Hugh
She stood on the steps of the church and tried to work out where the entrance was. He had said Thurso Street but St Francis was on Lorne Street. She walked down the hill to Thurso Street and leaned round the corner. A fence of high iron railings blocked the back from the road. She went back up the steps of the church and looked in through the open doors. A glass wall had been constructed five feet inside the chapel with doors on either side to keep out the cold and provide a soundproof area for noisy children.
The high altar was a white moulded wall of saints on a background of pseudo-Gothic drapery. The front two pews were busy with penitents, sitting down awaiting confession or kneeling on the far side of the aisle from the confessional boxes with their heads bent intently, doing their penance. Just inside the glass wall, on the very back bench, knelt a white-haired woman wearing an old-style black mantilla. She was saying her rosary, her windswept arthritic fingers flicking through the jet beads wrapped around her hand, her lips quivering as she recited the ‘Glory Be’, her pious head bent low.
Maureen looked to left and right. A small dark-wood door on the right-hand side of the entrance was slightly ajar. She walked over to it and pushed it open, peering round the corner. It was a long, narrow corridor running the full length of the chapel. She walked halfway down it before realizing where she was going.‘It’ll hardly be in the fucking sacristy,’ she muttered to herself, cursing for badness’ sake, because she was in a chapel and didn’t belong there.
Rather than knock on the parochial house door and ask where the meeting was, she decided to walk all the way round the church until she found the entrance. She discovered a dark alley between the next-door primary school and the back of the chapel and put her hand in her pocket, wrapping it around her stabbing comb before stepping into the dark. Bright trip-lights turned on as she walked down the narrow zigzag alley. She found herself at the top of a flight of steps. Straight in front of her was a small rickety wooden door covered in blistered brown gloss. A light shone out from under it. She trotted down the stairs and listened at the door. Someone was speaking– a woman was telling a funny story or something. Another voice interrupted her, a man’s voice. Maureen knocked on the door. The voices stopped and the door opened. A tall blonde woman wearing a smart black office suit looked out at her and smiled politely.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked in a lyrical, upper-class English accent.
The room behind her was very shabby. The concrete floor was bare and the cupboard under the sink unit had lost its doors. Patches of plaster were crumbling on the wall and the thick layer of blue paint looked as if it was holding the wall up. Maureen felt as if she had stumbled on a coven. ‘I’m looking for a guy called Hugh McAskill.’
The woman smiled pleasantly and leaned back into the room.‘Hugh, love, it’s for you.’
Hugh McAskill came to the door, beaming when he saw her. She grinned back, overjoyed to see him and his gappy teeth and his gold and silver hair.
‘Are you here for the meeting then?’ he asked.
‘Naw,’ she said, trying to disguise her delight.‘I just came to see ye.’
‘Come away in and get a cup of tea.’ He stepped back into the dingy room. The English woman looked disgruntled.‘It’s all right,’ he said.‘She’s one of us, she just doesn’t want to come up to the meeting yet, that's all.’
Maureen walked in and shut the door behind herself. The floor was angled slightly, tipping towards a drain in the middle of the floor; she could feel her calf muscles compensating for the gradient. Some smoked-glass cups, a plate of expensive chocolate biscuits and a steaming urn were sitting on a wobbly table. Four other middle-aged women were standing around in a group at the end of the room, looking at Maureen with benign curiosity. They stepped forward one at a time and introduced themselves by their first names.
The door opened behind Maureen and a ridiculously tall man in his early twenties came in, dipping his head under the low doorway.‘Hello, everyone,’ he called, looking around the room until he found the plate of biscuits. He made straight for them, picking up three and eating them whole. He looked at Maureen.‘Who are you?’
‘I’m Maureen O’Donnell.’
‘Are you an incest survivor?’
‘Um, yeah,’ she said, frowning and wishing he’d mind his own fucking business. His manner was so insistently cheerful that Maureen suspected she was looking at a profoundly unhappy man.
‘There’s no need to be embarrassed about that here,’ he said, grinning through a mouthful of chocolate crumbs. ‘We’ve all been fucked by our families.’ He looked at her, expecting some sort of response but she couldn’t think of anything to say. ‘Great,’ she said.
McAskill pulled her aside, turning her so that her back was to the happy-sad man.‘What did you want to see me about?’ he said softly.
She lowered her voice, talking into his chest.‘I just wondered if Joe McEwan got a phone call of some kind . . . maybe from an exotic holiday destination?’
McAskill tilted his head back and laughed. She could see his fillings.‘You don’t give up, do you? D’you know Joe McEwan wants to throttle you? We’ve got a high-pro file case and a nutter shouting about fire.’
‘Angus’s prints matched the ones on Martin, then?’
‘Yeah, perfect, he even had one of those big knives with him.’
‘Where?’
‘In the leather bag.’
She rolled her eyes and breathed,‘Fuck.’
McAskill sighed along with her ‘You’re a lucky wee bugger, you,’ he said.
She nodded.‘Not half. What made McEwan think it was me?’
‘Well, you slipped surveillance and your prints were all over the note. They were pretty smudged, though. The nurse at the cottage hospital managed to hold the note in about fifty different ways before phoning us.’
McAskill smiled at her and she thought she might chance her arm.‘Can I ask you something, Hugh? Something about the case?’
He looked uncertain.‘Depends.’
‘Why did you stop looking for someone available in the day-time? Why did you start thinking it happened in the evening?’
He was stunned.‘How do you know about that?’ ‘Auch, I just do.’
He looked hurt.‘Are you talking to someone else?’
‘No, it’s just . . . I noticed that ye were asking about the day-time and then, about the second time McEwan interviewed Liam, you started asking about the evening.’
‘Oh,’ said McAskill, thinking it through.‘Right enough.’ He looked despondent.‘’Member the thing in the hall cupboard?’ ‘Yeah.’
‘It was decaying at a different rate from the rest of it. The timing was all messed up.’
‘Oh,’ she said, wishing to fuck she hadn’t asked.‘I see.’
‘Anyway,’ he said,‘McEwan thinks you did it to wind him up.’
‘Yeah, everything I do is about Joe McEwan.’ McAskill eyed her with earnest admiration.‘You did it for her, didn’t you, for your pal?’
Maureen didn’t want to talk about her motive just yet. She had been doing it for Siobhain and the other women right up to the moment when she ran forward and nutted him.‘Yeah. A bit. Anyway,’ she said, scratching her scalp, digging her nails deep into the skin,‘Joe’s annoyed but he’s not coming after me for anything?’
‘No, we couldn’t prove anything. The guy’s a mess but he’s got LSD all over his mouth and in his throat. We can’t say he didn’t take it himself. All we had was a drunk man in a chip shop who saw three strange women. The prints on the note are useless. There’s nothing we could do.’
‘God, I was lucky,’ she said, almost to herself.
‘Aye, you’re that, all right,’ he said.‘He fell over by the way, smashed his nose.’
A hot blush rose up the back of her neck.‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said perfunctorily.
‘Do ye want a biscuit?’ He leaned over, snatched the plate away from the young man and held them out to her. The chocolate was bitter and dark and so thick that when her teeth sank into it they caused a tiny vacuum.‘God in Heaven,’ she said.‘They’re lovely.’
‘Aye,’ said McAskill, looking lovingly at his biscuit.‘We get these every week.’ ‘Where is he now?’
‘Who, Joe?’
‘No, the guy from the exotic holiday destination.’
‘In Sunnyfield.’
‘The mental hospital?’
He shook his head solemnly.‘It’s not a mental hospital, it’s a state mental hospital.’ ‘What’s the difference?’
‘The public gives a damn about people in mental hospitals.’
‘Didn’t think it would last that long. It’s been five days.’
‘Yeah,’ said McAskill,‘ye can’t tell how long LSD’ll take. Anyway, he’s been charged so he’s going nowhere.’
The English woman in the black suit opened a little door in the wall. It led to a wooden spiral staircase.‘That’s us, everyone,’ she said.‘That’s eight o’clock.’
The waiting crowd picked up their cups of tea and made their way, single file, up the stairs.‘Sure you won’t come?’
‘Naw, Hugh, another time.’
‘You might enjoy it.’
‘Yeah, there's some stuff going on in my family . . . If I come upstairs I’ll just have to think about it and my head might burst.’
McAskill looked at her respectfully.‘I doubt that somehow. Come back though, eh? If only for the biscuits.’ She poked him softly in the ribs.‘I’ll come back to see you.’
He grinned.‘You do that.’
He watched her as she walked out into the brightly lit alley and pulled the door closed behind her.