapping his long nails on the thin aluminum surface. He smiled unkindly at the can. "And you wanted to know who she was having an affair with? You were jealous in case it was Douglas?"

"No. I don't give a shit who she was seeing," Maureen said, pissed off at the suggestion that her motive was so puerile. "I just thought she might have been raped at the Northern and people seem to have known her. I thought she might have said something, given someone a clue about who did it. The rest of them can't seem to talk."

Shan looked up suddenly. "The rest of them?" he said softly. "Who have you seen?"

Maureen felt a rush up the back of her neck. She couldn't name them, she didn't know who Shan was, he might be the rapist, could be why he took the time to talk, he wanted to find out who she'd spoken to. He was sweet so she'd get into the car, that's why he was like that, he'd done this before. Her mind had gone blank, she couldn't think of a single lie. She felt inside her pocket for the beeper. McEwan said that it might take a few minutes for the police to arrive. She could be dead by then. She slid her hand into the other pocket, feeling for the stabbing comb. She found it and looked past him, scanning the third floor, looking for the cafe exits and ways out of the airport. No, stay in the fucking airport. She was on the bare, dark Renfrew plain with no car, little money and a comb to protect her. She looked out at the shadowy cars speeding past on the flyover, their pinprick lights leaving glimmer trails in the heavy dark, and squeezed the comb in her pocket. She felt one of the teeth break the skin on her palm. Shan was watching her. "Dunno." She clenched her teeth. "Dunno."

Shan frowned, his black eyebrows casting a dark shadow over his piercing eyes. "You won't tell me," he said. "You won't tell me their names?"

Maureen shook her head and squeezed again, breaking through another bit of skin. A Tannoy call announced the shuttle flight to Manchester. Shan leaned on the table, bringing his face close to hers. She would have moved back and away from him but she was so tense she couldn't be sure that she was capable of slipping casually backward in the chair – she might look as if she were about to scarper.

"Iona wasn't having an affair," said Shan quietly. "You heard it from the cleaner, right? Susan with the big mouth?"

Maureen nodded. It was a lie but if she tried to speak her voice would sound high and shaky and she didn't want him to know how scared she was.

"Susan saw Iona being raped. She saw it through a chink in the blinds. She was being raped in a therapist's office and because she wasn't kicking and screaming Susan decided they were having an affair." Still frowning, he jerked the can to his mouth, took a long drink and dropped it back down on the table. "You don't happen to smoke, do you?" he said.

"Urn, yeah." She sounded like a chipmunk.

"Have you got some fags on ye?"

"Yeah."

She had to take her left hand off the comb to get her bag. Her palm came away from the metal surface uneasily, like bare thighs from a plastic car seat left in the sun. She lifted the rucksack to her hand, trembling with a jittery post adrenaline rush. She took the packet out, dropping it on the table rather than handing it over in case he saw her hand shake. The packet slid across the polished surface of the table and hit the side of her cup of coffee, sloshing brown liquid onto the white tabletop. Shan reached out quickly, coolly, and grabbed the packet away from the coffee spill. He took a cigarette and lit it with a new brass Zippo he produced from his pocket.

Casual smokers don't have brand-new Zippo lighters, Zippos are expensive and cumbersome to carry. Shan must have cigarettes. He might have seen her take the comb from her bag, he might be asking for the fags so that she would let go of it, so that she would be undefended. She jerked her hand into her pocket and grabbed hold of it again. He watched her.

He inhaled the first smoke and held it in his lungs, tapping the ash from the cigarette under the table, watching the cigarette as he did, being precious with it. Shan had a Zippo because he smoked a lot of hash. He looked at her and his face softened. "You don't need to be afraid of me," he said. "I'm going to tell you everything I know and then you can leave before me, after me or with me. Whatever makes you feel safe."

" Kay," said Maureen.

"I'm sorry if I gave you a fright, I forgot about what's happened to you. You don't even know who I am. I suppose I could be anyone to you."

"I don't know if we can smoke in here," she said, changing the subject.

"Yeah, well, fuck it," said Shan, quietly unperturbed.

Maureen took the packet and pulled one out for herself. Shan gave her a light from his Zippo. "Go on, then," she said.

"Yeah, right," said Shan, turning to the window, looking out at the motorway, following the lights of the passing cars with his eyes. "Iona and the George I rapes, it was the same person…" He said it in an undertone, but Maureen caught the name.

She gasped, sucking smoke so deep into her lungs that it hurt. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," said Shan, calmly flicking the ash from his cigarette under the table. "Do you believe me?"

"Why do you think it was him, for God's sake?"

"It's a long story," he said.

Maureen squashed her fag out and stood up. "I need a drink," she said. "I'm getting a beer. D'you want one?"

Shan lifted his head and looked at her. "What, an alcoholic drink?"

"Yeah."

He put his hand in his jacket pocket. "No, no, I'll get it," said Maureen. "What d'ye want?"

"Any whisky? Auch, naw, that's bad, actually, I'm driving."

Maureen shrugged. "It's up to yourself. You're allowed one, aren't you?"

"Auch," he said, clearly gasping. "Auch, aye, get us a whisky if they've got it."

Maureen negotiated her way through the tables and around the trestle walls to the deserted island of food in the center of the cafe. She bought a whisky miniature and a cold can of Kerslin, an extra-strong lager with a bitter taste caused by the artificially heightened alcohol content. As she passed the till she picked up two plastic cups and four sugar sachets, which she tucked deep into her pocket under the beeper.

Shan was slumped over the table, chin in hand, watching the traffic on the motorway. He took the whisky from her, poured it into the plastic cup and sipped carefully. Maureen smiled and sat down. "You don't drink much, do you? I'd have walloped that back in a oner."

Shan looked at her can of lager. "How the fuck can you drink that stuff? It tastes like ethanol."

"Yeah," she said. "That's why I like it. How do you know this, Shan?"

"Like I said, it's a long story," he said, his head bent over the glass of whisky, enjoying the smell. He whistled a sigh and looked out of the window. "It wasn't long ago, I went to work one day and before I got changed into my uniform one of the cleaners came running into the staff room. Someone was crying in the toilets. I went in." Shan was talking quickly, quietly, as if he were giving a case report. "It was Iona. She was in a cubicle. I couldn't get her out. I climbed over the wall. She was sitting on the floor with her knickers around her ankles. She was scratching at herself, at her fanny. I got her to stop it and said come upstairs and see a doctor. She started scratching herself again." He took one of Maureen's fags without asking her and lit it, downing the rest of the whisky before he exhaled.

"When was this?" asked Maureen.

"Eight…," he said, scratching his forehead and thinking about it. "Eight? No, nine weeks ago-"

"Seven weeks before Douglas was killed?" said Maureen.

"Yeah. I knew Iona from the Northern. I was working in George I when the mysterious rapes were happening, yeah? We were all moved, even the female staff. The agency nurses were sent home and never employed again. Jill McLaughlin was agency. She was up for a full-time job at the Northern. Never worked again."

"That's why she was so jumpy when I phoned."

"Yeah. Only the senior staff weren't moved, they weren't even stigmatized. We didn't know Iona had been raped then. She didn't have a rope mark on her, no one suspected. I take it you know what I'm talking about when I say 'rope marks'?"

"Yvonne Urquhart's still got one on her ankle."

"Yvonne?" His face brightened. "How is she? Have you seen her?"

"You don't want to know how Yvonne is…"

Shan watched her carefully. "Okay, I can imagine anyway," he said, his voice dipping to a whisper. "Yvonne had a stroke… after… So, anyway, Iona wouldn't come upstairs with me. She said she wanted to go home, that's all she would say, she wanted to go home. I decided to drive her to her house, stay with her till the panic's gone, limit the damage. She wouldn't speak. When we got to the house she told me that he hurt her then. She knew what she meant and I knew what she was telling me. I asked her if she wanted to go to the police and she started pulling at her skin again so I took her over to Jane Scoular at the Dowling Clinic, it's all female staff there, and she got an emergency admission. The next day she hung herself in the staff toilets."

"Did you tell the police?"

He looked desperate. "Tell them what, for Christ's sake? Someone's been accused of a disgusting rape by a woman who's killed herself and also had a lifelong psychiatric history? She wasn't exactly a good witness, you know."

"Yeah," said Maureen, "I know exactly. Did you speak to Douglas?"

"No, that was later. I didn't know what the fuck to do."

"How many women were there?"

"Four that we knew of, five including Iona."

"Surely one of them would want to testify?"

"Maureen," Shan said, using her name for the first time, "after Douglas got the list from the office we went to see all of them. We even went to see some that were just on the ward at the time. They either can't talk or they're terrified at the mention of his name. Most of them can't even say it."

"Did Douglas know it was him?"

"Yeah. I told him a couple of weeks after Iona killed herself," continued Shan. "I was in the Variety Bar and I saw Douglas, pissed to fuck, coming up the stairs from the toilet, so I called him over. Man, he was so drunk, he almost couldn't breathe. You know that labored way?" He mimicked someone breathing heavily. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," said Maureen, not much the wiser.

"Douglas wanted me to order a drink for him, the barman had refused him. He was behaving strangely, he kept crying and laughing, and when I asked him where he lived he'd point in different directions and wouldn't say, so I took him up to mine to crash. On the way home he started to sober up a wee bit and by the time we got to mine he was more or less lucid. We sat up with a bottle and he was acting crazy, like crazy mood swings, and then he told me that Iona had hung herself. She was a colleague's patient and Douglas knew they were having an affair. He knew and did nothing and she killed herself. He said she always seemed fine to him, he thought she was all right. He'd been keeping an eye on her."

"And he felt guilty because he knew about it and did nothing," she said, taking a cigarette out and lighting it with Shan's lighter. "Did he know it wasn't an affair?"

"No, he really thought it was consensual. I could tell by the way he was talking about it." Shan smiled uncomfortably. "When I read about you it all made a lot more sense. That's why he wouldn't report them for having an affair."

"But I wasn't his patient," she said, lowering her eyes. "I was at the Rainbow but I was Angus's patient. I didn't have a professional relationship with Douglas."

"That's a bit thin," said Shan. "Fucking a patient is fucking a patient, whichever way you look at it."

Maureen inhaled heavily and kept her eyes on the table. She needed to believe she wasn't a victim just as much as Douglas had. "It might be a bit thin… but it's still different, isn't it?"

"No." Shan shook his head adamantly. "It's not. Doctors and nurses shouldn't fuck patients. That's fundamental. We all know that. Douglas knew it, we all know it."

Maureen took a heavy gulp of the bitter lager. "All right, it's a fine distinction," she said. "But it is still a distinction."

"Bollocks," said Shan. "Don't fuck the patients. How complicated is that? You're either fucking the patients or you're not."

Shan was right and Maureen knew he was.

"People who do things like that," said Shan, "they always say to themselves, 'This is different because yada-yada-yada, because I'm not her therapist now, because she's better-''

"Because she's got a big hat."

"Exactly, they've all got justifications. They don't say to themselves, 'I'm a bastard and I'm doing a fucking terrible thing.' Rapists do it. Pedophiles do it too. They say, 'They wanted it,' 'They were asking for it."

Maureen rubbed her head. Thinking of Douglas in the same league as a pedophile made her eyes ache. "I don't think he saw himself in the same league as them," she said, sad and disgusted. "He always drew the distinction that I wasn't his patient. I think he believed it. When did you meet him? What day was it?"

"A Monday," said Shan. "Monday's country-and-western night at the Variety. Monday, five weeks ago."

"He didn't touch me after that," she murmured.

"What-like, sexually?"

"Yeah. Never again." She lifted her beer. "Never again before he died."

Maureen drank a throatful as Shan sat back and sighed. "Well, maybe the justification stopped working the night I told him. Maybe he was crying for himself as much as anything."

Maureen looked up at Shan. "Was Douglas crying?"

"Yeah, big-time," said Shan. "He started crying when I told him about Iona, he was sobbing. He hid himself in my bathroom. He was in there for an hour – I could hear him crying through the door."

"Fuck," she said. "I went out with him for eight months and I never saw him crying."

"Well, he couldn't have been more upset if Iona was his own daughter."

Maureen dropped her cigarette onto the floor, stepping on it to put it out. "He withdrew the contents of his account," she said, "and paid Yvonne's nursing-home fees. I think it was to ease his conscience. He gave me money too."

"How much?"

"Too much. It feels like blood money." Maureen picked up her packet of fags. "D'ye want one?"

"Yeah," said Shan pleasantly. "Go on.

"Anyway," Shan went on when he'd lit their cigarettes, "I told Douglas who it was and I told him about the Northern."

"What did he say?" she asked, hoping that Shan would repeat something Douglas had said or say something like he would say it so that she could hear Douglas's voice again.

"He didn't say anything," said Shan. "In the morning he was very serious and we talked about it. He said we should try to prosecute through the courts, for the sake of the victims we might never find. They'd see it on TV and know they were safe. He got the list from the office in the Northern and we started going to see them all."

"But why was he so clumsy about getting the list?" she asked.

"We didn't think anyone would pay a blind bit of notice, to be honest."

"Everyone in the Northern knew," said Maureen.

Shan cringed. "Really?"

"Yeah."

"God." He shut his eyes tight. "Fuck, we thought we were being well fly."

"Maybe he only knew Douglas was involved because of the list. You weren't there when he got it, were you?"

"No. They wouldn't have given it to me."

"That's why he was killed – because he was finding out about the Northern."

"Actually" – Shan held up his hand to stop her – "I know he didn't kill Douglas. I know that for sure."

"How?"

"Well, when the police came to see us they were asking about the daytime, yeah? I was working and he was in the office all day He didn't leave until half-six and then he drove one of the secretaries home to Bothwell and that's miles out on the South Side. He didn't even leave his office to go for lunch-"

Maureen interrupted. "They've been asking about the evening too now."

Shan was stunned. "They've been what…?"

"They seem to think it happened in the evening now. It's a bit of a media myth, the time of death thing, they just have a good guess."

Shan had turned gray. "I was sure it couldn't be him because the only time he left the room was to use the pay phones in the foyer."

Maureen's heart was palpitating. "Why would he use a pay phone? Isn't there a phone in his office?"

"Yeah, but the line's only for domestic calls," Shan said. "Shirley said he was calling abroad or something."

"What time did he use the pay phone?"

"Why do you want to know that?"

"Just…" She shook her head.

Shan shrugged. "I've no idea."

"Can you try to remember?"

He thought about it. "Before lunch, about eleven or twelve the first time. Then after lunch. Early. Early afternoon."

"How many more times?" she asked.

"Only twice that I know of. All before two o'clock, because there was a case conference in his office after that and he was definitely there."

She ran her finger over the spilled coffee on the table, drawing a snake pattern.

"Who was he phoning?" he asked.

"He phoned me," she said. "At work. He wanted to see if I was there. My pal said I wasn't in. He thought I was away for the day."

"Why would he phone to see if you were in?"

"He needed the house to be empty during the day. He did it at night and fixed it to look as if it happened much earlier. He made a half-arsed attempt to frame me. He made footsteps near to the body with my slippers as well. He even got information about me and fitted the scene to look like something I'd done before…"

She shut her eyes and rubbed them hard. If the Northern rapist had killed Douglas to stop him digging up evidence, he would want to make the police think Douglas died in the afternoon. That way they wouldn't try to trace Douglas's movements during the day and they would miss Siobhain. She led straight back to the Northern rapes. And it would explain why Maureen had been left with a cast-iron alibi; the murderer wanted an empty house that Douglas could have been hidden in all day. Fitting Maureen up badly wasn't a mistake at all, it was halfhearted because it was incidental. His real concern was fucking up the time of death and keeping Siobhain out of it.

She opened her eyes. Shan was trying to mask his evident worry under a frown.

"He made it look like something you done before?" he said slowly.

"Naw," she smiled, "I didn't kill anyone. I hid in the cupboard. I stayed there for a few days and I had to be carried out and taken to hospital. It's not important but only certain people knew that. He left something of Douglas's in there after he killed him. I think he thought the police would find out and make some kind of connection to me."

Shan looked relieved. "Right, I thought it was something bad," he said, shaking his head and bringing himself back to the story. "Just wondering. What did you just ask me?"

"Why did Douglas think they were having an affair?"

"Oh, because he'd seen them together before, a long time before. He saw them in North Lanarkshire. They were sitting in a car and he was touching Iona's neck and smiling."

They looked at each other and Maureen could see a sadness creeping in behind Shan's green eyes. He couldn't fake that, she thought, not that level of empathy. De Niro couldn't fake that. "And Iona wasn't smiling?" she said.

"No," said Shan softly, putting his elbow on the table and resting his forehead on it. "Iona wasn't smiling."

"When was this?"

"Two or three years ago."

Shan was bent over the table, his head resting in his hand, his long fingernails parting the thick black hair. Douglas had thick hair, dark brown with an auburn fleck. Finally, he sat back in his chair. "What you going to do? Are you going to the police with this stuff?"

"No," said Maureen, "I'm not. They've already interviewed one of the women and nearly broke her fucking brain."

Shan nodded.

"What are you thinking?" asked Maureen.

"I spoke to the women he raped, and I'd like to start punching him but I don't think I should."

"Why?"

"Don't know if I could stop."

Shan took an early slip road and stopped outside the lightbulb factory. They got out of the car and sat quietly across the road on a concrete slab, under the lip of the motorway, looking up at the glass building, brightly illuminated by the floodlights on the motorway. Red slivers of light raced across the shimmering glass, reflecting the taillights of cars passing above. Maureen lit a cigarette. She offered the packet to Shan but he waved it away.

"Do you miss him?" he asked.

"Don't counsel me," said Maureen, without intonation.

They looked at the building again for a while.

"Let's go out and get pissed together one night," she said.

"I'd like that," he said. "I'm in the Variety most Mondays."

"I might have some lovely news about our mutual friend when I see you," she said quietly, raising her eyes and looking innocently at the glass-brick turret.

Shan turned his head and examined her face for a moment.

"I'd like some lovely news about that cunt," he said gently.