Still Midnight

by Denise Mina

  Eddy had his back to him, his head dropped forward, looking at his gun. Pat broke into a trot, stumbling gracelessly over the lumpy ground, running from him.

  It was age that had brought them to this. Age and coke.

  Seven good years sharing doors all over the city. They were liberal with their hands, known for it, good at the job, until Eddy’s missus left. Then came the fights and restraining orders and the drinking. He was drinking that night, now that Pat thought about it.

  It must have been cut with something, the coke. The boy was thin, too young for that bar really, granny grabbing, but his pupils were pins and he was twitching when he stumbled out and into Eddy, his mouth staggering to keep up with the words drenching his chin - fucking old fuck fat fucking old.

  Afterwards, Eddy said he was off balance, the boy was lucky, the night was wrong. He was probably right; on another night, at a different angle the boy’s first punch wouldn’t have got him down. The boy never went for Pat, just Eddy, the one who had nothing left to be but hard. He kicked Eddy’s face in.

  Pat rallied when Eddy’s wife left, when they lost jobs over arguments with managers, but the bruises of that fight never left Eddy. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. A bird, he said he needed a bird, so Pat set him up but she wasn’t right and he gave her a slap and her brother came over and it got messy. New job, so Pat got them an indoor, but Eddy said the money was shit and they weren’t allowed to drink. Now he needed money, if only Eddy had money. One big job. Pat was losing faith, wouldn’t use his contacts, so Eddy’d done it himself, set it up and got the guns, the van, the address. And now what was wrong was an old toast-smelling man who didn’t have a hole in his head.

  Walking along the sea of frozen mud Pat realised that soon he would be what was wrong with Eddy.

  Up ahead, in among the trees, Pat saw an orange eye widen in welcome. Malki was smoking a fag, casual, standing next to the two large white plastic drums of petrol. Pat bolted over to him, slapping the cigarette from his mouth, scattering flecks of red all over the ground and stamping on them.

  Malki had been enjoying that cigarette. He looked down at it sadly. ‘Aw, man!’ he droned, ‘I havenae opened the petrol, calm the fuck down.’

  Pat grabbed him by the hoodie zip, held him up on his tiptoes, and spat in his face. ‘You calm fucking down, Malki. You fucking calm down.’

  Flecks of Pat’s spit freckled Malki’s forehead. It was so obvious neither of them said it: Malki was medically, chemically, technically perfectly calm. Despite the freezing cold of the night, despite smoking a fag next to two giant cans of petrol while being threatened by a man twice his weight, even then Malki’s physiology couldn’t summon up enough adrenalin to redden his cheeks.

  A bead of sweat trickled down Pat’s forehead and Malki watched as the urgent trail disappeared into his eyebrow and dripped from his slightly overhanging brow.

  ‘Not being funny, Pat, man, but have yous twos been doing steroids or something?’

  Pat let his wee cousin drop back onto his feet. ‘Malki—’

  ‘Yees are awful fucking jumpy.’

  ‘Just shut it, Malki.’

  Indignant at the insult, Maki straightened the front of his hoodie and unseen, the tiny ball of foil tumbled gracefully out, bouncing on the grass, falling between the blades. Malki muttered, ‘ . . . need tae be fucking rude, man.’

  Sulking, they took a petrol can each and unscrewed the caps, Malki in charge now because he had been burning out stolen cars since he was twelve and knew what he was about. It was surprisingly easy to get it wrong.

  While Pat soaked the seats, Malki opened up the tank and threaded in a line of tubing, sucking the petrol out. They didn’t want an explosion or a fire ball drawing anyone’s attention; just a good, thorough job. The longer it took the police to find the van, the longer they had to muddy their trail.

  By the time Pat had finished, the fumes were prickling at the skin inside his nose, making him dizzy. His mind was on the Lexus, listening, the hairs on his neck on standby, alert for the muffled ‘pop’ of the gun.

  He found Malki round the back, blowing into the petrol tank through the tube.

  ‘Disperse the fumes, man,’ explained Malki between puffs. He smiled as he blew, eyes wide, excited.

  Pat watched. Malki came from a family of arseholes but he himself was a good wee guy. He smiled again, puffing his cheeks out like a trumpeter. How did that happen, Pat wondered, a good guy from that family, a moral guy, with standards.

  ‘Eddy’s lost it a bit,’ he said quietly.

  Malki puffed and raised his eyebrows.

  Pat kicked at the ground, looking away because he felt disloyal. ‘His wife . . .’ he said, backtracking, excusing.

  Malki took the tube from his mouth. ‘Three nice wee kids.’ He pulled the tube out carefully. ‘She’s well out of it. Did the right thing fucking off to Manchester.’

  Pat couldn’t look at him because Malki was right.

  He pulled the tube out and laid it flat on the ground, pointing away from the van and into the dark woods. He motioned to Pat to drop the cans underneath the van and stepped back, guiding Pat away, checking the ground they were stepping away from for oily smears of petrol.

  Malki was taking no chances. He made Pat stand a good distance away along the tyre tracks because he’d been in the van and would be all fumed up. Malki went back himself, crouching at the end of the tube, his lighter sparking twice before the flame caught. He held it to the end of the tube and got up quickly, backing off to Pat’s side.

  A warm glow shot along the tubing, spilling a sudden sheet of light into the grass. The flames took, licking up at the surrounding air, racing into the petrol tank until a ‘thwump’ and a spluttered belch of fire came from the petrol tank, spilling onto the grass, lighting every drip and smear of petrol. The inside of the van was on fire, the back windows bright. The fire spread to the front seats and a wave of warm and smoke hit their faces. Pat blanched at the heat but Malki didn’t even blink. His mouth had fallen open a little, his small teeth white against the dark.

  ‘’Mon,’ said Pat, anxious to get back. He hurried out of the trees, following his path to the Lexus. Eddy’s head was no longer visible over the scraggy hedge around the field. Pat sped up, keeping his eyes on the place Eddy had been standing, imagining him crouched over the old man’s body, rolling him into the ditch. Malki trotted after him, almost bumping into him at the mouth of the field when Pat stopped in his tracks.

  Eddy was gone.

  Pat ran towards the car, looking over the roof, in the ditch by the car, but Eddy was gone.

  ‘Where the fuck . . .?’

  Malki was behind him, staring hard at him, worried. With a limp hand he pointed at the car, at the driver’s seat. Eddy was sitting in it.

  ‘Oh,’ said Pat.

  ‘. . . the fucking motor,’ mumbled Malki, shaking his head.

  Pat looked at Malki. The harsh moonlight cut lines deep into his face, he looked forty and he was only twenty-three. And yet he was looking pityingly at Pat.

  ‘Fucking junkie twat,’ said Pat.

  Malki turned square to him and raised a warning finger. ‘Patrick, my friend, I have to say: you’re being a bit ignorant there.’

  ‘Get in the fucking motor.’

  ‘No need for rudeness, my friend. We’ve all got our troubles.’

  Pat rolled his eyes. ‘Malki—’

  Malki raised both hands. ‘Polite. That’s all I’m saying . . . Us and the animals, man.’ He opened the back door and slipped his skinny hips in next to the pillowcase, shutting the door before Pat had the chance to tell him off again.

  Heavily, his head throbbing slightly from the fumes, Pat made his way around to the other rear door and got in. The pillowcase was slight as well as small: Pat’s hips didn’t even touch him. It was like sitting next to a child.

  Eddy started the engine and his eyes met Pat’s in the rear-view mirror. Pat blinked and looked away.
r />   When they hit the motorway, Pat looked back to where the van was burning. A calm smoke plume drifted up into the clear night, it could pass for insignificant, unless a local was passing and knew there was no house over the shoulder of the hill.

  They drove on in silence as before but now Malki was content, having had the release of setting fire to something, on his way to a midnight assignation with his beloved scag. And Eddy was happy at the wheel of the Lexus, imagining a future where he owned such a car and could look at himself in the mirror.

  But the pillowcase was rigid with fright and Pat looked out at the dark fields and wished himself someone else, somewhere else. He should have refused to get out of the van.

  8

  Rain fell softly in the dark street, regular and rhythmic, like a comforting pat on the back. Beyond the tape the boys watched Morrow’s feet as she came towards them, their cigarettes were polka-dotted with drizzle. Neither could bring their eyes up further than her knees.

  Young, slim and handsome, their clothes were expensive and well laundered, ironed.

  She stopped in front of them. ‘Are you . . . ?’

  For a moment neither spoke until the friend said, ‘I’m, eh, I’m Mo. This is Omar. He lives, eh, it’s his house.’

  ‘Right?’

  They sagged like sacks, brought their cigarettes to their mouths. Omar opened his mouth to speak but shut it again, stunned. He struggled to look up at her and seemed very young.

  ‘You’ve had quite a night,’ she said.

  Mo told the tarmac, ‘Aye, then we got almost arrested for asking the police for help.’

  The hope that Bannerman had fucked up made her ask, ‘What happened?’

  ‘We drove off after the van,’ said Omar, ‘and lost it and then when we saw a police car we stopped them and they arrested us.’ His words were slurred, bizarrely languid, as if he was already stoned. After-effect of shock: massive slump in blood sugar after an adrenalin rush.

  ‘They arrested you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Omar smirked at Mo, ‘for a BB offence.’

  She didn’t understand. ‘You had a BB gun with you?’

  ‘No, BB offence: Being Brown.’ Omar became embarrassed, as if he was growing out of the adolescent sentiment while he was saying it.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ she said formally, feeling defensive. ‘I sincerely hope you don’t feel that race has been an issue in the investigation. We really are trying our very best to help.’

  ‘No, sorry, no.’ Mo looked shamefaced too. ‘Sorry, it’s just a daft thing they say, you know, see, they looked at our clothes and, you know, think stuff about you . . .’

  ‘Well,’ she said softly, ‘if anyone here has given you the impression that race was any kind of an issue for them I do hope you’d feel free to tell us. We certainly wouldn’t want politics like that interfering with an investigation like this.’

  They were mortified now, caught out in an unsupportable myth between them and Morrow leaned in and went kindly for the kill. ‘You know, you weren’t arrested. If you’d been arrested you wouldn’t be here now, you’d be in a station somewhere being questioned. It creates a lot of paperwork, they don’t just do it for a laugh.’

  ‘You know what?’ Omar’s knee buckled and he looked at her. ‘We’re being stupid. It was my fault, we did an emergency stop, leapt out at them. I forgot, you know, what we’d look like to . . .’ he scratched his head hard and sighed, ‘and I said a series of key words . . . that would alarm anyone really, I suppose.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Guns. Van. Took my daddy.’

  ‘Afghanistan!’ interjected Mo, as if it was a guessing game.

  ‘Why did you say Afghanistan?’

  ‘Well, they said it, the gunmen, as they were leaving: “This is for Afghanistan,” but it didn’t sound right.’

  Mo nodded. ‘Yeah, it didn’t sound kosh.’

  ‘Sounded like some bullshit Steven Seagal tagline. Like someone who watches a lot of action movies and is in a fuckin’ - sorry - is like in a dream or something.’

  They were talking to each other, not her, and their speech speeded up, took on colour and motion.

  ‘Aye, yeah, but shit action movies,’ confirmed Mo and affected a Schwarzenegger accent: ‘This-is-pay-back,’ but his joke was half-hearted, addressed to no one but the pavement.

  Omar smiled dutifully and echoed, ‘Pay-back. Anyway, we jumped out and they were just asking questions and then I saw the van going under the bridge and I forgot and I ran off towards it. They must have got a fright and they grabbed me in a hold. Hurt my shoulder a bit, actually.’

  Mo reached out and patted his pal’s back. They were close, she liked that, and Omar had an insight and honesty rare in a young man.

  ‘You saw the van?’

  ‘We were on the bridge over the motorway and we saw it going underneath and I ran over to it but they stopped me.’

  ‘On the bridge?’

  ‘At Haggs Castle.’

  ‘Great,’ She pulled out her notebook and wrote it down. ‘We can get the CCTV footage and trace it.’

  ‘They hurt my shoulder . . .’

  ‘Well, I can only apologise for that.’

  ‘Yeah and we were shitting ourselves anyway, buzzing because of the blood and Aleesha and that anyway.’

  ‘She’s been taken to hospital.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s fine.’ She didn’t actually know how Aleesha was doing, she’d heard someone else say it but hadn’t spoken to the hospital herself. ‘In the right place . . .’ She was slipping into hollow clichés as a barrier to empathising. Bitter night streamed down the road, chilling their ankles. ‘Were you in the hall when the men came in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘In the car outside.’

  ‘Where?’

  They pointed up to the evidence markers for the cigarette butts. She looked and saw that the cigarettes they had in their hands now were brand matches for the stubs she had seen in the road and she was pleased, found she wanted to trust them, whatever the story.

  ‘What sort of car?’

  ‘This car.’ Omar pointed to a blue Vauxhall parked behind him. ‘The Vauxhall. His Vauxhall.’

  ‘What were you doing out there?’

  ‘Chatting.’

  ‘Where had you been?’

  ‘Mosque.’

  Morrow read Omar’s face. What she had taken for guilt could have been shock and tiredness. He looked drained and spent, but there was something else there too, a reticence. ‘Did you see the van waiting in the road?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Were around the corner. Couldn’t see it.’

  ‘It’s a one way street. You must have passed it when you drove up.’

  ‘We’d been there for twenty minutes. Must have arrived after us.’

  ‘What were you doing there for twenty minutes?’

  Omar drew himself up, straightening his back, looking at her properly for the first time. She felt plain. The suit made her look tidy but not attractive. No elegant details, no statement stitching or anything that would draw the eye, make a casual viewer wonder about her as a person. Bland was the look she was going for.

  ‘Shouldn’t you wait until there’s another officer here before we speak to you?’

  Morrow was surprised. ‘Why - what makes you say that?’

  ‘For corroboration, for if the case comes to court.’

  She gave an unconvincing half-laugh. ‘What would you know about that?’

  ‘I’m a law graduate,’ he said, looking unaccountably sad about it.

  ‘Oh.’ She nodded for a minute, only vaguely aware of the car drawing up behind the boys. ‘Oh. When was your . . . When did you . . .?’

  ‘June,’ he said.

  ‘Morrow!’ Bannerman was out of the car almost before it stopped. The bigger brother climbed out of the back and strode over to them, almost
overtaking Bannerman in his eagerness to get to his brother’s side. They’d been on their way to the station for a formal interview, she realised, and both wanted to break up the conversation she was having, for different reasons.

  ‘Morrow?’ asked Omar.

  ‘I’m Morrow,’ she said. ‘Who’s the big guy?’

  ‘My brother, Billal.’ Omar dropped his chin to his chest and when she looked back she found the brother was glaring at him.

  ‘Morrow,’ scowled Bannerman, ‘could I have a word?’

  She blushed high on her cheeks, and turned away, stepping over to him with her head down.

  Bannerman turned her away from the boys and muttered reprovingly, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just talking to the boys . . .’ She sounded flat, as if she’d done a bad thing herself. She looked for something to attach the feeling of guilt to: ‘Any word from the hospital?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Bannerman took her elbow and moved her out of earshot of the boys. ‘Fine. Going in for emergency surgery but should be OK. Hand’s mangled. She’s only sixteen.’

  ‘Her mother with her?’

  ‘Yeah, we’ve left some cops there. We’ll get a proper statement off her when she comes out of it.’

  ‘Something funny about the family,’ she murmured. ‘I grew up on the Southside. I know dead religious families and this one isn’t right.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Omar, the son? Smokes fags like he’s smoking a joint. Aleesha wears jeans and T-shirts, Meeshra’s embarrassed about it, but kind of suggested that they’ve only recently become very observant. They’re from Uganda originally, traditionally that’s a pretty assimilated pro-British community.’

  ‘Are they recent converts?’

  He wasn’t listening to her. ‘No. They’re not converts, just become more observant.’