"I know you from somewhere," he said to Maureen. "Where do I know ye from?"
"I think"-Maureen was terrified-"I knew your sister."
"Pauline?" he said wistfully. "You knew Pauline?" He stared at the table and Maureen watched him. He looked up. "Did ye know her well?" He was watching Maureen's face, trying to see what she knew.
Maureen took a draw on her cigarette. He was still looking at her, waiting for an answer to the unspoken question, his eyes tired and old with a knife threat beneath them. "No," she said, "not very well. I was at her funeral because of my pal…"
Shaking slightly, he managed to breathe in, expanding his chest to fill his crumpled shirt.
"Do you know Ann?" she said, changing the subject before it started again.
He shrugged carelessly. Maureen took out the photocopy, laying it on the dirty table in front of him. Ann's black eyes looked up at him. "She was here, aye. Hasnae been in for a while. I seen her in London."
Leslie shot forward in her chair. "In London?"
He turned to her. "Aye, hen. In Brixton. In a pub called the Coach and Horses. Lot of Glasgow folk drink there."
"Whenabouts did ye see her?" asked Maureen.
"Month mibi." He stopped and gazed at his hands. "She was keeping rough company. That's a bad thing for a woman to do. I warned her."
He looked at Maureen, his eyes bright and open, telling her something she didn't understand. She felt cold to the core. As she folded the photocopy with tremorous hands Mark Doyle stood up and straightened his coat. She shouldn't be sitting here, peaceful in his company. Out of respect for Pauline she should at least have insulted him.
"How's your brother?" she asked.
He was dumbfounded. "M' brother's dead'n'all," he said simply, and swaggered away across the smoke-filled pub.
Maureen watched him. He was tall and broad across the shoulders, a powerful man with a shadow for a conscience.
Malki arrived back, clutching an empty glass. He didn't move to sit down but stood at Maureen's elbow, blocking the sight of her hands from the pub floor.
"Who did ye mean?" asked Leslie, leaning on the filthy table and pointing at him. "The big tall guy, scabby hands?"
Malki nodded.
"Cheers, Malki." Maureen slipped him a tenner.
The moment the money touched the inside of Malki's pocket they ceased to exist for him. He turned and walked away without a word.
"Let's get the fuck out of here," said Maureen.
They left, parting the crowd on their way out, and Mark Doyle's hungry eyes watched them go, remembering their faces. Maureen walked so fast she was panting by the time they got back to the shelter.
Chapter 21
Leslie drove carefully through the glistening city to Maureen's house. Maureen didn't want to go home, she didn't feel comfortable in her flat, but she couldn't stay out indefinitely and Mark Doyle had freaked her. Leslie stopped the bike outside her close and Maureen climbed off, opened the box and put in her helmet. "I'll see ye in the morning," said Leslie. "We'll go and see Senga, see what she says."
"Can we go and see Jimmy as well?"
"We'll see."
Vik had been sitting in his car for over forty minutes listening to Glen Campbell, smoking and wiping the mist from the window. He saw Maureen climbing off the bike and waited until the biker drove away before opening the door and getting out. He called to her and ran over as she was opening the outside door. "Hiya," he said, smiling and panting from the exertion of jogging a hundred yards with lungs full of smoke. "How ye keeping?"
"Not bad." She nodded and found her neck shaky and unsteady. Her shoulders were aching with tension.
"You don't look well. Have ye been ill?"
"No," said Maureen, opening the close door. "I've just had a strange night."
She walked into the close, assuming he was coming up, but Vik waited, his black hair glistening with drizzle. "Are ye not coming up?"
He shook his head uncertainly. "D'ye want me to?"
She hesitated, not knowing what he wanted from her. "Well, yeah."
Vik shrugged at her, his black eyelashes gummed together, the rain dripping from his chin.
"Vik," she said, "why did ye come to see me if ye don't want to come upstairs?"
Vik's hair gel was emulsifying in the rain, running in little white rivulets down his jaw and neck. "I came to chuck ye," he said gently. He wasn't angry and he wasn't playing a game – he was standing up for himself.
Maureen let the door fall shut. "Chuck me?"
"You don't return my calls, when I chap the door you stand behind it and won't answer." She cowered. "Yeah, I could hear you behind the door. I felt ye looking at me-"
"Vik, I'd just been really sick and my brother was in-"
"Why can't you introduce me to your brother?"
"I didn't want to-"
"Is it because I'm black?"
She smiled and tried to look up at him, but the rain was heavy and he was standing with a streetlight behind his head. "You'd have to know Liam to know how ridiculous that is." She squinted hard and saw him. He wasn't smiling back.
"Maureen," he said, digging his hands into his pockets, "you don't introduce me to your friends or your family, you leave me standing behind the door. You treat me like a twat." She thought back over the month and she knew he was right. When Vik's cousin Shan had introduced them to each other in the Variety bar Maureen couldn't believe her luck. Vik was tall and slim, his hair as black as Guinness, his eyes deep brown and adoring. That first night they'd gotten drunk and giggly together and fell back up the hill to her flat at closing time. Alone in the quiet living room, they found that they had nothing to say to each other. Vik was a quiet man. He only spoke when he had something to say and Maureen was too drunk to chat. Through a drink-sodden blur they mistook the heavy silence for sexual tension and started kissing. Twenty minutes later they were sweating and naked and panting on the bed, holding hands and staring at the ceiling, sobered by surprise. In the month they had been seeing each other they hadn't talked about much – they went out with his friends to bars and listened to music or stayed in bed, but they didn't exchange romantic histories or talk about anything. The relationship felt comforting but meaningless to Maureen. She opened her mouth to apologize but nothing came out.
"Yeah." Vik stepped away from her. "G'night anyway." He turned and walked to his car.
"Vik, please." She followed him and found herself panicking. "My head's full of battered shite, I don't know what I'm doing half the time and then Katia said that she was seeing ye-"
"That was ages ago."
"She said it was a month ago, when we started seeing each other." She stopped and looked at her feet. "I felt funny about it."
"Katia was two months ago," he said, insulted. "And I only saw her for three days." His hand was on the car door handle and he was leaving.
"Please." She looked away, not wanting to watch his face while she said it. "Come up and have that bottle of wine with me, let me explain. At least let me explain. I don't want ye to go away feeling bad."
He hesitated and she saw his thumb pressing on the handle button. "I'm not a complete tit, ye know. I see what's going on around me."
"I know, I know that."
He let go of the car door and stood up, looking down at her. "What d'ye mean, your head's full of battered shite?"
She tried to smile but it didn't work and she let it slide.
"What are ye thinking?" he asked.
She looked away to Ruchill, remembering blood splattering onto the window and nails scratching through the glass. "Sometimes," she said, and stopped. "Vik, d'ye think life's fair?"