Still Midnight

by Denise Mina

  He felt for something in his teeth with his tongue, couldn’t get it and picked at it with his pinkie fingernail. ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Bob?’

  ‘Hmm.’ He agreed. ‘Some people call him Bob.’

  ‘Only some people?’

  Ibby looked up at her. ‘No,’ he said carefully.

  She understood. ‘OK. Anything you want to share about the events of last night?’

  ‘Tell ye what, yous must be stuck to come here.’

  ‘We could go to the community leaders but they’ll just give us a load of, you know.’

  ‘Community leaders? We’re community leaders.’ The men around him nodded smugly. ‘Oh, legitimate community leaders, ye mean? Like MPs or Councillors or whatever?’ The men were smiling, less at what he was saying than the tone of his voice. Ibby was enjoying himself. She wondered if he knew he was surrounded by arseholes. ‘Well, we’re a community, we’re leaders, this table.’ He pressed his finger down hard on the flat bread. ‘This table’s a community.’

  He was talking shit so she took her chance and interrupted him, ‘Yeah, so anyway, you know anything about last night then or what?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said flatly and meant it.

  He looked to see if she doubted him. It was the angle as much as anything, him looking up at her. His face had broadened, darkened but the eyes were the same. Deep brown, hooded. She couldn’t see Ibby now. Instead she saw the child who sat next to her in first year of secondary school, the wee boy who scratched himself a lot, was small for his age. She was inexplicably fond of Ibby at the time, felt protective when he was asked anything by unthinking teachers, because he knew nothing. He was only in her school briefly. They sent him away after he nearly killed a boy.

  The child was in their year and had a thing about Ibby’s sister. He probably fancied the girl, Morrow thought in hindsight, but he’d got to that stage a month or so before everyone else, so that his chasing her seemed bizarre. Ibby thought it was a threat. Morrow could still see Ibby’s fingers threaded through the boy’s hair. His deep brown eyes were wet as he ground the boy’s broken nose into the asphalt playground floor.

  She understood him perfectly back then, the disproportionate wild quality of his violence. Social work got involved, she’d heard, and Ibby was taken away and never came back. They were all afraid of the social work, those children, the ones who stood, hands hanging by their sides and calmly watched Ibby do that, the ones whose parents didn’t come up to the school after and demand answers. They kept their heads down because to get noticed was to disappear. When the teachers came to drag Ibby off, Alex was who he reached for. She managed to wriggle her way through the teachers’ legs and touch his hand for a moment. Fingertips reaching for each other through a scuffle of legs. His knuckles were skinned raw.

  Morrow said, ‘Aamir Anwar’s a nice man, isn’t he?’

  Ibby conceded that Aamir was OK with a dip of his head and a glance at the table top.

  ‘No rumours you want to share?’

  ‘White guys, Glasgow accents. Nothing to do with us.’

  ‘You’ve got contacts.’

  ‘So have you.’ He smiled at his dinner as a plan formed in his mind. ‘What station you working out of, then?’

  The Young Shields were just head cases. They still had gang fights in the streets. It was all about territory still, they’d never gone professional or money-making. He might imply that he’d like a corrupt police officer on his payroll but Morrow was pretty sure Ibby didn’t have a payroll.

  ‘Here and there,’ she said. ‘Move about.’

  He smirked. ‘Might come and visit you at your work one day.’ He wasn’t really talking to her, just showing off to his pals.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Do that.’

  ‘Tell Dimples hello from me.’

  Morrow stopped. She hadn’t noticed the first time he mentioned Danny because she’d been distracted by Bannerman outside but Ibby had name dropped Dimples twice now and each time he did the fat boy next to him pushed his chin out, proud. A protective familial reflex made her notice, wonder if they’d battered Danny or bettered him somehow. Instinct made her square up to the henchman, but she forced her eyes to the floor. She was being sucked back in, she should leave.

  ‘Take care, Ibby,’ she said. ‘Try not to have any more accidents.’

  She turned to the door when Ibby spoke again, under his breath, ‘Hey, anyway, your da . . . Sorry he’s no well. In the infirmary . . . ?’

  Morrow read his face. The old man was such a has-been no one would have bothered to pass on the information. Danny must have told him. ‘Aye,’ she said gently. ‘Fuck him, anyway.’ She walked away.

  King Bo stepped aside when she came to the door, lifting his arm away from her, as if being in the police was something you could catch from social contact.

  ‘Bye bye,’ she said pleasantly, and the big gangster sneered to show how hard he was.

  She crossed the street back to the car. As she opened the door she looked through the window of Kasha’s again. King Bo had a mean face on, arms crossed, looking down the road for invading hordes. Inside Ibby was stuffing bread into his face. She could see under the table that his belly was heavy. He was getting fat. They were all heading for old. She climbed into the car and Bannerman started the engine.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t the Shields,’ she said.

  ‘We knew that.’

  ‘No. We suspected that. Now we know it definitely wasn’t them.’

  ‘You believe the word of a crim?’

  ‘I believe Ibby Ibrahim,’ she said as Bannerman pulled out into the road. ‘He’s too proud to lie.’

  He smirked. ‘If he’s too proud to lie we should get him in for questioning. Clear up half the batterings that went down on the Southside last year.’

  ‘Well, he’s honest off the record. On the record he might just be willing to lower himself.’

  They drove down Alison Street. Alex watching out of the window, glancing up every crumbling close but not seeing, wondering about Danny and Ibby. Thinking about family prompted her to ask: ‘How’s your mum?’

  ‘Bad.’

  She left it hanging for a moment. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, she’s on the mend, she’ll be fine really. She’s going to be fine. She’s on oxygen and massive doses of antibiotics but she’s sitting up and everything.’

  ‘Eating?’

  ‘Eating a bit, yeah.’

  ‘So you don’t need compassionate leave?’

  ‘No.’

  Morrow slapped her leg. ‘Damn!’

  Bannerman grinned at the joke. ‘You are as much of a bitch as they say you are.’

  It stung a bit but she hid her hurt and took it in good part. ‘Well, you know what they say, it’s iceberg bitchiness with me: only ten per cent visible.’

  They drove on, smiling away from each other, glad to have what lay between them acknowledged: he got her big case and she wasn’t popular. Having ripped their plasters off they sat quietly, letting the air dry the wounds.

  Bannerman suddenly veered the car, twitched his hips as if responding to a sudden itch. He pulled his crappy work phone out of his pocket and gave it to her. It was vibrating. Morrow pressed the green button and held it to her ear.

  ‘Bannerman?’ It was MacKechnie.

  ‘No, sir, it’s Morrow; Bannerman’s driving.’

  ‘We’ve found footage of the car at Harthill. It’s a silver Lexus. Hired under a fictitious name. We’re looking for it now.’

  ‘Great—’

  ‘The kidnappers called the Anwar house ten minutes ago. Go over on the pretext of picking up the tape, get another look at Bob.’

  22

  Even from inside the boot Aamir knew that where they were going was worse. The texture of the road beneath became rough. First they were bumping across broken asphalt then on grit, the wheels crunching over small stones, not factory-ground gravel but wild irregular stones.

  The driver slowed,
saving the car paint from being chipped. Aamir remembered it was a new car, he had smelled it last night. They crawled along the road for more than a mile until Aamir couldn’t hear the sounds of any other cars, just the wind buffeting the side and the faint swish of grass, birds.

  The car stopped. The engine died. The men in the cabin spoke in short sentences. They got out and opened the boot to the blinding daylight. Someone prodded him to get out, yanked him up by the neck and Aamir scrambled to his feet, felt the wind on his hands and neck, chill and damp on his legs and hands.

  A British passport.

  They couldn’t read, those soldiers, just saw the navy blue cover and knew that they had official sanction to steal, to do whatever they wanted. It was on the way to the airport, one day before the ninety days ran out. His older brother had stayed behind to guard the house. They never saw or heard from him again. Aamir saw his mother sobbing by the roadside, the contents of their suitcase strewn across the red dust of the road, green shirts, photos of ancestors, her meagre jewellery taken.

  They all disappeared behind the van and Aamir heard them: her sobbing and the men laughing awkwardly, the way men do when they see a stripper or talk about sex, a different quality laugh, deep, embarrassed. And he knew before they came around to the road, adjusting their flies, before he saw the blood, that they had fucked his maman. Aamir sat very still in the taxi, staring forward, straight through the soldier sitting on the taxi bonnet smoking a cigarillo, knowing they would be killed.

  She fell back into the taxi next to Aamir, sari pressed tight over her mouth and didn’t look at him. One of the soldiers shut the door after her, hung in the window and touched her hair because he could, running it between his thumb and finger as if it was material he was thinking about buying for his wife.

  Aamir felt the cold Scottish wind buffet him again and braced himself, cowering, his chin on his chest. Men like these men did not drive to the countryside for no reason. They were going to kill him. He shut his eyes to pray and, from a deep dark place, a small bubble of honest emotion rose to his chest, an old feeling, a puff of African dust and the smell of cigarillos. The feeling was urgent and fresh, unadulterated by memory. He had been running from this small bubble for thirty years, suppressing it with prayers and work and worry, with children and home improvements and food. A puff of dust from the November road to Entebbe airport. Under the pillowcase Aamir opened his eyes in shock. Facing death his last thought was honest and pure. It was relief.

  In Scotland a hand pulled him roughly by the arm, so that he staggered wildly over the uneven road of shattered concrete, he tumbled forwards, over and over, around a big building that blocked the wind, through a high open door into shadows. Inside smelled damp and stale, of cold and mud and wet on the walls. It sounded like a tall wide room.

  They walked Aamir through the hall, deeper and deeper into the gathering darkness, away from the door and the sound of the wind. Leading him calmly now, across metal pathways with a pattern on it, nonslip, he could feel it through his slipper soles. Silent, they took him over wooden planks that were not fixed into the ground, rocking under his weight. Up a steep set of clanging metal steps, they kicked the back of his heels, making him lift his feet and step through a lipped doorway.

  It wasn’t a room. The air smelled of dusty iron. His footsteps were deadened. The sound of his own breathing echoed back at him like an ambush. Aamir tried to make sense of it: the floor was concave, he was standing in a big iron tube. Looking down at the ground beneath his pillowcase and in the light from the doorway, all he could see was a crumbling carpet of rust, red sheets that fell to dust under his feet, red like the road to Entebbe.

  His arm was let go, the men backed away. Aamir shuffled around to face them, turned his palms up, lifting them in welcome to the coming close. The men shuffled on the metal steps, one of them going down, another dragging something. Something metal. A heavy metal door, rust resisting their efforts to pull it shut.

  No. They had to kill him.

  Aamir stepped towards them, hands out now, a beggar. They couldn’t leave him with this acid desire to be gone.

  ‘PLEA—’ He stepped towards them but the door slammed shut. All was darkness. A bolt ground closed on the outside of the door. They meant to leave him in here.

  Reckless, trying to force their hand, Aamir yanked the pillowcase off his head but it made no difference: the dark was absolute. He could hear the distant thump of feet on metal as the men outside walked away.

  Young again, on the road to the airport, a hand on the hot plastic of the taxi’s back seat and the smell of indifferent cigarillos. He’d stayed in the taxi and let them have her, listened to them laughing as they watched one another fuck her, just so that he could live. Pointless. He could never touch her again, never forgave her, felt soiled and tired for every waking moment after that. He had traded her honour for a life he didn’t want.

  Aamir threw his head back and screamed, a strangled roar that echoed back, knocking him to his knees in the brutal inky dark.

  23

  He’d say he forgot if they caught him. Forgot to stay in. No big deal, but Shugie walked faster than usual along the road and he kept his head down too, as if he didn’t have a distinctive puff of white hair and wasn’t the only guy in an electric blue leather bomber jacket shuffling down to Brian’s Bar, as if he could make himself invisible through force of will.

  Still, he felt relief as he stepped through the cordon of smokers gathered around the door and his fingers fell on the familiar grit of the dirty swing door. He stepped into Brian’s, the metal sole protectors on his cowboy boots tip-tapping on the stone floor, and made his way to the bar. A free seat.

  Senga was serving, her hands as soft as her eyes. She always dressed in T-shirts she got free, whether with cash and carry purchases or from the brewery. Today she was wearing one with a circle on it, advertising cancer. It clung to her hips, hung loose around her shoulders. She was eating cheese and onion crisps and slowly pulled her hand out of the crinkling bag, yawning her mouth open to get them in whole, her heavy eyes watching the bar for clients, for trouble, but never judging.

  Without wasting the effort of walking down to greet Shugie she tipped her chin, asking if he wanted what she thought he wanted. Shugie blinked back a yes. She slopped over to the taps and drew a half of heavy, poured a cheap whisky, and sauntered over, used a sour cloth to moisten the stickiness on the bar in front of him and set the drinks up.

  The twenty pound note impressed her and she didn’t try to hide the fact. She gave the note a respectful nod and held it up to the light to make sure it was for real. She touched his hand when she gave him back the change. Senga didn’t always do that.

  Shugie looked at his drinks glittering in the glasses in front of him, like old times, glory days. He had change in one pocket, fags in the other. Sunshine filtered in through the dirty windows and Senga settled back into her packet of crisps. The whisky fired first his mouth and then his throat. Shugie Nirvana.

  As he raised the beer chaser to his mouth, tipping his head back to receive his communion, his eyes fell on the silent television in the corner. Sky News. A red tickertape along the bottom of the screen. Glasgow businessman taken hostage. Police appeal for information. Shugie knew about that. He was still working scams, pulling strokes, keeping moody. He was still who he thought he was. Smiling to himself he put the glass on the bar, he caught Senga’s eye, gave her a wink.

  She couldn’t have done it if she tried: in exactly the same moment, with perfect precision and without rehearsal, Senga simultaneously tutted flirtatiously and farted at him.

  Billal had known that the police were coming. He opened the door solemnly, inviting them into the quiet house.

  Bannerman muttered some pleasantries but Billal didn’t respond. He shut the door behind them and they noticed how quiet the house was now, how comfy and warm. The hall carpet seemed softer than yesterday, thicker. The door to the bedroom was slightly ajar and they could
hear Meeshra snoring softly, napping with her baby.

  The only reminder of the night before was the bloody wall and clock. Someone had tried to wash the blood off but they had used hot water, Morrow could tell from the rusty brown smears. A man. Women knew how to wash blood. Never wash blood with hot water, she remembered her mother telling her over her underpants, because it cooks it into the material. It was the only useful bit of information she’d ever given her other than you won’t meet your husband at a football match.

  Billal gestured them into the front room. The Anwars’ living room was a symphony in peach and white, everything ordered, white and silver ornaments carefully spaced along the mantelpiece and a big white framed mirror above it. Morrow had the impression that no one came in here much. The kitchen was for standing in, the table too small for the whole family. They were not a family who ate together.

  Billal waited until they were in and orderly before he spoke: ‘The kidnappers actually spoke to my brother, so I’m not really sure what they said really.’ He lowered his big square frame gingerly onto the edge of a flouncy settee, the arms and back curved outwards like lips. ‘But I have the tape for you.’ He held out a black mini cassette. Bannerman took it and dropped it into an evidence bag, fitting it into his pocket. He took out an evidence label and got Billal to sign it.

  ‘What’s this for?’ he said, writing his name on the line. ‘Not signing my life away, am I?’

  ‘No, no,’ Bannerman smiled affably, ‘it’s just so that if we use it in evidence we can say who’s had access to the item.’

  ‘I see.’ He handed back the tag and looked uncertain. ‘I don’t know if my brother handled that. He was there . . .’

  ‘Did he take it out of the machine or anything?’

  ‘Um, no, I don’t think . . . Uh, no.’ Billal was in charge last night, ordering his brother into the car, telling Meeshra off for breast feeding badly, but now he seemed quite passive.

  ‘Is your brother here?’

  ‘No. He’s . . .’ Nervous, he brushed a non-existent speck from the cushion next to him. ‘Omar’s gone out.’