Still Midnight (26 page)

As long as a pencil with a serrated edge and sharp tip. A knife.

Insistent pains nagged at his knees and fingers but he resisted the distraction. He extended his left hand into the molten dark and pulled the sleeve up. Slowly, as if in a ritual, he found the sinews of his wrist with his fingers and drew the metal hard across the skin.

Warm wet dripped from him into the void. He held his right hand below it and felt the welcome blood run over his fingers, drip through, wetting the dusty Ugandan soil.

Aamir raised his face to the God who had suffered him to live through children and work and meals, a million bloody meals, sleep, and changes of carpet and striving, endless pointless striving.

He turned his face up and muttered a final quiet prayer: “You bloody nasty bastard.”

Mr. Kaira had been looking at the screen for thirty seconds, a small smile frozen on his mouth, his forefinger tapping the completely empty desk like a slow pulse. He turned his smile to Omar and his eyes followed slowly. “System is slow today,” he explained and turned back. The light on his face changed to pale blue and he exclaimed a little “ah!” and frowned at the numbers on the screen.

Omar had been coming here since he was ten. The bank was in the West End of the city, past all the halal butchers and the sari and sweet shops, before the university on the hill, right in the middle of student pubs and cafés and secondhand bookshops.

Every second week his daddy had brought him here to watch him make his deposits, to speak to Mr. Kaira. Mr. Kaira, whose oiled hairstyle never came or went from fashion, whose tiny collar stayed about his fat neck, whose smile was never more or less fixed, always a constant. The decor stayed the same: hessian moss-green walls, smoked glass between the counter and Mr. Kaira’s office. The chairs had been replaced but only by exact replicas. Before Omar’s time there had been an open counter for service but they had replaced it with a bulletproof window after a raid.

All their family money was in the Allied Bank of Pakistan, which was silly really because there was only one branch in Glasgow and it was on the other side of the city, but Aamir liked it. The small staff rarely changed and he could always talk to Mr. Kaira about his affairs, create accounts for weddings and holidays without having to explain to a stranger. All his friends at mosque knew that he banked here and Omar thought his father drew a sense of authenticity from it. He was a Ugandan Asian, an African Asian, not an Asian Asian like everyone else in mosque. Aamir was always an outsider.

Mr. Kaira frowned at the blue screen, jotted something on a notepad without looking at his hand, and sat back. “Mr. Anwar, as I told you on the telephone this morning, in the collected accounts of your family is deposited this much.” He smiled and pushed the pad across to Omar—£43,193.33. “Your father is a prudent man.”

Not prudent enough. They would need a loan for a huge amount, much more than the house was worth, more than all the cars. A ransom wasn’t exactly a good investment. Their only hope was that Mr. Kaira hadn’t heard about the kidnapping already.

“Um, Mr. Kaira.” Omar looked at him. Mr. Kaira smiled encouragingly. “Could I withdraw this money?”

He looked a little shocked. “All this money?”

“It’s for my father. He’s away and he needs it.”

“I see.” Mr. Kaira didn’t see, Omar thought, the clouds in the banker’s eyes made that clear. “I see, I see. Your brother would need to countersign for it. The accounts all require two signatories from the partnership.” Everyone trusted fine upstanding Billal. “Would he be willing to do that?”

Omar heard him ask if he was planning to steal it. They all distrusted the next generation, those old guys, especially the youngest sons. “Yes, he will sign. The thing is, my father needs a lot more than that. Would you be able to advance us a loan?”

Mr. Kaira snorted as if that was impossible. “For how much?”

Omar did the calculation, realized he wasn’t going to get a loan for £1,950,000 and balked. “Um. I’ll talk to Billal, see what he thinks.”

“The withdrawals, we will need advance notice of your withdrawals—”

“No.” Panic rose from Omar’s guts to his stomach to his throat, blocking his airway, making it hard to breathe. “How much notice?” Omar stood up, gathering the bank papers he had brought with him and shoving them back in the brown envelope.

“A month on your sister’s wedding fund, a week for the high-interest account.”

“But I need it right away.”

“Ah, but then you’ll lose all the interest on those accounts.”

“That’s fine. I need it right away.” He hurried to the office door but Mr. Kaira beat him to it.

“If your father is in trouble…”

“No. No.” Omar blinked hard, desperate to get out through the smoked-glass door Mr. Kaira was blocking with his rotund body.

“Mr. Anwar, I heard about last night. I cannot advance you the money but if I personally can be of any service…?”

Red-eyed, Omar reached around behind him and grabbed the door handle. “Thanks.” He slipped past Mr. Kaira and made it to the door, threw it open, and stepped out into the street. He felt the cold wind brush past his face, saw a cluster of schoolkids eating chips across the road.

Omar looked up the hill to the student union building and wished, dearly, that he was back at uni, that it was any time but this time, this awful gut-wrenching time.

With a jolt, Omar realized that the bank staff could see him through the door, and Mr. Kaira would be watching him, waiting to see what he did next. He turned stiffly and walked off uphill as if he knew where he was going, heading towards the university.

Afraid of meeting anyone he knew Omar took the back streets and lanes, dodging the streets around the mosque on Oakfield Avenue, looking for a place to hide. He passed the fence around Hillhead High School, saw kids inside hanging around the playground, kids dressed like poor gangster rappers, fat teenage girls wearing tight clothes and pixie boots, their conversations overanimated, posturing, attention-seeking. In the street fresh-faced first-year students brushed past him, hurrying to classes.

He veered off down a road he knew was lined by houses used by the German department. No one he knew did German. The street was quiet and he dropped his head as he walked along, let his tired shoulders slump.

Aamir would know what to do. He’d have railed and shouted and then told him what to do. Whenever Omar thought about Aamir he imagined him as a small angry mouse in pajamas. Small because he was small, angry because he was angry all the time, never spoke to any of them but to recriminate or correct, and wearing pajamas because Aamir was rarely home unless it was time to go to bed. They didn’t need to pay school fees anymore, he didn’t need to work a sixteen-hour day. He was avoiding them.

Omar saw his father looking at his spoiled, lucky children, sensed his bewilderment, his disappointment. They expected new clothes and cars and bedrooms of their own, they wanted shoes and food and holidays and iPods. Sadiqa wanted books and new clothes all the time because she was always getting fatter. They didn’t want to pray in the night, they didn’t want to walk anywhere, they didn’t want to work shifts in the smelly wee shop with Johnny Lander telling the same stories over and over about his time in the army. They were private-school kids and thought it was humiliating to sit behind a counter, taking shit from alkies and shoplifters and racist fuckwits out in their slippers looking for bottles of ginger and tea bags.

Aamir had been chased out of Uganda and came to Glasgow with nothing behind him. He’d worked as a dustman for two years, taking abuse every day from colleagues, passing schoolchildren, everyone. Finally he opened a shop where someone called him a black bastard at least once a day, where he hid from his frightening new wife and the children when they came. Omar knew these facts, he understood the hardships that had formed his father, but he had never felt the gross injustice of all that had happened to Aamir until now.

He had wandered into a back court surrounded by smelly bin sheds and overgrown gardens. He was one wall away from the university. A white cat skittered through a hole in a fence. Purposefully, he stepped into a bin shed.

In the dark, dank smell of rotting nappies and moldy vegetables, Omar covered his face and sobbed with worry for his hard-done-by daddy.

TWENTY-FIVE

They were dawdling. Bannerman and Morrow strolled from the car park around the station house and along the road as if they had all the time in the world, as if every minute was not a time frame during which an old man who had worked blamelessly every waking moment of the last thirty years could be killed.

If they had thought about it neither of them would have been quite sure why they lingered in each other’s company. They didn’t like each other, had fuck-all in common, but they had achieved a sort of truce over the day and were reluctant to lose that in the company of others.

Bannerman spotted the mini-supermarket down the road. “I need a paper…,” he said.

“No.” Morrow pushed him towards the yard door. “Come on…”

Miserably he punched the security code into the numbered pad. The door buzzed and they both stared at it until Morrow sighed and pushed it open. “Fucking get in.”

The processing bar was busy with a couple of easy collars having a laugh with the guys on the desk. Morrow and Bannerman kept their heads down and went through to the duty sergeant’s desk. The copper she’d been unkind to about the graffitti scowled when he saw her. For a moment she thought about apologizing but decided it would be easier to scowl back.

She typed the code into the CID corridor and they sloped inside, both eyeing MacKechnie’s office. The lights were on but the door shut, as if he was on a phone call or picking his nose. They stepped up the corridor and Morrow tried to peel off and go to their office but Bannerman pinched her sleeve and made her come with him.

MacKechnie called them to come. Bannerman opened the door wide into the corridor and tried to get Morrow to go in first but she held firm.

“Sir,” Bannerman said, “Omar Anwar wasn’t in…”

MacKechnie looked up from his paperwork and saw the look on his face. “What is it? Do you want me to guess?”

Bannerman slumped. “Omar is Bob. He’s got a business doing import-export to the EU.”

MacKechnie stiffened. “Bugger. Carousel VAT fraud? Is that what you’re saying?”

He shrugged. “That would be my supposition…. We’ve taken his paperwork and his computer hard drive…. They’re being processed now.”

“Right… right. Do we have to call Fraud right now? Would you say it was that pressing?” MacKechnie could see the danger of it; the public perception of a department prosecuting a victim of violent crime, the endless paper trails and his officers spending weeks milling in High Court corridors, waiting to be called to give evidence.

“Well… we could see what’s on the hard drive first. It’s just a suspicion, we haven’t really got any evidence…”

“OK,” he said vaguely. “Lab reports are in. Morrow, go and check them out.”

Bannerman turned to her as she left, pleading for her to come back and save him. She grinned and slapped his back. She was glad to get outside the room and shut the door firmly behind her.

In her office someone had carefully stacked hard copies of lab reports, of the fingerprint evidence that had already been gone over with no anomalies found, and the reports on the van, which turned up squat. She read them again. The tinfoil had opiate residue in it, cut solely with milk powder, no laxatives, no talc, just pure milk. It was unusual. She puzzled over it as she put the Anwars’ answerphone tape into a tape recorder. She made a copy and played it.

Billal answered, they asked for Bob and he handed it over to his brother. The kidnapper asked after Aleesha’s injuries and agreed to phone back to make an arrangement for a pickup. He ended by saying he knew about Omar. She noted the interest in Aleesha, wondering if he knew her or was worried about the charges against him.

She took it into the incident room for transcription. DC Routher was prematurely balding and long overdue a promotion. He was good at paperwork, though, efficient, and no one who got him ever wanted to let him go. She gave him the tape. “Anyone got a picture of the M8 motorway?”

“Aye.” He pointed her over to a board of images and notes that MacKechnie had been adding to. In the center was a big photo of a car. It was grainy, taken from CCTV cameras, enlarged and printed onto copy paper.

Because the motorway camera was up high, the driver’s face was obscured by the car roof. In the second picture the car was fuller, they could see a front passenger’s thighs and a hand on a knee. A final picture of the car driving back towards the town showed that the chassis was sitting low.

She went back over to Routher. “Where did it come off?”

“Town center, Charing Cross.”

“Fuck.” Charing Cross had seven exits and three broken cameras. The car could have gone anywhere. “Lost it?”

“ ’Fraid so. The reg is out now anyway. Everyone in the city’s looking for it. If they’re not picked up in the next half hour they must be sitting in a garage somewhere.”

“Did someone drop in a bag of CCTV tapes from a shop?”

Routher pointed to a small office room across the corridor. She could see Harris in profile through the strip of glass on the door, sitting on a chair, arms crossed, watching the far wall intently. He didn’t look happy.

She walked across the corridor and opened the door. “Right?”

Harris didn’t look up. “It’s because I said about the DVD, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know why Bannerman loves you enough to give you this, Harris, he just does.”

“Ma’am, it’s days’ and days’ worth.”

“You don’t have to watch it in real time, you can speed it up.”

She looked at the image on the telly. A small man sitting on a stool behind the counter in Aamir’s shop. She’d seen the publicity photo they were releasing to the news, a family snapshot of him three quarters side on, but this man looked smaller, angrier, less sympathetic.