Still Midnight

5

Pat felt a whoosh of cold hit the back of his neck and knew Eddy had opened both doors.

‘Help me,’ said Eddy sullenly, taking hold of the old man’s foot and tugging.

Pat climbed out of the van and walked around to the back doors.

The old man shivered in his pyjamas as he shuffled back on all fours, awkward because Eddy was keeping hold of his bare ankle, guiding his foot down to the ground.

The spongy sole of his slippers made it hard for him to stay upright on the uneven ground. Pat watched him totter, looking at the pillowcase where his face might be, searching for signs of humanity and finding nothing. The pillowcase wasn’t unusually big, but it covered the small man to his waist.

Once he found his footing, the pillowcase stood perfectly still, waiting until Pat and Eddy each took a firm grip of his elbows and guided him along the path. He didn’t resist or try to get away but accepted what was happening, as if the situation couldn’t be helped and none of them had decided any of it. He stumbled, his ankle buckling on the lumpy mud, and gave out a little cry, like a field mouse being stepped on.

Over the head of the pillowcase, Pat felt Eddy’s eyes burning into his cheek, begging him to look back at him. He kept his eyes forward, refusing to look at him, refusing to make it OK. The sheer effort of resisting Eddy made him sweat.

At the edge of the field Eddy reached into his pocket, pressed the car key and the Lexus lights flashed twice. They led the pillowcase over to it, opened the door and bundled the old man in, shoving him along to the middle of the back seat. Eddy shut the car door, reached into his pocket again. The car winked and chirped. They were alone.

Pat and Eddy stood close, so close the white of their breath mingled, not looking at each other. It was a habit developed from cold night after cold night standing on the door of shitty little nightclubs.

‘OK,’ said Eddy, ‘it didn’t go…’ He couldn’t think of a neutral word.

Pat caught his breath to speak but words failed him.

Eddy looked at his gun and spoke calmly. ‘If you never shot the girl-’

‘If I never shot the girl? Are you mental?’

‘You pulled the trigger.’

‘You shouted “Bob” soon as we got in the door and then bawled my fucking name. And what’s that “ Afghanistan ” shot about?’

‘Just – throw them off the scent. Something ye say-’

‘Something ye say when you’re paintballing. You grabbed the wrong fucking guy. This isn’t who he said to get. This is some old Asian bloke. He’s sixty, seventy fucking years old.’

They looked into the car. The upturned pillowcase was staring straight ahead, sitting in the middle of the seat with a hand calmly on each knee, blank as a packet of crisps, waiting to go a place.

Eddy’s face convulsed in an abrupt pulse. Pat fell back from him, thinking he’d been shot or, worse, was going to cry, but Eddy blurted a loud panicky laugh. Surprised at himself, Pat laughed too.

The wind was picking up over the field, carrying the rotting smell of cow shit, and it seemed suddenly funny to be out here, with Malki off his tits and Eddy so jittery he shouted Pat’s name. The pillowcase heard someone outside. It twitched a ridiculous swivel round and back, comical. Pat and Eddy laughed, falling into each other, snorting like boys at a dirty joke.

Eddy calmed down first. ‘Oh, fucking hell, honestly.’ He pinched his nose, and smiled warmly off at the far hills. ‘Will we just shoot it in the head and leave it here?’

Pat’s smile evaporated.

‘You know, near the van,’ Eddy suggested with a smile. ‘Drive off and leave it?’

‘Um, nah.’ Pat was sweating again, really quite afraid now. ‘Nah, let’s… not do that.’

‘But, um, look, every minute we’re with him is a chance to get caught.’

‘Aye,’ Pat tried to sound calm and reasoned, ‘but the old guy could, you know, might do just as well as Bob. Might be better, even.’

‘How so?’ said Eddy and tittered at his own phrasing.

‘Well, Bob’ll pay up to see him again. I mean, if we took Bob, how would he get to the money? We’d have to take him to it and if it’s in a lock-up or something we’d maybe get caught going there, eh?’

Eddy frowned, only half understanding.

‘I mean think about it, really, this way Bob can get the money and give it to us without us going with him, eh? So, with the old guy, it’s less chance to get done.’

‘Oh, I see. I see…’

‘Yeah? We don’t need to shoot the old guy.’

‘Nah.’ Eddy looked far away and his smile faded. ‘Just… you got to fire yours and, you know… shoot someone.’

Pat didn’t know what to say to that. ‘Hey… um, let’s get back, and… and phone the boss.’

‘He’s not the boss,’ corrected Eddy sullenly. ‘I’m the boss. He subcontracted us. It’s more of a contractor-contractee relationship than a boss-employee relationship.’

‘OK,’ said Pat carefully. ‘But maybe it’s best not to leave Malki too long…’

‘You go.’ Eddy was stroking the barrel of his gun with his fingertips. ‘I’ll just… I’ll wait and mind him.’

‘Aye, aye,’ but Pat didn’t move, ‘you’re just going to mind him…’

Eddy smiled. ‘I’m going to mind him. What?’

‘Nothing, just…’ Pat cleared his throat. ‘Just… I’ll get Malki started.’

‘Aye. See he does it right.’

Aamir could hear them talking outside the window. The white light of the night flooded in through the pillowcase, a new-smelling pillowcase. He sat, small and still, listening as they laughed and one of them said he wanted to shoot him. One of the men walked away, he didn’t know which one.

In passing, a hand brushed against the door handle and Aamir’s stomach turned to stone. The door didn’t open, the hand left the door, but suddenly, like the memory of a migraine, Aamir felt the heat in the car and the red dust rise from the road.

Time began to melt.

The heat of the Kampala road rose in the car until he felt himself engulfed.

A taxi with his mother. They should have got out sooner but she was an optimist. In the back seat with his mother, heading for the airport and, afraid, she reached for his hand along the hot plastic seat. He withdrew his hand, did not want to admit that he was afraid himself.

A jolt beneath the car, a former person on the road. No one felt safe enough to stop and care for the ragged mess of skin and bone, shirt ripped into rags, buffeted by passing cars and coaches.

He smelled the jasmine oil his long dead mother put in her hair. He withdrew and refused her hand and then he saw what she was afraid of. Up ahead: another road block. The brightly coloured contents of suitcases scattered across the dusty red road, the soldiers looked crazy, army shirts unbuttoned, rifles slung over shoulders, a hostile tribe. His mother made a sound he had never heard from her before, a sharp sound that came from her throat, like a long ago contented sigh snatched back from the world.

Now, in the bubble before, as the brakes on the taxi squealed, Aamir knew he should have reached over and taken her hand. He should have comforted his mother because now he understood the noise and knew how afraid she had been. He had remembered her only vaguely in the decade since she died in hospital in Glasgow of a weak heart, but found himself now muttering soft words under the pillowcase, telling her not to worry, that all would be well, his voice strangled by the knot of terror throbbing in his throat.

The hand brushed against the door again and the heat, the smells were gone, his mother, the hot wet blood blooming through the seat of her yellow sari, was gone.

Aamir was alone, in the dark, in bloody Scotland.