Still Midnight

32

Morrow’s eyes opened a fraction, searching for the red numbers on the alarm clock radio, but she woke up facing the wrong way, towards Brian’s side of the bed. The duvet was still tucked in, his pillow unflattened. She blinked again and rolled over towards the window. Morning scowled behind the curtains.

The alarm said 7.18. She could reasonably get up. Normally she would. She’d get up and leave him sleeping here for another forty minutes. She’d have the house to herself, listen to crap on the radio, eat toast, be alone, leave before he got up, but he was up already, out there, somewhere in the house.

She sat up, the duvet peeling off her, the warmth evaporating from it into the cold room. The heating was timed for 7.50. She liked the cold of the mornings, liked the prickle of chill on her face as she drank warm tea.

She sat up and looked at the closed bedroom door hatefully. She couldn’t stay in here. She needed a pee. Aware that she’d just opened her eyes and was already angry, she threw the rest of the warmth off herself and stood up, going to the wardrobe and pulled out clothes for herself, clean shirt, fresh suit wrapped in thin plastic from the dry cleaners. Brown, her safe suit, the one she wore for assessment interviews. Pulling on the trousers and jacket made her feel stronger, smarter, armoured. She put on socks and shoes and stopped behind the door, warning herself just to get ready and out, don’t engage, don’t respond.

In the bathroom she found herself listening for him, hypervigilant, like a house sweep. She washed her face and put on some mascara from the shelf behind the sink, tipping her head back, avoiding her own eye by staring at the lashes. The toilet flush sounded unreasonably loud and she stood watching the whirlpool in the bowl. Wherever he was in the house now he could hear her, knew where she was.

There was no radio on as she stepped down to the hall. His computer bag was still there, propped carefully against the wall, his jacket was hung up on the peg by the door. She passed the table and saw his keys in the bowl but he wasn’t in the kitchen eating a neat breakfast or standing at the worktop organising his packed lunch.

Surreptitiously, pretending to look for something in her bag, she ducked back into the hall and glanced into the living room but he wasn’t there either. Frowning, she flicked the kettle on, pulled some bread out of the bread bin and dropped it into the toaster and turned to look around. Brian was in the garden, wearing his dressing gown and propped up in a stained and faded deckchair they’d inherited from his parents. The wood had rotted and she’d wanted to chuck them but he insisted. Next to the deck chair, lying willy nilly in the wet grass, were three empty beer bottles.

She stood, frowning at him. Slowly his hand slipped down to the side, towards the bottles, limp, as if he was unconscious, as if he was dead. Overdose.

Morrow leapt across the kitchen, grabbed the handle for the French door and threw it open, not frightened but glad almost, glad there was an action to be performed. She stepped in front of the deckchair.

Brian was wearing sunglasses and a jumper under his dressing gown. He had walking boots on and a blanket over his knees. The other hand wasn’t limp. The other hand was clutching a mug of cold tea. He looked up at her, over his glasses, tried to smile, but his gaze faltered and fell to her knees, as if he couldn’t bear to look at her.

Morrow crouched down next to him, held his forearm, spoke with a professional voice. ‘Brian, have you taken anything?’

Sluggishly he looked down at her fingers on his arm. It was the first time she had touched him in the five months since their son died. She looked up. His eyes were raw and broken but Brian wasn’t sad or coping, wasn’t smug or irritated, all those small nuanced things he always was. This was a Brian she didn’t know, and he was looking at her neutrally, one eyebrow arched, protesting the impertinence of her touch.

Her fingers slowly retracted but their eyes were locked. He opened his mouth and whispered, ‘Can’t do this any more.’

She tried to deflect him. ‘You need to get ready for your work-’

‘Alex,’ he said, his voice quiet and measured, as if he’d been thinking about this one sentence all night, ‘I hate who you make me.’

The fisherman had laid newspaper on the car seat, ripped open a plastic shopping bag to protect it and then sat Aamir in the passenger seat. He was very kind. He turned his good winter coat inside out, because of the mud, and threaded Aamir’s arms in, one at a time, pulled the cord on the waist tight to do it up. He even gave Aamir his socks to put on his numb feet.

Aamir sat in the haze of warmth from the car heater and looked at the socks as his feet thawed. Grey socks, red toes. They were thermal, the man said. Thermal.

He was alone in the car. The man busied himself outside, packing up, folding a chair, pulling his fishing rod into bits and slipping them into socks of their own.

You think about that and I’ll pack up, he had said.

Aamir was to think. His job, set by the man, was to think: where do you want to go?

It was off the motorway, on the edge of a large roundabout and would, she imagined, be a serious draw for people who cared about that sort of thing. In the window the luxury cars were polished to a wink, lined up on the diagonal against the glass wall so that the sun glinted off them, drawing the eye of covetous drivers.

The building was a glass box, two storeys high, with a canary yellow Lamborghini hanging on a wired shelf, five feet off the ground, tilted towards the window like the display in a jeweller’s.

The garage wasn’t suppose to open until ten o’clock but two cars were parked up around the back, a small blue-grey BMW sports car with sharky gills along the side next to a dirty, unloved shit car, like hers.

Finding a plain door in the wall marked ‘Deliveries’ she knocked and waited an eternity. Again and again she knocked but no one answered. Finally she took out her mobile, thinking she should get the number and phone them, when a voice crackled over an intercom above her head.

‘Whit?’ A woman’s voice, rough and nasal.

Morrow looked up at the source of the voice. A grey cone with a red ball on the end of it was attached to the wall above her head. A camera with an intercom system on it. She stepped back and looked up at it. ‘I’m a police officer,’ she said, finding her voice high and pleading. ‘I want the manager.’

Another silence followed and a man’s voice came on the intercom, creamy smooth. ‘Hello, may I help you today?’

Morrow got out her wallet, flipped it open and held it up to the camera. ‘DS Alex Morrow, Strathclyde CID.’

She thought the voice said ‘For fucksa-’ and then the door buzzed and clicked and fell open. She pushed it, into a cold concrete corridor, took two steps and heard the door shut firmly behind her. She took another door ten feet away and stepped out into the plush showroom.

The glass walls were smoked and lent the room an evening air, like a smart hotel in a foreign locale frequented by wealthy businessmen. The cars were even shinier inside, their lines beguiling and the colours bright, like perfect children lined up for adoption.

An army of identical plug-in heaters littered the room, rumbling heat out into the ridiculous space, losing the battle against the faint smell of mouldering damp. In the distance, silhouetted against the window, a dumpy woman in tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt vacuumed the dark carpet under a car.

A man her own age and height stepped in front of her, smiling politely. He wasn’t good-looking, wasn’t tall but was very carefully groomed. Even the grey fleck around the temples of his black hair looked like a deliberate design. His grey suit hung beautifully from his shoulders. He smiled, showing her an army of capped teeth. ‘May I see your warrant card again, please?’

She got it out and gave it to him, noting that he knew a warrant card was called a warrant card and finding that interesting. He handed it back, letting off exactly the same smile. ‘Many thanks.’

She couldn’t look at the row of enamels without imagining a dentist going at his real teeth with a hammer and chisel.

‘We have to be very careful,’ he explained, ‘because of the value of the merchandise. So, what can I do for you today?’

‘You had a car on order for a Mr Omar Anwar?’

‘Hm, what brand?’ He was smiling, not picking up on the air of menace she was trying to exude. Morrow felt a bit insulted.

‘Lamborghini.’

‘Ah, Lamborghini…’ He rolled his eyes towards the ceiling and she noticed that his bottom teeth were yellow and crooked, as if they were from a different mouth altogether. ‘The bad boy. The King.’

‘Aye, well you can cut the shite with me, I just want to see your records.’

He faltered at that. She shouldn’t have said it. It wasn’t just who she made Brian be, it was everyone. She was turning everyone she saw into an arsehole. It didn’t used to be like that. She thought of Brian in his mum’s old deckchair and her anger abated. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said… that was rude.’

The man showed her his teeth again. ‘Yes, there’s no need for language.’

She looked around the showroom again. ‘Damp?’

He sighed. ‘Smells, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t mind but we actually own the building so we can’t threaten to move or anything. There’s a stream.’ He drew a line along the floor. ‘We’re suing the architect.’

‘Good,’ she said, trying to be friendly.

‘Listen, I can’t just show you someone’s records of purchase without a warrant or anything. I have to protect my clients. Would be bad for business if people thought they couldn’t trust us to be discreet.’

‘Purchaser is more than happy for us to have a look at your records. Could bring him here or you can call him.’

‘I think the latter would be more suitable.’ He beamed again, better this time, as if his face was warming up. ‘You have to appreciate, a lot of the people we sell to…’ He gave her a knowing nod, smiled and walked away.

In Morrow’s head she asked him if his clients were crooks, drug dealers, buying his cars with stolen money. In her head she threatened to look at all his records, pull the fuckers in and say she’d got it from him, give them his photo and let slip his name and address but she shut up. Gerald had died. It was the first time she’d thought the words since they left the hospital. Gerald has died. She hadn’t said it to anyone because she couldn’t even think it. Gerald died, but this, the carnage afterwards, this was her creation.

She followed him across the damp-smelling floor, blinking back small tears, wishing her hand was on Brian’s forearm, before he looked at her, the scratch of the soft wood on her wrist.

The man’s office was really just a large circular desk in the corner of the room, big enough to look fancy but up close just four curved tables shoved next to each other. He took his jacket off and hung it on a hanger, sat down in a wheeled office chair and walked himself across to the computer monitor, flicking on the hard drive. He sat, with his eyes on the screen, hands poised above the keyboard, a concert pianist waiting for the maestro’s signal.

It took a long time. Behind Morrow the vacuum hummed and the fan heaters grumbled to one another. She’d been turning away from Brian since they left the hospital, since the lift down in the hospital in fact, insisting that she would carry both the plastic bags of Gerald’s belongings, refusing to even let him take the SpongeBob doll from under her arm. She’d never felt it was a choice until now.

The monitor flicked bright suddenly and made them both jump. He smiled up at her. ‘Oh,’ he stood up formally and held his hand out, ‘I’m Bill Prescott.’

Morrow shook the hand, wondering why she hadn’t asked his name, worrying that she hadn’t.

He sat back down, the smile lingering on his face, adding, ‘General manager.’

Morrow nodded, shifted her weight, cleared her throat softly. It was suddenly getting warm in the showroom. She felt a prickle of sweat in her oxters.

‘Here we go.’ He used the mouse to choose a file, and picked up the phone next to him, dialling the number on the screen. Holding the receiver to his ear he smiled up at her, waiting and suddenly his face brightened. ‘Ah, hello, is this Mr Omar Anwar?’ He nodded. ‘This is Stark-McClure over on Rosevale, yeah, sure yeah uh, brilliant, OK, well listen, Mr Anwar, I have a police officer with-’ He listened, looked at Morrow as if she was being discussed, smiled the million dollar smile, ‘Great. That’s OK with you then? All and any documentation, Mr Anwar? Great.’ Looking suddenly worried he nodded and tried to interrupt, ‘I see. It is refundable. The full deposit isn’t refundable but that deposit is. OK, will – will do. Fine, as I said before, sir, that’s absolutely – OK, OK? Well, if you wanted to come in and look for any-OK, straight back to the account, OK. Great. Great. Bye. Bye.’

Bowing obsequiously he leaned forward, following the receiver down to the port, and hung up. He sat up and managed a faltering smile and spread his hands. ‘Cancelled the order. Wants a refund. And he said you can have anything.’

Alex sat in her car in the car park and looked at the photocopies. The deposit had been paid in the name of Aamir Anwar. Bill Prescott explained at length that it was a deposit to secure a place on the Lamborghini waiting list, not actually a deposit for the car. Omar had cancelled it and wanted a full refund into Aamir’s account.

Two grand was hardly evidence of massive international fraud. He could have saved it up himself from a bar job.

The receipts were confirmation of everything Omar had said the night before. It bothered her though. Three kids, a religious father and he was helping his unemployed youngest son to buy a Lamborghini. Not even the oldest son. And the father was frugal. He had a cheap white van parked in front of the house. That level of flash didn’t sound consistent. She looked at the receipt again.

Aamir Anwar’s account details had been blanked out by Bill Prescott but his name was there. Omar said yesterday that he could empty these accounts to pay for his father’s return. He had access to those accounts. There was nothing to stop him paying for a car out of them as long as he repaid the money.

She realised what it meant: Omar was a fantasist, he didn’t have money or a rich father, or a fraud scam. He was, at worst, optimistic about a bad business idea.

They had nothing but Malki Tait’s fingerprints and the chances were they were from an old foil.