Denise Mina - Still Midnight

She took a breath, pulled herself upright. ‘Poor Ugandan refugee. Had nothing but a strong work ethic.’

‘And twenty-eight years later…’ Morrow left it open.

A happy woman would have grinned and nodded, smugly affirmed the rightness of her choice. Sadiqa smiled weakly. ‘Yeah, it’s a long time, right enough.’ Absent-mindedly her hand strayed to the crusted blood on the front of her nightie and she looked down, suddenly distressed, taking her hand away and looking at it.

‘Haven’t the boys made it in yet?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, they can’t come because of the baby. I phoned them though. I phoned them because you can’t even have a phone on in here. It interferes with the machines or something.’

The boys could have phoned the ward and been put through to their mother, Morrow knew that.

‘Well, maybe it’s best if they don’t come up anyway.’ Morrow touched her arm. ‘It’s bound to be quite frightening.’

She had given her an excuse and Sadiqa appreciated it. ‘Yes.’ She looked around. ‘It is frightening. Very frightening. I’d actually rather they didn’t…’

‘Would you like us to bring you some clothes from home?’

‘No, no.’ Sadiqa softened. ‘No, I’ll go home later in a cab, get some food. The food’s disgusting here. They cook vegetables by boiling them for an hour…’

‘How’s Aleesha doing?’ asked Bannerman, shutting his notebook when he saw the coppers being let back into the ward by the nurse.

‘She’s not dying.’ She raised her eyes in a silent prayer of thanks. ‘Stable. Probably move her out of intensive care today. Half a foot to the left and she’d be-’

‘Oh that’s great,’ he interrupted. ‘Well, listen, we’ll leave you with these officers and we’ll go downstairs and make a phone call. When we come back in a minute we’ll try to talk to her.’

They weren’t coming back. He was keeping Sadiqa on point.

‘OK.’ Sadiqa nodded, watching uncertainly as Bannerman shuffled off to talk to one of the officers. She looked at Morrow.

‘Thank you very much, Mrs Anwar.’ Morrow nodded, letting her know she understood what she had done.

‘ Please ,’ said Sadiqa desperately. ‘ Please find him.’

‘We’ll do our best.’

Sadiqa went back into the intensive care room, resuming her purple seat, watching them anxiously through the window as she pulled her pink blanket up protectively over her chest.

Bannerman was muttering orders to the coppers. ‘I don’t want that woman using a phone until I give the say-so. Not talking on the ward phone, not using a mobile in the loo, not nipping downstairs to buy biscuits, understand?’

Through the intensive care window Morrow could see Sadiqa sitting tense, staring at her daughter, gnawing on a thumbnail.

When they opened the door to Shugie’s bedroom the little man was sitting as they had left him, upright on the bed, but something was wrong: the corners of the pillowcase met his corners. He looked too tidy. He’d taken it off and put it back on again, which was bad, but his posture troubled them more: he sat confidently, shoulders down, head up, facing them, not cowering. His head swivelled as he looked from one to the other through the pillowcase, his bearing so upright they both felt inexplicably afraid, as if it was a rehearsal for meeting them in court. It was creepy because his bearing made him seem human.

Eddy looked at Pat, glanced at the crack in the curtains, looked back at the confident man. Pillowcase knew the police had been there. He had been at the window and seen them or heard them downstairs and thought they were coming to save him, banged on the floor deliberately to fuck them up.

Pat could feel Eddy’s rage rise like a scream in a pitch too high to hear. Eddy stepped towards the bed, teeth bared, out of control and grabbed the man by the forearm, shaking him hard, toppling him face down into the mattress, twisting his arm up his back hard, the way the police did. The old man gave a squeal, ‘no’ or ‘ah’, but it was high anyway, shocked, not what he had expected. Pinning him face down on the bed, Eddy raised his other elbow high and jabbed a short punch into his kidney. The old man buckled and collapsed, groaning, the gush of air muffled in the mattress. Eddy punched again and again, hitting the soft skin on his back, missing the ribs deliberately, going for the soft tissue.

Pat looked away for part of the attack. Then he thought Eddy might see him looking elsewhere and forced his eyes onto the pillowcase. It twitched out a response to the blows.

Eddy stood unsteadily on the bed, over the body, saliva flecked on his chin, panting like a child on a bouncy castle. He was fighting off a smile. Pat watched as he wiped it away with the back of his hand. It was odd to enjoy it so much. A bit sadistic. You could kill a man doing that to him.

He looked down at the pillowcase, thinking vaguely about internal bleeding and the mysteries of the human body. If Eddy killed it he would have to sort out getting rid of the body, Pat wasn’t going to do it, he hadn’t laid a finger on him. But then Eddy would probably give a body to Shugie or some other arsehole and they’d get done for it.

As an afterthought the old man gave a twitch, raising his buttocks up in a futile attempt to get away, and he slumped back, face down on the bed.

Suddenly stern, Eddy gestured to the other side of the bed. Pat shuffled over and they took an arm each and dragged the pillowcase off the bed, trying to stand him up on his cloth legs. He buckled forwards. Twice more they tried to stand him up and both times his knees flopped hopelessly outwards. It was getting worrying. On the final try he took his weight, just one knee buckled, swinging a circle but coming back. Eddy nodded Pat to the door.

They dragged it on its toes out to the landing, through the mildew cloud at the bathroom door, yanking it, giving it contradictory signals about which way to go. By the time they reached the top of the stairs the pillowcase was crying and muttering, sputtering and gasping for air between sobs.

Eddy stopped, looked down to the front hall and back to Pat. Pat could feel warmth through the sleeve, human warmth, but he looked down at the hall carpet and thought of Aleesha, of the depth of her grief for her father, of slipping his arm around her shoulders and her silky hair sliding across his bare arm. His hand gliding around her shoulder, his fingertips memorising every hair, her sharp shoulder blades, vertebrae, the powdered softness of her skin. She would need him then. Desire made him peel his fingers away from the arm but as soon as he did he felt himself diminish and was ashamed.

Eddy took a step forward still holding the arm, yanking hard but the pillowcase stood firm, upright, looked at him angrily. It yanked its arm away indignantly. He knew there were stairs there.

A clatter of feet made them look down: Malki was running up towards them, lifting his knees high, smiling. ‘Brought the car round the back,’ he panted, stopping two steps down, holding the banister and swinging down a step again.

Eddy glared at him.

‘Bloke’s already heard my voice,’ explained Malki, a hand on the wall and one on the banister, barring the way. ‘I already spoke to him, when I give him the sweeties. He can’t eat them ’cause they’re not halal.’

Somehow the moment had passed. They couldn’t do it in front of Malki. In front of Malki would risk a long conversation about right and wrong, a dispute; he would ask about their motives, talk about the pillowcase as a person. Foiled. Pat felt proud of his wee junkie cousin.

Eddy motioned for Pat to take the stairs ahead of him and followed him down, pinching the old man’s elbow tight as he led him roughly down the steep steps.