Denise Mina - Exile

"Look," said Maureen, "he's just a poor fucking soul who knows nothing. She won't go back there and he didn't hit her either."

"You could tell that from one meeting?"

But Leslie hadn't seen the bare house, she hadn't smelled the lift, couldn't imagine the effort it must take for Jimmy to get up in the morning and manage all day. Maureen lit a cigarette, haunted by the image of Jimmy's jagged teeth. "I think she had a boyfriend," she said, "and she's gone back to him and he hits her. She'll be there now, pissing it up on the child benefit while that poor bastard feeds his kids on watery bread and margarine."

Leslie sneered at her. "Why do you think he's telling the truth?"

"Because if he was lying," said Maureen firmly, "he'd give himself a better part."

Leslie watched Maureen looking miserably around the pub, drinking quickly like she did these days, sighing heavily, as if she wanted to get away and be alone. Maureen had changed. Leslie knew she was nervous about her father being back in Glasgow but she was jumpy and moody and frightened of everything. They had been spending less and less time together and Leslie couldn't see an end to it. Maureen didn't like Cammy because he wasn't polished and hadn't been to university. They should have been closer now that they were working together but they weren't. Maureen looked freaked out half the time and bored the rest of it, and she had a new boyfriend she hadn't bothered to mention – Leslie had to hear it from Katia in the office. Leslie was beginning to think they had been too close, that it had been too intense before, with the poster campaign and Millport, and she'd seen a side of Maureen that frightened her. There was a fight brewing between them and she knew it would be a big fight. She took a drag and looked up. Maureen was watching the racing results. She was watching racing results rather than talk to her.

"What should we do now?" asked Leslie.

Maureen sipped her whiskey and looked at the racing results again. "You want to find Ann?" she said.

"Yeah," said Leslie.

"Well, why don't you check out the pubs around the shelter? They'll have seen her."

Leslie stared at her. She'd gone to Millport with her. She'd spent a summer in a mental hospital keeping her company, she had driven her around for weeks after Douglas was killed, and now Maureen was refusing to help her. "You really don't give a shit what happened to Ann, do you, Maureen?"

Maureen sighed. "Give it a fucking rest, Leslie. She's fucked off. Accept it. She fucked off and left her weans and her poor wee man to pay off her drinking debts."

" Her poor wee man ? I don't fucking think so."

"I know he didn't hit her."

"Because he seemed ordinary?" said Leslie, pulling rank. It was a basic article of faith at the Place of Safety Shelters that any man was capable of hitting any woman, and for her to suggest that Maureen was dismissing Jimmy because he looked ordinary was as good as calling her an idiot.

"Right, Leslie. Stop it. This isn't about PSS theology."

"Maureen, two women are murdered every week by their partner or an ex."

"Fuck off," shouted Maureen, losing the place. "I know all that. I know he didn't hit her because he's passive and put-upon and he's got four kids under ten and she's fucked off and doesn't give a shit. It's just possible that she was battered by a loan shark – did that occur to you? Maybe that's why she wanted the compensation-board photos taken, so she could use them as protection if they came back for her."

Maureen was shouting at her in a pub full of people. Leslie didn't know what to do. She couldn't walk away from another fight because she'd lost her bottle in Millport, and Maureen would never respect her if she ducked again. She leaned across the table and spoke quietly. "Do you want to fight me?"

Maureen snorted, and shouted back at her. "Do I want to what?"

"Let's go outside and have a fight and sort this out once and for all."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"I'll fight ye," said Leslie quietly. "Things haven't been right between us since Millport."

"It's a pity you weren't so fucking ripe at the fucking time, isn't it?" It was wrong of Maureen to say that but there was no going back. The final thread of cautious concern snapped and she went for it. "You've completely changed since you started seeing that prick Cammy."

Leslie stood up. "How have I changed?"

Maureen stood up to meet her, slamming her glass down on the table, knocking the ashtray onto the floor. "You're precious," she shouted. "And you're moody." She jabbed a vicious finger at Leslie's shoulder. "And why the fuck are you walking about with your tits hanging out?"

"Ladies!" The barman bolted across the floor of the pub, shouting louder than both of them. "Ladies! Keep it friendly or go home."

They swung round in unison, glaring at him, and he knew the fight wasn't going to end there. He held his hand towards the door. "Good night to both of you," he said firmly.

They gathered their jackets and helmets and stormed out of the bar into the rainy night, stopping on the pavement as the pub doors swung shut behind them. They could hear the crowd in the bar chorusing a long, swooping "woow" and laughing at them. Leslie leaned into Maureen's face. "Give me my fucking helmet back."

A pinprick of saliva landed on Maureen's pupil. "Take it." Maureen shoved the helmet at her. "Fucking take it, then."

Leslie snatched it from her and walked off round the corner, leaving Maureen standing alone in the spitting rain. They should have waited five minutes. They would have been crying and hugging each other within five minutes. They'd go home with a bottle and talk it out. Maureen waited on the pavement, hoping Leslie would come back.

The pub door opened behind her and a couple stepped onto the pavement. They recognized Maureen and smirked, wrapping their arms around each other and tramping off into the wind. The door swung shut, banging off the frame a couple of times, coming to rest. The street was still. One block away a motorbike fired up and roared away to the west. Leslie wasn't coming back. Maureen waited. Leslie wasn't coming back.

She walked home in the pissing rain, too tired and sad to think. The rain was running down her face, trickling through her hair, dripping down her neck and soaking into her shirt collar. She'd reached the bottom of the steep hill to her house before she remembered Jimmy. She turned round and walked back down the road, stopping at a cash machine on the way. She withdrew two hundred and fifty quid, walked to the scheme in Finneston and took the pissy lift up to the second floor. She tiptoed along the landing and slid the money through Jimmy's letter box, bolting for the stairs in case he came out and saw her. She knew from her own experience that nothing belittles more viciously than pity and Jimmy was small enough already.

It was only when she got down to the street that she admitted the truth: going back to give the money to Jimmy was just a pretext. She wanted to go past the pub again, to see if Leslie was there. She stopped and looked along the street to the Grove, too embarrassed to go back in. But Leslie wasn't there. And Leslie wasn't coming back.

Michael had a fever. He was scratching through the window into her bedroom, his knife-edged nails gouging through the glass. She was sweating and exhausted, and knew she couldn't take the noise anymore. She leaned across to open the window and a river of blood flooded into her house. The anxious, heavy knocking woke her up. Her first thought was Leslie, Leslie had come back, but it wasn't her knock and she didn't do morning visits. She sat up and looked at her watch. It was nine thirty and the Ruchill fever tower lurked behind the bedroom curtain.