Resolution

Chapter 42

Black clouds covered the moon, intensifying the oppressive darkness. The soil beneath their feet was wet and soft. She had never seen Mark Doyle so animated. The orange lights from the drive filtered through the dark trees, flickering across his face, obscuring the marks and scars. For a moment he seemed desperately handsome and dashing, the hero who would save the baby and make things all right. She thought of Pauline as a small girl and how strong Mark must have seemed to her, how clean and uncomplicated in comparison to every other member of her sordid family. Together they looked up the hill to Gartnavel Royal Psychiatric Hospital.

It had been built as a fortified containment facility in the Scots baronial style, with battlements on the eaves and solid turrets at the corners. The extensive grounds contained a complex of hospital facilities. At the bottom of the hill were nurses' dorms and Gartnavel General, a long slab of a building eight stories high, looking like an airport hotel, separated from the psychiatric hospital by old trees. Although floodlit, the Royal seemed darker and sadder, hidden away like the mistakes and failures it contained.

She had desperately wanted to drink this afternoon after Aggie left and Leslie had gone to visit her mum. She'd wanted to sit and drink and contemplate her glorious behavior tonight. She had to go for a walk around the town to stop herself and now she was trembling, weak from resisting the desire. Soon it would all be over and she could stop thinking and thinking and thinking about it.

"There's a door around there." Doyle pointed, keeping his voice so low she had to strain to hear him. "It leads into an old kitchen. The back door'll bring you out to corridor F. His ward's F4. It's off it, towards the back. They're shutting this wing down as well so they've not put any security doors or cameras in."

"How do you know all this?" she asked.

"I checked it out this afternoon," he said, reticent and uncomfortable.

"After I phoned ye?"

He nodded.

"That was very good of you."

He glanced at her resentfully. "D'ye wantae chat," he said, leaning over her, "or d'ye wantae fucking do this?"

"Yeah." She looked back at the building as if she were paying attention and could be trusted. "Let's do it."

"Sure?"

"Aye. I want to."

"It's not too late. We can turn back."

"No," she said, trying to look serious. "I'm sure."

She didn't feel serious. She felt elated that the moment was here and almost past. She was ready to do it, ready to make someone cleave to her will, to take a chance and change the future.

"Ye've got the knife I gave ye?"

"Yeah," she said, patting her pocket. "Got it."

"Remember to wipe and drop it once you've done it, leave the knife there, don't take it with ye."

"Leave it there," she echoed.

"Leave it there. Come on."

Still crouching, Doyle led her expertly along a track through the bushes. The soil was damp from the rain and muddy foot tracks from earlier in the day were still distinct.

"Look" – he pointed down – "we're leaving shoe prints. Chuck your shoes after but don't go barefoot. A footprint's like a fingerprint. They can convict ye on it." She had cheap imitation Timber-lands on and they had recently molded to the shape of her feet. She didn't want to throw them away. He led her round the perimeter of the building to an unlit area and stopped. "This bit of the building's shut down already." He pointed to a large ground-floor window on the corner. An unkempt bush was growing in front of it and it was almost completely covered. "It's light in there but no one can see in. Even if a car came past. No one goes there. They'll not find him until morning."

There were no bars on the window. The pane of glass was broken in the low corner but the disused wing was so long abandoned that no one had bothered to patch it up. She looked up and, framed in gray stone, saw herself tap Michael gently on the back, him slipping gracefully to the welcoming floor and an end to all their troubles.

"You listening to me?"

"No one can see in," she said automatically. "They won't find him until the morning."

"By which time you'll be rid of the knife and your shoes. What else have ye to do?"

"Get an alibi and make a phone call from home."

"Don't say anything in the phone call, just chat about the court case tomorrow or something." He raised a finger and bent low to look her in the eye. "And don't mention me. Understand?"

"I understand."

"Not to anyone. Ye haven't told anyone, have ye?"

"Not a soul."

His fingernail was an inch from her eye and she understood it as a threat.

"Never tell anyone – anyone," he said, jabbing the air. He tilted his head back, looking down at her like an impatient owner warning a dog. "I'm here because of you."

"I know."

"Remember."

"I'll remember."

"Shut up," he muttered, and turned back to the window.

To their left a car pulled up the drive, the headlights licking the jagged gravel path in front of them before it turned and stopped at the front of the building. They waited until the driver got out of the car, locked up and entered the building, heard the door click shut.

"When do ye take the knife out?"

"In the room, when he's standing in front of me."

"Make sure he can't see ye take it out. He'll mibi panic." He turned and looked at her, a full-face stare, then nodded, pushing past her to lead her back to the path.

They parted without speaking. Maureen climbed out of the trees and walked towards the kitchen door, feeling more alive than she ever had before, hearing voices echoing up the hill from the open windows on the nurses' dorms, smelling damp soil, the coldness of the stone and lingering exhaust fumes. Doyle had jimmied the door to the kitchen earlier and it opened easily, fresh splinters of sweet-smelling wood pulling out of the lock as she slipped it open. She slid into the building and closed the door after her.

It was a large room, tall and long, smelling of dust and disinfectant. A black, empty patch of floor showed where the industrial cookers had been. Against the far wall a rickety stack of solid hospital wheelchairs gathered dust by the door. She hoped that Doyle had been sensible when he broke the lock and had worn gloves. She looked at her hands. She didn't have gloves on. It hadn't occurred to her to wear gloves, because it was hot, because she was leaving everything to Doyle. She'd have to be careful, watch what she touched the whole time – she couldn't leave her fingerprints all over the place. She stared at her hands, watched them shaking, and thought of what Doyle had said, that it wasn't too late. But it was too late: she'd imagined herself here too often before for another outcome to be possible.

Maureen lowered her hands and listened to the noise of the building. It was ten thirty and she would have to get home soon if she was to make a plausible phone call to anyone. The ceiling above creaked a low sigh and she heard a ticking in the pipes. She tiptoed along to the far door, leaving perfect prints in the dust, opened the door a crack and looked out.

The corridor was empty but brightly lit. There was a door off the corridor at the far end, and coming from it she saw a familiar yellow night-light. The door had a sign reading "F4" on the lintel. She could hear men talking, their voices loud and joking, but she couldn't work out where they were.

She waited fifteen minutes, trying to pinpoint the voices and work out what to do. Finally she saw a shifting shadow in the yellow doorway and pulled the door in front of her closed a little. He had on a white nurse's shirt. "Aye," he said loudly, laughing back into the room. "He did it an' all." He walked down the corridor, passing close. She smelled soap and tobacco. He turned the corner at the far end of the corridor. The patients must be in a bad way in that ward, heavily medicated enough for the staff to shout at each other when they were trying to sleep. It occurred to her that Michael might be too deeply asleep for her to move him, and the possibility blossomed warmly in her chest.

Suddenly, the other voice came towards her out of the ward. He was fat, dressed in pale blue and holding a fiver, jogging with his heavy arms up at his shoulders, running after his pal, calling in a mock whisper. "Hughie," he said, "Hughie, get us a couple o' Twixes." He turned the corner, going after his pal. Maureen held her breath and slipped across the corridor.

It was a small room with four beds arranged two against each wall with the curtains pulled between them. A very old man was asleep in the bed in front of her, his hand lying limply by his side, a newspaper on his chest. She crept round the curtain. In the bed beyond, she saw Michael sitting bolt upright, wide awake and looking at his feet. She waited for a scream or a lunge, but Michael sat still, a small man in pajamas. He had Liam's eyes and square jaw.

Maureen stepped forward and Michael turned to her, looking for guidance. He didn't know who she was. She pulled back the bedcovers and he swung his feet around to the floor, feeling for slippers with his toes. For reasons she would never be able to fathom, she helped him on with his dressing gown before taking his upper arm and guiding him out of the room, across the corridor to the dusty kitchen.

It was dark and silent apart from Maureen's labored breathing. She held his arm tight and felt her skin burning where it touched him. Michael didn't struggle or try to get away. He seemed to find her fingers digging into him reassuring, as if she was grounding him. He smelled of sour vodka and dusty cheese. The smell infected her, getting into her lungs, sticking to the moist membranes in her mouth. She felt Michael seeping in through her skin.

They listened to the fat nurse's feet as he came back down the corridor and went into the ward. The chair squeaked as he sat down. He hummed to himself and cracked open a paper. Beside her, Michael was still. She led him out of the kitchen, pushing him in front of her, afraid to let go of his arm in case she couldn't bring herself to take hold of him again. He followed her prompts compliantly and said nothing until they were two corridors away.

"Is it-it-it?" he asked, smiling nervously as though they had just been introduced.

Maureen heard it through the rush and roar in her ears. He reminded her of Farrell. "Yes," she whispered, walking just in front, reminding him to keep moving. "Do you know this way?"

"Yes," he whispered back, chopping a straight path with his hand, gesturing ahead.

"What are they doing to you in here?" she said.

He hesitated, unsure. "Walking?"

"They're walking you?"

"Yes," he said definitely. "It's walking."

He was watching her, reading her face, trying to work something out, who she was or why they were whispering.

"Do you know me, Michael?"

"Yes," he said.

"Who am I?"

"A doctor."

She stopped and looked at him. "Who are you?"

"I'm… mm." He chopped forward with his hand again, forgetting what they were talking about. "A doctor?"

"You're in a hospital but you're not a doctor. What are you?"

"I'm in. Nurses? Nurses? I make nurses?"

The burning in her hand subsided. He wasn't addled with medication: it always left a blurriness in the eyes. She heard the clatter of a trolley being pushed a long way away. They had to get out of the corridor.

As they hurried along she tried to remember what Doyle had said. Leave the knife, but wipe it first. Take the knife out when Michael was looking away. Phone someone when she got in, talk about the court case tomorrow or something. Just as they arrived at the door to the disused wing of the hospital, she suddenly wondered how Doyle knew about the case tomorrow.

Maureen pushed open the door and stepped down into a fog of stale, damp air. Blinking to adjust her eyes to the gloom, she could hear her heart beat. Michael followed her, dropping the step to the corridor. He stumbled, letting out a little frightened exclamation. She reached out and caught him under the arms and wondered what the hell she was doing here, stealing this confused old man with Liam's eyes. He stood upright and she turned away from him. This wasn't the time to think – she'd been thinking about it for a year already. But Michael hadn't been real then: he hadn't been as small and he hadn't been confused. Don't look at him, she told herself, steeling herself against humanizing pity. Don't think about it, just do it.

The room wasn't hard to find. Maureen followed the floor of broken tiles down to a window, looked left and right and found the corner room. She pushed open the door and ushered Michael in ahead of her as Doyle had told her to, reaching for the knife in her pocket. Doyle had been right about the room. It was bright but the window was covered by the fervent growth outside. The floor was covered in dust and rubble, crunching underfoot. It felt like the mental rehearsals of killing him, but Michael had been taller in the fantasy, stronger and scary, not this frightened and bewildered little man. He looked back at her for reassurance and she urged him onward, thinking of the baby: that was why she was here. She was doing it for the wean.

She pulled the knife from her pocket and stepped towards him. He was pointing at something on the ground, trying to ask about it but forgetting the words: "Whatsits, it-it?"

She had the knife in her hand, raised the tip to his back, and a chink of light caught her eye. It was outside the window, just outside, inches outside, a bit of glass catching the light. Mark Doyle was outside the window, crouching among the foliage, holding a small video camera to the hole in the broken pane and filming her. He had knives in his eyes.