Denise Mina - Still Midnight

Morrow sat forward.

Omar was pointing two fingers at the floor, his hand wide, out of kilter to his body. ‘The gun had smoke on it. I looked at his face and I thought he had a really long jaw because he was wearing a balaclava and I only saw him from the side. But then he shut his mouth…’

‘There were two men?’

‘Two men-’

‘What did the other one do?’

Bannerman was missing it. Morrow wanted to jump into the screen and make him look at the angle of Omar’s hand, at the gestures of his jaw. The gunman’s mouth had been hanging open in surprise; the recoil from the shot had thrown his hand to the side. He hadn’t been ready for it, didn’t have his elbow at the proper angle or his muscles relaxed. He’d been shocked by the force of the recoil, which meant either the gun had gone off by accident, or he had never fired a shot before.

Anxiously she looked at the officers sitting next to her and noted which were straining towards the screen along with her, who was willing Bannerman to shut up. Three out of eight. Sitting two seats down in the front row, Harris was one of them: he caught her eye, the ‘O’ of his mouth tightened.

Back on the television Omar carried on. ‘He shouts “ Rob”, “Where is Rob? ” He came running up to Mo and goes, “You’re Rob,” and then they grabbed my dad and took him away.’

‘Did they ask if you were Rob?’

‘Me?’ Omar touched his chest and looked surprised. ‘Me? Well, he sort of looked around and said, “Who is Rob? One of you is Rob.” ’

‘But did he ever say, “ You are Rob?” ’

‘To me?’ His eyebrows rose indignantly to his hairline.

‘Yeah, to you.’

‘Um, yeah, I suppose he did but my mum said, “Oh no, not my Omar,” and then he just sort of backed off because, obviously, then, he knew I was Omar, that I wasn’t Bob.’

Bannerman, looking at his notes, failed to see the twitch on Omar’s neck, head flicking back a little, but Morrow noted it. Something had happened there but Morrow didn’t know what. She looked at Harris. He was straining forward on his chair, alert, looking for clues as to what had just happened.

They both watched as Omar leaned across the table, his hand under Bannerman’s eye, drawing him back up. ‘And then, and then, the other one, the fat one, he grabbed my dad, like around the neck with his hand.’ Then Omar did a strange thing: he wrapped his own hands around his neck to illustrate the hold but somehow he pressed a little too tight, too adamant about it, as if he was actually trying to hurt himself. ‘And I thought he was going to kill him!’ He let go and stopped for breath. ‘I did! And then he said he wanted two million quid by tomorrow night and not to call the police or he’d kill my dad. And then he’s like: “This is payback for Afghanistan.” ’

He stopped talking, watching Bannerman to see if the dissemble had worked.

Bannerman had noted the change in tone, the excitement. He spoke calmly, ‘Do you know anyone in Afghanistan?’

Omar was bewildered. ‘No!’

‘Have you ever been there?’

‘Never.’

‘Does your dad have any dealings with Afghanistan, any family there or anything?’

A hand swept the table top. ‘No connection with Afghanistan whatsoever.’

‘OK. And then what?’

‘Then he grabbed dad there,’ he lay his forearm over the bottom of his rib cage, like the Queen carrying a heavy handbag, ‘and lifted him up,’ he tipped back in his chair, ‘and took him out the house.’ Omar’s arms flailed expressively at the door, making Morrow think of a stage magician diverting an audience’s eye.

‘Me and Mo ran after them, saw a big white van, like a Merc panel van, pull away. So we ran to Mo’s car and got in and followed them but we lost them at the motorway. They weren’t driving fast, just within the law, didn’t want to get caught, I suppose, and we shouldn’t have lost them but we were panicking and driving fast and following tail lights in the dark and they didn’t go the most obvious way, down the main roads.

‘Then we saw a police car and stopped and I said to them that my dad had been taken by men in a van and about Afghanistan and that, but they tried to arrest us.’

Morrow saw the boy on the screen stop waving his hands and the hurt in his voice. To be treated with suspicion at a moment of grief. She knew the deep stinging cut of that feeling. That was why he looked like that in the road, he and Mo, because they knew they were not among friends, that they were other.

She sat back and glanced at the officers in the viewing room. Smart men, top of their game, all staring at the screen, willing him to be it. He must sense that.

When she stood up to leave someone called ‘Down in front’. Their voice tailed off when they realised it was her.

The officer who had given up his seat was leaning against the wall, tipped his forehead out of respect, ‘He’s good, isn’t he?’ He meant Bannerman, wrongly supposing they were friends.

‘Aye.’ She leaned over to Harris and tapped his shoulder. ‘Have a word?’

Out in the corridor they dropped their voices. ‘What happened, just before he started rambling?’

Harris shrugged. ‘I was trying to remember myself.’

‘Get the disk would you? As soon as…’

Still frowning Harris looked back into the room. ‘His mum said, “Not my Omar.”’

She turned her computer on, waited for what felt like ten minutes, signed herself in and called up her email. The digi recordings had already been forwarded to her. The transcript would take a few days to weave its way through form-filling and desk-landing but the digi recording was immediate.

Opening her bottom desk drawer she took out a brand new pad of cheap paper, a sharp new pencil from a box and a plastic container with a set of earphones in it. Plugging them into the hard drive stack, she clicked on the attachment.

The first file was numbered and she jotted it down in the pad before starting the recording. A caller panted loudly and a bored operator asked them: ‘Which service do you require?’

Barely contained sobs demanded, ‘Ambulance! Please! Tell them to come, please come! She’s bleeding all over the place!’

‘Who’s bleeding please?’

‘My daughter has been shot by… men, they came into our home and threatened-’ The mother, Sadiqa, had an English accent, a crisp fifties accent, and made the operator sound coarse.

‘Can ye give us your address?’

Sadiqa gave it, becoming calm in the familiar recitation, but she was interrupted by a girl crying out in the background and began panting again, ‘Oh dear, my God, my husband has been taken, my Aamir-

The operator’s voice was nasal and bland, told her to calm down, the ambulance was on its way. No, there wasnae any point in her getting off the line because the ambulance was on its way right now. She made Sadiqa spell her name, her husband’s name, what sort of guns were they?

‘I have no idea. Black guns? Big-’

‘Are they still in the actual house?’

‘Gone! Left! I’ve told you that.’

‘Did they leave on foot or in a car?’

‘I’m afraid no, I didn’t see. But my son, my Omar ran out into the street.’

‘Has your son come back in? Could he come to the phone and tell me if it was on foot or in a vehicle, maybe?’

But Sadiqa wasn’t listening to her any more. ‘Aleesha, oh Lord, Aleesha is bleeding. Please, please come quickly.’ She dropped the receiver noisily and spoke urgently to someone. A thump sounded like a body falling. Someone picked up the receiver and hung it up.

The call lasted one minute fourteen seconds. The second call started ten seconds later than Sadiqa’s.