Ruchill was a dead area. A single row of buildings stood against the steep road. Behind it, ten acres of wasteland were crisscrossed by overgrown roads. Street after street of damp and rotten tenements had been demolished. On the other side of the street a high fence barred entry to the park, a tall grassy hill pitted with skeletal trees and the looming hospital tower. Maureen ignored it, willing herself not to look as she passed the black machine-gun nest pub, and walked on. The first of the hospital outbuildings appeared on the shoulder of the road, a modest red bungalow with an outsize Dutch gable facade.
Maureen paused at the foot of the steep driveway, hot and trembling. She shifted the scarf on her head to get some of the snow off and looked up. The drive curved sharply and disappeared behind a high bank of bushes. Shards of broken glass scratched the tarmac beneath her feet and she walked on, past the bushes, and followed the road to the tower. The vandals had been there night after night. Single-story buildings were dotted around the campus; their wooden onion domes lay on the ground, burned and smashed. Crazed Venetian blinds hung forlornly in broken windows and net curtains flapped lazily at the muffled wind. She walked on to the top of the hill and looked out over the city dawn. She could see her house.
Maureen narrowed her eyes, blinking and catching snowflakes in her lashes as she looked up at the jagged tower silhouetted against a crumbling white sky. She crouched, picked up a stone, ran towards the building as she aimed, and threw it, her feet skidding on the slushy snow. The heavy gray stone hurled through the air, spinning and scattering the snowflakes falling gently in its path. She gasped as she saw where it was headed. The high window shattered and fell like a curtain. She picked up another stone from the overgrown grass verge, ran again and chucked it as hard as she could. Her scarf fell off her head, trailing down her back, baring her head to the weather. The stone shattered another window. Maureen smiled. She dropped her bag onto the wet ground and felt inside for Kilty's shopping. Her cold, stiff fingers relaxed when they found the rough cardboard of the box of fire lighters.
The heat left her as soon as she reached the bottom of the stairs. She was smiling and happy, chewing squares of Milka chocolate and feeling safe and home. She must never, ever tell anyone what she had done. She let the tension leave her. All she had to do now was phone Leslie and wait for the police to come to see her. Then she was looking forward to a wash and a sleep and a day in her pajamas, sitting on the settee in front of the television, sipping tea. Grinning and excited, she skipped up the stairs, taking them two at a time, until she got two steps away from her front door and stopped.
The front door was hanging on the hinges, two inches ajar. The lights were on in the hall. Noiselessly, she slid her bag to the floor and reached into her pocket for the stabbing comb. She pushed the door open with the tips of her fingers. She couldn't see into the living room but she could hear. Someone was in there – she could hear a voice muttering something, a short question, followed by a curt answer. Footsteps came towards her along the wooden floorboards, pausing in the living room. They stepped towards her, pressing on the back of the door to shut it. Maureen kicked the door with the flat of her foot, banging it against the wall, and found herself staring at a startled, sleepy Inness. She dropped her bag. "What the fuck are you doing in my house?"
Inness was standing in her hallway, grinning out at her with the blue morning behind him. "Mrs. Thatcher, I presume? I've got some pals here who are dying to meet you."
A man and a woman in smart dark suits were standing in her living room. Angus's letters were scattered over the table. Every one of them had been pulled from its envelope and read. "You bastards." She lurched into the hall, reaching for the letters, but Inness grabbed her by the arm and pulled her roughly round to face him. He screamed at her, "Calm down!"
Over his shoulder, out of the kitchen window and beyond on the north horizon, the Ruchill fever hospital tower was burning like a Roman candle, the turret windows belching black sparking clouds of dead men's ashes. Below, in the quiet city, siren screams rushed to a fire too well set to be sated. A door opened in the close and Jim Maliano appeared in her doorway pulling his purple dressing gown shut. "What is going on in here?" he demanded, his bouffant trembling with fury.
Inness held on to Maureen and put his other hand on Maliano's shoulder, pushing him out of the door. "We are police officers," he said, "and we are here to speak to Miss O'Donnell. Go back inside, please, sir."
"You can't go through my stuff," said Maureen stiffly. "Those are my letters."
"Well," shouted Jim, "if you are police officers you should know better than to come into a domestic close at eight thirty in the morning and make that sort of noise."
Inness pushed him with the flat of his hand. "Back inside, please, sir," he said, pushing too hard and making Maliano stumble over the step.
Maliano slapped his hand away and turned to Maureen. "Maureen, are you all right?"
Maureen didn't like Jim Maliano and he had made it abundantly clear that he didn't like her or her lifestyle, but whenever there was trouble Jim came running across the close and looked out for her.
"I'm fine, Jim, I'm really fine. You go back to bed and I promise we'll keep it down."
Maliano glared at Inness insolently. "Call me if you have any trouble?"
"I will, Jim, thanks."
He turned and looked at her. "Ruchill's on fire," he said, somewhat gleefully, as if he were having an everyday chat with his neighbor.
Maureen and Inness looked down the hall to the kitchen window and the column of fire on the horizon, and Inness muttered an awed curse.
"Neds," said Maliano, and looked accusingly at Inness. "Ye should be out stopping that sort of behavior instead of harassing her. I keep a diary of all your comings and goings up here"-he gestured to his spy hole-"so," he said, pointing at him, "just you watch it." Jim's bottle snapped and he blushed and scuttled back across the close to his own door, giving Inness a last warning look before he shut the door. Maureen knew he would be standing, watching. She shut her front door and darted into the living room, gathered up all of Angus's letters and held them to her chest. "These're mine," she said.
"We asked you about them," said Inness sternly, "and we're seizing them, so you can put them down. They're not even yours anymore."
"What gives you the right to break into my house?"
The fat guy in the dark suit stepped over to her. "Miss O'Donnell," he said, "where have you been since you got off the bus? We thought you were dead behind the door in here."
"I don't have to fucking tell you anything," she said.
"What happened to your neck?" asked the little blond woman, staring at it.
Inness stepped closer and Maureen could tell from the flush around his eyes that he was furious with her. "Those letters'll be going to the fiscal." He was trying to threaten her but in the past few days she'd been trapped in Parlain's, she'd been strangled by Toner and she'd made her home safe from the evil eye and had chosen her path. Inness couldn't frighten her with a mustache and a stare.
"Get out," she said, trying to shout but sounding strained and weak.
The fat guy was staring at the bruise around her throat. "What happened to your neck?" he asked.
"Get out," said Maureen.
He touched her arm gently. "Miss O'Donnell? I'm Arthur Williams from the Met?" His face was kind and nervous. "I understand that you have information about Ann Harris's murder."