Exile by Denise Mina Read Free Book Online Page B

are you in a fucking nippy mood with me for?” she said.
    Leslie didn’t answer.
    “You’re always in a fucking bad mood these days,” continued Maureen. “Ye never want to see me or talk to me or do anything.”
    Leslie lit a fag and looked out of the window, her mouth slackening as if she was going to speak. Maureen took a mouthful of whiskey and sat back. She waited, only half expecting an answer. Leslie scratched her nose and looked over her shoulder for the waitress.
    “I think the least we can do is go and ask her man about it. He lives in the big scheme,” said Leslie, magnanimously letting Maureen’s difficult mood go. “I’d go myself but if he was hanging about the office he might have seen me.”
    He could just as easily have seen Maureen at the office, but that didn’t seem to have occurred to Leslie.
    “Where does he live?” asked Maureen.
    Leslie pointed over Maureen’s shoulder. “Over the road.”
    “And you want me to go?”
    “We’re here now. Just don’t go into the house. If he looks like trouble just run like fuck.”
    “I don’t like this,” said Maureen.
    Leslie misunderstood and thought Maureen was telling her she was scared. She hated it when Maureen admitted to being frightened: she was letting her down, leaving the door open and letting the fear in. “You’ll be fine.” She sniggered. “He’s puny.”
    “He looks beefy enough in the photo,” muttered Maureen.
    Leslie looked at her. “What photo?”
    “The picture.”
    Leslie was still puzzled.
    “The Polaroid she left behind,” said Maureen. “The one with the wee boy in the school playground.”
    Leslie thought about it. “Oh,” she smiled, spontaneous and honest, “that’s not him.”
    They looked at each other. Leslie knew what the guy looked like but she’d never met him. She had asked for Ann as a resident when she was on a tiny budget. She let Ann get pissed and smash around the house when she’d put others out for less and she wasn’t about to tell Maureen why. Maureen finished her whiskey. “You’re lying to me, Leslie,” she said quietly, “and I know you’re lying. If I get my face kicked in because of it I’ll never forgive you.”
    Leslie could tell her the truth now but she didn’t. “He’s a skinny guy,” she said, looking at the table. “Really skinny. I promise.”
    Maureen nodded. “Anything else you can be arsed telling me?”
    Leslie shook her head at the table.
    “Well, give us the fucking address, then.”
    “You don’t need to go now, your food’s coming.”
    “I don’t want it, you have it.”
    Leslie pulled a scrap of paper out of her pocket with an address Biroed on it. Maureen snatched it away, stood up and pulled on her damp scarf.
    “You’ll want a proper drink when you get back.” Leslie smiled hopefully. “I’ll wait in the Grove. I’ll have a drink ready for ye. I’ll drive ye home.”
    “Do what ye like,” said Maureen, and left.

Chapter 8
    JOHN
    She stopped on the edge of the pavement, waiting for a break in the traffic. Fat, freezing lumps of rain began to fall, seeping through her hair to her scalp, sending a shocked chill down her spine. She felt in her pocket for her stabbing comb, a metal one with a sharpened handle that Leslie had given her to use in self-defense. She found the head and grasped it, giving it a little squeeze, pressing the teeth into her palm to comfort herself. The sharp point was making a hole in her new coat pocket but she liked to keep it with her.
    The scheme loomed over the street. Brilliant spotlights beamed skyward from the high roof, alerting passing helicopters and blinding pedestrians at a glance. Maureen couldn’t recall ever having heard a story about the scheme. Bad schemes had elaborate mythologies, tales of rapes and crucifixions, of vicious gangs and gangster families and neighbors dead for months behind the door. Good schemes, like good families, had no history. A giggling couple in their forties stopped