Exile

Chapter 23

Liam looked down from the upstairs window as cold rain ran off their shoulders and dripped through their hair. He made a pretense of not quite recognizing them and turned back into the room to laugh at his stupid joke with someone else before disappearing. They saw him through the glass door, trotting down the stairs and padding towards them. He opened it and took the cigarette out of his mouth. "My God," he said, staring at Maureen's face. "What happened to you?"

"She fell into a makeup counter," said Leslie.

Liam hung their wet coats on hooks, leaving them to drip onto the floor. It was cold in the hall; he couldn't afford to have central heating installed, and removing the partition from the bottom of the stairs had created a shaft of drafty breezes cutting through the heart of the house. "Right," he said. "Upstairs for towels and jerseys. There's tea made already. Mauri, you get a couple of cups from the kitchen."

"Will I bring biscuits?" she said, hopefully.

Liam rolled his eyes. "Okay."

Maureen trotted off to the kitchen as Leslie followed Liam up the stairs. Liam was the only man Maureen had ever met who kept nice biscuits in his house. They were lovely sugarcoated ginger sponges with jam in the middle, made under a German name in Lowestoft. And he was the only human she had ever met who could have such lovely biscuits in his house until they went stale. Concerned by this potential wastefulness she made it her business to finish the packet whenever she was in his house.

The kitchen was small and bare with a rattly window looking out onto a long, thin, scrubby garden. Liam had done nothing to the kitchen apart from washing it down with sugar soap. The fridge was very old and the motor so emphatic that it made the floor vibrate. Anything left on the worktop or the table overnight would intermittently jig its way to the edge and throw itself onto the floor. Maureen washed her face in the sink, watching the orange milky water swirl and retreat in the chipped Belfast sink. She wished she were going home to Vik this evening, that things were all right between them and that he hadn't made her face her future. She dabbed her face dry, picked up two cups and took the biscuits from the cupboard before making her way upstairs.

The front room had been Liam's retreat while he was dealing. It was tall with two floor-length sash windows, wooden floorboards and pale blue walls. He had kept it sparse in the old days but now it was cluttered with his desk, a dresser, his two favorite chairs and the Corbusier lounger. It was colder inside the room than out and Liam kept a box of secondhand jumpers for anyone who wanted to sit in there during the winter. Liam and Leslie were laughing loudly and a familiar voice shouted over them, "And he had a bulldozer with a picture of Tammy Wynette painted on it."

Maureen walked through the door and saw who was telling the story. Lynn was sitting in a tiny emerald green armchair under the window with a small red woolly jumper pulled over her clothes. "Lynn!"

"Mauri." Lynn grinned and stood up, doing a silly high-legged run across the room to give her a kiss. "How are ye?"

"Not bad," said Maureen, catching the brown jumper Liam threw at her. "You're not in tow with this balloon again, are ye?"

"Well"-Lynn lowered her lids and smiled coquettishly in Liam's direction-"mibi." She sauntered back to the chair, enjoying Liam's eyes on her tidy little body.

Embarrassed at witnessing such a graphic intimacy, Maureen pulled the jumper over her head and Leslie busied herself, pouring two cups of tea from the pot on the floor. They sat sideways in the dip in the Corbusier lounger, smashed into each other, sharing opposite ends of a towel to dry their hair.

"What possessed ye?" said Maureen, rubbing her hair with the towel.

"Well, Mauri"-Lynn slipped back into her chair-"I'm an old-fashioned Scottish girl and I think pity and fear are a healthy basis for a relationship."

She grinned and Liam looked as offended as a novice nun in Amsterdam. "Don't poke fun at our love," he said solemnly, and Lynn cackled in the corner.

Lynn was the first girl Liam had ever gone out with. They had met at the Hillhead comprehensive Christmas disco when they were fourteen. Lynn came from a rough part of Shettleston; she wasn't even at the school – she was only at the dance to stop her cross-eyed cousin, Mary Ann McGuire, from being bullied. Lynn had glided into the hall wearing eight-hole DMs, her shiny black bob swaying at the shoulders of her green silk minidress. Terrified that anyone else would nab her, Liam had run over to her and forgotten his lines. He stood in front of her, startled by her opalescent skin and black eyes, gubbing like a drowning fish. Had she been any other girl she might have laughed and broken his heart, but Lynn took Liam's hand and led him onto the floor, holding it gently as they swayed to and fro, together, apart, together, apart, transfixed by each other. Kylie and Jason sang "Especially for You" and the assembled boys cursed Liam O'Donnell for the jammy wee shite that he was. Mary Ann McGuire was never bullied again. They were together for six years but Lynn didn't like the dealing and she couldn't cope with his anger. She said she was young and she wanted to have a laugh and watch television without a man shouting over the fucking news. It had been two years since Lynn had chucked him and a year and half since Liam had started seeing poor, dull Maggie with the perfect bottom and the whispery Monroe voice that made men want to kiss her and women want to punch her.

"What are you two doing here, anyway?" asked Liam.

Maureen put her hand into the bag of biscuits, taking as many as she could in a oner. "We need to ask you about someone," she said, eating a little ginger heart whole. "Do you know a guy called Neil Hutton?"

Liam stared at her. "I don't know him, but I know of him. Why are you looking for him?"

"We're not looking for him, he's just come up in conversation, that's all."

"Yeah, well, stay the fuck away from him, he's mental. His nickname is Neil 'Bananas' Hutton."

Maureen wrapped her cold hands around the hot cup and sipped her tea, feeling the heat seep through to the small bones in her hands. "And he's a dealer?"

Liam nodded reluctantly. "Yeah," he said. "Out the east end. Why?"

"Oh, it's the east," said Leslie, holding the warm cup to her cheek. "She doesn't know him from the scheme, then."

"Why?" repeated Liam.

Leslie thought the quickest way around Liam's uneasiness would be to tell him the truth, so she sketched Maxine and the news report Senga had told them about and said that Ann had disappeared shortly afterwards. Maureen added that Senga used to visit Fraser's and Leslie fiddled uncomfortably with the sleeve of her jumper.

"Doesn't mean Senga told her where Ann was, though," she said.

"Well, she'd probably tell," said Maureen. "And that's why she said everyone knew where the shelters were, to take the bad look off herself. But why would it matter whether Hutton knew where she was?"

"Did she owe him money on a deal or something?" asked Liam.

"No," said Maureen. "She was a drunk, not a user. Would Hutton beat her up himself?"

"Definitely." He pursed his mouth with disgust. "Hutton likes it. Likes the rough stuff, specially if he knows he can win."

"What else is he like," she said, "apart from mental?"

Liam thought about it. "He's ambitious and he's not a real dealer. He's actually a gangster who deals."

"What's the difference?"

Liam ambled over to Lynn's chair and looked out of the window. "Well, I'll tell you a story about Hutton. He nearly started a war two years ago moving in on another guy. He torched the guy's house, didn't even go in and take the stash first. He wasn't content with taking the patch over, he was obliterating the guy, wiping him out. No dealer would ever do that – it's far, far too angry and it's not profitable. See, Hutton isn't feeding a habit or in it for the money, like the rest of us. He's got a lot more to prove." Liam slid the back of his hand against Lynn's face, lifting the cigarette from her mouth, took a draw and put it back.

Even Lynn was embarrassed by the gesture. She leaned forward to get away from Liam, tapping her fag into an ashtray. "If she wasn't a user," she said, "she might be frightened of him for some other reason. Maybe it was personal or maybe she was a courier for him?"

"Nah." Maureen shook her head. "She's got four kids and she certainly wouldn't courier. She was really underweight and poor looking. She'd be very conspicuous on a plane."

"Not all couriers travel on airplanes," said Liam. "If it was up and down to London she might just have driven."

"Actually, she was found in London," said Maureen. "She's got a sister in London and she was up and down for a month before Christmas."

"She couldn't drive, though," said Leslie. "Would someone else have driven her?"

"Why pay a driver and a courier?" said Liam.

"What about the train?" said Lynn.

"Well, not just now," said Liam. "The police have been all over the docks and they were crawling all over the trains in November and December. That's why there's a dry on. No one's using the trains. What about the bus?"

"I don't think she would courier," said Leslie. "No offense, Liam, but she wasn't that sort of person."

"What? Not an evil person like me?"

"I didn't mean that, but she wasn't involved with criminal people and she was just a drinker."

"Did she owe loan sharks?"

Leslie didn't answer.

"She did," said Maureen. "She owed them shitloads."

"There ye are, then," said Liam. "About five hundred quid would make her evil enough to do a couple of runs and pay them off."

"But that's ludicrous," said Maureen. "Why would they entrust a package of drugs to a nervous, tipsy housewife?"

"Could have been a dummy run," said Liam, "to test and see if it was safe. The police've been picking up everyone. They might have used her because she was a complete outsider, knew nothing about anyone and it wouldn't really matter if she got nicked."

"But the money's not paid off," said Leslie sullenly. "Maureen said there were sharks up at the door every night in the week."

They all looked at Liam for clarification. He frowned. "Maybe she owed different people." He looked at Leslie's miserable face and suddenly smiled. "Why am I arguing with ye? I don't fucking know."

Lynn sat forward. "Would Ann fit in on the bus to London?"

"Perfectly," said Maureen, and looked at Leslie.

"Perfectly," said Leslie.

Liam and Lynn went downstairs, ostensibly to make more tea but obviously to have a snog. Maureen had never known them so demonstrative. It might have been her own lovelorn perspective but their intensity felt desperate, as if they knew it couldn't last and kept having to touch each other to know it wasn't over yet. The muffled chat downstairs slowed to a trickle and Leslie stood up and walked to the window. "God," she muttered, "this is a beautiful house."

"He's done it up nicely, hasn't he?"

Leslie was looking out of the window with her hands behind her back. "Are you ready to go back to your job yet?"

Maureen wanted to tell her she wasn't going back, but they had spent such a nice couple of days together and she couldn't cope with another fight just now. "But we haven't even started finding out about Ann yet," she said. "We've got to go to London."

Leslie wasn't sure. She said she couldn't leave work with the funding review coming up again and it wouldn't be safe for Maureen to go on her own. But Maureen wanted to go, she wanted to get out of Glasgow, get away from Ruchill and the bedroom window, away from Vik and the PSS and Winnie's calls. She made a good case for it: she could check out the pub Mark Doyle had mentioned and visit the sister in Streatham. Maxine had said the man in the Polaroid lived down there and she could ask Ann's sister if she knew him. It would be fine, she said, she'd be safe, she could stay with an old friend from her art history class and, anyway, Ann had been running away from Glasgow so this must be where the threat was. She sounded quite plausible.

Leslie chewed her cheek and thought about it. "But Ann was murdered in London," she said. "That's exactly where it isn't safe."

"I want to do it, Leslie."

"For me?"

"For you," she lied. "And for Jimmy."

"Why for him?"

"He's so poor, Leslie, no one's going to give a fuck but us."

Lynn and Liam came back upstairs, giggling and touching hands as they came into the room.

"I'm going to London," said Maureen.

"If this has anything to do with Hutton I'd leave it," said Liam.

"It doesn't," she said, less sure than she sounded. "I'm just going to see the woman's sister. She's related to Leslie."

"You could stay with Marie," said Liam tartly. Their eldest sister, Marie, wouldn't have Liam or Maureen in her house. Marie found herself in greatly reduced circumstances. She had gone to London straight from school to get away from Winnie and live the Thatcherite dream. She and her husband, Robert, had made fortunes as merchant bankers and they had almost made it to a fully detached Holborn town house when the collapse of their Lloyd's syndicate forced them into bankruptcy, a rented studio flat and all of the indignities they had been foisting on the rest of the country for a decade. She thought they would gloat if they saw the flat and, to be fair, she was right. "I know some other people," said Liam, "but she wouldn't want to stay with them either."

"Druggie pals," chided Lynn.

"I'll phone Sarah Simmons," said Maureen. "I'll stay with her. I could go down tonight and come back on Sunday. It'll be a wee holiday."

Maureen thought of Sarah, and the name and the cold took her back years, to a long-ago winter when she felt much younger and was never without Vasari, when Otto Dix was her hero and the night terrors and sweating flashbacks were still a shameful secret that she just couldn't seem to shake. Sarah and Maureen used to study together. They were interested in the same areas and swapped notes and did complementary study tasks: one studying one part of a subject, the other studying the rest, then pooling the information. They didn't have much in common but it was a long and prosperous bond, and Maureen felt sure she could stay with her for a few days. Everything had been so much clearer then, hopeful and resonant, when she didn't know about the blood or the cupboard and Michael was still a distant memory.

"I hate London," Lynn was saying. "It's so dirty."

"The people are pig ignorant," said Liam, because Lynn didn't like London. "And they hate us, they hate the Scots. Glaswegians, especially."

"How dare they," said Leslie, smiling at Maureen. "Those racist pricks."

Leslie parked in front of Maureen's house and they ran upstairs to look for Sarah Simmons's phone number. They were in the bedroom, searching for her address book, when Maureen turned and saw Leslie looking at the used condoms on the floor. Maureen didn't explain, she didn't want to talk about Vik or her bad behavior, but she noticed a delicious, spiteful thrill tickle her belly because she was holding back information too.

They found the address book and sat on the settee in the living room, working their way through the bits of loose paper that Maureen kept tucked into the fold in the cover. The bundle of scraps was so thick that the cover of the fake Filofax sat open at forty-five degrees. There were work numbers, changes of address, short-term friends she'd promised never, ever to lose touch with, and some mysterious bald numbers without title or provenance, written in her own hand a long time ago. They had found one Sara but it was a Glasgow number and Sarah had always been particular about the spelling. Finally, Maureen found the number under S, written as the second entry.

Sarah said it would be super to see Maureen again but she was very busy at work and had a lot of other commitments in the evening so she might not be free to spend a lot of time with her. Maureen assured her that she just wanted a place to crash and said she was surprised that Sarah was still at the same number. Sarah said she'd probably be at the number until she died. It was a family house, she said, assuming Maureen would understand what that meant, but she didn't. Sarah gave Maureen directions from King's Cross and said she'd see her in the morning.

Maureen was shoving the mysterious bits of paper back into the sleeve of the Filofax when a glint of sharp sunlight caught her eye from under the settee. It was Vik's precious band lighter. She was sure he wouldn't have left it by mistake. She picked up the chrome oval and Leslie watched her stroke the dust off it. "That's a nice thing," she said.

Maureen stood up and slipped it into her pocket. "Yeah," she said. "It is."