Free G03 - Resolution by Denise Mina Page B

Pauline’s father stood next to his unknowing wife in the pew, squeezing her shoulder and keeping his eyes down. Her two brothers stood side by side and hurried outside as the coffin slid away, missing the lineup by the door in their eagerness to have a fag. When they followed the other mourners over the motorway bridge to a dark pub they spoke to no one but each other and even then said little. They were both tall and broad across the shoulders, drank fast and smoked without pleasure.
    It was years later when she saw Doyle again. They were in a grimy pub, looking for a friend of Leslie’s, and he approached them, asking where he knew Maureen from. His skin had got a lot worse since the funeral. He had a brutalized aura about him, war-veteran eyes and scars on his knuckles. He drawled his words like a hard man and when he looked at Maureen, his gaze fell short, settling on her cheek, her nose, her chin, but never meeting her eyes. As she looked at him in the pub she firmly believed he’d been the brother who’d raped Pauline, maybe even wanked onto her back as she lay dying. She’d wanted to hurt him for Pauline and run away from the scarred eyes and the raw skin.
    It wasn’t until she was in London, being dragged down Brixton High Street by a man with fists like mallets, that she began to doubt it. Doyle came out of nowhere, knocked the guy down and picked her up, carrying her through the fruit market and taking her to safety in his attic bedsit. As they sat and talked in the bare room Doyle told her that his father and brother were dead. He wouldn’t talk about what had happened to them, wouldn’t openly admit that he had killed them, but Maureen knew. He said it brought him no peace.
    She’d tried to be a friend to him but Doyle didn’t want a friend. He never wanted to talk about himself or what he did or how he lived. His sole purpose in seeing Maureen was to dissuade her from doing anything to Michael. It was all he ever talked about. He was adamant about it. Maureen tried to imagine how it must have been for him, growing up in a house with two men raping and assaulting his twelve-year-old wee sister, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine the recrimination or the self-loathing but she knew he was trying to avert another disaster, trying to stop her killing Michael and becoming like him. Sheila said it was easier to save other people. Maureen looked at him, hunched over the far table, his back to the crowd, hiding himself, and she felt for him. He was half dead already.
    “Three roll, two ‘n’ sausage,” said Lara, handing over the cans and a brown paper bag, one corner already clear with grease.
    Maureen paid and walked over to the table, reaching into the bag for Doyle’s roll. “Here ye are.”
    Doyle took the roll and bit it automatically, keeping his eye on the door as if he was watching for someone.
    “I’ll need to go,” said Maureen, holding up the bag. “I’ve got my pal’s roll.”
    Doyle looked at her as if remembering she was there. He nodded her closer to him. “What’s happening?” he muttered.
    “About Michael?”
    Doyle nodded. The oil from the bag was burning Maureen’s hand but she held on to it tightly. “Baby’s due any day,” she said, and thought of Sheila.
    Doyle picked up a plastic sauce bottle and squeezed watery red juice onto his roll, pressing the bottle too hard with his big hand, causing a little hiss from beneath the lid. “Promise,” he said, “you’ll tell me before you do anything.” He ate and watched her, waiting for her to nod assent. He reached into his overcoat pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. Awkwardly, he handed it to her. It had a long number written on it, pressed twice into the paper where the Biro had dried out and been replaced. “Phone me before.”
    Maureen folded her arms and looked at him reproachfully. “Mark” — he almost flinched at her use of his name, as if he couldn’t bear to hear it—”we’ve talked about this.