by Denise Mina
‘You’ve a nickname, haven’t ye?’ The man was smiling on the other end of the phone. He could hear the crocodile mouth, open wide, ready to snap him in half. ‘They call ye Bill, don’t they?’
‘Bob.’
‘Eh?’
‘They call me Bob.’
‘Nah,’ he laughed humourlessly. ‘Nah, don’t try games wi’ me, son. Bill, they call ye.’
Omar opened his eyes. Billal had heard it too. He looked at Omar, looked at the phone.
‘Well, Bill, we happen to know a wee bit about what you’re up to—’
Shocked, Billal crouched suddenly, punching at the tape recorder as if it was a spider on his dinner, switching it off.
‘With the old VAT fraud and that, so you’d better cough up pronto or your wee daddy’s getting it, understand?’
Billal stayed where he was, crouched down in front of the telephone table, his head slumped forward.
‘Where and when?’
‘In an hour. Drop the bag on the A1 at the first emergency phone box past the services. Understand?’
‘Yes. I can’t get what you asked for, I’ve got forty grand.’
‘That’ll have to do.’
‘Then will you release my dad?’
‘Soon as they pick-up he’ll be let go in the city with money for a taxi home. Clear?’
‘First emergency phone box past the services. Got it.’
‘And if it’s not a Paki driving that car I’ll know you’ve called the police. You know what’ll happen then, don’t ye?’
Omar could hardly speak, the threat and the racial slur together were too much.
‘In fact,’ said the voice, ‘in fact, can your mammy drive?’
‘Uh, aye.’
‘Send her with the bag. Send her alone.’
Omar managed three words. ‘In an hour.’
‘In one hour.’
He was holding the receiver so tight to his ear that the hang-up click hurt his ear drum. Slowly, with shallow breath, Omar took the receiver away, raised it above his head and clubbed Billal as hard as he could on the back of the head.
Harris looked up at the Anwars’ house. The low garden wall was still staved in but all the evidence cards and tape were gone from the garden and the bungalow looked as unremarkable as any of its neighbours.
‘Wouldn’t look twice,’ he said. ‘Much do you think he’s got stashed away?’
‘Companies House has a trail of failed companies going back eighteen months. VAT can pull in millions a month. Must have storage somewhere.’
‘And he’s living in one bedroom with his new missus?’
‘He’ll be spending a fortune on Lady and Master Nutkins though.’
‘Much do ye reckon? Thousands a month?’
Morrow shrugged. ‘He’s still got boxes and boxes of cash somewhere.’ She could see someone moving through the mottled glass on the Anwars’ front door, a mad lurch from one side of the hall to the other. She was imagining scenarios that would make sense of it: a leap for a phone, a jumping game among family members, someone falling forwards to catch a falling vase, when a giant body crashed into the glass pane, making it shudder outwards.
Harris and Morrow were out of the car and up the path, just as the body got up and fell away from the door. Harris tried the door, shouted, ‘Police! Police! Let us in!’
The door was flung open by Sadiqa. She gestured down the hall like a frightened magician’s assistant.
Omar was sitting on his brother’s chest, trying to club him with the weighted base of the phone. Billal was bloodied, held both arms over his face and cycled, kneeing his wee brother in the back with each of his knees alternately. Omar’s face didn’t register the blows to his kidneys. Omar didn’t even hear Harris coming across the hall towards him. Intent on what he was doing he brought the weighted receiver of the phone down and up, down and up on his brother, an angry child breaking a toy he had come to hate.
Harris grabbed the phone from his hand, put a throttle hold on Omar, yanking him off his brother, pulling him to his feet.
Suddenly free, Billal looked up, his nose was a bloody mess but he saw Morrow looking at him and waited a beat pause before he started shouting, ‘Oh god, my god!’ He rolled away from her, his eyes still trained on her, willing her to come and look to make sure he was OK. That’s what made her look away.
Dead-eyed with shock, Meeshra was in the bedroom doorway, her hands out, holding either side of the door jamb. Morrow took a step towards her and was surprised to see her jump a little. ‘Meeshra?’ Behind her the baby gave a squeak but Meeshra’s eye didn’t waver. She wasn’t blocking the doorway to protect the baby. Meeshra was protecting something else.
Keeping eye contact, Morrow walked towards her, took the woman’s right hand from the frame and saw the horror on her face as she realised she’d given them away. Morrow walked over to the only piece of furniture in the room large enough. She allowed herself a lick of the lips, bent down and took the edge of the divan bed in both hands. The mattress slid to the ground on the far side and the wooden frame lifted easily. She held it over her head and looked down.
Shrink-wrapped blocks of pink and purple bank notes, solid as bricks, so many she had to estimate in feet: five feet by four feet, one yard high.
Aware of the hush in the hall she looked out. Beyond Meeshra, Sadiqa, Harris and Omar saw the money and stopped, stunned, until Sadiqa fell forward from the waist, picked up the telephone from the floor and, with remarkable grace for a woman of her size, smashed her eldest son in the bollocks with it.
Here was the nurse, back to ask him if he wanted to go down to the cafeteria for a cup of tea; she could change his auntie and have her nice and ready for the doctors’ round. He could come back then and speak to them.
Pat sat up, looking at Minnie’s hand, finding her middle knuckle white from the pressure of his forehead. Carefully, he placed the hand back on top of the covers and sat up. His back was aching. His face was wet, his eyes puffed from crying and being bent over double for so long. He suddenly felt very foolish.
‘Aye, I mibbi will now,’ Pat stood up slowly, hiding his face from the nurse. She handed him a clutch of tissues. He dried his face.
‘Just you take your time,’ she said softly, and left again.
Pat went out into the corridor and locked himself in the toilet. He turned on the tap and leaned over the basin, cupping cold water in his hands and throwing it at his face. He tried to look at himself in the mirror, to check that he looked OK, but he couldn’t find the courage to do it. He dabbed his face dry with rough green paper and left.
A different nurse watched him walking down the corridor towards her, an older woman, navy uniform and trousers. Seeing his red eyes she smiled, head tilted in sympathy. ‘Mr Welbeck?’
Pat tried to skirt past her. ‘Just going for a cup of tea,’ he mumbled.
‘Well, the doctors won’t be down to see your auntie for at least half an hour, so just you take your time, there’s no hurry.’
He tried to get past but she stepped towards him and touched his elbow, dipping at the knees to get him to look up at her. He stopped, caught her eye, found he hadn’t the strength to resist.
‘She has been very comfortable,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t worry about that.’
He nodded, dragged a breath into his chest to quell more tears and, in doing so, tipped his head back.
She was a small woman. Beyond her, over her shoulder, was a wire mesh window into a room, the glass marked with the yellowed flaking residue of old sellotape. Yellow curtains with pink triangles on them. And there she was, sitting up in bed, an oil slick of hair pulled over one shoulder, hands on the bed sheets in front of her, the light behind her. She was looking at him.
‘. . . Although she does have some bedsores, they are very clean and the saline baths seem to be helping.’
Pat could not rip his gaze from Aleesha, nor she from him. He thought he saw her eyes widen, as if in recognition, but then
wondered if maybe it was his own eyes that had opened wider, as if he was trying to take in more of her.
The woman in front of him talked on about bedsores, about the home Minnie had come from, about a report and a test for something but he couldn’t hear her properly, just disjointed words swimming towards him, over him, by his ears.
Without breaking eye contact, without seeming even to move her head, Aleesha threw the covers back, swung her feet in perfect point to the floor and stood up. One of her hands was bandaged, white padded. She kept it high and held his eye as she walked to him. Even at the door frame, even when they couldn’t see each other for the woodchip wall, they held one another’s gaze. She lingered at the door, waiting for the nurse to go.
‘Sorry,’ the nurse touched her chest, ‘I’m Staff Nurse Sarah, what’s your name?’
Aleesha stepped back so that one of her eyes was hidden behind the door frame, she seemed to be unsure that coming to talk to the stranger was a good idea, bottled it a bit and looked at her bandaged hand, back curved as if she was going to step back into the room, as if a force in there was sucking her backwards.
‘Roy.’ He stepped to the side, past the nurse and reached out to Aleesha with a flat hand, palm outwards, not offering a shake but gesturing to take her hand, lead her away. ‘Hello.’
Aleesha looked at his hand, raised an eyebrow at the impertinence, looked at him, read the desperate need the man had for her.
He was gorgeous. Tall. Dirty blond hair so thick it stood up, not, like, with gel, not uniform spikes that made boys look as if they cared so much they’d spent hours styling it. A jaw speckled with stubble of a hundred different colours, a flat nose, like he’d been in a car accident, and shoulders broader than the door almost. He raised his eyebrows at her, sad smiling eyes, pale blue.
She didn’t take the hand. She sloped back into her room, turning so that her face was hidden from him.
‘Sorry,’ the nurse said, looking slightly resentfully at Aleesha’s foot, ‘do you two know each other?’
‘Yeah,’ said Pat, ‘I’m pretty sure we do, but I can’t think where from.’
Aleesha swung back at the door. ‘You go to St Al’s?’
Pat snorted a tired laugh. ‘I’m twenty-eight, it’s a long time since I was at school and I never went there, no.’
‘I thought you went to St Al’s,’ she said. Her voice was higher than he had thought it would be, sweeter.
He looked at her and saw a girl, not the goddess of his imagination. He liked the girl better. ‘My, um,’ he looked back down the corridor to the toilets, ‘my auntie’s getting ready for the doctors’ round. I was, um . . .’ He looked at the ward doors and was struck by the impossibility of this happening. ‘I’m going for a cuppa . . .’
She saw how tired he was and how sad and how handsome. ‘You’ve been crying.’ He nodded. ‘Why?’
The nurse tutted at the girl and crossed her arms, siding with him against her. Pat pulled one of his ears, gulped, tried hard not to cry again. ‘Sad,’ he whispered and thumbed behind him.
They looked each other in the eye again, stuck again for too long, inappropriate. He saw her feel it, saw her eyes melt into his mood. With her good hand she held out the bundle of bandages and dressings to show him. ‘I’m acting weird,’ she said, ‘’cause I’m on shit loads of painkillers.’
He pointed at the hand with a limp index finger, wanted to ask what happened, act surprised, but he couldn’t bring himself to start the thing with a lie. They both watched as Aleesha fingered a fray on the bandage.
The nurse was cross at finding herself a spectator. She stepped between them but, with superhuman grace, Aleesha stepped to the side, back into Pat’s line of vision.
‘If my mum phones,’ she said, ‘tell her I’ll be back in twenty minutes.’
38
They had the Lexus and seventeen other stolen cars, or bits of them, and they couldn’t tie a thing to Danny McGrath. His prints were on nothing, his name was on nothing but he had come in voluntarily to help them with their questioning, as a courtesy to the police.
Danny had never been a threat to her before; they’d left each other alone always. That he was here now meant he believed that Morrow had broken the ceasefire. And she knew that even if she got him alone and explained what had happened, it would never be all right again.
She couldn’t let anyone else question him in case he gave her up but to do it herself would mean people seeing them together, seeing the similarities; they’d know where she came from. She didn’t want to leave the disabled toilet ever again. She almost wished there was a window she could crawl out of, that she had a lighter and could set off the fire alarm. A gentle rap on the door was followed by Harris’s voice: ‘Are ye stuck in there?’
She made a sound like a laugh at the door, straightened her clothes, managed a light, ‘Just coming,’ opened the door quite suddenly and found Harris standing a little too close to the door. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ she said. ‘Behave yourself.’
‘You’ve been in there for twenty minutes, boss. He’s about to go home. He’s in voluntary, you know? He can leave.’
She nodded back at CID. ‘Where’s himself?’
‘MacKechnie’s gone home.’
She looked at her watch, ‘It’s only half four.’
‘Had a meeting and then went home. Be back in for the pick-up, he said. Going out in the Obs van with you.’
‘Fuck.’ It was a relief. At least he wouldn’t see her and Danny together. ‘Fuck.’
‘You feeling sick?’
‘Wee bit. Do I look sick?’
‘Wee bit.’
She was talking very fast, she realised, dead giveaway. She stared helplessly at the wall until Harris prompted her. ‘Clock’s ticking, he’s within his rights—’
‘What room’s he in?’
‘Four.’
‘Get Gobby up to the corridor outside Three. I want a word with him before we go in. If he’s not there in two minutes I’ll kick his bollocks in.’
Danny was sitting across from her next to his lawyer. The lawyer didn’t look like a criminal lawyer at all, Morrow had never met him or even heard his name. He dealt mostly with corporate, he said, when she remarked on it, and he smiled charmingly.
Danny looked cheap and angry. He slumped in the chair, one arm flung over the back as if he was the most relaxed guy in the world. Their father used to sit like that. She’d seen him swing a punch at a man from that stance. And he was wearing his duck-down puffa jacket, more expensive than most suits, but it placed him as a poor man who’d done well.
His lawyer in contrast wore a genuinely expensive suit, wool, and carried a briefcase of exquisite leather. He pulled from it a notepad and a tortoiseshell pen, a small glasses case containing gold-rimmed half-moon glasses and a packet of chewing gun, which he offered to Danny. Morrow sat as still as she could.
The door opened flat against the wall and Gobby sauntered in with a strange expression on his face, half haughty, half indigestion. Morrow stood up respectfully and the lawyer followed her lead, holding his hand out. ‘DSI MacKechnie?’
Gobby took the hand and shook it, looked at Morrow a little unkindly, she thought, and took his jacket off, shaking it out the way Bannerman had done with Omar. He sat down, clenched his hands in front of himself on the table and cleared his throat. Everyone waited for him to speak. Gobby cleared his throat again and glanced reproachfully at Morrow.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Sorry, OK, I’m DS Morrow, this is D- well, you’ve met. I don’t know if you know why you’re here, do you?’
Danny clenched his jaw at her and his eyes promised her that he would never forget this.
‘Basically,’ she continued, ‘a hostage has been taken by gunmen and we’re trying to find them. A car used in that crime was followed to the garage you were, um, apprehended in. Can you tell me how you came to be in there?’
‘Buying parts,’ said Danny.
‘Car parts?’
He blinked yes.
‘Who were you buying them from?’
‘Guys that was there.’
‘The two other men we apprehended in the garage itself?’
He shrugged.
‘What parts were you buying?’
‘Spark plugs.’ He sounded contemptuous.
‘Spark plugs?’
He sucked a hiss between his teeth. ‘Just says that, didn’t I?’
‘Why were you buying them there?’
He gave a careless one shoulder shrug. ‘Good as anywhere.’
‘They’re not an expensive item are they?’
He snorted and sat back.
‘Why buy them there if you can buy them just as cheaply elsewhere?’
He muttered something at the table.
‘Pardon?’
‘You’ve got some fucking cheek,’ he said quietly.
‘Have I?’
‘Making me fucking sit here and listen tae this shit.’ He was looking at Gobby but talking to her. He nodded towards her. ‘See her?’
Gobby looked at Morrow.
Danny grinned. His dimples were already sagging into slashes, she realised, his charm already going south, bitterness already setting in. ‘But, d’ye see her?’
The lawyer was looking at them, back and forth. Seeing the similarities. The dimpled cheeks, the high brow.
Danny and Morrow looked at each other for a moment, and for a moment she could see herself in him utterly, deep rooted fear making him angry, wanting to control the desperate, craven desire to belong.
‘I’d like to speak to you alone,’ he said smugly.
Morrow hesitated. ‘To me?’
‘To him.’ He reached into his pocket and took out a chewing gum packet, flipped two small white rectangles into his palm and threw them into his mouth like headache pills. He bit down on them, the crunch of the coating audible in the quiet room.
Gobby sat forward. ‘To me? Why?’
‘Got something to tell ye.’
He wouldn’t, she was sure he wouldn’t, but he was threatening her, letting her know it was possible, that he could.