Exile

by Denise Mina

  ‘Fuck me,’ muttered Kilty into Maureen’s hair. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t stand it here. Come on.’

  ‘No,’ said Maureen, ‘I wanna see some’dy.’

  ‘Just come. Crash at mine.’

  ‘No.’

  Kilty ceremonially handed over the packet of fags she had bought for herself. ‘Give that back to me tomorrow.’

  She patted Maureen on the tit by accident and swerved her little froggy body away from the bar and out of the door. Two minutes later she came back with her phone number written on a bit of paper and put it in Maureen’s coat pocket. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, and left again.

  It was later and busier and warmer. Maureen rolled limy whisky around her mouth. She felt superior to the other people in the bar and wondered how they could stand it. She was from a shitty background, she’d had a crap life, but standing here in the Coach and Horses she felt like Lisa Marie Fucking Presley. She went to the loo and found the source of the sharp lemon smell. A broken mirror was bolted to the stained wall, its shattered guts missing. She left the first cubicle because menstrual blood had been smeared on the wall spelling out a ‘T’. The seat was broken in the second loo and there was no paper.

  She was very drunk now, leaning on the bar, reckless of her good coat on the sticky surface. A tinny tune began behind her and played and played until it played itself out. She saw the man and woman sitting at the far table again and was trying to concentrate hard enough to work it out when she turned and saw Frank Toner coming in from the street. The crowd parted for him. He was shorter and stockier than he had seemed in the Polaroid and moved like a retired boxer. Behind him was the staggering Vegas woman who had been leaning over the bar earlier. Maureen hadn’t seen her leave. She seemed much brighter now, happier and lighter, ready to laugh and give and receive. The couple came to the bar and Maureen moved nearer, nodding to the woman. The woman recognized Maureen from somewhere and nodded back.

  ‘How are you now?’ said Maureen. ‘Feeling a bit better?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ she said, pretending she remembered. ‘Much better now. Nice now.’

  She was well-spoken. She might have been a beauty once. Her face was as slender as a Modigliani; her thick brown hair had a natural sheen of auburn through it. She moved with grace, stepping from one foot to the other, letting her hips lead the sway. She might have been young, the deep wrinkles in her forehead and under her eyes looked premature; the rest of her skin was soft and fresh. Frank Toner looked at Maureen and Maureen nodded at him. ‘Good,’ she smiled, ‘let me get you both a drink.’

  ‘What would I want to take a fucking drink off you for?’ he said, speaking with a harsh south London accent.

  It suddenly occurred to Maureen that she was far too drunk to deal with this. She backed off. ‘Forget it,’ she turned to the bar, ‘doesn’t matter,’ as if ending the conversation was her choice.

  Toner announced to the gathered crowd that the day he took a drink from a bit of Scottish cunt was the day he’d fucking retire. He ordered his round and told the barman to give Maureen one as well, adding a wee joke, that he didn’t mean fuck her. He guffawed like a bitter child and the moat of sycophants around him laughed too.

  ‘Don’t want your drink,’ said Maureen quietly, feeling like a defiant cowpoke. Everyone ignored her. The barman put the drink down by her hand. ‘I don’t want it,’ she said.

  He gave her a manic look and pushed the glass towards her. ‘Just fuckin’ take it,’ he said. ‘Save us all the trouble.’

  Maureen wasn’t going to drink it but in the end she did because it was there and she couldn’t get served quickly enough. She was playing with Vik’s lighter and wanted to turn suddenly and set fire to the back of Toner’s coat.

  The skinny woman sidled up to her. ‘Are you all right?’ she said, smiling, mellow now, like a different woman again.

  Maureen had been insulted, and she was trying to mend the damage with the tenderness of a woman who had known humiliation herself and wanted to soften the pain for other people.

  ‘I’m Maureen.’

  ‘I’m Elizabeth.’

  A rattle of laughter emanated from a table in the corner. Maureen nodded to Frank. ‘’S that your boyfriend?’

  Elizabeth glanced round to see who Maureen was looking at. ‘Oh . . . no . . . I haven’t seen you in here before.’

  ‘I’m looking for my pal. Did you know Ann who used to drink in here?’

  Elizabeth smiled hard at her. ‘Ann. She didn’t really drink in here.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’ Elizabeth stood casually on one leg, looking at her puffy hands. The thick skin was hopelessly scarred, red and shiny on the knuckles, on the joints, around the slippery forked vein on the back of her hand. ‘Ann drank in different places, mostly.’

  ‘Do you drink in here all the time?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Elizabeth relaxed a little, now that they were off the subject of Ann. ‘Yeah, it’s nice in here.’

  ‘Is it?’ asked Maureen, testing to see if she had a sense of humour.

  Elizabeth smiled, getting the joke. ‘It looks really grotty,’ she said, ‘but they’re a good crowd in here.’ She nodded around the room at the drunks and the bums. ‘These are good people. We all look after each other, you know?’

  Elizabeth wasn’t lying. She honestly believed that staggering about in the Coach and Horses was a lifestyle choice. ‘How do you look after each other?’ asked Maureen, curious about the way her justifications operated and wanting her to elaborate.

  ‘Oh,’ said Elizabeth, getting stuck, ‘lots of things . . .’ She couldn’t think of any. ‘Lots of little things.’

  Maureen guessed that Elizabeth probably did lots of little things and got fuck-all back.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Elizabeth vaguely, losing her way a little. ‘You’re Scottish.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘I like Scotland.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Maureen. ‘Have you been there?’

  ‘Yeah, I go sometimes,’ said Elizabeth, remembering neither sad nor happy times. ‘Not now, but I used to.’

  ‘On the train?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ She was getting vaguer, zoning out.

  ‘Ann was killed,’ said Maureen.

  ‘I know.’ She came to. ‘I know.’

  ‘Did you know her well?’

  ‘Not well.’ Elizabeth smiled nervously. ‘I don’t know anything about that . . .’

  She backed off into the crowd. Maureen had lost her fags. She looked up again and saw the man and the woman at the table. Maureen looked at him. He was a big man, beefy next to the scrawny drinkers. She felt angry with him but she couldn’t remember why. She couldn’t place either of them but the woman was especially familiar. She thought about it. She definitely knew them from somewhere and then it hit her: the woman was Tonsa.

  Tonsa was an elegant middle-aged woman with blonde streaked hair. She always dressed beautifully in suburban designer clothes. Liam knew her because she was a professional mule, carrying backwards and forwards to Glasgow once a month. He’d introduced her to Maureen once in Glasgow. Tonsa’s eyes were the only real giveaway: they were blank. Liam said you could run at her with a spear in each hand and she wouldn’t blink, which was why she was so good at her job. Tonsa had almost managed to get Liam arrested a few months before: for no reason at all she’d told the police he’d beaten her up, retracting her statement at the last minute. Maureen fell across the floor towards them. ‘Hiya,’ she said, sitting clumsily at the table. ‘D’ye ’member me?’ She slapped Tonsa on the arm. ‘Tonsa, Tonsa, d’ye not remember me? My brother, Liam? He introduced me to ye.’

  Tonsa ignored Maureen and pulled at the cuff of her Burberry overcoat absentmindedly.

  Maureen looked at the man He sat back. ‘What you doing here?’ he said. He was Scottish and she knew she knew him from home.

  ‘Just, ye kn
ow, kicking about.’ She wanted to hit him and she couldn’t remember why. Frank Toner was still holding court at the bar. ‘See that baldy guy?’ He stared at her. ‘What about him?’

  She shook her head, thinking maybe she had known once but had forgotten. ‘What is it with that guy?’

  ‘Never you mind about him.’

  Without acknowledging Maureen, Tonsa stood up and left the table. Maureen looked at the man and remembered why she hated him so much, why she was so angry with him, why he was Michael. It was Mark Doyle.

  ‘You,’ she said loudly, slumping over the table. ‘Who killed Pauline?’

  Mark Doyle leaned in, his blistered red face suddenly vivid and alive. ‘You’re gonnae get yourself a sore face. Get the fuck out of here.’

  Maureen was too drunk. She blinked at him. Mark Doyle jutted out his jaw, looking as if he could take a punch and not flinch.

  ‘I’m not looking for trouble,’ she said, with a dawning consternation at her own drunkenness, ‘I’m just drinking.’

  ‘You here ’cause I telt ye Ann was in?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m here to see her sister and have a drink.’ Doyle looked around the bar, sniffing the air. ‘Does her sister drink in here too?’

  ‘No.’ Maureen reached into her pocket and pulled out the Polaroid, cupping it in her hand to hide it. ‘I’m here because of this.’

  Doyle was on his feet, wrapping his fingers around Maureen’s elbow, digging in deep to the soft skin between the bones, making her feel faint and breathless. He stood her up. ‘Get the fuck out of here,’ he growled, lifting her from the seat and directing her towards the door. ‘Get the fuck out of here.’

  They were all watching him lift her with an apparently gentle touch to her elbow, seeing her almost crying with the pain. Mark Doyle opened the pub door and threw her out into the street. Maureen didn’t fall over, she staggered forward, scratching her knuckles on the pavement, bumping into a black couple who were walking past, nearly pushing them into the busy road. ‘Aye,’ said Doyle, ‘an’ fucking stay out.’

  Sarah was not pleased to see her. She was dressed for bed and told Maureen over and over that it was half one and she had to get up in the morning. Maureen sat on the bed while Sarah shouted at her that she couldn’t stay any more, no more, not any more. She lay down on the bed fully dressed, promising herself never to drink like that again, never again. She held her bloodied hand to her chest, and Sarah’s voice receded into the background as the Grecian leaves spun a dance above her and Michael hovered in the black bathroom.

  36

  Rumbled

  The cold in the hall enveloped her and the syphilitic sailors glared down from on high. Sarah was yanking Maureen into her overcoat. She had come into the room while Maureen slept and packed up all her stuff into her cycle bag. She woke Maureen up and poked and prodded her downstairs. Added to the discomfort of a terrible hangover, the knuckles on Maureen’s hand were badly scratched and her elbow throbbed when she tried to straighten it. Sarah threw the bag on to the floor by the door. ‘I just can’t have it, Maureen, I’m sorry. This is my home.’

  ‘Christ, Sarah—’

  ‘Don’t you say that.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for coming home in a state, I got a bit drunk—’

  ‘A bit drunk?’ screeched Sarah, and her voice felt like a needle in Maureen’s eye. ‘You’re an alcoholic!’

  Maureen cupped her sore hand. ‘Fucking calm down,’ she said. ‘God, I’ve got a hangover, have ye no pity?’

  ‘I have pity, I have plenty of pity for people who don’t bring misfortune on themselves—’

  ‘You’re just pissed off because I wouldn’t read your Jesus pamphlets.’

  ‘Get out of my house.’

  The bright sun attacked her and her eyes were bursting. She felt ashamed as she sloped through the quiet village to the station. She’d been completely pissed and she’d said the only curse word that was guaranteed to upset Sarah. She got herself to a newsagent’s in Blackheath village and bought a packet of fags. The guy behind the counter was tilling them up when she saw a rack of cheap sunglasses. She impulse bought the cheapest-looking pair. They were reclaimed stock from the 1970s, with brown lenses and a soft, orange plastic frame. The man charged her a tenner for them, correctly guessing that she was too hung over to argue. She got outside and slid them on, lit a cigarette and silently thanked humanity for the miracle of tobacco.

  She was groaning at the bumpy train when she checked her pager and found an old message sent the night before from Leslie: Jimmy had been arrested and she must come home immediately. Maureen tried to phone her from a callbox in London Bridge but couldn’t get an answer at home. She looked away down the road. Cars and lorries passed in front of her, whipping the air into wind. She wanted to be cold again and to see familiar buildings, to have her home to go to, her bed to hide in, fresh clothes to wear, to see some noble fucking hills instead of this endless flatness. But she couldn’t go home; she couldn’t go back to Ruchill.

  They were having a break. Leslie smoked yet another cigarette and looked around the grim room, at the yellowed walls and the rubber flooring. She had been smoking for hours without anything to wet it. A giant ulcer throbbed on the end of her tongue and she couldn’t stop biting it. Isa was looking after the kids and Jimmy was downstairs in a holding cell.

  Leslie had knocked back the offer of a lawyer initially, thinking it would make her look suspicious, but she was beginning to wonder about the wisdom of that. She didn’t think she had anything to hide: all she had done was omit to tell Ann that she knew Jimmy, but she had done it because she knew whose side she was on. She knew how it would look if the police spoke to the committee members and heard that Leslie had requested Ann as a resident. She should have declared an interest when Ann was first mentioned. If the committee even suspected that she had told Jimmy that Ann was in the shelter she’d get the sack, at best they’d move her to the big smelly office. She’d be sitting across from that twat Jan, feeling as miserable as Maureen. She should have told the committee she was Jimmy’s cousin. She should have told them.

  The police didn’t believe in the Polaroid and she couldn’t tell them where it was. She couldn’t mention Maureen or they’d want to know why she had taken it and why she was in London. When she told them it was of a guy called Frank Toner the fat guy laughed and the woman smiled up at her. ‘What has he got to do with this?’

  ‘I think he was her boyfriend,’ Leslie’d said.

  The policeman had sniggered. ‘Well, I know what Frank Toner’s girlfriends look like and Ann just wasn’t his type.’ Leslie bit the tip of her ulcer again and blanched at the convulsive needle pains in the root of her tongue. If she could just speak to Maureen and find out what was happening she might be able to lie convincingly. The English woman came back in and sat down across from her. ‘Would you like something to eat?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Leslie. ‘Listen, I didn’t know Ann was Jimmy’s wife until after she left.’

  ‘I see. When did you realize?’

  ‘After she left.’

  ‘When after she left?’

  But Leslie wasn’t used to lying and she didn’t have any of the basic equipment. She couldn’t visualize herself or build on existing facts to make a lie sustainable. She sat back, drawing the last of her cigarette and stubbing it out in the pie-tin ashtray. ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are you going to charge me?’

  ‘We’re not sure yet.’

  ‘If you do, what will you charge me with?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘If we can prove you could foresee he was going to hurt her and you aided that in some way. Then . . . well, then it’s murder.’

  Leslie still wasn’t home. Maureen nearly pho
ned Vik again but lost her bottle half-way through the area code. Outside the glass of the telephone box the car exhaust was forming a gritty haze above Brixton Hill, the fumes and the dirt suspended in the sunlight like salt in solution. It was early afternoon and the day was turning out to be another warm one. She put on her sunglasses and stepped out of the box, heading up the hill to Moe’s. Her bag was heavy and pressed on her shoulder, making her feel worse. She stopped and rested the bag on a low wall, ripped the Velcroed flap open and looked inside. She still had Kilty’s shopping. She picked out the heavy stuff and left two cans of beans and a tin of corned beef on a wall. She kept the things that couldn’t be replaced from a corner shop; two giant bars of Milka chocolate, a packet of rice cakes and a box of firelighters. She’d explain to her later. She cringed as she remembered the night before. The Las Vegas woman, Elizabeth, had said she didn’t know anything about that. She wouldn’t have said that unless there was something to know.

  Someone had tipped a wheelie-bin over around the back of Dumbarton Court, disseminating the putrid smell of week-old ready meals and shitty nappies. Maureen took the stairs slowly, stopping to catch her breath on each of the landings. By the time she got to the door she was half hoping Moe wouldn’t be in, but she was.

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Moe, adding a ‘hah’ as an afterthought.

  ‘I’m not from the brew,’ said Maureen, softly, more concerned with nursing her hangover than setting a kindly tone. ‘Ye can stop all that puffing and panting.’

  ‘Hah, I don’t know what you mean, hah.’