Garnethill by Denise Mina (19 page)

"What are you talking about?"

"He gave you cash, though. You were happy enough to accept that from him, weren't you?"

"No. Where did you get that idea from? I didn't take money from him. I didn't want his money. I don't make a lot of money but it's mine and I manage."

McEwan reached into his pocket and pulled out a bank statement. Maureen recognized the red and blue type on the heading. He unfolded it and pushed it across the table to her.

It was a statement of her account. The last entry was a deposit of £15,000. It had been paid in on the day Douglas died. "That's a lot of money to you, isn't it, Maureen?"

"It's a lot of money," she whispered. "I didn't know . . ."

"Did he pay you not to tell his wife about your affair? Was that it?"

"I didn't know it was there."

"But you paid it in yourself."

"No. I didn't. Why did you say that?"

"It says your name on the paying-in slip."

"I didn't pay it in."

"As I said, Maureen, your name is on the paying-in slip."

"I was at work that day. I wasn't out of the office. How could I have paid it in?"

"The slip was signed 'M. O'Donnell.''

"I always write Maureen," she said very quietly. "Not 'M.''

McEwan made great play of taking out his notebook and reading something, rolling his lips over his gums. He looked up suddenly. "I heard about something that happened to your brother yesterday."

"Which particular thing?" said Maureen, her heart sinking.

"A police search? I take it you know about it?"

Maureen made a noncommittal noise and looked away.

"Your brother's a drug dealer, isn't he?" His voice was low now, a happy growl.

There was no point in denying it. They'd found the scent everywhere. Maureen looked back at McAskill's hands. His nails were short and clean; deep ridges were scored into the finger joints. "I wouldn't know anything about that," she mumbled.

"He doesn't tell you anything, is that right?"

"Absolutely." She nodded emphatically. "He tells me nothing."

McEwan smiled. "I expect he wants to protect you."

"I don't know why he doesn't tell me, he just doesn't."

"Is your brother very protective of you, Maureen?"

She could smell it coming, the accusation, and she didn't know how to sidestep it. "Not especially," she said.

"Oh?" said McEwan, feigning surprise. "But when you needed to go to hospital it was your brother who took you, wasn't it?"

"How is that protective?" she said, irritated by his stupid game and witless patter. "He found me sitting in a cupboard in a puddle of my own shit. What was he supposed to do?"

"I'm not saying what he did was wrong," said McEwan, uncomfortable with the image.

"No," she said. "But you're suggesting it's evidence of pathological protectiveness and I'm saying it was just ordinary decency."

McEwan leaned back and looked at her shrewdly. "I didn't say anything about pathological anything. Why did you say that?"

"I know what you're getting at," she said, a sick, hopeless panic rising from her belly. "Right? I know Liam and I know he didn't do it."

"Why would you think I was going to say that?"

"Because you mentioned the raid and then started talking about his relationship with me."

McEwan leaned forward over the table. His gestures were so assured, so certain, that Maureen wanted to punch him.

"Don't try and guess what I'm about to say, Maureen," he said carefully.

"So, I have to wait until you've finished the pantomime. Even though I know exactly what you're going to say."

She had ruined his big moment. "You don't know what I'm going to say," he said churlishly.

"Yes, I do."

"No, Maureen," he said, enunciating the words slowly. "You don't know what I'm going to say, you just think you do. I was asking about your brother's relationship with you. He is protective of you."

"Oh-no-he-isn't," chanted Maureen.

McAskill snorted a laugh.

McEwan was finally getting annoyed. "Just answer the questions, Miss O'Donnell. Don't try and get smart with me."

"You're a fucking arsehole."

McAskill lifted his head.

"I beg your pardon?" whispered McEwan.

"I said, you're a fucking arsehole. You're bullying and smug and patronizing and I don't like you."

McEwan spluttered, "Well, I'm sorry you feel that way."

"Yeah, so am I," said Maureen, taking out her fags and lighting one. She saw McEwan looking at the packet. She flicked it across the table to him. "Just take one, for fucksake, you make me nervous."

McAskill kept his eyes on the cigarette packet as McEwan pushed it purposefully back across the table and looked at Maureen defiantly. "You know, I really think if you wanted us to find the person who murdered your boyfriend—"

"You already said that."

"—you'd cooperate a bit more fully."

"You're not asking me to cooperate," she blurted. "You're asking me to be servile and accept intrusions into my life and tell complete strangers all my private business and my friends' business. It's horrible. I hate it."

McEwan took a packet of ten Super-delux low-tar cigarettes out of his pocket and put one in his mouth. Maureen watched him light it. "It still counts as smoking," she said, "even if you don't enjoy it."

McEwan snatched the fag out of his mouth, stood up and threw open the door, telling someone outside to bring tea. Now. He sat down. He was very annoyed. "We have to ask you questions," he said. "How are we going to find the person who did this if we don't ask any questions?"

"I know you have to," she said. "But I don't have to like it, do I?"

"I don't care whether you like it or not. I'm going to ask you questions and I want you to answer them honestly."

She nodded impatiently, rolling the ash off her cigarette against the inside of the pie-tin ashtray. McEwan looked her in the eye for too long. "Do you think your brother is a violent man?"

"No," she said.

"Well, we have evidence from a witness who said he beat her up two years ago." He sat back and watched Maureen's face fall.

"I don't believe you."

"You'd better believe me. She's downstairs now, I could bring her up if you like."

"Who?"

"A woman called Margaret Frampton. Do you know her?"

"Maggie?"

"Is she called Maggie?"

"Liam's girlfriend Maggie?"

"No, she may have been his girlfriend at one point but she isn't now, I don't think. Her nickname is Tonsa."

"Fucking Tonsa?" said Maureen, relieved and annoyed that it was the vacant crack courier. "You must know Tonsa, she's so wasted. Would you take her word against anyone's? She can't tell New York from New Year."

"She knows when she's being beaten up. She told us all about it."

"Yeah, and what did you tell her all about? The two years she'd get in Cornton Vale if she didn't say it?"

McEwan was genuinely insulted. McAskill had a curious look on his face, like a warning that she'd gone too far. It touched her, she respected him.

"All right," she conceded. "Look, Tonsa might have said that but there's no doubt in my mind that it isn't true. Ask her if she shot Kennedy, that's all I'm saying."

A knock on the door signaled the arrival of tea. A man in a startlingly white shirt came in, put down the tray and lifted the cups onto the table. Maureen took her tea weak and black without sugar. The young man had given her sugar and milk but she took it anyway, knowing that McEwan hadn't intended her to get a cup.

Still smarting from the insult, McEwan drew heavily on his super low-tar fag and stubbed it out.

"Did your brother know Douglas Brady?"

"He met him once."

"When?"

"Four months ago, I suppose. Liam came round to my house and Douglas was there."

"How long were they together for?"

"About fifteen minutes. Douglas was late for an appointment or something, he had to go."

"Was anyone else there?"

"No. Just the three of us."

"Right." McEwan wrote something down in his notebook. "Did you know Douglas was married when you got involved with him?"

"No."

"When did you find out?"

"Just recently."

"When?"

"I don't know. Recently." She picked up the cup of tea and took a sip. The milk in it left a cheesy coating on her tongue.

"We found this in your house." McEwan pushed a letter toward her. It was Douglas and Elsbeth's marriage certificate, the copy from the General Register, still inside the creamy envelope. "It's a copy of Douglas Brady and Elsbeth McGregor's marriage certificate ordered from the General Register," he said, for the benefit of the tape. "The envelope is postmarked two days before the murder. When did you receive it?"

"The day after it happened."

McEwan slapped his open hand hard on the table. "THAT WAS A STUPID LIE," he shouted. "DON'T LIE TO ME."

The letter had been addressed to her work. She had left it sitting in her handbag on the bedroom floor and McMummb had handed her the keys and wallet out of the bag. They knew she hadn't been in the bag since she found Douglas. It had to be before she found him. She sipped her cheesy tea. "Yes," she said. "It was a lie, I'm sorry."

She inhaled the last of her fag and put it out, wondering where the fuck Liam was and what they were saying to him and why.

McEwan wasn't questioning him. His boss might be questioning him, if he had a boss.

"When did you receive this letter?" asked McEwan.

"The day it happened. The day before I found him."

"Did you show it to your brother?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I didn't see him that day."

"So you've said."

"Ye didn't find his fingerprints on it, did ye?" she said triumphantly. "Did ye?"

"We haven't taken your brother's fingerprints yet. Why would you send off for a marriage certificate, I wonder?"

It was meant to be rhetorical. She decided to get in his face. "He told me he wasn't married. I thought he was lying so I sent off for a search on the Register. I'm sure the Registrar'll have a record of the request. I asked for a fifteen-year search."

"And that's how you found out he was married?"

"Yes."

"And what did Douglas say when you told him?"

"I didn't tell him. I never saw him alive again."

"That's right," said McEwan. "You didn't see him that day, did you?"

"No, I didn't."

"You've been consistent about that one point, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"As consistent as you were about not having been to the Rainbow for treatment." He turned the page on his notebook. "How did you feel when you found out he was married?"

"I kind of knew. That's why I wrote to the Registrar in the first place."

McEwan leaned over the table and repeated the question firmly. "How did you feel when you found out he was married?"

"Well, Joe," she said loudly, "I felt a bit stupid and then I felt tired and then I felt stupid again, all right?"

McEwan pointed at her. "Don't be cheeky," he said, his voice lowering an octave. He composed himself. "You didn't feel angry, at all?"

"Uff, if you get involved with men who are already spoken for, you deserve all you get, don't you?"

McEwan sat back and looked down his nose at her with a mean, lopsided smirk. "Is that right? And you weren't expecting him to leave his wife?"

"Look, I was four months out of psychiatric hospital when I met him, I was in a state. Even I knew I wasn't fit to pick a life partner."

"What do you mean? You didn't really like Douglas?"

Whatever she said sounded incriminating. She decided to come clean. "Look, Douglas was a sad middle-aged guy who couldn't keep his knickers on. I liked him and he was nice to me. I should never have got involved with him but I did because I was lonely and horny. I didn't want to see him anymore and the wedding certificate was the final straw. I wasn't upset about it. I wasn't pleased but I wasn't angry either."

McEwan was suddenly interested. "You intended to end the relationship?"

"Aye, but I wouldn't kill him or harm him in any way or have him harmed by anyone else. He was as nice to me as he knew how to be. That's all you can ask, isn't it?"

"Did you tell anyone you were going to finish the relationship?"

"Yeah, I told my pal Leslie and I told Liz at work."

"You didn't tell your brother?"

"No. Liam and I don't talk about things like that. He knew Douglas was living with someone else and he never asked much about him because he didn't take it seriously."

"Someone thought it was a serious relationship," he said pompously, folding his arms. "Serious enough to kill him in your house."

The conclusion didn't follow from the observation. Maureen told herself just to leave it. The sooner it was over the sooner she could see Liam.

McEwan raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "Here's what I think happened, Miss O'Donnell." This was what he had been building up to, this was his trump. "I think you were very upset when you received the letter telling you he was married. I think you threatened to tell his wife and he tried to pay you off but the money wasn't enough. You wanted him to leave her and come and live with you. I think you phoned your brother and told him."

"No, I didn't—"

"You invited Douglas to the house and let him in. Your brother came to the house. Maybe he just meant to threaten Douglas, make him think seriously about leaving his wife, and it just went too far."

"Oh, fuck. You're so wrong. You've no idea."

"We'll call you in if we need to speak to you again," he said. "Thank you, Miss O'Donnell."

Maureen was surprised. She looked at McAskill but he was looking at the tape recorder, away from her. "What are you going to do to Liam?" she asked.

"We're not
going to do
anything to him, we're going to talk to him. Is there anything else you want to tell me?"

McEwan looked at her as if he knew something. He was bluffing.

"I can't think of anything," she said innocently. "Who's questioning Liam?"