Exile

by Denise Mina

  ‘The woman who disappeared.’

  Martha looked at the picture again. ‘In a playground, that is un-fucking-human.’

  Maureen didn’t know what unhuman was but she had an inkling ‘Why is it a threat?’

  Martha leaned forward and pointed at the Polaroid. ‘He knows where the kid is. He’s been near the kid once and he can get to him again. He’s going to hurt her kid.’

  They settled back in the living room on the seductively sagging sofa and Maureen sipped the tea and ate more chocolate mini rolls. Martha said that the Polaroid was a way of flushing Ann out and making her come to him. She wasn’t surprised when Maureen told her that Parlain was after it. Parlain worked for Toner and anyone who dealt with Toner would want it: returning the Polaroid to him would be a way to curry favour, keeping it back would give them leverage. She said that if Toner knew Maureen was holding the Polaroid he’d have marked her already. Maureen looked at the picture, at Toner’s spiteful smile and the strain in the boy’s forearm as he tried to pull away. Ann must have been terrified.

  ‘What had she done to deserve that?’ asked Martha.

  ‘I’m not certain. I think she was carrying for him and she lost the lot or sold it and then he beat her up and she got away. If she was carrying for him, who’d she be carrying to?’ Martha shifted uncomfortably in her chair and sipped her tea.

  ‘You know, don’t you?’ said Maureen.

  ‘It’s not a big secret or anything.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Toner’s got a relationship with some people in Paisley.’

  ‘Parlains,’ said Maureen.

  Martha smiled faintly into her cup. ‘Liam would be so worried if I told him about this.’

  ‘Oh, God, Martha, please don’t tell him. He’ll be worried sick.’

  Martha shrugged.

  ‘No, please, don’t, Martha. I’m going home in the morning anyway.’

  38

  Anagram

  Michael had slipped through the window as a smoky vapour 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 to within three inches of 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 was 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 shrivelled 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 reverbera
ting 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 flavours too complex for a heavy smoker’s palate. Maureen asked Kilty to smoke a cigarette. Liam and Maureen sat and watched her puffpuffing 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,’ grinned Maureen.

  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 any more 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 neighbour.’ 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 mid-sentence.

  Behind the counter two men shouted over each other angrily until one of them slammed a frying-pan down on the work-top. An intense quiet fell over the café. 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 naïve, 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 mid-distance 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 feel
ing 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, Tam 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 sceptically, ‘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 Tam 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 Tam’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 the way of harm.’

  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 fucksake come home,’ said Leslie.