"Excuse me," said Maureen, finding her voice more rough than before. "Have you been working here long?"
"Yes, love, I've been here for five months."
"I'm trying to find out what happened to a friend of mine who was on the night bus to Glasgow. She got off for the break and never got on again about a month ago."
"Oh, yes," said the woman, folding her cloth to a flat surface. "I know."
Maureen got out the picture and showed it to her.
"I know," nodded the woman. "Wasn't it awful? We were all shocked, actually."
Maureen was surprised that news of Ann's death had reached Knutsford. "How did you hear about it?"
"I saw her, dear, I saw her coming out of the toilet and going into the ambulance. It was very sad. We were very shocked."
"Into an ambulance?"
"Yes, she was mugged, dear, in the ladies'. Beaten very badly. Had her bag stolen."
"Her bag?"
"Yes, her handbag. She wasn't found for half an hour. The men that did it were probably long gone by then."
Ann's bag. She'd taken the bag everywhere with her, afraid of it being stolen, drawing attention to herself everywhere she went. If Tarn Parlain told Maxine when it was coming in, Hutton could have been waiting for her at the service station, watching for her, waiting to do what he did best: annihilate the weak. They must have known she was going to get off and come in with a handbag worth tens of thousands. Parlain and Maxine were going out on their own, siding with Hutton against their own family and Toner. Toner would know Maxine lived with Hutton and he must have realized what they'd done before Hutton was killed over a mystery stash. Elizabeth had said Toner had wanted to talk to Ann, and Senga had told Leslie that Ann had recognized Hutton's picture in the paper. Parlain had killed Ann to stop her talking. Poor witless Ann. Toner could afford her no protection here – in Glasgow and London maybe, but not in this wilderness. The CCTV evidence might have been kept, and even if it hadn't, the ambulance would have a record of it.
She went back to the bus early, standing outside on the grass verge, smoking a final fag, wondering about Ann. How desperate would a woman have to be? How much money would she need to owe to take a chance like that? But that's what Frank Toner had been counting on, someone desperate enough to take those chances.
Williams was out of bed and pulling on his trousers before Hellian had finished the sentence. "… under the sofa which gave a superficial match to blood and hair samples from the deceased. Obviously we won't know for certain until the lab have a look at it."
Williams balanced the receiver on his shoulder and knelt down, feeling under the bed for his shoes. The guesthouse carpet was a hideous hangover from the seventies: it flowed and spiraled like a melted box of crayons and smelled of dog. "Parlain, ye said?"
"Yes, Tarn, t-a-m, Parlain, p-a-r-l-a-i-n. Works for the Adams family."
"Those bastards again. Who's Parlain under, did Intelligence tell ye?"
"One Frank Toner, f-r-a-n-"
"And she bought a ticket up on the overnight bus?"
"Yes, but we can't confirm whether she's on it. DCI Joe McEwan knows her and has volunteered one of his officers to give a visual."
"She'd better be on it. You realize that if this gets out before we interview her she's dead?"
"Won't get out this side, sir."
Maureen couldn't sleep. The cigarettes and the story about Ann had woken her up and she was desperate to get home, home to the cold and the red and yellow tenements, the big sky and the rude children. She knew who she was in Glasgow and she was going to fight back before the last and make it safe. It was half four when they reached the wild hills. Steep slopes of mud and jagged rock were capped by creeping snowbanks and the bus felt suddenly colder. She looked at the bare hills and saw the families driven from their homes to make way for sheep, a thousand Coach and Horses all over the world, serving succor to souls who couldn't go home, who didn't even know where home was. Maureen leaned her head on the window and cried for the beautiful land, sobbing and covering her face with her hands, trying not to sniff. The woman on the backseat was at her elbow. "Why are you crying?" she asked.
Maureen sniffed. "Scotland." She pointed out of the window. "It's so beautiful. I haven't been home for so long."
"That's well seen," said the woman quietly. "This is the Lake District."
The bus hurtled into the reluctant dawn, through lowlands and into the flat Clyde valley. A cloudless electric blue sky was marred in the distance by a patty of thick black cloud and in its dark gray shadow sat Glasgow, her Glasgow, and she began to cry again.
Chapter 43
The air was very still in the bus station. Maureen's breath hovered in front of her, swirling as she pushed past the other passengers, picked her bag from the growing pile and walked out of the automatic doors. The pavement shimmered and the buildings strained against the cold. A white mist filled the tall street and Maureen cut a swath through it, leaving black footprints in the frost. A black cab glided past her, turning for the city center and the stations. She lit a cigarette. Her raw throat throbbed and she looked like shit but she was home. A sudden flurry of snow bleached the colors out of the city as she passed the foot of Garnethill and walked north. She was tempted to go home first, to dump her heavy bag, but she was sure she'd never come out again. Maureen pulled her scarf around her head and walked on.
Williams parked across the street from the station.
"Here, just here," said Inness. "That'll be fine."
"Are you sure?" asked Williams, cranking up the hand brake and making Bunyan sigh. "We're on a yellow."
"Yeah."
They walked across the road and took the gray concrete stairs down to the bus station. It was almost empty. Local double-deckers were parked in tidy lines along the center of the concourse. A single bus, stopped in front of the ticket building, showed signs of life. A driver in a blue nylon uniform walked around the bonnet and disappeared behind it. Williams bristled. "It's already in," he said, and jogged over to it, his suit jacket flapping open. He stopped a withered wee guy with an Afro hairdo. "Is this the London bus?"
"Aye."
"Look, I'm a police officer." He pulled the grainy printout photograph of Maureen O'Donnell out of his pocket. "Was this woman on the bus?"
The wee guy looked at it and asked his pal to come and see as well. "Think so," said his pal.
"Aye," squawked the first driver nasally. "I recognize the hair. She was on the bus, right enough."
"Where is she now?"
"How should I know?"
"Did you see anyone come and pick her up?"
The ugly man shrugged. "I don't watch them all leaving – we've to get the luggage out."
"Did ye see anyone grabbing her?"
The men stood apathetically and Inness pulled Williams by the arm. "She might just have gone home."
"Do you know where it is?"
"Yeah, it's up the road, two minutes up the road. Top of that hill there."
It was a long walk. The snow thickened as the sun came up, enveloping the city in a heavy gray light. It lay on her sleeves and shoulders, catching on her scarf and eyebrows, deadening the noise of the cars and traffic as she made her way up the Maryhill Road. She got angrier as she walked, working up a sweat as she approached the turnoff to Ruchill. The early-morning streets began to empty. The lazy blizzard stopped suddenly under the disused railway bridge. Maureen walked on, stepping out of the envelope of calm into the white sheet and up the steep hill.