Still Midnight

by Denise Mina

  Her key was in and the door half open before she heard the radio from the kitchen. Her chin crumpled, a hot red flush rose to her eyes, making her stop on the step to take a deep shuddering breath. Dread of home. Not tonight. Not him and not tonight.

  Being stuck on her own doorstep made her angry and she used the feeling to open the door and step in. Shutting it carefully behind her, she dropped her shoulders and let the coat slide down her back and into her hands. She threw the coat on the end of the banister, dropped her bag so that it would be in the way and marched into the kitchen.

  Perched at the end of the kitchen table, Brian was doing some work on his laptop. He had heard her coming in, was already looking up at her, the resentment smothered by his pursed lips. White light from the computer screen glinted off his glasses, turning his eyes into harsh silver razor blades.

  ‘Alex . . . ?’

  ‘Hi.’ She meant to sound light but it came out leaden. She dropped her keys on the counter. ‘Big case, didn’t get back last night. Haven’t slept for about forty hours.’

  ‘Hm. You must be tired.’

  She almost laughed at the banality of the observation. He sat back, one of his broad shoulders turning a circle as if his neck was sore. He looked at her, his mouth twitched softly. He was waiting patiently for her to answer. ‘Yes,’ she responded in the same bland tone. ‘I am. How are you?’

  ‘Fine. Neck’s a bit sore again. The plumber came, sorted out that drain in the garden.’

  She flicked through the gathered letters on the table to give herself something to do. ‘Good. Did he find the blockage?’

  ‘Newspaper, he said.’ Brian was trying to catch her eye, ducking his head to meet her, missing every time. ‘He said someone in the street has been using newspaper instead of toilet paper. It doesn’t dissolve in the same way.’ She didn’t speak. He waited for a beat. ‘I think it’s the students farther down, probably, in the Bianci house. They probably ran out of paper and were improvising.’ He forced his mouth to smile, half closing his eyes, keeping them shut when the smile was gone, trying to mask his hurt. ‘Can I run a bath for you?’

  Morrow no longer loved the texture of skin on his neck, no longer loved the way he held his mug or the steadiness of his gaze. ‘Think I’ll have some herbal tea. Want some?’

  ‘I’m on the beer tonight.’ He held his bottle up, as if guilty. ‘Needed a beer . . .’

  She turned away and flicked on the kettle, biting her bottom lip hard to stop herself shouting.

  Brian was skirting it, getting around to talking about things. Losing her breath she turned away to the crockery cupboard and issued a warning: ‘God, I’m absolutely exhausted.’ She took out a mug and watched the kettle rumble to its high C. Don’t say that, Brian. Don’t fucking say it.

  Brian watched her back for a moment, she could feel him reaching for her and finding her gone. ‘Well, you know what they say.’ Don’t Brian, don’t say that. ‘A watched kettle never . . . well, you know.’ He sniggered to cover his embarrassment.

  Morrow kept her face to the kettle and brought her index finger to her mouth. She bit the knuckle so hard she could taste blood.

  In the dark the artexed ceiling of the bedroom was a jagged mountain range. Morrow stared hard at it, angrily wishing herself asleep, making her way from one side of the room to the other, through the passes, sticking to the low ground. It calmed her, a big job, and the ceiling was broad and dark, hard to keep track of all the ridges. She had been doing it for almost an hour when she heard movement downstairs, a light snapping off, a door shutting. She listened, mapping the movements of Brian’s slow, inexorable approach.

  He had finished working, had pushed his chair back on the stone floor with the backs of his knees. She heard him slap his laptop shut. He moved to the hall to put the laptop into the protective foam zip bag and then into his bag for the morning. He’d say it in his head because she wasn’t there to say it to: sorting things out, ready for the morning.

  Brain stayed safe in routine, in cliches. He ate the same lunch every day, ham and cheese on brown bread and an apple. Regular in his habits, predictable. Safe.

  She was halfway along the ceiling, almost dead centre, when Brian had a quiet moment and she wasn’t sure where he was, but then the dishwasher began its evening churn. Hall lights snapped off and then the steady thud of his feet up the carpeted stairs heading to the bathroom for his routine. Tooth brushing, flossing, examining the floss. Face washed and then dried, three pats of a towel - cheek, cheek, neck.

  But Brian didn’t go into the bathroom. At the top of the stairs he left the grid of predictability. He had stopped outside the nursery. She listened for him to move but he didn’t. Brian stopped too long for it to mean he’d forgotten something, remembered something, was lost in an extraneous thought. He thought she was asleep, that he was alone, and out there in the lonely dark she heard him keening softly.

  Separated by the splinters of the door, Brian cried quietly for the lost axis of his world and Morrow lost her way among the mountains.

  31

  His legs were numb, his hands were numb, his face, chest and heart were numb. Aamir stood in the tall grass with the sea behind him, looking back over the marsh he had waded through.

  In the dark the water was black and still, a solid glass floor over an underworld. Aamir had no memory of passing through it. His clothes were wet and freezing around him, his skin tight, his muscles twitching but he looked back at the black and all he could recall was the loss of warmth. She was in there, lost.

  He had cowered inside the metal tube for an infinity, staring at the brightness at the door, aware of the boy’s body and then not aware. He thought he saw the tracksuit melt into the red dusty road. Quite suddenly, the wind was on his face, birds were in the air above him and his feet became wet, cold, his shins, his knees, his genitals. Pulling his knees up to walk became a Herculean task but he did it, holding her hand the whole time, dragging her behind him like a doll, like a heavy, dead doll.

  In the black water, somewhere, at some point, his mother’s hand slipped from his and took the heat of his body with her. She was in the water but he hadn’t the courage to go back for her.

  The sandy bank he was standing on slowly began to give way beneath his bare foot and he stepped away from the edge. He looked down. He had a slipper on. Just one. It had soaked up water and that was what had made his foot so cold. Remedying the problem of biting cold on his foot he slipped his foot out and stood in the dark, watching the damp dark sand rise up between his toes.

  Around him the air began to lighten. A bird rose from the ground a hundred feet away. Aamir raised his face to it and saw a light, a bulb, swinging hypnotically in the dark. He lifted his right knee, took one step and then another.

  Eddy watched as the sun rose over the wetlands, a sluggish October haze of dirty yellow behind nasty clouds. He sat on a concrete block at the end of the road burning-eyed, spent, and watched as birds rose from nests near the water and seagulls swooped over the far estuary, shrieking like indignant women. He was deep down cold. His head ached from grinding his jaw all night.

  He turned, looking down the road. Apart from the security issue, he couldn’t call a cab because he’d no fucking money to pay the fucker. Four miles to the nearest service station and he had £2.43. He came out with twenty on him, leaving his cards at home for security purposes, and he’d spent a good bit of that on the chinkie.

  As the meagre sun came up he looked at his hands. Greasy from the chinkie food. Dirty. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. The dirt came off in a paste, rolled into greasy cigars. Brown. He looked at it closer, rubbing his fingertips into the bowl of his palm. It was blood. Junkie blood with Chinese grease over it. He’d been eating that. His stomach turned over: disgusting. Might have Hep B or Aids in it or something. He looked up at the sun as if it was responsible. Revolting. He said it aloud for company: “Revoltin”.’

  The sun struggled into the heavy sky and
he looked around at the rubble of Breslin’s forecourt. Weans had been here, smashed every window, wrote on big blank walls with house paint. They’d written dirty words: shit, cunt, then run out of ideas and thrown it at a wall in a big splash. The tin was still there. Magnolia gloss.

  Eddy sucked his teeth, reliving the bloody meal. If he left the takeaway empties in the building rats would come, maybe eat the face. The thought turned his stomach but he tried to pretend it didn’t by frowning. They always ate a person’s face in films but maybe that wasn’t true. If they did it would be good. Unrecognisable.

  He sighed, shifted his buttocks and pulled out his phone. The battery symbol was blinking. He’d been using it for light in the night, when the candles ran out, checking the floor for firewood but failing to find a single combustible item in the whole fucking factory.

  He checked the time on the phone’s face: 6.50. Too early. He’d be annoyed but Eddy couldn’t wait any longer. He held the mobile to his forehead and shut his eyes, rerunning the facts in head, what to say and what not to say. Then he looked at the keypad and stabbed the number in with his blood-greasy finger.

  The phone was answered with a deep silence.

  ‘Me,’ said Eddy, feeling suddenly overwhelmed and tearful.

  ‘Let me guess,’ said the Irish, ‘you got nothing last night?’

  ‘Correct.’ Eddy had meant to plough on through the awkwardness of recriminations at the beginning but he lost his breath slightly and didn’t trust his voice.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Lost . . . a man.’

  ‘Lost?’ Irish seemed to be sitting up, paying attention suddenly.

  ‘Aye. Lost.’

  ‘The subject?’

  ‘No, one of ours . . .’

  ‘Where’s the subject?’

  ‘Hm.’ Eddy looked around the grass in front of him as if expecting Aamir to pop up out of it and wave. ‘Location unclear.’

  ‘Unclear? Unclear?’

  ‘Kind of . . .’

  Irish was sitting bolt upright now, Eddy could tell, and he was leaning hard into the receiver. ‘Son, just so we’re clear about this: one of your guys is dead and the hostage got away, is that right?’

  Eddy didn’t like them talking normally; it made it all seem stupid and hopeless. He faltered, kind of groaning from inside his throat and managed a faltering, ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘You owe me for them guns anyway,’ said Irish, sounding less cool and professional now, sounding worried and fretful now. ‘Right? I’m not letting you off wi’ that, right?’

  Eddy looked at the phone angrily. Irish was supposed to be a professional for fuck’s sake, he was supposed to be unshakeable, the training was supposed to kick in when things went tits up. Eddy could do frightened-to-fucking-death himself. He listened to a hard breath on the other end and Irish spoke again. ‘He got away. Has he arrived home, do you know?’

  Eddy looked around the wetlands. ‘No.’

  ‘Will he?’

  Eddy shut his eyes hard. He didn’t want to talk about this. ‘No.’

  ‘Good. What did they offer you?’

  ‘Forty grand.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Aye.’ Eddy felt tearful at the thought of forty grand. ‘Look, are you sure these people are pulling strokes?’

  ‘Intel is rock solid. Intel is local, gave us the layout of the house, everything.’

  Eddy wondered at that, at the Irishman having the layout and not telling them about it. ‘Just, they seem kind of normal, the house isn’t all that big and there’s a million of them living in it.’

  ‘Pakis do that. Intel is solid. They’re playing hard ball. Accept the forty. Arrange a pick-up this morning.’

  ‘But forty grand’s fuck all—’

  ‘Cut and run, son. Call, accept, arrange for immediate pick-up.’

  ‘Then disappear?’ said Eddy hopefully, liking the fact that it all sounded like a training exercise, like a set of movements that guaranteed a successful mission.

  Irish faltered. ‘Well . . . OK . . . ?’

  Eddy frowned at the non sequitur.

  ‘OK, look, I’ll tell ye what. Call, accept, arrange for pick-up this evening at seven o’clock, right?’

  ‘Why?’

  A bluster of a sigh tickled Eddy’s eardrum. ‘Son, we do this all the time, never a hint of a worry, right? This one’s . . . complicated. Your first time, not a lot of . . . guidance. But I’ll say this for ye, son, you’ve shown real promise . . . Real promise.’

  Eddy wasn’t stupid. He didn’t really think he had shown promise; he’d made a couple of mistakes, but he wondered how it looked from that side of the Irish Channel. He’d lied a lot. Maybe it looked better there than it did from here.

  ‘That’s to be encouraged. Need good men. Call, accept and arrange pick-up for seven, I’ll be off the ferry at five tonight. Meet me at the place at six—’ The voice stopped, the phone light went out and Eddy looked at it. His phone had run out of juice.

  Aamir lifted a knee and took the next step and the next and the next, heading for the light. The water was there, moving water, a sea. He walked along a rough path, stumbling, lifting knee after knee until he got to the light. A torch. It was on the ground, flat, the precious light spilling wastefully over a patch of concrete. Behind it stood a figure wearing a good warm winter coat, hood up, facing out to sea. Aamir blinked and saw that he was holding a fishing rod.

  He turned his face to Aamir, his hood unmoving, his face sliced in half. The man was Aamir’s age, Aamir’s height, a Scottish man.

  ‘Dear heavens,’ he said, ‘what in the name of God happened to you?’

  32

  Morrow’s eyes opened a fraction, searching for the red numbers on the alarm clock radio, but she woke up facing the wrong way, towards Brian’s side of the bed. The duvet was still tucked in, his pillow unflattened. She blinked again and rolled over towards the window. Morning scowled behind the curtains.

  The alarm said 7.18. She could reasonably get up. Normally she would. She’d get up and leave him sleeping here for another forty minutes. She’d have the house to herself, listen to crap on the radio, eat toast, be alone, leave before he got up, but he was up already, out there, somewhere in the house.

  She sat up, the duvet peeling off her, the warmth evaporating from it into the cold room. The heating was timed for 7.50. She liked the cold of the mornings, liked the prickle of chill on her face as she drank warm tea.

  She sat up and looked at the closed bedroom door hatefully. She couldn’t stay in here. She needed a pee. Aware that she’d just opened her eyes and was already angry, she threw the rest of the warmth off herself and stood up, going to the wardrobe and pulled out clothes for herself, clean shirt, fresh suit wrapped in thin plastic from the dry cleaners. Brown, her safe suit, the one she wore for assessment interviews. Pulling on the trousers and jacket made her feel stronger, smarter, armoured. She put on socks and shoes and stopped behind the door, warning herself just to get ready and out, don’t engage, don’t respond.

  In the bathroom she found herself listening for him, hypervigilant, like a house sweep. She washed her face and put on some mascara from the shelf behind the sink, tipping her head back, avoiding her own eye by staring at the lashes. The toilet flush sounded unreasonably loud and she stood watching the whirlpool in the bowl. Wherever he was in the house now he could hear her, knew where she was.

  There was no radio on as she stepped down to the hall. His computer bag was still there, propped carefully against the wall, his jacket was hung up on the peg by the door. She passed the table and saw his keys in the bowl but he wasn’t in the kitchen eating a neat breakfast or standing at the worktop organising his packed lunch.

  Surreptitiously, pretending to look for something in her bag, she ducked back into the hall and glanced into the living room but he wasn’t there either. Frowning, she flicked the kettle on, pulled some bread out of the bread bin and dropped it into the toaster and turned
to look around. Brian was in the garden, wearing his dressing gown and propped up in a stained and faded deckchair they’d inherited from his parents. The wood had rotted and she’d wanted to chuck them but he insisted. Next to the deck chair, lying willy nilly in the wet grass, were three empty beer bottles.

  She stood, frowning at him. Slowly his hand slipped down to the side, towards the bottles, limp, as if he was unconscious, as if he was dead. Overdose.

  Morrow leapt across the kitchen, grabbed the handle for the French door and threw it open, not frightened but glad almost, glad there was an action to be performed. She stepped in front of the deckchair.

  Brian was wearing sunglasses and a jumper under his dressing gown. He had walking boots on and a blanket over his knees. The other hand wasn’t limp. The other hand was clutching a mug of cold tea. He looked up at her, over his glasses, tried to smile, but his gaze faltered and fell to her knees, as if he couldn’t bear to look at her.

  Morrow crouched down next to him, held his forearm, spoke with a professional voice. ‘Brian, have you taken anything?’

  Sluggishly he looked down at her fingers on his arm. It was the first time she had touched him in the five months since their son died. She looked up. His eyes were raw and broken but Brian wasn’t sad or coping, wasn’t smug or irritated, all those small nuanced things he always was. This was a Brian she didn’t know, and he was looking at her neutrally, one eyebrow arched, protesting the impertinence of her touch.

  Her fingers slowly retracted but their eyes were locked. He opened his mouth and whispered, ‘Can’t do this any more.’

  She tried to deflect him. ‘You need to get ready for your work—’

  ‘Alex,’ he said, his voice quiet and measured, as if he’d been thinking about this one sentence all night, ‘I hate who you make me.’

  The fisherman had laid newspaper on the car seat, ripped open a plastic shopping bag to protect it and then sat Aamir in the passenger seat. He was very kind. He turned his good winter coat inside out, because of the mud, and threaded Aamir’s arms in, one at a time, pulled the cord on the waist tight to do it up. He even gave Aamir his socks to put on his numb feet.