Denise Mina - Exile

"D'ye know there's a nursery down the road?"

The man paused. He didn't know why she was telling him that.

"If you're not working," she said, "and you're looking after them on your own, you'd have a good chance of getting them places."

Apparently unfamiliar with good news, the man looked worried.

"Ye'd get some time on your own," she added, wondering about the blue sports bag, wary of looking straight at it.

"Aye?" he said, watching his babies as they forgot what they were crying about and began to pull at a newspaper on the floor. "What's your name?"

"Maureen. What's yours?"

"Jimmy."

He tried to smile at her, sliding his lips back, but his face was too tired to pull it off. He had threateningly sharp teeth, which slanted backwards into his mouth. They looked like a vicious little carnivore's, naturally selected because they slid deeper into the flesh when the victim resisted.

"I'm going fucking mad here." He picked up an old pair of Mutant Ninja Turtle pajamas from the cold floor. "What d'ye want Ann for?"

"I owe her some money," she said.

"You taking the piss out of me?" He said it as if everyone did and he was past caring.

"No."

"You owe her money?"

Maureen nodded uncertainly. Jimmy knelt down and started to dress the smallest boy, tugging him into his pajamas. The boy chewed his dummy, holding his daddy's jumper.

"Why are ye really looking for Ann?" he said.

"What makes you think I'm lying?"

Jimmy displayed his sharp little teeth again. "Ann owes everyone on this scheme money. If ye ask me, that's why she's off. Last I heard she was living with the Place of Safety people."

"Place of Safety?"

"Aye." His voice dropped to a whisper. "She telt them I'd hit her."

It was painful to watch a man so ready to take a punch.

"Did ye hit her?" she asked.

"No." He was adamant and Maureen was pleased. "I never hit her. Nor anyone else."

Maureen thought of him slapping the children, but then remembered that children don't count as people. She leaned against the wall and felt the sandy texture of plaster rubbing into her shoulder. She stepped back and propped herself against the door frame. "Why would Ann say you hit her if ye didn't?" She noticed herself changing her accent to speak to him, paring down her language, as if Jimmy was so thick he wouldn't understand if she spoke normally. She hated herself.

"I don't know," said Jimmy, squeezing the child into a pair of tight pajama bottoms. "The police said she'd had a doing. Maybe she wanted to hide."

"Did ye send her a Christmas card?"

"A card?"

"Yeah."

Jimmy looked blank and Maureen guessed that he didn't have an extensive Christmas-card list.

"What are ye asking me these things for? Who are you?"

If he was going to turn nasty now was the time to do it. Maureen was glad she was near the front door and had a five-foot start on him. She mentally rehearsed opening the door and running along the balcony to the stairs. "I work for the Place of Safety," she said quietly.

Jimmy looked at her and nodded softly. "We've had hard times," he said, "but… Ann knows… I can't believe she's going about saying that about me. I'd never hit her. You won't believe me." He turned away from her, patted his son's bottom to let him know he was finished changing him and held out his hand for the older boy to come. The children swapped places on the strip of rug.

"I do believe ye, Jimmy," she said, and she meant it.

"Ha," he said, as if he'd never really laughed. "Thousands wouldn't, eh?"

He looked at her, genuinely expecting a response to an inappropriate cliché. Maureen couldn't imagine a suitably bland response. "If you didn't hit Ann," she said, "can ye think of someone who would?"

"Take your pick. There's hard men up at this door every night in the fucking week looking for her. I'm left paying her debts while she's off gallivanting with the child-benefit book. They've even threatened the wee ones in the swing park," he said, yanking his son's pink little body into worn pajamas. "All I know is that she left here without a mark on her."

"When did she leave?"

Jimmy thought about it. He thought for a long time. He remembered that one of the boys' birthdays was on 15 November and Ann wasn't there for it. But Jimmy had money for presents so he figured that he'd probably had the child-benefit book that week. Ann had disappeared from Finneston around 10 or 11 November.

"That's a while back," said Maureen. "Did she go straight to the Place of Safety?"

"I don't know where she went." He pulled worn sweatshirts over the boys' pajamas. It must get cold in the concrete flat at night. "She came back at the start of December for Alan's birthday. I was at the shops and when I came back she'd been and gone. She telt him she hadn't been to visit because she was up and down tae London all the time. Could have been a lie, but…" He touched the smallest boy's head. "There's plenty on this scheme think I'm lucky because it's only the drink she's into."

Maureen looked around the desperate room, at the filthy bare floor and the cold children and the skinny man bent over them. Jimmy was anything but lucky.

"Can I make ye a cup of tea, Jimmy?"

It had been a long time since anyone had been kind to Jimmy and he didn't know what it meant. He looked up at her, trying to work out her angle. "There's nothing worth thieving," he said.

"I'm just offering to make ye a cup of tea."

He looked her up and down, licked at the dried spittle in the corner of his mouth and smothered a lascivious smile. He thought she fancied him.

"Aye, hen. A cup of tea. I'll put the weans to bed." He hurried the children off, carrying the smallest boy on his hip and holding the other one's hand, leading them out to the hall. He called back to her from the door, "Don't use the milk, I'll need it for the night feed."

She could hear Jimmy out in the hall encouraging the child up the stairs. She looked around the dirty flat at the broken toys and the worn clothes discarded on the floor. She went into the ragged kitchen. The bulb didn't work. Light from the street cast a dull orange glow onto the worktop. There was no kettle and no cooker, just a chipped portable grill with a single electric ring on top. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom and she saw a small scale-scarred saucepan in the sink. She filled it from the tap as the red ring came alive, livid in the darkness.

Back in the living room she crossed her arms. There was no TV in the room, no family photos, no books or ornaments or mementos, nothing that wasn't essential and secondhand. They didn't even have a radio. Next to the armchair sat a stack of free local newspapers. Jimmy had been tearing them into strips for use as toilet paper. She could hear him through the ceiling, coaxing the children into bed, when she suddenly remembered the blue sports bag with the troubling sticker. It was green and white and looped around the handle. She looked at it. It was a British Airways luggage sticker. Liam used to have them on his bags all the time when he was dealing. She crept over to it. The bag had been from London to Glasgow and the name, in tiny print on the fold, said "Harris." It was dated less than a week ago. She stepped back and looked at it, trying to reason away the incongruity. Someone might have given him the bag, someone with his name, a family member, but the bag sat as if it had been emptied recently, the base flattened on the floor, the sides flapping open. The scenario made no sense. Jimmy had flown to London on an expensive airline when they were too poor to buy a kettle.

The water was spitting hot but she could only find one mug, with black rings of tea stain inside. She made tea, took it back into the living room, sat down in the chair and lit a cigarette. It was damp and cold in the room. She could hear Jimmy coming down the stairs, leaving the restless children calling for him, answering their pleas with a curt "Shut it." He sauntered into the living room. He had wet his hair. Maureen stood up and offered him a fag. He took it, bending over her for a light. "You sit," she said.