Still Midnight

by Denise Mina

‘The Lamborghini,’ said Morrow, calm and enjoying it. ‘How can you afford it if you need your dad to buy a shed for you?’

  ‘Well,’ he coughed, ‘the Lamborghini . . .’ he scratched his face. ‘See, with that, the thing is—’

  The lawyer leaned across him to Morrow. ‘We need a comfort break.’

  ‘You’ve just come in.’

  ‘We need one now.’

  ‘OK. Let’s take ten minutes then.’ Bannerman noted the time, that they were stopping for a short break and switched off the tape recorder.

  The lawyer stood up. ‘Omar and I are going out to the corridor for a moment.’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘Yes,’ she ordered. Omar got up and trotted out after her. He looked scared.

  Bannerman and Morrow sat at the table, feeling distinctly like the winning side as Omar and his lawyer whispered in the corridor. Morrow checked her buttons and make-up, flattened her hair and then Bannerman gave her a comradely smile. They knew better than to speak within earshot of the person they were questioning but Morrow shrugged and mouthed ‘Not VAT?’ Bannerman beamed.

  The lawyer came back in with her jaw clenched and sat down on the inside this time. Omar followed her sheepishly and sat down where she pointed him to sit.

  ‘Mr Anwar wants to tell you about the Lamborghini now.’

  ‘OK,’ said Bannerman slowly, putting the tape back on, getting the details on it and sitting back smugly. ‘So, Omar, you wanted to tell us about the Lamborghini?’

  Omar cleared his throat. ‘Yes,’ he said formally, ‘I do want to tell you about it. I have been thinking about ordering a Lamborghini from the Stark-McClure garage in Rosevale Road.’

  ‘Thinking?’

  ‘Well, I’ve done a couple of test drives and I put down a deposit, my dad put it down, as a present for getting a first in my degree.’

  ‘Deposit?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Much?’

  ‘Two grand.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yeah, but when the order goes through you have to pay the full amount.’

  Bannerman tried not to smirk. ‘And I suppose you have documentation to the effect that your dad put the deposit down for you?’

  Omar looked at his lawyer who nodded angrily at him to tell Bannerman.

  ‘The receipt is in his name and the credit card payment is his. Both receipts are in the strong box my dad keeps on top of the fridge in the kitchen.’

  Not sure where to run with the ball Bannerman got angry. ‘They came looking for you, for Bob, who knows you as Bob?’

  ‘Loads of people. Half the Southside calls me Bob.’

  ‘Did people at uni call you Bob?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You were in the Young Shields?’

  ‘Well, I hung about with them a bit. As I said I was getting battered on my way home from school . . . St Al’s uniform was a bit of a beacon.’

  ‘How did you leave the Shields?’

  ‘My dad found out I was hanging about with them and grounded me for six months.’ He looked angry about it and then talked himself round. ‘He was right, he was right to do that actually. I started working hard then, ’cause I was stuck in all the time anyway and that’s when I started doing well at school . . .’ Thinking about his father, his eyes welled up again. He looked at the three adults around the table. Again Morrow was the only one who didn’t look away. ‘Do you think he’ll be OK?’

  She wasn’t one for doling out cheap comfort. ‘We’re doing our utmost,’ she said. ‘Omar, who do you think did this?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea. Who has a gun? Isn’t that the big thing? Who could even get a gun like that?’

  Bannerman made a play of looking at his notes and then put them down. ‘What else have you lied about?’

  Omar opened his hands wide. ‘Nothing, man, swear.’

  Bannerman stared at him. ‘Omar,’ he said softly, ‘what else have you lied about?’

  Omar looked concerned and turned to his lawyer. ‘I haven’t lied about anything else. I dunno what to say . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I think we’ve done all we can here.’

  Suddenly furious, Bannerman slapped his hand loudly on the table. ‘We are questioning you, Mr Anwar. This isn’t a game. We’re attempting to find your dad and you’re supposed to be helping us, not impeding our work.’ Bannerman had judged it wrong, he was too angry, too loud, and everyone sat still around the table. Morrow watched a bubbled fleck of Bannerman’s spit that had landed on the tabletop. The skin thinned and the bubble burst.

  Bannerman looked at his notes again, holding them up as if he wanted to hide behind them. He dropped them angrily on the table. ‘The kidnappers called again this evening?’

  ‘Yes they did,’ said Omar obediently.

  ‘You offered them forty thousand pounds.’

  ‘I did.’ Omar seemed afraid to look up. ‘I offered them that, yes.’

  ‘How did you arrive at that figure?’

  ‘I went to the bank this afternoon. That’s all the money we have in our bank accounts.’

  ‘All the money your dad has in his accounts?’

  ‘They’re family accounts, one’s under the name of his business.’

  ‘What did the kidnappers say to that?’

  ‘Said fuck off.’

  ‘Meaning that’s not enough to get him back?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Bannerman sat still. ‘Omar, what would you say about a man who had the money to get his father back like that,’ he clicked his fingers, ‘and didn’t pay up?’

  Omar frowned at Bannerman’s fingers. ‘Had the money?’

  ‘A man who had the money sitting in a shoebox in the back room, had plenty of money just sitting about but refused to hand it over.’

  ‘Why would anyone do that?’

  Bannerman shrugged. ‘You tell me. Maybe he hates his dad.’

  ‘He’s still his dad though.’

  ‘Maybe he got the money doing something he shouldn’t. Maybe he knows he’ll get in a lot of trouble if he hands the money over. What would you say about someone like that?’

  Omar looked up into a corner of the room, considering the scenario, and brought a steady gaze down to Bannerman. ‘I’d say he was a total bastard,’ he said simply.

  29

  They both knew it. Of all the grim fucking nights they had spent together in the past ten years, this would be the longest.

  Pat couldn’t bring himself to ask about the birthday Eddy had forgotten, or nod that it was the wife’s fault because she didn’t remind Eddy in time. That he hadn’t asked about it meant that a fight was brewing. They’d had fights before, when they were drunk, over money, but they were both angry those times. Only Eddy was angry now. Without discussion, without warning, Pat had shifted away.

  Eddy ground his teeth as he drove, his nostrils flared, a distant look on his face, as if he was daydreaming about hurting someone. Pat wondered if Eddy had his gun with him. His own was still down the back of the bin in Shugie’s kitchen.

  The Lexus pulled slowly through the moat of gravel around Breslin’s, crossed a grassy bank and onto the concrete runway. Eddy stopped in front of the loading bay entrance. It was open, big enough for three lorries to back up for loading at the same time. Eddy pulled on the handbrake, leaned over the wheel, snorted at the dark mouth of the door, and looked at Pat expectantly.

  Pat blinked. The plastic bag on his lap was burning the skin on his thighs. It was a Chinese takeaway. Oil had leaked out of a bag of spring rolls and puddled in a corner of the blue plastic, burning into his lap. Even though they hadn’t eaten since their morning roll and the cabin was saturated with the delicious aroma, Pat didn’t want to eat. He stared hard at the door, blinked, looked out of the passenger window. He wanted to throw the passenger door open and run, to run away across the dark fields, run through the knee-deep marshes, away to the fast road and hitch a lift back to the city.

  ‘Ma
lki’ll be hungry,’ said Pat, blinking faster now, as if he could wipe the night away. Eddy opened his door and Pat did the same. They stepped out into the dark.

  Breslin’s had been shut down twenty or so years ago and the building was disintegrating. The cantilevered lintel above the loading bay door had snapped off and now barred the doorway, the metal struts sticking out of the concrete, twisted and rotted orange. The whole of the building had been colonised by defiant vegetation, bursting through the cracks, easing the slabs apart in geological time.

  Leading the way ahead of Eddy Pat carried the takeaway reverentially, as if he was leading an offertory procession. He ducked under the collapsed lintel, stepping into the wall of blackness inside. His footsteps sounded dead as he took the stairs up to the loading platform, and through the door into the packing hall. He stopped, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark, but it was too thick.

  Eddy stepped in front of him, holding up his mobile phone high for the light from its face. The blue gleam barely made a dent in the dark, the phone was old, so he supplemented it with a pen torch he kept on his keyring.

  Holding the mobile high and the pen torch low, they picked their steps into the room. Pat followed Eddy, clutching the takeaway to his chest for warmth. It seemed very quiet. They expected Malki to have a wee radio on or something, to have a wee light on, they’d left him a couple of candles and knew he’d be off his nuts anyway. Junkies were like cats or foxes, they could make themselves comfortable anywhere.

  Silently, Pat and Eddy made excuses to themselves all the way through the packing bay, but at the mouth of the works room they could see that there was no light on, no whispery radio, no bed made of newspaper, no snoring. Pat stuck his face through the doorway, into the absolute dark, listening.

  The works room had a metal floor, metal tables bolted to it, some of the legs bent where someone had tried to lever them off the ground but failed. Metal steps at the back led up to the big circular boiler where they had left the pillowcase. The whole room was metal, a leaf couldn’t pass through without making a noise. But they heard nothing.

  Malki wasn’t sitting where they’d left him. The candles weren’t lit, there wasn’t even a sound of him hiding from them, if he thought they were the police or something. Malki had fucked off. It was going to make everything worse.

  Pat whispered before he even realised he was going to, ‘Malki?’

  Eddy muscled in the doorway next to him, held the torch up. The pinpoint pierced the room, dimming twenty feet away, casting a narrow canal of glow, helping hardly at all.

  ‘Malki?’ Pat spoke louder, telling himself he’d feel foolish when Malki walked in at the back of him. ‘Where are ye?’

  Holding the mobile and torch in one hand Eddy reached into his pocket and took out a bag of five tea light candles, bursting the plastic with his teeth, taking out a lighter and bending down, emptying the candles on the floor. He set them up right, lit the lighter but it was draughty. The first couple of times he tried the wind blew the flame out. Purposefully he crab-walked into the room, his feet clanking on the metal floor, the sound booming around the empty space. He set the candles up at the base of the wall inside, in a line, each dropping to the ground with a little ‘pup’ that echoed around the metal room. His lighter took, successfully catching the wicks with the flame.

  Pat watched Eddy crouching, rolling forward rhythmically over and back, over and back, like a man up to his waist in rough seas, and he knew then that Eddy was so angry he was on the brink of going absolutely fucking mental.

  Pat put the takeaway down on the floor and looked around. The candles tried but failed, their poor light struggling against the blackness, seeping into it and being swallowed, deepening the shadows. Pat looked up to the boiler. The steps were empty, the platform at the top of the ladder beyond the thin reach of the light, a black void. He stepped towards it, calling softly for his wee cousin, pleading with him to come out, hoping to Christ that Eddy didn’t have a gun in his pocket, certain that he would be looking for an excuse to use it. Pat couldn’t let Eddy shoot him. Malki wouldn‘t fight back. Like his long gone father Malki was a rogue, but a gent. He wasn’t even a fast runner.

  ‘I’m going to look outside,’ snarled Eddy, the glow from his mobile phone lighting his chin, making him resemble a Halloween ghoul.

  ‘No!’ Pat’s voice snapped back from the cold metal floor. ‘Just,’ he held a hand up, ‘just wait a minute. Give us the fucking pen torch.’

  He took the keys from Eddy, holding the torch steady, not looking at his hurried hands as he fitted the spokes of the keys on it through his fingers to make a weapon in case Eddy went for Malki.

  He headed to the ladder, hoping to find warm foil or a burnt spoon on the landing. Maybe Malki was outside pissing; he was like that, had nice manners, ideas about how to do things, keeping things clean. He put his foot on the first step and pulled himself up.

  The narrow beam of torchlight spilled over the landing step to the boiler door and Pat saw that it was open. Thinking Malki had let the pillowcase go and had run off himself, he took the next step and the light swept into the round belly of the boiler. A white leg, a blue cap, squinty, a blue stripe, wet. Red.

  Pat dropped his hands to the dusty step, scrambling up the remaining steps, across the landing, into the black dark of the boiler.

  Still as a waxwork. Malki was lying flat on his back, arms outstretched like Jesus, one knee pulled up to his side, a dancer in mid flight. Pat reached forward and took his hand as if he was going to shake it. Rigid, skin cold. The mouth was open, lips pulled tight across his teeth. Dry. The teeth were dry.

  A crash from behind heralded Eddy running towards him, jumping up the steps, pointing his phone, the dull gleam whipping around the inside of the boiler, then steady. Eddy stood in the doorway, shining the brutal light at Malki’s face. Scarlet freckles were splattered all over his face. It came from his neck, at the side, a ragged mess of skin, like something had burst out of it, a cut like lips, only an inch or so long, but the redness came from it. A puddle had formed underneath Malki and soaked into his white tracksuit, it was working its way up through the material. He looked old, skullish, but Pat knew he was just a wee boy.

  Eddy: ‘How did the cunt get overpowered by a midget Paki?’

  Slowly, Pat stood up. He stared straight into the beam of light, an expression on his face that made Eddy’s feet falter. ‘My phone . . .’ said Pat flatly.

  Eddy tipped his head quizzically, as though he had never seen Pat’s face before. Pat pushed past him, down the ladder. His steps fell loud as cannons as he crossed to the door.

  ‘Um, Pat?’ Eddy called after him, his voice small, ‘are ye off to phone his ma?’

  With wide purposeful strides Pat passed through the packing room to the light at the loading bay door. Eddy’s voice was thin and far away.

  ‘I’ll wait here then, eh?’

  Through the loading bay, under the lintel, into the broad concrete road, Pat burst into a run, faster and faster until he got to the car and then a sudden burst of adrenalin made it impossible to stop. He sprinted the three hundred yards to the end of the concrete strip, dropped to touch the edge for reasons he would later find bewildering, and bolted back to the car. He was by the door, jogging on the spot, knees up to his chest, faster and faster and faster, trying to keep time with his heart, lifting his fists in time, punching his chest. He panted like a woman in labour, trying to breathe the pain out, trying to burn it up.

  Twenty-three years ago Pat had sat on a settee with his feet not reaching the end of the seat. Auntie Annie sat next to him, her hands hovering beneath the baby’s back and head, and Pat holding the baby for a photo. Pat grinning, the baby turning away from him, secretly making an ugly face that no one knew about until they got the picture back from the chemist’s. They’d ordered two sets.

  Malki once had a girlfriend who looked like a monkey. Big jaw. She chucked him and he cried for a week.

  A car
door, blue, new, swinging open in a street in Shettleston as Pat yomped the five miles home in shitting icy rain one Hogmanay night and Malki’s gleeful face grinning out from the driver’s seat. ‘Lift?’ He was thirteen.

  Pat kept running on the spot until his lungs felt like they might burst. The energy left him as fast as it had come. He slumped over the roof of the car, pressing hard against the cold metal. Pat pushed his face into the roof, pushed until the bridge of his nose clicked.

  Standing up, he drew in a breath and held it. The marsh smelled of rotting things, of dead grass melting into the water. Without a thought in his head Pat pressed the button on the car key in his hand, opened the door and climbed into the driver’s seat. He shut the door and locked it, adjusted the seat to fit him, pulled the seat belt over himself.

  He flicked the headlights on just as Eddy’s face appeared under the lintel. Eddy’s mouth was open, eyes wide as the headlights crossed him. Swinging the car in a wide circle on the concrete, Pat turned around and drove away.

  30

  Morrow drove home through the calm traffic, wishing it was heavier, hoping someone not far in front would have an accident. No one did.

  Blair Avenue was settling in front of the television after a heavy dinner, curtains were being pulled, lights were on upstairs as families spread out and children steeled themselves to do their homework. A man coaxed an old dog along the road, touching its back to remind it of the direction. Three teenage boys eyed two girls chatting showily on a far corner.

  Her curtains were drawn open, the light was on in the living room but she couldn’t see the flicker from the TV. They had a security timer on the lights. He might not even be in there.

  Taking her courage in both hands she reach forward, took the car key from the engine and opened the door to the street. She put one foot on the road, made the other one follow it, slammed the door, locked it and kept her head down as she walked up the path to the house. He’d done some tidying in the garden since this morning. Weeds pulled up and the loose soil brushed back off the tiled path. He’d brushed the steps as well.