Alex had heard Billal’s accent as she came through the hall. Unless she missed her guess he had been educated at St. Al’s, the Catholic school in the city center, an expensive, highly academic institution. He had that confident charm and a particular turn in his “r”s. Meeshra was common, used swear words without a thought, had bad grammar, reported speech as if she was telling another girl on a street corner about a fight at school.
“Just out of interest, how did you meet Billal?”
“Come up with my family.”
“To live in Glasgow?”
“Nah, nah, it were a setup. Arranged marriage. We only met four times before we got married.”
“Oh, I see.”
Defensive, Meeshra turned back to the baby. “Yous don’t understand about it, think it’s all forced and that—”
Alex cut her off. “I don’t.”
Meeshra looked at her.
“I’m all for it.” Alex shrugged. “Especially if you’re moving in with the in-laws. You’re not just picking a husband, are you?” Alex had thought about it often, who her mother would have picked for her, how differently her life would have gone. That was the thing about arranged marriages, she thought, no one got the right to choose an unexpected future for themselves.
Meeshra gave her a soft smile. “Exactly.”
“You’re picking the whole family. You need to know you’re compatible in lots of ways.”
Meeshra nodded. “Exactly, exactly,” and tipped her head at Alex, wondering if she was being played. She seemed to realize Alex was genuine and smiled softly, almost grateful.
Alex blinked, resuming her questions. “Back to before, so the gunman says ‘Pat’ and they both freeze. Then what?”
“Yeah, so, he’s like ‘Pat’ and they both freeze and then, suddenly, me mam-in-law’s like, ‘What’s doing out here?’ and the fat one run down the hall, I seen him skip past my door here”—she pointed past the door to the back of the house—“and he brung me mam-in-law and Dada back up. Then they was quiet for a bit. And then Pat shot Aleesha’s hand off.”
“Just out of the blue?”
“Yeah.”
“No threats or demands?”
“Nah.”
“Did you see him shoot the gun?”
“Naw. I heard a, like, a big whump noise and seen a light and then Aleesha says, like, ‘You’ve shot me fucking hand off!’ ”
“How did you know it was Pat who did it?”
“ ’Cause the other one was there at the door and I could see him.”
“You heard the shot?”
“Yeah. And light, like white light, a flash, and everyone looked over there and I seen blood on the wall and I thought Aleesha had been shot but then I heard her go, ‘You’ve shot me fucking hand off.’ ” Meeshra didn’t seem very sad that Aleesha had been shot. She actually smiled a little.
“She swore?”
“Aleesha’s—” Meeshra looked away quickly, snorted a joyless laugh. “Well, a
teenager
.” Received opinion, repeated comments. Meeshra wasn’t far off her teens herself.
“Were you like that?”
That hollow laugh again. “Me dad would have battered me.”
“Is Aamir not like that?”
She shook her head. “Even if he were I don’t think she’d be any better. Jeans and T-shirts. Nail varnish. Won’t observe religious practice
at all
.”
“A rebel?”
“No. Stubborn.” She was angry about it but not really with Aleesha, seemed slightly removed from it, as if her belonging to family was contingent on her joining in a campaign against the girl.
“Did she stop wearing traditional clothing?”
Meeshra became embarrassed. “Never done. Dunno. I just… dunno.”
“She hasn’t ever worn them?”
“Nah. I dunno.” She wouldn’t look at Morrow.
“Are the family converts?”
“Naw, just not always that, ye know, religious.”
“Oh, I see, just recently become more observant?”
“Aye, yeah.”
Morrow noted it but let it pass. “What happened after the shot?”
“Then, well, then, Mo and Omar come in the front door.”
“At the sound of the shot?”
“Yeah, I heard them come past outside the window there”—she pointed to the window at the side of the bed—“running there, round.” Her finger traced their passage along the blank wall. “And then they burst in through the door. The fat one, not Pat, the other one, he started shouting at them, ‘You’re Robbie, no, you’re Robbie,’ and then he grabbed Dada and went. I’s in the bed the whole time, so I only seen little bits.”
The baby’s head slumped drowsily on his tiny neck. Meeshra looked down at him, calmer now, her fingers curling around the perfect sphere of his skull.
“So,” Morrow prompted, “Omar and Mo had been waiting outside in the car?”
“Is it?” Meeshra looked up.
“Well,” said Morrow, “they’re unlikely to have just pulled up at that moment, are they?”
“Dunno.”
“What did he say as he left, the fat one?”
“Two million quid by tomorrow night. Did he not see the house?
Two million?
He’s mad.”
“Anything else?”
“Not to call police and it were payback for Afghanistan. Mental case.” She nodded out to the hall. “They’re from Uganda and I’m from bloody Lancaster. You wouldn’t believe the shit we have to put up with now, ’cause of all them fucking Arabs.”
“D’you think that’s what it was? Just a case of misplaced bigotry?”
“Well, what else could it be? ’S like kidnapping a African because of the slave trade.”
Alex wrestled with the analogy for a moment before realizing that it didn’t quite fit. “Right.” She stood up. “Thanks very much for your help, Meeshra. I’m sure we’ll need to talk to you again later but now we’ll leave you and the baby to get a sleep.”
Meeshra leaned back on the pillows, pleased with herself. “Robbie, he says.
Rrr
obbie, right Scotch, like.”
It was a final statement, a good-bye, not requiring a response, but Alex couldn’t resist showing her cards. “Is that right?” she said pointedly.
Disconcerted by the steely edge to her voice, Meeshra blinked.
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 pajamas 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 at 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 be taken wherever.
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 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 we get to the money? We’d have to take him to it and if it’s in a lockup 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 gotten out sooner but she was an optimist. In the backseat, 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, 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 roadblock. The brightly colored 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.
Alex Morrow stopped outside the bedroom door, pulling it closed, feeling for the click. The white-suited Forensics team moved like ghosts through the hall and living room. They worked in a studied, calm silence, gathering and measuring, face masks giving them an air of graceful anonymity.
The wall opposite the bedroom was splattered with blood. A short guy was worrying holes in the plaster with tweezers, another picking up fibers from the carpet, both kneeling on small stools that matched their outfits.