Garnethill by Denise Mina Read Online Free PDF Page B

were you waiting for?" she said.
    "Just about three-quarters of an hour. Not long anyway."
    "Liam, they're going to have to speak to you. I didn't think and I told them you had a key to the house."
    He flinched. "Oh, bollocks."
    "I'm sorry," she said. "Would they know about your business?"
    "Dunno, maybe," he said. "Auch, actually they probably don't. Where are we going, anyway?"
    "Well, I want to ask Benny if I can stay there for a while. I'm not allowed to go home until they've finished looking through everything and I can't stay at yours, obviously. How's Mum?"
    Liam looked shifty. "Mm, well, Una's with her."
    "You mean she's pissed?"
    "Umm, she might be," he said quietly. "She's very upset. Una's comforting her."
    "For fucksake, this is going to turn into something that happened to her, isn't it?"
    "You know Mum, she could scene-steal from an eclipse." He opened the passenger door for her and saw that she was winding herself up. "Getting pissed off won't make a sod of difference. You should know that by now."
    Maureen got into the car. The windows were opaque with cold condensation. Maggie was sitting in the backseat. "Oh, Maggie," said Maureen. "Have you been here all that time?"
    Maggie smiled politely and nodded.
    "Why didn't you come inside? You must have been freezing."
    "I didn't like to," she said vaguely.
    Liam revved the engine. "Let's go and see Benito," he said, and pulled out into the Maryhill Road. "Benito Finite"
    An unmarked police car followed the Herald at a discreet distance.

    Hillhead Comprehensive's catchment area covers a middle-class area and a profoundly deprived one. Benny came from the latter. He had been expelled in third year for setting fire to a toilet but Maureen and Liam stayed in touch with him because he was mental and a good laugh.
    Benny drank like his father. Consequently his early life was a series of Dadaesque adventures: he woke up in a meat factory, he got engaged to a woman whose name he couldn't remember, he fell into a quarry on a Saturday night and didn't manage to get out until the men came to work on Monday morning. When he was twenty he said he was sick of getting his face kicked in all the time and started attending Alcoholics Anonymous and got sober. He was homeless at the time and Maureen let him sleep on her bedroom floor at home. He talked about nothing but the joy of AA for two months. Winnie came to hate him.
    His alcoholic family disowned him when he moved in with Maureen's family and got sober. He did some exams at college and got into Glasgow University to study law. His family owned him again. He was in senior honors studying corporate law and had a series of traineeship interviews lined up with high-flying companies. His bank manager kept writing to him, asking him to take out more loans.

    THEY DREW UP INTO Scaramouch Street. It was short, only four closes long, with bollards blocking off the end from the Maryhill Road. The street used to be a handy cutoff before the lights. When the bollards first went up several drivers, thinking they'd be cute and save a couple of minutes, swerved straight into them and wrote their cars off. They climbed the stairs to the second floor and knocked. Benny opened the door. He wasn't bad-looking: he was dark with long eyelashes and kind gray eyes, six foot something tall, and had a solid muscular frame, but his close association with Liam and the rest of her family made Maureen squeamish about fancying him. He looked Maureen up and down and burst out laughing. "What the fuck are you wearing?" he squealed. "You look like a ned!"
    Maureen pushed her way in through the door. "I've had a bit of an eventful day," she said, and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Benny was a dirty bastard: the kitchen was filthy. Dishes, bits of food and packaging were sitting on the work tops and table, the sink was full and smelled faintly of mildew.
    She could hear them in the hall, Liam mumbling the story in a monotone and Benny whispering