He took her to George III ward. She was so engrossed in what he had said that she didn't feel much about being back there. "You remembered which ward I was in," she said.

"Oh, aye," said Martin, as if it was nothing.

When they were standing in the lift she asked him if he knew which ward Siobhain McCloud was in. "George I," he said quickly, as if he had known the question was coming. "They were all in George I."

They visited the dayroom and the patients' canteen. On the way over to the Portakabin counseling suites they passed through the gardens. The flower beds were bare now, sunken patches full of naked lumps of frozen mud, like measles scars on the well-kept lawn. Liam liked to sit here with her. They used to bring Pauline out and give her cigarettes. She wasn't allowed them because they suppressed her appetite but Maureen suspected that the real reason was punitive. Pauline wasn't starving herself to death because she wasn't hungry enough.

They walked past the Portakabin where the joint session with Winnie had taken place and back into the main body of the building. Martin led her into the theater lift. It was big enough to accommodate three trolley beds and their attendants comfortably. Maureen looked around the stainless-steel box. "I've never been in one of these before."

"We're not really supposed to use them," he said, "but they're always free."

The doors closed in front of them and he pressed Lower Basement, taking her to a part of the hospital she had never been to before. The lift slid downward, alighting softly, and the doors opened out onto a shallow lobby. They stepped out, turned right and walked through a set of fire doors, straight into a fork in the corridor. The right-hand side led up a long, windowless ramp; the left led down, deeper into the ground. They took the left fork to a corridor running parallel to the kitchen. One of the strip lights was failing, palpitating nervously. The smell of overcooked meat and synthetic gravy wafted up the corridor in a warm stream. Maureen could feel her mouth watering. Martin opened an old wooden door on the left of the corridor. "In here," he said.

They went into a dark L-shaped room. The foot of the L was obscured by a tall dusty hillock of bin bags stuffed with hospital blankets. Martin led her behind the little hill and down the L's foot to a small door. He pushed it open and flicked a switch. A bare lightbulb lit up the little room. The low ceiling sloped sharply to the left and the walls were bare, crumbling stone. Behind one she could hear a steady, low-pitched thrumming like a ship's engine. It was a warm room, perhaps because it was so close to the kitchen. On the walls hung posters of the Partick Thistle football team dating back to the 1960s. A small hand sink stood at the back of the room with a single cold tap. In front of it was a lonely hospital chair made of metal and cloth, taking up a third of the entire floor space. A pile of discarded tabloid newspapers was stacked unevenly against the wall. Some loose tea bags, a large kettle and a transistor radio were sitting on top of a miniature set of beautifully varnished mahogany drawers, with a polished brass window on the front of each drawer to hold a label in place. Martin saw her looking at it. "They used to keep the medicine in that, back in the olden days."

"Is this your den?" asked Maureen.

"Aye. No one knows it's here except me. This is where I do all my skiving."

She motioned to the Thistle posters. "I didn't know you were a religious man."

He grinned sheepishly. "Oh, aye. Season-ticket holder for my pains."

Partick Thistle FC, known as the Jags, is one of the few Glasgow football teams not associated with either side of the Protestant/Catholic sectarian divide. Their fans are known locally for their passive but exceptional eccentricity and the team are known nationally for being crap.

Martin motioned for her to sit down in the chair, took the tea things off the mahogany drawers, put them on the floor, and crouched down on it. He looked uncomfortable so low with his big knees tucked under his chin. His feet were an inch away from hers.

He began to talk. He said that several years ago there had been some sort of problem in George I. The women in the ward were all getting much worse. It turned out that someone was interfering with them sexually. They changed all the staff and the problem cleared up but a lot of the original patients had never recovered. Martin's voice had dropped so low Maureen had to lean forward to hear him above the throbbing hum of the engine behind the wall. "I never knew about this," she said. "Did they prosecute someone?"

"Have you been to George I?"

"No."

"Oh, God, the poor souls can hardly talk. They couldn't go to court – half of them don't know their own names."

"How did they find out, then?"

He looked at a distant place somewhere through the wall and hugged his knees to his chest. "Burn marks. They'd been tied up or something. They'd burn marks on their bodies from the rope. And they were hurt…" He motioned downward.

"Where?"

"Their flowers – their flowers were cut."

"With a knife?"

"I don't know. You don't like to ask questions about things like that. I always thought it might be just that they were scared and they were dry." Martin was crying, his face impassive.

"Didn't they think to DNA test the semen and compare it with possible suspects?"

"There wasn't any semen," said Martin. "He'd wore a rubber. He knew exactly what he was doing."

His voice took on a peculiar timbre, halfway between a cry of despair and a growl. "I was there every day while it was going on. I didn't even notice. I keep my eyes open now."

"Oh, Martin, who would think to look for that?"

He coughed hard and wiped his face dry with his hand. She wanted to touch him. She could reach her hand out just a little and touch his brown cheek, but she didn't think he would like it. It would be done to console her, not him. He pulled his knees tighter to his chest and looked farther through the wall. "If any of us had noticed we could have stopped it."

She reached out and touched his hand with the tips of her fingers. He looked up, startled by the intrusion, and relaxed the grip on his knees. She shouldn't have touched him.

"Anyway," he said, stretching his legs out in front of him, "it doesn't much matter what I feel about it."

"Do they know who it was?" she asked.

"No, but your boyfriend was tied up, wasn't he?" Maureen nodded. "With rope?" She nodded again. "Did you know he was here?" asked Martin.

"Douglas was here?"

"You didn't know, then? I thought that's why you came back. Two weeks ago he asked Frank in the office for a list of patients' names from George I. He said he was doing a follow-up study about how they got on. Frank's a stupid bastard. He told loads of people that Dr. Brady d been in. Frank isn't even authorized to give out that sort of information, so he was telling on himself as much as anyone.

Brady seems to have been a bright man. I'm surprised he hadn't the good sense to use a different name."

"Well…"

"Anyway, those of us who've been here for a while knew what it was about because he'd only asked for the George I names and he'd only asked for that time. Was he daft?"

"Not really. He wasn't very good at being secretive. You think he was killed because he got the list, don't you?"

"Aye," said Martin.

"Did you tell the police about this?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't know." He looked at his feet. "That's a lie. I do know. I don't want to be involved in this. It's finished now and I'm too frightened to get involved." He didn't try to excuse himself but left the statement hanging in the air between them. "Was Douglas Brady married?" he asked.

"Aye."

"What were you doing going out with a married man?"