"Right." Kilty wrote slowly, in a jagged but precise hand. Then she looked up. "I want to make my dad wake up," she said, waited for them to nod and jotted it down as the hot chocolate arrived.
Maureen ate her Flake with showy gusto, spooning warm cream into her mouth and swallowing it as if she were enjoying it. Leslie was taking her out on the bike to look for Michael after this and the last thing she wanted was heavy food but she ate to reassure the others. All three looked at the notepad and the three points, nodding and thinking about it as they drank milky chocolate.
"If," said Kilty ponderously, "trafficking isn't an offense in Poland, and McGee's name isn't on anything here -"
"We don't know that," interrupted Leslie. "What about Ella's court case?"
"That's not evidence, that's an allegation," said Kilty succinctly. "And if he's fly enough to traffic from Poland because it's one of the few countries that isn't a signatory to any convention, you can bet your arse he'll have kept his name off the sauna license."
Leslie stirred her chocolate, coaxing the settled cocoa powder from the bottom.
"If his name isn't on anything," continued Kilty, "what can we do? We can't go to the police. They'll tell us to piss off."
They all thought about it, each trying to think of alternatives to going to the police.
"We could blow him up," said Leslie stupidly.
"Yeah." Kilty looked at her askance. "I think you should get back with Cammy before ye kill someone. Leaving your commando tendencies aside, goal two is get the women out."
They couldn't think of anything for that either and were feeling discouraged as the food arrived at the table. Kilty got the waitress just to put it all in the middle and they tried to share it but everyone wanted the eggs and it turned into an unsightly scramble.
"God," said Leslie, "that was gorgeous."
"Taste the Croque Monsieur," said Kilty, pointing her to a golden toastie. "They make it with butter."
"The problem with helping the women," said Maureen, "is what do we do? Do we get them out and send them home?"
"Yeah," said Kilty. "Otherwise we'd need somewhere safe for them to hide from Immigration and the bastards who brought them over here. We don't have those kinds of resources."
Leslie sat back. "I'll go in with a gun and get them out, if that's what it takes."
"Look, you can't use being angry with your boyfriend to shoot up a licensed premises," said Kilty, as if she'd been involved in a tremendous amount of paramilitary activity. "You might remember the good times halfway through and then where will ye be?"
"Standing in a brothel with a gun and whole lot of foreign women?" said Leslie, as if she'd really thought about it.
"How would ye get the women to leave with ye? What would you say to them?"
"That I'd come to rescue them and if they came with me they'd be safe-"
"In Polish? Or Latvian?"
"Oh." Leslie looked deflated.
"And what about afterwards? What if they want to carry on working? Would you take them to your house?"
"They can't stay with me, even if they're not working," said Leslie firmly. It seemed a strange line for a mad bomber to stand firm on. "I'm gonnae… I need my space," she said, and looked shifty.
Maureen leaned across the table. "What about upsetting your dad? Couldn't you just tell him?"
"Nope," said Kilty. "He'd just do what he always does and say I was mad. Anyway, getting one lot of women out probably won't even cost Si that much money."
"See," said Maureen, "I don't think he really cares about the money."
"Why?"
"Well, think about it. He's a poor scholarship boy at a Catholic school, his mum's a prostitute and the other boys probably know that, his sister's a psycho. He doesn't want money. The money is a side issue. He wants respectability."
Leslie shook her head. "How can this even be happening in this day and age? It's un-fucking-believable."
"Yeah," said Kilty. "They count on that, like the child prostitution racket. I read today that lone child immigrants seeking asylum routinely go missing in the UK. The cops think they're being prostituted and used to make pornography by organized gangs but they can't find them. Who'd believe that?"
"No one," said Maureen.
"No one," said Leslie miserably. "And even if they did they'd roll their fucking eyes and do nothing."
Sitting on the back of the bike, holding on to Leslie's waist, Maureen shut her eyes and wished herself anywhere else. She felt sick and dizzy, and suddenly aware of her bare legs and arms and the danger of the night traffic. If they crashed and skidded on the Tarmac she'd be skinned alive. The possibility still seemed more inviting than their destination. Leslie had agreed to help her watch Michael but had no idea what Maureen was planning. She pulled up at a junction, flicking the bike into neutral and kicking down the stand. Her voice was muffled through the helmet. "Ye're hurting me," she said, working her fingers into Maureen's clenched fists, making her relax her grip. Sorry.
"Just loosen it a bit."
The front of the house was dark again and Una's Rover was parked outside the front door. They stood behind the strip of communal garden in the street for twenty minutes, watching the lights in the hall through the open living-room door, but saw no movement. "Let's go round the back," whispered Leslie.
"Wait here a bit." Maureen was afraid she'd be sick again and shame herself in front of Leslie, who'd just KO'd a brick shit-house.
Leslie elbowed her hard. "There's nothing going on here."
Maureen pushed her elbow down. "Wait a bit, though."
Leslie, still bristling with adrenaline, pushed her arm. "What's the point in us standing here -"
The close door opened and Una stepped out into the street, followed by a small bald man. Maureen froze, holding on to the chicken-wire fence. Una had gained a lot of weight since they had last seen her, and her haircut was worse from the front than the back. It stuck up at the top and hung over her ears. She was wearing purple leggings and a giant pink T-shirt. She raised her hand and pointed at the car. The lights flashed and beeped and she walked round to the driver's seat. Michael was shuffling and looked as if something demeaning had just happened to him. As he reached forward to open the door Leslie grabbed Maureen's arm and pulled her away to the bike parked on the corner. She had to lift Maureen's leg to get her on the bike and slammed the helmet on her, banging the top of her head so hard it rang and buzzed. They took off, following the Rover at a distance.
Maureen shut her eyes, leaning her head on Leslie's shoulder, trying to take herself back to Vik. They were crossing the river at Jamaica Street when the anger in her belly stirred awake, swirling around her gut, mustering allies among the hormones. She sat up. They were on the Maryhill Road, heading up to where she knew he stayed. They passed Benny's house and she tried to see if his lights were on, but they were doing forty and whizzed under the railway bridge marking the boundary with Ruchill.
Three cars in front, Una took a left, disappearing off the road. Leslie followed her round the corner and suddenly came to the Rover, parked at the back of a shop. Leslie passed by just as Una opened her door, flicking on the internal light. Michael had on a white T-shirt with a Nike tick across the front, the soft material articulating his drooping belly and rounded back. Maureen wanted to lean across and grab him from the bike, forgetting who he was, thinking he was McGee or Angus or someone else. She wanted to grab him and drag him along behind her, skin him alive on the potholed road.
Leslie turned the block and rejoined the main road, following it back to the town. At a set of lights she wrestled with Maureen's clenched hands again, loosening them, digging at them with her nails unnecessarily.
Back in Garnethill, Maureen cracked the lid off a brand-new half bottle of whiskey and drank it. Leslie said she only had another couple of days on the antibiotics and watched her enviously, sipping a cup of tea. They hadn't bothered to put the lights on in the living room and the dark orange sky filled the window.