Exile (29 page)

Moe pursed her lips in disgust. “They’re animals here,” she said. “Bloody animals. Nothing’s safe. A woman was mugged at lunchtime the other day. Broad daylight. They’re animals.”

“Oh dear. Well, you’ve got your man.” Maureen looked around the room. There were no signs of a man at all, no odd shoes left lying around, no jackets, no special armchair positioned in front of the television with the remote balanced on the arm.

“Hah,” said Moe smugly. “Hah, we’ve got each other.”

Maureen didn’t think she could listen to another incompetent lie without calling her on it. She gave Moe a copy of her pager number and stood up to leave.

“It’s nice tae hear your accent,” said Moe, burring on the Rs with wide-open vowels, showing herself. “You’re Glaswegian.”

Maureen smiled. “Aye.”

“I married a Londoner. He can’t live in Scotland — we couldn’t even go home to visit for a long time. He’s black, ye see.”

“Aye,” said Maureen, thinking of the bald man on the bus and feeling the shame of her people. “I’m sorry about that. Have ye been married long?”

“Fourteen years. They’re terrible racists, the Scots.”

“Well,” said Maureen, “I’m sure you’re right.”

Moe hoisted herself out of the armchair and led her through the hall to the front door.

“Hah. Ann led a terrible life,” she said heavily.

Maureen patted her arm and thanked her for her time. She walked down the first flight of stairs, hearing the regular pant, pant of Moe behind her. Moe had been married to the same man for fourteen years and rarely left the house, but she still took good care of her appearance. It was as likely as peace in Africa.

She would have sold her soul for a lie-down. She walked back down the hill, down the high street and up the stairs to the overhead train station. When the Dartford express arrived she found a seat near the doors. She sat on the warm train, wishing to fuck she could smoke, her ankles burning from the hot radiator under her seat, the chilly breeze from the open window making her eyes water. She closed her burning eyes for a moment. It was lovely to be here, lost in Ann, away from Michael and Ruchill, where Winnie couldn’t find her and Vik couldn’t demand an answer.

She tried phoning Leslie’s house from Blackheath station but couldn’t get an answer. Without making a conscious choice she pressed follow-on call and dialed Vik’s house.

“Hello?” said Vik.

“Hello, how are ye?” said Maureen, her heart thundering in her throat, distorting her voice to a quiver. “I thought I’d give ye a ring and see how ye are.”

“I’m fine.”

“I’ve, um, got your lighter.” She was trying to sound breathy and casual but it wasn’t working. She sounded as if she was about to cry.

“Oh,” said Vik stiffly, “I left it.”

“Yes. It was under the settee.” She nodded into the phone and they waited, each for the other to say something and make it all right between them.

“Did ye think about what I said?” he said.

“I did, Vik, I did.” She blanked out again, cringing into the receiver and wishing she hadn’t phoned.

“Why did you phone me?”

Her heartbeat was so loud she could hardly hear him. “I thought about what you said, Vik — I want that too. I don’t know if I’m capable. I miss you here.”

“Are you in London?”

“Yeah, I’m here, yeah.” She shouldn’t have phoned. She took a deep breath and shut her eyes. “Vik, I want to be happy and content but I’m not. I don’t know what to do about it.”

“I’m not asking you to get happy for me, Maureen. I just don’t want to get all the shit for you not being happy.”

“How’s your tummy?”

” ‘S okay.”

They listened to each other breathing for a while.

“My money’s running out,” she said, as the urgent beeps began.

“Gonnae phone me again?”

“Tomorrow?”

And the phone cut out.

Chapter 31

FROM C TO T WITH N AND U

Black rain clouds were gathering outside the window and the air temperature in the damp flat had dropped dramatically. Bunyan and Williams both had their coats done up and they were cold. Bunyan wondered how the family managed to live in these temperatures. Williams was losing patience with Harris and had changed tack from curious stranger to bullying shit. Dakar was right, he was very good. Kindly interest hadn’t worked on Harris — they both wanted to get home for the weekend and Jimmy Harris was not a difficult man to be unpleasant to; in fact, he was a hard man to like.

“Jimmy,” said Williams, “what we need to know now is what happened to Ann between her leaving you and arriving at the shelter.”

“I never hit her,” said Harris.

Williams sighed. He had been standing for over an hour and his feet were throbbing.

“Jimmy,” he said softly, “we can’t keep just going over the same bits. Can we leave aside whether or not you hit her for a minute — just a minute? We’ll come back to that—”

Harris interrupted him. “But I never.”

“That is as may be,” said Williams, “but what we are concerned about just now is finding out what happened to Ann when she left you. It seems that she was up and down on the bus to London. Now, her sister saw her each time but she wasn’t staying with her. Can you think of anyone else she knew down there?” Harris looked blank. “Any friends or workmates? Relatives maybe?”

“She owed a lot of money,” said Harris.

“So you’ve said.”

“I never hit her.”

Williams sighed again. “So you’ve said.” He tapped Bunyan on the arm and motioned for her to give Harris a fag.

She opened the packet and leaned across, flicking open the packet. “Want one, Jimmy?” she said.

Jimmy Harris’s eager eyes caressed the packet of Silk Cut. His tongue slid past the sharp teeth and licked at the corner of his thin lips. “Yes, please,” he said, without having the wit to reach out and take one.

Williams didn’t like him at all. There was something sly about him, something small and base. Williams liked to place interviewees in the classroom, imagine where they would come in the natural order of things, how they would relate to others and react to authority. Harris was one of nature’s victims. The other children would take the piss, hit him, kick him, and he’d get up smiling and try to play with them.

“Well, take one, then,” said Williams softly.

Harris reached out slowly, watching Williams and Bunyan, as if he expected them to slap his hand away. He fumbled a cigarette out of the packet and retracted his hand quickly. Williams didn’t smoke himself but it was an interesting feature of the interview, the sudden, misplaced sense of community that came in a fag break.

Bunyan leaned across to give him a light and something on the floor caught her eye. “Sorry,” said Bunyan, leaning down by the side of the chair. “May I?”

Harris nodded his consent and Bunyan picked up a bundle of photos from the floor.

“Jimmy,” said Williams, “what can you tell me about Ann?”

Harris shrugged and inhaled. “She drank. A lot.”

“She was badly beaten, very badly beaten. She told everyone that you did it.”

“I never. I’d never ever hit her.”

“Do you think it’s wrong to hit a wife?”

Harris nodded, shaking his head up and down. His thinning hair fell over his ear and he brushed it back.

“But sometimes,” Williams was talking softly, siding with him before the pounce, “a wife might do something unforgivable, like hurt the kids or go off with someone else.”

Harris was shaking his head again. He was disagreeing before he’d even heard what Williams was going to say.

“Would it be wrong,” said Williams, “to hit a wife who spent the food money on drink, for example?”

Harris looked up and realized that they were staring at him, expecting him to speak. “Shouldn’t hit people,” he said.

“You should never hit people?” said Williams indignantly. “You mean if someone was hurting your kids you’d just let them?”

Jimmy Harris stared at the floor. He was there, someone was hurting his kids, the bruises around his eyes darkened, the tremble in his hand magnified. “God, no,” he said.

“You’d let people hurt your children and stand by and do nothing?”

“No. No.”

“What would you do then?”

Harris opened his mouth to speak and realized the trap. He kept his pointed little teeth together to stop himself from speaking and dropped his eyes to his lap.

“It’s not always wrong to hit someone, is it?” said Williams.

Harris looked at the floor and took a drag on his fag. His eyes began to fill up. He was going to cry, it was good, it was good, he was going to cry and a crying man has no defenses. Wet guilty tears gathered in his piggy eyes. He was playing with his fag, tapping it frantically into the saucer. He was about to break.

“Where did you get these?” said Bunyan. Williams stared at her. Harris was about to break and she was changing the fucking subject. Bunyan handed the photos to Williams and he looked at them. They were pictures of the dead woman.

“They’re Christmas pictures, aren’t they?” Bunyan asked Harris. “It’s Christmas at the Place of Safety shelter.”

“Aye,” said Harris.

She looked at him curiously. “But, Jimmy, you said you hadn’t seen her since November.”

Harris looked confused. “It’s just pictures.”

Williams smiled. “Jimmy,” he said, continuing to smile with his mouth long after his eyes had stopped, “you said Ann hadn’t come back to the house after she went into the shelter?”

“That’s right.” Harris nodded emphatically. “She didn’t.”

“So, you haven’t seen her since before Christmas, have you?”

“No.”

“Not since November.”

“No.”

“No contact at all?”

“No.”

“Now, listen carefully,” said Williams, speaking slowly. “If a person left point A with item X …” He held the photos over to his right, looking up to see Harris’s face. He was watching the photos. “… and the person goes to B …” He moved his hand and the photos to the left and Harris’s eyes followed them carefully. “… how could item X …” Williams threw the photos into Harris’s lap. “… be found in C?”

Harris was staring at the photos, puzzled by the sum.

“The photos”—Williams spoke as if he were sharing a confidence, as if he were on Harris’s side—”how could they be in your house if Ann hadn’t been back?”

Harris looked up. “But they came through the door,” he whispered. “I thought — a girl I know — she put them through the door.”

Williams shook his head. Harris’s eyes glazed over and he looked up. The game was up. He was going to confess.

“They were put through my door,” he whispered. “I never seen her.”

“You never saw her,” said Williams, correcting his grammar without meaning to. “Like you never hit her?”

“I wouldn’t hit her,” said Harris, squirming on his chair, panicking, losing what little composure he had. “I wouldn’t ever, never hit her. I wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t you hit her if she was hurting the kids?”

But Harris was crying, staring at the ashtray, baring his yellow teeth and sobbing. The kids were the problem. He’d confess if he thought the kids were safe. He wanted to confess or he wouldn’t have kept the photos.

Williams gave her the nod and Bunyan slipped out to the hall and phoned ahead. The receptionist at Carlisle police station told her to come anytime this afternoon. He said there was no need for them to book an interview room, they were usually quiet on Friday evenings. Getting through to the social worker was much harder. Bunyan got through to an answering-machine message, which gave her the number of another answering machine, which gave her the number of a mobile that rang out for thirty-odd rings. She slipped back into the room and muttered to Williams that she couldn’t get through.

“Jimmy,” said Williams, “we’re going to take you to Carlisle police station for a formal interview now. Before we phone the emergency social-work department and get them to send someone over is there no one who could sit with the kids?”

“Auntie Isa?”

“She’s still not in, Jimmy. Your kids’ll be fine with the social worker.”

“I’m worried about them.”

“Why are you so worried?”

Bunyan shifted against the wall. Williams didn’t have kids. If he had kids he wouldn’t have asked that question. Williams seemed to think there was something sinister about Harris’s fear of the social work but Bunyan understood. She provided a clean house for her family, cupboards full of food, central heating on all the time, judging by the bills, and she still wouldn’t want her parenting assessed by a government official.

“Don’t phone,” said Harris, crying and trying to talk through his gaping mouth. “Please … for fuck’s sake.”

Williams stepped forward. “Who don’t you want us to phone, Jimmy?”

Harris was sobbing now and they were ashamed for him. He could hardly catch his breath to speak. “Please don’t.”

“Who, Jimmy? Who don’t you want us to phone?”

“Social work,” he said. “Don’t phone the social work.”

Williams glanced at Bunyan and crouched by the chair. “Why don’t you want us to phone them, Jimmy? Do they know you? Have they been here before?”

“Jimmy,” interrupted Bunyan, “is there someone else we could phone? Someone else who could sit with the boys and set your mind at rest?”

Harris sat up. “Leslie,” he said, “Isa’s daughter, but I don’t know her address. She’ll live in the Drum.”

Bunyan nodded encouragingly. “Is Leslie married?”

Harris looked even more bewildered.

“Has she married and changed her name?” asked Bunyan.

“Oh, no. I don’t think so.”

“So, her surname’s Findlay too?”

Jimmy Harris nodded eagerly. “She’ll live in Drumchapel. All the Findlays live there.”

Bunyan slipped out into the hall again. She was trying directory inquiries when it occurred to her that the name was familiar. She’d heard it recently, in connection with the dead woman’s sister in Streatham, but she couldn’t recall the context. The operator gave her the number and as she called the house she repeated the name over and over to herself. “Hello, Leslie Findlay?”

“No,” said Cammy, “Leslie isn’t in just now.”