Denise Mina - Exile

"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.

Tons a was an elegant middle-aged woman with blond-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 know, 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 deeply 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 anymore, no more, not anymore. 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.

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 onto 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 hungover 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 call box 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.