Denise Mina - Still Midnight

Pat looked up for a response and found the barrel of Eddy’s gun pointing at his eye. Eddy spoke quietly to the tip of his gun. ‘Patrick,’ he told it, ‘I’ve went to a lot of trouble and you’re not really appreciating that.’

Pat was hypnotised by the circle of deep blackness.

‘I have tried reasoning with you,’ whispered Eddy, a tremor in his voice as the enormity of what he was doing sunk in. He was looking at Pat’s mouth, quite close, as if afraid to look at the eye he was about to shoot. They were wet again, the eyes, the bastard fucking eyes brimming with panic.

‘I’ve tried so fucking hard…’

‘Edward.’

‘I’ve really fucking tried.’

‘Get the gun away from my face or I will kill you.’

‘Oh, you ’ll kill me,’ and Eddy waggled the end of the barrel in Pat’s face, afraid to drop it now, in case Pat did kill him. ‘I’ve got a gun on you and you’re threatening to kill me, is it? You’re threatening me? Who are you tae fucking threaten me?’

They both knew who Pat was. Pat was a Tait, and he didn’t need to threaten Eddy. Being a Tait, even an estranged Tait, meant that he was a walking threat. The barrel was pointing at Pat’s ear now. ‘Point the gun at the floor,’ he said carefully.

Eddy didn’t know what else to do. He lowered the barrel, spluttering a sob of relief.

Calmly, Pat reached over and, hand over hand, took the pistol from him. He held it away from Eddy and flicked the safety on, took a deep breath and spoke: ‘This is a fuck-up from start to finish. We both know it.’

‘Aye,’ whispered Eddy urgently, tears rolling down his face. ‘Aye, I know it’s a fucking mess, I don’t know what to… I just sat in that old cunt’s pish.’ He rubbed his eyes with the ball of his palm, smearing tears into his hairline.

Pat reached out and touched Eddy’s back with his fingertips and Eddy covered his face like a girl and cried, high pitched, helpless. Beyond the kitchen door Shugie crossed his legs and Pat saw that he was wearing trainers with the wrong laces, brown laces from brogues. I don’t belong here, he said to himself, knowing that he really meant that he didn’t want to belong here.

‘If she hadn’t taken the fucking kids, man,’ squeaked Eddy. ‘If she’d only let me see my fucking weans…’

It wasn’t the wife stopping him from seeing the kids. This lie had developed slowly, like a lot of other lies in Eddy’s life. Pat went along with it but now, abruptly, he looked at Eddy and saw a man refused access to his children by the courts because he was an unreliable moody arsehole, a man who brought Shugie in so that people in their local would know he was up to something big, a man who, over the course of today, would misremember last night, rewrite events so that Pat was the nervous one who fucked up. He looked at Eddy, self-pity seeping out of him. Eddy wasn’t capable of being honest. I do belong here, Pat admitted, I do belong, but I don’t want to.

As Eddy bubbled, Pat calmly took himself away, back to the pink hall of the toast-smelling house. He wasn’t in this kitchen, wasn’t in the house with a disputed mouldy shit in the living room and fossilised bin bags in the kitchen. He was back in the pink hall, watching a lock of perfect silky black slide over a young shoulder. He was back in the clean, where bad smells elicited disgust and a shit on the floor wouldn’t even get the chance to get mouldy. That’s what he wanted.

She had just brushed her hair before they came in, he realised. Sat in front of the telly and brushed her long hair. The image made him smile, made him warm, until Eddy’s shrill sob shattered the image.

Pat reached out to still him. ‘Don’t…’

‘That Irish cunt… I don’t know what to do…’

‘Let’s go and get some toast or something.’ Pat’s voice was expressionless.

‘We can’t leave that pishy cunt to mind him,’ said Eddy looking out to the living room.

‘OK. We need to get moving.’ Aleesha’s hand came up and touched his face, the hand that was no more, but he wrote that part out. Her fingertips touched his face, her pretty gold rings glinting in the corner of his eye. ‘I’ll call Malki, get him over here to mind Shugie.’

‘How are we, how are we gonnae do that? I mean, we can’t move now, that fucker’ll go and get pissed and tell everyone.’

‘Malki’ll come, I’ll get him to bring bevy for Shugie, get him to stay in the house, say we’ll be back any minute. You and me, we’ll go get some toast or something-’

‘ Toast ? What ye on about toast for?’

‘And we’ll phone the family.’ Pat imagined himself arriving at the door of the Anwar family home, being greeted by the brothers as a long lost friend, being offered tea as he slipped his jacket off in the pink hall. ‘Ask about the money. I’ll sort it out, man, don’t worry.’ He pointed to Eddy’s pocket. ‘I’ll speak to the Irish.’

Eddy took his phone out and selected a number, pressed call and handed the phone over.

Irish had been asleep. His voice was an angry, startled bark. ‘ Whit?’

‘We’ve got the father and we’re calling them this morning.’

‘Who’s this?’

‘The other one.’

Pat could hear the Irish consider the angles. ‘I don’t know you.’

‘I’ll call you after,’ said Pat and hung up.

Eddy took the phone back, dropping his chin so he was looking up, puppyish, ‘Pal…’ he said, meaning thank you, meaning to express affection, hinting at words he would never say.

Pat was thinking words he would never say too.

Pat was thinking that the world would be better off if a cunt like Eddy wasn’t in it.

Morrow sat in her car as the sun came up over the young trees in Blair Avenue. It had been a warm autumn, plenty of rain and the gardens were bursting with life. Balding branches of well-tended trees shadowed the road and the hedges, verdant, waxy leaved, littered the pavement below. A smattering of rain had cleared the sky to an uninterrupted solid blue.

Her bum was numb. She had been sitting there for forty minutes, tiredness and indecision pinning her to the seat. In every fraction of a second she was poised to reach for the car key, pull it out and open the door. The muscles on her forearm twitched in rehearsal, her mind focused on the plastic casing around the key, the crunch of the lock as she pulled the key out, the warm mottled plastic of the door handle, but still she didn’t move.

She had been there so long that the blood had drained from her hands resting on the steering wheel. Several times she had thought about turning the radio on for company, but that would have meant admitting that she wasn’t going to get out of the car.

She could go back to the station. Bannerman was giving a briefing but she could still hide in her office. She had the day off. She could go into the office and say she couldn’t stay away – never mind that she wouldn’t get overtime – show willing, instead of going indoors and dealing with Brian.

She looked up at the brand new house. All the lights were off, the curtains still drawn in the living room.

This had been her dream once, when she was little, to live in a clean, bland house with a clean, bland husband. A man who would never raise his voice or said anything alarming. A man who never shouted ‘fire’ into her sleeping face in the middle of the night because he was pissed and wanted attention. A man who would never get taken away by the police at 6.15 in the morning and spit saliva streaked with blood on his own hall carpet as they dragged him away.

The Blair Avenue house was new, they were the first people ever to live in it and she savoured the absence of history. They chose it because it was quiet and there were so many children in the neighbourhood.