Denise Mina - Exile

She didn't answer. She had been prepared to die at Toner's hands but not this, not Mark Doyle. She didn't want to be dead Pauline under a tree – she didn't want to die with spunk on her back. It was bright in the room and his skin was worse than she had realized. Open yellow sores pitted his face, punctuated with patches of red flaking skin. They were sitting on the cold floor under the window with their backs against the dead radiator. Doyle had his feet flat, his elbows resting on his knees, his big red hands hanging limp. Smoke from his cigarette snaked through the shadow, blossoming into lively white clouds in the brilliant sunshine.

"You hurt me the other night," she said quietly. "My elbow was aching all day."

He nodded hard, sinking his chin into his chest, but he didn't apologize. "The photo," he said. "It would've taken two minutes for Toner to find out you had it. You need rid of it."

She pulled her coat tight around her. "Is that what he was after?"

"Probably," said Doyle. "He must have thought you were a real hard nut, showing it around the pub then standing on the pavement waiting for him." And he tittered, laughing like a nervous girl.

Liam had a ticket home for her and she'd never get there. She was waiting for Doyle to sidle closer to her, wriggle along the floor and make the first burning touch. He sat up and looked out of the window behind him. "How well did you know Pauline?" he said.

Maureen held Vik's lighter in her hand and thought of Hutton torching his rival's house to obliterate him. She could set fire to him, just lean across and hold Vik's lighter to his jacket. She looked at his sleeve. It was wool. At best it would leave a bad smell. She started crying, holding her forehead with one hand, scratching her scalp hard. "We were in hospital together," she said, holding her breath to stop herself sobbing, making her blood pressure rise. Doyle didn't bother to try to comfort her. He looked away and drew on his fag. If she had to die she wanted it to be quick, not a long slow rape and battery with Doyle coming and going out of the room, leaving her there to visit when he wanted. Of all fucking ends, not this. If she had to die like Pauline she wanted it to be quick. Hot blood rose in her chest. "Pauline told me everything," she blurted. "About her dad and her brother. At the funeral-"

Doyle was mesmerized, watching her, his jaw hanging open, his eyes half closed.

"We all knew what ye'd done to her. I put acid in your dad's pint to fuck him up."

He raised his eyebrows in surprise and tittered again, edgy this time, turning back to his fag. Maureen felt herself getting righteous and hot, angry at everyone who had shut up and made it all right for Doyle to be alive and Pauline to be dead. She threw her fag into the corner. "She was lovely." Her bubbling voice reverberated around the tall room. "She was kind and sweet and thoughtful, and she never fucking told because she wanted to protect your mum, did you know that? Did ye know that's why she never said? That's how much she thought of her. She'd rather go back to that, rather go home and die, than hurt her mum."

Doyle's mouth turned down in a disgusted frown and he touched his heart with the tip of his thumb. "And me," he said. "She was protecting me." He gawked morosely at the floor.

"No, she fucking wasn't." Maureen stood up and bent over him, shouting into him, her fists clenched at her side, her voice wet and hysterical. "She wasn't fucking protecting you. She fucking hated ye. If she hadn't been so sick and feeble she'd've gone to the police and reported ye, ye sick fuck. Then you'd be fucking in prison and kept away from other Paulines, like ye should be."

Doyle wasn't reacting: he was sitting calmly, watching her shout at him, watching the tears, letting her taunt him.

"You ruined her life," she said. "She told me once that she left a trail of filth behind her. Can you begin to imagine how that feels? You took her life and made it squalid. Every fucking thing she did felt dirty to her because of what you did."

Doyle was watching her rant with detached disinterest, blinking heavily, not getting annoyed like he should. He shut his eyes, squeezing the rims together. Maureen's anger dissipated suddenly and she found herself back in the soundproof room with the most frightening man she'd ever met. She breathed in unsteadily, her bottom lip flapping against her teeth. Doyle wasn't righteous or indignant the way he should have been.

He dropped his cigarette onto the floor and stubbed out the burning head with his callused fingertip. "She never telt yees," he whispered, watching as he scattered red flecks on the concrete floor. His head lolled forward and when he looked back up he wasn't looking at her. "I can't believe her. She never telt."

"What?"

He shook his head slowly. "Wasn't me," he said eventually.

"What do ye mean?"

"Wasn't me," he said.

She stepped back and looked at him. Doyle wasn't a social animal; he wouldn't lie for approval. The sunlight illuminated flakes of scalp impaled on his hair. If Mark didn't hurt Pauline, then the other brother did. Maureen stood in the shaft of hot sunshine, looking into the shadows, trying to make out his face. "Mark," she said quietly, "what exactly happened to your brother?"

"Brother's dead," he said glibly, picking at a scab on his neck as he stared at the floor.

"How did he die?"

Doyle looked straight at her as he picked at his jugular. The tips of his fingers were tanned a deep, polluted yellow.

"When did that happen?" she asked.

" 'Bout a month after Pauline," he said quietly.

"What happened to your dad?"

"Came out of hospital, after what ye did." He pointed to her, his dry finger catching the light. "Then… he died too." He looked at his hand, frowning, gray and pained.

"Mark?" she said. She bent down to make him look at her but he couldn't. "Mark, I think that's brilliant," she said softly.

But Doyle shook his head. "It was a mistake."

"But you did it for Pauline."

"I did it for myself," he said loudly, as if they'd had this conversation before. "I was angry. If I'd had Pauline in mind I'd've paid more heed to her when she was alive. I felt no different about Pauline before nor after. Made no difference to her. I did it for myself."

"But, Mark, ye did something."

"Stop saying my name."

"I'm just saying, most people don't do anything."

"Most people are right," he said quietly, touching a scab on his face. "All I've done is waste myself. Is that why you're looking for the people who killed that Ann? You going to do something?"

She shrugged. "The husband's been arrested," she said.

"Why d'you care? Is he your man?"

"No."

"Well, why d'you care?"

"He deserves a break."

Doyle looked up at her. "No one deserves anything," he said.

"But your father and your brother, didn't they deserve what happened to them?"

"And they thought Pauline deserved what they did to her. I spend time with men. I hear them. Know what they say about women like Pauline? She deserved it, asking for it, must've done something."

The direct sunlight was making her hot and her fags were lying on the floor but she couldn't bring herself to sit down in the comforting shadows with Doyle. "This guy," she said, "his kids'll go into care if I don't turn up anything. I think Frank Toner killed her."

Doyle tittered again and she watched him. He held his mouth tight, keeping the lips tightly under control, but his brown eyes curled into perfectly geometric half-moons, lined by dark lashes. Tittering wasn't a creepy habit – Doyle couldn't laugh out loud: if he stretched his face he might split the dry skin on his cheeks. He took out his battered packet of cigarettes and lit up. "Frank Toner never killed her," he said, pocketing the packet without offering them. "He wouldn't waste himself on that. And he wouldn't be so careless after, either."