"No, it's a sin. She was over the other day. Mum's telling everyone I'm crazy. She said I might have killed Douglas and not remembered."
Leslie ladled the stew into bowls. "I think you should stay the fuck away from her. No offense, I know she's your mum and everything, but she's-"
"I know, Leslie, you don't have to say it out loud."
"You should, though."
"I know, but she's the only parent I've got and you need at least one."
It was a fine night and Leslie liked eating hot food in the open air so they put their jackets on and took the stew out onto the veranda, sitting in the dark on old stained deck chairs, knee-deep in a forest of dead plants. The stew was thick and salty. The veranda overlooked a patch of waste ground with irregularly undulating hillocks, bald and strewn with litter. Children were shouting and chasing each other around, apparently without purpose, as a flamingo pink sunset bled into the navy blue night.
Maureen finished her stew. The waste ground was emptying, most of the children going home to their tea. Three or four hung around, silhouetted against the dying light, kicking at the ground and talking to each other. She huddled inside her big overcoat, wrapping her hands around the glass of beer as though it would warm her, and lit a cigarette. "What are you going to do about the shelter, then, if the appeal fails?"
Leslie dunked a folded slice of buttered bread in the hot gravy in her bowl. "I have not one fucking clue," she said. "We've got a meeting with the subcommittee next week. We should've got a lawyer in the first place but the action committee were against it, said we'd save a week's running money if we did it ourselves. What are you going to do about Douglas?"
"I dunno either," said Maureen. "The police don't seem very sharp. They totally missed Suicide Tanya and the photograph in the paper. They must have missed other stuff too, things I didn't stumble across."
"Yeah," said Leslie, combing through the thick gravy with her fork, looking for the meat. "I bet they did."
Maureen sipped her beer and watched Leslie biting a lump of meat off her fork. "Do you think I should leave it to the police?"
Leslie chewed a space in her mouth. "No, I don't. They'll charge you and if they don't get you they'll get Liam."
"That's what I think."
Leslie swallowed. "The police don't have an infinite amount of time to spend on anything. They just go with the most obvious answer. You're both so dodgy-looking. Think about it, the two people who could get into the house. You've got a psychiatric history which you've already lied about, you were his mistress-"
"I wasn't his mistress"
"That's what they'll call it and they probably can't conceive of a woman who doesn't want to get her man and keep him. And Liam, heavy guy, dealer, public enemy number one, wee sister seeing married older guy. Gets protective and kills him."
Maureen slumped in her deck chair. "They'd planted footprints with my slippers and they did something in a cupboard. It's the cupboard Liam found me in before he took me to hospital."
"In the same cupboard?"
"Yeah, same one."
"Who the fuck knew that? I didn't even know that."
"No one did. Just me and Liam."
"Which means one of you told someone else. Did Douglas know? Could he have told someone?"
"Not that I remember. Christ, I'm really fucked. Whoever did this really knew how to pick a winner."
Leslie wiped her bowl clean with a slice of bread. "He's not daft, is he? You need to find him in case he finds you first. You should carry something in your bag to protect yourself."
"What, like a knife?"
"Oh, for Christ sakes, no. The police could arrest you if they found it." She lit a cigarette. "Hair spray, you can spray it in his eyes, or one of those metal combs, you know, the ones with the pointed ends. I've got one."
She collected the dirty bowls and clambered over Maureen's legs to get into the house. When she came back she had the comb with her. She handed it to Maureen. It was stainless steel, with a long tapered handle ending in a rounded point. "Once you've sharpened that end rub it with oil to make all the metal the same color."
Maureen took it. "I think I'd freeze."
"No, you won't," said Leslie. "Just remember what he did to Douglas. He's a vicious bastard so don't flinch and don't wait for him to hurt you first." She climbed back over Maureen's legs, the tip of her cigarette leaving a glowing crimson trace against the dark sky, and sat down in her deck chair.
"I don't understand why they'd plant footsteps with my shoes and maybe even fix the timer but do it while I was at work."
"Yeah. Maybe it was just a mistake."
"It's a bit of a big mistake."
"Yeah, that doesn't mean it isn't one. Remember Benny told us that story about the gangsters who killed the guy in the woods? They burnt the face off to stop him being identified, cut off his hands and took a hammer to his teeth. When the police found him the guy had his rent book in his back pocket. Remember that?"
The night and the punch line floated through Maureen's memory like a warm breeze. It was Benny's first AA birthday and they didn't know how to help him celebrate. They couldn't take him to a bar. It was in the height of the sticky summer and they drove up to Loch Lomond with the roof down on Liam's Herald. The sun was setting and Leslie built a fire by the water as the sharp night came on. They ate Marks and Spencer's sandwiches, drank ginger and told their best stories as giant, glistening dragonflies hummed and swooped between them.
"I was thinking about the three phone calls to my work. Liz doesn't know Douglas's voice particularly well. It might've been them trying to see if I was there."
"And she said you weren't there?"
"Yeah. But, then, just because I wasn't there doesn't mean I wasn't anywhere that would give me an alibi."
"Yeah." Leslie drew on her fag and looked out over the waste ground, surveying her land. "Like I said, the guy could have made a number of daft mistakes. Why do they all think he was giving you money?"
"Some money's gone missing, I think, and they're assuming he gave it to me."
Maureen sat forward in the deck chair and drew deeply on her fag, flicking the ash over the edge of the veranda. Leslie leaned over and pulled her back into the chair.
"Don't do that," she said. "Sometimes the weans hide under here."
"Why?"
" 'Cause they can't go home."
"Sorry."
" 'S all right. So why's your mum talking about Michael?"
"Fuck," said Maureen slowly, scratching her scalp hard enough to hurt. "I don't know, I don't want to think about what Winnie's been up to. That makes me more nervous than the fucking murder."
"Fair enough, doll," said Leslie, patting her on the knee. "We'll not talk about that. I'm freezing."
Maureen stood up, eager to change the conversation. "I'll get the whisky out, then, yeah?"
"Aye."
She went into the kitchen and took the bottle from under the sink. None of Leslie's glasses matched. Maureen lifted a stolen half-pint glass and a plastic Barbie doll tumbler from the draining board. She poured four fingers into the half-pint and swallowed it in two gulps, the warm whisky aftershock floating up her nose. Back out on the veranda she gave Leslie the Barbie glass and poured a generous measure. "There you are, in your favorite glass as well."
"Great, Mauri. I hope you'll be getting me another one for my birthday this year."
"By the time ye retire I promise you'll have the whole dinner set."
They settled down in the deck chairs, sipping their whisky and smoking cigarettes. "I'm drinking all the time," said Maureen.
"I don't think alcohol abuse is a bad way to cope with short-term traumas."
Maureen laughed with surprise. "That's the worst advice you've ever given me."
Leslie thought about it. "Oh, well, fuck it, then."
The kitchen gulp hit Maureen's head and she felt a wave of purposeful clarity coming on. "I don't want to sit about holding a comb and waiting for them to come for me. How would you go about finding the person who did this?"