Still Midnight

by Denise Mina

  ‘Turn around and put your hands on the roof of the car please, sir.’

  ‘They’re criminals!’

  ‘Just put your hands on the car please, sir.’ He said it more firmly this time. Omar did as he was asked.

  The other officer moved round to the other side of the car and motioned for Mo to come and copy Omar’s example. With the boys arranged on either side of the car, the officers took a man each, patting them down.

  Mo knew he looked the most alien because of his beard and so he started talking quietly to the officers searching him, thickening his accent to its private school best. ‘Officer, we really appreciate that you have to do this, really, we do, but my friend’s dad is just a very ordinary member of the public. He’s Scottish.’

  Omar watched across the roof of the car and saw the officer’s eyes narrow spitefully at the back of Mo’s neck. He knew, suddenly, that sounding posh was not the way to invite sympathy and he tried to signal to Mo, but Mo wasn’t looking at him.

  ‘You see,’ continued Mo, ‘my friend’s dad was taken from his home by gunmen, they’ve injured his sixteen-year-old sister.’

  ‘’S that right?’

  ‘Yes. They bundled him into a van and we ran after them, following the van, but we seem to have lost it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call the police, sir?’

  ‘Well, we went after them.’

  ‘D’yees not have a mobile? One can drive, one can call.’

  ‘I suppose . . . we didn’t think . . . It’s a big white van, possibly a Merc, a panel van, the left light at the front’s broken, it’s brighter, because they went into the wall near the house—’

  ‘Right? Really?’ The officer’s pace was slow. He stopped searching Mo, half smirked, pressed the end of his automatic pencil.

  Just then, looking over Mo’s shoulder at the motorway below, Omar saw the van with one bright light coming out of the empty motorway towards them. He screamed, ‘Hoi !’ put two hands on the Vauxhall’s bonnet and skimmed across it, sprinting to the crash barrier just as the van shot underneath the bridge. Omar hung over the railing, shouted after it, ‘Nugget! Nugget!’

  A blinding whoosh of pain stabbed his shoulder, swept up his neck and circled his ribcage, making his knees buckle. He twisted as he slid to the ground, trying to turn into the painful hold that the policeman had locked him in.

  Holding him by the wrist, the officer lifted Omar to his feet as easily as a hollow stick, guiding him back across the road to the squad car. Omar saw the white van through the far railings, trundling off along the motorway, headed for the city.

  2

  Alex Morrow bit slowly into her index finger, pressing her teeth until she could hear a small crunch in the skin. She was so angry that the upper lid of her left eye was twitching, blurring the changing view through the rain-splattered car window. If she didn’t calm down before they got there she’d blurt something, make a fool of herself in front of him. The thought of meeting Grant Bannerman face to face made her bite her finger again.

  Years ago a well-meaning training officer had told her never to question a superior’s decision, forget fair, just do the job, ignore the politics and don’t take it home. What the hell did he know, she thought now, sinking her teeth a little deeper into the skin. He never rose above sergeant. At her level the whole job was politics, as if she had anything else to think about, as if she had a home.

  The tinge of melodrama shamed her to her senses. She released her finger from the grip of her teeth. She had a home. Of course she had a bloody home. She just didn’t want to go there.

  The car purred quietly, the uniformed driver carefully taking his time, observing every traffic by-law because she was in the car, taking no chances. He pulled on the handbrake at each set of lights. It was all she could do not to slap him.

  She knew her anger was disproportionate and scattered, leaking from her like water through a sock. It was being noticed, remarked upon in her assessments. It’s nothing, she said, it’s about nothing.

  They’d had a quiet night up until now. October was the start of the cold weather, when the drunken street fighters scurried home to beat uncomplaining wives in the warm, when all the really bad men went off to winter in the sun. Start of the academic year, she remembered, a good time for long term investigations and reviving cold cases.

  The streets were empty. Cold rain pattered softly on the glass, swept aside by the rhythmic wipers, revealing and obscuring the Vicky Road. The address they were headed to was familiar from her childhood, so quiet a suburban area that she hadn’t been back in decades. The crimes here were burglaries, noisy teenage parties, local stuff.

  She saw the driver glance uncertainly at his silent GPS for guidance. ‘Take a right at the roundabout,’ she said, ‘then take a left.’

  They were just a few streets away, so she went through the checklist she always followed before a public appearance. Hair tidy, touches of make-up in place, she ran a finger under each of her eyes. She had small eyes and her mascara tended to puddle underneath. Handbag on the floor of the car, nothing personal hanging out of the top, no tampons or photos. She pulled her suit jacket straight, touching the buttons with her fingertips, making sure her armour was secure.

  The car pulled up at the mouth of the street, at an unfamiliar no entry sign and the driver hesitated, not knowing whether to break the law or observe it and piss about, circling the address through the back streets.

  ‘Take it,’ she snapped.

  He turned into the road slowly, as if reluctant. He’d been reprimanded for a high speed violation, she remembered now, and was showing the boss that all of that was behind him.

  The street was smaller than she remembered, the houses low bungalows rather than the mansions of her memory. She used to cross this street to primary school everyday. Her hand still remembered the warmth of her mother’s palm as she led her across the road. She curled her fingers around her palm at the thought. This area seemed hugely wealthy to them back then.

  Straight ahead blue and white tape had been strung across the road, blocking the street. A uniformed cop was standing in front of the tape and approached the driver’s door as the car slowed to a stop. He was dressed against the cold in reflector jacket and big padded regulation gloves, scissoring the fingers of one hand into the other as he arrived at the window. Not long ago Alex had been in uniform, had worn the ridiculously padded gloves and remembered how uncomfortably they splayed her fingers. Her driver lowered the window.

  The cop bent down. ‘Road closed.’

  ‘I’m here with a gaffer.’ Her driver pointed at Morrow.

  ‘Oh.’ The cop blushed, embarrassed that he hadn’t noticed her through the windscreen. ‘Sorry. Can you park up over there?’

  ‘Aye, keep your eyes open, won’t you?’ said Morrow.

  The driver smirked, trying to side with her as he pulled up the road a little.

  She could see all the way down the empty street to the tape at the far end. The house was on her right, taking up the corner, the crime scene forming an awkward T-junction around the house. Straight ahead of her, beyond the second line of tape, squad cars were parked with their siren lights still blinking, bathing the street blue then red, like Cinderella’s dress. At Morrow’s end of the road a couple of uniforms lingered in front of the tape, backs rod straight, hands clasped behind, formal poses that alerted anyone in the know to the fact that very senior officers were very nearby.

  Her driver was pulling a long turn. ‘Are you . . . um, should I back . . . ?’

  ‘Just stop.’

  For a second his lips parted in dismay but then he clamped them shut, staring forwards as he pulled on the handbrake, not reacting. Forget fair. She knew she was wrong to speak to him like that, but she never knew how to fix these things. She opened the door and stepped out into the soft October rain, took a deep breath and leaned back into the cabin. ‘Sorry,’ she said abruptly, ‘for being rude.’ The driver looked frightened. ‘To you.�
� The explanation didn’t help. She got flustered and slammed the door, cursed herself. She should just be rude; it would be easier.

  An older cop with the crime scene log clipboard approached her.

  ‘DS Alex Morrow,’ she said and he wrote it down. ‘London Road.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am. DS Bannerman and DCI MacKechnie are over there.’ He pointed around the corner to the front of the house. She could see a huddle of heads beyond the low garden wall.

  ‘MacKechnie’s here?’

  He seemed surprised too. MacKechnie meant it was a big case. A career case, but not her case, she remembered with a grind of her jaw.

  ‘You first here?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Taped off all entrances?’

  ‘Aye. Alerted the Firearms Unit and they’re just pulling out now.’

  ‘Gunmen gone then?’

  ‘Aye. They’ve searched front, back and sides.’

  ‘Shots fired?’

  ‘One, sixteen-year-old girl’s hand blown off.’

  ‘’Kin hell.’

  He hummed in agreement.

  ‘Residents?’

  ‘All over there giving statements.’ He gestured straight down the road to the tape where the cars were blinking. Gathered beyond them were a crowd of people dressed in combinations of overcoats and pyjamas, slippers and shoes, and cops with notebooks talking to them one at a time. Everyone who lived inside the taped-off area would have been pulled out of their houses until the FAU had secured the area.

  ‘Well done,’ she said. ‘Good job,’ aware that she was making up for her rudeness to the driver by being nice to him. She knew it wasn’t how to develop allies; you have to be nice to the ones you’ve insulted. He looked pleased anyway.

  ‘Where’s the path?’

  He used his pencil to point her along the centre of the road and around the corner.

  Morrow dipped under the tape and picked her way carefully, keeping her eye on the tarmac for missed evidence. She stopped and looked up. The house was on her right: a small wall on the pavement and then elevated ground, a bit of grass and then bricked over. A series of cars were parked there: a Nissan people carrier, an Audi, a new Mini and a small, dirty white van.

  In the road next to her, marked with big white evidence cards, lay two cigarette ends. She bent down and squinted at them: the brand was Silk Cut. They had burnt out where they lay, the log of ash sitting on a strip of tar-yellowed paper. They were five feet apart, as if they had been thrown out of either window of a car. She looked back to the cop who had stopped her car.

  ‘You - why aren’t these bagged up?’

  ‘Said to wait until the photographer had a picture, ma’am.’

  They should have bagged them. It was raining and any DNA on the stubs would be lost. Bad scene management. Morrow was secretly glad.

  She carried on to the corner, could see the residents better now: three Asian men standing together, young, talking to uniformed cops. An elderly white couple were there as well, both in overcoats with pyjamas underneath. A scowling housewife, young, alone, hair a sleepy tangle, stared at her. Morrow glared back: let us apologise for the inconvenience caused by saving you from armed raiders.

  Morrow looked over at the house. There were two entrances to the garden: a wide metal gate leading straight up to off-road parking and a small ornamental one, open onto the path up to the front door. She turned the corner and saw a puddle of fresh safety glass on the pavement. Above it on the wall a few bricks were caved in.

  Despite herself, her interest was piqued. She could feel it happening: facts, disjointed, irrelevant, being card indexed and filed away in her mind, the familiar private landscape of deduction. All the niceties of politics, personal or professional, eluded her always, but she could do this. It was the one absolute certainty for Alex Morrow. She was good at this.

  She looked up and saw them standing just outside the ornamental gate, arms folded, waiting for Firearms to leave the property. DS Grant Bannerman and DCI MacKechnie stood flank to flank, shoulders almost touching, looking back up to the front door as they listened to two animated uniforms brief them on the witnesses’ statements. Bannerman was nodding as if he already knew what had happened and was just there to check up on everybody. Next to him MacKechnie watched his prodigy approvingly, a little echo of the nod on his neck.

  Bannerman. His sun-bleached hair was too long, hung slightly over his eyes, muscular, suntanned. She thought he aspired to look like a surfer but he looked like a careerist to her, a boy whose dad was in the force and introduced him to senior officers. That’s how he got the promotion to DS while still in CID. Morrow had to leave, go back into uniform, do the exams and then transfer back. Friendless, without a sponsor, she’d done it through merit. No one retired and few got promoted in CID; it was a destination and the jobs were few and far. To make DS within CID an officer had to suck up to senior officers, go to the football with them, play golf and let them win.

  Morrow and Bannerman had been sharing an office for a month but it wasn’t going well. However many coffees he made her, however many KitKats he brought her from the machine, she could see in his eyes that he joked about her behind her back, couldn’t take to her, feared her moods. He had already been settled in their office for two months before she arrived, seemed easy going, was four years younger than her. And she was hard work, she knew that. If Morrow worked with herself she’d try and sit a few desks away.

  Bannerman saw her now, walking towards him, and his smile lingered too long, going stale on his lips.

  ‘Sir.’ She tipped a nod at MacKechnie but couldn’t bring herself to look at Bannerman. ‘Grant.’

  Grant Bannerman nodded back. ‘All right, Morrow? What’s happening?’

  She could feel the blood draining from her face. ‘Hello’ wouldn’t do for Grant. ‘Good evening’ wouldn’t do. It had to be some cheesy greeting, a bit of a song, a line from Elvis or some fucking thing. He strove to be different because he wasn’t. Her ambition was to fit in and she couldn’t. Jealousy made her focus on him, notice small vulnerabilities like the occasional sunbed flush to his skin, how he often implied credit to himself for other people’s work, and although superficially confident, how lost he sometimes looked in the company of other men.

  Heat rose in her cheeks and she knew she had to cover up quickly. ‘There’s evidence getting wet around there,’ she said. ‘Two cigarette butts needing bagged up.’

  Bannerman was wrong and knew it. ‘We’re waiting for the photographer.’

  ‘No point proving they came from here if the traces have been washed off, is there?’

  MacKechnie blinked indulgently. ‘Best to go and get them bagged.’

  Bannerman nodded at one of the cops, briefing them to go and do it.

  The Firearms Unit were coming out of the house. They crowded out of the front door, looking terrifying. Four big men in black body armour blocking the light of the hallway. They each held intimidatingly large pistols, holding them with two hands as if they were likely to go off of their own volition and blow a hole in something vital.

  They were laughing at something as they came down the path towards them, the relief marked in their shoulders and faces. Whenever a gun was used Firearms had to come to either disarm or ensure that no gun-toting nutters were hanging around in cupboards waiting to leap out when the police got there. It was a high-stress, short-life job. They were recruiting all the time, month on month getting more and more calls. A flood of redundant weapons were coming to Glasgow from Ireland, selling for buttons.

  As the Unit came past they assumed MacKechnie was the senior and gave him the low-down: no one in there, no guns in the house, one bullet in the wall and a lot of blood. One resident still in the house, a bedridden new mother.

  ‘Bedridden?’ asked Morrow.

  As if they were seeing her for the first time, all of the men looked at her.

  ‘Well,’ their DS answered weakly, ‘she’s just had a baby. A week ago
or something.’

  ‘How’s she bedridden?’

  ‘She’s not to get up. Said she could haemorrhage.’ The sergeant was embarrassed and laughed, ‘I’m not qualified to check her stitches, am I?’

  She watched as they all giggled together. Even MacKechnie had a titter. Bannerman looked away. The sergeant opened his mouth to add to the joke, say something crude, but he saw the look on Morrow’s face and bottled it.

  ‘Anyway, that’s us done,’ he said, giving Bannerman a sympathetic look about Morrow. ‘We’re off.’

  They watched the gaggle of big men pick their steps carefully down the far stem of the T-junction, tiptoeing until they were carefully beyond the tape and out of the crime scene. They climbed back in their shiny black van.

  Morrow wished she was alone and could bite herself again but she took a breath and asked the cop, ‘What’s the story?’

  The plod drew a breath to speak but Bannerman cut him dead. ‘Family, at home after Ramadan prayers in the Mosque—’

  ‘Which Mosque?’

  ‘Central for the kids, Tintagell Road for the daddy.’

  Morrow nodded, it made sense. Central was a city-wide mosque, young people from all over the city got to check each other out. Tintagell was smaller, local, had a tighter community feeling about it. If the kids were going to Central then they weren’t territorial, weren’t gang-marked. Good kids.

  ‘Gathering back at the house,’ Bannerman continued, ‘door-bell rings, thinking that a family member had forgotten their keys, daughter opens door, father in hall. Two masked gunmen enter shouting threats, looking for someone called Rob. Demanded money and ordered them not to call us—’

  ‘Much?’

  ‘Two million.’

  ‘Pounds?’

  ‘Aye.’

  They looked back at the house, valued it, MacKechnie said, ‘Worth about three hundred K, do you think?’

  Morrow and Bannerman nodded in agreement.