Still Midnight

As the Unit came past they assumed MacKechnie was the senior and gave him the low-down: no one in there, no guns in the house, one bullet in the wall and a lot of blood. One resident still in the house, a bedridden new mother.

‘Bedridden?’ asked Morrow.

As if they were seeing her for the first time, all of the men looked at her.

‘Well,’ their DS answered weakly, ‘she’s just had a baby. A week ago or something.’

‘How’s she bedridden?’

‘She’s not to get up. Said she could haemorrhage.’ The sergeant was embarrassed and laughed, ‘I’m not qualified to check her stitches, am I?’

She watched as they all giggled together. Even MacKechnie had a titter. Ba

‘Anyway, that’s us done,’ he said, giving Ba

They watched the gaggle of big men pick their steps carefully down the far stem of the T-junction, tiptoeing until they were carefully beyond the tape and out of the crime scene. They climbed back in their shiny black van.

Morrow wished she was alone and could bite herself again but she took a breath and asked the cop, ‘What’s the story?’

The plod drew a breath to speak but Ba

‘Which Mosque?’

‘Central for the kids, Tintagell Road for the daddy.’

Morrow nodded, it made sense. Central was a city-wide mosque, young people from all over the city got to check each other out. Tintagell was smaller, local, had a tighter community feeling about it. If the kids were going to Central then they weren’t territorial, weren’t gang-marked. Good kids.

‘Gathering back at the house,’ Ba

‘Much?’

‘Two million.’

‘Pounds?’

‘Aye.’

They looked back at the house, valued it, MacKechnie said, ‘Worth about three hundred K, do you think?’

Morrow and Ba

‘Two million in cash? Did they get it?’

‘There was no one called Rob here.’

‘What colour were the gunmen? Were they Asian?’

‘White. They had balaclavas on but they were white.’

‘Who’s Rob?’

‘Du

‘No lodgers? No dodgy boyfriends?’

‘No one. Money not forthcoming,’ continued Ba

Morrow was puzzling at the house still. ‘Could it just be a matter of the wrong address then?’

‘As yet undetermined,’ said Ba

‘It’s not a case of the wrong address,’ she spoke to MacKechnie, making him look up the road, ‘because Albert Drive ’s just over there-’

‘Millionaires’ row,’ interrupted Ba

She ploughed on. ‘If they were just looking for a family with money they’d go there and smash a door in.’

‘So?’ MacKechnie encouraged her to draw a conclusion. Ba

‘So, they came here deliberately, sir. They had intel about someone here that made them think there was money here. Ready money, maybe.’

‘Unless…’ Ba

It was a fucking stupid suggestion.

‘If armed men had burst in anywhere else tonight incident room control would have notified FAU, I think.’ MacKechnie’s voice was softer, correcting.

Morrow looked back at the squad cars littering the street and asked, ‘D’ye say they were warned not to call us?’

Ba

The cop answered, holding his witness statements up for support. ‘Yeah. “Call the cops and this fu-” ’ He thought better of a word-for-word recitation. ‘Um, threats to the hostage.’

MacKechnie looked at the squad cars and the menacing FAU van pulling out. ‘Let’s move this visible presence.’

Ba

‘If they said not to call us,’ Morrow continued the thought, ‘they must have been confident that the family would comply. Maybe they’re right, maybe there is money here after all.’

MacKechnie checked that Ba

‘Sir, you said the next-’

‘We’ve had a lot of trouble here recently, minorities, gangs fighting, the Boyle boy. Don’t need any trouble with cultural misunderstandings.’

Morrow ground her jaw and stared at the house as if it had offended her. ‘I’m from here, sir, I know the people in this area-’

‘DS Ba

This case was a career maker and MacKechnie was here guiding Ba

‘Why not this one, sir?’

He didn’t answer. When she looked back at him she followed his eyes to the Asian guys standing beyond the tape. They had the lost, limp look of victims. The oldest guy was big, and dressed in a plain sweatshirt and cotton trousers, bearded. The two younger ones were tall and thin, wore a shalwar kameez, hoodies and trainers, traditional, religious.

‘Personal factors make us suitable for some cases,’ he said, ‘and not for others. You’ll get the next one.’

Typical MacKechnie. Never said anything outright. Delicate situation, he wanted to say, all Asians hate women and anyway, you’re a nut case.

Morrow could tell by the size of the boys and the softness of their builds that they were second generation. They had short hair, buzz cut by a barber. One of them had top of the range Nikes on, and they weren’t to impress his pious pals at Mosque. Those guys didn’t care if she was female or male. She was ten years older than them, she might as well have been a man and she knew the South Side. If anyone’s personal factors made them suitable it was her. But MacKechnie no longer trusted her, sensed that she was slowly tipping over the edge. It was unfair, but the service was all about unfair and she knew she should let it go.

‘Sir, that’s…’ she was regretting it before the word even tumbled past her lips, ‘racist.’

They both stood quite still, looking at the house. Cold rain pattered on their heads. A trickle ran down Morrow’s cheek, dripping off her chin, soaking into her lapels, marking a ragged bullet hole over her heart. Behind them marked squad cars reversed slowly out of the street. She felt a weight on her chest and realised that she was trying not to breathe.

MacKechnie didn’t turn to speak and his voice was less than a murmur. ‘Never speak to me like that again.’

He turned sharply and walked away from her, over to Ba

Fuck.