Resolution

Chapter 19

The Glasgow underground system has two concentric tracks, one running clockwise, the other anticlockwise. The trains are painted orange, hence the nickname the Clockwork Orange. Through a peculiarity of design, the Bridge Street underground station sucks down air from ground level, and halfway up the short flight of stairs is a windy vortex. Kilty and Maureen left the cold platform, battled through the buffeting Arctic wind and walked out into a calm, sunny Gorbals evening, just south of the river.

The monolithic high flats stood gray and black across a dusty lawn of wasteground. Not a single car was parked outside. Eighteen stories up three empty window sockets had black smoke smeared above the lintels. The same bossy blue signs that had pitted the front of Sheila's block were here too, ordering residents to do this, stop that and get your bloody hand out of there.

Number fifty-four had a security door and they couldn't get in. Kilty pressed the buzzer for the concierge but got no answer. They were standing about for a couple of minutes, trying to think of something to do, when a small man behind them pressed his key to a pad and the door buzzed open. They stood back, thinking it would be rude just to push in after him, but the man held the door open for them.

"We could be desperate robbers, ye know," said Kilty, once they were safely inside.

"Aye, ye look like right villains." He smiled and walked away to a stairwell.

The lobby was in good nick – no graffiti, no burn marks anywhere, and the lifts appeared to be working. The floor was covered in large black rubberized tiles that would have been trendy in a loft. A janitor sat behind a glass wall in a small room to the side, watching television under a sign that read "Concierge." Maureen found the lift that stopped at the even-numbered floors and pressed the button. The doors opened and they stepped into a smog of piss and detergent. Maureen used the hem of her T-shirt to press the button for Ella's floor.

"God, fuck," said Kilty, choking and covering her mouth. "Why? Why piss everywhere?"

Maureen held her nose and tried not to breathe in. The lift stopped and they staggered out onto the landing. On either side of the lift shaft, flights of stairs led up and down, the reinforced glass on the outside wall filling the stairwell with a pissy yellow light. Maureen and Kilty looked up and down the corridor at the rows of gray doors. The place was deserted. Buzzing strip-lights flickered at the far end. A sudden brutal clang behind their heads made them jump. The noise continued, falling away from them. The bag of rubbish finished its journey down the chute and Kilty grinned at her. "I'm not tense," she said, opening her eyes manic-wide.

Maureen found Ella's flat three down from the lift. The door frame was covered in a sheet of raw plywood, nailed into place. It looked so final, as if everything about Ella was being blocked up because she was dead.

"Did someone kick the door in?" asked Kilty.

"I dunno," said Maureen. "They wouldn't do that because she's dead, would they?"

"No, doors still lock after you're dead. It looks as if the door's been kicked in. Can't have been her son who attacked her, then. She'd've let him in, surely."

"He didn't look the sort to kick a door in anyway. Let's ask the neighbors. You ask up there" – Maureen pointed to the next door and swiveled on her heels – "and I'll ask down here."

Kilty walked away, trying to effect a Robert Mitchum swagger but looking as if she'd pissed herself and sprained both ankles. Maureen knocked on a nearby door. No one answered but she could hear a television inside. She banged again. Still no answer. Kilty wasn't having any more luck. They moved across the corridor and tried the doors opposite Ella's but still couldn't get an answer.

"No one's in," said Kilty.

The noise of a lock cracking open made them turn to the end of the corridor. An old woman stepped out into the silence. She locked her door carefully, picked up the plastic bag at her feet and walked towards them, looking past them, pretending they weren't there. Her footsteps echoed around the corridor. She was wearing a bandage around her calf under thick support tights. As she approached Maureen and Kilty, the old woman's path veered steeply to the opposite wall and she kept her eyes down.

"Excuse me?" said Maureen, stepping towards her.

The woman looked skittish and twitched to a stop, glancing at Maureen's shoes.

"I've been up seeing Ella McGee at the hospital," said Maureen, hoping to attract her attention with the promise of gossip.

The woman looked up at her. "She okay?"

"She died, I'm afraid," said Maureen. "What happened to her door?"

The woman seemed startled and glanced at the wooden slab. "It got broke," she said.

"Did someone break in?"

The woman looked uneasy and dropped her voice. "From the inside," she said. "It was all smashed out the way."

"Gee-so," said Kilty.

Apparently offended by the use of a bowdlerism, the woman stumbled back a step and stared at them dumbly.

"Do ye know her son? Si McGee?" asked Maureen.

The old woman shook her head and looked at Kilty.

"Sorry," muttered Kilty, and Maureen stepped back against the wall to let the nervous woman pass.

She scuttled off down the corridor, pressed the button for the lift, looked back at them again and hobbled off down the stairs.

"Look at that granny go," muttered Kilty. "I don't think anyone here'll talk to us."

"I think you're right," said Maureen.

They heard the whine of the lift approaching and went over to it. The doors opened on a bare knee, a naked thigh, a smoking cigarette. A very drunk man was loitering in the lift, propped up against the side, smoking casually. He was naked, his tired little belly sagging in perfect semicircles, like Gothic drapery. He raised his cigarette, opening his mouth wide, as if he were going to bite an apple, and let his lips slowly alight on the filter. "What are you doing?" said Kilty indignantly, jamming the doors open with her foot.

"Eh?"

"What are ye doing in there? There might be children getting in that lift."

The man's gaze slid around the floor then bounced over to Kilty. He shut his eyes and pointed at her with his smoking hand. "You don't even live here," he drawled, his lips sliding freestyle across his teeth.

"Children might get into this lift and you're naked. And you've got half a hard-on."

The man felt his stomach. He clearly didn't know he was naked until Kilty told him. From his mild discomfort Maureen guessed that things like this happened to him quite often. "No one takes the lift," he said.

"You shouldn't take the lift and then maybe someone else could."

Maureen stepped in front of Kilty. "Hey, did you hear about the lady on this floor who was attacked?"

He shook his head, and kept his eyes shut. "Ella the Flash. Are you the polis?"

"No."

"Well, tell her hello from me."

"Does she know ye?"

"Ever'b'dy around here knows me." He opened an eye but the other one seemed to be stuck shut. "I'm famous."

"What for?" asked Kilty, and Maureen looked at her incredulously as the door slid shut.

It was ten o'clock and still as bright as noon. Traffic lights ordered ghostly legions around the empty roads.

"What does Ella the Flash mean?" said Kilty.

"Dunno," said Maureen.

As they walked across the deserted car park Kilty flapped her T-shirt to disperse the memory of the smell from the lift. She was completely unperturbed by the naked man. As a social worker she saw things Maureen couldn't conceive of. She was never shocked at horror stories of deprivation and seemed to know all the names of the big men in the city.

"Have you ever heard of Si McGee?"

Kilty shrugged. "I know the name."

"How much force would it take to smash a door from the inside?"

"The other doors looked pretty sturdy. I don't think Benny Lynch Court would be the most sensible place for the council to make big savings on front doors."

"Why could he possibly be that angry with her?" Maureen mused.

"Maybe it was bringing the small-claims case."

"Naw," said Maureen. "Whatever went on in there happened on Thursday night and he couldn't have received the letter about the small claims until Saturday morning at the earliest."

"He got the letter for the small claims on Saturday morning and then, suddenly and out of the blue, she died?"

"Yeah," nodded Maureen. "Suspicious, isn't it?"

"It is a bit," said Kilty, biting her lip.

They walked to the mouth of the underground and bought their tickets. Kilty stopped at the turnstile. "Look, is this any of your business, Mauri? Are you sure you're not just worried about Una's baby and looking for a morbid distraction?"

"She asked me to get her out, Kilty – she asked me and I said she'd be fine." Maureen flushed, shoved her ticket into the slot and pushed through the turnstile.

Kilty got halfway down the stairs and turned, the wild wind flattening her thin hair hard against her head, making her look like dead Ella. "I've definitely heard that name somewhere," she said, as if that would console Maureen.

It didn't make her feel any better. The platform was empty. Through the dark tunnels on either side they could hear a rumbling. The train clattered into the station and they got into a deserted carriage, sitting next to each other. As the train took off Maureen leaned across to Kilty. "How could ye get into a lift and not even notice you're naked?" she shouted over the noise.

"He'd be blacked out," she said and left it.

It struck Maureen that her drinking was taking over her life. Whatever course she took in her life there would be no dignity in it.

She could only see two options: ugly cells or a life of perpetual streaking. Kilty read the concern on her face. "You don't black out a lot, do ye?"

"No."

Kilty smiled. "You answered that awful quick. Are you sure?"

"What is a blackout?"

"That's when you can't remember hours of what happened last night. They get worse if your drinking escalates. It can go on for days."

Maureen smiled for her. The drinking was getting worse: she could dress it up as a crisis, she could call it Michael, but she knew deep down that it would have happened anyway, that she was like Winnie.

Kilty leaned over and tapped her leg. "Blacking out for days is pretty extreme, Mauri – it means your brain's shriveling. I don't think you'll get that bad."

Maureen nodded.

"You should cut down, though," she said, once again displaying her inability to understand the siren call of drink. "I've said that to you before."

Maureen looked at kind Kilty's pretty wee face and would have sold her to the devil for a double there and then.

She stayed on the train to Kilty's stop, passing Garnethill, knowing if she got off she'd run upstairs and take a drink. Kilty talked about her brother's wedding most of the way home, how she couldn't stand his friends and knew the feeling was mutual. They thought she was a loser freak for working in a children's home. Maureen asked her what sort of work they did.

"Sell things, buy things," said Kilty. "Like you and Leslie but from offices."

She looked and saw that Maureen was only half listening. Her responses were shallow and a beat too late. Una's baby was due soon. She must be worried sick.

It was dark outside Hillhead underground. The big sky was as yellow as a wolf's eye. Kilty tried to convince her to come up for a cup of tea but Maureen said she needed a walk and had to get up early for work the next day. They kissed and Maureen thanked her for coming to Benny Lynch Court with her. Their parting felt strange and formal, like a Judas kiss.

Maureen planted her hands in her pockets and walked down the street. The students were away and the area was quiet in the lull before closing time. It was still warm. She wanted a drink: her mouth wanted a fresh drink, her gut wanted a searing drink, her fingers wanted to cradle a precious glass, her heavy heart wanted succor. The watchful yellow sky hung close and she heard a high breeze rustle the dark trees in Kelvingrove Park. She wouldn't drink, wouldn't stop at a bar and order a triple. She'd just go straight home. But she had whiskey at home in the cupboard. She slowed down.

She was approaching the Indian Trip, thinking about the lager she'd had with her dinner there – she could almost taste the cool sweet tinge of it-when she realized that she was close to the business address Ella had given for Si. Becci Street or something. She cut down a narrow street of tall gray tenements.

The road opened out into a dark, run-down square with failing trees in a bald central island. To her left stood an old church with antifascist slogans painted in five-foot letters. It looked like a cross between a Masonic hall and a synagogue, with four outsize columns and fussy rotunda looming on the roof. The doors were painted pale blue. The Church of Scotland seemed to have bought a job lot of the paint from somewhere and all their doors were the same color, regardless of a building's style or period.

She looked at the road signs on the corner. It was the junction between Coleworth and Becci Street. Thinking it was a dark area for a health club, she followed the line of the square round towards the park. Past the church, she came to a Georgian yellow sandstone block of grand windows and imposing doorways with broad sets of stairs leading up to them. The corner flat of the block had a broken window, boarded over with wood stamped "Hurry Brothers, Emergency Glaziers." The other windows in the flat were covered in inappropriate burgundy plastic. A brass plaque on the wall announced it as the Park Circus Health Club. It didn't look like a health club. Maureen was looking at it, puzzling, when the door opened and a man came out, walking down the stairs with his hands in the pockets of his anorak. He didn't have a sports bag with him and he wasn't wearing sweats. He caught her eye and glared at her, as if she'd done something awful, turned on his heel and hurried away down the street.

Maureen walked across the square and sat down on a set of stairs opposite, facing the health club, wondering about it. She lit a cigarette and watched as night fell.

One and a half cigarettes later her mouth tasted foul. She chewed her tongue to force out some saliva and was swilling it around her mouth as a black cab pulled up across the road. The light flicked on as the door opened and a woman stepped out, pulling a shoulder bag after her. She trotted up the steps and Maureen recognized her, somehow, from the straightness of her back and the hair pulled carefully into a tidy chignon. Glaswegian women tend to dress wishfully, in clothes they'd like to suit – in short skirts because they want long legs, in vest tops because they want thin arms – but the woman on the steps was dressed beautifully, in clothes that fitted her and suited her shape, like a French woman. She turned on the top step, saw the red tip of Maureen's cigarette flare against the dark and looked across at her carefully, keeping her head down before opening the door and slipping inside. Maureen watched the door and wondered if she was the foreign woman Ella had mentioned, the one she had fought with her son about, and the wife who was at the hospital with Si when poor old Ella died.

A car drew up at the bottom of the steps and a man climbed out of his car, locked it, jogged up the steps to the door and pressed the buzzer. The door opened and Maureen saw into the lobby – a shot of thick blue carpet, pea green wallpaper, a yucca plant against the wall – and the man disappeared inside. Maureen smiled at her own naivete: it had taken her twenty-five minutes and two cigarettes to realize it was a brothel. She stood up, grinning, dropped her cigarette and ground it into the pavement, thinking of all the fucking miserable lives in Glasgow. Poor women on their backs to ugly men for shit money, and nothing in her life seemed that bad. Fuck it. She'd go home and have a drink.

Across the square the door opened again and a bodybuilder in a suit came out. His neck was thick, his arms stuck out to the side like stabilizers on a bike; his thick thighs rubbed against each other, gathering the material in his trousers at his crotch as he walked across the square to her. He stopped fifteen feet away, stood in the road and raised his eyebrows at her. He seemed to be panting. "What ye doing?" he said aggressively. His voice was high to be coming from such a manly body.

Maureen pointed up to the front door behind her. "Waiting for my pal," she said.

He saw that she wasn't angry or obviously up to something, and dropped his hostile stance. "Ye locked out?" he said softly.

"Naw, I don't live here. I just came to see someone but she's not in. Did ye come over to see if ye could help?" she said, and smiled. They both knew why he had come over.

"Huh, aye," he said, looking back at the health-club door. "Sometimes we get women waiting, you know, outside."

"What are they waiting for?"

He looked away. "For their man. To catch him."

"Is it expensive?"

"They're not always bothered about the money."

She had the feeling he was reluctant to go back in. "Is that what happened to the window?" She pointed to the Hurry Brothers board.

"Aye." He gave a small smile.

They stared at the ground for a bit, listening to the wind hissing through the dead trees.

"I'm gonnae go anyway," said Maureen, dropping her foot to the next step. "I think my pal's out for the night."

"Mibi she got lucky," he said, as if that'd never happened to him.

"Mibi," said Maureen.

She tipped her chin good-bye and walked off down the street. She was almost at the corner when he spoke. "Safe home," he said gently.

She was walking up the hill to her house, feeling low about the drink and Michael and everything, when she saw a gray Saab with silver trim idling in the street outside her house. It wasn't parked, just stopped in the street, and the driver was looking up at the building. She walked close to the buildings, keeping in the shadows, and stopped outside Mr. Padda's, hiding in the dark doorway as she looked into the car. Si McGee was gazing at her house, his mouth open a little, making his weak chin look even weaker than it was. He was smoking a small cigar, driving around and checking out her house the day after his mum died. He must have seen her address on the small-claims form. Maureen stood still and waited for him to drive away, watching the red taillights until they turned the corner.