Still Midnight

‘Not that worried about Malcolm, is she?’ observed Morrow.

‘More worried about the twenty quid he had.’

Across the street the door opened and they disappeared inside. Harris was opening his car door but Morrow stopped him. ‘Look.’

The house was bought, the front door had been exchanged for a solid oak thing with vicious bolts studded on it on a Castilian pattern. The windows all had alarm wiring threaded along the glass and cameras were dotted along the wall. But what was bizarre was that A

‘Fortress Tait,’ said Harris. ‘I knew it was here somewhere, just never got the actual address.’

‘You call that number plate in?’

‘Yeah, boss, they’re checking it out now. Probably bogus, though.’

‘Yeah. What d’ye think she’s doing in there?’

Harris watched and shrugged. ‘Visiting family? Maybe she’s in there setting a firebomb.’

34

A

She stood too close to Pat, so close he couldn’t focus on her face without hurting his eyes. And she wasn’t standing still either, she was reeling towards and away from Pat, peering at him top and bottom through ridiculously thick glasses.

‘I mean if he’s getting money from somewhere it should come through me,’ said A

‘I du

Pat was waiting to be told the Big Man wouldn’t see him, waiting to be told he should deal with Parki, who was reading a newspaper at the far end of the room and ignoring him. They always made you wait.

Pat didn’t want to see the Big Man really, it was too complicated, too much bowing and scraping. He had knocked them back for job after job, for security positions in the family firm, for one-off muscle shifts. Worse than that, Pat wouldn’t let them use his name on any of the legal papers for the security firm. Relations with his relatives were cold to say the least. That’s how they got everyone involved, freezing them out if they didn’t comply. Pat had been pretty straight his whole life until now, until this. Loyalty to Eddy had made him go along with it.

‘Where’d he get it from?’ A

Pat shrugged and looked away. He hated this cold house. They’d knocked two into one, knocked down a wall to make a living room that was double the size. It was all wrong, the shape was wrong, ceilings too low to fit with the room, four big windows from the front and back, like a waiting room or something. Impossible to heat. Stupid. The big man had money but no taste, he’d bought expensive stuff, desks and antiques and that, but the stuff was all dotted around the room like a garage sale.

‘Never came from me, A

Big Man wouldn’t let anyone clean it now either, not since his wife died, and everything looked sticky and dirty. Pat focused his eye on a glass display cabinet. It looked like something that should be in a shop, a glass box with three shelves in it and a dead bulb at the top, hanging slightly out of its socket. Inside were three sculptures of Chinese women, one sitting under a brolly, one leaning against a tree, one sitting on a bench. They all had the same face.

‘Mean, everb’y knows I handle his money. If they’ve got anything else to give him they should gae it tae me.’

This was what he had to get away from. All of this. Mothers chiselling money from weans, cold rooms, waiting for knock-backs. He wanted toast and warm and pink and hair on pillows. He wanted family members who cried when one of them was taken away. Kindness.

‘See, Pat, son-’

‘Auntie A

She crossed her arms and looked him up and down. ‘He’s been hanging about Toryglen. Who lives in Toryglen?’ She was threatening him.

Pat stared at her. ‘Did he tell ye he was going to Toryglen?’

‘Nut,’ she glanced out of the window, ‘polis are looking for him.’ She was looking at a couple in a black Ford outside. ‘He got a cab yesterday and they found out he’d went there.’

The police were sitting in a car outside the house right now looking for Malki. Pat felt suddenly violently sick. He shrugged awkwardly. ‘I du

‘Shugie Wilson,’ said A

She was so fucking fly. Pat always forgot. ‘I don’t know Shugie.’

‘Aye, ye do,’ she said, looking at him through the bottom of the lenses. ‘Alki. Drinks in Brian’s. Used to run wi’ the Bankshead buoys.’

Parki coughed a dry bark and turned the page of his newspaper noisily. He was telling A

A

‘What, son?’

‘I want to talk to Parki in private.’

She looked at Parki to overrule Pat but he didn’t say anything, his face didn’t flicker. They both stared at her.

‘Oh that’s fucking nice.’ She stepped back along the room. ‘Tell your old auntie to go fuck herself.’ She stopped, waiting for them to insist on her coming back but they didn’t. Sulking, she sloped off. Gordon, the Big Man’s other heavy, let her out of the front door.

Pat and Parki looked at each other across the football pitch of a room. ‘’S a wonder Malki’s such a nice wee guy, i

Gordon came in from the door. He’d been a body builder in his day. Took steroids but hadn’t worked out since his back injury. All the muscle had turned to fat. Even his fingers were fat now. Rumour was his dick was the size of a cigarette. ‘The big man’ll see ye now, Pat.’

Dumb with surprise Pat followed Gordon out of the room and up the stairs. Gordon’s back was so fat that his neck wasn’t visible from one step down. At the top of the stairs Gordon turned to Pat and smiled. ‘Nice to see you here, by the way,’ he said. It struck Pat as strange that he said it like that, warm, as if Pat was back with them. He motioned to the door, knocked twice on Pat’s behalf and swung it open into a small living room.

The Big Man probably didn’t recognise it himself and Pat only saw it because he’d been away for so long, but the pokey upstairs living room was a recreation of the house he used to live in. A brown armchair faced its twin, empty now that the wife was dead. A small telly sat on top of a lacy doily over a wee chest of dark wood drawers that they’d had in the old house. The sideboard was even ru

The Big Man wasn’t big but he was square, like professional footballers in another age, a terrier of a man. He looked up at Pat from his armchair and seemed old but still vital, still threatening. ‘Son.’ He nodded, almost smiled, and Pat wondered if he’d been missed. It seemed unlikely. The Big Man had a lot of nephews and Pat’s mother had been dead a long time. ‘What’s your business?’

‘Um.’ Pat stood awkwardly by the door, his hands in his pockets, wanting to leave. ‘I’m sorry to come here…’