Denise Mina - Still Midnight

‘Be down in a wee tiny minute.’ Crystyl giggled at this, a nervous titter that sounded like a high heel grinding glass into a dirty pavement. ‘Um, could ye go a coffee at all?’

On the basis that they could either stand here and try to talk to each other, or busy themselves with the rigmarole of making a drink, Alex nodded and followed Crystyl through the living room, heading for the kitchen.

The living space in the flat was gorgeous: warm yellow sandstone two storeys high with a wall of glass looking down the river towards the Irish sea. A big L-shaped sofa faced the view. Throughout the flat all the fittings were either yellow or stone, all the furniture show-flat tasteful, included in the price. Alex had been in Crystyl’s own flat years ago, when she and Danny first got together. Decorated exclusively in pink it felt vaguely obscene to Alex, like walking into an instructive model of a vagina.

Crystyl led her across the living room and into the kitchen. The lowered ceiling had dazzling halogen lights punched into it. Glassy black granite worktops shone around the room meeting at a massive double-door fridge with a wooden pediment built over it, like a mausoleum to food.

‘I’ll make ye a real coffee, in the coffee machine. I love real coffee. Do you like it?’

Alex shrugged.

Running out of things to say about coffee Crystyl hummed tunelessly to fill the awful, prickly quiet. Silence was the most basic interview technique; Alex knew most normal, innocent people would try to fill the conversational void. Glaswegians would give up their own mother rather than sit quietly with a stranger. She didn’t want Crystyl to talk but couldn’t think of anything to say herself.

Crystyl went to a cupboard and took out an unopened silver tin of Illy coffee, took the plastic lid off and peeled back the metal, looking into the tin, bewildered. ‘Oh,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘It’s wrong,’ said Crystyl.

Alex went over and looked in. Beans. ‘Can’t you grind them up?’

She looked at the food processor. ‘In that?’

‘Haven’t you got a coffee grinder?’

Crystyl looked at the wall-mounted coffee maker. ‘Is there one on that?’

It had a button for pushing warm water through coffee grinds and a nozzle for frothing milk. Crystyl pressed buttons, trying to decipher the symbols. Getting nervous she opened a small door in the machine and took out the water tub, yellowed because it had never been used. ‘Do the beans go in here?’

As Alex watched Crystyl a burst of compassion for the silly woman came from nowhere. ‘Look, never mind coffee, I’ll have a cup of tea if you’re having one.’

‘But I’m not.’ Crystyl looked up, over Alex’s shoulder and her face brightened. ‘Hi, darlin’.’

Alex hadn’t heard Danny coming in. He had his jacket on already and was pointedly twirling his car keys around his index finger. The jacket was down-quilted for warmth and bulked him up, made him look as if he’d spent a two stretch lifting weights in prison. His shaved head and the long scar on his cheek didn’t contradict the impression.

‘What you doing here?’ he said, trying not to smile.

‘Visiting,’ she replied, chewing her cheek so that she didn’t either.

‘At seven thirty in the morning?’

‘I’m on nights, on my way home. Wanted to see you before ye set off for the day.’

He pursed his mouth. ‘Easy to miss each other.’

‘It is.’ They nodded away from each other, both wishing in their separate ways that this was easier.

‘Baby?’ he asked.

‘Not recently,’ she answered quickly, making a joke to deflect the question. She reminded herself to breathe in. They smiled away from each other. ‘Nah, he’s fine. Good. Brought ye this.’

She set the bottle of single malt on the kitchen counter and he sniggered at it, touching the lid lightly with a finger. ‘Thoughtful.’

Confused, Crystyl looked from one to the other. Danny didn’t drink.

Alex smiled away from him. ‘I’m always that. Happy birthday, Danny.’

‘I missed yours.’

‘Don’t care,’ she said honestly.

Crystyl gasped and brushed past Alex to Danny’s side, wrapping her arms around his middle and pressing her tits into his side. She gave him a weak mock punch. ‘Your wee sister’s birthday! What a bastard – pardon my French – you’re a bad bastard, Danny.’ She smiled. ‘Total.’

Danny straightened his face. ‘Right, doll,’ he said, wrapping a hand around Crystyl’s tiny waist and giving her a squeeze. ‘I’m off then, I’ll get Alex here downstairs,’ and to Alex, ‘did ye park on the street?’

‘Aye.’

He understood why and it hurt him a little, she could tell.

Crystyl trotted out to the lift door on her tiptoes, ponytail swishing ahead as they followed her. She stopped in the same place she had been in when Alex had arrived, and let them pass her. She must think she was well lit there, that whoever was looking out from the lift would get the best view of her from this angle and would perhaps remember her fondly while he was shutting a car door on someone’s fingers during the day.

‘Bye, da’lin’.’ She blew a kiss.

Seeming rather tired Danny raised his hand to catch it in his fist. The doors shut.

Mirrors on all four walls threw their reflections back at them: both tall, blonde, both thirty-four, both with their father’s baby dimpled cheeks. They looked sweet on both of them now, babyish, but they knew from their father that ageing dimples sagged into gashes. Their father looked as if he’d been in a fight with a knifeman plagued by a need for symmetry. Apart from that they didn’t look alike: Alex took after her mother’s side for eyes and chin, and Danny had his own mother’s mouth, tight, mean.

Three months between them. Their father was a charmer in his day, and had all of his many families concurrently. Alex’s mother was naive and loved him with a passion that congealed when the baby arrived. Danny’s mother was younger but already inured to disappointment. Danny didn’t grow up with shame and anger, just in a household governed by a series of bad men and drink.

Alex and Danny met on their first day at school. They looked like twins, everyone said so, it was an innocent joke. They were sweethearts for their first term of school but it all ended abruptly when their mothers met at the gates. The most vivid memory of Alex’s early life was walking home through a park, blood dripping from her sobbing mother’s mouth onto the grey path. She’d ripped her blouse in the fight and everyone could see her bra strap.

People didn’t move schools in those days. Danny and Alex went all the way through primary school together, and secondary. And all the time there was the ever present threat of their mothers fighting, of the other boot falling.

She was glad when Danny’s mum died of the drink in second year and no doubt he was glad when they were sixteen and hers died, but she never knew: he was long gone from school by then.

She was lucky never to have had the McGrath name, she realised later. Her mother always wanted it for her but her father wouldn’t admit she was his. Somehow that mattered then. If she’d had his name the police admissions board might have worked out where she was from, who she belonged to and not let her into the force.

Neither spoke until they were three floors down.

‘I came to ask ye about someone,’ said Alex, taking out her mobile. She flicked through the pictures until she reached the photo she had taken in the road the night before. Standing behind police tape was Omar Anwar, as clear as she could get him, smoking and looking sorry. She showed it to Danny, ‘Know him?’

Danny narrowed his eyes. ‘Nut,’ and handed her back the phone. ‘Seen anyone?’