Denise Mina - Still Midnight

Gobby walked taller as they made their way back down the hill, back to the car. He kept his chin up now, meeting the curious look of students, taking up his space on the pavement without apologising.

‘He was a bit of a prick, wasn’t he?’ he said, suddenly cocky now that it was over.

‘You’re fuck-all use, Gobby. You look so much like a polis, Jesus’d be cagey around you.’

Gobby seemed hurt. Her phone rang, denying him the right to even a silent appeal. Bannerman was a warm relief in her ear. ‘They did the fingerprint analysis on the tinfoil in the trees, they’ve managed to get a match. A certain Malki Tait. They’re calling his records down from central right now.’

Morrow grinned and checked her watch: 3.10. ‘Back in ten.’

‘OK’ she could hear that Bannerman was grinning too, ‘but listen, hurry up. We need to go back to the Anwar house for five. Pick Omar up. D’you get anything?’

‘Rumours that he’s got money. We’ve got probable.’

She heard Bannerman give a long heartfelt sigh. ‘Thanks,’ he said quietly. ‘Thank you.’

Aamir had been waiting for a change, a passage to somewhere else, for nothingness, nothingness would have done. He waited a long time in the dark, hearing no change and seeing no change.

Slowly, as the urgent pain in his wrist throbbed and the blood gathered in his cupped hand, drip-dripping between his fingers and soaking into the dusty rust on the floor, slowly, despite himself, he began to feel hope. He resisted, reminding himself of the betrayal, of the certainty he’d had a moment ago that nothing meant anything and he had wasted his efforts. But the absolute conviction that he should die had evaporated.

Suddenly the balance tipped and he could see it up ahead, like a pinpoint of light in the darkness, the moment when he would not be able to remember clearly why this was definitely a good idea.

Suicide should be sudden, he decided. Slow suicides could struggle, forget, change their minds. He saw himself in a misty plastic bag strugging wildly against the masking tape at his neck. He saw himself in a dark garage, jumping from a chair with a rope around his neck and fighting hard against it, scrabbling for purchase on a shelving unit. Too slow. Himself sleepy in an exhaust-filled car, slowly lifting a regretful hand to the lock. Too slow.

Slow. He wondered if he was hoping hard or the bleeding had slowed. He opened his fingers. Thick gummy blood fell softly onto the spongy rust below and he swept his hand beneath the cut on his wrist. It had stopped. A trickle was running down his arm but the flood of blood had stopped. He looked around the blackness, feeling ridiculous, embarrassed at his previous outburst. Ashamed before God. He imagined his sons watching him in the dark and cleared his throat authoritatively, holding his clean hand to his mouth, making the slash on his wrist gape. It hurt.

Slowly, for want of anything else to do, he stood up. He was aware suddenly of the pains in his scratched knees, of the awful slash of pain in his wrist and how sticky his right hand was.

What a mess to get yourself in, said Johnny Lander. He had said it to Aamir, but while looking at an alki who had come into the shop for fags. The man had a dead moth stuck to his jaw. What a mess to get yourself in.

Arms out to the side, shuffling his feet to orientate himself in the filthy dark, Aamir followed the camber to the end of the drum and found the door he had come in by, feeling along the rim with his sticky hand. He could feel the outline of the bottom of the door, no light or breeze, sealed tight.

In the absence of any other ideas he raised a bloody knuckle and knocked politely, three raps that clanged and swirled around the drum. He couldn’t hear anything. There was no one out there.

Suddenly the drum quivered with a scratch of metal. A pause and another clang. The door opened two inches. The stab of light made Aamir stagger backwards, lifting his bloody hand to shield his eyes.

A disembodied voice spoke softly: ‘Fuckin’ hell.’

A figure in white, an angel, was in the doorway. A skinny angel. ‘Man, what the fuck happened to you?’

Aamir shut his eyes against the blinding day and heard the voice clearly. Not an angel. A ned. The voice was nasal, high, indignant. A junkie voice, familiar somehow. The door opened further, making Aamir cry out at the brutal light and the ned stepped into the drum. ‘Wee man, you’re all bloody. S’there rats bothering ye in here or something?’

It was the sudden realisation of what he had done that made shame and fury explode in Aamir’s chest. He flailed his good hand out wildly and hit the man. It was awkward, less a punch, not even a slap, more of a clumsy glancing entanglement and Aamir turned away from the terrible light, baring his back to take the beating.

He waited. The emotion subsided. He became conscious of the small needling pains everywhere, in his wrist, in his knees, under his fingernails and the balls of his hands.

A small scuffle behind him. It sounded as if the ned was doing a dance, small, quick, delicate steps. Not dancing but shuffling on the platform at the top of the ladder, not shuffling but falling.

In the very moment that Aamir realised the man was struggling to stay upright, the ned toppled, crashing down into the drum. He landed heavily, flat, with a clang so loud it crashed over them in a cold wash. Aamir covered his head, expecting the man to jump to his feet, furiously swing his arms, punch, kick, a jab-jab-jab in his back. But he lay where he fell. The soft sound of a wet cough. Then a military beat, growing louder, faster, more insistent.

Still cringing Aamir stole a glance behind, towards the door. He could see a foot in a pristine white trainer, heel jerking off the floor, beating time, faster, tapping out a crazy beat, too fast to follow. It stopped. Aamir waited with his arms over his eyes, watching the foot below.

The sound of wet.

Keeping his eyes covered Aamir retreated to the shadows at the back of the drum, turned and finally managed to open his burning eyes.

A ned in white, his skip cap half covering his face. White legs, white wrists but the rest was as red as roses. Wet. Dark. And the blood was still coming. Aamir looked at his own hand. The slice of metal was still in it. He had thought it was bigger in the dark. It was sharp. Not where he had thought it was sharp, not along the ridge but on the end. And it was glinting.

Carefully Aamir stepped towards the white legs and looked down at the man’s face. Blood gurgled from his neck like oil from the ground. The skin was drained to a ferocious blue-white marble, slowly clashing with the ginger of his hair, orange stubble on his face sprouting vivid. Eyes rolled up under the lids, irises coming to rest just below his upper eyelids. Blue as a vein under white skin.

He knew suddenly where he recognised the voice from. The boy in the bedroom offered him sweeties and apologised for the mess of the place. Aamir didn’t take them in case they were poisoned but he’d been impressed that when he gave a religious objection it was understood and respected.

Aamir looked at the cut on his own wrist. Hardly bloody at all. No gash marks, just a dried dribble around his wrist like a drawing of a bangle.

Softly, slowly, Aamir sank to his knees. He stayed there for a long time until his knees were so stiff he could hardly stand to move them, until the pains shot into his hips and the bruises on his back throbbed. Even then he sat still.

Beyond the door the sun was going down, the dark creeping back in to swallow the day. It was time to pray but Aamir couldn’t. He couldn’t make himself known to God. Keeping his eyes shut, feeling his way with his feet and the sound of his whimper, Aamir shuffled back into the hateful dark at the end of the drum and awaited his fate.