Resolution

Chapter 45

PAULSA was agitated. He seemed not to have had his medicine that morning and was pacing the stuffy room, watching the door. Spontaneous droplets of sweat popped onto his forehead and top lip. He was licking them away, a habit Shirley found disgusting. Maureen could see her across the room, watching him, grimacing when he did it. Maureen wanted to tell him what Liam had told her, that they were defense witnesses, they'd be the last to give evidence, but the more upset he was the better it was for her.

Leslie had bought bandages for Maureen's arms and put them on her this morning, securing the ends with little elastic clasps. Some of the wounds were open, itching and festering. Leslie had washed them gently in salt water before vomiting in the sink.

Maureen went back to reading a newspaper she had picked up when she was buying cigarettes. It was a local newspaper and she hadn't noticed that it was a special sports edition. The back page crept towards the front, buffeting the central pages, and there was little for her to read in it. In the "News in Brief" column she saw a headline that caught her eye. A body had been found up at Gartnavel Royal and police were treating the death as suspicious. The paragraph underneath gave scant detail, adding nothing to the headline but times and the fact that Stewart Street were conducting the investigation. Joe McEwan and Liam had definitely seen each other.

Maureen guessed that she wouldn't be called today. She began reading, dragging her eyes over a long article about football funding, and before she had digested half of it, they were called for lunch.

Kilty and Leslie were waiting in the lobby again with Winnie and George, Liam and Vik. Shan had had to go to work, apparently, but he'd be back in the afternoon. They went down to the canteen and ate sandwiches together. Maureen looked around the table and felt very lucky, having them all here, chatting to one another and getting on well. She saw Liam was looking tired and drawn and wanted to comfort him, but couldn't until he told her.

They were smoking on the stairs outside, Kilty and Vik having a good-natured argument about Kosovo with Leslie interjecting supporting arguments for each side, when Liam took her aside. "The night before last," he said casually, "what did you do?"

Maureen pretended to try to remember. "I fell asleep and woke up and couldn't get back to sleep," she said.

"So, you didn't go out?"

"No. Leslie was there with me. And Kilty. We all slept in the living room. Why are you asking?"

Liam looked down his nose at her. "Just asking."

She should push it: he'd be suspicious if she wasn't suspicious. "It's a strange thing to just ask. Where were you?"

"At Siobhain's house," he said, "watching a video."

They sat smoking and looking out at the sunny green.

"I really love her, Mauri."

Mauri looked at him, at his curly black hair and straight nose, at the prematurely aging skin beneath his eyes. "I'm glad, then," she said. "I hope ye stay together for the longest time and are really happy."

Liam smiled up at her. "Really?" he said, touched and pleased.

"Yup."

Liam grinned and stretched out a leg in front of him, looking away down the road and then back at her. "I'm thinking about asking her to marry me."

"Oh, fuck off," snapped Maureen.

"Hey, you said you were pleased," said Liam, raising his voice.

"You've known each other all of two minutes," shouted Maureen.

Everyone on the steps was looking at them.

"We'd have a long engagement," said Liam earnestly.

She found herself laughing. "A long engagement?" she repeated.

Liam thought about it and laughed too. "Yeah," he grinned, "a long engagement."

"Who are you, the Duchess of Argyll?"

"You. Hello."

Maureen turned and found Suicide Tanya staring down at her. She was wearing a grotesquely feminine Laura Ashley dress with a rosebud pattern on it, tottering in a pair of battered court shoes with a worn-down heel. Maureen suspected that Laura might have meant her to wear a bra with the dress: the cloth belt around the waist strained under the weight of her breasts. Next to her stood a pencil-thin myopic man wearing women's glasses, a dirty gray T-shirt and a Confederate soldier's hat. "Suicide, how are ye?"

"Aye," shouted Tanya. "This is Reb. He's my partner."

Maureen nodded at him. "How're ye?"

Reb didn't nod back. His glasses were so thick Maureen doubted he knew where he was. "This is my brother," she said and, turning to introduce him, saw that Liam was at once enchanted and repulsed by Tanya and her beau.

"Hiya," shouted Tanya. "I've seen Angus."

"Very good," said Maureen. "Were ye in the court, then?"

Everyone on the stairs was watching Tanya now. She was hard not to watch. As she turned to tug the elasticized sleeve from the groove in the fat of her arm, Maureen saw that the dress wasn't even done up properly. A couple of token buttons had been fastened but the waves of fat on her back tugged the material this way and that, leaving gaping holes of stretched red skin. Maureen realized she was witnessing the sexual awakening of Suicide Tanya. At the bottom of the stairs two young men in suits were sniggering at her, one covering his face with a fat hand, and Maureen suddenly felt precious about her. "You look lovely, Tanya," she said, inadvertently prompting a grin from Liam and some journalists standing nearby. "Have ye been going out together for long?"

Tanya blanked the pathetic attempt to patronize her. "Angus Farrell's a murderer and murdered Douglas," she shouted.

"I know, Tanya."

"It was in the paper. Reb telt me. Are you going to the court to look at him?"

"Dunno," said Maureen. "Are you going back in?"

"Yes. Later," said Tanya, shoved her hand into Reb's and reeled away down the stairs towards the road.

"Who or what was that?" asked Liam quietly.

Maureen explained that Suicide Tanya had been at the Rainbow Clinic and had introduced her to Siobhain. She kept trying to kill herself and was something of a celebrity among the emergency services. The last time Maureen had heard of her, Suicide was being hoisted off a shed roof in Shettleston by the fire brigade.

"Reb seemed like a nice guy," he said facetiously.

"I like Tanya," said Maureen, raising her voice so everyone else on the stairs could hear her. "She knows people are laughing at her – it hurts her. They put her on this medication to stop her killing herself and she can't control her voice and it makes her a bit thick."

"Sorry," said Liam. "She certainly cuts a dash, though."

Maureen relaxed a bit and watched Tanya leave. "I've seen her wearing a backless gold halter-neck," she whispered, and Liam winced. Maureen watched her undulating back disappear through the gate and reflected that even Suicide Tanya was sustaining a relationship with a man.

When Shirley, Paulsa and Maureen had gathered in the room again after lunch the police officer came through and asked them to come with him. He led them through the lobby, past the door of the court Angus was appearing in, and along a corridor to a small door with the number "1" on it. "Where are we going?" asked Shirley.

"This is the prosecution waiting room," said the officer, as if that meant anything to any of them. Maureen and Paulsa nodded to each other, trying to show they weren't completely out of their depth. Shirley, who wasn't out of her depth, didn't bother trying to convince anyone of it.

It was a larger, windowless room with seats bolted to every wall. Overhead lights were muffled by a dropped panel. On each of the four walls hung an indistinct impressionist print in a thin gold frame. A smaller door at the back of the room had a stern notice on it, prohibiting unauthorized entry.

One hour into the afternoon Shirley was called to give evidence, leaving Maureen alone in the small room with fraught Paulsa. This, she suspected, was exactly what he had feared. As the door shut behind her Paulsa sniggered like a teenager on a frightening first date. Maureen pretended not to notice and went back to making up words that would fit into the spaces of the crossword. He sniggered again. "Are you trying to get my attention?" she said, without looking up.

"Nut," he said petulantly.

"What are they going to make you say out there?"

"In the court?"

"Yeah, in the court."

Paulsa lifted his bony shoulders past his ears.

"Won't be good for me, though," she said, "whatever it is."

"Doesn't matter," Paulsa said, in a high voice. "You're not on trial, are ye?"

"No," she said, "I'm not. Are you going to tell them Liam gave me the acid?"

"God, shit, no." Paulsa moved across the room, sitting one chair away from her, leaning over confidentially "They're going to ask me about the acid you bought from me."

Maureen lowered her paper. "You're not mentioning Liam in your evidence?"

"No. Just about the acid you bought from us. They've got me on another charge. I haven't got a choice."

She smiled at him, relieved. "I understand that, Paulsa, I won't hold it against ye."

"Liam will but."

"Paulsa, Liam's retired."

"But you're his sister. He'll fucking kill me."

They were let go at half four and Maureen watched Paulsa slope off out of the building. Liam was in the clear, they weren't even going to mention him.

Minutes ago Angus had been no farther away than through that door. Maureen remembered him listening to her describe the incidents with Michael, giving her cigarettes and tissues, telling her how not to die five times a day, handing her a future. He was a pragmatist, wasn't interested in connecting or empathizing, just focused on practicalities and problem solving. He was through the door and it meant nothing to her. She went outside for a cigarette.

As the door opened to the green, Maureen smelled the sweet grass and saw the yellow sun dancing across the roofs of passing cars. The soft breeze caressed her face, brushing her hair back like a kind mother; the sun warmed her itchy arms and loosened her tired neck. Here she was, she thought, content and enjoying whatever she could, living her dream.

A man walked along the dark road at the top of the hill and turned into the park, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched around his ears. Ten yards past the gates he disappeared into a thicket of bushes. A big moon hung over the blue city and Kilty, Leslie and Maureen were sitting very still, heavy hearts beating quickly, wishing they could smoke or drink or leave.

Liam had phoned Maureen at home, telling her that something had come up and he might not be in court tomorrow morning. He sounded stiff and strange but she didn't want to press him. It would be a complication to do with Michael and she didn't want to take in another shred of information. She couldn't stop thinking about Liam now, wondering where he was and what had happened, wondering whether she should have asked.

"That's forty minutes," said Kilty, under her breath. "Maybe they're not coming at all."

Neither Maureen nor Leslie answered. They had both decided that they weren't coming but didn't want to leave yet, just in case.

"What if we-"

"Ssh," said Leslie. "Another twenty and then we'll go."

"I need the loo," said Kilty.

"Just wait," said Maureen.

Another ten minutes passed and they were wriggling around, shuffling their numb buttocks on the cold step, when three cars and a large white van came round the corner, lighting up the Park Circus Health Club with their headlights. They stopped in the street and all the doors opened, everyone piling out and running up the stairs to the door. They didn't bother to knock – they had a big metal bar with handles on it and smashed the door open at the first try, shouting that they were the police and to stop.

In the hall a woman turned and ran, the yucca plant got knocked over and everyone was shouting, women screaming, doors being smashed in, orders to stop. All around the genteel square lights went on and people came to windows to watch the furor, squinting out into the darkness. A woman at a third-story window was holding a baby. She smiled and said something to a man standing at her shoulder. Two neighbors spotted each other at their windows across the square and waved.

Aggie Grey had tipped them off. The police had informed her of their timetable so she could get there with the photographer and do their media department's job for them. When she had passed it on she told Maureen it was top secret and she had to sit somewhere that the police wouldn't see her. She told Maureen to sit in the dark, not to move, smoke or do any bloody thing that would draw attention to herself. Everything Maureen had told her had checked out, from the agency in Warsaw to the Newcastle connection. Aggie said she had even found a file interview with an anonymous woman who had been through the network and managed to get away while she was in Dublin. She was still trying to source the interview but they had enough confirmation to run the story anyway.

Aggie was standing at the bottom of the stairs, a photographer at her side. He raised his camera in readiness and waited, setting off flashes as the police began to filter out of the club's smashed door, bringing with them skinny women in thrown-on clothes, one holding a bandaged hand in front of her. The bodybuilder had a surgical collar on and his massive arms cuffed behind his back. Two or three men were hustled into the back of the van, covering their faces or looking away.

When all the noise and bustle was done, when the cars had shut their doors and driven away and the van had left the square, when the neighbors had finished waving and shrugging to one another, the three women were left alone on the stairs. Leslie lit a cigarette. "Good one," she said.