Still Midnight (32 page)
Eddy: “How did the cunt get overpowered by a midget Paki?”
Slowly, Pat stood up. He stared straight into the beam of light, an expression on his face that made Eddy’s feet falter. “My phone…,” said Pat flatly.
Eddy stood up, tipped his head quizzically. Pat pushed past him, down the ladder. His steps fell loud as cannons as he crossed to the door.
“Um, Pat?” Eddy called after him, his voice small. “Are ye off to phone his ma?”
With wide, purposeful strides Pat passed through the packing room to the light at the loading bay door.
Behind him Eddy’s voice was thin and far away. “I’ll wait here.”
Through the loading bay, under the lintel, into the broad concrete road, Pat burst into a run, faster and faster until he got to the car, and then a sudden burst of adrenaline made it impossible to stop. He sprinted the three hundred yards to the end of the concrete strip, dropped to touch the edge for reasons he would later find bewildering, and bolted back to the car. He was by the door, jogging on the spot, knees up to his chest, faster and faster and faster, trying to keep time with his heart, lifting his fists in time, punching his chest. He panted like a woman in labor, trying to breathe the pain out, trying to burn it up.
Twenty-three years ago Pat had sat on a settee with his feet not reaching the end of the seat. Auntie Annie sat next to him, her hands hovering beneath the baby’s back and head, and Pat holding the baby for a photo. Pat grinning, the baby turning away from him, secretly making an ugly face that no one knew about until they got the picture back from the chemist’s. They’d ordered two sets.
Malki once had a girlfriend who looked like a monkey. Big jaw. She chucked him and he cried for a week.
A car door, blue, new, swinging open in a street in Shettleston as Pat yomped the five miles home in shitting icy rain one Hogmanay night and Malki’s gleeful face grinning out from the driver’s seat. “Lift?” He was thirteen.
Pat kept running on the spot until his lungs felt like they might burst. The energy left him as fast as it had come. He slumped over the roof of the car, pressing hard against the cold metal. Pat pushed his face into the roof, pushed until the bridge of his nose clicked.
Standing up, he drew in a breath and held it. The marsh smelled of rotting things, of dead grass melting into the water. Without a thought in his head Pat pressed the button on the car key in his hand, opened the door, and climbed into the driver’s seat. He shut the door and locked it, adjusted the seat to fit him, pulled the seat belt over himself.
He flicked the headlights on just as Eddy’s face appeared under the lintel. Eddy’s mouth was open, eyes wide as the headlights crossed him. Swinging the car in a wide circle on the concrete, Pat turned around and drove away.
Morrow drove home through the calm traffic, wishing it was heavier, hoping someone not far in front would have an accident. No one did.
Blair Avenue was settling in front of the television after a heavy dinner, curtains were being pulled, lights were on upstairs as families spread out and children steeled themselves to do their homework. A man coaxed an old dog along the road, touching its back to remind it of the direction. Three teenage boys eyed two girls chatting showily on a far corner.
Her curtains were open, the light was on in the living room, but she couldn’t see the flicker from the TV. They had a security timer on the lights. He might not even be in there.
Taking her courage in both hands she reached forward, took the car key from the engine, and opened the door to the street. She put one foot on the road, made the other one follow it, slammed the door, locked it, and kept her head down as she walked up the path to the house. He’d done some tidying in the garden since this morning. Weeds pulled up and the loose soil brushed back off the tiled path. He’d brushed the steps as well.
Her key was in and the door half-open before she heard the radio from the kitchen. Her chin crumpled, a hot red flush rose to her eyes, making her stop on the stairs to take a deep, shuddering breath. Dread of home. Not tonight. Not him and not tonight.
Being stuck on her own doorstep made her angry and she used the feeling to open the door and step in. Shutting it carefully behind her, she dropped her shoulders and let the coat slide down her back and into her hands. She threw the coat on the end of the banister, dropped her bag so that it would be in the way, and marched into the kitchen.
Perched at the end of the kitchen table, Brian was doing some work on his laptop. He had heard her coming in, was already looking up at her, the resentment smothered by his pursed lips. White light from the computer screen glinted off his glasses, turning his eyes into harsh silver razor blades.
“Alex…?”
“Hi.” She meant to sound light but it came out leaden. She dropped her keys on the counter. “Big case, didn’t get back last night. Haven’t slept for hours and hours.”
“Hmm. You must be tired.”
She almost laughed at the banality of the observation. He sat back, one of his broad shoulders turning a circle as if his neck was sore. He looked at her, his mouth twitched softly. He was waiting patiently for her to answer. “Yes,” she responded in the same bland tone. “I am. How are you?”
“Fine. Neck’s a bit sore again. The plumber came, sorted out that drain in the garden.”
She flicked through the gathered letters on the table to give herself something to do. “Good. Did he find the blockage?”
“Newspaper,” he said. Brian was trying to catch her eye, ducking his head to meet her, missing every time. “He said someone in the street has been using newspaper instead of toilet paper. It doesn’t dissolve in the same way.” She didn’t speak. He waited for a beat. “I think it’s the students farther down, probably, in the Bianci house. They probably ran out of paper and were improvising.” He forced his mouth to smile, half closing his eyes, keeping them shut when the smile was gone, trying to mask his hurt. “Can I run a bath for you?”
Morrow no longer loved the texture of the skin on his neck, no longer loved the way he held his mug or the steadiness of his gaze. “Think I’ll have some herbal tea. Want some?”
“I’m on the beer tonight.” He held his bottle up, as if guilty. “Needed a beer…”
She turned away and flicked on the kettle, biting her bottom lip hard to stop herself shouting.
Brian was skirting it, getting around to talking about
things
. Losing her breath she turned away to the crockery cupboard and issued a warning: “God, I’m absolutely exhausted.” She took out a mug and watched the kettle rumble to its high C.
Don’t say that, Brian. Don’t fucking say it
.
Brian watched her back for a moment, she could feel him reaching for her and finding her gone. “Well, you know what they say.”
Don’t, Brian, don’t say that
. “A watched kettle never… well, you know.” He sniggered to cover his embarrassment.
Morrow kept her face to the kettle and brought her index finger to her mouth. She bit the knuckle so hard she could taste blood.
In the dark the pattern of swirls on the bedroom ceiling was a jagged mountain range. Morrow stared hard at it, angrily wishing herself asleep, making her way from one side of the room to the other, through the passes, sticking to the low ground. It calmed her, a big job, and the ceiling was broad and dark, hard to keep track of all the ridges. She had been doing it for almost an hour when she heard movement downstairs, a light snapping off, a door shutting. She listened, mapping the movements of Brian’s slow, inexorable approach.
He had finished working, had pushed his chair back on the stone floor with the backs of his knees. She heard him slap his laptop shut. He moved to the hall to put the laptop into its protective foam zip bag and then into his bag for the morning. He’d say it in his head because she wasn’t there to say it to:
sorting things out, ready for the morning
.
Brian stayed safe in routine, in clichés. He ate the same lunch every day, ham and cheese on brown bread and an apple. Regular in his habits, predictable. Safe.
She was halfway along the ceiling, almost dead center, when Brian had a quiet moment and she wasn’t sure where he was, but then the dishwasher began its evening churn. Hall lights snapped off and then the steady thud of his feet up the carpeted stairs heading to the bathroom for his routine. Toothbrushing, flossing, examining the floss. Face washed and then dried, three pats of a towel—cheek, cheek, neck.
But Brian didn’t go into the bathroom. At the top of the stairs he left the grid of predictability. He had stopped outside the nursery. She listened for him to move but he didn’t. Brian stopped too long for it to mean he’d forgotten something, remembered something, was lost in an extraneous thought. He thought she was asleep, that he was alone, and out there in the lonely dark she heard him keening softly.
Separated by the splinters of the door, Brian cried quietly for the lost axis of his world and Morrow lost her way among the mountains.
His legs were numb, his hands were numb, his face, chest, and heart were numb. Aamir stood in the tall grass with the sea behind him, looking back over the marsh he had waded through.
In the dark the water was black and still, a solid glass floor over an underworld. Aamir had no memory of passing through it. His clothes were wet and freezing around him, his skin tight, his muscles twitching, but he looked back at the black and all he could recall was the loss of warmth. She was in there, lost.
He had cowered inside the metal tube for an infinity, staring at the brightness at the door, aware of the boy’s body and then not aware. He thought he saw the tracksuit melt into the red dusty road. Quite suddenly, the wind was on his face, birds were in the air above him, and his feet became wet, cold, his shins, his knees, his genitals. Pulling his knees up to walk became a Herculean task but he did it, holding her hand the whole time, dragging her behind him like a doll, like a heavy, dead doll.
In the black water, somewhere, at some point, his mother’s hand slipped from his and took the heat of his body with her. She was in the water but he hadn’t the courage to go back for her.
The sandy bank he was standing on slowly began to give way beneath his bare foot and he stepped away from the edge. He looked down. He had a slipper on. Just one. It had soaked up water and that was what had made his foot so cold. Remedying the problem of biting cold on his foot he slipped his foot out and stood in the dark, watching the damp dark sand rise up between his toes.
Around him the air began to lighten. A bird rose from the ground a hundred feet away. Aamir raised his face to it and saw a light, a bulb, swinging hypnotically in the dark. He lifted his right knee, took one step and then another.
Eddy watched as the sun rose over the wetlands, a sluggish October haze of dirty yellow behind nasty clouds. He sat on a concrete block at the end of the road burning-eyed, spent, and watched as birds rose from nests near the water and seagulls swooped over the far estuary, shrieking like indignant women. He was deep-down cold. His head ached from grinding his jaw all night.
He turned, looking down the road. Apart from the security issue, he couldn’t call a cab because he’d no fucking money to pay the fucker. Four miles to the nearest service station and he had £2.43. He came out with 20 on him, leaving his cards at home for security purposes, and he’d spent a good bit of that on the chinkie.
As the meager sun came up he looked at his hands. Greasy from the chinkie food. Dirty. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. The dirt came off in a paste, rolled into greasy cigars. Brown. He looked at it closer, rubbing his fingertips into the bowl of his palm. It was blood. Junkie blood with Chinese grease over it. He’d been eating that. His stomach turned over: disgusting. Might have hep B or AIDS in it or something. He looked up at the sun as if it were responsible. Revolting. He said it aloud for company: “Revoltin’.”
The sun struggled into the heavy sky and he looked around at the rubble of Breslin’s forecourt. Weans had been here, smashed every window, wrote on big blank walls with house paint. They’d written dirty words: “shit,” “cunt,” then had run out of ideas and thrown it at a wall in a big splash. The tin was still there. Magnolia gloss.
Eddy sucked his teeth, reliving the bloody meal. If he left the takeaway empties in the building rats would come, maybe eat the face. The thought turned his stomach but he tried to pretend it didn’t by frowning. They always ate a person’s face in films but maybe that wasn’t true. If they did it would be good. Unrecognizable.
He sighed, shifted his buttocks, and pulled out his phone. The battery symbol was blinking. He’d been using it for light in the night, when the candles ran out, checking the floor for firewood but failing to find a single combustible item in the whole fucking factory.
He checked the time on the phone’s face: six fifty. Too early. He’d be annoyed but Eddy couldn’t wait any longer. He held the mobile to his forehead and shut his eyes, rerunning the facts in his head, what to say and what not to say. Then he looked at the keypad and stabbed the number in with his blood-greasy finger.
The phone was answered with a deep silence.
“Me,” said Eddy, feeling suddenly overwhelmed and tearful.
“Let me guess,” said the Irish, “you got nothing last night?”
“Correct.” Eddy had meant to plow on through the awkwardness of recriminations at the beginning but he lost his breath slightly and didn’t trust his voice.
“What’s happening?”
“Lost… a man.”
“Lost?”
The Irish seemed to be sitting up, paying attention suddenly.
“Aye.
Lost
.”
“The subject?”
“No, one of ours…”
“Where’s the subject?”
“Hmm.” Eddy looked around the grass in front of him as if expecting Aamir to pop up out of it and wave. “Location unclear.”
“Unclear?
Unclear?
”
