It was an hour before the pubs shut and Maureen was the only person at the bus stop with the right to vote.
A crowd of excitable teenagers were hanging about. They were guessing at how to behave, each of them a bundle of secret terrors and paranoias. Their voices were too loud, their gesticulations too pronounced, like bad actors in a theater with rotten acoustics. The blue Ford was parked a hundred yards down the road. Maureen looked up, pretending to look past it for the bus. One of the policemen was looking straight at her. He seemed to be trying to catch her eye.
The bus came after a couple of minutes and she clambered aboard, leaving the youngsters behind. She went upstairs to the top deck, sitting down two seats from the back. It was quiet: a couple of people sat singly near the front, a woman looking out of the window, a man reading a paper. She shut her eyes and thought about Douglas's lovely bollocks sitting in a bloody puddle in the dark hall cupboard. And she saw herself sitting in there, in the black dark, hiding from no one, not knowing whether she was ten or twenty. The two time frames seemed to blur together so that she was in one corner and Douglas's bollocks were in the other.
He wasn't a complete shit, after all, he was just a poor, bewildered bastard feeling his way, and knowing that made her feel closer to him. She thought about the last few weeks of his life, when he would have heard about Iona and started investigating rapes at the Northern. She was looking for some small clue she could have picked up on at the time. She could have tried to help. But she was part of the problem he was trying to solve. Douglas had been further away than she could ever have imagined.
She had a strong sense of coming to the end of a painful time in her life, a time riddled with betrayals and half-arsed apologies. She couldn't remember what she was like when she wasn't in a state.
She could hear Leslie moving carefully behind the door. "Yeah?" It s me.
Leslie opened the door a crack and peered out with one very frightened eye. She grinned unsteadily and let the door swing wide. She was holding an old wooden walking stick by the toe. It had a vicious duck's-head brass handle, the sharp beak pointing outward.
"What's happening?" said Maureen. "That looks scary."
"Yeah," said Leslie, double-locking the door behind Maureen and walking back into the living room. She was still holding the walking stick.
"Where's Siobhain?"
"In bed," whispered Leslie urgently, standing close to Maureen. "She's asleep. Someone was at the door. Half hour ago, trying the handle."
"What did you do?"
"I was standing, watching. I coughed and they let it go. I heard them belting off downstairs."
"Does Benny have your address?"
"No."
"Well, if it is Benny he couldn't have followed me, I just got here. Could have been kids."
Leslie looked relieved. "Yeah," she said, and handed Maureen the stick. "They usually work their way around a close. I'm going across the hall to ask Mrs. Gallagher if they tried her door. You stay here."
Maureen stood behind the door, listening, as Leslie knocked for Mrs. Gallagher across the landing. After a pause she heard voices. Leslie was still talking when she scratched at the door to be let back in. Maureen opened it. Mrs. Gallagher was standing at her open door in a pink nylon dressing gown and matching fluffy slippers.
' 'S all right," said Leslie, grinning widely. "They tried her door. It was just some wee robbers."
Leslie came back into the house, said good night to Mrs. Gallagher and shut the door, locking it behind her. "Thank fuck for that." She took the stick off Maureen and set it down by the door. They went into the living room. Maureen took off her coat and threw it over the back of a chair.
"How did it go with your family?"
"Well, I said everything I meant to but that's all. They didn't exactly see my point of view. They seemed confused when I said about accusing me of killing Douglas. I dunno why they'd deny that, they were definitely up to something."
"Right," said Leslie, standing formally in front of her with her hands clasped behind her back, swaying on the balls of her feet. "So we're off tomorrow, then?"
"Yes."
"Right."
"Well, I brought drink again," said Maureen, pulling the opened bottle of whisky out of her rucksack.
"Fucking ace." Leslie went into the kitchen and brought out some glasses. "We're drinking too much," she said as she held out her glass for Maureen to fill it.
"I thought alcohol abuse was a good way to cope," said Maureen.
"I'm getting too old for it," said Leslie. "I'm starting to feel it during the day."
"This is a difficult time. It won't always be like this."
Maureen poured a whisky for herself and drank it like ginger. She shouldn't be able to drink it like that. She was drinking far, far too much. She wasn't even getting the rolling glow anymore. They sat down next to each other on the settee but Maureen noticed that Leslie settled at the far end, as far away as she could get. She was pale and stared at the opposite wall.
"See, about tomorrow?" she said timidly. "I… um… I've been thinking about it and, um… I just don't know if it's a good idea."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Listen to me. The police know about the hospital and the list. They might catch up with him any minute."
"He'll come for us."
"But it seems to be dying down now," she said uncertainly.
"He'll come if the police aren't holding him." Maureen put her whisky down. "And I don't think they've got enough evidence to hold him. He doesn't need to hurry, he can come for any of us any time. He's killed two people to cover up the rapes in the Northern. If anything, we're more of a threat than Douglas was because we've got Siobhain. He needs to kill us."
"I'm a bit scared, Mauri, that's all," said Leslie. "I'm sorry."
"I'm doing it," said Maureen, and picked up her whisky again.
They drank in silence until Leslie suddenly blurted out, "Wonder why he hasn't come for you yet."
"I'd be harder to get at," said Maureen calmly. "I've been moving around the whole time. And, besides, there's a police car on my tail."
"They're following you?"
"Yeah, McEwan knows every step I've taken in the past week and I just spotted them. They'll be outside now in that blue Ford McEwan was in this morning."
Leslie's face contorted into a parody of a smile. "Then we can't do it, can we? The police'll see us and we'll get charged."
"No, Leslie, they won't see us. If they're still with us at Largs then we'll leave it and come straight home. You're really scared, aren't you?"
Leslie looked up at Maureen and her furtive expression collapsed. "Yeah, I'm fucking scared." She slammed her whisky down on a side table and turned to Maureen, shouting under her breath in case she woke Siobhain: "I've spent all day with Siobhain and I don't know what he did to her but I don't want him to do it to me. I've never been this scared. Even Charlotte wasn't as cowed as Siobhain. At least she had a shred of fucking personality left and her man'd done all sorts of surgery on her."
"But Siobhain was sick before it happened. This probably compounded it. We don't know what she's like when she's well."
"I feel like packing up my bike and getting the fuck out of here."
Maureen sighed. "You can do that if you want. I'd understand."
Leslie picked her glass up and looked into it for the answer. "But if Siobhain isn't seen getting onto the Millport ferry he won't come, will he? And you can't manage her and see to him, can you? I have to go if you go." She looked at Maureen, leaving it open for her to say she wouldn't go either.
"These women can't give evidence, Leslie, they've got no one to stand up for them but us. I can't stop now." She told Leslie what Shan had told her, about Iona, about the rapes, about Douglas crying in the toilet.
"Are you sure about this, Mauri?"