Denise Mina - Still Midnight

He looked out at the road. ‘This junction’s a pain in the arse.’

‘Go right,’ she said quickly, keen to maintain the forward momentum in the conversation. ‘Round the side there to the left.’

Bannerman followed her directions into the visitors’ car park in front of the infirmary, found a spot near the far wall and stopped. He took the key out and stepped out of the car into the wind coming off the bare junction in front of them.

Still suspicious, she opened her door, climbed out and shut it, watching him carefully over the roof of the car. He was squinting at the Battlefield Rest, a restaurant in a converted Edwardian tram depot. ‘Looks like a seaside ice cream parlour or something. Why’s it called the Battlefield Rest?’

‘You don’t know this area?’

‘No.’

‘Mary Queen of Scots fought her last battle here. Against her son’s army. She lost.’

‘What were they fighting about?’

‘Religion.’ She stopped to frown. ‘I think.’

He pointed to the little rotunda. ‘And she rested in there?’

The tram stop was built during the Great War, over three hundred years after Queen Mary was executed. Morrow looked for a note of humour on his face but found nothing. ‘No,’ she said, ‘she just sent in for a lasagne.’

Bannerman didn’t react. He turned and walked into the hospital. Morrow wished she had a pal at work to tell the story to.

The lobby was busy but the lifts were efficient, sucking in groups gathering in front of them and spiriting them off to different floors. Bannerman checked his notes as they stepped into a lift. They were crammed in next to a woman and her very fat toddler in a pushchair. The fair-haired girl was three, sleeping, her head dropped forward onto her chest, dressed in clothes that didn’t quiet fit her. A roll of belly peeked out from under her T-shirt. Morrow noticed the back of the pram was littered with sweetie wrappers and empty juice bottles.

The mother herself looked nippy, a skinny strip of anxious annoyance, hair yanked up into a ponytail, smelling of stale cigarette smoke and perfume.

Morrow saw Bannerman looking at the wrappers and frown a reproach at the mother. The doors opened on the second floor and the woman shoved the pram out, spitefully bumping it over the metal ridges, jerking the fat sleeping child around in her chair.

Bannerman tutted when the doors shut and muttered, ‘Feed your kids shit like that…’

Morrow didn’t join in the cosy sanctimony. Bannerman didn’t have kids. He knew fuck all about it. ‘Have you got the statements there?’

Bannerman opened the folder and pulled out three sheets. One was Aleesha’s statement. She had been out of it and said nothing. The second one was Sadiqa’s, taken at the hospital, probably while Aleesha was in the operating theatre. Sadiqa had been in the kitchen, heard a noise, went to see what it was. The lift doors opened on floor five but Morrow continued to read, stepping out into the lobby, standing to the side as she quickly scanned the notes. Men with guns threatened them, pulled her up the hall. Aleesha was shot. Then Omar came in and she screamed and then they took Aamir.

When Morrow looked up she was smiling. ‘She says they were asking for Bob.’

Bannerman sighed and conceded, ‘I know. I only got it this morning. Feel like an arse now.’

She gave him back the statement as they approached the ward doors, walking slightly behind him, a disingenuous gesture of companionship. She wanted him to trust her. When she reached forward to press the security buzzer on the door she saw that he was smiling quietly to himself. It worried her. A wash of exhaustion swept over her, shift change from night to day was always painful.

A voice on the intercom interrupted her train of thought; ‘Yes?’ A young nurse in glasses was looking out at them from an office a hundred yards down the corridor.

‘DS Bannerman and DS Morrow from Strathclyde Police. We’re here to talk to Aleesha Anwar.’

‘OK.’ The nurse reached back into the door and pressed a button to release the lock, walking down to meet them as they entered.

Two coppers had been ordered to stay outside Aleesha’s room and were stationed in the corridor, one sitting on a chair in the corridor, the other leaning against the wall facing the door, watching the nurse’s arse as she passed him.

Morrow and Bannerman walked into the ward corridor, getting out their warrant cards. The nurse gave them a brief glance. ‘Anwar’s in IC.’ Without a word of explanation she turned on her white heels and led them to the room opposite the nurse’s station.

A large window looked into the room from the corridor. A tangle of wires was threaded through a hole in the wall, plugged into monitors sitting on a metal trolley in the corridor, where the nurses could watch the numbers. The DCs standing outside stood upright when they approached. Bannerman told them to go and take a ten-minute piece break. They thanked him and shuffled off out the doors.

Through the glass they could see Aleesha was asleep, propped upright against puffed-up pillows. Her left hand was heavily bandaged but the shape still discernibly distorted: three of her fingers were missing, only the index finger still clearly outlined, the others stubs after the first knuckle. The dressings on the stubs of her two middle fingers were discoloured with a translucent yellow fluid.

She was terribly pretty, Morrow thought, young and vulnerable, with the perfect skin and effortless grace that no one ever appreciates until they’ve lost them.

They stepped into the room. The lights were calmingly low but vicious strip lighting outside the room kept it bright and clinical. On the nearside of the bed, between the window and the patient, Sadiqa was dozing in a big purple recliner armchair, covered to her neck in a pink cellular blanket. She was very overweight, a heavy wattle of fat pooling around her chin, her massive round stomach splayed to the sides.

The chair was upholstered in waterproof plastic and reclined so that the footrest rose and the back dropped down. Morrow had slept on those chairs and knew how fantastically uncomfortable they were.

Sadiqa half opened her eyes, saw their feet, realised they weren’t hospital staff and looked up.

‘Mrs Anwar, I’m DS Bannerman and this is DS Morrow from CID. We were at your house last night.’

Befuddled with sleep Sadiqa’s hand rose to her chest under the blanket. Morrow stepped forward and reached out to shake. ‘I don’t think I met you last night, Mrs Anwar, I’m Alex Morrow.’

Sadiqa reached her hand out from under the cover. She was still wearing her nightie. ‘Nice to meet you…’ said Sadiqa, lost for forms of address in the strange circumstance.

‘We wondered if we could have a word with you?’

She tried to sit up suddenly, as if she had just remembered. ‘Aamir?’

‘No.’ Alex held her hand up. ‘We haven’t come with any news. We just wanted to ask you about a couple of details that might help us find him.’

‘OK, let me get…’ Sadiqa struggled to get out of the chair. She kicked her heels at the footrest but her weight pinned her to the chair. She had to use her arms to hoist her bottom off the chair and haul the chair into the upright position. She was embarrassed, gestured to her stomach, blaming it as if it was a separate entity. ‘Fat,’ she said and stood up.

The blanket fell to the floor revealing her pink nightie, still splattered with dried blood. She slipped her feet into her shoes.

‘Wouldn’t you like to change, Mrs Anwar?’ said Morrow.

‘Into what?’ Sadiqa wasn’t pleased by that. ‘I haven’t anything to change into.’

‘Couldn’t your sons bring you something?’