Still Midnight

31

His legs were numb, his hands were numb, his face, chest and heart were numb. Aamir stood in the tall grass with the sea behind him, looking back over the marsh he had waded through.

In the dark the water was black and still, a solid glass floor over an underworld. Aamir had no memory of passing through it. His clothes were wet and freezing around him, his skin tight, his muscles twitching but he looked back at the black and all he could recall was the loss of warmth. She was in there, lost.

He had cowered inside the metal tube for an infinity, staring at the brightness at the door, aware of the boy’s body and then not aware. He thought he saw the tracksuit melt into the red dusty road. Quite suddenly, the wind was on his face, birds were in the air above him and his feet became wet, cold, his shins, his knees, his genitals. Pulling his knees up to walk became a Herculean task but he did it, holding her hand the whole time, dragging her behind him like a doll, like a heavy, dead doll.

In the black water, somewhere, at some point, his mother’s hand slipped from his and took the heat of his body with her. She was in the water but he hadn’t the courage to go back for her.

The sandy bank he was standing on slowly began to give way beneath his bare foot and he stepped away from the edge. He looked down. He had a slipper on. Just one. It had soaked up water and that was what had made his foot so cold. Remedying the problem of biting cold on his foot he slipped his foot out and stood in the dark, watching the damp dark sand rise up between his toes.

Around him the air began to lighten. A bird rose from the ground a hundred feet away. Aamir raised his face to it and saw a light, a bulb, swinging hypnotically in the dark. He lifted his right knee, took one step and then another.

Eddy watched as the sun rose over the wetlands, a sluggish October haze of dirty yellow behind nasty clouds. He sat on a concrete block at the end of the road burning-eyed, spent, and watched as birds rose from nests near the water and seagulls swooped over the far estuary, shrieking like indignant women. He was deep down cold. His head ached from grinding his jaw all night.

He turned, looking down the road. Apart from the security issue, he couldn’t call a cab because he’d no fucking money to pay the fucker. Four miles to the nearest service station and he had £2.43. He came out with twenty on him, leaving his cards at home for security purposes, and he’d spent a good bit of that on the chinkie.

As the meagre sun came up he looked at his hands. Greasy from the chinkie food. Dirty. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. The dirt came off in a paste, rolled into greasy cigars. Brown. He looked at it closer, rubbing his fingertips into the bowl of his palm. It was blood. Junkie blood with Chinese grease over it. He’d been eating that. His stomach turned over: disgusting. Might have Hep B or Aids in it or something. He looked up at the sun as if it was responsible. Revolting. He said it aloud for company: “Revoltin”.’

The sun struggled into the heavy sky and he looked around at the rubble of Breslin’s forecourt. Weans had been here, smashed every window, wrote on big blank walls with house paint. They’d written dirty words: shit, cunt, then run out of ideas and thrown it at a wall in a big splash. The tin was still there. Magnolia gloss.

Eddy sucked his teeth, reliving the bloody meal. If he left the takeaway empties in the building rats would come, maybe eat the face. The thought turned his stomach but he tried to pretend it didn’t by frowning. They always ate a person’s face in films but maybe that wasn’t true. If they did it would be good. Unrecognisable.

He sighed, shifted his buttocks and pulled out his phone. The battery symbol was blinking. He’d been using it for light in the night, when the candles ran out, checking the floor for firewood but failing to find a single combustible item in the whole fucking factory.

He checked the time on the phone’s face: 6.50. Too early. He’d be annoyed but Eddy couldn’t wait any longer. He held the mobile to his forehead and shut his eyes, rerunning the facts in head, what to say and what not to say. Then he looked at the keypad and stabbed the number in with his blood-greasy finger.

The phone was answered with a deep silence.

‘Me,’ said Eddy, feeling suddenly overwhelmed and tearful.

‘Let me guess,’ said the Irish, ‘you got nothing last night?’

‘Correct.’ Eddy had meant to plough on through the awkwardness of recriminations at the beginning but he lost his breath slightly and didn’t trust his voice.

‘What’s happening?’

‘Lost… a man.’

‘Lost?’ Irish seemed to be sitting up, paying attention suddenly.

‘Aye. Lost.’

‘The subject?’

‘No, one of ours…’

‘Where’s the subject?’

‘Hm.’ Eddy looked around the grass in front of him as if expecting Aamir to pop up out of it and wave. ‘Location unclear.’

‘Unclear? Unclear?’

‘Kind of…’

Irish was sitting bolt upright now, Eddy could tell, and he was leaning hard into the receiver. ‘Son, just so we’re clear about this: one of your guys is dead and the hostage got away, is that right?’

Eddy didn’t like them talking normally; it made it all seem stupid and hopeless. He faltered, kind of groaning from inside his throat and managed a faltering, ‘Uh huh.’

‘You owe me for them guns anyway,’ said Irish, sounding less cool and professional now, sounding worried and fretful now. ‘Right? I’m not letting you off wi’ that, right?’

Eddy looked at the phone angrily. Irish was supposed to be a professional for fuck’s sake, he was supposed to be unshakeable, the training was supposed to kick in when things went tits up. Eddy could do frightened-to-fucking-death himself. He listened to a hard breath on the other end and Irish spoke again. ‘He got away. Has he arrived home, do you know?’

Eddy looked around the wetlands. ‘No.’

‘Will he?’

Eddy shut his eyes hard. He didn’t want to talk about this. ‘No.’

‘Good. What did they offer you?’

‘Forty grand.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Aye.’ Eddy felt tearful at the thought of forty grand. ‘Look, are you sure these people are pulling strokes?’

‘Intel is rock solid. Intel is local, gave us the layout of the house, everything.’

Eddy wondered at that, at the Irishman having the layout and not telling them about it. ‘Just, they seem kind of normal, the house isn’t all that big and there’s a million of them living in it.’

‘Pakis do that. Intel is solid. They’re playing hard ball. Accept the forty. Arrange a pick-up this morning.’

‘But forty grand’s fuck all-’

‘Cut and run, son. Call, accept, arrange for immediate pick-up.’

‘Then disappear?’ said Eddy hopefully, liking the fact that it all sounded like a training exercise, like a set of movements that guaranteed a successful mission.

Irish faltered. ‘Well… OK…?’

Eddy frowned at the non sequitur.

‘OK, look, I’ll tell ye what. Call, accept, arrange for pick-up this evening at seven o’clock, right?’

‘Why?’

A bluster of a sigh tickled Eddy’s eardrum. ‘Son, we do this all the time, never a hint of a worry, right? This one’s… complicated. Your first time, not a lot of… guidance. But I’ll say this for ye, son, you’ve shown real promise… Real promise.’

Eddy wasn’t stupid. He didn’t really think he had shown promise; he’d made a couple of mistakes, but he wondered how it looked from that side of the Irish Channel. He’d lied a lot. Maybe it looked better there than it did from here.

‘That’s to be encouraged. Need good men. Call, accept and arrange pick-up for seven, I’ll be off the ferry at five tonight. Meet me at the place at six-’ The voice stopped, the phone light went out and Eddy looked at it. His phone had run out of juice.

Aamir lifted a knee and took the next step and the next and the next, heading for the light. The water was there, moving water, a sea. He walked along a rough path, stumbling, lifting knee after knee until he got to the light. A torch. It was on the ground, flat, the precious light spilling wastefully over a patch of concrete. Behind it stood a figure wearing a good warm winter coat, hood up, facing out to sea. Aamir blinked and saw that he was holding a fishing rod.

He turned his face to Aamir, his hood unmoving, his face sliced in half. The man was Aamir’s age, Aamir’s height, a Scottish man.

‘Dear heavens,’ he said, ‘what in the name of God happened to you?’