Denise Mina - Still Midnight

Morrow took what she could from it: three sets of feet coming towards her, muddied by steps that were there already, perhaps meeting others who had been waiting. She looked back, sorting the impressions in her eye: two sets coming towards her, a scuffle of overlaps, but they looked like the same treads on the soles.

Finally Bannerman asked, ‘What ye seeing?’

He was good at this, she knew that, but was either trying to be friendly or intending to steal her ideas for his own. She almost hoped it was the latter. ‘Two gunmen,’ she said. ‘Same boots on. Thought for a minute they were met here but unlikely. Two big men, a driver and a hostage. They wouldn’t all fit in a car unless they were met by just one other guy. Only the army boots go to the driver’s door.’ She pointed back up to the large patch left bare of frost by the car. ‘They must have left a car here to pick up. We can check the CCTV at Harthill, see what pulls off earlier and match it with what pulls out later.’

Bannerman was still looking back at the rectangle. ‘How do you know that’s the driver’s door?’

She drew her finger along the tyre marks. ‘They didn’t reverse out, did they?’

Bannerman looked pleasantly surprised. ‘Hm.’

He was going to steal that, she fucking knew it, he was known for it below ranks. Gaffers thought he was a genius.

‘That’s the third one this year, burnt out cars on my land.’ The farmer standing opposite her was wearing a Barbour coat and had a pissed-off, sleep-puffed face. His accent was almost impenetrable and Morrow found herself watching his lips for clues.

‘Is this your land, sir?’ she said.

‘It is my land, aye, aye, mine, yeah.’

‘Would you mind standing behind that tape over there? We’ve got frosty feet marks here and we’re trying to keep them good until the photographer gets here.’

‘But it’s my land.’

‘Ye can see my point though, eh?’ She gave the copper a look, tipped her head to the side to get the farmer out of the crime scene.

‘It’s my land,’ mumbled the farmer, unsure if he’d been reprimanded, but proactively annoyed anyway. ‘I’m staying here if I want to stay here. And why did you not bother before and now you’re bothering about this one? They’ve burnt out cars before this one and ye did nothing at all. Had to shove the cars out mysel’.’

He was almost unintelligible. Too long Bannerman’s eyes stayed on his mouth and when he finally broke off it was to nod, bewildered, and frown at his feet. He turned to the uniform. ‘Officer, were you the first here?’

The uniform nodded at Bannerman as if he was meeting a film star. He had a red farmer’s face and round body, not flattered by the double-breasted plastic police issue jacket buttoned tight across his belly.

‘Find anything? A passport or a home address? No letters with photo ID on the path up here?’

‘Nothing like that so far, sir, no, as far as I know, like.’ Same accent, voice quiet because he was intimidated by the specialist from the town, almost as hard to understand as the farmer.

Bannerman snorted, looking to Morrow to laugh along with him: a bonding moment between colleagues.

‘Have you actually done a search?’ she pointed towards the van.

‘Not yet, ma’am, no.’

‘How do you know then? Get that man out beyond the tape.’ She walked off into the field, leaving Bannerman to stand with the two men he had been ridiculing a moment ago.

Even she was starting to wonder if she was an arsehole.

‘I am not sitting down anywhere here.’ Pat crossed his arms and looked around the living room. There was not a surface on floor, walls or ceiling without a suspicious stain nearby.

Sitting in the least damp corner of the balding brown corduroy settee, Shugie looked up at him, tipping his head back to compensate for the puff on his eyes, and whispered, ‘OK then.’ His smoke-fucked voice was barely a rasp.

‘Because,’ Pat, leaned in to provoke him, ‘it’s fucking ginking.’

Shugie blinked, sanguine about the charge. ‘OK.’

Foiled, determined that Shugie would be as upset as he was, Pat looked around the floor, at the settee, through the door to the kitchen. ‘ You live like a dirty fucking animal.’

But Shugie was unperturbed, distracted, perhaps by the profundity of his hangover. He shut his rheumy eyes to sniff, the violent action disturbing the delicate balance of forces behind his eyes, and he cringed with pain. ‘Oooh.’

‘Did you hear me?’

‘Oh aye. OK.’ He kept his eyes shut, awaiting equilibrium. ‘You’re saying it’s dirty and that’s fair enough.’

‘ Look at that.’

With supernatural effort Shugie peeled one swollen eye open and followed Pat’s finger to a distant meeting of floor and wall. He squinted at it: something small and brown had grown its own white fur coat.

‘ Wit the fuck is that?’

Shugie shrugged at the distant object. ‘An orange?’

‘ An orange?’

‘Or a tangerine?’

‘ It’s a shit.’

Dropping his feet heavily on the stairs they heard Eddy coming downstairs from keeping guard outside the old man’s room.

‘There’s a fucking dog shit in your living room.’ Pat raised his voice, restating his case so that Eddy could hear.

‘Naw,’ Shugie sighed with the effort of talking, ‘there hasnae been a dug in here for three month, man.’

‘Then it’s been here for three month. Look at the bloom on it.’

Shugie did as instructed. ‘Nah,’ he said unconvincingly, ‘that’s just an old tangerine or something.’

Pat looked accusingly at Eddy but didn’t get the chance to speak.

‘Your watch,’ said Eddy, thumbing over his shoulder to the stairs.

‘This place…’ Pat found himself lost for words. He pointed at the furry white intruder by the wall.

Shugie threw his hands up and rasped an appeal to Eddy. ‘He’s going mad over an old orange or something.’

In a gesture of solidarity Eddy flopped onto the settee next to Shugie. He sat suddenly straight, his eyes widened. He jumped to his feet again, turning to look at the damp seat of his trousers, moving his hand to brush the urine off and then thought better of it, flapping his hand at it instead. ‘Oh, ya dirty fucking…’

Pat grabbed his arm and pulled him roughly into the kitchen. ‘Come in here.’

The kitchen looked even worse in the weak morning light. The window above the sink was broken, a triangle of glass missing from the bottom corner, the rest of it documenting every splash of dirty water that had ever hit it, a thick layer of grey dots emanating from behind the mixer tap. Beyond the lace of dirt the very tip of the Lexus’s silver bonnet shone in the sun.

The wall of bin bags blocking the passage to the back door were not just leaking sticky mess onto the floor, the ones on the bottom were stuck in a pool of white.

‘I can’t stay here,’ said Pat.

Eddy was standing too close to him, chewing his bottom lip.

‘It’s not…’ Pat looked around the floor, ‘healthy.’

‘Pat-’

Pat pointed into the living room. ‘There’s a shit with mould on it in there.’

Eddy pinched his nose, paused, and shut his eyes. When he spoke it was with forced patience. ‘The trouble I had to find this place-’

‘ Trouble ?’ shouted Pat. ‘The cunt drinks in your fucking local. All ye did was buy a pint and turn around.’

Eddy’s eyes were still shut. ‘I looked at a number of places as possible-’

‘Oh, “A pint o’eighty”,’ shouted Pat, flailing his hands about indignantly, ‘“Aye, you, you seem to smell of pish, have ye a house? Can I hold a hostage there? Would that have a shit in the corner?”’