The Exiled Read Free Page A

carpet looked to be the same one as back then, worn thin enough to show the floorboards beneath in many places. Battered tables and chairs were dotted around the main lounge. It was a large barn of a place that would be heaving and sweating on any given weekend night or full of bingo-playing pensioners midweek. But now, on a quiet afternoon, there were only a handful of locals lined up on high stools along the length of the bar. In days gone by there would have been a cloud of smoke hanging over them, but now the air was clear, and only an open door out to what was euphemistically known as a garden showed where the hardened smokers would be lurking.
    Conversation stopped as Alan walked in, and everybody turned to look at him, then just as quickly looked away and went back to their drinks.
    They thought I was the police.
    One of them looked a bit more startled than the others had, and he also looked away faster than the rest. Alan took the stool to the man’s left and sat at the bar.
    Softly, softly, catchee monkey.
    “Pint of heavy,” he said when the barman came over. He didn’t offer to buy a round—there was no sense in showing his hand too early. The barman looked like he might say something, that he might have recognized Alan, but his attention was called away to the other end of the bar and the moment passed.
    Alan sipped at the beer and tried not to look too interested in the man beside him. He was a small, wiry man with a mop of black hair that hadn’t seen a comb in a while. Thick black eyebrows hung over deep sockets, eyes so dark as to look black in the dim light in the bar. Alan didn’t know him, or at least didn’t remember him.
    That works both ways.
    Whoever he was, the man was taking to the drink as if he meant it. He downed a double Scotch in one, took a large gulp of lager, and ordered another of each.
    “Steady on, Frank. It’s a bit early for you,” the barman said as he passed over the drinks.
    The man—Frank—laughed bitterly.
    “Too early? It’s too late; it’s far too late. I’ve seen things this day I’ll never forget—there’s not enough booze in the world for that.”
    “Catch a swatch of your missus in the shower, did you?” the barman replied with a laugh, but Frank wasn’t for rising to the bait.
    “Just keep the whisky coming,” he said. “I’ll decide when I’ve had enough.”
    Alan’s nose for a story was tingling, but there was a rhythm to these things, and he still hadn’t matched himself to the beat of the mood in the bar. He kept quiet and listened. But he was also aware of the need for urgency. If he remembered this place, he was sure John would too—it was only a matter of time before either John himself or some of his officers turned up.
    To begin with, the talk along the counter was of bookies and horses—the television above the bar showed the three-thirty race from Ayr, and while it was on the bar filled with shouting and curses. Nobody won.
    “I knew it wasn’t my lucky day,” the barman said, and that prompted Frank to speak for the first time in a while. He’d knocked back several doubles by this time, but his speech was still clear.
    “You don’t know the half of it, boy. What I saw on them stairs…”
    His voice tailed away. Alan let the barman ask the question.
    “Come on then, Frank. Don’t leave us in suspenders. It’s obviously got to you—you’ve been white as a sheet since you came in. What did you see?”
    “That’ll cost you a wee goldie,” Frank said, smiling.
    The barman shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, and moved to turn away.
    Alan took a chance.
    “I’ll get you that nippy sweetie,” he said. “Two even, if you tell me what you saw?”
    Frank turned and looked him in the eye.
    I’ve moved too soon.
    “Trust me, lad,” Frank said. “You don’t really want to know.”
    “It’s about that row at the flats? I used to live over that way. I saw all the cops when I got here. What’s going on?”
    At first he