Still Midnight

The Vauxhall’s headlights were off but two men sat inside, slumped in the front seats, arms folded, waiting.

They were a scant five years younger than the pretend soldiers in the van around the corner but were better fed, better groomed, altogether more shiny and hopeful.

Omar was spindly and awkward, a walking elbow-jab. He still had the sort of ethereal thi

They had been waiting for twenty minutes, talking sometimes to fill the time, but mostly silent. The radio rumbled in the background and the soft yellow light lit their chins. Ramadan AM broadcast locally for only one month a year. It filled its schedules with young Glaswegians clumsily rehashing opinions they’d heard at Mosque or on tapes. Mo and Omar weren’t listening for moral instruction; it was a small community and sometimes they knew the speakers and got a laugh when they sounded nervous or said stupid things. The debates were best early in the evening, when everyone was hungry. Mo and Omar would chant over the rancour: ‘Give us a biscuit, give us a biscuit.’

Mo sat in the driver’s seat resting his eye on a magazine with a double page spread about Lamborghinis.

‘Fuck, man,’ he said almost to himself, ‘couldn’t pay me to take that car.’

Omar didn’t answer.

‘I mean park that car anywhere and it’ll get keyed to fucking ribbons.’

‘It’s not for going messages for your mum.’ Omar’s voice was surprisingly high. ‘’S for cruising up the neighbourhood, being seen in.’

Mo looked at him. ‘Impressing fit birds and that?’

‘Aye.’

Mo looked back at the pictures. ‘Aye, well, you’d know, being a noted ladies’ man.’

Omar rubbed hard at his right eye with spidery fingers. ‘Listen, man women are fighting to get at me. Just, like, when you’re there they lay off, because, ye know, might make ye feel inadequate and that.’

‘Course they do.’ Mo nodded at the magazine. ‘You’re a good tipper.’

Omar yawned and stretched, drawling when he spoke. ‘I’m an international lady magnet.’

Mo jabbed an animated finger at an action photo of a yellow Lamborghini taking a corner on a su

The pundit on Radio Ramadan gave a time check – 10.23 – and both did the mental calculation.

Mo spoke first. ‘Give it five minutes or so.’

‘Aye.’ Omar yawned luxuriously again, juddering on the come-down, ‘Bloody knackered… Can’t have a smoke in here, can I?’

‘Nah, man, it’ll stink the motor out.’

‘Put my window down, then.’

Mo huffed and pressed the button on his door to lower Omar’s window. Then he twitched a smile and lowered his own. Tutting, Omar took out his packet, handed a cigarette to Mo and took one himself before lighting them both up.

They sat, puffing shallow breaths, blowing white streams of smoke that flattened over the windscreen. The October breeze outside tugged thin tendrils of smoke out, over the roof of the car and into the quiet street.

Back around the corner, in the front seat of the stolen van, Eddy and Pat were pulling their balaclavas down, adjusting the eyeholes. Eddy picked up his gun and he and Pat looked at it. The barrel was vibrating, amplifying the shakes in his hand. Suddenly angry, Eddy nodded a ‘go’.

Pat hesitated for only a moment before loyalty propelled him out of the van. By the time both his feet were on the street he was already rueing it.

Behind him Eddy slithered down, shut the door and thumped Pat on the back, knocking him towards the gate.

Pat turned and squared up to him, ready to say his piece, but Eddy didn’t notice. Keeping his gun flush to his side, he ran in a low crouch across the road to the gate and up the dark path.

The wind in the street made Pat’s eyes stream and through the tears he watched Eddy ru

Pat caught up to him. ‘Eddy-’

But Eddy swung his gun up parallel to his cheek and flicked the safety catch off. His chest was heaving with excitement as he wrapped both hands around the butt and scampered over to the front door.

Pat watched Eddy, noting quietly that he was ru

Eddy’s eyes snapped shut at the pain. He bent forward from the waist slightly, panted, waggled the barrel of his gun at Pat to tell him to move.

Pat wondered suddenly if he could grab Eddy’s arm, pull him back to the van. Or just turn and walk himself, get in the van with Malki, refuse to move, but they had shelled out for the van already, bought the guns, and anyway Malki needed to be paid. Malki really needed to be paid.

Pat took a breath and, against his own best counsel, sauntered casually out of the dark, up to the front door.

He pressed the bell.

A cosy three-tone chime rang out in the hallway and a moment later, behind the mottled glass panel, two shadows materialised, one far away down the hall, the other close, coming from the left, just feet away inside the door.

The faraway figure had set his shoulders in a huff, spoke indistinctly, sounded a

Graceful as water she reached for the handle.

The door fell open and a puff of warmth billowed out to meet Pat’s nose – the smell of toast.

Pink carpet and walls. To his left was a small black telephone table between the living room door and another. Above it, on the wall, a cheap-looking black velvet clock ticked loudly, a picture on the back of it, a gold line drawing of a mosque or something. Pat mapped the room: six doors leading off. Paki music coming from a back room, at least one other person in the house.

Pat looked at the hostile who had answered the door. She wasn’t obviously beautiful; her nose was long and pointy and she had an angry red spot on her cheek. He could never explain, then or afterwards, why the sight of her struck him so, or why he froze, gun limp by his side, drinking in the flawless ‘s’ of black hair resting on her shoulder. ‘Hello Monkey,’ said her T-shirt, a green slogan on faded soft grey, the line of the letters cracked and broken from the washing machine.

Aleesha looked back at him, quizzical, eyes snaking across his face as if she was trying to make sense of the black woollen canvas. A strand of blue-black hair slipped softly from her shoulder, coming to rest across her small apple-round breast. She was wearing western clothes and didn’t seem to have a bra on under her T-shirt, which was odd because she was definitely the man’s daughter; she looked like him, and Pat always thought those old Asian guys had a firm hold over their daughters.

‘Who in the hell are you…’ called the man at the back of the hall. He was small, sixty or seventy, had an Amish-looking neat little curtain-hanging of a beard and wore pale blue nylon pyjamas, perfectly ironed, ‘coming in here…’ his voice faded, the danger occurring to him, ‘so late…?’