Exile

Chapter 45

The Equal Cafe was serving lunches. Hungry office workers and students from the art school were cramped together at the black and gold fleck Formica tables, eating their rolls and sipping tea from smoked-glass mugs. Maureen and Liam managed to find a small empty table near the back. It was under a sloping ceiling of cheap pine, which hung so low that Maureen's seat was really only suitable for a midget with a hump. Previous patrons of the I had carved their names into the sloping soft wood. The middle-aged waitress who approached them had a very prominent limp, which worsened dramatically when an order was sent back or anyone asked for anything tricky. She seemed to have developed some sort of fungal complaint on one of her feet as well, because she was wearing what appeared to be a slipper with the toe cut out.

"Hello," nodded Liam.

"Whatd'yeswant?"

"Two all-day breakfasts," he said. "I'll have tea with mine. Mauri?"

Maureen was tired and wanted coffee but didn't trust it to be anything but reused grounds. "Tea as well."

The waitress shuffled off to the adjacent table to take a lone businessman's order.

"Sorry about the Martha thing," said Liam, casually watching the waitress and nodding, as if his apology brought the whole episode to a satisfactory conclusion.

Maureen sat back indignantly, banged the Toner bruise on the back of her head off the ceiling and sat forward again. "Liam, what are you going to do about Lynn?"

"She doesn't need to know," he said briskly. "What happened to you in London?"

"Look, ye can't harass her into going back out with ye and then do things like that. You can't treat her like that. Lynn's too good for you. She always has been."

Liam turned to face her, exasperated. "What exactly do you expect me to do?" he said, unreasonably annoyed for a transgressor.

"Urn, well," she said sarcastically, "start with not fucking other women?"

"Look, if it wasn't for you I wouldn't have done it. I only came down to London to get ye. It was you who wanted to stay the night there."

The businessman shifted in his seat, pretending not to listen but savoring every word.

"Hey," she said, "ye can't blame that on me – it was you who got your fucking tager out."

"Fuck off, Maureen."

The businessman looked up and smiled sweetly at the far wall.

"That is so unreasonable," Maureen said. "Anyway, I've been fighting people all week, I'm not going to say any more about this. But it wasn't my fault."

"Let's say no more about it," said Liam, adding quickly "But it wasn't my fault either. What happened to your neck?"

The waitress shuffled over to them, carrying two mugs and two oval plates. She dropped the cups onto the table and slid a plate in front of each of them, walking away before the runny egg yolks had stopped quivering. The bacon, eggs, sausage and black pudding were cooked to perfection. Fried potato scones, swollen and glistening with hot oil, sat on either end of the ovals like inverted commas. Liam bagsied the tea. For some reason Maureen had been given a cup of hot orange squash but she was pleased with it.

"Tell me about your neck," said Liam, eating a slice of Lorne sausage dripping with yolk.

"London was heavy, you know?" She nodded. "Really heavy. There's some bad people in the world."

"I know, wee hen."

Maureen remembered Elizabeth. "And some sad people too," she said.

"Yeah," said Liam. "God, I'd rather deal with the evil ones any day – they just try and fuck ye. The sad ones make ye feel miserable and then they try to fuck ye. Did ye find out who killed her?"

"Tarn Parlain. She was robbed of a big bag of drugs she was carrying for Toner. Tarn told Maxine she was muling and she must have told Hutton. I think he ran down there and robbed her. He kicked the shit out of her."

"Yeah," said Liam. "He would do. He was a right sicko."

"Anyway," said Maureen, a little annoyed at being interrupted, "Toner was putting two and two together and put out the word that he wanted to talk to Ann, and Tarn killed her to stop him finding out."

"So he killed her?"

"Yeah, in front of a whole lot of people." She squashed crumbly black pudding onto a portion of square sausage and covered it with runny yolk.

Liam was looking at her and trying not to smile. "He killed her in front of people?" he asked.

"Yeah. He made them all help him."

"So," he smirked, "Tarn Parlain killed a woman in front of loads of people because – what? He wanted to cover up another misdemeanor?"

Maureen stopped eating and looked at her plate.

"Well," said Liam skeptically, "maybe it's random enough to be true."

"They were all junkies," said Maureen, irritated by his supercilious tone. "I never really knew what that world was like before. How could you, Liam, knowing what it's like?"

Liam paused and stared at her, instinctively angry and defensive. He used to look like that all the time. "Dunno," he said, clenching his jaw. "It's not like that for most users. Lots of people use socially. Ye start off doing a favor for a friend, and then favors for several friends and then it's for friends of friends. Before ye know where ye are, you've become this big demon and the police are strip-searching ye and you're to blame for everyone who misuses or Ods. You don't hold wine merchants responsible for Winnie's drinking, do ye?"

He sat up and looked at her. Liam had never done anything but right by her and Maureen had no right to cast up his past to him. "I'm sorry," she said. "I was annoyed. I'm very tired."

But Liam continued. "I like not living like that," he said. "I like putting my rubbish out the front like everyone else and not being worried when the door goes. I was good at it, they were choosing to use it, and if they hadn't bought it off me it would have been from someone else. But I've got a house out of it and I'm at university and I can fly to London at a minute's notice looking for you, so I can't lie and say I'm sorry. I did a bad thing and I'm not sorry."

The businessman called the waitress over and asked where his hot orange was. Maureen cupped her hands around the drink, afraid they'd take it away. "I shouldn't have asked about that," she whispered. "It's in the past and I shouldn't have."

The waitress insisted that she'd already brought the hot orange and accused the businessman of losing it. He said how could he possibly lose a drink when he'd been sitting at the same wee table since he came in? The waitress tutted, muttered a bowdlerized curse and hobbled away.

"Know what you were saying about alcoholism being genetic?" whispered Liam, leaning over the table. Maureen nodded. He pointed at her hot orange. "There's a gene for criminal behavior as well."

Maureen laughed at him, choked immediately and used the last of her hot drink to soothe her throat. She hid the cup behind a stand-up plastic menu.

"D'you know what I find amazing?" said Liam, dipping into his yolk with a slice of scone.

"What do you find amazing?" said Maureen.

"The fact"-he pointed his fork at her-"that you know two people who've been murdered in the last six months."

"Mad, isn't it?" she said.

"I mean, that is unbelievable," said Liam. "In fact it's more than unbelievable. It's statistically implausible."

Maureen looked at him, remembering Elizabeth saying Toner wanted to speak to Ann, the cuts behind Ann's knees, and Moe, who remembered Leslie's name and work address perfectly and reported her drunk sister missing after a day. "Bitch," she said.

"Who?"

"The fucking lying bitch."

Liam looked over his shoulder. "Who are ye talking about?"

"Finish, finish," she said suddenly, poking at his plate.

"Why?" he said, pulling it away from her.

"You're driving me to the airport."