Still Midnight (17 page)

“Yes, sir, Bannerman was right,” she said. “His instincts were right; there was something important.”

Bannerman nodded. “The inconsistency in the names, if they agreed to say Rob and not Bob, it must have been after the calls. Aleesha was unconscious. We should interview her this morning.”

“Yes,” said Morrow, struggling not to smile. “Yes, we should.”

MacKechnie looked away. “DS Morrow, how do you explain your absence this morning?”

Morrow stole a look at Grant. “I’m sorry, I didn’t check my e-mail before I left.”

“You
must
check your e-mails.”

“I will, sir, sorry, sir. Are the family dodgy, then?”

“Don’t know.” Bannerman was eager to move the conversation on. “If they have that kind of money or anything approaching that kind of money, where is it going? Do we know anyone in the community we could ask about the family?”

“Mahmood Khan?” suggested MacKechnie.

“Nah,” said Morrow, “he’ll just give us the party line.”

“Yeah,” said Bannerman, “he’ll be checking party contributions before he tells you anything about the family.”

She had kept her distance for twenty years, but now, like asking Danny, she was surprised to find herself willing to reach back for help. “Ibby Ibrahim.”

They both looked at her curiously.

“Ibby Ibrahim?” repeated MacKechnie. “What on earth makes you think he’ll talk to us?”

She cleared her throat. “I know… Ibby. But I’d need to talk to him alone.”

They were both impressed, glanced at each other, back at her. “How do you know him?” asked MacKechnie.

She saw Ibby, ten years old, sobbing in a playground and the bad children standing around watching him in an awed circle, herself among them. “From a case,” she lied. “A few years back.”

“What case?” MacKechnie was impressed.

“Ah,” she said, “kind of hard to say…”

If they had any kind of connection to her, any level of intimacy, they would have pressed her to unofficially tell. They’d have gathered around, pressed and teased, guessed until they had some idea. Instead, they slid glances across the desktop to each other, referring to a conversation had elsewhere, away from her.

“Right.” MacKechnie moved the conversation back to a safe area and stood up, coming around the desk to her, forgetting how angry he had been only a moment before. “Get the background before we ask him about it. We’ve got officers assigned to the door-to-doors but I want you two to take a look at the shop and the shop helper, find out if there’s anything going on there, betting, drugs, anything that would generate big revenue. Bannerman, make the Rob/Bob thing the focus now,
yes?
”

“Sir, I’d like to drive Morrow to meet Ibrahim,” said Bannerman quietly. “I can brief her on the way.”

“I need to speak to Ibby alone, though,” she said, reluctant to spend longer with Bannerman than she needed to.

“Yeah, but I’d like to see him in the flesh. Just for future…”

For future what, he didn’t say. It wasn’t an efficient use of two DSs but MacKechnie nodded. “Bonding. Good. DCs busy?”

“Sir.” Bannerman handed him a duty sheet. “We’re checking the CCTV from the M8 for cars going to and from the van site. Lab reports on the way. Fingerprints on their way. Researching all family members for Afghani visas. Two DCs are doing door-to-door around the house and processing the witness statements. Morrow and I could go to the hospital for a follow-up and take a look at the shop as well.”

“OK,” said MacKechnie, and turned to Morrow. “Check your e-mails from now on.”

She nodded, hoping she looked sorry.

He stood with his back to the door, addressing the troops: “If this is right, then it’s not the wrong address. The gunmen were after the Anwars, Omar specifically. What we need to know is why anyone thought they had two million to hand over.” He put his hand on the door to the corridor and stopped. “Well done, Morrow,” he said, opened it, and left.

Grant was a little red in his cheeks. “Yeah, well done,” he said, with more grace than she would have.

SIXTEEN

Shugie was in the living room, sitting defiantly on the piss-damp settee, casually reading a newspaper from July.

In the kitchen Eddy sat on a stool, Pat crouching on a rickety wooden box with “Fragile” stamped on the side. They sat away from each other, each marooned like boats lost on a dead sea. Dumb with tiredness, they were both struggling to keep awake. Someone, not Shugie, had put down laminate flooring but a long-ago flood had warped the boards. They were curving up at the sides, making the floor choppy and uneven. Under the dirt Pat could see that each board was a photograph of the next, the same knot in the wood repeating like a greasy dinner.

Eddy held a loaf in a waxy wrapper, opened out like a bag of sweeties. He had been eating dry bread all night because that was the only foodstuff Shugie had remembered to buy with the forty quid Eddy had given him in advance. He’d invested the rest of it in strong lager.

Pat breathed heavily through his nose as a precursor to speaking but Eddy looked away. “Man,” said Pat regardless. “We
need
to move.”

“Leave it,” Eddy warned through his teeth.

“We need to move him.”

Eddy didn’t answer. He held out the bread wrapper as if it were a solution. Pat shook his head. He couldn’t eat in here. He felt as if particles of Shugie’s piss were getting in his mouth and into his stomach when he ate. Had to be. That’s what smell was, particles.

He brought his elbows and knees in, shuddered a little, thinking about dead skin. Then he remembered the girl and wondered how she was. But Shugie didn’t have a radio, never mind a telly. They didn’t know if they were in the news or not. If it was in the paper there might be a photo of her. The chances were that she’d been taken to the Victoria Infirmary. Less than a mile away, in a clean bed.

Desperate to relive the warm glow he felt when he first saw her, Pat imagined her lying in a hospital bed with her hair fanned out over the pillow, smelling nice, peachy or flowery, clean, thinking about him perhaps. Pat shook his head softly. No. He had shot her fucking hand off: if she was thinking about him it wasn’t fondly. A girl like that wouldn’t go with someone like him. The father was annoyed that the doorbell was rung at night. The house was clean and pink, nice. She was from a good family. Even if he hadn’t shot her by accident she’d never go with him. Her father wouldn’t allow it.

He imagined himself walking into the ward with a big bunch of flowers, dressed smart, looking sharp, but her face was horrified when she saw him again. Disappointed with the fantasy, he took himself back to the hallway to see her there. Her waist was tiny, the waistband of her denims hanging off her hip bones. He realized suddenly that the bridge of his nose felt hot when he was in the hall. Looking at her waist he could see the black woolen edge of the eyeholes. He had a balaclava on. She didn’t know what he looked like.

Pat sat upright, smiled, almost laughed. She had no idea what he looked like.

Back at the Victoria Infirmary, Pat walked into a ward that didn’t exist and smiled at a girl who didn’t remember him. Shy, she looked away, but he gave her an impossibly glorious bunch of flowers and she suddenly loved him back.

He had been in the Vicky once, to see someone, he thought, a niece with tonsils or someone. Smiling at the dirty laminate he walked through the lobby, took a lift, sauntered into the ward. He could pretend to visit someone else and just look at her. It would be reckless, stupid.

If he did go, which he wouldn’t, he’d sit far away and just look at her. Then he’d go over and say something nice, you’ve got beautiful eyes or something, something to make her feel good even though she was missing a hand.

Surrounded by swirling particles of Shugie’s urine, Pat’s thoughts went off on their own, to a romantic, wordless conversation between himself and Aleesha at her bedside, to cups of tea in the hospital café, shortbread, smiles. He picked her up in a car he didn’t own, went to places he’d never been, places in the country, sunny places.

A girl like that, a girl who smelled of toast and warmth, she wouldn’t go with someone like him. Her father would never allow it. She’d go with him only if she wasn’t living with her father, like if he was dead or something.

A rap on the glass above the sink made them both sit up. Malki’s skinny face looked in, smiling, and Pat grinned back. Malki disappeared and then the door opened. He stood in the doorway, wearing a new white tracksuit with twin blue strips up the leg and a matching cap.

“Been shoplifting?” Eddy thought buying clothes was womanly.

Malki didn’t answer but curled his lip at the bin bags piled up by the door. “ ’Kin hell.” He held the knees of his pristine trackies away from the bags as he sidled by. “Been in some dives, man…”

Pat was on his feet, unreasonably happy to see Malki. “Thanks for coming.”

Malki held out a thin blue polythene bag. “Call me with offers o’ money and I’m there, man.” He gave the rubbish a sidelong look. “Only, eh, the job doesn’t involve touching stuff in here, does it?”

Pat looked into the bag of lager cans. “Four’s not enough to keep Shugie in all day.”

Eddy stood up and looked into it. “It’ll need to be.”

“He’ll go out for more. And he’ll be pissed when he goes. He could tell someone everything.”

Eddy looked at him. “So what ye saying, tie him up or something?”

Pat and Malki looked at each other. “Hmm.” Malki smirked, played it as if he was thinking really hard. “There may be another way…”

But Eddy was in at him. “Don’t you take the piss out of me, you junkie fuck.”

Malki fell back. “Yous are on steroids.”

“Eddy, I think Malki means we can just buy Shugie more bev.” Pat the peacemaker.

“OK.”

Malki was embarrassed. “Anyway, it’s
Mr.
Junkie Fuck to you.”

No one laughed. It was an old joke. Feeling he had the high ground again Eddy handed Malki a gun. “Take this and stand outside the door of the bedroom.”

Malki held the gun between his forefinger and thumb, looking at it as if it was a used condom. “Eh… Eddy, man, no guns, man.”

“How are ye going to threaten him if he tries to get away?”

Malki held the gun out to Pat. “Is it the old guy from last night?”

Eddy took the gun back. “Aye.”

“Well, he’s not gonnae try to get away, though, is he?”

“Well, we don’t know, do we?” said Eddy, goading. “That’s the raison d’être for having the guns, isn’t it?”

“No.” Malki held firm. “No guns, man.”

“Take the fucking gun.” Eddy shoved it at his hand.

Malki dodged him. “Man, I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

Eddy was furious. “What if he tries to get away? What ye gonnae do? Fuck him back into the room?”

“Keep your money, man.”

Eddy and Pat looked at Malki. He was not going to change his mind. He took a step to leave but Pat blocked his way and looked at Eddy. “Come on.”

Eddy was bewildered, unable to understand anyone passing up the opportunity to threaten a man with a gun.

“We need to phone,” said Pat reasonably.

Doing his laugh that wasn’t a laugh Eddy turned his back on them, sliding the gun into his trouser pocket.

Pat nodded Malki through to the living room, where he was treated to the sight of Shugie sitting on the edge of the settee looking at the racing pages of meets long past. Shugie looked the junkie boy up and down, huffed at the obvious inadequacies of his replacement. But Malki minded his manners. “Right?”

Shugie didn’t answer.

Pat brought him to the bottom of the stairs. “Go up and watch the door till we get back, OK?”

“It’s the old guy, yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Pat, keen to get away.

“Has he eaten anything?”

“Bit of bread, can of juice.”

Malki whipped a family bag of Gummi bears out of his trackie pocket. “Grub’s up!”

“Aye, very good.” Pat smiled, glad Malki was here to lighten the mood, glad he found the place as disgusting as Pat did. “Get your arse up there.”

Malki stopped on the second stair and turned back. “Same rate as last night?”

Pat nodded. “Aye.”

Malki grinned and jogged up five stairs.

A knock at the front door made them both freeze. They looked at each other. In a flurry of silent motion Malki ran to the top of the stairs and Pat bolted through the living room to the kitchen door, stopping when he was flat against it. Eddy followed him, cowering in next to the stack of bin bags.

“Fuck!” Pat whispered.

“Where’s Malki?” hissed Eddy.

Pat nodded and pointed at the ceiling as Shugie looked in through the kitchen door. The knock came again, three formal raps on the front door. Shugie raised his eyebrows.

“Answer it and get them the fuck away frae here,” ordered Eddy.

Shugie looked confused. “What if it’s someone who wants to come in?”

“Don’t fuckin’ let them.”

Shugie nodded and shuffled off to the door.

They listened, breathless, as the door creaked open on unaccustomed hinges in the distant hallway. A low rumble addressed a question to Shugie which he answered in the affirmative. The voice, an official voice, told him something. After a pause Shugie said “no.”

The door creaked loudly and Eddy and Pat both breathed out, realizing too late that the door had not shut but had been opened wider, that steps were coming into the hallway, into the house, towards them.

Eddy opened the kitchen door and they shuffled gracelessly into the garden, crouching down under the kitchen window, praying the Lexus was low enough not to be seen through the window. They held their knees tight to their chests, listening to the long grass hissing spitefully around them, hearing through the broken window as footsteps came all the way into the kitchen. Three sets.

“And does anyone live here with yourself, Mr. Parry?”

Eddy and Pat looked at each other. Polis voice. Shugie had the fucking polis in his kitchen. Pat buried his head in his knees, looking down at the grass flattened below him. He shut his eyes and saw the sunshine die on the girl in the hospital bed, her hair sliding across the pillow into ash.