Read Online Exile by Denise Mina - Free Book Online

through the ceiling, coaxing the children into bed, when she suddenly remembered the blue sports bag with the troubling sticker. It was green and white and looped around the handle. She looked at it. It was a British Airways luggage sticker. Liam used to have them on his bags all the time when he was dealing. She crept over to it. The bag had been from London to Glasgow and the name, in tiny print on the fold, said “Harris.” It was dated less than a week ago. She stepped back and looked at it, trying to reason away the incongruity. Someone might have given him the bag, someone with his name, a family member, but the bag sat as if it had been emptied recently, the base flattened on the floor, the sides flapping open. The scenario made no sense. Jimmy had flown to London on an expensive airline when they were too poor to buy a kettle.
    The water was spitting hot but she could only find one mug, with black rings of tea stain inside. She made tea, took it back into the living room, sat down in the chair and lit a cigarette. It was damp and cold in the room. She could hear Jimmy coming down the stairs, leaving the restless children calling for him, answering their pleas with a curt “Shut it.” He sauntered into the living room. He had wet his hair. Maureen stood up and offered him a fag. He took it, bending over her for a light. “You sit,” she said.
    Jimmy lifted the mug and sipped, looking up at her as he sat down.
    “Jimmy, why does Ann owe so much money?”
    “Come on.” He smiled. “Come on, we’ll not talk about her.”
    Jimmy didn’t want to talk about kids or Ann or money. He wanted a quick, fumbled fuck with anyone willing and a ten-minute pause in the incessant worry. He held out his hand to her and bared his sharp hunting teeth. Maureen pulled her coat closed. “I want to talk about her,” she said quietly. “That’s why I came.”
    Long acclimatized to disappointment, Jimmy let his outstretched hand fall to the side of the chair. “She borrowed money for drink,” he said finally. “Then she borrowed to pay the loan and it got worse and worse and worse. Ann’s not a bad woman. It’s the drink. She’s different when she’s not drinking. When she drinks she’s a cunt.”
    “Ye don’t think she could be dead, do ye?”
    “I know she’s not. She cashed the child-benefit book on Thursday.”
    “In Glasgow?”
    “Dunno.” Jimmy sipped his tea despondently. “They don’t tell ye that at the post office, just that it’s been cashed and I can’t get it.”
    “Do you think she’ll come back here?”
    Jimmy shook his head into his chest. “She’s not coming back.” He sipped the tea, tipping the mug back and grimacing.
    “D’ye know where she is?”
    “She’s got a sister in London. Maybe she knows.”
    “Could I phone her?”
    “I dunno if she’s on the phone.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “Moe Akitza.”
    Maureen wrote the sister’s name on a receipt from her pocket and showed Jimmy the spelling. “I think that’s right.” He smiled at her. “Mad name, eh? She married a big darkie.”
    She knew if she pressed him he’d claim not to be prejudiced against anyone, except those grasping Pakis, of course. And the freeloading Indians. And the arrogant English. And the drunken Irish. And the suspiciously swarthy. “Well, Jimmy, thanks very much. It was kind of ye to talk to me.”
    “Aye,” he said. “Well, I’m pressed as ye can see.”
    They smiled at each other to pass the time. Maureen broke it off. “Ye really don’t know where she is, do ye?”
    He looked into his empty mug and shook his head.
    “D’ye miss her?” she asked.
    Jimmy didn’t need time to think about it. “No,” he said, very sure and very sad.
    Behind her the front door flew open, letting a cold slap of night air into the living room. Two wee boys with wet hair and filthy faces strolled into the room, their arms at forty-five-degree angles to their small bodies, strutting like miniature hard