Exile

by Denise Mina

  Williams sighed and looked very tired. ‘It’s a long story,’ he said.

  A soft knock on the door heralded the creeping return of Inness. Hugh McAskill was behind him, his gold and silver hair splitting the grey morning as he looked into the living room and caught Maureen’s eye. For the briefest moment he looked very sad then dropped his eyes to the floor. He looked up again with a blank expression.

  ‘Is this the officer you were trying to phone?’ asked Williams.

  ‘Aye,’ said Maureen.

  Hugh stood in the living-room doorway and nodded solemnly at his feet. Williams and Bunyan took the hint, stood up and went into the kitchen with Inness to wait. Hugh watched them leave and turned to her, his china blue eyes suddenly lively. ‘You all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Maureen, feeling like a hard case. ‘It’s nice to be home.’

  ‘They taped the phone-call from London,’ said Hugh.

  ‘They went around to Tam Parlain’s house and found bits of blood and hair under his settee. There’s a superficial match with the hair from the body.’

  ‘Will they let Jimmy go?’

  ‘He’s out already,’ said Hugh. ‘They hadn’t charged him yet.’

  ‘Right? What about Leslie?’

  ‘She’s out too. That Elizabeth woman’s in a bit of a state. She’s telling them everything on the promise of a methadone course.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Maureen. ‘She told me everything for five hundred quid.’

  ‘Desperate.’ Hugh nodded at his feet and looked at her. ‘Farrell’s been writing to you all this time?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He sighed. ‘Maureen,’ he said, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.’

  ‘It’s your job, Hugh, you’d’ve been honour-bound to tell Joe.’ They looked at each other and Hugh nodded quietly. ‘He’s only pretending to be mental,’ said Maureen. ‘He’s having ye on. I didn’t understand why he was writing at first but then I realized. It was too easy for you to trace the letters here. He’s drip-feeding Joe information about his mental state. He knows that the harder Joe has to work to get it, the more likely he is to believe it.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘What will ye do with the letters?’

  ‘We’ll have to give them to the fiscal now. We don’t have any option– they’re material evidence as to his state of mind.’

  ‘He’ll get out, Hugh,’ she said. ‘He’s a fucking psychologist, he knows exactly how to act to get off.’

  ‘I know. It’s a tricky one.’ He turned to look at her neck.

  ‘Let me see you.’ She stretched her chin up as high as she could. ‘You should get an X-ray,’ said Hugh. ‘I’ll take ye up to the Albert if you want.’

  ‘Naw,’ she said, ‘I’ll go after. Would you like a cup of tea?’ Hugh blinked slowly and smiled. ‘I would love a cup of tea.’

  He followed her into the cramped kitchen. Bunyan was sitting down at the table and Williams was standing in the corner, smiling as Inness mumbled a story to him. They stopped talking as the door opened, stiffening when they saw it was Maureen.

  ‘Hello, again,’ said Williams pleasantly.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Maureen, ‘I was just going to make a cup of tea.’

  Williams shifted on his feet and glanced sideways at Inness. ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that you were in a psychiatric hospital for a while.’ He looked at her innocently but the question was never innocent. ‘So what?’

  Williams shrugged. ‘It’s just, you know, interesting.’ Maureen lit another cigarette and her heart heaved at another lungful of harm. Hugh was here and she didn’t need the fellowship of this pushy man any more. ‘No,’ she said, flicking the kettle on, ‘you’re wrong. It wasn’t interesting.’

  ‘While you were in there—’

  ‘I’m not answering questions about myself. I’m answering questions about Ann Harris and London, not about myself.’ Williams pointed at Inness. ‘My colleague here tells me that your brother was a drug-dealer. Did he have any connection with Frank Toner?’

  ‘No. None.’

  ‘It’s interesting, though, isn’t it? That Tam Parlain is found with a houseful of drugs and your brother used to be a dealer? Is that why you went to London?’

  If she hadn’t been to Ruchill she would have thought it was strange herself. She would have wondered but she was sure of everything now. The kettle reached a pitch, spluttering before switching itself off.

  ‘This is a magnificent view,’ sighed Bunyan. The men looked at her. She was sitting down, her hand resting on the table, a vertical cigarette burning between her fingers. She was smiling softly to herself and looking out over the rugged north side of the city and the flaming fever tower. ‘Magnificent,’ she breathed.

  ‘We’ll be keeping the letters,’ said Inness, stepping forward, reasserting his authority.

  Maureen turned to him. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘see those letters? He wanted me to give them to you. He wants you to think he’s mental so he’ll get a short sentence in a low security facility.’

  ‘Really?’ Inness glanced a snide, silent aside at Williams. ‘You’re a doctor now, are ye?’

  She fucking hated him. ‘Have ye ever heard of the 1971 Rosenhan study?’ She waited, making him say it. ‘No,’ he said finally.

  ‘These people went to mental hospitals and said they’d been hearing voices. They behaved normally apart from the retrospective claims. They were lying, there was nothing wrong with them.’

  ‘Why did they do it then?’

  ‘For the study,’ said Maureen, with forced patience. ‘They were all diagnosed as schizophrenic and everything they did after that was put down to their illness; taking notes for the study, watching people, asking about their case. Some of them were kept in for days, some for weeks. The only people who knew there was nothing wrong with them were the other patients. Now, I am a certified mental case.’ She looked at Williams. He was biting his lip and listening. ‘And there is fuck all wrong with Angus Farrell.’

  Williams raised his eyebrows and smiled at Inness. ‘Smart lady,’ he said.

  Inness didn’t smile back.

  They were leaving. Inness was making a great play of being grateful for her help but he didn’t like her and she didn’t like him, and it was getting harder for both of them to hide it.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Inness. ‘I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other very soon.’ He gave her a disgusted look and turned down the stairs, walking away before he said something he regretted, leaving Maureen and Williams alone.

  Williams looked faintly amused. ‘You’re not exactly in his good books, are you?’

  ‘Personality clash,’ she said.

  ‘You’re in my good books,’ he said. ‘You’re not planning on leaving town again, are you?’

  ‘No,’ she smiled, ‘not for a long time.’

  ‘We’ll be back tomorrow to take you to Carlisle. About twelve, okay?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Get it X-rayed,’ said Williams, backing off and pointing at his neck. ‘Little bones in there.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she touched her throat softly, ‘it’ll be all right.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Hugh. His breath smelt of bitter tea. ‘I’ll be seeing ye.’

  ‘Take care, Hugh,’ she said, trying to look up at him without bending her neck.

  ‘Get an X-ray.’

  ‘I will, Hugh, I will.’

  She watched them pile down the stairs. The little blonde English woman trailed behind the men, looking up at her as they disappeared below the landing. She smiled and lifted her hand, slapping the fingers against the palm, as if she was waving to a child.

  Maureen used the mobile number.

  ‘Oh, Mauri, fucking hell, fucking hell, I’ve never been more scared in my life.’ Leslie paused and
Maureen could hear a little ‘phut’ as she took a draw of her fag. ‘They’ve let you go?’

  ‘They’ve let me go and I’m home and so’s Jimmy, thank fuck. They told my work. I’m getting sacked but I don’t care. I just fucking don’t care.’ Cammy called impatiently in the background for Leslie to come here and harhalfingfom. Leslie sighed into the receiver and turned to speak to him. ‘I’m on the fucking phone, Cameron. Can it, will ye?’

  ‘Well,’ said Maureen, ‘they’ve found blood and hair in someone’s house so I think they’ll be dropping the charges.’

  ‘They’d never have made a case. It was ridiculous in the first fucking place,’ said Leslie, and realized how she sounded. ‘Surrounded by Injuns I was, but wasnae feart, oh, no. Let’s set up a business together now we’re both free agents.’

  Maureen giggled, glad to have Leslie back on form. ‘A business? Doing what?’

  ‘Roaming vigilantes,’ said Leslie. ‘I’ll be your driver.’

  ‘That’s crazy. I’ve never even been to Rome.’

  ‘Maureen,’ said Leslie seriously, ‘punning causes cancer.’

  45

  Equal

  The Equal café was serving lunches. Hungry office workers and students from the art school were cramped together at the black and gold fleck Formica tables, eating their rolls and sipping tea from smoked-glass mugs. Maureen and Liam managed to find a small empty table near the back. It was under a sloping ceiling of cheap pine, which hung so low that Maureen’s seat was really only suitable for a midget with a hump. Previous patrons of the café had carved their names into the sloping soft wood. The middle-aged waitress who approached them had a very prominent limp, which worsened dramatically when an order was sent back or anyone asked for anything tricky. She seemed to have developed some sort of fungal complaint on one of her feet as well, because she was wearing what appeared to be a slipper with the toe cut out.

  ‘Hello,’ nodded Liam.

  ‘What d’ yes want?’

  ‘Two all-day breakfasts,’ he said. ‘I’ll have tea with mine. Mauri?’

  Maureen was tired and wanted coffee but didn’t trust it to be anything but reused grounds. ‘Tea as well.’

  The waitress shuffled off to the adjacent table to take a lone businessman’s order.

  ‘Sorry about the Martha thing,’ said Liam, casually watching the waitress and nodding, as if his apology brought the whole episode to a satisfactory conclusion.

  Maureen sat back indignantly, banged the Toner bruise on the back of her head off the ceiling and sat forward again. ‘Liam, what are you going to do about Lynn?’

  ‘She doesn’t need to know,’ he said briskly. ‘What happened to you in London?’

  ‘Look, ye can’t harass her into going back out with ye and then do things like that. You can’t treat her like that. Lynn’s too good for you, she always has been.’

  Liam turned to face her, exasperated. ‘What exactly do you expect me to do?’ he said, unreasonably annoyed for a transgressor.

  ‘Um, well,’ she said sarcastically, ‘start with not fucking other women?’

  ‘Look, if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have done it. I only came down to London to get ye. It was you who wanted to stay the night there.’

  The businessman shifted in his seat, pretending not to listen but savouring every word.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘ye can’t blame that on me, it was you who got your fucking tager out.’

  ‘Fuck off, Maureen.’

  The businessman looked up and smiled sweetly at the far wall.

  ‘That is so unreasonable,’ Maureen said. ‘Anyway, I’ve been fighting people all week, I’m not going to say any more about this. But it wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘Let’s say no more about it,’ said Liam, adding quickly, ‘But it wasn’t my fault either. What happened to your neck?’

  The waitress shuffled over to them, carrying two mugs and two oval plates. She dropped the cups on to the table and slid a plate in front of each of them, walking away before the runny egg yolks had stopped quivering. The bacon, eggs, sausage and black pudding were cooked to perfection. Fried potato scones, swollen and glistening with hot oil, sat on either end of the ovals like inverted commas. Liam bagsied the tea. For some reason Maureen had been given a cup of hot orange squash but she was pleased with it.

  ‘Tell me about your neck,’ said Liam, eating a slice of Lorne sausage dripping with yolk.

  ‘London was heavy, you know?’ She nodded. ‘Really heavy. There’s some bad people in the world.’

  ‘I know, wee hen.’

  Maureen remembered Elizabeth. ‘And some sad people too,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Liam. ‘God, I’d rather deal with the evil ones any day, they just try and fuck ye. The sad ones make ye feel miserable and then they try to fuck ye. Did ye find out who killed her?’

  ‘Tam Parlain. She was robbed of a big bag of drugs she was carrying for Toner. Tam told Maxine she was muling and she must have told Hutton. I think he ran down there and robbed her. He kicked the shit out of her.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Liam. ‘He would do. He was a right sicko.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Maureen, a little annoyed at being interrupted, ‘Toner was putting two and two together and put out the word that he wanted to talk to Ann, and Tam killed her to stop him finding out.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah, in front of a whole lot of people.’ She squashed crumbly black pudding on to a portion of square sausage and covered it with runny yolk.

  Liam was looking at her and trying not to smile. ‘He killed her in front of people?’ he asked. ‘Yeah. He made them all help him.’

  ‘So,’ he smirked, ‘Tam Parlain killed a woman in front of loads of people because– what? He wanted to cover up another misdemeanour?’

  Maureen stopped eating and looked at her plate. ‘Well,’ said Liam sceptically, ‘maybe it’s random enough to be true.’

  ‘They were all junkies,’ said Maureen, irritated by his supercilious tone. ‘I never really knew what that world was like before. How could you, Liam, knowing what it’s like?’ Liam paused and stared at her, instinctively angry and defensive. He used to look like that all the time. ‘Dunno,’ he said, clenching his jaw. ‘It’s not like that for most users. Lots of people use socially. Ye start off doing a favour for a friend, and then favours for several friends and then it’s for friends of friends. Before ye know where ye are, you’ve become this big demon and the police are strip-searching ye and you’re to blame for everyone who misuses or ODs. You don’t hold wine merchants responsible for Winnie’s drinking, do ye?’

  He sat up and looked at her. Liam had never done anything but right by her and Maureen had no right to cast up his past to him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I was annoyed. I’m very tired.’

  But Liam continued. ‘I like not living like that,’ he said. ‘I like putting my rubbish out the front like everyone else and not being worried when the door goes. I was good at it, they were choosing to use it, and if they hadn’t bought it off me it would have been from someone else. But I’ve got a house out of it and I’m at university and I can fly to London at a minute’s notice looking for you so I can’t lie and say I’m sorry. I did a bad thing and I’m not sorry.’

  The businessman called the waitress over and asked where his hot orange was. Maureen cupped her hands around the drink, afraid they’d take it away. ‘I shouldn’t have asked about that,’ she whispered. ‘It’s in the past and I shouldn’t have.’

  The waitress insisted that she’d already brought the hot orange and accused the businessman of losing it. He said how could he possibly lose a drink when he’d been sitting at the same wee table since he came in? The waitress tutted, muttered a bowdlerized curse and hobbled away.

  ‘Know what you were saying about alcoholism being genetic?’ whispere
d Liam, leaning over the table. Maureen nodded. He pointed at her hot orange. ‘There’s a gene for criminal behaviour as well.’

  Maureen laughed at him, choked immediately and used the last of her hot drink to soothe her throat. She hid the cup behind a stand-up plastic menu.

  ‘D’you know what I find amazing?’ said Liam, dipping into his yolk with a slice of scone.

  ‘What do you find amazing?’ said Maureen.

  ‘The fact,’ he pointed his fork at her, ‘that you know two people who’ve been murdered in the last six months.’

  ‘Mad, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘I mean, that is unbelievable,’ said Liam. ‘In fact it’s more than unbelievable. It’s statistically implausible.’

  Maureen looked at him, remembering Elizabeth saying Toner wanted to speak to Ann, the cuts behind Ann’s knees, and Moe, who remembered Leslie’s name and work address perfectly and reported her drunk sister missing after a day. ‘Bitch,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The fucking lying bitch.’

  Liam looked over his shoulder. ‘Who are ye talking about?’

  ‘Finish, finish,’ she said suddenly, poking at his plate.

  ‘Why?’ he said, pulling it away from her.

  ‘You’re driving me to the airport.’

  46

  Fucked Both Ways

  The plane lifted off the Tarmac, pressing Maureen back in her seat. An excited small boy in front lost control and undid his belt, standing up on the seat and giving out a high happy squeal. His nervous mother grabbed his leg and sat him down, nodding apologetically to the stewardess who was staggering towards them down the aisle, ready to quell the boy’s air joy.

  Within minutes they were blinking at the sunshine and looking down at a molten white landscape. The flight took an hour and ten minutes but felt much shorter. The cabin crew came down the aisle dishing out drinks and pretzels, followed it with a small meaningless meal and chased that with tea or coffee. By the time the passengers had stopped fretting that their neighbour was getting something they weren’t, the plane had already begun its descent. They made a quick, bumpy landing and pulled to a stop. The passengers stood up, cluttering the aisles and standing with aching knees pressed into the seat in front, waiting to get out and get away. It was raining gently outside the window.