by Denise Mina
‘Horrified. In front of her. Thrilled when she’s out of the room.’
‘He’s not a disciplinarian then?’
‘Aamir?’ She half giggled at the suggestion, remembered he was in mortal danger and became tearful. ‘God, no, he’s . . . a nag, a worrier but not heavy handed. He’s . . .’ She looked for a moment as if she might cry but caught herself, raised a hand to cover her face, hiding for a moment. ‘Sorry.’
Morrow reached out a hand to her arm but didn’t touch her. ‘No, don’t, it’s awful . . .’
Tired of being excluded by the women, Bannerman blurted, ‘Why wasn’t Aamir good enough for you?’
She took a breath, pulled herself upright. ‘Poor Ugandan refugee. Had nothing but a strong work ethic.’
‘And twenty-eight years later . . .’ Morrow left it open.
A happy woman would have grinned and nodded, smugly affirmed the rightness of her choice. Sadiqa smiled weakly. ‘Yeah, it’s a long time, right enough.’ Absent-mindedly her hand strayed to the crusted blood on the front of her nightie and she looked down, suddenly distressed, taking her hand away and looking at it.
‘Haven’t the boys made it in yet?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, they can’t come because of the baby. I phoned them though. I phoned them because you can’t even have a phone on in here. It interferes with the machines or something.’
The boys could have phoned the ward and been put through to their mother, Morrow knew that.
‘Well, maybe it’s best if they don’t come up anyway.’ Morrow touched her arm. ‘It’s bound to be quite frightening.’
She had given her an excuse and Sadiqa appreciated it. ‘Yes.’ She looked around. ‘It is frightening. Very frightening. I’d actually rather they didn’t . . .’
‘Would you like us to bring you some clothes from home?’
‘No, no.’ Sadiqa softened. ‘No, I’ll go home later in a cab, get some food. The food’s disgusting here. They cook vegetables by boiling them for an hour . . .’
‘How’s Aleesha doing?’ asked Bannerman, shutting his notebook when he saw the coppers being let back into the ward by the nurse.
‘She’s not dying.’ She raised her eyes in a silent prayer of thanks. ‘Stable. Probably move her out of intensive care today. Half a foot to the left and she’d be—’
‘Oh that’s great,’ he interrupted. ‘Well, listen, we’ll leave you with these officers and we’ll go downstairs and make a phone call. When we come back in a minute we’ll try to talk to her.’
They weren’t coming back. He was keeping Sadiqa on point.
‘OK.’ Sadiqa nodded, watching uncertainly as Bannerman shuffled off to talk to one of the officers. She looked at Morrow.
‘Thank you very much, Mrs Anwar.’ Morrow nodded, letting her know she understood what she had done.
‘Please,’ said Sadiqa desperately. ‘Please find him.’
‘We’ll do our best.’
Sadiqa went back into the intensive care room, resuming her purple seat, watching them anxiously through the window as she pulled her pink blanket up protectively over her chest.
Bannerman was muttering orders to the coppers. ‘I don’t want that woman using a phone until I give the say-so. Not talking on the ward phone, not using a mobile in the loo, not nipping downstairs to buy biscuits, understand?’
Through the intensive care window Morrow could see Sadiqa sitting tense, staring at her daughter, gnawing on a thumbnail.
20
When they opened the door to Shugie’s bedroom the little man was sitting as they had left him, upright on the bed, but something was wrong: the corners of the pillowcase met his corners. He looked too tidy. He’d taken it off and put it back on again, which was bad, but his posture troubled them more: he sat confidently, shoulders down, head up, facing them, not cowering. His head swivelled as he looked from one to the other through the pillowcase, his bearing so upright they both felt inexplicably afraid, as if it was a rehearsal for meeting them in court. It was creepy because his bearing made him seem human.
Eddy looked at Pat, glanced at the crack in the curtains, looked back at the confident man. Pillowcase knew the police had been there. He had been at the window and seen them or heard them downstairs and thought they were coming to save him, banged on the floor deliberately to fuck them up.
Pat could feel Eddy’s rage rise like a scream in a pitch too high to hear. Eddy stepped towards the bed, teeth bared, out of control and grabbed the man by the forearm, shaking him hard, toppling him face down into the mattress, twisting his arm up his back hard, the way the police did. The old man gave a squeal, ‘no’ or ‘ah’, but it was high anyway, shocked, not what he had expected. Pinning him face down on the bed, Eddy raised his other elbow high and jabbed a short punch into his kidney. The old man buckled and collapsed, groaning, the gush of air muffled in the mattress. Eddy punched again and again, hitting the soft skin on his back, missing the ribs deliberately, going for the soft tissue.
Pat looked away for part of the attack. Then he thought Eddy might see him looking elsewhere and forced his eyes onto the pillowcase. It twitched out a response to the blows.
Eddy stood unsteadily on the bed, over the body, saliva flecked on his chin, panting like a child on a bouncy castle. He was fighting off a smile. Pat watched as he wiped it away with the back of his hand. It was odd to enjoy it so much. A bit sadistic. You could kill a man doing that to him.
He looked down at the pillowcase, thinking vaguely about internal bleeding and the mysteries of the human body. If Eddy killed it he would have to sort out getting rid of the body, Pat wasn’t going to do it, he hadn’t laid a finger on him. But then Eddy would probably give a body to Shugie or some other arsehole and they’d get done for it.
As an afterthought the old man gave a twitch, raising his buttocks up in a futile attempt to get away, and he slumped back, face down on the bed.
Suddenly stern, Eddy gestured to the other side of the bed. Pat shuffled over and they took an arm each and dragged the pillowcase off the bed, trying to stand him up on his cloth legs. He buckled forwards. Twice more they tried to stand him up and both times his knees flopped hopelessly outwards. It was getting worrying. On the final try he took his weight, just one knee buckled, swinging a circle but coming back. Eddy nodded Pat to the door.
They dragged it on its toes out to the landing, through the mildew cloud at the bathroom door, yanking it, giving it contradictory signals about which way to go. By the time they reached the top of the stairs the pillowcase was crying and muttering, sputtering and gasping for air between sobs.
Eddy stopped, looked down to the front hall and back to Pat. Pat could feel warmth through the sleeve, human warmth, but he looked down at the hall carpet and thought of Aleesha, of the depth of her grief for her father, of slipping his arm around her shoulders and her silky hair sliding across his bare arm. His hand gliding around her shoulder, his fingertips memorising every hair, her sharp shoulder blades, vertebrae, the powdered softness of her skin. She would need him then. Desire made him peel his fingers away from the arm but as soon as he did he felt himself diminish and was ashamed.
Eddy took a step forward still holding the arm, yanking hard but the pillowcase stood firm, upright, looked at him angrily. It yanked its arm away indignantly. He knew there were stairs there.
A clatter of feet made them look down: Malki was running up towards them, lifting his knees high, smiling. ‘Brought the car round the back,’ he panted, stopping two steps down, holding the banister and swinging down a step again.
Eddy glared at him.
‘Bloke’s already heard my voice,’ explained Malki, a hand on the wall and one on the banister, barring the way. ‘I already spoke to him, when I give him the sweeties. He can’t eat them ’cause they’re not halal.’
Somehow the moment had passed. They couldn’t do it in front of Malki. In front of Malki would risk a long conversation about right and wrong, a dispute; he would ask
about their motives, talk about the pillowcase as a person. Foiled. Pat felt proud of his wee junkie cousin.
Eddy motioned for Pat to take the stairs ahead of him and followed him down, pinching the old man’s elbow tight as he led him roughly down the steep steps.
Shugie was dozing on the damp settee. A second blue plastic bag was sitting open and next to him with three new cans in it. The previous bag of cans lay empty, the tins discarded on the floor.
‘Dunno if three be enough,’ said Malki. ‘But it’s all they had left in the shop.’
Pat shrugged. He didn’t want to speak too much in front of the pillowcase. Carefully he reached around to his wallet and took out a twenty quid note. He looked at it, calculated that it was probably enough for an alki to buy drink but not enough for a really greedy drinker to spend a night in the pub with other people. He sat it on top of the cans in the bag.
They formed a strange parade, passing through the living room to the kitchen and out the back door: Malki ahead with his hurried junkie speed-walk, Pat behind him, the pillowcase puffing and jerking as he was prodded and shoved by Eddy following behind. Malki hesitated at the kitchen door, waiting for Eddy’s signal. Eddy nodded and Malki opened it, letting fresh air into the festering corridor of bin bags.
They had been in the house for almost ten hours, breathing in every nuanced smell a human being can make without dying and the back garden seemed impossibly lush and fresh. Each in turn stopped on the back doorstep to take a grateful breath.
It was a jungle: grass grew long and dark here, an enclosing wall of deep green waxy hedges exploding upwards, bursting in every conceivable direction, swallowing the light. As the wind caressed the blades the grass winked its silver undersides.
The Lexus had been driven into the long grass so that the boot was facing the kitchen door and Malki had left a trail through the grass from the driver’s door to the back step, from the boot to the passenger door as he emptied anything from it that might be used as a weapon. Pat followed the path to the boot, popped it and stepped back.
Eddy took his time, glancing spitefully at the old man. He seemed unsatisfied that the pillowcase was walking stooped, that he was limping on one foot, flinching at the pain in his back. Swinging him by the elbow Eddy turned the pillowcase so that his back was to the boot and punched him in the groin, winding him so that he doubled up. Eddy stood up with a snigger and looked at Malki and Pat. Malki looked away. Pat smiled weakly. Oblivious to the animosity, Eddy smirked again and, as if telling a joke, put his hand flat on the old man’s head and, with the smallest push, dropped him into the boot.
The excellent suspension echoed the fall of the old man’s body. Eddy looked around for support, smiling, lips parted. Pat and Malki were from a wild sprawling family, composed mostly of ineffectually worried mothers and bad apples, a model of complex social problems, but it took a special kind of man not to empathise with a punch in the balls. They wouldn’t meet his eye. Malki even tutted at the car.
Angry at having measured his violence wrong, yet again, Eddy picked up the feet in dirty slippers and dropped them into the boot, swinging the old man onto his side, and slammed it shut as if hoping to trap some small something between the metal lips.
Malki looked for Pat to say something. ‘In the car, son,’ said Pat and Malki obliged, shutting the door carefully behind him.
Eddy looked angrily at the back of Malki’s head. ‘Your Malki’s a twat.’ Pat glared at him. ‘OK, I know he’s your cousin, but he fucking is a twat.’
Pat’s eyes were open wide in warning. The pillowcase could hear them. The wind hissed through the grass as Eddy looked away and blushed. He couldn’t seem to stop fucking up. Pat turned away and walked around to the passenger door. The pillowcase knew two names now; Eddy had said them out loud and told him that two of them were cousins and so now Eddy couldn’t let him walk, he’d have to kill him and leave Aleesha fatherless, rudderless, looking for love in all the wrong places. Pat could be one of those places.
As he opened the passenger door and slipped inside the car his chest was warm, full of thoughts of sunny places and hair on pillows.
21
Morrow and Bannerman were parked in Alison Street, looking across the road to two big shop windows.
The restaurant didn’t have a name painted above the door, it wasn’t listed in the phone book, but everyone knew it as Kasha’s. It didn’t even look like a restaurant; it looked more like a community centre because of the modest furnishings and utilitarian decor. The seats were moulded grey plastic, the tables wood effect tops with steel legs. Even the wallpaper was slightly grey, a dado rail hinted at a different pattern but mirrored the dull colours in the rest of the room. The food service area was a modest four-foot sandwich bar, a fridge full of cans of mango juice, bottles of water and glass jars of mango lassie.
Morrow knew that later in the evening it would be full of men eating, sipping coffees and drinking fresh lassie out of long glasses, but it was Ramadan and the men were sitting around empty tables, keeping each other company but not eating.
One table was conspicuously eating, though. The four men were sitting at a table away from the window near the dimly lit back of the shop, their table shamelessly strewn with plates of food. A fifth man stood in the doorway, dressed like the others. He stood with his hands crossed over his groin, watching the street. He wasn’t the biggest of the men but Morrow knew him from his reputation. King Bo was a nasty, cold boy. He could break bones to order: one finger, two legs, even a thumb, which is a hard bone to break, did it without a flicker and he was fast too. But King Bo was a sideshow, a soldier. The men at the table were the main event.
There were four of them, all big, all dressed in T-shirts and tracksuits, all frowning as they worked their way through their food. The Shields bosses, and at their centre was Ibby Ibrahim.
‘Only be a minute,’ said Morrow and got out. He let her go alone without a fight in the end. Ibby was a good contact, the sort of contact to boast about to other officers, a name to drop and he was letting her have it for the good of the case. It was big of him and she found that, reluctantly, despite herself, Morrow was starting to hate him a fraction less.
She shut the car door and stepped across the empty street, looking King Bo in the face as she approached. He reared his head back. His hair was cut short and gelled into a fin, the quiff tip matching his pointy chin. Afflicted with a slight squint he gave her his best mean look. She looked down to pull out her warrant card as she approached, and when she looked back she found him grinning.
‘Nah,’ drawled King Bo, ‘that’s not a pass in here, lady.’
She stopped four feet from him, her heels hanging off the edge of the pavement and looked around. Ibby could see her standing in the street but she didn’t look at him. He might tell her to fuck off. She hadn’t seen him for twenty years, he might not even remember her.
She could just turn and leave, let the past be the past. Her Bob lead was already panning out and she was making herself vulnerable coming here. She was making herself traceable back to her maiden name, from there back to her family and she’d worked so hard to shed it all. But King Bo leaned backwards into the shop, listened to something and then bent towards her. ‘OK, aye, you’re in.’ He stepped back in the dark, flicked his hand to send her to the table of men, avoided her eye as if they were letting her in against his advice.
Morrow was the only woman in the place and her top was low enough cut to show half an inch of cleavage. She walked in feeling like a stripper entering a monastery.
‘Go.’ King Bo pointed her towards Ibby.
She walked over but stopped a few feet short of the table and looked at him. ‘Hello.’
Ibby looked up at her. He was a big man, brooding, wide shoulders, big fists. His nose had been broken many times, the bridge of it ruined. He was dressed in a tracksuit as if it was pyjamas, no attempt to make an impression or sway an audience. Everyone he met already knew about him. Ibby looked a
t her cheap work suit, looked at her face. ‘Heard about you,’ he said, chewing a mouthful of dark green sag aloo. Morrow could almost feel the mustard seeds popping on her tongue.
‘How’re you, Ibby?’
‘No bad.’ Ibby tore off a handful of virgin white flat bread from a plate in the middle of the table and used it to pinch a mouthful of spinach from his plate and put it in his mouth. ‘How’s Dimples?’
She shrugged, aware of Bannerman watching outside, hoping she looked professional through the window.
Ibby glanced at her cleavage and pointed, drawing the attention of the other men to it. ‘Evening all,’ he said. The boys sitting next to him laughed, not really understanding, she felt, but toadying to their boss none the less.
When the sycophantic laughter died down she spoke again. ‘Your nose . . .’
‘I was in a accident,’ he said too loud, too flat.
‘Some accident.’
He chewed the mouthful, smiling to himself and Morrow found herself smiling too. It was nice to see him again. It was nice that he wasn’t dead. Nice that neither of them were mad or in prison or jagging up.
Ibby grinned back, mustard seeds littering his teeth. ‘Fuck, man, ye went polis?’
She shrugged. ‘Couldn’t handle the accident rate on the other side,’ she said and looked out at Bannerman in the car. He wasn’t looking at her; he seemed to be wiping the dust from the dashboard with a tissue.
Ibby picked up a paper napkin and rubbed his meaty fingers with it, ripping it into bits. He sat back and tipped his head at her. ‘Go on then. Say whatever.’
‘OK, erm, you’ve heard about the hostage-taking last night?’
He nodded at his dinner.
‘They were looking for Omar Anwar. For Bob.’
His face was blank, neither listening nor contradicting.
‘Bob. You called him that.’
‘I never called him Bob.’
‘I don’t mean you personally, Ibby, I mean yous.’