Exile

by Denise Mina

  ‘Hi, Sarah, not bad,’ said Maureen, smiling. ‘How’s yourself?’ She noticed once again, as she had all the way through university, how rough her accent sounded.

  Sarah stepped aside and invited her in. ‘Come,’ she smiled, ‘come into the humble abode. Most welcome.’

  Maureen walked into the hall and looked up. ‘Oh, Sarah,’ she said, before she could stop herself.

  ‘Nothing much,’ said Sarah, blushing with shame and pleasure. ‘Granny’s old house.’

  The hall was fourteen foot high with black and white floor tiles, walls papered in textured fleur-de-lis, and hung with blue-black portraits of bearded men in naval uniforms. A high wooden staircase clung to the wall on the right with a black wood balustrade. The house was very still. Maureen pointed at the paintings. ‘Who are these fantastic men?’ she said.

  ‘Relatives,’ said Sarah. ‘Deceased. Mostly from syphilis. Look, I have to leave for work in half an hour. I’d leave you here but I don’t have a set of spare keys.’ They looked at each other. Sarah smiled weakly and slid her gaze to the floor. ‘I can give you a lift into town if you’d like?’

  Maureen nodded. Sarah didn’t trust her. All she knew was that she and Maureen had had little in common at university and Maureen had been mentally ill since then. ‘That’s fair enough,’ she said, neglecting convention and responding to the subtext.

  Sarah steered her to the back door, turned her round and lifted her coat by the shoulders, helped her out of it and hung it on a coat peg. ‘Come,’ she slipped her arm through

  Maureen’s, ‘and have a little breakfast with me. Come and tell me everything that has happened to you. You must be famished. How’s your hunky brother?’

  The tentative pals walked into the Aga-warmed kitchen where Maureen sipped her tea and gave Sarah a disinfected summary of her last four years. Her time in hospital with mild depression, how Liam’s business had done so well he could pay his way through uni, about her boyfriend, Douglas, who’d died of a heart-attack, and how her mother didn’t keep terribly well at all. Sarah was sad for her, happy for her and sad again, as the story dictated. She put on her makeup at the table as Maureen finished spinning a tattered web of half-truths, then took her turn.

  Sarah had been engaged to Hugo at the tail end of her university career but their relationship just hadn’t worked out, they weren’t as suited as they had imagined. Maureen had met Hugo briefly when he came up to attend the graduation ball. He was a thick-lipped, over-bred, rugby shirted haw-haw. He didn’t seem interested in Sarah, much less in love with her, and Maureen was glad she hadn’t married him. Anyway, Sarah got her dream job at an auction house and was working hard and getting promotion and good work to do all the time, it was great and she had the house so money wasn’t a worry. You see, she knew everyone here, in this area, so she had a ready-made circle of friends locally. And the local people were so friendly. They went out all the time. Sarah’s lies were so bright and cheerful that Maureen felt sorry for her. She was a nice woman, and Maureen wished something nice had happened to her but the big house felt cold and Sarah seemed bereft and needy. ‘Right,’ said Sarah, taking a drink of tea and leaving most of the lipstick she had just applied on the rim of the cup, ‘let’s go. Where are you off to?’

  Maureen said she was going to Brixton. Sarah frowned at the mention of the area. She said she wasn’t headed that way but Maureen could get a train straight there from the station at the bottom of the hill and insisted she’d drive Maureen and drop her. The station was a quarter of a mile away. Maureen wondered why she had agreed to her coming to stay at all. She could just have said no. ‘Sarah,’ lied Maureen, ‘you’re a pal.’

  Joe McEwan sat back in his chair and lit his fifth smoke of the morning. He was thinking about her again. The harder he tried to avoid it the more she came to mind. His mother had died a month and a half ago and he knew he was coping badly, losing his temper, working too much, giving into the fags again. Whenever he relaxed or took his mind off his work for any length of time there was Patsy, waiting for him, her hand, her voice, her eyes. He had been sitting at home, alone and maudlin, sorting through her papers, the night before when the call had come through about Hutton. It was exactly what he needed: a big investigation with citywide implications.

  Hutton had been killed for dealing on his own. He was one of the new generation pushing their way up the ranks, one of the worst side effects of Operation No-go. The success of the operation was a mixed blessing. It pushed prices and profits up, turned already vicious men into animals and it meant more dead junkies in shopping-centre toilets. As new dealers sprang up to replace the old ones they sold virtually pure heroin to their first few clients so that word would get around that they did good deals. An OD brought the punters to the dealer’s door like an advertising campaign. But the old powers were still battling for control, and the nature of Hutton’s injuries was meant as a warning to other aspiring entrepreneurs.

  McEwan knew Hutton. He had seen him in court several years before when he had battered his neighbour. The Sheriff asked him why he was nicknamed ‘Bananas’ and Hutton’s sodden junkie eyes darted around the room. ‘I like bananas,’ he said, and the public benches laughed. ‘I could eat them all day.’ He tried to bring his purported love of fruit into every answer thereafter, labouring the joke, playing up to the public, irritating the Sheriff and drawing the court’s attention to his confused mental state. It was as if he thought the public benches were deciding his fate.

  A sudden knock at the door heralded DI Inness’s first visit of the day. Inness had been getting the brunt of McEwan’s recent moods. He knew it was wrong, he knew he shouldn’t allow himself the luxury, but he found Inness deeply annoying. And the more he bullied him, the more Inness sucked up to him.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, stepping into the office clutching a piece of paper. Inness always carried a bit of paper, as if his mum had given him permission to be in the police force. It was a standing joke at the station. When he was off duty and didn’t have his bit of paper he always carried a plastic bag. ‘The DI and the DC from the Met are downstairs. D’you still want me to handle it?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll sit in. Take them to conference room two, please,’ said McEwan, starting the day as he started every day, meaning not to pick on him.

  Inness showed them in and DI Williams and DC Bunyan took their seats at the table without being invited. Williams was a pudgy man with a bald head and small gold glasses. Bunyan was a pretty little thing, petite and slim with short blonde hair and a modest trace of pale lipstick. They were dressed in smart dark suits, he in trousers, she in a skirt that just reached her knees, and McEwan didn’t altogether approve. If they had been from any other region he wouldn’t have bothered attending but they were the Met and he wanted them to know whose patch they were on.

  ‘First of all, thank you for your co-operation, sir,’ said Williams, and McEwan recognized the accent. ‘It’s been very helpful.’

  ‘You from the south side?’ asked McEwan.

  ‘Aye,’ said Williams, and he smiled. ‘My da was a copper. Govan,’ sixty-two to’ seventy-nine.’

  ‘Why are you in the Met?’

  ‘Form of rebellion,’ he said, and McEwan smiled at him. Regional forces resented the Met. They were considered arrogant and lax. Williams’s dad would have hated it.

  ‘Did you stay with your family last night?’

  ‘No, they’re all gone now. We stayed in a guest house in Battlefields.’

  ‘That’s a bit out of the way.’

  ‘’S familiar, though.’

  ‘Yeah.’ McEwan signalled to Inness to start the briefing. Inness flipped through the notes in front of him ‘There isn’t much intelligence on the deceased,’ he said, ‘so I don’t know how helpful we can be to you. The husband was interviewed when she was first reported missing and he claimed he hadn’t seen her since November. Notes say he was a
quiet man, very concerned for her safety. The area’s not bad, poor but not bad.’

  ‘Who’s in the frame at the moment?’ asked McEwan. A little startled by the intrusion, Williams sat up. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the husband beat her up quite badly before, but we can’t place him in London and we haven’t had the chance to question him yet.’

  ‘Didn’t you go there last night?’

  ‘Yeah,’ interrupted Bunyan, ‘but we couldn’t question him because he hadn’t told his kids yet.’

  McEwan ignored the short-skirted woman and continued to look at Williams, answering him as if he was the one who had spoken. ‘He hadn’t told them she was missing?’

  ‘He hadn’t told them she was dead,’ said Williams. He raised his eyebrows.

  McEwan tipped his head to the side and sighed. ‘How many kids?’ he asked. ‘Four,’ said Williams.

  McEwan shook his head at the notes. ‘They’ve always got kids,’ he said heavily. ‘All these nightmare couples have got kids.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ nodded Williams. ‘Always got kids.’ Williams was quietly spoken, deferential but firm, and McEwan thought he might like him if they worked together.

  Inness turned the page on his notebook and started reading again. ‘They’ve got four kids, which you already know, and you know about the Place of Safety Shelter, obviously.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bunyan, sitting forward and leaning her hands on the desk. ‘We’re going there later.’

  Hugh McAskill knocked on the half-open door and looked in. ‘What is it?’ said McEwan.

  ‘They’ve got Hutton’s girlfriend downstairs, sir.’

  ‘Well,’ said Williams, standing up, ‘I can see you’ve got a lot on so we’ll leave ye to it.’

  ‘Right,’ said McEwan. ‘Well, let us know how you get on. If we can do anything, you know.’

  McAskill stood at the door, holding it open for the visiting officers, and followed them out to show them downstairs. Inness lingered in the doorway.

  ‘She’s a bit of a hot-shot, isn’t she?’ said McEwan, assuaging his conscience by giving him credit. ‘Yes, sir, she is.’

  28

  Coldharbour Lane

  The passengers had thinned by the time the train reached Brixton. Maureen got off and climbed down the stairs, enjoying a bracing breath of cold air in the street. Everyone in Brixton was dressed for a mild spring and Maureen was ready for the height of a Siberian winter. The sweat from the Underground had dried out, leaving her feeling crusty and damp. She stopped by Woolworth’s window and took out her A–Z. The lawyer’s office was just beyond the high street and Moe Akitza’s address was at the top of Brixton Hill, within easy walking distance. The pager in her bag began to sing and she felt for it, finding it at the bottom of her bag under a pair of pants. Jimmy said that the child-benefit book had been cashed yesterday.

  She waited at the lights, crossed over to the Ritzy cinema and entered the mouth of Coldharbour Lane. The street ran around the back of Brixton high street, sloping away from it at a forty-five-degree angle. The start of the Lane was busy with bistros and wine bars, small restaurants and tasteful clothes shops. The brave push towards gentrification died suddenly at the intersection of Electric Avenue and the vegetable market. Coldharbour Lane crumbled into a ramshackle ghetto. A big police sign strapped to a lamp-post announced that someone had been shot and killed in the Lane at 2.09 a.m., three days ago, and appealed to the public for information. Next to a shop selling nothing but neon yellow chickens stood a subsiding Victorian inn with a sinking stone portico. It was the Coach and Horses, the pub Mark Doyle had seen Ann in before Christmas. It wasn’t open yet but shadowy figures moved inside the small orange windows. It looked dirty and run-down and Maureen could easily see Ann drinking in there. Beyond the eroded brick railway bridge stood a row of pleasantly proportioned Victorian shops. On the corner, behind a bank of call-boxes, was a whitewashed pub called the Angel, and next to it a long office window was barred with vertical strip blinds. It was McCallum and Arrowsmith, Solicitors. Maureen opened the door, tripping a tinkling alarm bell as she walked in, and stood at the counter, trying to attract the attention of a secretary. ‘Don’t hold your breath.’

  A tiny woman, in a fake-fur box jacket was sitting on one of the plastic chairs against the window. She had sunbrushed skin, thin brown hair and buggy, goitrous eyes. She was resting her head against the window, her eyes half shut. She looked like a tiny, very beautiful tropical frog. ‘She’ll take fucking ages,’ she said, her accent a muted upper-class Glaswegian.

  For all her worldliness, Maureen found the stranger a bit frightening. But she didn’t look dangerous. Her hair was twisted into a loose roll at the back and her little slipper shoes looked expensive. ‘Takes ages,’ said the stranger.

  ‘Aye, right enough,’ said Maureen noncommittally. Without sitting up the frog woman opened one bloodshot eye. ‘Glasgow?’ Maureen nodded a little.

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Garnethill.’

  The tiny woman shut her eye and smiled softly. ‘Ah, Garnethill,’ she said. ‘I was at the art school. Long time ago.’

  Maureen wondered why she was in the lawyer’s. She might be a criminal, or getting divorced. Divorce seemed more likely, somehow. She seemed fairly content. A phone rang out on the desk and was intercepted by an answerphone. Maureen remembered why she had come in and turned back to the counter. The office was shallow with two desks standing in front of a door leading to the lawyers’ private offices. The young Asian secretary was alone, transcribing something from her headphones. Her hair was permed into tight spirals and hennaed burgundy. She was badly placed to see anyone at the counter but she was aware of Maureen and looked up at her a couple of times, nodding and lifting her hand briefly from the keyboard, letting her know she’d be with her in a minute. Maureen pulled a pen and the service-station notebook out of her bag, and stood at the counter, poised and ready to write, trying to look official.

  ‘Wait till ye see her eyes,’ whispered the fur-coated woman.

  Maureen wasn’t sure she was even talking to her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘are you waiting to be seen?’

  ‘Just wait till ye see her eyes.’

  Confused by the irrelevant mantra, Maureen smiled. Despite having her eyes shut the tiny woman smiled too and smacked her lips, nestling her head back against the window.

  Six long, hot minutes later the secretary took off her headphones, picked up a clipboard and meandered over to the counter. She wore coloured contact lenses of such a pale blue that her pupils looked irradiated, as if the edges of them were melting into the whites around her eyes.

  Maureen almost let out a little gasp but caught herself. She looked at the frog woman. She still had her eyes shut but she sensed Maureen’s intense discomfort and grinned to herself.

  ‘Can I have your name,’ asked the secretary, in a clipped lilt, ‘the time of your appointment and the name of the person the appointment is with, please?’ The dye, the perm and the contacts seemed designed to contradict her every feature, as if she didn’t want to be her at all.

  ‘I don’t have an appointment,’ said Maureen. ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

  The secretary looked up, startling Maureen again. ‘I wanted to ask you a couple of questions,’ said Maureen, trying to sound official. ‘It’ll only take about three minutes. Would that be okay with you?’

  ‘You’re not selling stationery, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because I’m not authorized to buy anything.’

  ‘No, no, I just want to ask you about something.’

  ‘What is the nature of your inquiry?’ she said.

  ‘I wanted to ask you about a man called James Harris.’ She let it hang for a minute. ‘He came into this office a week ago yesterday. He was under the mistaken belief that this office was a different firm of solicitors.’
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  The secretary grinned. ‘The little Scottish man who thought he was here for a will reading? Like in the films?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Maureen. ‘He spoke to you, did he?’

  ‘Yes, he did. He showed me the letter and every fink.’ She smirked. ‘’Course, it was made-up rubbish. We do criminal work and it wasn’t even our name. We used to be McCallum and Headie but then, of course, Mr Headie left three months ago.’

  ‘And Mr Arrowsmith came on board?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mr Headie left, did he?’ Maureen looked up. The secretary looked uncomfortable but she wasn’t giving anything away. ‘Did he retire?’

  The secretary didn’t know what to say. ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Right,’ said Maureen, jotting ‘fuck’in her notebook. ‘Did you get on with him?’

  ‘He was a nice man to work for . . .’

  ‘And where is he now?’

  The secretary hesitated and glanced at the frog woman. ‘He’s in Wandsworth, I think,’ she muttered.

  ‘Could you give me the number of his new office?’

  The secretary sniggered and held her clipboard up to cover her mouth. She tipped to the side to look behind Maureen and the frog woman giggled too. ‘I haven’t got the number of his office.’

  ‘Well, thank you for your time,’ said Maureen, closing her notebook. A shaft of sunlight hit her in the eye and she flinched. ‘Thanks again.’

  Out in the street the sun was warm and Maureen desperately wanted something sugary to wake her up. The door to the Angel pub was pinned wide to let in the morning air. She glanced inside to see if it was open. It was empty but someone was standing behind the bar, reading a paper and drinking out of a blue mug. ‘You open?’ she called. ‘Naw, I’m waiting for a bus.’