Exile

Chapter 27

It was half past seven in the morning and King's Cross was already gridlocked. Cars and buses on the Euston Road were jammed up close and exhaust fumes hovered over the stodgy traffic like smoke in a nightclub. Across the road the Underground entrance hoovered streams of pedestrians off the pavement. Maureen realized that, for the first time in months, she was walking with her head up because the weather was so mild and Michael wasn't here and Vik had come to see her off.

She crossed at the lights heading for the tube. At the foot of the stairs stood a filthy old man with one agate eye. He smiled beatifically up at the ferocious river of bad-tempered people, enjoying the warm stream of heat from the vents, peeling an orange with one hand, his other arm cramped into his waist, his hand puckered and paralyzed by a stroke. The torrent of commuters bustled past him, swinging to the far side of the tunnel to avoid even seeing him, rendering him invisible with their indifference.

It was oppressively warm downstairs. By the time Maureen arrived on the southbound platform the sweat was running down her back, soaking into her coat and ruining it. After a gentle back-draft, a welcome cool breeze whispered from the tunnel. The crush of people shifted, looking to the left as a train clattered into the station. The passengers clotted around the opening doors, pushing from the back, shoving onto the train before the disembarking passengers could get off. The doors shut behind her, skimming Maureen's bag, and the train took off with a jolt.

Inside the carriage the commuters and tourists pressed tightly against one another, valiantly defending the fiction of unconnected-ness. Those standing looked covetously at the seated. The seated looked relaxed and happy, reading books or staring contentedly into the crotch of the person standing in front of them. A Norwegian tourist shared an indignant observation with his companion, who agreed. Maureen wondered about Ann carrying up to Glasgow, wondering whether it meant anything. She couldn't think straight, her eyes burned hot and tired, and more than anything she wanted a wash and a sleep. Her coat was far too heavy – she was sweating into the gorgeous silky lining, straining a muscle on her side trying to reach the bar on the ceiling. The train stopped at a station and a fresh set of tired commuters, wearing their office best, clambered into the carriage.

The train was cooler than the Underground and brought her to Blackheath station. She followed the directions Sarah had given her, turning right out of the station, following the steep road up the hill and taking the left-hand fork. Blackheath was postcard pretty. The low shops had big bow windows with inappropriate red sale banners plastered across them. She walked on until she came to the corner of the heath. Restrained colonnades of high Georgian houses faced onto an extravaganza of empty land, which came to a little hill in the middle, like a pseudohorizon, as if the grassy land were as infinite as the empire. Sarah Simmons lived in Grote's Place, one street back from the heath.

Maureen trotted up the stairs to number three but couldn't find a doorbell. She knocked with the heavy brass knob, heard the clip-clop of court shoes on stone, and the door opened. Sarah was dressed for work in a white blouse, navy blue skirt and matching tights and shoes. She looked Maureen over, took in her expensive overcoat, her cheap trainers and her heavy bag. "Hello, hello, Maureen," said Sarah, drawing it out as if she'd have nothing to say when the greeting was over. "How are you?"

"Hi, Sarah, not bad," said Maureen, smiling. "How's yourself?" She noticed once again, as she had all the way through university, how rough her accent sounded.

Sarah stepped aside and invited her in. "Come." She smiled. "Come into the humble abode. Most welcome."

Maureen walked into the hall and looked up. "Oh, Sarah," she said, before she could stop herself.

"Nothing much," said Sarah, blushing with shame and pleasure. "Granny's old house."

The hall was fourteen feet high with black and white floor tiles, walls papered in textured fleur-de-lis, and hung with blue-black portraits of bearded men in naval uniforms. A high wooden staircase clung to the wall on the right with a black wood balustrade. The house was very still. Maureen pointed at the paintings. "Who are these fantastic men?" she said.

"Relatives," said Sarah. "Deceased. Mostly from syphilis. Look, I have to leave for work in half an hour. I'd leave you here but I don't have a set of spare keys." They looked at each other. Sarah smiled weakly and slid her gaze to the floor. "I can give you a lift into town if you'd like?"

Maureen nodded. Sarah didn't trust her. All she knew was that she and Maureen had had little in common at university and Maureen had been mentally ill since then. "That's fair enough," she said, neglecting convention and responding to the subtext.

Sarah steered her to the back door, turned her round and lifted her coat by the shoulders, helped her out of it and hung it on a coat peg. "Come"-she slipped her arm through Maureen's-"and have a little breakfast with me. Come and tell me everything that has happened to you. You must be famished. How's your hunky brother?"

The tentative pals walked into the Aga-warmed kitchen where Maureen sipped her tea and gave Sarah a disinfected summary of her past four years. Her time in hospital with mild depression, how Liam's business had done so well he could pay his way through uni, about her boyfriend, Douglas, who'd died of a heart attack, and how her mother didn't keep terribly well at all. Sarah was sad for her, happy for her and sad again, as the story dictated. She put on her makeup at the table as Maureen finished spinning a tattered web of half-truths, then took her turn.

Sarah had been engaged to Hugo at the tail end of her university career but their relationship just hadn't worked out, they weren't as suited as they had imagined. Maureen had met Hugo briefly when he came up to attend the graduation ball. He was a thick-lipped, overbred, rugby-shirted haw-haw. He didn't seem interested in Sarah, much less in love with her, and Maureen was glad she hadn't married him. Anyway, Sarah got her dream job at an auction house and was working hard and getting promotions and good work to do all the time. It was great and she had the house, so money wasn't a worry. You see, she knew everyone here, in this area, so she had a ready-made circle of friends locally. And the local people were so friendly. They went out all the time. Sarah's lies were so bright and cheerful that Maureen felt sorry for her. She was a nice woman, and Maureen wished something nice had happened to her, but the big house felt cold and Sarah seemed bereft and needy.

"Right," said Sarah, taking a drink of tea and leaving most of the lipstick she had just applied on the rim of the cup, "let's go. Where are you off to?"

Maureen said she was going to Brixton. Sarah frowned at the mention of the area. She said she wasn't headed that way but Maureen could get a train straight there from the station at the bottom of the hill and insisted she'd drive Maureen and drop her. The station was a quarter of a mile away. Maureen wondered why she had invited her to stay at all. She could just have said no. "Sarah," lied Maureen, "you're a pal."

Joe McEwan sat back in his chair and lit his fifth smoke of the morning. He was thinking about her again. The harder he tried to avoid it the more she came to mind. His mother had died a month and a half ago and he knew he was coping badly, losing his temper, working too much, giving into the fags again. Whenever he relaxed or took his mind off his work for any length of time there was Patsy, waiting for him, her hand, her voice, her eyes. He had been sitting at home, alone and maudlin, sorting through her papers, the night before when the call had come through about Hutton. It was exactly what he needed: a big investigation with city wide implications.

Hutton had been killed for dealing on his own. He was one of the new generation pushing their way up the ranks, one of the worst side effects of Operation No-Go. The success of the operation was a mixed blessing. It pushed prices and profits up, turned already vicious men into animals, and it meant more dead junkies in shopping-center toilets. As new dealers sprang up to replace the old ones they sold virtually pure heroin to their first few clients so that word would get around that they did good deals. An OD brought the punters to the dealer's door like an advertising campaign. But the old powers were still battling for control, and the nature of Hutton's injuries was meant as a warning to other aspiring entrepreneurs.

McEwan knew Hutton. He had seen him in court several years before when he had battered his neighbor. The sheriff had asked him why he was nicknamed "Bananas," and Hutton's sodden junkie eyes had darted around the room. "I like bananas," he said, and the public benches laughed. "I could eat them all day." He tried to bring his purported love of fruit into every answer thereafter, laboring the joke, playing up to the public, irritating the sheriff and drawing the court's attention to his confused mental state. It was as if he thought the public benches were deciding his fate.

A sudden knock at the door heralded DI Inness's first visit of the day. Inness had been getting the brunt of McEwan's recent moods. He knew it was wrong, he knew he shouldn't allow himself the luxury, but he found Inness deeply annoying. And the more he bullied him, the more Inness sucked up to him.

"Sir," he said, stepping into the office clutching a piece of paper. Inness always carried a bit of paper, as if his mum had given him permission to be in the police force. It was a standing joke at the station. When he was off duty and didn't have his bit of paper he always carried a plastic bag. "The DI and the DC from the Met are downstairs. D'you still want me to handle it?"

"Yeah, I'll sit in. Take them to conference room two, please," said McEwan, starting the day as he started every day, meaning not to pick on him.

Inness showed them in and DI Williams and DC Bunyan took their seats at the table without being invited. Williams was a pudgy man with a bald head and small gold glasses. Bunyan was a pretty little thing, petite and slim with short blond hair and a modest trace of pale lipstick. They were dressed in smart dark suits, he in trousers, she in a skirt that just reached her knees, and McEwan didn't altogether approve. If they had been from any other region he wouldn't have bothered attending but they were the Met and he wanted them to know whose patch they were on.

"First of all, thank you for your cooperation, sir," said Williams, and McEwan recognized the accent. "It's been very helpful."

"You from the south side?" asked McEwan.

"Aye," said Williams, and he smiled. "My da was a copper. Govan, 'sixty-two to 'seventy-nine."

"Why are you in the Met?"

"Form of rebellion," he said, and McEwan smiled at him. Regional forces resented the Met. They were considered arrogant and lax. Williams's dad would have hated it.

"Did you stay with your family last night?"

"No, they're all gone now. We stayed in a guesthouse in Battlefields."

"That's a bit out of the way."

" 'S familiar, though."

"Yeah." McEwan signaled to Inness to start the briefing.

Inness flipped through the notes in front of him. "There isn't much intelligence on the deceased," he said, "so I don't know how helpful we can be to you. The husband was interviewed when she was first reported missing and he claimed he hadn't seen her since November. Notes say he was a quiet man, very concerned for her safety. The area's not bad – poor but not bad."

"Who's in the frame at the moment?" asked McEwan.

A little startled by the intrusion, Williams sat up. "Well," he said, "the husband beat her up quite badly before, but we can't place him in London and we haven't had the chance to question him yet."

"Didn't you go there last night?"

"Yeah," interrupted Bunyan, "but we couldn't question him because he hadn't told his kids yet."

McEwan ignored the short-skirted woman and continued to look at Williams, answering him as if he were the one who had spoken. "He hadn't told them she was missing?"

"He hadn't told them she was dead," said Williams. He raised his eyebrows.

McEwan tipped his head to the side and sighed. "How many kids?" he asked.

"Four," said Williams.

McEwan shook his head at the notes. "They've always got kids," he said heavily. "All these nightmare couples have got kids."

"Yes, sir." Williams nodded. "Always got kids."

Williams was quietly spoken, deferential but firm, and McEwan thought he might like him if they worked together.

Inness turned the page on his notebook and started reading again. "They've got four kids, which you already know, and you know about the Place of Safety shelter, obviously."

"Yeah," said Bunyan, sitting forward and leaning her hands on the desk. "We're going there later."

Hugh McAskill knocked on the half-open door and looked in. "What is it?" said McEwan.

"They've got Hutton's girlfriend downstairs, sir."

"Well," said Williams, standing up, "I can see you've got a lot on so we'll leave ye to it."

"Right," said McEwan. "Well, let us know how you get on. If we can do anything, you know."

McAskill stood at the door, holding it open for the visiting officers, and followed them out to show them downstairs. Inness lingered in the doorway.

"She's a bit of a hotshot, isn't she?" said McEwan, assuaging his conscience by giving him credit.

"Yes, sir, she is."