Maureen sighed and tapped her hand on the roof of the car.
"Are ye getting in?" he said, not seeming to understand her reluctance.
"Why would I get into a car with a man I don't know?" she said.
Shan frowned and looked hurt. "I'm not trying to abduct you," he said. "I thought you wanted to talk to me. I'll go away if you want me to, I didn't mean to scare you." He leaned over to shut the door but Maureen caught it with her foot. "No, really," he said firmly. "I'd really rather ye didn't get in now I've scared you."
"It's all right," said Maureen, feeling she had insulted him. "I'll get in."
"I left my work to come and talk to you. I don't want to hurt you."
Maureen opened the door and clambered into the car. Shan reached for the ignition key and paused. "You can still get out if you want," he said, watching the parade of slow-moving traffic passing in front of them.
"No," said Maureen, squeezing the comb in her pocket. "Really."
Shan pulled the Clubman into the traffic and crawled along the main street, stopping every three hundred yards at red lights. He turned the car left onto the motorway.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Away somewhere," said Shan. "Somewhere we won't be seen talking together."
"Why?"
He gave her a you-know look.
"Do you think I'm a policewoman?"
"I know exactly who you are," he said, and turned the music up.
They were on the motorway headed out to the flat Renfrew plain and the airport. The rain had cleared up and darkness was falling quickly, as it does in midautumn in Scotland. The big sky was a sudden pink smear.
They passed the lightbulb factory, Maureen's favorite building in Glasgow. It starts as an inauspicious concrete rectangular base with broad, square windows, and then soars into a glass-brick attic with a turret. Many of its windows have been smashed but, like one of the mystical secrets of geometry, it's still appealing. Shan saw her looking at it as they passed. "Do you like it?" he said, smiling as if it were his.
"Aye," said Maureen.
"Me too."
Farther along he took the slip road for the airport, drove under the motorway flyover and into the huge empty car park. He pulled up in a space directly across from the terminal doors. "Why did we have to come all the way out here?" asked Maureen.
"Paki guy with green eyes talking to a white lassie? There aren't many places in Glasgow where that wouldn't be noticed."
Shan locked the car and they took the zebra crossing over the empty road to the airport terminal. The automatic double doors opened in front of them and they stepped inside. The illuminated signs and posters lent the building an all-pervasive melancholy yellow light. Straight in front of them were the check-in desks, manned by heavily made-up women wearing silly hats. Above their heads the check boards told the number and destination of the next flight. A group of tall adolescent boys with Scandinavian Airlines stickers on their rucksacks were standing aimlessly in front of one of the desks. An electric cleaning cart trundled past, driven by a fat guy in overalls.
Shan veered off to the left, taking the escalator up to the second floor where the big cafe was, and Maureen followed him. It was a large space with about fifty tables arranged round a well-defended serving area in the middle. The tables were partitioned off into user-friendly spaces by flimsy white trestle walls with plastic vines hanging off them. At the center was an oval self-service island offering breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same time. The place was almost deserted.
Shan bought Maureen a coffee and chose a can of Irn Bru for himself. She noticed that he didn't look up at the woman tending the till.
They sat down at a table next to a glass wall overlooking the car park and the flyover. Shan opened his can and took a mouthful. "Jill McLaughlin phoned me," he said.
"Right," said Maureen.
"She said you phoned her on Sunday."
"Oh?" She blew on her coffee. It had been boiled and smelled of burnt plastic. A bing-bong overhead call announced a flight to Paris, Orly.
"I'm sorry about Douglas," he said.
"Thanks."
Shan sat back and looked at her, scratching his hairy forearm softly. His nails were long, yellowing and horny. He must play acoustic guitar. "D'you not want to talk about this?" he said sharply, bending his neck to catch her eye and bringing her gaze back up to his face. "I'm only here because I got the impression that you did."
"I do," she said formally, wondering who the fuck this guy was. "I'm sorry. Do you or Jill know why Douglas was killed?"
"I'm not spillin' my guts," he said sternly. "This is heavy stuff and I want to know who you are."
"I thought you knew who I was," said Maureen. "You said you knew in the car."
"Aye," he said. "I know your name, that's all. I want you to tell me what you know about this before I start talking about it."
"Fair enough. What is it you want to know?"
Shan sucked a tut through his big front teeth and drew a sharp breath. "I left my fucking work to come after you, yeah? I didn't need to do that."
"But you did."
"Yeah," he said indignantly, "I fucking did as well."
"Because I asked about Iona."
He nodded sadly. "Because of Iona."
Shan could have taken her to a field and slit her throat. No one had seen them, and he had no reason to bring her to the airport, where they might be seen together. There was no reason for him to talk to her, and he'd been so sweet when she didn't want to get into the car.
"I know Iona was at the Northern," she said. "I know she was on the George I ward during the incidents-"
"They were rapes," said Shan flatly. "Not incidents."
"Right, I wasn't sure about that. I know she was having an affair with someone at the Rainbow. Then she killed herself."
Shan waited, expecting more. When he realized there wasn't any more he dropped his can heavily onto the table. "That's what you know?"
"Yes," said Maureen, after a long pause. "That's what I know."
Shan watched his can as he turned it round on the tabletop with the tips of his fingers, tapping his long nails on the thin aluminum surface. He smiled unkindly at the can. "And you wanted to know who she was having an affair with? You were jealous in case it was Douglas?"
"No. I don't give a shit who she was seeing," Maureen said, pissed off at the suggestion that her motive was so puerile. "I just thought she might have been raped at the Northern and people seem to have known her. I thought she might have said something, given someone a clue about who did it. The rest of them can't seem to talk."
Shan looked up suddenly. "The rest of them?" he said softly. "Who have you seen?"
Maureen felt a rush up the back of her neck. She couldn't name them, she didn't know who Shan was, he might be the rapist, could be why he took the time to talk, he wanted to find out who she'd spoken to. He was sweet so she'd get into the car, that's why he was like that, he'd done this before. Her mind had gone blank, she couldn't think of a single lie. She felt inside her pocket for the beeper. McEwan said that it might take a few minutes for the police to arrive. She could be dead by then. She slid her hand into the other pocket, feeling for the stabbing comb. She found it and looked past him, scanning the third floor, looking for the cafe exits and ways out of the airport. No, stay in the fucking airport. She was on the bare, dark Renfrew plain with no car, little money and a comb to protect her. She looked out at the shadowy cars speeding past on the flyover, their pinprick lights leaving glimmer trails in the heavy dark, and squeezed the comb in her pocket. She felt one of the teeth break the skin on her palm. Shan was watching her. "Dunno." She clenched her teeth. "Dunno."
Shan frowned, his black eyebrows casting a dark shadow over his piercing eyes. "You won't tell me," he said. "You won't tell me their names?"
Maureen shook her head and squeezed again, breaking through another bit of skin. A Tannoy call announced the shuttle flight to Manchester. Shan leaned on the table, bringing his face close to hers. She would have moved back and away from him but she was so tense she couldn't be sure that she was capable of slipping casually backward in the chair – she might look as if she were about to scarper.