Still Midnight (2 page)

Omar yawned and stretched, drawling when he spoke. “I’m an international lady magnet.”

Mo jabbed an animated finger at an action photo of a yellow Lamborghini taking a corner on a sunny mountainside. “It looks like a speed bump. Folk won’t know whether to be impressed or slow down, man.”

The pundit on Radio Ramadan gave a time check—ten twenty-three—and both did the mental calculation.

Mo spoke first. “Give it five minutes or so.”

“Aye.” Omar yawned luxuriously again, juddering on the comedown. “Bloody knackered…. Can’t have a smoke in here, can I?”

“Nah, man, it’ll stink the motor out.”

“Put my window down, then.”

Mo huffed and pressed the button on his door to lower Omar’s window. Then he twitched a smile and lowered his own. Tutting, Omar took out his packet, handed a cigarette to Mo, and took one himself before lighting them both up.

They sat, puffing shallow breaths, blowing white streams of smoke that flattened over the windscreen. The October breeze tugged thin tendrils of smoke out, over the roof of the car and into the quiet street.

Back around the corner, in the front seat of the stolen van, Eddy and Pat were pulling their balaclavas down, adjusting the eyeholes. Eddy picked up his gun and he and Pat looked at it. The barrel was vibrating, amplifying the shakes in his hand. Suddenly angry, Eddy nodded a go.

Pat hesitated for only a moment before loyalty propelled him out of the van. By the time both his feet were on the street he was already ruing it.

Behind him Eddy slithered down, shut the door, and thumped Pat on the back, knocking him towards the gate.

Pat turned and squared up to him, ready to say his piece, but Eddy didn’t notice. Keeping his gun flush to his side, he ran in a low crouch across the road to the gate and up the dark path.

The wind in the street made Pat’s eyes stream and through the tears he watched Eddy running up the path, fast and low, enjoying himself. Pat chased after him, aping him, his head down, back straight, a human battering ram. They took the steep garden path in single file, Eddy heading towards the pink glow at the front door, Pat running after Eddy to say no. Suddenly Eddy veered off the path, standing in the shadow of the fence.

Pat caught up to him. “Eddy—”

But Eddy swung his gun up parallel to his cheek and flicked the safety catch off. His chest was heaving with excitement as he wrapped both hands around the butt and scampered over to the front door.

Pat watched Eddy, noting quietly that he was running too fast across the short space. Eddy arrived before he expected to, spun awkwardly, and slammed his back flush against the wall, his head jerking back on his neck, his skull cracking loudly off the brickwork.

Eddy’s eyes snapped shut at the pain. He bent forward from the waist slightly, panted, waggled the barrel of his gun at Pat to tell him to move.

Pat wondered suddenly if he could grab Eddy’s arm, pull him back to the van. Or just turn and walk himself, get in the van with Malki, refuse to move, but they had shelled out for the van already, bought the guns, and anyway Malki needed to be paid. Malki really needed to be paid.

Pat took a breath and, against his own best counsel, sauntered casually out of the dark, up to the front door.

He pressed the bell.

A cozy three-tone chime rang out in the hallway and a moment later, behind the mottled glass panel, two shadows materialized, one far away down the hall, the other close, coming from the left, just feet away inside the door.

The faraway figure had set his shoulders in a huff, spoke indistinctly, sounded annoyed. The second figure answered him, drawling, insolent. She was close, had come from the living room to the left of the door. It was the hostile they had spotted from the van. Definitely female, she was slim, dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt with long black hair loose down her back.

Graceful as water she reached for the handle.

The door fell open and a puff of warmth billowed out to meet Pat’s nose—the smell of toast.

Pink carpet and walls. To his left was a small black telephone table between the living room door and another. Above it, on the wall, a cheap-looking black velvet clock ticked loudly, a picture on the back of it, a gold line drawing of a mosque or something. Pat mapped the room: six doors leading off. Paki music coming from a back room, at least one other person in the house.

Pat looked at the hostile who had answered the door. She wasn’t obviously beautiful; her nose was long and pointy and she had an angry red spot on her cheek. He could never explain, then or afterwards, why the sight of her struck him so, or why he froze, gun limp by his side, drinking in the flawless “s” of black hair resting on her shoulder. Hello, Monkey, said her T-shirt, a green slogan on faded soft gray, the line of the letters cracked and broken from the washing machine.

Aleesha looked back at him, quizzical, eyes snaking across his face as if she was trying to make sense of the black woolen canvas. A strand of blue-black hair slipped softly from her shoulder, coming to rest across her small apple-round breast. She was wearing Western clothes and didn’t seem to have a bra on under her T-shirt, which was odd because she was definitely the man’s daughter; she looked like him, and Pat always thought those old Asian guys had a firm hold over their daughters.

“Who in the hell are you…,” called the man at the back of the hall. He was small, sixty or seventy, had an Amish-looking neat little curtain-hanging of a beard and wore pale blue nylon pajamas, perfectly ironed. “Coming in here”—his voice faded, the danger occurring to him—“so late…?”

Ironed pajamas and warmth and toast. Pat began to salivate. He wanted to walk in, shed his jacket, and stay, but a sharp shoulder hit him from behind, shoving him into the house. Eddy barged in, stumbled over the doormat, and staggered sideways up the pink hall, his crazy crab dance watched by everyone, until, bandy-legged, he regained his balance. His balaclava had slipped off center, blinding him until he tugged at it, remembered his gun, raised it, seemed surprised at the sight of it in his hand.

Watching from the other end of the hall, Pat could sense his embarrassment. Eddy took a deep breath, tipped his head back, and shouted through the mouth of the balaclava, “BOB!
BOB!
”

His entrance, dress, and manner were so distracting that no one really heard what he said. The pajamaed man looked anxiously back at the door to see if anyone else was coming in. The girl next to Pat bristled. Fear settled like smog in the hallway.

Pat looked at the girl again. The color had drained from her cheeks, her eyes were wide, watchful of Eddy, looking out for her father. He was struck by her again, felt his heart slow and the hairs on his skin rise as if reaching towards her. She saw him look, his pale blue eyes pleading and wondering.

Aleesha was a teenager and therefore interested in the world only as it spoke about her. She saw Pat like her, long for her to like him back, and despite her bewilderment and terror, his frank admiration warmed her. Still, she was young and in the presence of her father and felt suddenly terribly embarrassed. Dropping her head forwards so that a curtain of black hair fell across her face, she rolled a shy step back towards the living room door.

The movement made Eddy jump. He pounced towards her, snatched her arm, yanked her back towards Pat. “DON’T FUCKING TRY. GET OUT HERE. STAY OUT
HERE
.”

Having thrown her off balance he let go and skipped back down to the pajamaed man, leaving Aleesha bent over to the side. She glared at the arm Eddy had dared to touch. Ballsy as fuck. Pat smiled beneath his woolly mask. When she stood up straight her face was an inch from Pat’s chest and she looked up at him, her plump lips parting, her fear superseded for a moment by anger.

In that moment, when she was no longer terrified, Pat’s wool-framed eyes asked her a wordless question. Aleesha arched her back, stood tall, looking down her long nose, and answered with a slow, proud blink.

Each smiled and looked away.

The sight of the unfamiliar pink carpet brought Pat to his senses. He raised his heavy gun at the ceiling, halfheartedly, as if he was showing it to her, and Aleesha smothered a panicky giggle.

A sharp click drew every eye to a door across the hall. It opened slowly and a big square man looked out into the hall. Billal took after his uncles, not his wee daddy, and his hugeness was unexpected and alarming.

Though only a few feet away, Eddy screamed at him, “BOB? Are you Bob?”

Eyes wide, shoulders stiff, Billal stepped out of the room, holding the doorknob and shutting the door behind him. His hands stayed behind his back, holding the door handle firmly.

“BOB?”

“No,” said Billal quietly. “I’m not… no one called Bob here, mate.”

“OPEN IT!” shouted Eddy, jabbing the barrel of the gun at him. “OPEN THAT DOOR!”

Billal glanced at his feet and swallowed awkwardly. “Um, no, actually, I won’t.”

At this Aleesha snorted, giving Pat an excuse to look at her again. Her hand was over her mouth, fingers glittering prettily with small cheap rings, false nails glued on badly, the index fingernail crooked. She couldn’t be over seventeen. He shouldn’t think those things about a seventeen-year-old. He had nieces that age.

Eddy stepped purposefully over to Billal, pointing his gun at his nose. “MOVE IT!”

Hypnotized by the gun barrel, the big man stepped slowly to the side. Eddy raised his foot and kicked at the door with his heel.

The room was dimly lit. Straight across from the door was an old-fashioned double divan bed, high, with a dark wood headboard, much marked. Sitting in the bed was a wild-haired, bloated woman, two fingers of her right hand scissored around a hugely swollen brown nipple. In her other hand she cradled the bald head of a tiny baby.

She stared at the gun barrel and clutched the baby to her breast, covering herself with it.

Eddy was still staring at the place where the exposed nipple had been. “Out,” he said. “Get out here.”

Billal stepped between them, his palms forming a wall in front of the gun barrel. “Careful with that, mate.”

Eddy panicked. “DON’T TOUCH MY GUN! NOB’DY TOUCH MY GUN.”

“OK, OK.” Billal raised his hands high in surrender. “No worries, no bother.”

“AND YOU.” Eddy stepped aside to shout at the woman in the bed. “OUT HERE.”

“Oh. But I’ve not to get up,” she said, looking at the big man for backup. “I could hemorrhage.”

Eddy glanced at Pat, saw him stealing a lingering look at Aleesha’s hair, and screamed across the hall, “LIFT YOUR FUCKING GUN, PAT.”

Everyone in the hall realized his mistake before Eddy did. He should never have said Pat’s name. Billal looked away, the daddy flinched, and Aleesha snorted and suppressed another panicked laugh.

Eddy bit his lower lip and began to tremble with panic. It wasn’t going well. It wasn’t going well at all. Feeling himself without an ally in the hall, Eddy spun back to Billal. “FUCKER! YOU FUCKING FUCK! BOB! WHERE’S BOB?”

Billal kept his hands high. “Mate, there’s no one called Bob here. There’s no one else in the house. We’ve got a wee baby here. Just go.” He gestured to the front door. “You just go and we’ll say nothing, right? Just you go on out and there’ll be no problem, eh?”

“
Who’s shouting?
” A mother’s command. Everyone stiffened and turned to look at the back of the hall.

Sadiqa was as wide as she was tall, which wasn’t very. She didn’t have her glasses on and so peered down at the two black shadows. “Omar? What are you boys doing?”

With the incongruous grace of a fat boxer, Eddy skipped down the hall, grabbed both her and the old man by the forearm, dragging them up to Billal’s side. He stood them in a line, pointing his gun at each in turn, shouting so loud his voice cracked. To Aamir, the father, “WHO”; to Sadiqa, “IS”; to Billal, “BOB?”

Sadiqa was the only one who answered. “A gun…?”

Eddy’s attention was on her now and Aamir stepped forward to distract him. His hands were up, his eyes down, and he wobbled his head, obsequious as an old country boy. “Son, we’s all Indians here. There’s no Bobs here. No Bobs, wrong house.”

Sadiqa looked at the back of Aamir’s head and sucked her teeth disapprovingly.

But Aamir ignored her and continued to beg. “No Bobs, mate. Wrong. You go. No problem.”

The black velvet clock ticked loudly.

No one knew what to do. Except Aleesha. Addled with fear and the bold compliment of Pat’s gaze, she was sure that the whole thing would be OK, that coming in with a gun was somehow a benign misunderstanding. She wanted it to stop. Looking at the side of Pat’s head, she smiled and reached her left hand forward to the woolen rim, intending to whip the balaclava off with a cheerful “ta-da,” put an end to the awkwardness.

Unexpected fingernails scratching the back of his neck shocked Pat into a spin.

He hadn’t meant to pull the trigger.

*   *   *

Omar and Mo jumped when they heard the muffled whoomph coming from the house and saw the flash of white light in Billal and Meeshra’s bedroom window.

They turned to each other for confirmation of what they had seen, read the shock on each other’s faces, and threw their car doors open in unison, dropping their cigarettes in the street, leaving the doors wide as they bolted over the pavement. One after the other they leapt over the low garden wall, scrambling around the corner to the front door. Omar kicked it open.

Malki felt calm now, cool, OK. A flash of pink light caught the corner of his eye as the front door opened. He remembered his instructions and snapped into action.

Crumpling the still warm tinfoil in his hand into a ball, he went to throw it over his shoulder but stopped, thinking to himself that it would be unwise to do so. He smiled at his own lucidity, and brought his hand down, tucking the foil deep into the corner of his hoodie pocket and then, with mechanical precision, twisted the van key, slid the hand brake off, engaged the clutch, and drove slowly forwards, straight across the road to the rendezvous point.

He was congratulating himself on having remembered the instructions but forgot to stop and crashed the front of the van into the low garden wall, smashing the left headlight.