Exile

Chapter 38

Michael had slipped through the window as a smoky vapor and was hanging in the air near her bed, close enough to touch her if he wanted to. Someone was tapping her feet and calling her name. She opened her aching eyes and slowly made out the figure of Martha across the room. She was sitting in the big wicker armchair and had put on a lot of makeup. She smiled sexily at Maureen. "Hello, sleepy," Martha drawled, lifting a big spliff to her smudged red mouth. "Daddy's here."

Maureen scrambled to her feet, staggering on her wobbly legs, trying to scratch the sleep out of her eyes and make out the figure standing stiffly at the end of the sofa.

"Fucking hell," said Liam.

"Liam?"

"Are you okay?"

"How the fuck did you get here?"

"I flew." He looked very concerned. "Are you okay?"

"I got a fright." She pointed at Martha.

"But she's all right now, aren't you, babe? She was so ill earlier," said Martha, keen to give Liam the impression that she and Maureen had bonded.

"Look, Mauri, there's a flight back tonight," said Liam, "and I've booked two seats."

"I'm not going back," said Maureen. "I'm not finished."

"Maureen"-he glanced sidelong at Martha-"I've come all the way down here to get ye out of trouble."

"I'm not coming home yet."

Liam sat down on the settee, sinking down to three inches off the floor, and looked up at her. "Come here, come and sit down," he said, patting the seat next to him.

"I don't want to sit down." She sounded like a sullen teenager.

Martha stood up, acting embarrassed, as if she were so fey she'd never seen siblings squabble. "I'll go and put the kettle on," she said, and went into the kitchen with an affected, wiggling walk. Maureen waited until she was out of the room before going back to the settee and falling into it. Liam offered her a fag but she refused it.

"The game's a bogie, Mauri," said Liam. "The police found stuff in Harris's house, his wife had been back-"

"What stuff?" interrupted Maureen.

"A set of photos belonging to the woman. In Leslie's shelter place at Christmas."

"But Leslie's got them! She wouldn't have two sets."

"Hey," shouted Liam indignantly, "don't fucking shout at me, I didn't put them there-"

"I didn't shout!" she shouted.

"Mauri, listen. Harris had been in London as well. They've got evidence that he was here when she died. Isn't that proof enough?"

"I'm not going home yet," she said simply.

"Look, Mauri," he said softly, "there's no point sulking about this. Take it from me, Frank Toner is a very scary man. If you've been showing that picture around you need to come home. Did ye show the picture to anybody?"

She shrugged.

"Did ye show it to anyone who could trace ye to home?"

She vaguely remembered showing it to Mark Doyle, or Tonsa – she couldn't remember.

"Tonsa?" she said. "I think I showed it to Tonsa."

Liam was horrified. "Tonsa?" he said, slapping her leg and leaning over her. "Maureen, they'll think you're working for me."

"But you're retired."

"No one retires, you silly cow. If Tonsa realizes who you are and tells Toner, I'm fucked. God." He sat back and looked at her. "Wee hen, you've got to come home before ye do some real damage."

Vaguely, vaguely in a distant place within her shriveled brain, she remembered telling Tonsa she was Liam's sister. She'd said his name to Tonsa, of all fucking people. She looked up at the umbrella floating on the ceiling. He had told her not to mention him. He had specifically told her.

Liam nudged her gently. "Let's go home."

"I need one more day to make it right," she said, panicking. "I need to see her sister again. She's a wee old lady, she doesn't keep well. One more day? Can't we stay tonight and leave tomorrow?"

Liam looked hurt. "Promise me that's all you're going to do."

"I promise."

Martha was leaning on the door frame, her forearms wrapped around her waist in a way she imagined was slimming. She smiled at Liam. "Looks like you're staying," she said, and laughed gaily.

"We're not staying here," said Liam bluntly. "There isn't any room."

"Alex is away for a couple of days," said Martha casually. "There's loads of room. Maureen's comfortable on the sofa, aren't you?"

"Yeah," said Maureen. "It's just one night."

Reluctantly, Liam went out to the hall and phoned the airline, changing the flights for the next evening. Maureen and Martha sat together on the settee, listening and relaxing when they heard him confirm his details. Martha smiled. "It's comfortable, isn't it?"

"What?"

"The sofa. Nice and comfortable."

Confused, Maureen smiled back at her as Liam came back in. "Tomorrow night," he said. "But we can't change them again, right?"

Maureen nodded. "I'd better go back to Sarah's," she said, staring meaningfully at Liam, "and let her know I'll be staying here."

"Good. Come on, then," said Liam, deliberately not inviting Martha.

Maureen said she wanted to see Kilty to give her back what was left of her shopping. In fact, she had been so drunk the night before that she wasn't sure how they had left things. A twitching pang of hangover insecurity nagged at her and she wanted to see her to make sure it was all right. The young landlord let them into the narrow hallway and said that Kilty was upstairs, last door, knock loud.

"She knows we're coming," said Maureen.

"You'll still have to knock loud."

The door to Kilty's room trembled with the reverberating theme tune from the Money Programme, and beyond the wall of noise a trilling little soprano voice sang along badly, following the notes a step late and pausing for breath midbar. Maureen banged on the door as hard as she could but felt the sound being swallowed beyond the door. She banged again and the singing stopped. Moments later the theme tune flickered to a dead stop. "Did someone knock?" asked Kilty politely.

"It's me."

The door opened on a grinning Kilty. Her room was large, with a big oriole window at the far end and wooden shutters like the ones in Liam's house. She had very little furniture: a single bed, a leather armchair and an ottoman. On the far wall a semicircular fireplace built of orange tiles looked like a decorator's take on a sunset. It was stacked with smoke-free fuel, little burning black boiled sweets. A gold mesh fireguard stood in front of it.

'This is my brother, Liam."

Kilty smiled and held out her hand. "Kilty Goldfarb," she said, shaking Liam's hand.

Liam looked bewildered. "What is that?" he said. "An anagram?"

Kilty wiggled her eyebrows alternately at Maureen, and Liam watched them, hoping she'd do it again. Kilty turned off the television and made sure the fireguard was as close to the fire as possible before slipping on her fur coat and turning off the light. She said that the best place for a quiet chat was the Alhambra restaurant and the coffee was beautiful. On the way round the corner Maureen chatted anxiously and managed to glean that Kilty had had a good night the evening before and Maureen had neither said nor done anything spectacular in her company, apart from convincing her to have a drink in the Coach and Horses.

The Alhambra was a North African restaurant decorated with a desert-theme mural. It looked as if the artist could only draw people from a side-on view but they had exploited their limitations to the full; men carried heavy bags and led camels backwards and forwards across the wall while the women stared straight at them or watched their backs. Kilty took a table near the window and began talking to Liam, asking him about himself. They knew the same crowd of people from the Glasgow Tech disco and worked out that they had probably been at several of the same parties when they were in their late teens but had somehow managed never to meet each other. At Kilty's insistence they ordered three coffees. Maureen sipped hers. It was delicious, the bitterness of the coffee tempered by the subtle perfume of cardamom seeds and other hints and flavors too complex for a heavy smoker's palate. Maureen asked Kilty to smoke a cigarette. Liam and Maureen sat and watched her puff-puffing over her coffee, giggling and nudging each other. Maureen didn't expect Kilty to enjoy the negative attention quite as much as she did, but Kilty didn't mind people laughing at her because Kilty thought she was great. And so she was. Kilty stubbed out her fag, finished her coffee and pulled on her jacket, saying she'd better go home and get ready for work tomorrow. She invited them both out for dinner the following evening.

"We're going home tomorrow," said Liam.

"Oh." Kilty looked crestfallen. "What a shame. You will come back, though, won't you?"

"I'll definitely come back and see ye," said Maureen. "I promise."

Kilty leaned across the table, grabbed Maureen by the ears and pressed a smacking kiss into her cheek. She stood up. "I had a fucking top time last night." She pulled her ski hat down over her eyebrows like a cloche. "It was lovely to meet you. Both."

"She's a turn and a half," said Liam, when she had gone.

"She certainly is." Maureen grinned.

Liam had ordered two plates of lamb couscous. Maureen didn't want to eat but the cardamom coffee had given her an appetite. When the food arrived the smell from the meat was rich and heady and the couscous was as light as air. Tentative, she tried eating a little couscous on its own, then with a spoonful of gravy over it and finally got stuck in. Liam ate his dinner and kept an avaricious eye on hers, discouraging her where he could, telling her that dinner was the worst meal to eat with a hangover and lamb could prolong the pain for up to a week.

"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 -

"Martha!" snapped Maureen. She was up for a fight but Liam glared at her.

"What?" said Martha, smiling for Liam.

"Don't cut it!" exclaimed Maureen, maintaining a furious face for the sake of continuity. "Keep it long!"

"Really?" Martha was very pleased. She didn't notice Liam turning away from her and grinning into the ashtray.

"Yes! It's nice!"

Liam sniggered out a trail of smoke and started coughing.

It was twelve o'clock and the mediocre programming took a downturn. Martha insisted that Maureen sleep on the sofa, because she liked it so much, didn't she? She brought out a sleeping bag and a pillow and gave Maureen a T-shirt and pajama trousers to wear. She demanded that Liam sleep on the floor in her bedroom. He tried to resist but Martha persisted shamelessly. "Are you frightened of me?" she said, smiling at Maureen for support.

"No, Martha, I'm not frightened of you but I'd rather sleep in here."

Martha laughed. "But there's more room in there. Don't be silly, I'll set up the camp bed for you," she said, and skipped lightly out of the room.

Liam sighed and lifted his jacket from the floor. "I'll see ye in the morning, Mauri."

Maureen settled onto the sofa, fully dressed, feeling disgusted at Martha and her tawdry flat with its regressive hippie shit décor. She knew she had to make a choice. She could abandon Una's baby to its fate, stay away from them all and live her own life with her eyes half closed among decent people like Vik. Or she could stand up and face it. She wanted Vik and nights out at the pictures and seaside days and the odd bottle of wine. She wanted normal, decent company. She wanted Vik.

She had been thinking about Michael and Una's baby for over an hour when she heard creaking from the next room and Liam groaning loudly. She banged on the floor to remind them that she was there but it didn't make any difference. She tried closing the door to the front room but the sloping floorboards and subsiding frame held it open.

She sat up by the window, as far away from the open door as she could get, watching the lorries and the black cabs stopping at the lights outside while Liam shagged Martha to get her off his back.

She woke up in the sagging armchair, convinced that she was home and Una was breathing baby blood through the window. She'd dropped her fag and it had burned a long chewy black stripe in the rug. She couldn't face Martha or Liam – she didn't think she could hide her disgust. She gathered her bag and left a note for Liam, saying she'd meet him at the airport. She tiptoed out of the flat, down the stairs and into the breezy street. She wanted to find Elizabeth.

Following the route in the A-Z, she made her way from Martha's house to Brixton. The clouds were sparse and ribbons of sunshine filled the street. It was warm. Lynn would be at home in Glasgow, waiting for her Liam to come home. She thought of Liam and tried to remember what she had said to Tonsa. She needed a good sleep. She stopped for more fags and a half-pint carton of milk, drinking it as she walked from the Oval to Brixton. She was struck by a sudden image of Michael holding Una's baby, cutting its little legs with his razor fingers.

She was standing at the edge of the pavement on the high street, waiting to cross over, when she looked up and saw Frank Toner swaggering along the pavement with a woman on his arm. The woman was tall but frighteningly young, like an elongated child with big breasts. Toner grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to him, buckling her ankle as he nuzzled his face into her rich hair. The girl feigned a big smile, opening her mouth and showing all her teeth, but her young eyes were frightened. As Toner lifted his face from her hair he turned and looked straight at Maureen. He stopped and Maureen caught her breath.

He was coming chin first across the road, pulling the girl off the pavement, dragging her by the hand. The cars slowed and the child ran after him on tiptoe, precarious in her stilettos. Toner sped up, swinging his free hand as ballast. The child was slowing him down so he dropped her hand, abandoning her in the middle of the road; she staggered to a stop, her thick hair falling over her eyes as a Volvo screeched to a halt in front of her. Frank Toner was coming.

Maureen stood quite still on the pavement, watching him. She should have run but she was sweating and exhausted and knew she couldn't run any farther. If she died now she would never go home, never see Ruchill or have to save Una's child, Liam would be safe and Vik would always be a possibility. She held her breath and he reached out for her, tucking a rigid hand under her armpit, lifting her off her feet and scuffing her toes, pulling her along through the crowded pavement. Behind them the lost girl teetered on her heels and cried, "Frank, Frank!" The air smelled like water, like the breeze back at the window in Garnethill, and Maureen resigned herself.

Toner was dragging her towards the mouth of Coldharbour Lane. He was hurting her, pressing the tendons tightly together, pinching the bones apart, holding tighter than he need have. Pedestrians watched them pass, Toner striding up the road with his jaw foremost and a small, ragged woman in his grip. She didn't seem alarmed, didn't seem bothered, just hanging at the side of him like a little doll with a mop of curly hair.

They turned the corner and went up Coldharbour, past the nice boutiques and businessmen's bars, towards the Coach and Horses. But Leslie needed the Polaroid. Leslie needed it. Maureen began to struggle, scratching at his hand and drawing his attention as they passed the mouth of Electric Avenue. A shadow moved closer and Toner toppled over on the pavement, dropping Maureen and landing on his face. An arm wrapped tightly around Maureen's waist, lifting her off her feet, turning her sideways and running down the lane, carrying her into the market, blending into the stalls.

Mark Doyle put her down on her feet and grabbed her forearm, scratching her skin with his callused hands. He dragged her into a shallow doorway, through a narrow close open to the sky, through another door and up a set of worn wooden stairs. He pushed her in front of him and she ran as fast as she could, suddenly awake and afraid, suddenly caring. They ran up four flights of stairs until they came to a door. Doyle unlocked three heavy bolts and opened it, shoving her in. It was a tall, shallow room, completely bare, flooded with startling sunlight from a high arched window at the narrow end.

Maureen approached the window carefully, standing on tiptoe to peer out, afraid that Toner would be standing outside. They were three stories above the shops in the high street. She turned and looked around her. At the other end of the narrow room a red sleeping bag lay crumpled on a dirty mattress, an ashtray spilling onto the floor next to it. They were panting with excitement, their faces varnished with sweat and apprehension. She was about to ask him why he had saved her when she turned and saw him rubbing his hands together. "You're heavier than ye look," he said.

She was alone with Mark Doyle in a room no one knew about, with one exit and three locks.

"Much heavier." He smiled and walked towards Maureen, panting alone by the window.