‘We don’t, but listen, I’m going to the bank right now, mate, yeah? I’ll get whatever I can out and give it to you tonight, happily give it to you tonight, I’ll give you anything we can get, right? For my dad.’
‘Well… how much is that gonnae…?’
‘I’ve no idea, mate, right? I can get a loan. But I can definitely get, like forty K right away.’ He said it like that, forty K, instead of forty thousand because he thought it sounded like a bit more. ‘But whatever I can get I’ll give it all to ye really happily, right? Will ye phone back later? Say at five o’clock and we’ll arrange to meet?’
‘Forty K’s not enough, mate.’ He breathed loudly into the receiver, this almost friend, held it close to his mouth so the sound was breathy and distorted. ‘OK, listen to me now: we know about you.’
Omar looked at the tape recorder. ‘What?’
‘We know about you,’ he said carefully. ‘See what I’m saying here? We know about you.’
Omar was watching the tape turn, ‘OK, mate, honestly, I don’t know what you’re on about, right? Genuinely. But listen, right? If you call back in two hours I’ll have been to the bank and I’ll see what I can do for ye, right?’
‘We know all about ye.’ And he hung up.
Pat could see Eddy sitting in the Lexus, stroking the leather of the steering wheel, and smiling smugly to himself.
He drawled as Pat got back in. ‘What did he say?’ His blink was too long, the smile too fixed for it to be real and Pat knew that Eddy was off again, gangster tripping, imagining himself more than a fat divorcee in a hire car.
‘Well,’ Pat pulled the seat belt over himself, ‘spoke to Bob and he said he’ll get out what he can. He’s got forty K already but he’ll get more. We’ve to phone back at five to arrange a drop. This should be over pretty soon, I think.’
Eddy nodded slowly and blinked again. He was so caught up in the role play he almost seemed drunk. ‘Good one, man, good work,’ as if Pat was working for him and he’d pleased him. ‘Was he niggaring about it?’
Pat flinched. ‘What?’
‘Niggaring, ye know, havvering about the money.’ Eddy started the car and pulled out smoothly, driving to the end of the road.
Pat didn’t know what to say to him, didn’t want to implicate himself in the general air of ignorant madness by responding to the term. He wished Malki were in the car to say something. ‘He said he doesn’t know how much more he can get, but he’ll try his best.’
‘Yeah.’ God almighty, he was even doing an American accent now. ‘Yeah, niggaring it.’
That’s not really a word, Pat thought of saying. He licked his lips, drew a breath, but by the time he had his courage up the moment had passed. He held his newspaper to his chest with two hands, like a woman clutching an evening bag in a dark alley.
‘Aye, wait an’ see, those fucker’s’ll pay up, right enough…’ Eddy gabbled on, still doing the accent, confident again now that the arrangement had been made. Pat answered in grunts, trying not to engage but keeping Eddy going, studying him.
The realisation was slow but profound: whatever amount the family offered tonight Pat would accept it to get away from Eddy. All the years of listening to him, coaxing him, rearranging facts to suit him, smiling away from him, it was over. Pat had other things to do, other matters to take care of.
They had driven around quiet streets for half a mile before they hit the main road. Mid-morning traffic was building up and they joined a queue of cars trying to dodge through the traffic. Eddy saw the lights changing up ahead and squeezed the brake on, bringing the big car to a stop. A brand new Mini was next to him, blue, shiny, and the woman driver saw the Lexus’ silver bonnet and turned to look into the car. Her eyes were obscured by the Mini’s roof. All that was visible was a lipsticktackity mouth hanging open, looking at them. She smiled and Eddy drank it in, smiling at his steering wheel.
‘Check this cunt checking me, eh?’
Pat didn’t answer.
‘Pat, man, check this bird checking the car.’
Pat wasn’t looking at him.
‘Man…’
Eddy followed Pat’s eyeline, over the dash, over the bonnet, past the lights to a green and white tiled rotunda in a traffic island. It was a strange wee building, like something from a garden but in the middle of a sea of traffic. A hand-painted sign on the window read ‘The Battlefield Rest’. Eddy looked back at him.
‘Had your dinner in there?’ he asked.
But Pat didn’t answer. A horn tooted behind them, the lights had changed. Eddy cursed the driver and took off.
Pat wasn’t looking at the rotunda, he was looking over the road again, to a small wall around a visitors’ car park and a tall Victorian building. Built in a comma around the cars it was the Victoria Infirmary.
‘Pat, man, you’re miles away.’
Eddy was right. Pat stared at the building and his mind took him out of the car, away from the racial slights and the bad role play and the hint of Shugie’s piss on Eddy’s trousers.
Pat and his beloved newspaper were in the lift in the Victoria Infirmary. Pat was holding a bunch of flowers, yellow flowers, he could feel the cold damp from the stems creeping through the tissue paper in his hands. And he had a suit on.
19
Perhaps because Bannerman had believed her when she pretended to stand up for him over the 999 call detail, or because they were both tired and bored of fighting, for whatever reason peace broke out unexpectedly as Bannerman drove them to the Victoria Infirmary. He took the drive slow, hardly talking except to fill in the spaces in the briefing as they occurred to him. His delivery was thoughtful and Morrow found him beating her to conclusions a couple of times. More astute than she had given him credit for.
‘Why burn it out in Harthill, is the question. Either they went to Edinburgh or pass there often, knew it and sensed it would throw us off the scent.’
‘Serial number trace on the van’s origins?’
‘Nicked from a dealers in Cathcart. Nothing unusual about the theft.’ He slowed for the lights at Gorbals Cross.
‘Could explain them burning it out there, if one of them was an experienced car thief. The farmer said he’d had nicked cars there before.’
‘Yeah. Could be a known place to leave cars. Tried and tested, they’d know it would take a good few hours before anyone would find it.’
‘What’d the burnt-out look like?’
‘Professional. You know that fire ball effect you get sometimes? ’ He waved his hand flat over his head, skimming the roof of the car.
She did. ‘When they leave the tank full and it explodes and burns itself out?’
‘Exactly.’ He smiled a little, pleased that she knew what he was talking about. ‘Well, no sign of that. They doused the inside thoroughly and it burned nice and steady so there’s no fibre or hair traces or anything.’
‘Did the family have any Afghanistan visas?’
‘Nah, no connection. Doesn’t seem to be one. Mum and dad are both refugees from Uganda. Any extended family they have is from there as well. Couple of cousins from Pakistan, distant, Ugandan émigrés.’
‘I think Mo and Omar were right, it’s just the thing an idiot would say to Asian people. If they are unprofessional enough to use a gun they’ve never fired before… You’d think they’d try it out.’
‘I know.’ The lights changed to green and he eased the car through the junction and down the Vicky Road. ‘They did make one big mistake: tin foil wrap found in among the trees.’
‘No!’ She grinned at him. ‘No!’
‘Yeah.’ He was smiling too. ‘Heroin. But let’s not get too excited because even if it was from the kidnappers and not the van thieves, it’s so hard to trace anything from a wrap.’
‘The gunmen weren’t mellow.’
‘Yeah, well, it was just one wrap, there’s tar on the inside.’