Still Midnight

18

Omar Anwar was at home, sitting in the peach living room, frightened and watching the rain patter on the window when the phone rang out in the hall, a soft unfamiliar trilling. He heard Billal’s bedroom door fly open and a heavy gallop across the hall.

‘Omar! Get the fuck out here!’

Omar sprang to his feet and hurried out to the hall. The brothers stood away from each other, staring at the strange green phone. It wasn’t their phone. The police had given it to them. It was old and slightly dirty, the rubbery cord on the receiver coated with a layer of grey that came off under the nail. The receiver was so loud it had to be held away from the ear. When they spoke into it they could hear an echo of their own voice. The recording device was a tape recorder plugged into the back. They expected something more high tech and the rudimentary nature of the equipment made them feel dismissed, as if the police didn’t really care too much about their dad.

Billal bent down abruptly, pressed the record button on the tape, checked it was turning and lifted the receiver, carefully holding it to his ear as if he had never used a phone before and was uncertain of it. He listened for a moment, nodded and offered it to Omar, his arm straight, staring at the mouthpiece as if afraid.

Omar took it and listened.

‘Who is this?’ The voice was familiar from last night.

‘It’s eh, Omar. Who’s this? Are you the guy from last night?’

‘Put Bob on.’

Omar looked awkwardly at the recorder. ‘It’s, em, Omar.’

‘We’ve got your dad.’

‘Right? Look, mate, was it yourself who was here last night?’

‘We’ve got him. We want two mill, in used notes, we want it today.’

‘I know, mate, right, there’s no need for this to go on any longer, OK? How is my dad, is he OK?’ Omar was surprised at his own mannerliness, being so polite to a man who had threatened his family, shot his sister and kidnapped his dad, but Sadiqa had drummed social grace into him and, at a loss for protocol, he found it was his default position.

‘Listen, pal, your dad’s fine, fine. Don’t worry.’ He was being polite too. In the background Omar could hear a bus or a car pass: he was calling from a street. ‘Is your sister OK?’

‘My sister?’ asked Omar.

‘Aleesha, that got shot, is she OK?’

‘She’s fine, she’s in hospital.’

‘Is her hand OK?’

Bewildered, Omar looked up and found Billal glaring at him and he was suddenly tearful. ‘No, mate, it’s a mess, to be honest with ye.’ He stopped for breath. ‘She’s lost a thumb and her forefinger and a bit of the next one. They said they can sew her big toe on as a thumb. Mum thinks it’ll look weird. But you need opposable digits for your hand to be any use, y’know…?’

‘Aye, well, OK. Don’t worry.’

‘It’ll look weird though.’

‘Um… couldn’t she wear gloves?’

Omar frowned at the phone, it seemed an odd thing to say. ‘Maybe…’

‘Nice gloves, I mean, different colours on each hand…?’

‘Different colours?’

‘Just a thought, anyway, um, tell her… say we’re sorry about that.’

Billal saw Omar’s confusion and poked him in the arm, shaking his head at him, asking what was going on. Omar ignored him. ‘We’ll tell her,’ he said, ‘that you’re sorry.’

‘OK. OK then…’ The kidnapper’s voice sounded as if it was retreating from the phone and Omar had the feeling the conversation was coming to an end, as if he had forgotten about the ransom.

‘Mate, didn’t you want to ask us about something?’

‘Oh, aye, yeah, listen, right: we want two million in used notes by tonight.’

‘Look, mate, I want to do whatever you want, right? I want to help you, make this OK, get my dad back safe and sound. Thing is, yeah?’ He took a desperately needed breath. ‘Um, are you still there?’

‘Aye, I’m here.’

‘Thing is, we don’t have anything like that kind of money.’

‘You don’t have that…?’

‘We don’t, but listen, I’m going to the bank right now, mate, yeah? I’ll get whatever I can out and give it to you tonight, happily give it to you tonight, I’ll give you anything we can get, right? For my dad.’

‘Well… how much is that gonnae…?’

‘I’ve no idea, mate, right? I can get a loan. But I can definitely get, like forty K right away.’ He said it like that, forty K, instead of forty thousand because he thought it sounded like a bit more. ‘But whatever I can get I’ll give it all to ye really happily, right? Will ye phone back later? Say at five o’clock and we’ll arrange to meet?’

‘Forty K’s not enough, mate.’ He breathed loudly into the receiver, this almost friend, held it close to his mouth so the sound was breathy and distorted. ‘OK, listen to me now: we know about you.’

Omar looked at the tape recorder. ‘What?’

‘We know about you,’ he said carefully. ‘See what I’m saying here? We know about you.’

Omar was watching the tape turn, ‘OK, mate, honestly, I don’t know what you’re on about, right? Genuinely. But listen, right? If you call back in two hours I’ll have been to the bank and I’ll see what I can do for ye, right?’

‘We know all about ye.’ And he hung up.

Pat could see Eddy sitting in the Lexus, stroking the leather of the steering wheel, and smiling smugly to himself.

He drawled as Pat got back in. ‘What did he say?’ His blink was too long, the smile too fixed for it to be real and Pat knew that Eddy was off again, gangster tripping, imagining himself more than a fat divorcee in a hire car.

‘Well,’ Pat pulled the seat belt over himself, ‘spoke to Bob and he said he’ll get out what he can. He’s got forty K already but he’ll get more. We’ve to phone back at five to arrange a drop. This should be over pretty soon, I think.’

Eddy nodded slowly and blinked again. He was so caught up in the role play he almost seemed drunk. ‘Good one, man, good work,’ as if Pat was working for him and he’d pleased him. ‘Was he niggaring about it?’

Pat flinched. ‘What?’

‘Niggaring, ye know, havvering about the money.’ Eddy started the car and pulled out smoothly, driving to the end of the road.

Pat didn’t know what to say to him, didn’t want to implicate himself in the general air of ignorant madness by responding to the term. He wished Malki were in the car to say something. ‘He said he doesn’t know how much more he can get, but he’ll try his best.’

‘Yeah.’ God almighty, he was even doing an American accent now. ‘Yeah, niggaring it.’

That’s not really a word, Pat thought of saying. He licked his lips, drew a breath, but by the time he had his courage up the moment had passed. He held his newspaper to his chest with two hands, like a woman clutching an evening bag in a dark alley.

‘Aye, wait an’ see, those fucker’s’ll pay up, right enough…’ Eddy gabbled on, still doing the accent, confident again now that the arrangement had been made. Pat answered in grunts, trying not to engage but keeping Eddy going, studying him.

The realisation was slow but profound: whatever amount the family offered tonight Pat would accept it to get away from Eddy. All the years of listening to him, coaxing him, rearranging facts to suit him, smiling away from him, it was over. Pat had other things to do, other matters to take care of.

They had driven around quiet streets for half a mile before they hit the main road. Mid-morning traffic was building up and they joined a queue of cars trying to dodge through the traffic. Eddy saw the lights changing up ahead and squeezed the brake on, bringing the big car to a stop. A brand new Mini was next to him, blue, shiny, and the woman driver saw the Lexus’ silver bonnet and turned to look into the car. Her eyes were obscured by the Mini’s roof. All that was visible was a lipsticktackity mouth hanging open, looking at them. She smiled and Eddy drank it in, smiling at his steering wheel.

‘Check this cunt checking me, eh?’

Pat didn’t answer.

‘Pat, man, check this bird checking the car.’

Pat wasn’t looking at him.

‘Man…’

Eddy followed Pat’s eyeline, over the dash, over the bonnet, past the lights to a green and white tiled rotunda in a traffic island. It was a strange wee building, like something from a garden but in the middle of a sea of traffic. A hand-painted sign on the window read ‘The Battlefield Rest’. Eddy looked back at him.

‘Had your dinner in there?’ he asked.

But Pat didn’t answer. A horn tooted behind them, the lights had changed. Eddy cursed the driver and took off.

Pat wasn’t looking at the rotunda, he was looking over the road again, to a small wall around a visitors’ car park and a tall Victorian building. Built in a comma around the cars it was the Victoria Infirmary.

‘Pat, man, you’re miles away.’

Eddy was right. Pat stared at the building and his mind took him out of the car, away from the racial slights and the bad role play and the hint of Shugie’s piss on Eddy’s trousers.

Pat and his beloved newspaper were in the lift in the Victoria Infirmary. Pat was holding a bunch of flowers, yellow flowers, he could feel the cold damp from the stems creeping through the tissue paper in his hands. And he had a suit on.