Exile

Chapter 41

Maureen's throat hurt when she spoke and she couldn't swallow properly. She was having to sip her whiskey, let it slide down her throat and numb her cheek. She wanted to gulp it down and lose herself in it. She had stood limp and let him slap and throttle her. She was frightened and she hated everyone. She wanted to go home.

"Where are you from, Elizabeth?" rasped Maureen.

"London," said Elizabeth, looking at her drink.

"Where are your family?"

Elizabeth smiled churlishly. "Where I left them, I suppose."

"Have you got brothers? Sisters?"

She sat up a little. "A sister. She's a designer. Furniture. She makes it all herself. In a workshop. In Chelsea."

"She must be doing well to afford a workshop in Chelsea."

"No, we had trust funds…" She tried to smile again. "All gone now." She frowned at her glass, the light shining in through the softening etched windows.

Maureen couldn't tell how old she was. Her long hair and hopeful smile fitted a different life, a crazy deb living life her own way, with real people, making all the wrong choices. Elizabeth didn't want to talk. Whatever she was feeding into the back of her knee wasn't working for her today. She was trembling inside her dirty Vegas sweatshirt and her hairline was damp. Maureen looked at her and thought of kind Liam sitting at Martha's, waiting to whisk her home to safety. She'd never made the connection between Liam and these people, never acknowledged a causal connection between his big beautiful house and bony bodies like Elizabeth's.

"Remember Ann who died?" whispered Maureen.

Elizabeth tore herself away from the mess in her head and looked up. "Yeah."

"She had kids. Her husband's looking after all four of them but he's been arrested for murdering her. They'll go into care."

Elizabeth nodded slowly, taking it in. "I had a kid." She sat up, remembered, then her back bent and she slumped. "Nice kid."

"Boy or girl?"

"Boy. Joshua. He never cried. He was a good boy."

"When was that?"

Elizabeth brushed her hand into the past but her mind went with it and she stared vacantly at the table.

"Is he in care?" asked Maureen.

Elizabeth shook her head. "Died. House fire." She took a deep, deep drink of liquid eraser.

"Sorry," croaked Maureen, and Elizabeth shrugged, as if she'd heard the word a thousand times and was sick of hearing it. She took another drink.

"If I knew what happened to Ann," said Maureen, "he might not go to prison. The kids could have a normal life."

Elizabeth drank again, looking at her glass.

Doyle had misjudged her: mentioning the children had had no impact; all that mattered to Elizabeth was what she could get and where she could get it.

"I've got five hundred quid. If you tell me what happened, I'll give it to you."

Elizabeth sat up.

"Five hundred." Maureen sipped her whiskey and Elizabeth stared at her.

"What for?"

"Ann. Tell me what happened."

Elizabeth tried to find the catch. "How do I know you've got five hundred quid?" she said.

"In the bank," said Maureen.

Elizabeth hesitated so Maureen reached into her pocket and found an old cash-line receipt. The account balance at the bottom was faint but Maureen showed it to her and Elizabeth smiled and relaxed when she saw the figures. She gave it back to Maureen and looked at the floor, thinking.

"Can we get it now?"

"No. Once you've told me."

"But we might miss the bank."

"Tell me quickly, then."

"You're not the police, are you?"

"D'ye think I'd have this mess on my neck if I was the police?"

Elizabeth hesitated, staring at her drink, then looked up suddenly. "It was an accident," she said. "She fell over."

Maureen snorted, and regretted it immediately. "She fell into the river?" she said, holding her throat and trying to swallow.

"No. She fell over and banged her head. We were trying to look after her."

"Where did she fall?"

"Dunno. Do you know Tarn Parlain?"

"I do, yeah."

"Tarn said she fell and banged her head. She was on the couch when I got there. She was in a mess, her face was all bloody. No one wanted to look at her."

"Who was there?"

"Ann, Tarn, Heidi and Susan. Heidi came up with me – she used to be on the methadone program with me up at Heme Hill. It was closing time." She took a sip of vodka. "Tarn came and told us we had to go to his house. She was on the sofa. And then she died."

"Why did he want you all up there?"

"For Toner. He was teaching us all a lesson for Toner." Elizabeth sipped again.

"What was the lesson?"

"He was teaching us not to steal. She'd stolen from Toner and Tarn was doing him a favor."

"What did she steal?"

"She stole a lot. A whole shipment. She went missing after that but Toner found her. Tarn was teaching us not to steal."

"Do you carry for him?"

"Not now."

"What about the mattress and the river?"

"Well, we got a fright so Tarn got some of his friends to come and put her in a mattress and put her in the river." Her skin was so white and damp it was beginning to turn silver. "Is that it? Can we go to the bank now?"

"No. Why burn her feet? Who cut her legs?"

Elizabeth sat up straight, as uncomfortable as if Maureen had accused her of farting at dinner. "Oh," she said, "that was the others. Tarn made them do it, to teach them. I had to go out and see the doctor."

"In the middle of the night?"

"No," said Elizabeth, trying to put the times together. "That was later, the next day, or the day after, I think." Elizabeth didn't think she was lying: she was so divorced from reality she genuinely believed that mutilating and killing a drinking partner constituted a bit of an accident.

"They did it when you went to the doctor's?"

"Yeah," she said. "See, she was on the sofa and Tarn got really fed up with her being there and he got Heidi, I think it was Heidi, to burn her feet to wake her up, but she didn't wake up."

"What about her legs?"

"Oh, Tarn told them to cut them, I don't know why. I was out."

"She was wearing a gold bracelet. Why didn't you take it off her?"

Elizabeth looked guilty. "Tarn said leave it."

Maureen leaned into her, dropping her aching voice. "Elizabeth," she said, "did Toner ask Tarn to get her?"

"No," she moaned, cringing and afraid. "That's why it was such a big deal. Tarn did it to teach us a lesson. He thought Frank would be pleased but he wasn't. It wasn't what Frank wanted. And now Tarn's crossed him but we were there." Elizabeth glanced out of the door. She lifted her glass to sip but was trembling so much she had to put it down again. "And Tarn might say we were there. Tarn comes from a big family, he's got people behind him. Frank won't hurt him but he'll hurt us."

"The little fish?"

"Yes." Elizabeth nodded, dipping her chin down and looking up at her, making herself the victim. "The little fish."

"Toner didn't mean to kill her?"

"No, no, he wanted to ask her about the bag and there's a photo of him and it's missing now. It's very bad for Frank."

Maureen looked at her glass, at the thousands of tiny scratches on the surface. "Why would he want to ask about the bag? She said it had been stolen but he didn't believe her, did he?"

"Not at first, no, but then he put out the word that he wanted to talk to her about it." She tried to smile. "Frank doesn't talk to people about things like that, not usually."

"What made him want to talk to her?"

Elizabeth took a deep, impatient breath. "I don't know. It turned up in the wrong hands and I guess he thought it had been stolen after all."

"But she died before he got the chance?"

"Yes," said Elizabeth, shaking her legs under the table like a small girl desperate for the toilet. "Please can we go?"

"We'll go when I've finished or we won't go at all. Who stabbed her in the legs?"

"Tarn told them to do it," she said.

"But, Elizabeth, why did the women do what Tarn asked them?"

"It was her or us."

But Maureen knew there had to be more to it. "Did he feed you while you were there?"

Elizabeth reached out a bruised hand and held Maureen's wrist, looking at her watch. She gestured towards the door. "We should go."

"It was a vicious thing to do, Elizabeth. She had four kids."

"Well, I was out. At the doctor's." Even Elizabeth was having trouble believing in a doctor's appointment that lasted several hours. She blinked, looked at the floor, blinked again and looked back.

"Ye can't have been out for all of it," said Maureen. "It must have gone on for hours."

Elizabeth gave it some thought but the terrible cold was driving through her muscles like frozen needles, cracking her bones. "There was a queue," she said feebly.

"There was a queue?" repeated Maureen, her high voice pushing the battered rings of cartilage against the bruised muscles, sending a searing pain through her neck.

Elizabeth knew how stupid it sounded but she wasn't used to being talked to, or listened to, or taking responsibility. She played with her glass, running her finger down the side and around the rim. She lifted it and drank deep into it, looking for blindness and peace. Maureen knew that if she tried to make Elizabeth admit her part she'd never find out what had happened. She tried again.

"So, when you came back from the doctor's, did ye see what happened to Ann at the end?"

"Oh, I was in then." She sat forward. "That was Tarn. Tarn did that at the end. He kicked her."

"Where did he kick her?"

She pointed to her face. "In the chin. She was lying on the floor and he kicked her. She held his leg, held on while he kicked her with his other foot." She looked away wistfully. "She was hitting his leg, little pats, you know, like, slapping him, over and over, while he kicked her. I thought that was brave of her, hitting back. Can we go now?"

Maureen thought back to the missing flooring and shuddered when she remembered the grainy texture of the damp leather settee. "Who did he get to put Ann in the mattress?"

"A fat bloke and a bloke called Andy."

Maureen drained her drink. "Let's go to the bank."

The butch barmaid watched them leave, sadder than she had been before, certain she'd be watching the cheeky Scottish girl die inch by inch over the coming months and years.

Elizabeth was shaking so intensely that she had to sit on a chair at the side while Maureen went to the counter. The queue was long, busy with shop managers depositing end-of-day bags of small change and office workers paying their bills. Maureen looked over at her. The white lights in the bank glinted off her sweaty face. Elizabeth gathered her hair with her shaking hands, twisted it into a rope at the front and threw it over her shoulder, keeping her eyes down like Maureen did when she was dying, concentrating on breathing in and breathing out. Maureen looked away and followed the rest of the line, shuffling forward. She needed to get to the airport, she needed some cash herself for a cab.

She thought of Ann with her split lip and her battered fanny, coming to London to give herself up gladly for her kids. But Ann fought back at the last, refusing to go gently, a dying woman with burned feet and cuts on her legs and a fractured skull, hitting back as she was kicked in the face. Maureen wanted to fight back before it was too late, before her head was broken. She thought about Winnie playing cards, crying because she was sober, of Elizabeth running into the pub with her straggly fanny on display – hedonistic casualties.

The clerk made no secret of his skepticism. He didn't think a bedraggled woman like Maureen could take out six hundred quid. He read carefully as Maureen's account details came up on-screen and watched as Maureen typed in the PIN number. He asked her how she wanted it.

"Any way."

Elizabeth was excited and on her feet. She watched the wad of notes with cloudy, absent eyes and Maureen recognized the tranquilizing calm of anticipation. Elizabeth took the money, shoving it deep into her pocket, plugging the hole in her soul with the readies, and her panic evaporated. She stood up tall and straight, flinching slightly at muscle pains, flicking her hair back over her shoulders again. She knew she'd done a bad thing. "You won't tell anyone, will you?" she said, quite casual.

But Maureen couldn't lie to her. "Don't kill yourself with that money."

"Please don't tell," she whispered close. "Frank doesn't know I was there. He'll be really angry. I'm only a little fish." She dipped her chin down again and looked up. At best she had stood by while the rest, as vicious as frightened children, had ripped and burned Ann to death.

"Don't worry," said Maureen. "I won't tell Frank."

When they got outside Elizabeth said good-bye and walked quickly away, melting into the crowd. Maureen watched her skinny shoulders swaying, her hair roped and tucked into her sweatshirt, and she felt exhausted. It was so pedestrian. She didn't have the sense of having met with something evil. It was so normal, so within the scope of what she knew. She couldn't set herself apart from Elizabeth or from the crowd of greedy users, helping themselves as a mother of four bled to death on the settee.

Maureen lit a fag, inhaling with her tongue flicking over the cut in her cheek. She wanted to tell someone who couldn't have done this, seen this, heard this without feeling different and separate. The police. She wanted to tell the police.

"Excuse me." She stopped a man and could see him taking in the bruises on her neck and the smell of whiskey on her breath. "Could you tell me if there's a police station around here?"

"Yes, dear," he said, "down there, under the bridge, third on your right. Canterbury Crescent." His accent was African and his yellow and brown eyes were sad and sorry for her. Maureen looked down the street towards the bridge. "You want me to take you there?" he asked.

"No," said Maureen, laughing as if it were nothing, as if she'd lost her poodle. "I'm – I can find it okay."

She was beyond the bridge when her mind settled. She couldn't walk into a police station and give her name. If she went in and said she'd found a gang of murderers, they wouldn't let her go home with Liam, they'd keep her there for hours. If she didn't leave London now she would never get home, and Douglas's money wouldn't last forever. She knew her place here, next to Elizabeth and the men on the pavement, afraid like them, floating for years, another fun-seeker picking at scabs on the back of her knee. She turned up Electric Avenue, following the railway arches back to Coldharbour Lane and the phone boxes outside the Angel. She went into a newsagent's for a ten-quid phone card.

"Maureen," Martha whined reproachfully, "he was so worried about you. He's gone to the airport. He didn't have your pager number with him and he was counting on you being there."

"What time's the plane?"

"It's at seven thirty. You'd better set off now if you're going to get there on time."

"Cheers, Martha," said Maureen, because she couldn't bring herself to thank her properly, and hung up.

Hugh McAskill wasn't at his desk. The man who answered the phone wandered away to look for him. Maureen listened down the line to some men laughing and people walking past, watching as two and a half quid ticked away on the crystal display. The man came back over to Hugh's desk; she could hear him sniffing and chatting to someone near the phone. It took him twenty pence to pick up the receiver again. "Sorry about the delay," he said. "He's left the office for the day. Can I help?"

"Well," said Maureen, speaking fast, "someone I was drinking with has just confessed to witnessing a crime and I don't know what to do about it."

"Whereabouts are ye?"

"In London."

"Did the crime happen in London?"

"Yeah."

"Well"-the man sounded completely uninterested-"you're through to the wrong division anyway. Have ye tried the Crimestoppers hotline? Or the City Police? Or what about the Metropolitan Police?"

"Okay," she said, surprised by his cavalier lack of concern. "Well, thanks anyway."

"Yeah, 'bye," he said, and hung up.

She phoned directory inquiries for the number and called New Scotland Yard. She told the switchboard operator that she had information relating to the murder of Ann Harris and they put her through to a phone queue. A screechy voice from the East Midlands told her that she was being held in a queue and her call would be answered as soon as a communicator became available. The phone rang out blindly at the other end. The voice came back on several times, one and a half quid's worth of times, and each time returned her to the ringing phone. Maureen was running out of money. When the phone was finally answered a pleasant man asked her for her name and address. Maureen didn't want to get involved, she just wanted to pass on the information and go and find Liam. "Marian Thatcher," she said. "I live in Argyle Street off Brixton Hill."

"What number?"

"Six three one," she said, feeling clever.

"Well, Marian, why don't you come in and tell us what happened?"

"Look, I've got kids. I can't come in. Can't I just tell ye and ye can come and interview me later?"

The policeman paused. "Urn, okay, let's do that first. What happened?"

"I'm running out of money here. Will you phone me back?"

"Can't you come-"

The phone clicked and she was listening to the dial tone. Maureen checked her watch. It was going on twenty to six and her throat was killing her. It shouldn't be this fucking hard to dub someone up. She dialed 999.

"Fire, police or ambulance?"

"Police," she said, trying to make her strangled voice sound urgent.

The operator told the police that Maureen was in a call box and told them what the number was. "Hello, caller, what is the nature of the emergency?"

"There's a woman called Ann Harris. She's being held in flat six three two in Argyle Street in Brixton Hill. I think they're going to kill her."

"Who is going to kill her?"

"Tarn Parlain, Elizabeth, Heidi and Susan. She's on the settee – they're going to throw her in the river."

"What's your name, caller?"

"Please help her."

"Caller, I need your name."

"Marian Thatcher."

"And your address?"

"Six three one Argyle Street off Brixton Hill. Tarn Parlain's going to get two of his pals, a fat guy and a guy called Andy, to come up and put her in the mattress and throw her in the river."

"Caller, your name isn't coming up at the address you've given me."

Maureen hung up and backed out of the phone box. Liam would be frantic. She stepped into the street and hailed a black cab. She had forgotten that the closed-circuit camera was hovering high above the road, watching the street, keeping it clean.