Denise Mina - Still Midnight

‘It’s a one way street. You must have passed it when you drove up.’

‘We’d been there for twenty minutes. Must have arrived after us.’

‘What were you doing there for twenty minutes?’

Omar drew himself up, straightening his back, looking at her properly for the first time. She felt plain. The suit made her look tidy but not attractive. No elegant details, no statement stitching or anything that would draw the eye, make a casual viewer wonder about her as a person. Bland was the look she was going for.

‘Shouldn’t you wait until there’s another officer here before we speak to you?’

Morrow was surprised. ‘Why – what makes you say that?’

‘For corroboration, for if the case comes to court.’

She gave an unconvincing half-laugh. ‘What would you know about that?’

‘I’m a law graduate,’ he said, looking unaccountably sad about it.

‘Oh.’ She nodded for a minute, only vaguely aware of the car drawing up behind the boys. ‘Oh. When was your… When did you…?’

‘June,’ he said.

‘Morrow!’ Bannerman was out of the car almost before it stopped. The bigger brother climbed out of the back and strode over to them, almost overtaking Bannerman in his eagerness to get to his brother’s side. They’d been on their way to the station for a formal interview, she realised, and both wanted to break up the conversation she was having, for different reasons.

‘Morrow?’ asked Omar.

‘I’m Morrow,’ she said. ‘Who’s the big guy?’

‘My brother, Billal.’ Omar dropped his chin to his chest and when she looked back she found the brother was glaring at him.

‘Morrow,’ scowled Bannerman, ‘could I have a word?’

She blushed high on her cheeks, and turned away, stepping over to him with her head down.

Bannerman turned her away from the boys and muttered reprovingly, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Just talking to the boys…’ She sounded flat, as if she’d done a bad thing herself. She looked for something to attach the feeling of guilt to: ‘Any word from the hospital?’

‘Yeah.’ Bannerman took her elbow and moved her out of earshot of the boys. ‘Fine. Going in for emergency surgery but should be OK. Hand’s mangled. She’s only sixteen.’

‘Her mother with her?’

‘Yeah, we’ve left some cops there. We’ll get a proper statement off her when she comes out of it.’

‘Something funny about the family,’ she murmured. ‘I grew up on the Southside. I know dead religious families and this one isn’t right.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Omar, the son? Smokes fags like he’s smoking a joint. Aleesha wears jeans and T-shirts, Meeshra’s embarrassed about it, but kind of suggested that they’ve only recently become very observant. They’re from Uganda originally, traditionally that’s a pretty assimilated pro-British community.’

‘Are they recent converts?’

He wasn’t listening to her. ‘No. They’re not converts, just become more observant.’

Now he wasn’t even looking at her. ‘Yeah, great, Morrow: local knowledge. Let’s get them to the station.’

Omar couldn’t look back at Billal. He seemed to be shrinking under his brother’s gaze.

‘We’re all going to the station,’ Bannerman called to him.

‘The boys saw the van,’ she said. ‘They tried to get a squad-’

‘Yeah,’ he cut her off and called Billal over to his side. ‘Let’s get the boys into a car. We’re going to the police station, right?’

‘Have I to come too?’ Mo was asking Billal.

‘We’re all going,’ Billal said sternly.

Bannerman waved the boys to a car door and they trotted obediently over. As Omar came past Billal reached out a meaty hand and grabbed his arm, with unnecessary force. ‘Just tell the truth,’ he said loudly. Omar didn’t look at him.

Bannerman watched approvingly, as if he had located the biggest boy in the class and made friends with him.

‘Tell them the truth.’ But Billal was talking in exclamations, so loud he wasn’t really talking to Omar.

The two boys got into the back seat of the squad car and Billal shut the door on them.

Morrow sidled over to him, touching his elbow gently, guiding him away for a moment. ‘Billal, I’m DS Alex Morrow. Can I just ask you quickly: why were they waiting outside the house while it all went on?’

Billal looked at her as if he had misheard. ‘What?’

‘The guys,’ said Morrow, pointing back to Mo and Omar, ‘they were waiting in the car for twenty minutes before they came in.’

Billal looked shocked. ‘Really?’

Bannerman hurried, came back around the car, possessive of the brother, slipping in almost between them.

‘Yeah,’ said Morrow.

Billal looked at the police tape, along the road, to the open front door of his house, frowning as he tried to answer the question. ‘Where?’

Morrow pointed up the road. ‘There, where those markers are.’

Billal imagined it for a moment. ‘But the gunmen were parked down there.’ He pointed around the corner to the garden path.

‘That’s right.’

Billal frowned. ‘So, they might not have seen them?’

‘They said they didn’t see anything.’

‘And that’s possible?’ Billal looked at Bannerman, asking him if his younger brother could be telling the truth.

‘Yeah,’ said Bannerman, trying not to smile, ‘it is perfectly possible.’

Billal looked angrily at the window of the squad car. ‘Good. Good.’

He turned back to look at Morrow and nodded back at the house. ‘Meeshra help you?’

‘Yes, thanks, she was very helpful.’

Billal arched his back slightly at that. ‘She didn’t see very much. She was in the bed the whole time,’ and he nodded, a strange pecking nod, slightly out of time. Morrow didn’t know what it meant. He looked at Morrow’s shoes, curled his lip and turned away, walking away without saying goodbye.

Bannerman backed up to Morrow’s side as they watched him fold his big frame into the backseat next to Mo. ‘Yeah,’ he said as if Morrow had expressed her reservations out loud. ‘What did the daughter-in-law say?’

‘Not much. Do you still think they got the wrong house?’

‘Dunno. They rang 999. Neighbours put the shot thirty seconds or so before all the calls so, they rang immediately…’

Innocents call for the police, generally. It meant they didn’t feel responsible for the attack. Or else they were criminal but had a grotesque sense of entitlement. There were families who knew whole shifts by their first names. When they weren’t getting lifted they were calling cops in to resolve family arguments. Morrow dismissed that option though: they’d have heard of them if that was the case.

Bannerman sighed heavily. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry about this, just… MacKechnie’s idea. I’ll be working for you next time.’

Morrow froze slightly. The skin on her finger was throbbing. ‘Yeah, well it looks complicated. Time consuming. I know your mum’s not well.’

‘Oh, no, no, no,’ he said quickly. ‘She’ll be fine.’ Bannerman’s mother had pneumonia, both lungs, not good when a woman was in her late seventies. He’d been milking it for sympathy in the office for a week but now he squinted at her, guessing at her motive for bringing it up. ‘You’ll cooperate on this, won’t you?’

‘I’m not a child, Grant,’ she said coldy.

He flinched at that and she regretted saying it. His mother wasn’t well and she was being mean.

‘Sorry.’ She said the word so quietly she saw him glance at her mouth for confirmation.

He brightened. ‘Yeah, can’t get a handle on this at all.’ His bewilderment seemed feigned. ‘They seem as straight as anything, no crims in the family, no enemies, nothing. They haven’t even got a big telly.’