Denise Mina - Still Midnight

She smiled and he leaned forward, his face close to hers. ‘When you get old,’ he whispered, ‘it’s very hard to find people you can stand the sight of.’

Morrow whispered back, ‘I have that trouble now.’

He smiled and sat back. ‘D’you think you’ll find him alive?’ he said, his voice cracking a little.

She gave an honest shrug. ‘The gunmen came in asking for someone called Bob,’ She watched him for a reaction.

‘There ye are then,’ Johnny Lander said certainly. ‘It was the wrong address.’

He led them out to the hall, opened the door and saw them out formally, shook their hands in turn and gave all the formal pleasantries a gentleman would, nice to meet you, anything I can do. He watched them take the stairs, looking over the banister again, lifting a hand to wave when they looked up to see if he was still there.

Morrow found herself leaving the neat world of Mr Lander reluctantly, dragging her feet as she tripped after Bannerman down to the bubbling damp and noisy street. He was a soldier, had that capacity to form ferocious, blind attachments, lived in a world of moral absolutes. She envied it. He probably never had to call into question the army; it must have served him well. Her own experience of joining the force was her father and the rest of the family turning from her, thinking themselves betrayed. It was twelve years ago and she still wondered if the desire to shed them was the reason she joined. She saw herself as an old woman in a personality-free house, sitting in a desolate silence as a bus rumbled past the window.

Outside the close the day had descended into cold drizzle.

‘You shouldn’t have said that about the guns.’ Bannerman squinted out into the road.

Morrow pulled her coat closed. ‘Those guys last night, they aren’t firearms trained.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Omar did that, didn’t he?’ She threw her hand to the side, the way Omar had during questioning the night before, at a low ninety degree angle. ‘I was watching on the remote.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Doesn’t that look like recoil put it there?’

Bannerman looked at her hand, reluctant to admit she was right.

‘And he said he thought the guy had a long face under the balaclava. He said that, “a long face”, until he shut his mouth.’ She dropped her jaw in shock and shut it again. ‘Just after he fired the shot.’

Bannerman shrugged. ‘It’s an idea.’

‘Plus, think about the order of things: the girl was shot at an irrelevant point in the negotiations. It wasn’t a ploy to up the ante, wasn’t to move the threat forward. It was just a stupid mistake.’

Bannerman wouldn’t look at her.

‘Well, it’s a theory anyway.’ She shrugged. ’Don’t like being wrong, do you?’ She dropped from the step into the street. Buses passed noisily in front of her. Cars edged impatiently around them and drew back at the stream of traffic coming the other way.

Bannerman was at her side. ‘No, but, it’s… that’s much worse, isn’t it? If they aren’t used to firearms. They could shoot anyone at any time.’

The traffic in front of them came to a standstill as a bus let its passengers off and the lights changed on the other side.

‘On the upside,’ she stepped out between the back of a bus and a car, ‘they might shoot each other.’

The shop door was sticky and needed a shove. It chimed as Bannerman opened it and stepped in. It was a small room, smelled of dust and stale body odour. On the right the wall was lined with newspapers and magazine racks, with the porn high up and children’s comics. Near the back sat a rack of glass bottles of fizzy juice, laid out on their sides like wine, with an upright crate of empty returns next to them. A central stand displayed household absolute essentials: shampoo next to tea bags and washing powder and nappies. Expensive items like peanut butter were arranged to face the shopkeeper, close enough to lean over and slap any shoplifters who tried their arm. The counter ran half the length of the shop, which wasn’t much. Behind it cigarettes and cheap drink and coffee were kept beyond grabbing distance.

Twenty years of small change had eroded the white plastic counter through to the brown chipboard beneath. Behind it sat two high stools, still angled into one another, as if duettists had just left the stage. On one of the low shelves she saw a little silver short wave radio. It would be a comfy perch to watch the world from.

The shop was being manned by a man who was too young for his beard and old-fashioned manners, as if he was acting a part. He looked at her expectantly but didn’t speak.

‘Hello, are you Mr Anwar’s cousin?’

‘Yes,’ he said, heavily accented, nodding his head passively.

‘DS Morrow.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m one of the police officers investigating your cousin’s kidnapping.’

He didn’t take her hand. ‘Yes,’ he said again, trying, she thought, to process the words she had said individually.

‘This is DS Bannerman.’ She gestured behind her. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Ahmed Johany.’ When he saw her confusion he added kindly, ‘John.’

‘John?’ She laughed.

‘You call me… John.’ But he wasn’t smiling now, at least his eyes weren’t smiling, they were sad, as if he was mourning Ahmed Johany and wished he had a place in the shop too.

Bannerman leaned over her shoulder. ‘Mr Johany?’ He pointed to a high corner behind the counter and they all looked up together. A video camera, a small red light next to it. ‘Is that…?’

‘Camera, yes.’

‘Do you keep the tapes?’

He shook his head. ‘For one, two weeks only…’

‘Then…?’

‘Tape over.’ Apologetic, he smiled, rolling one forearm over the other. ‘Save on tapes.’

‘Can we have the ones you’ve got from last week?’

He indicated that they could but was worried about leaving them while he went through to the back shop. Bannerman took out his warrant card and showed it to him but Ahmed shook his head, embarrassed at having doubted them. He scuttled off quickly though, glancing back a couple of times as he made it to a door at the back. He took barely twenty seconds to bring out a stack of dusty video cartridges out to them. He hurried back behind the counter, not happy until he got there, and found a thin blue plastic bag to put the tapes in. He tried to fit them all in one bag, but they wouldn’t go and he had to get another bag out from under the counter.

Morrow watched him put them in, careful as eggs, trying not to rip the thin skin of the bag. ‘Have you worked here long?’

‘Hmm.’ Worried at the question, he handed the bags to Bannerman by the handles. ‘I come here just… now. ’ He added quickly, ‘Not Scotland. Here many years, but shop, I just come now.’

The distrust, the soft passive smile, all reflected poorly either on the neighbourhood they were in or else the one Johany had come from. Morrow felt ashamed, remembered racist graffiti on a shop front when she was small, thought of a shop in Partick that had a felt-tipped sign in the window: ‘ This Shop is Run by Scottish People.’

The door opened behind them, a puff of noise and dust from the street, and an elderly woman with a severe white perm stood in the doorway. She looked from Bannerman to Johany. ‘Where’s he?’ she said indignantly.

‘Who?’ asked Morrow because Johany didn’t say anything.

‘The wee man.’ She pointed at the counter. ‘Is he sick or something?’

‘How?’ asked Morrow sharply.

The woman scowled at her. ‘Who are yous? Have you bought the shop or something?’

‘No. Who are you?’

‘Who am I?’ She couldn’t quite believe she was being asked. ‘I’m in here every day. I come in here every day. Where’s the wee man?’