Exile (44 page)

Maureen hung her head and drew on her fag.

“These people,” said Bunyan, nodding gently, “are very frightening.”

Maureen noticed that she was talking to her as if Maureen were a child, as if she could make it better with a glass of orange and a chocolate biscuit, but Maureen needed that certainty now and she responded to it. She nodded back. “I got a fright,” she said.

“I’m not surprised,” said Bunyan, leaning towards her. “I get a fright when I talk to these people.”

Maureen looked at her. “Did you come all the way up to see me?” Her voice was high and nervous.

“Yeah.”

“How did you know I’d be here?”

“Didn’t know.”

“How could you possibly know it was me that phoned?”

Bunyan tapped her nose playfully. “Copper’s instincts,” she said, and smiled a consolation.

Maureen smiled back. “Thank you,” she said.

Williams sat back. “It’s still possible that Jimmy Harris did it, you know.”

“I know.”

“He was in London.”

“I know.” She looked at Bunyan. “But you’ve spoken to Jimmy, you know how passive he is. I’m sure Tam did it. Why else would he wash a leather settee?”

Williams nodded at the floor. “But that’s not evidence. We can’t get a conviction on the basis that he mistreated his leather sofa, can we?” Williams smiled sadly again, and Maureen realized that nice, plump, nonthreatening male was his catch — they must send him in to question all the mental birds.

“We’ll have to take you to Carlisle to interview you formally,” he said.

“Why Carlisle?”

Williams sighed and looked very tired. “It’s a long story,” he said.

A soft knock on the door heralded the creeping return of Inness. Hugh McAskill was behind him, his gold and silver hair splitting the gray morning as he looked into the living room and caught Maureen’s eye. For the briefest moment he looked very sad then dropped his eyes to the floor. He looked up again with a blank expression.

“Is this the officer you were trying to phone?” asked Williams.

“Aye,” said Maureen.

Hugh stood in the living-room doorway and nodded solemnly at his feet. Williams and Bunyan took the hint, stood up and went into the kitchen with Inness to wait. Hugh watched them leave and turned to her, his china blue eyes suddenly lively. “You all right?”

“I’m fine,” said Maureen, feeling like a hard case. “It’s nice to be home.”

“They taped the phone call from London,” said Hugh. “They went around to Tarn Parlain’s house and found bits of blood and hair under his settee. There’s a superficial match with the hair from the body.”

“Will they let Jimmy go?”

“He’s out already,” said Hugh. “They hadn’t charged him yet.”

“Right? What about Leslie?”

“She’s out too. That Elizabeth woman’s in a bit of a state. She’s telling them everything on the promise of a methadone course.”

“Yeah,” said Maureen. “She told me everything for five hundred quid.”

“Desperate.” Hugh nodded at his feet and looked at her. “Farrell’s been writing to you all this time?”

“Yeah.”

He sighed. “Maureen,” he said, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

“It’s your job, Hugh — you’d’ve been honor-bound to tell Joe.” They looked at each other and Hugh nodded quietly. “He’s only pretending to be mental,” said Maureen. “He’s having ye on. I didn’t understand why he was writing at first but then I realized. It was too easy for you to trace the letters here. He’s drip-feeding Joe information about his mental state. He knows that the harder Joe has to work to get it, the more likely he is to believe it.”

“I don’t know …”

“What will ye do with the letters?”

“We’ll have to give them to the fiscal now. We don’t have any option — they’re material evidence as to his state of mind.”

“He’ll get out, Hugh,” she said. “He’s a fucking psychologist. He knows exactly how to act to get off.”

“I know. It’s a tricky one.” He turned to look at her neck. “Let me see you.” She stretched her chin up as high as she could. “You should get an X-ray,” said Hugh. “I’ll take ye up to the Albert if you want.”

“Naw,” she said, “I’ll go after. Would you like a cup of tea?”

Hugh blinked slowly and smiled. “I would love a cup of tea.”

He followed her into the cramped kitchen. Bunyan was sitting down at the table and Williams was standing in the corner, smiling as Inness mumbled a story to him. They stopped talking as the door opened, stiffening when they saw it was Maureen.

“Hello, again,” said Williams pleasantly.

“Excuse me,” said Maureen, “I was just going to make a cup of tea.”

Williams shifted on his feet and glanced sideways at Inness. “I understand,” he said, “that you were in a psychiatric hospital for a while.” He looked at her innocently but the question was never innocent.

“So what?”

Williams shrugged. “It’s just, you know, interesting.”

Maureen lit another cigarette and her heart heaved at another lungful of harm. Hugh was here and she didn’t need the fellowship of this pushy man anymore. “No,” she said, flicking the kettle on, “you’re wrong. It wasn’t interesting.”

“While you were in there—”

“I’m not answering questions about myself. I’m answering questions about Ann Harris and London, not about myself.”

Williams pointed at Inness. “My colleague here tells me that your brother was a drug dealer. Did he have any connection with Frank Toner?”

“No. None.”

“It’s interesting, though, isn’t it? That Tarn Parlain is found with a houseful of drugs and your brother used to be a dealer? Is that why you went to London?”

If she hadn’t been to Ruchill she would have thought it was strange herself. She would have wondered but she was sure of everything now. The kettle reached a pitch, spluttering before switching itself off.

“This is a magnificent view,” sighed Bunyan. The men looked at her. She was still sitting down, her hand resting on the table, a vertical cigarette burning between her fingers. She was smiling softly to herself and looking out over the rugged north side of the city and the flaming fever tower. “Magnificent,” she breathed.

“We’ll be keeping the letters,” said Inness, stepping forward, reasserting his authority.

Maureen turned to him. “Look,” she said, “see those letters? He wanted me to give them to you. He wants you to think he’s mental so he’ll get a short sentence in a low-security facility.”

“Really?” Inness glanced a snide, silent aside at Williams. “You’re a doctor now, are ye?”

She fucking hated him. “Have ye ever heard of the 1971 Rosenhan study?” She waited, making him say it.

“No,” he said finally.

“These people went to mental hospitals and said they’d been hearing voices. They behaved normally apart from the retrospective claims. They were lying, there was nothing wrong with them.”

“Why did they do it, then?”

“For the study,” said Maureen, with forced patience. “They were all diagnosed as schizophrenic and everything they did after that was put down to their illness: taking notes for the study, watching people, asking about their case. Some of them were kept in for days, some for weeks. The only people who knew there was nothing wrong with them were the other patients. Now, I am a certified mental case.” She looked at Williams. He was biting his lip and listening. “And there is fuck-all wrong with Angus Farrell.”

Williams raised his eyebrows and smiled at Inness. “Smart lady,” he said.

Inness didn’t smile back.

They were leaving. Inness was making a great play of being grateful for her help but he didn’t like her and she didn’t like him, and it was getting harder for both of them to hide it.

“Good-bye,” said Inness. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other very soon.” He gave her a disgusted look and turned down the stairs, walking away before he said something he regretted.

Williams looked faintly amused. “You’re not exactly in his good books, are you?”

“Personality clash,” she said.

“You’re in my good books,” he said. “You’re not planning on leaving town again, are you?”

“No.” She smiled. “Not for a long time.”

“We’ll be back tomorrow to take you to Carlisle. About twelve, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Get it X-rayed,” said Williams, backing off and pointing at his neck. “Little bones in there.”

“Yeah.” She touched her throat softly. “It’ll be all right.”

“Okay,” said Hugh. His breath smelled of bitter tea. “I’ll be seeing ye.”

“Take care, Hugh,” she said, trying to look up at him without bending her neck.

“Get an X-ray.”

“I will, Hugh, I will.”

She watched them pile down the stairs. The little blond English woman trailed behind the men, looking up at her as they disappeared below the landing. She smiled and lifted her hand, slapping the fingers against the palm, as if she were waving to a child.

Maureen used the mobile number.

“Oh, Mauri, fucking hell, fucking hell, I’ve never been more scared in my life.” Leslie paused and Maureen could hear a little “phut” as she took a draw of her fag.

“They’ve let you go?”

“They’ve let me go and I’m home and so’s Jimmy, thank fuck. They told my work. I’m getting sacked but I don’t care. I just fucking don’t care.” Cammy called impatiently in the background for Leslie to come here and harhalfingfom. Leslie sighed into the receiver and turned to speak to him. “I’m on the fucking phone, Cameron. Can it, will ye?”

“Well,” said Maureen, “they’ve found blood and hair in someone’s house so I think they’ll be dropping the charges.”

“They’d never have made a case. It was ridiculous in the first fucking place,” said Leslie, and realized how she sounded. “Surrounded by Injuns I was, but wasnae feart, oh, no. Let’s set up a business together now we’re both free agents.”

Maureen giggled, glad to have Leslie back on form.

“A business? Doing what?”

“Roaming vigilantes,” said Leslie. “I’ll be your driver.”

“That’s crazy. I’ve never even been to Rome.”

“Maureen,” said Leslie seriously, “punning causes cancer.”

Chapter 45

EQUAL

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.”