Denise Mina - Still Midnight

They were laughing at something as they came down the path towards them, the relief marked in their shoulders and faces. Whenever a gun was used Firearms had to come to either disarm or ensure that no gun-toting nutters were hanging around in cupboards waiting to leap out when the police got there. It was a high-stress, short-life job. They were recruiting all the time, month on month getting more and more calls. A flood of redundant weapons were coming to Glasgow from Ireland, selling for buttons.

As the Unit came past they assumed MacKechnie was the senior and gave him the low-down: no one in there, no guns in the house, one bullet in the wall and a lot of blood. One resident still in the house, a bedridden new mother.

‘Bedridden?’ asked Morrow.

As if they were seeing her for the first time, all of the men looked at her.

‘Well,’ their DS answered weakly, ‘she’s just had a baby. A week ago or something.’

‘How’s she bedridden?’

‘She’s not to get up. Said she could haemorrhage.’ The sergeant was embarrassed and laughed, ‘I’m not qualified to check her stitches, am I?’

She watched as they all giggled together. Even MacKechnie had a titter. Bannerman looked away. The sergeant opened his mouth to add to the joke, say something crude, but he saw the look on Morrow’s face and bottled it.

‘Anyway, that’s us done,’ he said, giving Bannerman a sympathetic look about Morrow. ‘We’re off.’

They watched the gaggle of big men pick their steps carefully down the far stem of the T-junction, tiptoeing until they were carefully beyond the tape and out of the crime scene. They climbed back in their shiny black van.

Morrow wished she was alone and could bite herself again but she took a breath and asked the cop, ‘What’s the story?’

The plod drew a breath to speak but Bannerman cut him dead. ‘Family, at home after Ramadan prayers in the Mosque-’

‘Which Mosque?’

‘Central for the kids, Tintagell Road for the daddy.’

Morrow nodded, it made sense. Central was a city-wide mosque, young people from all over the city got to check each other out. Tintagell was smaller, local, had a tighter community feeling about it. If the kids were going to Central then they weren’t territorial, weren’t gang-marked. Good kids.

‘Gathering back at the house,’ Bannerman continued, ‘door-bell rings, thinking that a family member had forgotten their keys, daughter opens door, father in hall. Two masked gunmen enter shouting threats, looking for someone called Rob. Demanded money and ordered them not to call us-’

‘Much?’

‘Two million.’

‘ Pounds?’

‘Aye.’

They looked back at the house, valued it, MacKechnie said, ‘Worth about three hundred K, do you think?’

Morrow and Bannerman nodded in agreement.

‘Two million in cash? Did they get it?’

‘There was no one called Rob here.’

‘What colour were the gunmen? Were they Asian?’

‘White. They had balaclavas on but they were white.’

‘Who’s Rob?’

‘Dunno. Everyone’s Indian, I mean, has Indian names at least, so… no one called Rob.’

‘No lodgers? No dodgy boyfriends?’

‘No one. Money not forthcoming,’ continued Bannerman, ‘left with father as hostage.’

Morrow was puzzling at the house still. ‘Could it just be a matter of the wrong address then?’

‘As yet undetermined,’ said Bannerman, meaning he didn’t know.

‘It’s not a case of the wrong address,’ she spoke to MacKechnie, making him look up the road, ‘because Albert Drive ’s just over there-’

‘Millionaires’ row,’ interrupted Bannerman, leaning between them and nodding as if he’d thought of it.

She ploughed on. ‘If they were just looking for a family with money they’d go there and smash a door in.’

‘So?’ MacKechnie encouraged her to draw a conclusion. Bannerman’s nodding became manic.

‘So, they came here deliberately, sir. They had intel about someone here that made them think there was money here. Ready money, maybe.’

‘Unless…’ Bannerman had to get MacKechnie’s attention back on him, ‘unless, they went to go to another house, set off the alarm or something, and turned back? I mean, we should check it out…’ His voice faded halfway through the sentence, his confidence waning.

It was a fucking stupid suggestion.

‘If armed men had burst in anywhere else tonight incident room control would have notified FAU, I think.’ MacKechnie’s voice was softer, correcting.

Morrow looked back at the squad cars littering the street and asked, ‘D’ye say they were warned not to call us?’

Bannerman shrugged uncomfortably. He should have thought of that.

The cop answered, holding his witness statements up for support. ‘Yeah. “Call the cops and this fu-” ’ He thought better of a word-for-word recitation. ‘Um, threats to the hostage.’

MacKechnie looked at the squad cars and the menacing FAU van pulling out. ‘Let’s move this visible presence.’

Bannerman sloped off to give orders to that effect.

‘If they said not to call us,’ Morrow continued the thought, ‘they must have been confident that the family would comply. Maybe they’re right, maybe there is money here after all.’

MacKechnie checked that Bannerman was out of earshot. ‘Morrow, we both know this is your case but I can’t give it to you.’

‘Sir, you said the next-’

‘We’ve had a lot of trouble here recently, minorities, gangs fighting, the Boyle boy. Don’t need any trouble with cultural misunderstandings.’

Morrow ground her jaw and stared at the house as if it had offended her. ‘I’m from here, sir, I know the people in this area-’

‘DS Bannerman can handle this,’ he continued. ‘You’ll get the next one.’

This case was a career maker and MacKechnie was here guiding Bannerman by the elbow. The decision was made, fair didn’t come into it, but her eye began to twitch again and she couldn’t even bring herself to look at MacKechnie.

‘Why not this one, sir?’

He didn’t answer. When she looked back at him she followed his eyes to the Asian guys standing beyond the tape. They had the lost, limp look of victims. The oldest guy was big, and dressed in a plain sweatshirt and cotton trousers, bearded. The two younger ones were tall and thin, wore a shalwar kameez, hoodies and trainers, traditional, religious.

‘Personal factors make us suitable for some cases,’ he said, ‘and not for others. You’ll get the next one.’

Typical MacKechnie. Never said anything outright. Delicate situation, he wanted to say, all Asians hate women and anyway, you’re a nut case.

Morrow could tell by the size of the boys and the softness of their builds that they were second generation. They had short hair, buzz cut by a barber. One of them had top of the range Nikes on, and they weren’t to impress his pious pals at Mosque. Those guys didn’t care if she was female or male. She was ten years older than them, she might as well have been a man and she knew the South Side. If anyone’s personal factors made them suitable it was her. But MacKechnie no longer trusted her, sensed that she was slowly tipping over the edge. It was unfair, but the service was all about unfair and she knew she should let it go.

‘Sir, that’s…’ she was regretting it before the word even tumbled past her lips, ‘racist.’

They both stood quite still, looking at the house. Cold rain pattered on their heads. A trickle ran down Morrow’s cheek, dripping off her chin, soaking into her lapels, marking a ragged bullet hole over her heart. Behind them marked squad cars reversed slowly out of the street. She felt a weight on her chest and realised that she was trying not to breathe.