"Iona wasn't having an affair," said Shan quietly. "You heard it from the cleaner, right? Susan with the big mouth?"
Maureen nodded. It was a lie but if she tried to speak her voice would sound high and shaky and she didn't want him to know how scared she was.
"Susan saw Iona being raped. She saw it through a chink in the blinds. She was being raped in a therapist's office and because she wasn't kicking and screaming Susan decided they were having an affair." Still frowning, he jerked the can to his mouth, took a long drink and dropped it back down on the table. "You don't happen to smoke, do you?" he said.
"Urn, yeah." She sounded like a chipmunk.
"Have you got some fags on ye?"
"Yeah."
She had to take her left hand off the comb to get her bag. Her palm came away from the metal surface uneasily, like bare thighs from a plastic car seat left in the sun. She lifted the rucksack to her hand, trembling with a jittery post adrenaline rush. She took the packet out, dropping it on the table rather than handing it over in case he saw her hand shake. The packet slid across the polished surface of the table and hit the side of her cup of coffee, sloshing brown liquid onto the white tabletop. Shan reached out quickly, coolly, and grabbed the packet away from the coffee spill. He took a cigarette and lit it with a new brass Zippo he produced from his pocket.
Casual smokers don't have brand-new Zippo lighters, Zippos are expensive and cumbersome to carry. Shan must have cigarettes. He might have seen her take the comb from her bag, he might be asking for the fags so that she would let go of it, so that she would be undefended. She jerked her hand into her pocket and grabbed hold of it again. He watched her.
He inhaled the first smoke and held it in his lungs, tapping the ash from the cigarette under the table, watching the cigarette as he did, being precious with it. Shan had a Zippo because he smoked a lot of hash. He looked at her and his face softened. "You don't need to be afraid of me," he said. "I'm going to tell you everything I know and then you can leave before me, after me or with me. Whatever makes you feel safe."
" Kay," said Maureen.
"I'm sorry if I gave you a fright, I forgot about what's happened to you. You don't even know who I am. I suppose I could be anyone to you."
"I don't know if we can smoke in here," she said, changing the subject.
"Yeah, well, fuck it," said Shan, quietly unperturbed.
Maureen took the packet and pulled one out for herself. Shan gave her a light from his Zippo. "Go on, then," she said.
"Yeah, right," said Shan, turning to the window, looking out at the motorway, following the lights of the passing cars with his eyes. "Iona and the George I rapes, it was the same person…" He said it in an undertone, but Maureen caught the name.
She gasped, sucking smoke so deep into her lungs that it hurt. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah," said Shan, calmly flicking the ash from his cigarette under the table. "Do you believe me?"
"Why do you think it was him, for God's sake?"
"It's a long story," he said.
Maureen squashed her fag out and stood up. "I need a drink," she said. "I'm getting a beer. D'you want one?"
Shan lifted his head and looked at her. "What, an alcoholic drink?"
"Yeah."
He put his hand in his jacket pocket. "No, no, I'll get it," said Maureen. "What d'ye want?"
"Any whisky? Auch, naw, that's bad, actually, I'm driving."
Maureen shrugged. "It's up to yourself. You're allowed one, aren't you?"
"Auch," he said, clearly gasping. "Auch, aye, get us a whisky if they've got it."
Maureen negotiated her way through the tables and around the trestle walls to the deserted island of food in the center of the cafe. She bought a whisky miniature and a cold can of Kerslin, an extra-strong lager with a bitter taste caused by the artificially heightened alcohol content. As she passed the till she picked up two plastic cups and four sugar sachets, which she tucked deep into her pocket under the beeper.
Shan was slumped over the table, chin in hand, watching the traffic on the motorway. He took the whisky from her, poured it into the plastic cup and sipped carefully. Maureen smiled and sat down. "You don't drink much, do you? I'd have walloped that back in a oner."
Shan looked at her can of lager. "How the fuck can you drink that stuff? It tastes like ethanol."
"Yeah," she said. "That's why I like it. How do you know this, Shan?"
"Like I said, it's a long story," he said, his head bent over the glass of whisky, enjoying the smell. He whistled a sigh and looked out of the window. "It wasn't long ago, I went to work one day and before I got changed into my uniform one of the cleaners came running into the staff room. Someone was crying in the toilets. I went in." Shan was talking quickly, quietly, as if he were giving a case report. "It was Iona. She was in a cubicle. I couldn't get her out. I climbed over the wall. She was sitting on the floor with her knickers around her ankles. She was scratching at herself, at her fanny. I got her to stop it and said come upstairs and see a doctor. She started scratching herself again." He took one of Maureen's fags without asking her and lit it, downing the rest of the whisky before he exhaled.
"When was this?" asked Maureen.
"Eight…," he said, scratching his forehead and thinking about it. "Eight? No, nine weeks ago-"
"Seven weeks before Douglas was killed?" said Maureen.
"Yeah. I knew Iona from the Northern. I was working in George I when the mysterious rapes were happening, yeah? We were all moved, even the female staff. The agency nurses were sent home and never employed again. Jill McLaughlin was agency. She was up for a full-time job at the Northern. Never worked again."
"That's why she was so jumpy when I phoned."
"Yeah. Only the senior staff weren't moved, they weren't even stigmatized. We didn't know Iona had been raped then. She didn't have a rope mark on her, no one suspected. I take it you know what I'm talking about when I say 'rope marks'?"
"Yvonne Urquhart's still got one on her ankle."
"Yvonne?" His face brightened. "How is she? Have you seen her?"
"You don't want to know how Yvonne is…"
Shan watched her carefully. "Okay, I can imagine anyway," he said, his voice dipping to a whisper. "Yvonne had a stroke… after… So, anyway, Iona wouldn't come upstairs with me. She said she wanted to go home, that's all she would say, she wanted to go home. I decided to drive her to her house, stay with her till the panic's gone, limit the damage. She wouldn't speak. When we got to the house she told me that he hurt her then. She knew what she meant and I knew what she was telling me. I asked her if she wanted to go to the police and she started pulling at her skin again so I took her over to Jane Scoular at the Dowling Clinic, it's all female staff there, and she got an emergency admission. The next day she hung herself in the staff toilets."
"Did you tell the police?"
He looked desperate. "Tell them what, for Christ's sake? Someone's been accused of a disgusting rape by a woman who's killed herself and also had a lifelong psychiatric history? She wasn't exactly a good witness, you know."
"Yeah," said Maureen, "I know exactly. Did you speak to Douglas?"
"No, that was later. I didn't know what the fuck to do."
"How many women were there?"
"Four that we knew of, five including Iona."
"Surely one of them would want to testify?"
"Maureen," Shan said, using her name for the first time, "after Douglas got the list from the office we went to see all of them. We even went to see some that were just on the ward at the time. They either can't talk or they're terrified at the mention of his name. Most of them can't even say it."