Still Midnight

by Denise Mina

  ‘There were two men?’

  ‘Two men—’

  ‘What did the other one do?’

  Bannerman was missing it. Morrow wanted to jump into the screen and make him look at the angle of Omar’s hand, at the gestures of his jaw. The gunman’s mouth had been hanging open in surprise; the recoil from the shot had thrown his hand to the side. He hadn’t been ready for it, didn’t have his elbow at the proper angle or his muscles relaxed. He’d been shocked by the force of the recoil, which meant either the gun had gone off by accident, or he had never fired a shot before.

  Anxiously she looked at the officers sitting next to her and noted which were straining towards the screen along with her, who was willing Bannerman to shut up. Three out of eight. Sitting two seats down in the front row, Harris was one of them: he caught her eye, the ‘O’ of his mouth tightened.

  Back on the television Omar carried on. ‘He shouts “Rob”, “Where is Rob?” He came running up to Mo and goes, “You’re Rob,” and then they grabbed my dad and took him away.’

  ‘Did they ask if you were Rob?’

  ‘Me?’ Omar touched his chest and looked surprised. ‘Me? Well, he sort of looked around and said, “Who is Rob? One of you is Rob.” ’

  ‘But did he ever say, “You are Rob?” ’

  ‘To me?’ His eyebrows rose indignantly to his hairline.

  ‘Yeah, to you.’

  ‘Um, yeah, I suppose he did but my mum said, “Oh no, not my Omar,” and then he just sort of backed off because, obviously, then, he knew I was Omar, that I wasn’t Bob.’

  Bannerman, looking at his notes, failed to see the twitch on Omar’s neck, head flicking back a little, but Morrow noted it. Something had happened there but Morrow didn’t know what. She looked at Harris. He was straining forward on his chair, alert, looking for clues as to what had just happened.

  They both watched as Omar leaned across the table, his hand under Bannerman’s eye, drawing him back up. ‘And then, and then, the other one, the fat one, he grabbed my dad, like around the neck with his hand.’ Then Omar did a strange thing: he wrapped his own hands around his neck to illustrate the hold but somehow he pressed a little too tight, too adamant about it, as if he was actually trying to hurt himself. ‘And I thought he was going to kill him!’ He let go and stopped for breath. ‘I did! And then he said he wanted two million quid by tomorrow night and not to call the police or he’d kill my dad. And then he’s like: “This is payback for Afghanistan.” ’

  He stopped talking, watching Bannerman to see if the dissemble had worked.

  Bannerman had noted the change in tone, the excitement. He spoke calmly, ‘Do you know anyone in Afghanistan?’

  Omar was bewildered. ‘No!’

  ‘Have you ever been there?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Does your dad have any dealings with Afghanistan, any family there or anything?’

  A hand swept the table top. ‘No connection with Afghanistan whatsoever.’

  ‘OK. And then what?’

  ‘Then he grabbed dad there,’ he lay his forearm over the bottom of his rib cage, like the Queen carrying a heavy handbag, ‘and lifted him up,’ he tipped back in his chair, ‘and took him out the house.’ Omar’s arms flailed expressively at the door, making Morrow think of a stage magician diverting an audience’s eye.

  ‘Me and Mo ran after them, saw a big white van, like a Merc panel van, pull away. So we ran to Mo’s car and got in and followed them but we lost them at the motorway. They weren’t driving fast, just within the law, didn’t want to get caught, I suppose, and we shouldn’t have lost them but we were panicking and driving fast and following tail lights in the dark and they didn’t go the most obvious way, down the main roads.

  ‘Then we saw a police car and stopped and I said to them that my dad had been taken by men in a van and about Afghanistan and that, but they tried to arrest us.’

  Morrow saw the boy on the screen stop waving his hands and the hurt in his voice. To be treated with suspicion at a moment of grief. She knew the deep stinging cut of that feeling. That was why he looked like that in the road, he and Mo, because they knew they were not among friends, that they were other.

  She sat back and glanced at the officers in the viewing room. Smart men, top of their game, all staring at the screen, willing him to be it. He must sense that.

  When she stood up to leave someone called ‘Down in front’. Their voice tailed off when they realised it was her.

  The officer who had given up his seat was leaning against the wall, tipped his forehead out of respect, ‘He’s good, isn’t he?’ He meant Bannerman, wrongly supposing they were friends.

  ‘Aye.’ She leaned over to Harris and tapped his shoulder. ‘Have a word?’

  Out in the corridor they dropped their voices. ‘What happened, just before he started rambling?’

  Harris shrugged. ‘I was trying to remember myself.’

  ‘Get the disk would you? As soon as . . .’

  Still frowning Harris looked back into the room. ‘His mum said, “Not my Omar.”’

  She turned her computer on, waited for what felt like ten minutes, signed herself in and called up her email. The digi recordings had already been forwarded to her. The transcript would take a few days to weave its way through form-filling and desk-landing but the digi recording was immediate.

  Opening her bottom desk drawer she took out a brand new pad of cheap paper, a sharp new pencil from a box and a plastic container with a set of earphones in it. Plugging them into the hard drive stack, she clicked on the attachment.

  The first file was numbered and she jotted it down in the pad before starting the recording. A caller panted loudly and a bored operator asked them: ‘Which service do you require?’

  Barely contained sobs demanded, ‘Ambulance! Please! Tell them to come, please come! She’s bleeding all over the place!’

  ‘Who’s bleeding please?’

  ‘My daughter has been shot by . . . men, they came into our home and threatened—’ The mother, Sadiqa, had an English accent, a crisp fifties accent, and made the operator sound coarse.

  ‘Can ye give us your address?’

  Sadiqa gave it, becoming calm in the familiar recitation, but she was interrupted by a girl crying out in the background and began panting again, ‘Oh dear, my God, my husband has been taken, my Aamir—

  The operator’s voice was nasal and bland, told her to calm down, the ambulance was on its way. No, there wasnae any point in her getting off the line because the ambulance was on its way right now. She made Sadiqa spell her name, her husband’s name, what sort of guns were they?

  ‘I have no idea. Black guns? Big—’

  ‘Are they still in the actual house?’

  ‘Gone! Left! I’ve told you that.’

  ‘Did they leave on foot or in a car?’

  ‘I’m afraid no, I didn’t see. But my son, my Omar ran out into the street.’

  ‘Has your son come back in? Could he come to the phone and tell me if it was on foot or in a vehicle, maybe?’

  But Sadiqa wasn’t listening to her any more. ‘Aleesha, oh Lord, Aleesha is bleeding. Please, please come quickly.’ She dropped the receiver noisily and spoke urgently to someone. A thump sounded like a body falling. Someone picked up the receiver and hung it up.

  The call lasted one minute fourteen seconds. The second call started ten seconds later than Sadiqa’s.

  Billal was calling from a mobile so the line was less clear. In the background she could hear Sadiqa’s voice repeating one side of the conversation she had just listened to. Shock made Billal shout a series of exclamations: ‘Police! Police! And an ambulance!’

  ‘And what is your call concerning, sir?’

  ‘Two men! Two men!’

  ‘Two men what, sir?’

  ‘Two men came in our house! They took my daddy away!’

  ‘So, they’re not there now?’

  ‘They shot my wee sister. In her hand!’
r />   ‘They shot her hand, sir?’

  ‘Yes! Yes! She’s bleeding really . . . God . . . badly! It’s all . . . blood—’

  ‘Did you see them shoot her?’

  ‘Yeah, with guns! Big guns, real guns.’

  The female controller tried to get him to spell his name and the address but Billal could barely hear her he was so shocked.

  ‘Please come and help us, help us, please come.’

  ‘We are on our way, sir, right now, but—’

  ‘We’ve got a baby here, a new baby! They pointed the gun at a baby!’

  ‘Did they say what they wanted, sir?’

  ‘Ob.’

  Billal had moved his face, his chin was slightly over the receiver, so it wasn’t very clear. Morrow had to use the mouse to listen to the portion of speech again.

  ‘. . . what they wanted, sir?’

  ‘Hob. Were after someone called Bob.’

  It was clearer the second time he said it, the puff of air from his lips popping gently on the receiver as he said the ‘b’s.

  Morrow wrote ‘Bob’ on the pad and put a question mark next to it.

  ‘Mum! She’s falling—’ He hung up. The conversation had lasted less than a minute.

  The last call was from Meeshra, sobbing loudly, wailing about Aamir and Aleesha. She sounded calmer than the other two, even a little excited but much more upset, the way a distant acquaintance sobs at a funeral of a child while the family hold tight, afraid the force of grief will rip the earth from under their feet.

  ‘They’ve taken my dad-in-law, just lifted the poor man up and went off wi’ him—’

  ‘Could you tell me your—’

  ‘Lifted him off—’ She broke off to sob theatrically and ask Dear God to help them.

  ‘Could I have your name and address, please? Madam, are you there? Can I have your name, please?’

  ‘Meeshra Anwar. They’ve took ’im.’

  They were talking at the same time, the controller and Meeshra, and their voices coiled around one another:

  ‘. . . wanted ’im . . .’

  ‘. . . spell that . . .’

  ‘. . . shouting, looking for . . .’

  ‘. . . out for me?’

  ‘. . . some bloke called . . .’

  ‘. . . spell that name?’

  Both voices stopped dead for half a second of dead air, and then Meeshra spoke: ‘Aye, they was shouting for some bloke but they couldn’t find him and just took Aamir instead.’

  Morrow looked at the pad. Meeshra was avoiding saying the name. She looked at her writing: small and regular, the word less than half a centimetre long but pressed so hard into the paper that the free edges at the bottom of the page curled up to meet it. Bob? She touched it tenderly with her fingertip. Bob?

  Reluctantly she pulled the sheet of paper out of the pad and stood up, stopping by the door, nodding a congratulations to herself for being honourable and giving up the information so quickly. She opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. Outside a uniformed copper was chatting lightly to a plain clothed DC showing him something in the paper. Night shift. Hard graft but there was a kindness about it. Everyone moaned about it but they missed it when they were promoted and went days only. There was a closeness in being sleepy together, in minding the drowsy city.

  MacKechnie was still in, the light from his office spilling into the corridor. Morrow stood at the door and nodded politely. ‘Sir ?’

  ‘Come!’ He always said that, not knowing it had another meaning and that they laughed at him. Morrow looked in and found him squinting at something on his computer. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sir, I was listening to the 999 calls just now.’

  MacKechnie frowned at her, one eyebrow arched accusingly. ‘Why?’

  ‘In case there was something on them.’

  MacKechnie sighed at his clasped hands and sucked his teeth. ‘Sergeant Morrow.’ He had a way of pronouncing her name that made her flinch. ‘I have asked you to work with Bannerman on this.’

  ‘Bannerman told me to listen to the tapes, sir.’

  ‘Bannerman told you to listen to the tapes?’

  She stepped into his office and held up a hand to fend him off. ‘OK, that aside, they’ve all said the gunmen were asking for “Rob”. On the 999s they’re avoiding it but I think the son said “Bob”.’

  ‘OK.’ He looked confused.

  ‘He’s interviewing Omar now, shall I send him up a note? Get him to ask about it?’

  Confusion gave way to certainty. ‘Yes.’

  She withdrew and stood in the corridor a moment. She’d expected a bit more of a reaction. It was something concrete after all, and she’d discovered it. Disappointed, she went back to her office and wrote out the details, marked that the note was from her and caught a DC lingering by the board in the incident room.

  ‘DC . . . ?’

  ‘Wilder.’ He stood to attention and she appreciated that he knew who she was.

  ‘Wilder, take this up to Bannerman in Three right away.’

  He took it from her and set off quickly, leaving the door to slam shut behind him. At least someone was taking it seriously.

  Deflated, she went back to her office, dragging her eye and her pen across incident forms. The warm glow of her discovery was fading, swamped with tiredness and the mundane job. She broke off from the admin task to listen to the section of Meeshra and Billal’s emergency calls several times, her certainty paling a little each time.

  She was about to do it again when Bannerman opened the door and leaned against the door jamb like a louche lover coming back from the bathroom. ‘All right, Morrow?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘How are you getting on?’

  Morrow blinked hard, her eyes were burning. ‘Just . . . paperwork. ’ He slouched into the room. ‘Did you get my note?’

  He had to think about it. ‘The note? About Bob. Yeah, the note. God, great, thanks for that. Great.’ He dropped into his seat and unlocked his drawer, pulling out a grain bar and ripping the wrapper open with his teeth.

  ‘And ?’

  He shrugged without looking at her.

  She wanted to get up and go over and kick his shins. ‘What did Omar say about it?’

  ‘Well, I’d actually finished interviewing him by that point, so we’ll ask him next time.’

  They looked at each other across the office and Bannerman smiled. He hadn’t asked Omar about it because it came from her. He’d been unprofessional and she should let it go, win some, lose some, but the point wasn’t about her and Bannerman: a small man was sitting in a cold van somewhere, surrounded by armed malevolent strangers and the information could be material.

  ‘You didn’t ask?’

  Bannerman refreshed his smile.

  ‘Look, come over here.’ She held up the headphones.

  Bannerman looked wary, didn’t budge from his seat and instead swung his feet up on the edge of his desk, crossing them, stubbornly chewing his health bar. The interview had been a disappointment, viewed by the entire squad. She understood how foolish he would have felt if the only significant question was on a note from her but she was sure she was right. She called up the audio file of Meeshra’s phone call, a tiny box on her screen with a jagged visual of her speech. She pulled the earphones out of the hard drive, double clicked and Meeshra’s voice burst into the office, weaving through the crackle of switchboard operators.

  ‘She’s dodging the question,’ she said. ‘And Billal said “Bob” instead of “Rob”.’

  Bannerman didn’t react.

  Morrow tutted and held her hands up. ‘Well, I’ve told you. MacKechnie knows I did, Wilder’s a witness I sent the note, so if it goes tits up because of you it’s nothing to do with me.’

  He narrowed his eyes at her.

  ‘OK?’ She leaned across the desk towards him. ‘You can’t say I haven’t told ye.’

  ‘OK,’ he said slowly, as if trying to calm her down. ‘Thanks.’

  �
�If you want to fuck it all up, that’s up to you.’

  Bannerman smiled condescendingly at his health bar, peeling the wrapper off the end and popping it in his mouth. He would tell MacKechnie that she’d said that, tell it as a funny story about what a character she was, knowing MacKechnie would hear it as confirmation that she was impossible, mad, no team-player.

  ‘This animosity,’ he was muttering, ‘you and me, professional jealousy, you know, I’m sure we can work around it.’ He was turning it around, making it about her and him, not Aamir Anwar’s safety.

  ‘Not if you’re going to act like a cunt, we can’t.’

  She was too angry, almost dizzy and the words fell out of her before she could catch them. A hot blush ran up her neck. MacKechnie would hear that comment too.

  A perfunctory rap at the door was followed by Harris looking in. ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘What!’

  He paused, looked frightened and addressed himself to Bannerman. ‘Just looked the DVD of the interview over. Omar says they were looking for Bob, not Rob.’

  Without a word Bannerman swung his feet to the floor, stood up and left the office, shutting the door behind him, leaving her alone in the rancorous silence. Outside some guys were talking in another room, having a laugh and she listened jealously for his voice, suspecting, as always, that everyone had more allies than her.

  She was filling out the forms, cooling down to a cold rage when she heard excited footsteps in the corridor, an exclamation and a scurry.

  Bannerman threw her door open. ‘Found the van.’

  They took a car from the yard and Bannerman drove. All the cars in good condition were out and they had an old Ford with an engine so noisy that idle chat was impossible.

  Bannerman concentrated on the road, uncomfortable at the silence, but Morrow was glad to be let alone, her face slack as the warm orange lights of the motorway clicked past on the quiet road. The drive was long and effortless, all the way to Harthill on a smooth and empty road.

  Bannerman didn’t know the area they were going to and made a big production of looking for road signs, muttering inaudibly to himself about turns and directions, winding himself up. Morrow said nothing. They took a roundabout, a side road and finally a rough road down the side of open fields with intermittent hedgerows. It had been tarmacked at one time, but a decade or so of harsh winters and tractors had churned the ground uneven. They pulled up outside the perimeter tape.