Denise Mina - Still Midnight

She was frightened too. He clutched his mother’s finger for courage and told her not to worry. He understood her now, giving herself for his safety. As a young man he thought she should have fought to the death, but he understood now.

Aamir did not find family life comfortable. He held resentments against his children, but all the day to day animosity of normal family life had evaporated in the night. At a distance, with an impassable sea of longing between them, he could see that they were good, that the values he was trying to drum into them by checking up, shepherding, shouting, those values were there already. If he could see them right now, just once more in his life, he’d kiss his grandson’s head, rub his nose in the baby’s downy hair and tell Omar he wasn’t really angry, smile at Aleesha and tell her that her wildness was beautiful. He would lie in the dark next to Sadiqa and not think about how fat she was, how she was bending the bed to herself and smelled of cooking oil. He would lie there in peace and enjoy the peaceful dark, the sheets, savour the pulsing green light from the radio alarm smeared across the ceiling.

The thought of his own bed raised a sob to his throat, but the bruising on his ribs choked it.

There were two men, one whose voice was strangled with rage. The other one was less interested, kind sometimes when his friend was out of the room. Strangle voice had come back into the room last night and punched a vicious jab in his side, sniggering malevolently as Aamir struggled to breathe. He had ordered Aamir to stay on the bed, like a childhood game of crocodiles, and not to take the pillowcase off. Aamir did as he was ordered. He had a CCTV camera in the shop and knew how cheap they were: they might have one in here.

He imagined himself seen from up high: a small grey man, cross-legged on a vast grey bed. A pillowcase over his head, neat, tidy, and next to him a fat woman with a blood bloom flowering at her seat, holding her sari to her face to dry her tears on, sobbing, but only out of habit, not because she was sad.

He saw her looking around, far, far into the distance, as if they were on an open-top bus and she was anxious to see the sights. His mother reached over to his hand and squeezed it tight, not with fear, not that, no soldiers with rifles and an eye for a British passport here, but squeezed it with excitement because they were seeing things together, finally. He had taken her hand, finally. She pointed at the window, smiled a grey smile and the CCTV cut out.

There was a window; she was right. He could see through the weave of the linen. And there was a door at the bottom of the bed, closed, the men went through there, he remembered now. When he coughed he heard the noise bounce back off the walls and knew it was a small room. A man’s bedroom. A woman would not allow that smell of dirty hair and feet to build up like that. She’d know to open a window, change the bedding once in a while.

He pulled the bottom of the pillowcase out a little so he could see the bedding. He pulled the edge in, covering it up again. Disgusting. He didn’t want to see it. Yellowed where a man’s body had lain, creased into sharp edges, a faint tinge of urine. Hadn’t been changed in months.

Disgust made him panic, dirt made him panic, but it was essential to stay calm. A clever man in a mundane profession, Aamir was used to altering his mood through force of will, doing sums and mental inventories to stay alert. He started now to think his way through a day of regulars at the shop, beginning when the doors opened at half past six and working his way through the shift, telling his mother about them. He thought through the odours of people who came into his shop, cataloguing their smells, their various problems: drink, drugs, mental illness, laziness, incontinent animals running about the house.

It was 9.30 a.m., give or take four to six minutes. He didn’t have a watch on but had spent that last thirty-five years sitting in shops, his uncle’s and then his own, waiting for people to come in, and had developed an acute sense of the rhythm of time. The shop would be getting quiet. Johnny usually made them a cup of tea about now, getting ready for the rush of school children in for chocolate and crisps. He couldn’t remember Johnny’s face, just his presence. Calm, shoulder to shoulder, a set of eyes seeing what he did, hearing what he did, sharing his day.

Aamir stiffened as the door at the foot of the bed opened softly and a grey shape leaned into the room.

‘Hungry?’ Not the strangled voice, the other one. ‘Are you hung-ary?’ repeated the guy, as if he thought Aamir couldn’t speak English.

‘Yes,’ said Aamir clearly. ‘Thank you. Something to eat would be most welcome.’ He meant to sound articulate but instead, he realised, sounded as if English was his second language. Actually it was his third.

‘OK, faither.’ The man held something out towards him. ‘Here’s um, not toast but bread, anyway. And a can of ginger.’

He came down the right side of the bed and bent down, putting something on the floor, giving a little ‘there ye go!’ as he stood up again. Aamir had reached for the edge of the pillowcase, lifting it a little.

‘Not being funny.’ Gently, the guy stopped his hand. ‘Sorry, but can ye not take that off until I get out of the room?’

‘Sure.’

‘Not being funny.’ He stood straight up and dropped his voice. ‘D’ye sleep OK?’

Aamir matched his tone, whispering, ‘Aye, son, no bad.’

‘Sorry it’s smelly in here, eh? Sorry. Bit stinky. Soon as your family stump up ye’ll be home, eh? D’ ye need the loo?’

‘Not yet. Is my wee girl OK? Her hand…’

The man hesitated. ‘Don’t know,’ he said when he finally did speak. ‘But I’ll find out and let you know.’

Aamir nodded.

‘Drink your juice now, OK?’

The guy turned and left, shuffling his feet on the carpet.

He listened until he heard the door close firmly and footsteps trailing down the stairs. Tentative, he lifted the edge of the pillowcase, looking down over the edge of the bed. An open can of Irn Bru and two slices of plain white loaf stacked on top of each other, not cut in half, sitting on top of a page of newspaper. Prepared by a man. He reached out and touched the can with his fingertips. Warm. He shouldn’t break his Ramadan fast but didn’t know if they would bring him anything later. He could make up the days, he might be saving his life and Aamir was seventy, old enough not to fast. Anyway there was no one here to set an example for.

He picked up the can and pulled the pillowcase down again, enclosing himself in his little white tent. The drink was sugary and tangy. Nice. He finished it and reached down for the bread, lifting the edge of the pillowcase higher than he meant to, seeing the wall next to the bed. Wallpaper had been pulled off from the skirting board, the effort given up halfway up the wall, the edges tattered, showing the lining paper.

Kneeling behind him his mother lifted the pillowcase gently with two hands, resting it on his forehead. A filthy room. There were crumpled magazines on the floor, Loaded , FHM, and pornos too, Escort , Fiesta. Very old editions, Aamir knew, from the covers. He stocked them, fewer now because they hardly sold any more, since the Internet. The window had curtains on it but they looked greasy and weren’t shut properly, just yanked together and separated at the top so that the white day streamed in, a spotlight for the dust.

His mother’s hand touched his back, fingertips making one of her irresistible suggestions: Go, Ammy, she said, go look for me, see where we are.

Aamir looked at the door to the room, back to the window, back to the door. He pulled the pillowcase off and stopped still, waiting for them to run in and beat him. If they had CCTV in the room they would know. He waited for a moment but no one came.