Denise Mina - Still Midnight

‘And so, Mr Parry we will be getting the fuck out of this disgusting abode pronto.’ He stopped for a titter himself. ‘Thanking you, but offers of tea and biscuits will be declined.’

‘And biscuits!’ echoed the giggly second polis.

Shugie said nothing. He stood and took the abuse until a sudden thump came from the kitchen ceiling.

The polis shifted their feet. ‘Is there someone else in this house?’ It was the other one talking. Shugie didn’t answer him.

‘Mr Parry?’

Shugie mumbled, ‘Cheeking my fucking…’

The giggler was suddenly stern. ‘Is there someone else in the fucking house, Parry?’

‘… disrespectful and that, talking about smells and that, whit’s your fucking house like then?’

‘Come on, we’ll just go and see, Paul.’ It was the first polis again, the comedian.

Shugie spoke up. ‘My mate – he’s… sleeping it off.’

‘Right, answer us when we fucking speak tae ye, well.’

‘’S get the fuck out of here before we catch something.’

‘Too fucking right… disgusting.’

They were walking away, Shugie grumbling behind them. Finally the front door slammed shut.

Pat raised his head from his knees and whispered, ‘I can’t… my fucking nerves are shredded here,’ he reasoned. ‘Eddy, I know you’re the contact, but I’m facing the same time as you and I can’t fucking take it.’

Eddy raised a hand, Pat expected him to get angry but he looked frightened too. ‘Let’s go and phone and then we’ll come back and move him.’

‘Where to?’

‘Well, you fucking decide.’ Here was the spite. ‘You fucking come up with somewhere better if you’re so much fucking smarter than me.’

‘Breslin’s.’

Eddy blinked, his bottom lip flapped as he thought of things to say. He licked his lips, disappointed that Pat had come up with somewhere so much better. ‘Let’s phone.’

The roll shop was tiny, little more than a dirty-looking door with a chalkboard outside announcing the availability of tea and full breakfast butties. Pat made Eddy stop here because he knew it sold newspapers too.

He stepped across the pavement, alive with the urgent tenderness of a lover orchestrating a chance encounter. Workmen in dusty jeans stood by the counter. The heavy aroma of spitting fat filled the narrow room with sticky air. Trying to act calm Pat turned to the newspaper stand. She was looking out at him.

A bad photo, grainy head and shoulders, taken by a mobile phone, but it was clear enough for him to see what he wanted. Long black hair parted in the middle, a large nose, hooked like a finger curling come hither. White perfect smile and hooded eyes that spoke only to him. She was injured but not dead. The first paragraph said that they were a respectable family. Shows what they know, thought Pat.

She was making a face in the picture, puffing up her cheek-bones and pouting a little, not tarty, just sweet. Pat reached out to pick up a copy and felt the texture of the rough paper kiss his fingertips, smelled the hot fat as sweet, the daylight glinting on the greasy wall as a sparkle. That she existed made the tawdry present bearable. He folded the paper and tucked it under his arm, smiling, as happy as if it was her arm, and went over to the counter, ordered two egg and bacon rolls and two cans of ginger, handing over the money to the beautifully hungover fat man behind the counter.

He read on as the rolls were made. Her name was Aleesha, she was sixteen, a pupil at Shawlands Academy, loved by all her classmates. Pat knew she would be popular, he’d known it. She had lost several fingers and was in intensive care in the Victoria Infirmary. At that he slowly dropped the paper, his mouth hanging open in amazement. He knew she would be in the Vicky. He just knew that she would be there. It was as if they were connected somehow, as if he had picked the place they would meet again.

He read about the terrible damage to her hand and empathised with her pain, with the awful disfigurement she would have to live with, but deep inside he was pleased that he had shot her, because now she wouldn’t be perfect and a hundred miles above him, because he had caused her photo to be on the front of the paper and he could look at her whenever he wanted.

The rolls arrived and he carried them, fat seeping through the paper bag out to the car. Eddy told him to be careful not to get grease everywhere; it was a hire car and they’d have to pay extra if they got stains on the seats and that. Use the newspaper on your lap, he said.

But Pat folded the paper carefully and tucked it into the pocket on the door, letting the fat get on his jeans instead.

‘What’s it saying?’ Eddy nodded at the paper.

Pat filtered through the story to find the facts. ‘She’s stable,’ he said. ‘In the hospital. Intensive care.’

Eddy stopped chewing and stared at him. ‘Who’s stable?’

‘The girl.’

‘Oh, the one you shot?’

That stung, him saying that so lightly, as if it was a detail. Pat looked out of the window. ‘They’ve clues anyway.’

Eddy took another bite and asked through a mouthful, ‘Can I see?’ He held his hand out to the paper but Pat hesitated. He didn’t want Eddy to touch his paper. He braced himself and handed it over casually.

They finished their rolls in silence, Pat holding a secret vigil over the paper until Eddy handed it back, and licked his fingers before accepting. He folded it nicely so that her face was visible and tucked her into the car door pocket. They drove on, looking for a phone box that didn’t have a camera right nearby. Cameras were all over the city like rats.

Finally Eddy stopped the car in a quiet street, a few spaces away from the phone box in case they were being watched, and they looked around, keeping their eyes up, looking for cameras on the sides of buildings and on street lights. It was a residential area, a quiet street with big trees and bushes in front of the tenements.

‘Right.’ Eddy pulled on the handbrake, and snapped his belt off.

‘No.’ Pat touched his arm with a staying hand. ‘No, I’ll do the phoning.’

Eddy looked at him. ‘Why?’

‘’Cause you’ve been under a lot of pressure…’

Eddy liked that characterisation. He nodded at the windscreen. ‘Well, be threatening. And tell them two million by tonight.’

‘And we’ll call back with a drop place?’ Pat knew that was what they had to do, they’d talked about it enough, but he wanted to make Eddy feel as if he was deciding. ‘Aye, that’s right, that’s… a drop point. We’ll call back later.’ ‘When they’ve got the money?’ Eddy nodded again. ‘When they’ve got the money.’ Pat got out and took the newspaper with him.

The street of tenements was tall and narrow but surrounded by fields, like a lone passenger crammed into the corner of an empty lift. The pink sandstone was stained to blood red over the years by the black belching from the backsides of cars and buses passing through the stone valley. It was part of a city now gone, the buildings running along either bank of a road that once snaked through other tall streets. All its neighbours had been knocked down before they crumbled away, the families of mine and dock and factory workers decanted to the schemes and new towns.

The Anwars’ shop would never have excited the interest of an avaricious passer-by. It was a poor corner shop. The shop front was painted with what looked like navy blue undercoat, matt and dusty from the street, with ‘Newsagents’ hand painted in red, weathered to pink, above the window. The window was frosted with dirt, the counter inside abutting glass obscured with adverts for newspapers and magazines and comics. A blue plastic ice-cream selection board sagged drunkenly in the window, too far in to be read, too old to be true.