Denise Mina - Exile

"How's Winnie?" said Maureen. "Still sober?"

"Sober as a very jumpy judge. She won't have Michael in the house anymore either and her and George have remade their bed together."

"That's great." Maureen smiled. "Una'll be pleased, anyway. She won't keep having to fend a drunk granny off the wean."

Liam looked suddenly at the table. "Yeah," he said. "That's right, yeah."

"What?" said Maureen, knowing the look of old. "Una's not seeing Winnie or what? Has Alistair finally put his foot down or something?"

"Alistair's, well, Alistair's gone."

"Gone?"

"He's left."

"What do you mean he's left?"

"Una's chucked him out. They're getting divorced. He'd been having an affair with the upstairs neighbor."

Maureen sat back and looked at him. " Alistair ?"

"Yeah, Mr. Steady Eddie Alistair."

"But he was the only nice one out of all of us."

"I know," said Liam. "Changes things, doesn't it, if Una's bringing up the child alone?"

"Is Michael still hanging about at Una's?"

"Like a persistent bad smell. She's the only one who's kept faith with him. I think that's why Winnie got sober. I think she's worried about the wean."

"Jittery Winnie's going to protect the wean?" said Maureen, her voice cracking midsentence.

Behind the counter the two men shouted over each other angrily until one of them slammed a frying pan down on the worktop. An intense quiet fell over the décor. It wasn't born yet, Maureen told herself, not yet. She didn't want to care about that, she didn't have room to care about that. She wanted to nuzzle her face into the abstract problem of Jimmy and Ann and never think about Michael again.

"See, if someone's carrying drugs up to Glasgow? Do the people buying them pay before they arrive or do they pay on delivery?"

Liam giggled at her. "On delivery."

Maureen frowned. "Why are you laughing at me?"

"You're very décor, Mauri. The trip's the dangerous bit. We'd all be broke if we paid before."

Maureen clicked her tongue at him. He was very patronizing sometimes. "This woman," she said, "was killed in a really bizarre way."

"How?"

She watched Liam shoving couscous into his mouth. "D'ye really want to hear about it when you're eating?"

"Doesn't bother me," he said.

"Well," she said, "her feet and hands were burned, her legs and arms were cut and her skull was fractured. Does that sound like a gangster killing to you?"

Liam wiped his plate clean with a chunk of lamb.

"Not really," he said. "Not unless they were torturing her for information." He looked at her meat dish. "They'd probably be disguising her identity."

"That's the one thing they weren't doing. They left her identity bracelet on."

"They must have been torturing her, then. Where did they cut her on her legs?"

"The backs of her knees."

Liam sat up and looked at her curiously. "Really?"

"Yeah."

He gazed into the middistance and mapped the injuries on his body, moving his lips and gesturing to his legs, his feet and finally his hands, like a tiny genuflection. "Those are all places you inject yourself," he said.

"Eh?"

"The veins junkies inject in – arms, hands, feet and behind the knees – that's a bit later."

"Maybe she became a user?"

"Maybe." Liam lit a cigarette and sat back, rubbing his swollen belly. "That was fucking lovely."

"You know who I feel really sorry for?" said Maureen. "Hutton's girlfriend. She's pregnant."

Liam huffed at his plate. "I wouldn't waste my energy feeling sorry for Maxine Parlain."

Maureen dropped her fork to the table. "She's a Parlain? From Paisley?" Liam nodded. Maureen sat forward, shaking her finger in his face. "Her brother's down here. Tarn Parlain paged me to go and see him."

"Ye didn't go, did ye?"

"I didn't know it was him till I got there. He's a dealer-"

"Keep your fucking voice down," muttered Liam.

"Sorry, sorry." She affected a whisper. "But he's down here and he's involved in this somehow. Martha says he works for Toner."

"Well," said Liam skeptically, "he won't work for him but he'll distribute for him."

"Why won't he work for him?"

"Well, he's a Parlain and they're a team so Tarn is always going to be one of them. Toner might get him to work for him but he knows his loyalty will be with the family. He'd only have taken him on to build contacts with them. It's like the idiot son who used to get taken on by another firm as a goodwill gesture."

"So Toner'll have a lot of contacts at home?"

"Yeah."

"She must have been muling for Toner, not Hutton at all."

"Well, there you are, she'd be carrying up to the Parlains, then. That Tarn's got slash scars all over his face."

"I know," said Maureen. "Is he quite heavy?"

"Naw, everyone says he's a prick. He kept getting slashed for annoying people. He's probably down here out of harm's way."

Maureen gave Liam the rest of her dinner as a reward and sat back watching him eat. The Parlains could have put the ticket through Jimmy's door. Senga could have given Maxine the photos and Toner would have an army of lackeys in Glasgow happy to fake letters for him. She wondered about Las Vegas Elizabeth. She'd been to Scotland on the train – she might have been a courier too. Liam finished the meat and sat back, picking at his teeth with a complimentary toothpick. Maureen went to the back of the restaurant to use the pay phone. The mobile was answered before it rang out. "Hello," called Maureen, sounding jolly.

"Maureen, for fuck's sake come home," said Leslie.

"What?"

Leslie dropped the phone to her shoulder but Maureen could still hear her asking permission to take it outside. She heard the shriek of a chair being pushed back and Leslie muttered, "Hang on, don't hang up," before walking somewhere and shutting a door.

"Are you all right?"

"No. The police are going to arrest me. They don't believe me about the Polaroid." She was whispering quickly and sounded terrified. "They think I told Jimmy where she was, and gave him the money to fly to London. They found the shelter Christmas pictures in Jimmy's and they think she was back there."

"But you've got Ann's set."

"I've told them that. They don't believe me. Even if I don't get charged I'll lose my job if the committee hears about it. Fuck." Her voice was rising to a tearful pitch. Leslie dropped the phone to her shoulder to gather herself together and the receiver crackled in Maureen's ear as she rubbed it against her jacket. Leslie cleared her throat and came back on. "He was in London, Mauri – he was in London when she was murdered."

"Ye haven't given them the CCB photos, have ye?"

"Are ye fucking joking? They're gonnae charge me and I'm going to do that?"

"Look," said Maureen, "tell them Maxine Parlain's brother lives down here and knew Ann."

"What's that to do with anything?"

"Just tell them. I'm coming home tomorrow."

"Don't lose that fucking Polaroid."

"I won't, I promise I won't. Sit tight – it'll be okay, I promise."

"Even if they don't sack me they'll never trust me again. I'll end up working in that fucking office with you."

Maureen coughed and hesitated. "I'm not going back there, Leslie. I'm going to do something else."

"Aye," said Leslie, looking around. "Well, ye might have to save me a seat."

"Listen," said Maureen, feeling relieved, "what's Jimmy's story about the Christmas photos?"

"He's saying they came through his door, like the ticket. He thought you'd put them through."

"Senga fucking Brolly."

"That's what I thought," agreed Leslie.

They dragged themselves back to Martha's expressionist house and spent a horrible evening flicking through the television channels looking for something watchable and listening to Martha carp on about how great she was and how everyone mistook her for a model. They watched a nasty, gossipy program about JFK and Martha talked over the most salacious bits. Alex was away for a couple of days – in fact, Martha and Alex weren't getting on at all well and Martha wondered if they'd break up. Maureen smoked until her tongue went numb. She wanted to leave and go to Brixton and lose herself in Ann again. Martha had been with Alex for over six years – that was a long time, wasn't it? Una and Alistair splitting up must have been worse for Liam than it was for Maureen; Una would talk to Liam, rely on him and make him spend time in the house with Michael. Martha wished she had hair like Maureen's and Liam's, lovely curly hair. She stood up and walked over to Liam to touch it and comment on the texture. She'd love hair like that. The prospect of a new baby in the family had never seemed real to Maureen, even though Una had been trying for years. The enormity of it began to sink in. Una was having a baby without the good sense and protective presence of Alistair. In all the years they'd been trying for a baby none of them had imagined that Martha was going to get her hair cut, really short -