Still Midnight (27 page)

Harris pressed Fast-Forward on the remote and suddenly the wee man was wriggling this way and that, getting down, messing with the shelves behind him, sitting back up. Someone came in and bought fags. A figure came in around the counter, got up on the stool next to him, got down, disappeared, came back with two mugs. She squinted and saw that it was Lander. It was a bad-quality tape, a crap angle too.

“My eyes’ll be bleeding in a minute,” said Harris.

“Harris, you’re the only man we trust this with,” she said sarcastically, backing out of the room.

Bannerman shuffled miserably across her path.

“Is everything turning to shit in front of ye?”

He didn’t answer but smirked at his shoes.

She filled him in on the kidnapper’s call and then, “Listen to this: the residue in the tinfoil wrap from the van? This heroin has been cut with milk powder, but only with milk powder. No talc, no ash, nothing extra. Just milk powder. It’s very clean.”

“So?”

“Well, if they were only cutting it with a single substance the quantities needed would attract attention. Usually it’s lots of different things.”

“Is he a cutter, then?”

She shrugged. “Unlikely because those guys are very undercover, paid for discretion, and they lose their job if they use. More likely he’s got a long habit and gets a custom deal from someone—”

“I said that. Long-term habit, I said that before…” He seemed desperate to have got something right so she let him have it.

“Maybe he lives with a dealer? Has a supply or gets it wholesale. Either way he’s well in with dealers.”

“Cuts it himself?”

“For himself.”

He looked hopeful. “Could this be traceable, then?”

Morrow shrugged. “Worth a try.”

Eddy and Pat were cruising in the car, listening to the radio. Pat turned it up so loud that Eddy couldn’t talk over it. A high-pitched alert signaled from Eddy’s pocket and he pulled over to the side to read it.

Pat could see the text. It was from Eddy’s ex-missus in Manchester. Their youngest daughter was six today. Phone or she’d cut his balls off.

Eddy’s color changed as he read it and Pat knew if he didn’t get out of the car he’d get the brunt of it.

“I’ll jump out here,” he said, throwing the door open to the street.

“She’s fuckin’—” Eddy leaned over the seat. “Pat, get back in.”

“No, no.” Pat backed away from the car, holding the edge of the door. “Give ye privacy to call. Pick me up in half an hour.” And he slammed the door shut, instantly regretting that he’d left the paper with Aleesha’s picture inside. He looked in at Eddy. A nothing in Reactolite glasses. Small, fat, furious.

Eddy pointed straight down to the ground and mouthed angrily, “Here?”

“In half an hour.” Pat turned away so that Eddy couldn’t argue, walking quickly down the road. He kept moving at the same pace until he saw the silver car draw past him, down the road, and disappear around a corner.

Pat breathed out and looked up, actually excited at the prospect of a half-hour holiday from Eddy. When he saw where he was he almost choked.

He hurried up, breaking into a jog until he reached the junction and stopped. A low row of newsagents and chip shops on his right but to his left, across the road, loomed the Vicky Infirmary. He struggled to breathe in. He searched his conscience to see if it was true, if he really hadn’t known where he was. He hadn’t: it was as if it was meant.

Outside smokers were huddled in their coats, standing singly or in twos, gazing aimlessly out into the street. Pat stood with his toes over the edge of the pavement, straining, face-first towards the passing traffic. He wanted to be there, just a little closer.

Suddenly aware that he might be acting strangely and attract attention, he veered right and went into a newsagent’s shop. He bought the paper again, smiling to himself as he picked a can of juice out of a fridge, and found himself asking for ten Marlboro reds, imagining that it was what she might smoke, if she smoked.

The man behind the counter tried to chat, asking if he had finished his work for the day, but Pat couldn’t hear him. He nodded and paid and left the shop, hurried off across the road, dodging buses and cars, snaking between parked cars. He was grinning as he walked over to the infirmary and took his place among the lineup under the smokers’ shelter.

An old man in a green cap and tweed coat was standing next to him, watching Pat as he took out his packet of ten from his pocket and unwrapped the clear cellophane.

“You just starting again?” The old man’s voice was low and rough, his nose a blistered mess of skin.

“No.” Pat looked down at his packet and pulled out the silver foil, crumpling it into his palm and pulling a cigarette out. “Just… sometimes. When I’m stressed. Have ye a light, faither?”

The old man reached into his pocket and brought out a dun tin lighter, flicked the wheel, and held the flame to the tip.

Pat puffed, superficially, not really inhaling but getting a wild buzz off it nonetheless. He felt dizzy and reached back to steady himself against the building, smiling when the stone hit his palm. She was in there, on the other side of this wall, and he was touching it.

“Well, son, ye look pretty happy for someone under stress. Are ye visiting?”

“Aye, but she’s getting out.”

“Oh, lucky, aye.” The man looked away. “You’re lucky.”

The man wanted to be asked about the person he was visiting, a wife or a son maybe, but Pat didn’t want to talk. He opened his paper and pretended to read the front page, leaning his back on the wall, feeling cold from the smooth stone chill at his back. He forgot to smoke his cigarette. He let it burn out in his fingers as he looked at the picture and thought of her upstairs and him down here, just about to visit her with yet more flowers, with women’s magazines and sweeties.

And she would sit up in the bed when she saw him walking towards her, and her face would open towards him and her hands would slide from the blanket over her knees to her sides, and he would walk, faster and faster, until he was inches from her face and he would hold her face in his big warm hands and he would kiss her.

It was counterintuitive to trust Kevin Niven. He had greasy hair, wore trackies, had the bad skin and vague speech patterns of a junkie. In fact he was a decorated officer with years of undercover experience. He sat alone in the canteen, though, nibbling a poor homemade sandwich, looking shifty and attracting sidelong looks from the officers who didn’t know him.

Morrow could imagine how uncomfortable he made them, like someone dressed in a Nazi uniform hanging about a synagogue: you might know he was dressed like that for some higher purpose but in absentminded moments you’d still feel the urge to punch him.

“That’s, like, no easy, like, to say…” He trailed off, head jerking to the side. “Know?”

One question in, he already had Bannerman’s hackles up. “Where could we find out?”

“Dunno…” He seemed to suddenly absorb the information. “That’s not that usual, though, eh?”

“What isn’t?”

“Someone with a supply or bulk-buying and moderating it, know? Using like a medicine.”

“What would normally happen if someone had a supply?”

He opened his arms wide and grinned.
“Gorge.”

Morrow laughed but Bannerman was staring at him intently. “Can you think of another reason for this, then, this chemical profile of the residue?”

Niven looked at the lab report, considered it, tipped his head one way at one possibility, the other way at another. “Here.” He drew a meaningless mind map on the table, tapping with four fingers to the left. “New supply from someone with a lot of milk powder.” His hand traced a long line. “Pattern emerges later.”

Morrow smiled, getting it, but Bannerman looked angrily at the table.

“Here…” Kevin tapped another portion of the table. “One off, bad mixing, milk powder clustered in one part of a mix.”

“Hmm.” Morrow was disappointed. “So it could mean nothing?”

“Or”—Kevin opened his eyes wide—“holiday supply, bought elsewhere, used here.”

Morrow nodded. “In short, fuck-all use, then?”

“Aye.”

“Means nothing?”

“Nah, s’not evidence. Well, he mibbi knows someone, early stages. When ye find him he’ll mibbi be someone’s pal.”

“Part of a crew?”

“Nah. Unreliable.”

“So we can only use the connection for confirmation?”

“Yeah.”

Bannerman looked sadly at the table.

Kevin sucked his teeth noisily. “Check for prints, but?”

“On the foil?” Bannerman looked up. “Don’t know.”

“ ’Cause, know how ye go straight to one bit of the lab for residue, eh? Don’t want to dust for prints in case they mess that up, understandable, but see they check
inside
for prints, eh?”

“Right?”

“Oh aye,” said Kevin, looking at his empty hands, turning an invisible bit of foil around and around. “ ’Cause if there’s prints they’ll be good ones, man.” He looked up and smiled. “They’ll be fuck-off good y’uns.”

TWENTY-SIX

University Avenue felt like part of a different city. The buildings were pretty architectural statements. The Gothic main building with its high tower and quadrangles, the circular Reading Room, the new medical building. The students were well fed, tanned, and tall, wearing clothes that were cleaner and better-fitting than most of the people Morrow came into contact with.

As they locked up the car on the steep approach to the university gates Morrow overheard a girl who looked all of seventeen tell another that it was just
impossible
to get a parking space around here. These people weren’t just better than the population they nicked, they were better than Morrow and Gobby: better starts in life, better homes, knew better people.

Morrow had brought Gobby with her, just for peace, but was regretting it already. He was so quiet it was creepy, as if he’d been jinxed. His defensive swagger was exaggerated, his expression sullen and intimidated by the strange poshness of the university students. Alex wasn’t bothered; she spent her childhood being banned from friends’ houses. Single-parent families were frowned upon then, her mother was half-mad with depression, and the reputation of a connection to the McGraths never left her. She grew up knowing that everyone was better than she was.

They got to the gatehouse and walked in, passing the porter’s box, entering the uni grounds. The Law School was separate from the main building, around the side to the right, across a grassy square. A long terrace of thin town houses, high narrow windows and small black front doors, emphasized the stern look of the place. The houses must have been university accommodation at one time: a blue plaque on a wall notified disinterested passersby about a long-dead famous resident.

The main entrance to Law was through one of the small front doors. They followed the numbers down and took the steps. The hallway was inauspicious. Electric blue carpet, blue wood-chip walls, and white paint on the woodwork. Cork notice boards with bits of paper pinned to them, the same notice on all of them warning students to check their e-mail regularly. Morrow wasn’t the only idiot, it seemed. The town houses were joined together through passages punched into the adjoining walls.

The hour must be turning: from the stairs and the door behind them students began to filter into the building.

On the right-hand side, just inside the front door, a glass cubicle was marked Enquiries and a man in a blue shirt looked out at them expectantly.

“Hello, we’re looking for the tutor of one of your students,” said Morrow amiably.

“And who might that be, young lady?” His eyes twinkled playfully, as if Morrow was in on the joke and knew she was neither a lady nor young.

“Omar Anwar.” She sounded cold. “Graduated last June.”

The security guard took a deep breath, ready to reciprocate the rebuff. She pulled out her warrant card and slapped it on the window. He looked at it, nodding as he emptied his lungs, and turned back to the computer, asking her for spellings and telling her that Tormod MacLeòid was her man. He’d call up and see if he was in.

Professor Tormod MacLeòid fancied the arse off himself. His office and personal appearance spoke of a man who lived for pretentious obfuscation and all things dusty. He kept them waiting for ten minutes in his secretary’s office and then came in, ordered the secretary to bring him Omar’s student file before they began the interview. Once in his office he made them sit in a passive silence while he read the file. Happily it wasn’t more than five paragraphs long but it gave Morrow a chance to look around the office.

Like the building itself the room was tall and narrow. Every bit of wall space was weighed down with books, most of which were old, battered, and looked out of print. Layered in front of the books and on top of them were busts with missing noses, bits of stone and brick, mini reproduction Greek vases. On top of one of the shelves, rolled up into a cylinder, was a time-faded Fettes brown and pink tie. Morrow was sure that every single object had a story attached to it, and that every story would be long and ponderous.

She had taken the lone seat in front of his messy desk, leaving Gobby to sit on a chair near the door, perching in front of a precarious stack of essays, silently wringing his hands and contemplating the nuances of his discomfort.

Finally the professor leaned back in his wooden throne, stroking his beard. He adjusted his sports jacket and smiled a patronizing yellow smile. “I do recall him, certainly, yes. Where was he from?”

“Pollokshields,” said Morrow.

“Ah.” His eyes widened at the implied correction. “Yes, the old colony of Pollokshields,” he smirked.
“Quite.”

“He did honors in your class and got a first.” Morrow thickened her scummy South Sider accent to challenge his Fettes drawl. “So I kinda thought you’d mibbi remember more about him than the shade of his tan.”

MacLeòid’s face snapped into a mean squint. “I did not mention his skin color.”

She waited for a beat, letting him squirm. “What sort of student was he?”