Exile (13 page)

“Maybe he was just like that?” suggested Leslie.

“He took her eye,” said Isa.

“Mum, I hear about things like that all the time and there aren’t any boats for the bastards to go on anymore. They’re just like that.”

“Oof.” Isa turned away as if she’d been slapped. She smiled hopelessly at Maureen. “I hope she doesn’t use language like that all the time.”

Maureen patted her hand. “What happened to wee Jimmy, Isa?”

“Monica’s sister came”—she hung her head—”and took him away. She thought I knew what he was going to do but I didn’t. I wouldn’t think of such a thing, I was just a girl myself. But he was my cousin and he was dead and I got the blame. She wasn’t very nice to me.”

“And did ye see wee Jimmy after that?” asked Maureen.

“Not for a long time. Then about ten years ago I bumped into him at the Barras.” She flushed. “He was all grown-up and he knew me, came running over and kissed me in the street, in front of everyone. I was that pleased. I thought his auntie would’ve turned him against me but, to her credit, she hadn’t. She died before he married. We kept in touch. He came to our Maisie’s wedding”—she nodded at Leslie—”and he brought his new wife, Ann. It was nice, us all being together, but then he just drifted away. He wouldn’t hit his wife …”

Isa trailed off and Leslie sat forward. “I think he did it,” she said certainly.

“Rubbish,” said Isa flatly, and Leslie opened her mouth to start a fight.

“I don’t think he’d hit anyone,” interrupted Maureen, “not coming from a background like that.”

“He’s more likely to hit someone coming from that,” insisted Leslie.

“No, he isn’t,” said Isa.

“No,” said Maureen. “If ye come from that ye can’t lie and pretend it doesn’t matter. If ye come from that ye’d be acutely aware of what it meant and what it could lead to.”

“I still think he did,” said Leslie stubbornly.

Isa poured more tea for Maureen. She tried to make her take a gammon roll or at least a biscuit, have a wee biscuit. Maureen took a tea cake just to be nice.

“What d’yees think’ll happen to him?” whispered Isa.

Leslie looked at Maureen but Maureen’s mouth was full. “The police’ll do him for murder when they see the shelter photos,” said Leslie.

“What if they don’t see the photos?” said Maureen, struggling to speak through a mouthful of mallow and cooking chocolate.

“But they’re going to see the photos,” said Leslie firmly.

“Could you hide the photos?” whispered Isa.

“Mother,” said Leslie, “what are you suggesting?”

Isa quietly rearranged the plate of biscuits. “Ye might misplace them,” she said quietly.

“Mum, for God’s sake—”

“I’ve stolen them,” said Maureen to Isa. “They’re in my bag.”

“Oh,” beamed Isa, “that’s wrong.”

“I’m a bad lot,” said Maureen. Isa made her take another biscuit. “I think Ann had a boyfriend,” said Maureen, basking in Isa’s approval. “He could have beat her, she could have followed him to London and he might have killed her there. We should look for a boyfriend.”

“Yes,” said Leslie, nodding at Maureen as if she were prompting her a line. “But we need to wait and see what the police make of it.”

Isa sighed heavily. “I’ll go and see Jimmy and get to know the children,” she said. “Every time something terrible happens to that family I turn up like Typhoid Mary.”

“Mum, if it wasn’t for you Billy might have killed the wean as well.”

The doorbell rang three times in rapid succession. Isa sighed and stood up, straightening her pinny and narrowing her lips. “I bet that’s that bloody Sheila McGregor,” she said.

“Oof,” said Maureen to Leslie. “I hope she doesn’t use language like that all the time.”

Isa tee-heed and disappeared into the hall. They heard two oscillating lady voices greeting each other with offers of tea and cake.

“You were brilliant,” said Leslie. “She’d have been gutted if I’d told her.”

“No bother.” Maureen gestured out to the hall. “Who’s this?”

“Hungry neighbor. Catches the smell when the lid comes off the biscuits.”

Mrs. McGregor’s shopping bags filled the doorway. She humphed them onto the kitchen floor and stood up, blinded by the condensation on her glasses. She was dressed in a thick green tweed coat and stood less than five foot tall on bandy cowboy legs. Isa came back into the kitchen and put the kettle on again.

“Oh, my,” said Mrs. McGregor, pulling out a chair and sitting herself down, “but it’s wild out there today. Is that you, Leslie, pet?”

Leslie looked as sullen as she ever had. “Aye, hello, Mrs. McGregor. How ye keeping, all right?”

Mrs. McGregor helped herself to a shortbread biscuit and looked at Maureen. “And who’s this?” she said, looking her up and down. “Is this your life partner, Leslie?”

“Stop trying to be modern, Mrs. McGregor. She’s my pal.”

“Very good,” said Mrs. McGregor, taking a half cup of weak tea from Isa and filling it to the brim with milk. “Your mother says I can’t stay long because you’ve had a death in the family.”

“That’s right,” said Leslie.

“Aw, well,” said Mrs. McGregor, opening her mouth, letting shortbread crumbs fall willy-nilly onto her coat. “And just after Christmas as well.” She wrinkled her nose at Maureen. “No time for turmoil.”

They had to wait until Mrs. McGregor left because Leslie wouldn’t leave Isa alone with her. “McGregor bullies her,” said Leslie, unchaining the bike from a lamppost. “She’d be staying for her tea if we hadn’t seen her out.”

“You’re very abrupt with her,” said Maureen. “Who is she?”

“She’s a misery magnet, that woman,” said Leslie. “Every time there’s a tragedy on this scheme that woman turns up for the purvey.”

Maureen put her helmet on and did up her coat, watching while Leslie jump-started the bike.

“Why did she think I was your girlfriend?”

“She’s been saying I’m gay since I was wee. And then the bike, ye know.”

“Oh, yeah, sure sign. Ye should tell her that a bipolar conception of gender is widely discredited now.”

Leslie threw back her head and laughed a wide-mouthed dirty laugh, baring black fillings and coffee stains. And Maureen wanted her to keep laughing so she could watch.

Chapter 16

BAPS

“So far nothing, then?”

“Yes, sir. So far fuck all,” said Williams.

Dakar shook his head and stood up. He remembered himself, remembered what he would look like to Bunyan, and held in his belly until he got to the window and had his back to her. “It’s a mattress, for Pete’s sake. Thames Division say an object that big doesn’t move far so it had to go in near the Chelsea Wharf. They’re not even sure it could have made it across the river so it had to go in at that side of the river. Someone must have seen something.”

“I’m sure someone did,” said Williams, between bites of chicken bap, “but they’re either keeping quiet about it or they didn’t realize it was suspicious.”

Bunyan sat forward, pressing her waist against the edge of the desk, pulling her blouse tight. Williams saw Dakar being careful not to look. “If,” she said, “they dumped the mattress at four in the morning, that road could have been completely empty. Maybe no one saw anything.”

“Possible,” agreed Dakar. “Quite, quite possible. The husband’s the only thing we’ve got to go on, isn’t he?”

Bunyan nodded. “Can’t place him in London until we talk to him, though.”

Williams swung back in his chair and thought about home. They’d have to go to Glasgow and interview the husband. He hadn’t been back for years, not since his dad’s funeral.

“… Glasgow,” finished Dakar and looked expectantly at Williams.

Bunyan was looking at him too. “We have to go to Glasgow,” she said.

“Oh, right,” said Williams. “Obviously.”

Dakar pointed at him. “I’ll approach Liaison about a spot on Crimewatch. She’s a mother of four, for God’s sake. Someone must have seen something.”

Chapter 17

THE BIG PICTURE

Maureen had never seen CCB photographs before. The glossy pictures were spread over the floor, a patchwork of angles and body parts lit by a harsh white light. “Are they always like this?” she whispered reverently.

“No.” Leslie sat down next to Maureen and looked out over the sea of photographs. “They’re not usually this bad. These are the worst I’ve seen.”

Ann was standing against a white wall wearing nothing but her tired underwear. She looked into the camera, vacant and resigned, her mouth hanging open with Hindleyesque apathy. Full-length shots of her front, side and back established the scale and then the pictures homed in on her injuries, slicing her body into digestible pieces. She was seriously underweight; her arms were pencil thin and her pelvic bone jutted out of her back. There was a two-inch chasm between her bony thighs. A whispering silver road map sprawled across her withered belly and spent breasts. Someone had kicked the shit out of her.

A punch to her jaw had split her lip and left it grotesquely swollen. Black and yellow bruises were clustered on her back, creeping around her torso to her chest, slipping under her gray bra. One series of shots concentrated on the injury to her groin. The pictures centered on the modest bridge of her pants, a patch of white cotton in a sea of blackened skin that extended all the way down to her knees.

“See there?” Leslie leaned forward and pointed to an oval bruise on the back of Ann’s neck, gesturing with her pinkie as if reluctant to touch it. “That’s a stamp mark, from a shoe.”

“Jesus,” whispered Maureen, “she must have fought like a bastard.”

“No,” said Leslie, picking up a full-length shot and pointing to the back of Ann’s hands. “Look at that. There’s not a mark on the back of her hands or her arms.”

Maureen didn’t get it. “What does that mean?”

“This is what ye do when you’re being hit”—Leslie crossed her hands over her head and rounded her back—”but Ann didn’t. See that big bruise?” She traced a big diagonal one on her chest. “She wasn’t defending herself at all. She was probably unconscious.”

“She might have been steaming,” said Maureen, pointing to Ann’s legs in the full-length shot. Cuts and bruises of various ages were slashed across the knife-edge bone on her skinny shin. Ann had a habit of falling down. She’d been falling for a long time. Maureen looked at Ann’s tired eyes. “She looks dead already.”

They sat for a moment looking at the pictures, frowning and sick and sad. Maureen tried to imagine how angry someone would have to be to do that to a limp body. The clouds parted outside the window, and for a brief moment Leslie’s living room was full of brilliant yellow sunshine.

It was a small flat in a good low-level block in Drumchapel. Leslie was lucky with her neighbors. They were elderly and watchful of one another, and they kept the close clean and tidy. The houses were small and neat with low ceilings, little square rooms and a veranda through the door at the back of the kitchen. Leslie’s favorite thing was to eat hot food outside, she said it made her feel privileged, and on milder nights they used to sit on the veranda, watching the wasteground around the back, and eat dinner together. Maureen supposed that Cammy sat with her now — his presence was evident everywhere else in the house. His jacket was hanging up in the hall, his shaving foam was in the bathroom and, judging by the Celtic mugs in the kitchen and the bad oil painting of Jock Stein, he had brought his most treasured possessions over to the house so that he could be near them. Maureen berated herself. She should wish Leslie well — she was her friend, after all, and they seemed happy together, the house felt comfortable. She looked down at Ann again and sat back on the settee to distance herself from the pictures.

“Did Ann know you were Jimmy’s cousin?” she asked.

“No,” said Leslie. “I didn’t recognize the name but I knew her when I saw her face. Mum’s got photos of a cousin’s wedding a few years ago and Ann and Jimmy were there. I kept my distance.”

“Did ye tell the committee you knew her?”

“No, well, I wasn’t sure it was her. I can’t tell ye how pleased I was when you said ye didn’t think it was him.”

“You didn’t act pleased.”

“I wanted it to be true,” said Leslie. “It felt like a cop-out.”

“Jimmy’s awful spent. Ann looks like a weight lifter next to him.”

“Yeah.” Leslie rubbed her face with an open hand and looked at the pictures. “But how fit do ye need to be to stamp on the back of someone’s neck, Mauri?” She started picking up the photographs from the floor, shuffling them together into a tidy pile.

Maureen thought of the tiny hard men coming home to a dinner of bread and marg. “Leslie? Do we need to take these back?”

Leslie thought about it, her fingers trailing on the edges of the pictures. “Do you want to take the chance, Mauri? What if he did do it?”

“Come and meet him,” said Maureen.

“I don’t want to.”

“You’ll have to sometime. Can we keep the pictures until after you’ve met him?”

“I don’t want to meet him.” Leslie gathered the pictures together, tapping the edges on the coffee table and looking perplexed. “Why have you got these, anyway?”

Maureen drew hard on her cigarette. “I just … I dunno, wanted to see them.”

“Yeah.” Leslie sounded as if she understood. “Ann was a poor soul, wasn’t she?”

Maureen was eager to move the conversation on. “If she was popping out to the shops and coming back drunk she must have been drinking nearby. We can photocopy her face from the big picture and ask about her in the pubs near the shelter. We could do it tonight if you’re not busy.”

“No.” Leslie smiled. “No, I’m not busy.”

Maureen felt inside her jeans pocket and found the bit of paper with Ann’s sister’s name on it. She was going to tell Leslie what Jimmy had said about Mr. Akitza being a big darkie but Leslie hated him enough as it was already and she hadn’t even met him. She gave the name to Leslie, told her it was in Streatham somewhere, and Leslie dialed for directory inquiries, waited for a long while and then asked the operator, “Why not?” a couple of times. She got pissed off and hung up. The operator wouldn’t give her the number unless she had the postcode. Leslie said she didn’t know her own fucking postcode but they could probably get the number at the Mitchell library.