She was a small woman. Beyond her, over her shoulder, was a wire mesh window into a room, the glass marked with the yellowed flaking residue of old sellotape. Yellow curtains with pink triangles on them. And there she was, sitting up in bed, an oil slick of hair pulled over one shoulder, hands on the bed sheets in front of her, the light behind her. She was looking at him.
‘… Although she does have some bedsores, they are very clean and the saline baths seem to be helping.’
Pat could not rip his gaze from Aleesha, nor she from him. He thought he saw her eyes widen, as if in recognition, but then wondered if maybe it was his own eyes that had opened wider, as if he was trying to take in more of her.
The woman in front of him talked on about bedsores, about the home Minnie had come from, about a report and a test for something but he couldn’t hear her properly, just disjointed words swimming towards him, over him, by his ears.
Without breaking eye contact, without seeming even to move her head, Aleesha threw the covers back, swung her feet in perfect point to the floor and stood up. One of her hands was bandaged, white padded. She kept it high and held his eye as she walked to him. Even at the door frame, even when they couldn’t see each other for the woodchip wall, they held one another’s gaze. She lingered at the door, waiting for the nurse to go.
‘Sorry,’ the nurse touched her chest, ‘I’m Staff Nurse Sarah, what’s your name?’
Aleesha stepped back so that one of her eyes was hidden behind the door frame, she seemed to be unsure that coming to talk to the stranger was a good idea, bottled it a bit and looked at her bandaged hand, back curved as if she was going to step back into the room, as if a force in there was sucking her backwards.
‘ Roy.’ He stepped to the side, past the nurse and reached out to Aleesha with a flat hand, palm outwards, not offering a shake but gesturing to take her hand, lead her away. ‘Hello.’
Aleesha looked at his hand, raised an eyebrow at the impertinence, looked at him, read the desperate need the man had for her.
He was gorgeous. Tall. Dirty blond hair so thick it stood up, not, like, with gel, not uniform spikes that made boys look as if they cared so much they’d spent hours styling it. A jaw speckled with stubble of a hundred different colours, a flat nose, like he’d been in a car accident, and shoulders broader than the door almost. He raised his eyebrows at her, sad smiling eyes, pale blue.
She didn’t take the hand. She sloped back into her room, turning so that her face was hidden from him.
‘Sorry,’ the nurse said, looking slightly resentfully at Aleesha’s foot, ‘do you two know each other?’
‘Yeah,’ said Pat, ‘I’m pretty sure we do, but I can’t think where from.’
Aleesha swung back at the door. ‘You go to St Al’s?’
Pat snorted a tired laugh. ‘I’m twenty-eight, it’s a long time since I was at school and I never went there, no.’
‘I thought you went to St Al’s,’ she said. Her voice was higher than he had thought it would be, sweeter.
He looked at her and saw a girl, not the goddess of his imagination. He liked the girl better. ‘My, um,’ he looked back down the corridor to the toilets, ‘my auntie’s getting ready for the doctors’ round. I was, um…’ He looked at the ward doors and was struck by the impossibility of this happening. ‘I’m going for a cuppa…’
She saw how tired he was and how sad and how handsome. ‘You’ve been crying.’ He nodded. ‘Why?’
The nurse tutted at the girl and crossed her arms, siding with him against her. Pat pulled one of his ears, gulped, tried hard not to cry again. ‘Sad,’ he whispered and thumbed behind him.
They looked each other in the eye again, stuck again for too long, inappropriate. He saw her feel it, saw her eyes melt into his mood. With her good hand she held out the bundle of bandages and dressings to show him. ‘I’m acting weird,’ she said, ‘’cause I’m on shit loads of painkillers.’
He pointed at the hand with a limp index finger, wanted to ask what happened, act surprised, but he couldn’t bring himself to start the thing with a lie. They both watched as Aleesha fingered a fray on the bandage.
The nurse was cross at finding herself a spectator. She stepped between them but, with superhuman grace, Aleesha stepped to the side, back into Pat’s line of vision.
‘If my mum phones,’ she said, ‘tell her I’ll be back in twenty minutes.’
38
They had the Lexus and seventeen other stolen cars, or bits of them, and they couldn’t tie a thing to Danny McGrath. His prints were on nothing, his name was on nothing but he had come in voluntarily to help them with their questioning, as a courtesy to the police.
Danny had never been a threat to her before; they’d left each other alone always. That he was here now meant he believed that Morrow had broken the ceasefire. And she knew that even if she got him alone and explained what had happened, it would never be all right again.
She couldn’t let anyone else question him in case he gave her up but to do it herself would mean people seeing them together, seeing the similarities; they’d know where she came from. She didn’t want to leave the disabled toilet ever again. She almost wished there was a window she could crawl out of, that she had a lighter and could set off the fire alarm. A gentle rap on the door was followed by Harris’s voice: ‘Are ye stuck in there?’
She made a sound like a laugh at the door, straightened her clothes, managed a light, ‘Just coming,’ opened the door quite suddenly and found Harris standing a little too close to the door. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ she said. ‘Behave yourself.’
‘You’ve been in there for twenty minutes, boss. He’s about to go home. He’s in voluntary, you know? He can leave.’
She nodded back at CID. ‘Where’s himself?’
‘MacKechnie’s gone home.’
She looked at her watch, ‘It’s only half four.’
‘Had a meeting and then went home. Be back in for the pick-up, he said. Going out in the Obs van with you.’
‘Fuck.’ It was a relief. At least he wouldn’t see her and Danny together. ‘Fuck.’
‘You feeling sick?’
‘Wee bit. Do I look sick?’
‘Wee bit.’
She was talking very fast, she realised, dead giveaway. She stared helplessly at the wall until Harris prompted her. ‘Clock’s ticking, he’s within his rights-’
‘What room’s he in?’
‘Four.’
‘Get Gobby up to the corridor outside Three. I want a word with him before we go in. If he’s not there in two minutes I’ll kick his bollocks in.’
Danny was sitting across from her next to his lawyer. The lawyer didn’t look like a criminal lawyer at all, Morrow had never met him or even heard his name. He dealt mostly with corporate, he said, when she remarked on it, and he smiled charmingly.
Danny looked cheap and angry. He slumped in the chair, one arm flung over the back as if he was the most relaxed guy in the world. Their father used to sit like that. She’d seen him swing a punch at a man from that stance. And he was wearing his duck-down puffa jacket, more expensive than most suits, but it placed him as a poor man who’d done well.
His lawyer in contrast wore a genuinely expensive suit, wool, and carried a briefcase of exquisite leather. He pulled from it a notepad and a tortoiseshell pen, a small glasses case containing gold-rimmed half-moon glasses and a packet of chewing gun, which he offered to Danny. Morrow sat as still as she could.
The door opened flat against the wall and Gobby sauntered in with a strange expression on his face, half haughty, half indigestion. Morrow stood up respectfully and the lawyer followed her lead, holding his hand out. ‘DSI MacKechnie?’
Gobby took the hand and shook it, looked at Morrow a little unkindly, she thought, and took his jacket off, shaking it out the way Bannerman had done with Omar. He sat down, clenched his hands in front of himself on the table and cleared his throat. Everyone waited for him to speak. Gobby cleared his throat again and glanced reproachfully at Morrow.