G03 - Resolution (4 page)

“Yeah,” said Maureen, “but it’s only in history of art.”

“Don’t care about that.” Home Gran pointed Maureen onto a rickety kitchen stool, gave her a pen and an official-looking form. “I need this filled out.” It was a form to start a case in the small-claims court. The agile old woman squatted down to sit on the stall’s crossbar, five inches off the ground.

“I haven’t got anything to lean on,” said Maureen.

Home Gran reached underneath the stall and pulled out a rough scrap of hardboard. She had a bandage on her right hand, wrapped tightly around her wrist and her thumb.

Maureen had never really had a conversation with Home Gran but she knew the other stallholders were wary of her. Peter and Lenny had told Leslie that Home Gran was a retired prostitute. Her son had been a scholarship boy at a posh private school. The Parish Mothers had organized a petition against the place going to her boy because she was a streetwalker but, to the school’s credit, they kept him on and he went to university and studied management, no less. Maureen had heard of Home Gran walloping light-fingered shoppers across the head with the lid of her change tray. Sometimes she did it to innocent young guys on suspicion, prompting widespread disapproval: no one would come to the market if they thought they might get battered just for looking. But it was a slow day and Maureen had nothing else to do but go outside and dodge the sunshine. “Okay, then,” she said, pulling the lid off the Biro. “What’s your name?”

“Ella McGee.”

“Address?”

“Fifty-four, flat 12 D, Benny Lynch Court, Gl.”

The Gorbals had recently been renamed and rebranded for the third time in a century but the area had yet to lose its heroin-plague and slasher-gang reputation. The high flats were a reminder of a simpler time, when the area was a repository for the most difficult and troubled families in the city. Maureen had heard that the janny’s office was fitted with bulletproof glass. Ella muttered, “It’s not like ye think.”

Maureen moved on swiftly. “And who’re ye bringing the case against?”

Maureen waited, pen poised, but Ella didn’t answer. She looked up to find Ella with her bandaged hand raised, ready to give a slap.

“One word to anyone,” she said, but it sounded as if she was begging.

Maureen shrugged casually. “No odds to me,” she said, and pointed at Ella’s hand, “but raise your hand to me again and I’m off.” She went back to waiting to fill out the form and, out of the corner of her eye, saw Ella’s hand drop to her knee.

“Okay. It’s my son, Si.” She waited for a reaction but Maureen kept a straight face.

“Si McGee,” said Maureen. “Is that his full name?”

“No,” said Ella.

“Well, we should put his full name down.”

“Simon Alan Egbert McGee.”

“Egbert, is that a confirmation name?”

“Aye.”

Maureen hadn’t figured Home Gran for a Pape at all but now she looked at her and saw the heavy gold crucifix at her neck in a slightly less Versace light.

“Egbert.” Ella smiled weakly. “Silly bugger, eh?”

“There’s dafter names in the canon,” said Maureen, letting Ella know that she was Catholic too. Liam’s confirmation name, Mortimer, had been chosen out of a hat in collusion with four pals at school. It could have been worse: the other options were Crispin, Ado and Mary. Maureen marveled once again at the idiocy of allowing hysterical children to choose their own confirmation names. She left Egbert out of Si McGee’s name and moved on to the address box. She looked up at Ella expectantly, pointing at the page. Ella was watching her face. “Well?” said Maureen. “Where does he stay, then?”

“Twelve Bentynck Street, Bearsden,” said Ella.

“That’s a swanky address. Is there that much money in tapes?”

“Naw, he’s got different businesses.” Ella pointed to the tray of tapes above her head. “There’s not a lot of money in this. He just set me up to keep me out of the way of the buses.”

Maureen turned back to the form, pointing to the amount box. Ella was staring at her face again, trying to read something in it. She seemed determined not to look at the form. Maureen tapped the page with the pen and looked at her expectantly. Ella blinked and raised her drawn-on eyebrows.

“How much does he owe ye?” asked Maureen finally.

“Seven hundred pound.”

“How come?”

Crouched down on the crossbar, Ella looked like a withered child, hiding from angry adults. She lowered her voice. “Don’t tell?” Maureen shook her head and Ella looked at the floor, resting her chin on her knee as she drew a finger through the dust. “He hasnae been paying me,” she said softly.

“For working here?” whispered Maureen.

“Aye, and my cleaning I do for him in his shop.”

“Has he got money worries?”

“Nut. The shops are doing well. He’s not short, he just thinks there’s nothing I can do if he doesn’t pay me.” Uncomfortably, she gestured an elaborate rolling circle with her finger and stopped. “I’m getting benefit. If they knew I worked …”

Maureen had seen tourists hounded out of the flea market for raising a camera and knew that Ella’s position was not unique. ” Ye’d hardly get a balloon and a badge for that here, would ye?” she said, wondering why Ella was confiding all of this information in her at all. They didn’t know each other. She must have had closer friends in the market. Maureen wrote “loan” in the box, trying to keep her writing tidy. The hardboard she was leaning on was still gritty and she felt the pen crunch through dust, pitting the back of the page. She looked up and Ella was still drawing zigzags on the dusty floor. “What does your son sell in his shops?”

“This and that.” Ella waved her hand. “Houses, and wholesale stuff, ye know.”

“He’s an estate agent?”

“Aye, and other things.”

“Well, what business address should I put in here?”

Ella thought about it for a moment, looking at the floor. Her face contracted slowly, her lips tightened, eyes narrowed. “Park Circus Health Club, ninety-three Becci Street, Kelvingrove.”

“I didn’t know there was a health club there,” said Maureen, writing it down.

When she looked up again Ella was suddenly ancient. Maureen imagined her without the tracksuit, without the gold rings and the eyebrows and her glasses, and realized she must be much older than sixty. She was at least seventy. “And that’s where you clean, is it?”

“Aye.”

It wasn’t part of the form but Maureen was keen to know. “Why don’t ye just keep back the money from the stall?”

Ella harrumphed. “Wouldn’t cover it.”

“So you’re still handing over the money ye make here?”

“I’ve kept my side of the bargain.”

“Is he just avoiding ye, then?”

“Nut,” said Ella, turning her mouth down at the corners. “He’s threatened me.”

“With violence?”

“What else would he threaten me with — a holiday?”

Maureen dropped the board onto her lap and leaned forward. “Ella, that’s appalling,” she said seriously. “Did ye have a falling out?”

Ella nodded quietly. “Over a foreign woman. Not even a Scottish woman,” she said, as if that made a difference to the fight-worthiness of anyone.

“A girlfriend?”

Ella chewed the inside of her cheek.

“Have ye got any other kids?”

“A daughter.”

“Could she not talk to him for ye?”

Ella ignored her and sat up, straightening her back and pointing at Maureen. “Ye know what? Fuck them, I’ll go to court if I need to.”

Maureen thought back to her time working at the Place of Safety Shelters, remembered how unusual it was for family members to go all the way to court over anything, much less a small debt and a point of pride. “Up to you. Ye just need to sign this.” She held out the form but Ella shoved the hardboard back at her.

“You do it.”

“Well, it says here you have to sign it.” Maureen pointed to the box.

“Oh, Christ,” said Ella, getting flustered, “you fucking do it.” She stood up and turned away, busying herself with the tapes.

Maureen stood up behind her uncertainly. “You’ve to sign it, you’re bringing the case. I can’t sign for you.”

Ella McGee looked at her as if she were stupid. “Aye, ye can.”

Maureen stood up next to her. “Are ye afraid to sign it, Ella?”

“No,” she said emphatically, patting the Phil Collins tapes into a tidy row.

Maureen watched her turn away, looked at the back of her wrinkled neck and realized why Ella had confided in her. Ella couldn’t fill in the form herself because Ella couldn’t write. It would have been shaming to ask anyone else for help but Maureen was a newcomer to the market and Maureen didn’t count.

“Will I sign it, then?” said Maureen.

“Aye, you do that.”

Maureen considered signing Ella’s name but thought it might be fraudulent. She put down her own name and address. “Um, you’ll need to write an envelope and send it to the sheriff’s office.”

“You can do that, can’t ye?”

They looked at each other and Maureen nodded. “Aye, no bother, I’ll do it.”

She folded the form and went to brush past her, but Home Gran caught her by the flesh on her upper arm. “And you’ll come to the court with me, eh?” she said anxiously. “If it comes to that.”

Maureen didn’t want to. She had more than enough psychos in her own life without a man who’d threatened his seventy-year-old mother. They wouldn’t go to court — families don’t go to court. “Might not come to it,” said Maureen, squeezing past her.

“Aye, might not,” said Ella unconvincingly. “Eh, Pat by the river got raided yesterday.”

Maureen would have heard it from someone else anyway but she knew Ella’s telling her was a friendship gesture.

“Took all his fags away,” said Ella, “and he still needs to pay Sammy for them.”

“Nightmare. Thanks, Ella.”

“No bother,” said Ella, as if she’d done Maureen the favor. “By the way, wee Trish showed me your picture in the paper this morning. Ye look nice.”

“In the what?”

“You’re in the paper.”

Maureen bolted for the mouth of the tunnel and the bright sunshine.

The newspaper seller was hiding in the shadow of the high tunnel over the road, hollering headlines unintelligibly. The poster on the front of his stall read “Brady Trial Exclusive.” She bought the paper and read the front page. Angus Farrell had been declared fit for trial and had been charged with the murders of his colleague Douglas Brady and a hospital porter. The porter, Martin Donegan, had been twice the man Douglas ever was but his name wasn’t mentioned because his mother wasn’t famous. An old file photograph showed Carol Brady, the ex-MEP and victim’s mother, snarling into the camera. Mrs. Brady was quoted: “I am heartbroken,” claimed Brady. “He must never get out of Sunny fields.” Maureen had had an uncomfortable lunch with Carol Brady a year ago and knew her patterns of speech. Either she’d had a stroke in the interim or the journalist was making it up. A small inset photograph showed Maureen’s building from the outside, the black and gold Mars Bar advert above Mr. Padda’s shop visible in the corner. The close door was propped open in the picture, showing how insecure it was. Inside, on page five, they’d reprinted the photograph of Maureen on holiday in Millport. She was wearing a “Never Mind the Bollocks” T-shirt and shades, grinning as she held on to a rented tricycle. Liam and Leslie had taken her to the seaside for a holiday just after she got out of hospital. She was painfully thin but still recognizable. Any nutter with the price of a paper had her face, her name, a picture of her house and its approximate position in the city. Siobhain might see that headline, and God knew what it would do to her. Maureen felt the fight go out of her. It was too much, the baby and the trial at the same time. She leaned against the wall under the high arch, standing in the dark, pretending to read as she tried to get her nerve together. Angus Farrell was twice as smart as she was. He scared the shit out of her.

She leaned her bare shoulder against the crumbling cold wall and looked at the guddle of the market. Joe the Hawk was selling car stereos with the wires still hanging out the back. Lenny’s daft wee dog, Elsie Tanner, was sniffing a blanket someone had left in a gutter. Milling crowds gathered around stalls selling tights and biscuits, curling tongs and bits of stereos. Everyone was sunburned in a snapshot trace of their activities the day before: red necks and shoulders from gardening, red forearms with inside elbows cadaverous white where they’d been reading a book or sipping cups of tea. The true religious had full-on red faces and white garrote rings around their necks. Gordon Go-a-Bike waved to her from his perch and she waved back. Gordon sold greetings cards in the lane. He had something wrong with his legs and rather than stand still all day and make his condition worse he sat on an old exercise bike and worked his knees while he shouted at the passersby to get their cards here.

Maureen looked at the busy crowds of good people, looking for bargains and just the very thing. Not yet. None of it had happened yet. She dropped the paper to the ground. There was time enough for grief, she told herself, without rehearsing it for weeks in advance.

She stopped at Gordon Go-a-Bike’s stall, bought a packet of big brown envelopes, and he gave her a loan of a stamp. She addressed one, as the form instructed, to the Clerk of the Sheriff Court and nipped out to the street to post it. When she came back with the egg rolls Leslie asked her what Home Gran had been saying.

“She wanted me to fill out a form for her.”

“What form was it?”

“Urn, the council tax,” said Maureen, because she’d promised not to tell.

“Aye,” said Leslie. “It’s a bugger, that form.”

“Aye,” said Maureen. “It’s nice and cold in here.”

She lowered herself onto the wee stool and they sat complaining about their achy-breaky knees, staring at each other, and smoked the day away in their dark tunnel as another scorcher blazed across the city.

They were in the square waiting room next to the interview cubicles. Across the room a stocky prison officer nodded slowly to the guard sitting next to Angus Farrell, letting him know that he was watching.

It was an old part of the asylum building, refurbished with soundproof walls and remote-control security doors. The white strip-lights embedded in the ceiling were painfully bright and in each corner of the room red-eyed, whirring cameras watched every movement. Some patients could only be interviewed in the containment rooms, held behind a window while their lawyer shouted reassurance through toughened safety glass. Some were interviewed across a normal table. Whichever Angus got would give him a clue as to whether his lawyer trusted him. He had no other way of knowing. He was waiting for the man to arrive. In the past he’d had to wait here for up to an hour, poring over the events of last autumn.