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herself, without rehearsing it for weeks in advance.
    She stopped at Gordon Go-a-Bike’s stall, bought a packet of big brown envelopes, and he gave her a loan of a stamp. She addressed one, as the form instructed, to the Clerk of the Sheriff Court and nipped out to the street to post it. When she came back with the egg rolls Leslie asked her what Home Gran had been saying.
    “She wanted me to fill out a form for her.”
    “What form was it?”
    “Urn, the council tax,” said Maureen, because she’d promised not to tell.
    “Aye,” said Leslie. “It’s a bugger, that form.”
    “Aye,” said Maureen. “It’s nice and cold in here.”
    She lowered herself onto the wee stool and they sat complaining about their achy-breaky knees, staring at each other, and smoked the day away in their dark tunnel as another scorcher blazed across the city.

Chapter 6
BROKEN
    They were in the square waiting room next to the interview cubicles. Across the room a stocky prison officer nodded slowly to the guard sitting next to Angus Farrell, letting him know that he was watching.
    It was an old part of the asylum building, refurbished with soundproof walls and remote-control security doors. The white strip-lights embedded in the ceiling were painfully bright and in each corner of the room red-eyed, whirring cameras watched every movement. Some patients could only be interviewed in the containment rooms, held behind a window while their lawyer shouted reassurance through toughened safety glass. Some were interviewed across a normal table. Whichever Angus got would give him a clue as to whether his lawyer trusted him. He had no other way of knowing. He was waiting for the man to arrive. In the past he’d had to wait here for up to an hour, poring over the events of last autumn.
    He thought back to the Northern Psychiatric Hospital, to all those mute girls, provocative, defenseless, and their goading blank eyes. His dick warmed and twitched. He almost hoped the lawyer would talk about them, show him pictures of the cupboard or the girls or something. He blinked and remembered the sluice cupboard, the grimy darkness and stinging air, thick with the smell of urine. The lawyer wouldn’t talk about the rapes — they hadn’t charged him with the rapes, just the murders. It would be better to go to prison as a murderer. The rapes would give him a shorter sentence but he’d be held in segregation and would be afraid for his life most of the time. Labels matter most on the margins. The ideal outcome would be no conviction at all.
    At the far end of the room a door buzzed. An officer pushed through it and the tone rose to an urgent whine until the lock clicked shut behind him. The door was made of yellow pine with small glass windows, like an outside door, sturdier than Maureen O’Donnell’s close door.
    The door beside Angus opened and Alan Grace looked out, inviting him into the room with a raised eyebrow and a forced smile. Grace was a thin man, bald, his uneven pate glinting under the fluorescent light, the hair too long at the sides. The guard stood up and nodded deferentially, standing Angus up with an authoritative pat to his elbow, guiding him with a hand on his shoulder forward into the room. Angus glanced up just once. It was a small room, painted two shades of gray, dark to shoulder height, lighter above. There was no partition, just a table bolted to the floor and two chairs. In two of the high corners black cameras watched, hungry for action. The officer stopped at the door behind him as if he were waiting for a tip. “Will I come in with yees?”
    “I think we’ll be fine,” said Grace, and the guard left, shutting the door after him. “Perhaps you might like to sit, Mr. Farrell.” Grace always maintained a cheery voice. It sounded less like conviviality than egging himself through an unpleasant task. “We can start to go over what happened to you yesterday.”
    As Angus sat down the legs on the chair splayed beneath him,