Still Midnight

by Denise Mina

  Blue and white was strung up between some of the hedges, blocking the roadway, and a fat copper was standing next to it, a local plod, warming his hands by rubbing them together and stamping his feet. He wasn’t acting it either; his nose was red and his top lip looked damp.

  Bannerman cut the engine. ‘Noisiest bloody car I’ve ever fucking been in,’ he said to himself.

  ‘Saved us having to talk to each other for forty minutes though.’

  Bannerman swung to her aggressively, ready to take it out on her, but found her smiling pleasantly. Despite himself he smiled, swinging away from her so she wouldn’t see him concur. He opened the door and stepped out. She liked him better away from their gaffers.

  Opening her own door she stepped out into the bristling cold. Harthill was on higher ground than the city and the air was thinner here, the skies often brutally clear. Tonight a giant white moon lit it. The tarmac on the road had snapped like a slab of toffee. The motorway was hidden behind a hill, the lights glowing over the low horizon. Whoever brought the van here knew the area. Looking to the foot of the hill she saw a clump of wind-gnarled trees gathered around a smouldering white van, well lit by the Forensic Fire team.

  The Scene of Crime Forensic team would not be here for a few hours, not until it got light. There wouldn’t be any point in the dark. Unless Osama Bin Laden personally organised a massacre in the Glasgow city centre over the next few hours theirs would be the first crime scene they came to. In the meantime a crew of two were trying to pat out the dying fire, preserving what little trace evidence they could.

  It was hard to put out a fire in a vehicle that would serve as evidence. Smother it in foam and you might as well wash it under a tap. Throw water at it and any accelerants would disperse and start an ancillary fire elsewhere. In the morning they’d do a fingertip search of the surround and lift the van without opening it, take it to a sterile environment for analysis.

  ‘Harthill,’ she said. ‘On their way to Edinburgh?’

  Bannerman shrugged a shoulder. ‘Not an obvious place is it?’

  ‘Maybe they knew it from somewhere.’

  ‘Can’t exactly make that the basis of a search though can we?’ Bannerman pointed to the ground. ‘No marks.’

  She was desperate to know but embarrassed to ask. ‘What else did Omar say?’

  Bannerman looked at her curiously, surprised by the tone in her voice, not knowing what it meant. ‘Not much. I thought he was it, but . . .’

  She shrugged and looked off towards the van. ‘I thought he was too.’

  Mistaking consensus for intimacy Bannerman leaned into her, quite close, and drew a breath. Suddenly panicked by his proximity she scurried away, over to the fat copper guarding the tape.

  He was freezing but still nervous, asked their names and rank and where they were from, jotting it longhand in his notebook, as if he was doing an exam. He probably didn’t have much crime scene experience. He must have been the same age as them, Morrow thought, early thirties, but his ruddy face and fatness made him look much older. People got old quicker in the country.

  Sensing Bannerman coming up behind her Morrow ducked under the tape and walked over to the mouth of the field, staying on the far side, away from the obvious path anyone leaving the field would be likely to have taken. A farmer was standing there with a copper but she didn’t look at them. She was looking at the ground.

  The moonlight was so bright she could see the shadow of marks in the frost: tyres from a car were picked out in the tarmac, a parked car had sheltered a rectangle from the ground frost and then driven away. She looked up the road, squinted, crouched.

  Indistinct footsteps trailing back and forth to the car from the field, muddying one another, some deep zigzagged treads, like army boots, size eightish, some flat soled, like slippers, another pair of trainers. Disappointing: frost was a useless medium for prints.

  Bannerman saw her looking at them and shouted back to the plod by the tape, ‘Get the photographer out here and get them before they disappear.’

  The plod looked shocked and hurt, as if he had been reprimanded, and swung away to talk into his radio.

  She looked away from the footprints and saw the press of tyre tracks. New wheels, clear zigzags and deep lines, which was bad. It was easier to match worn tyres to track marks, chips and wear in the rubber could be as effective as a fingerprint, but factory fresh all looked the same and there were only a few manufacturers.

  Bannerman was behind her and nodded at her thought. They traced the movements wordlessly, pointing and tutting and humming, keeping their eyes on the ground. They traced the footsteps to the break in the hedge and looked into the long stretch of churned mud in the field. The footsteps broke up here, the ground was too lumpy, but some of the partial impressions were clearer, a toe, a heel, the side of a sole.

  Morrow took what she could from it: three sets of feet coming towards her, muddied by steps that were there already, perhaps meeting others who had been waiting. She looked back, sorting the impressions in her eye: two sets coming towards her, a scuffle of overlaps, but they looked like the same treads on the soles.

  Finally Bannerman asked, ‘What ye seeing?’

  He was good at this, she knew that, but was either trying to be friendly or intending to steal her ideas for his own. She almost hoped it was the latter. ‘Two gunmen,’ she said. ‘Same boots on. Thought for a minute they were met here but unlikely. Two big men, a driver and a hostage. They wouldn’t all fit in a car unless they were met by just one other guy. Only the army boots go to the driver’s door.’ She pointed back up to the large patch left bare of frost by the car. ‘They must have left a car here to pick up. We can check the CCTV at Harthill, see what pulls off earlier and match it with what pulls out later.’

  Bannerman was still looking back at the rectangle. ‘How do you know that’s the driver’s door?’

  She drew her finger along the tyre marks. ‘They didn’t reverse out, did they?’

  Bannerman looked pleasantly surprised. ‘Hm.’

  He was going to steal that, she fucking knew it, he was known for it below ranks. Gaffers thought he was a genius.

  ‘That’s the third one this year, burnt out cars on my land.’ The farmer standing opposite her was wearing a Barbour coat and had a pissed-off, sleep-puffed face. His accent was almost impenetrable and Morrow found herself watching his lips for clues.

  ‘Is this your land, sir?’ she said.

  ‘It is my land, aye, aye, mine, yeah.’

  ‘Would you mind standing behind that tape over there? We’ve got frosty feet marks here and we’re trying to keep them good until the photographer gets here.’

  ‘But it’s my land.’

  ‘Ye can see my point though, eh?’ She gave the copper a look, tipped her head to the side to get the farmer out of the crime scene.

  ‘It’s my land,’ mumbled the farmer, unsure if he’d been reprimanded, but proactively annoyed anyway. ‘I’m staying here if I want to stay here. And why did you not bother before and now you’re bothering about this one? They’ve burnt out cars before this one and ye did nothing at all. Had to shove the cars out mysel’.’

  He was almost unintelligible. Too long Bannerman’s eyes stayed on his mouth and when he finally broke off it was to nod, bewildered, and frown at his feet. He turned to the uniform. ‘Officer, were you the first here?’

  The uniform nodded at Bannerman as if he was meeting a film star. He had a red farmer’s face and round body, not flattered by the double-breasted plastic police issue jacket buttoned tight across his belly.

  ‘Find anything? A passport or a home address? No letters with photo ID on the path up here?’

  ‘Nothing like that so far, sir, no, as far as I know, like.’ Same accent, voice quiet because he was intimidated by the specialist from the town, almost as hard to understand as the farmer.

  Bannerman snorted, looking to Morrow to laugh along with him: a bonding moment between colleagues.


  ‘Have you actually done a search?’ she pointed towards the van.

  ‘Not yet, ma’am, no.’

  ‘How do you know then? Get that man out beyond the tape.’ She walked off into the field, leaving Bannerman to stand with the two men he had been ridiculing a moment ago.

  Even she was starting to wonder if she was an arsehole.

  11

  ‘I am not sitting down anywhere here.’ Pat crossed his arms and looked around the living room. There was not a surface on floor, walls or ceiling without a suspicious stain nearby.

  Sitting in the least damp corner of the balding brown corduroy settee, Shugie looked up at him, tipping his head back to compensate for the puff on his eyes, and whispered, ‘OK then.’ His smoke-fucked voice was barely a rasp.

  ‘Because,’ Pat, leaned in to provoke him, ‘it’s fucking ginking.’

  Shugie blinked, sanguine about the charge. ‘OK.’

  Foiled, determined that Shugie would be as upset as he was, Pat looked around the floor, at the settee, through the door to the kitchen. ‘ You live like a dirty fucking animal.’

  But Shugie was unperturbed, distracted, perhaps by the profundity of his hangover. He shut his rheumy eyes to sniff, the violent action disturbing the delicate balance of forces behind his eyes, and he cringed with pain. ‘Oooh.’

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘Oh aye. OK.’ He kept his eyes shut, awaiting equilibrium. ‘You’re saying it’s dirty and that’s fair enough.’

  ‘Look at that.’

  With supernatural effort Shugie peeled one swollen eye open and followed Pat’s finger to a distant meeting of floor and wall. He squinted at it: something small and brown had grown its own white fur coat.

  ‘Wit the fuck is that?’

  Shugie shrugged at the distant object. ‘An orange?’

  ‘An orange?’

  ‘Or a tangerine?’

  ‘It’s a shit.’

  Dropping his feet heavily on the stairs they heard Eddy coming downstairs from keeping guard outside the old man’s room.

  ‘There’s a fucking dog shit in your living room.’ Pat raised his voice, restating his case so that Eddy could hear.

  ‘Naw,’ Shugie sighed with the effort of talking, ‘there hasnae been a dug in here for three month, man.’

  ‘Then it’s been here for three month. Look at the bloom on it.’

  Shugie did as instructed. ‘Nah,’ he said unconvincingly, ‘that’s just an old tangerine or something.’

  Pat looked accusingly at Eddy but didn’t get the chance to speak.

  ‘Your watch,’ said Eddy, thumbing over his shoulder to the stairs.

  ‘This place . . .’ Pat found himself lost for words. He pointed at the furry white intruder by the wall.

  Shugie threw his hands up and rasped an appeal to Eddy. ‘He’s going mad over an old orange or something.’

  In a gesture of solidarity Eddy flopped onto the settee next to Shugie. He sat suddenly straight, his eyes widened. He jumped to his feet again, turning to look at the damp seat of his trousers, moving his hand to brush the urine off and then thought better of it, flapping his hand at it instead. ‘Oh, ya dirty fucking . . .’

  Pat grabbed his arm and pulled him roughly into the kitchen. ‘Come in here.’

  The kitchen looked even worse in the weak morning light. The window above the sink was broken, a triangle of glass missing from the bottom corner, the rest of it documenting every splash of dirty water that had ever hit it, a thick layer of grey dots emanating from behind the mixer tap. Beyond the lace of dirt the very tip of the Lexus’s silver bonnet shone in the sun.

  The wall of bin bags blocking the passage to the back door were not just leaking sticky mess onto the floor, the ones on the bottom were stuck in a pool of white.

  ‘I can’t stay here,’ said Pat.

  Eddy was standing too close to him, chewing his bottom lip.

  ‘It’s not . . .’ Pat looked around the floor, ‘healthy.’

  ‘Pat—’

  Pat pointed into the living room. ‘There’s a shit with mould on it in there.’

  Eddy pinched his nose, paused, and shut his eyes. When he spoke it was with forced patience. ‘The trouble I had to find this place—’

  ‘Trouble?’ shouted Pat. ‘The cunt drinks in your fucking local. All ye did was buy a pint and turn around.’

  Eddy’s eyes were still shut. ‘I looked at a number of places as possible—’

  ‘Oh, “A pint o’eighty”,’ shouted Pat, flailing his hands about indignantly, ‘“Aye, you, you seem to smell of pish, have ye a house? Can I hold a hostage there? Would that have a shit in the corner?”’

  Pat looked up for a response and found the barrel of Eddy’s gun pointing at his eye. Eddy spoke quietly to the tip of his gun. ‘Patrick,’ he told it, ‘I’ve went to a lot of trouble and you’re not really appreciating that.’

  Pat was hypnotised by the circle of deep blackness.

  ‘I have tried reasoning with you,’ whispered Eddy, a tremor in his voice as the enormity of what he was doing sunk in. He was looking at Pat’s mouth, quite close, as if afraid to look at the eye he was about to shoot. They were wet again, the eyes, the bastard fucking eyes brimming with panic.

  ‘I’ve tried so fucking hard . . .’

  ‘Edward.’

  ‘I’ve really fucking tried.’

  ‘Get the gun away from my face or I will kill you.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll kill me,’ and Eddy waggled the end of the barrel in Pat’s face, afraid to drop it now, in case Pat did kill him. ‘I’ve got a gun on you and you’re threatening to kill me, is it? You’re threatening me? Who are you tae fucking threaten me?’

  They both knew who Pat was. Pat was a Tait, and he didn’t need to threaten Eddy. Being a Tait, even an estranged Tait, meant that he was a walking threat. The barrel was pointing at Pat’s ear now. ‘Point the gun at the floor,’ he said carefully.

  Eddy didn’t know what else to do. He lowered the barrel, spluttering a sob of relief.

  Calmly, Pat reached over and, hand over hand, took the pistol from him. He held it away from Eddy and flicked the safety on, took a deep breath and spoke: ‘This is a fuck-up from start to finish. We both know it.’

  ‘Aye,’ whispered Eddy urgently, tears rolling down his face. ‘Aye, I know it’s a fucking mess, I don’t know what to . . . I just sat in that old cunt’s pish.’ He rubbed his eyes with the ball of his palm, smearing tears into his hairline.

  Pat reached out and touched Eddy’s back with his fingertips and Eddy covered his face like a girl and cried, high pitched, helpless. Beyond the kitchen door Shugie crossed his legs and Pat saw that he was wearing trainers with the wrong laces, brown laces from brogues. I don’t belong here, he said to himself, knowing that he really meant that he didn’t want to belong here.

  ‘If she hadn’t taken the fucking kids, man,’ squeaked Eddy. ‘If she’d only let me see my fucking weans . . .’

  It wasn’t the wife stopping him from seeing the kids. This lie had developed slowly, like a lot of other lies in Eddy’s life. Pat went along with it but now, abruptly, he looked at Eddy and saw a man refused access to his children by the courts because he was an unreliable moody arsehole, a man who brought Shugie in so that people in their local would know he was up to something big, a man who, over the course of today, would misremember last night, rewrite events so that Pat was the nervous one who fucked up. He looked at Eddy, self-pity seeping out of him. Eddy wasn’t capable of being honest. I do belong here, Pat admitted, I do belong, but I don’t want to.

  As Eddy bubbled, Pat calmly took himself away, back to the pink hall of the toast-smelling house. He wasn’t in this kitchen, wasn’t in the house with a disputed mouldy shit in the living room and fossilised bin bags in the kitchen. He was back in the pink hall, watching a lock of perfect silky black slide over a young shoulder. He was back in the clean, where bad smells elicited disgust and a shit on the floor wouldn’t even get t
he chance to get mouldy. That’s what he wanted.

  She had just brushed her hair before they came in, he realised. Sat in front of the telly and brushed her long hair. The image made him smile, made him warm, until Eddy’s shrill sob shattered the image.

  Pat reached out to still him. ‘Don’t . . .’

  ‘That Irish cunt . . . I don’t know what to do . . .’

  ‘Let’s go and get some toast or something.’ Pat’s voice was expressionless.

  ‘We can’t leave that pishy cunt to mind him,’ said Eddy looking out to the living room.

  ‘OK. We need to get moving.’ Aleesha’s hand came up and touched his face, the hand that was no more, but he wrote that part out. Her fingertips touched his face, her pretty gold rings glinting in the corner of his eye. ‘I’ll call Malki, get him over here to mind Shugie.’

  ‘How are we, how are we gonnae do that? I mean, we can’t move now, that fucker’ll go and get pissed and tell everyone.’

  ‘Malki’ll come, I’ll get him to bring bevy for Shugie, get him to stay in the house, say we’ll be back any minute. You and me, we’ll go get some toast or something—’

  ‘Toast? What ye on about toast for?’

  ‘And we’ll phone the family.’ Pat imagined himself arriving at the door of the Anwar family home, being greeted by the brothers as a long lost friend, being offered tea as he slipped his jacket off in the pink hall. ‘Ask about the money. I’ll sort it out, man, don’t worry.’ He pointed to Eddy’s pocket. ‘I’ll speak to the Irish.’

  Eddy took his phone out and selected a number, pressed call and handed the phone over.

  Irish had been asleep. His voice was an angry, startled bark. ‘Whit?’

  ‘We’ve got the father and we’re calling them this morning.’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘The other one.’