"I most certainly did not."
"Well, she told me she got it from the police. Her assistant turned up at the door and nearly scared the living shit out of me." She was talking very fast, very angry.
McEwan looked at McAskill. McAskill looked confused and shook his head.
"We'll look into that," said McEwan.
"And you told her that my family were unsavory." She was glad to be on the offensive, glad she had something to pull him up about. "We're as savory as any other family in this city…" She sounded ridiculous.
"As I said," McEwan reiterated, "we'll look into it. If someone did give her the address it was against my express orders. Anyway, I made it perfectly clear I didn't want you to wait for Elsbeth. Why did you talk to either of them?"
"Look," she said, "I'm a failed Catholic woman, I feel guilty all the time anyway. I was shagging her husband and Carol Brady's son died in my living room. What the fuck am I going to do when they ask me to speak to them? Spit?"
McEwan warmed at the mention of Catholicism. McAskill didn't look up. He might be a Protestant. He might not give a shit. Maureen hoped it was the latter.
"When did Carol Brady approach you?" asked McEwan.
"Urn, Saturday night. She sent her assistant to Benny's to tell me I was having lunch with her the next day. I was freaked enough as it was. Those bloody journalists had been at my work-"
"Did you give them the picture that was in the paper yesterday?"
She moved her chair back and recrossed her legs. "No, my mum did."
"Did you tell her to do it?"
"No," she said, uncrossing them.
"Why did she, then?"
Maureen held up her hands. "The ways of Winnie are many and varied."
McEwan suppressed a derogatory snigger. "I spoke to your mum."
"Oh, yeah?" she said, wanting to slap him for implicatively slagging her mammy. "I heard she was in here. She's a bit of a live wire."
McEwan grinned unkindly. "Yeah," he said. "She is."
"Unsavory," said Maureen. "Anyway, both Elsbeth and Carol were asking if Douglas gave me money."
"Did he give you money?"
She noticed that the conversation was getting faster and faster and she was wiggling about in her chair. Slow, slow, she told herself, slow. "No," she said, probably too slowly. "No. He tried to pay my mortgage a couple of times but I wouldn't take it."
"He 'tried'?"
"Yeah, but I wouldn't let him."
McEwan was perplexed. "Why?"
"I didn't want to be beholden to him."
He frowned, tried to understand for a millisecond and then gave up. "I thought that was one of the good things about being a woman," he said flirtatiously.
"But nothing's for nothing, is it?" she said, puzzled by his attitude. And it hit her. That was how certain he was: he was talking fast and flirting with her, letting his guard down every which way. He didn't give a shit what she thought anymore. They'd cautioned Liam, too, and McEwan thought he had them.
She faked calm and glanced at the tape recorder. Her eyes fell on McAskill's hands, one on top of the other, resting on the table. He lifted a finger, signaling to her to look up. His face was sad and soft. He blinked his blue eyes slowly and when he opened them again he was looking at the table.
"Are you a feminist?" asked McEwan, acting surprised and dragging her back to the game.
"Yeah," said Maureen, feeling genuinely calm, as if she'd absorbed some of Hugh's tired dignity.
McEwan laughed. "I thought you liked men," he said.
"Yeah, feminists don't like men and Martin Luther King picked on white people. You don't know many feminists, do you, Joe?"
"No," he said, oblivious to her supercilious attitude, "but I know what they look like and they don't look like you." He pointed openly to her large tits and looked away, leaving Maureen – and McAskill – aghast. He knew he'd offended her but he didn't give a shit. "Still, your political beliefs would allow you to accept cash."
"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.