Denise Mina - Still Midnight

‘Old lady,’ guessed Morrow, pressing the doorbell.

‘A quid,’ bet Harris.

Shuffling steps, a weak call of ‘hello’ in an old lady’s voice.

Morrow smiled at the step. ‘Mrs Tait?’

‘Hello?’

Harris and Morrow looked at each other. Either she hadn’t heard Morrow or she was working for time. Malcolm Tait could be walking out of the back door right now.

Suddenly animated, Morrow raised her fist to bang on the door and Harris backed away to the street, looking for a lane to the back garden. The door opened suddenly and a thin woman looked out at them, tipping her head back to see them through the bottom portion of red plastic bifocal glasses.

Annie Tait was wearing a pair of baggy red joggers and a white vest with bra straps showing. She had the arms of a much younger woman. She’d once had red hair like her son, but had dyed it blonde, two inch roots of red and grey mingled at her scalp. It was wild frizzy hair, the tips not helped by the drying effect of the hair dye. It looked like a rain-flattened afro. Embarrassed by her appearance she raised her hand to it. ‘Who are you?’

Morrow stepped forward. ‘I’m DS Morrow, this is DC Harris. We’re here about Malcolm.’

‘What about him? He’s not been arrested?’

‘No, Mrs Tait, we’re just really keen to talk to him.’

Annie pulled the door shut so that she blocked the view of the house with her body. ‘Keep the heat in…’ she explained to Harris and turned back to Morrow, as if she was the natural leader. ‘I’m looking for Malki too. I’m always looking for bloody Malki. Did you get the taxi firm number?’

‘We did, aye, that’s what we wanted to talk to you about.’

‘How?’ Annie tipped her chin down, trying to see better through the top portion of the bifocals. Unsatisfied she went back to the bottom portion. The lenses were warping Morrow’s view of her eyes, it was making her feel a bit sick.

‘Can we come in, Mrs Tait? Would that be OK?’

Annie looked across the street, then up the road to the chapel, as if checking that Jesus wasn’t watching and opened the door. ‘Aye,’ she wrinkled her nose as if she was letting a wet stray in for a drink of water, ‘come in.’

Harris followed behind Morrow, closing the door behind himself. The hall was narrow and plain, painted green with matching carpet. To the left was a front room, as neat in its way as the Anwars’ but with older, cheaper furnishings. A set of stairs led up the right-hand wall to the bedrooms. Along the wall by the stairs were click-frame collages of family photos, all of Malcolm and ginger Annie in different fashions, in the front garden here, in ugly halls at weddings, never abroad, never on a beach. There didn’t seem to be any pictures of a dad.

Malcolm making his first communion, standing stiff as a board in a shirt and tie, solemn-faced, hair watered flat, rosary beads strapped around his prayer-clasped hands like a parlour Houdini. It was outside the chapel down the road, Morrow realised, she could just see this house in the far background.

Annie saw her looking at the photo. ‘That’s him, when he was cute. He’s still cute now, just not in the same way. So, did ye find the taxi cab? He’s never phoned home and he usually does if he’s staying out and can remember, if he’s gageing off his nuts.’

‘Gageing?’ repeated Harris, thinking he had misheard.

Annie crossed her arms. ‘D’ye not know? Malki’s a heroin addict.’ She pointed at a pile of photocopied leaflets sitting on the floor by the door. ‘M.A.D.: Mothers Against Dealers.’ She touched her chest. ‘Founder member,’ she said proudly.

‘Good for you,’ said Harris.

‘It’s a family disease,’ she said, as if that explained it.

‘Is it?’ Harris looked genuinely perplexed and interested. Morrow was impressed. ‘What do you do about it?’

‘Oooh,’ Annie rolled her eyes back into her head, ‘talk about it.’

‘Hm.’ Harris didn’t know what else to ask so he tipped his head in sympathy.

Annie seemed appeased by this, she led them into the front room, offering them the threadbare brown settee. They sat down side by side. A large sacred heart picture of Jesus was on the wall, the colours blue and red, Disney-ish. The television was boxy and old, the carpet worn.

‘You’ll notice that the ornaments in here are shite,’ she said proudly. ‘That’s what it’s like to live with an addict. Ye have to watch the fuckers every minute or they’ll rob the eyes out your head, swear to god.’

‘Must be hell,’ said Harris lightly.

‘It is.’ Annie hung her head. ‘It’s especially hard on the mothers. That’s why we set up M.A.D.’

‘So it’s a support group?’ asked Morrow.

‘Oh, more than that.’ Annie was suddenly animated. ‘We’re activists. Chased two of the fuckers out of this scheme last year.’

‘Chased?’ asked Harris mildly.

Smirking, Annie mimed lighting a match and throwing it. Morrow did remember something in the papers about houses on that scheme being firebombed. ‘Ye firebombed their houses?’ she said. ‘That’s illegal, Annie, someone could get killed.’

‘Never said that, did I?’ She stuck her tongue deep into her cheek defiantly, almost flirtatiously, daring them to prove it.

‘If you know of dealing on the scheme you should phone us.’

Annie wasn’t used to being disagreed with. ‘Well, we can hardly call the polis on them, can we? Ye never appear. Half of ye are on the take anyway.’

Morrow gave her a warning look, flicking her eyes to Harris, suggesting that though she herself was tolerant he’d be liable to lift her. Aware that she’d said the wrong thing, Annie looked penitent. ‘Sorry,’ she said to Harris. ‘God forgive me. I know a lot of ye are on the level.’

‘Did you firebomb someone?’

‘Naw, we never really.’ she said, but she was smirking. ‘Just kidding.’

‘Look.’ Morrow took charge. ‘Malcolm took a taxi from here to Toryglen yesterday morning. We think he might be in a lot of bother.’ It was a lie but she could live with it. ‘Could ye tell us who he knows there?’

She was stunned at the news. ‘In Toryglen?’

‘Toryglen, yeah, on the Southside.’

‘Doesn’t know anyone there. Toryglen, are ye sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Toryglen’s twenty quid away.’

‘Yeah.’ Morrow looked at her notes. ‘The fare was… eighteen thirty.’

‘Well,’ Annie was furious, ‘that wee fucker better be in a lot of trouble, somebody else better have paid that for him, I can tell ye, if he had money like that and wasn’t hiding it in the house. He owes me a lot of dough.’ She looked hopefully at Morrow’s notes. ‘Did someone else pay it?’

‘No, he pulled out a twenty and took the change.’

‘I’ll fucking kill him.’

‘Who’s he been spending time with recently? Is he working? Do you know who he’s been hanging about with, say, over the past couple of days?’

Annie was too angry to think. ‘I’ll fucking kill him. God for-fucking-give me, so fucking help me…’ Leaning back she glanced out of the front window and froze. As they watched she seemed to be nodding a wild signal at the picture window. Harris and Morrow stood up to see what she was looking at. Nothing there but a silver car. Morrow looked at Annie and realised that she wasn’t nodding but peering into the street alternately through the bottom and top half of her glasses, trying to get focus.

‘Mrs Tait? Who’s Malcolm been spending time with?’

Keeping her eyes on the road Annie seemed suddenly very calm. ‘Just his usual pals. Dealer over in Shettleston. James Kairn, lives near the Tower Bar. Might want to check that out. Could ye excuse me?’ She hurried out into the hall, opened the door and ushered them out into the street. Despite still having her slippers on she grabbed a set of keys from the sill inside and shut and locked the door, bid them a perfunctory goodbye, and scurried across the road.